I Love My Crazy Uncle Orson

Uncle Orson is not an Asshat

2008-11-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

I came across an article written a few years back called Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat. Of course I had to read it. The gist of the article is that the author’s friend published an essay (Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman by Elaine Radford) calling Ender’s Game an “apologia for Hitler” and Card did not like it very much and a few years later the author almost got punched in the face at a party.

Elaine apparently read Ender’s Game, immediately decided that Ender was a surrogate for Hitler, and hated the book for that reason. She then sat down with a biography of Hitler and found all kinds of parallels between his life and Ender’s. There is a name for this; its called confirmation bias. That is when you hold something to be true and then everything you see simply confirms that belief in you own mind. Elaine found connections that you “wouldn't even notice unless you read the footnotes to the most detailed Hitler biographies.”

This reminds me of the scene in “A Beautiful Mind” when John Nash finds patterns in newspapers and magazines that he thinks are the communication of communist plotters. For him the patterns were real, and they confirmed his belief in a conspiracy. I don’t know if Elaine Radford’s belief is the result of schizophrenia or some other craziness, but the fact is she went looking for connections and she found them. You can find unseemly connections to many literary character if you set out to do so. For example:

Ursula k. Leguin has extraterrestrial charcters that mate with more than one other individual, including humans. Therefore she must be a polygamy apologist.
In the Dune novels Paul Atreides and his Buddislamic followers conquers the known universe in a bloody Jihad. Therefore Frank Herbert must be an Islamic terrorist apologist.
Mark Twain called a character "Nigger Jim". Therefore Mark Twain must hate black people.

The author of the article goes on to explain he doesn’t think Card even actually wrote the novels, and that his henchmen will punch you in the face if he is upset with you. Seriously. Talk about a conspiracy theory.

Uncle Orson’s politics may border on crazy, but he is not a Hitler apologist and he’s not an asshat.

Uncle Orson Secretly Loves Obama

2008-11-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

A week before the election Uncle Orson wrote a twenty nine hundred word column explaining why McCain would be the best president since George W. Bush (keeping in mind that Uncle Orson thinks Bush is the best president since Lincoln), and why Obama is really a cross between Karl Marx and Bill Ayers. That's nearly three thousand words that could have been better spent writing a new Lovelock novel (I need to know what happens to that crazy monkey).

Uncle Orson thinks Obama is dangerous to America for a number of reasons, let's look at those one at a time:

The Iraq War

Uncle Orson commends bush for his perseverance in Iraq and chastises Obama for opposing it and wanting to end it. He fails to mention one important fact, the Iraq war was a mistake. The premise on which it was based (WMD) turned out to be wrong and there was no real national security reason to invade the country. While most of our leaders (including Democrats) bought into the shaky intelligence that Iraq was a threat and ignored the intelligence to the contrary, Obama predicted that invading Iraq would be the giant mistake that it was.
But now we are in there, and Obama wants to get us out. He talks about withdrawing "responsibly" and that at one brigade a month we could do this in sixteen months. Uncle Orson calls this cowardice, but actually this is leadership. Setting goals and deadlines for your best people (General Petreaus in this case) is one of the hallmarks of great leadership. Committing to stay in for "as long as it takes" or "a hundred years" (McCain) may show perseverance, but it does not show leadership.

Now, of course, the Iraqi government has asked for a time table and the Bush administration is talking about a "time horizon". So the only people left who think that a time-table is a bad idea are Uncle Orson and John McCain.

Talking to Our Enemies

We need to be perfectly clear what it means to "talk without precondition." The Bush-Cheney administration has refused to talk with our enemies unless they first met certain "Preconditions". In the case of Iran and North Korea the precondition was to suspend and verifiably dismantle their nuclear programs. That, of course would be the reason for talking with them in the first place. In essence the bush administration said, "we won't talk to you about dismantling your nuclear program until you dismantle your nuclear program." That is the context around any discussion of preconditions, and to ignore that context is just playing stupid.

The reason that Obama would have talks without precondition is because the Bush approach was such a failure that even Bush changed his mind about it. Iran advanced their nuclear program and North Korea actually tested a nuclear bomb while we didn't talk to them. The Bush administration finally changed course on this and as a result un-preconditioned talks have led to the closing and inspections of some North Korean facilities. It's still a big mess, and we know they will probably never fully keep their word, but arguing over inspections is better than nuclear tests. The Bush administration has also started talking with Iran.

So far we have: Uncle Orson loves Bush => Bush is negotiating a time table and talking to our enemies => Obama is for a timetable and talking with our enemies => ergo, Uncle Orson should love Obama.

The Economy and Taxes

Uncle Orson repeats the ridiculous and simplistic claim that the democrats caused the economic meltdown by forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to poor people. I have already debunked this bogus claim here.

Bush tax cuts are set to end. If we do nothing the tax rates on all Americans will increase. Uncle Orson asserts that Obama is lying about not raising taxes on the middle class because he would just let the bush tax cuts expire and that would be that. This is just a complete misrepresentation. Obama's plan is to extend the bush tax cuts for everyone except those in the top two brackets. From Obama's full tax Plan (download the PDF at the bottom of the page for the full details):

"The top two income tax brackets would return to their 1990’s levels of 36% and 39.6%. All other tax brackets would remain as they are today. Obama would also restore the 1990’s levels for the personal exemption and itemized deduction phaseouts (known as PEP and Pease). Obama would work with the Treasury Department to adjust the thresholds of these rates slightly to ensure that no married couple making less than $250,000 (or single making less than $200,000) was affected by these changes."

So Uncle Orson rips Obama's tax plan and calls him a liar without even understanding what the plan really is.

Uncle Orson also calls Obama a "redistributor," taking from the rich and giving to the poor. But taxes by their very nature are redistribution of wealth, and since under Obama the rich would still be paying taxes at or below what they were in the Reagan years that means he is less of a redistributor than Reagan was. Couple this with the fact that 60% of those making more than $200,000 (the very people who will see there taxes increase) voted for Obama and this "redistributor" argument starts to ring hollow.

Obama also has some very well known capitalists advising him and backing his economic plan, Warren Buffett among them. These are not folks you lightly accuse of being "socialists" or "redistributors." Also, a poll conducted by The Economist showed that professional economists trusted Obama over McCain to Deal with the economy 4 to 1. They rated McCain's plan "Very Bad" and Obama's plan "Very Good." The Economist is a conservative magazine economically (for lower taxes, free trade, etc) so this is not a product of the "liberal media."

Character

Uncle Orson attacks Obama on the William Ayers link. Obama sits on a board to reduce poverty that Ayers is also on, a board that includes and is funded by some republicans also, and this is evidence of bad character. He also repeats some conspiracy theory clap-trap that Ayers actually ghost-wrote one of Obama's books. That's just sad.

In 2000 McCain refused to say that South Carolina should remove the confederate flag from the state capital. After he lost the nomination he admitted (in a rare moment of actual straight talk) that refusing to take a stand against the flag was weak and completely politically motivated. Since much of the '08 campaign consisted of him going against his own "principles" the only conclusion we can make is that his instinct is to let political consideration trump principle, and that he only recognizes this weakness when it is too late. And he calls Vietnamese "gooks". That's just not cool.

In spite of all this I actually like McCain, I supported him in 2000, and voted for him in the primaries. This is the first election in my memory when I did not think that I was picking from the lesser of two evils. It is possible to disagree with a man's politics and not resort to vitriol, Uncle Orson.

Now get back to work on Lovelock. I know it's been a long time but I'm sure Kathryn Kidd will return you call.

Uncle Orson Gets a Shout Out from the King of Crazy Talk

2008-11-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

Unlce Orson is pretty proud, and rightfully so. One of his columns was mentioned by the King of Crazy Talk himself, Rush Limbaugh. Rush describes Uncle Orson as a liberal Democrat (because he supports gun control) and then reprints dear uncle's entire column titled "Would the Last Honest Reporter Turn the Lights Out." I guess Rush's point is that even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. In this case the "blind squirrel" is Uncle Orson and the"nut" is pure nuttiness.

You see, Uncle Orson buys hook line and sinker into the myth of the liberal media. A lot of people do, and in some cases they might be right. But like Al Franken said: saying the media has a liberal bias is like saying Al Qaeda puts too much garlic in their hummus; even if its true that is not the real problem with AL Qaeda. Franken goes on to describe how the real problem with the media is bias toward their corporate owners (Viacom and GE for example, whose boards are not exactly known for their liberal bias), and bias to keeping access to politicians, and bias to laziness by simply reporting what somebody else has reported. But you can read Franken's book yourself.

Uncle Orson asserts in his column that the media is dishonest because it hasn't reported that the cause of the current economic collapse is the fact that the democrats in congress forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make risky loans to poor people, and that the republicans - McCain, in particular - saw this coming and tried to prevent it, but the Democrats blocked all attempts at reform.

It is true that Fannie and Freddie were were allowed to loosen their lending practices and this contributed to the crisis. One problem with Uncle Orson's argument is that I know this because I learned it from the mainstream "Liberal" media.

The Truth about Fannie and Freddie

While Fannie and Freddie did loosen their lending standards they never got into the worst of the "toxic" loans. A sub-prime loan is by definition a loan that does not meet the standards of Fannie and Freddie. They did buy some pretty bad paper in the "Alt-A" category, but they didn't buy the NINA (no income and no asset verification) loans and exotic interest-only ARM loans. Other companies bought those. In fact, if Fannie and Freddie hadn't bought the loans that they did, somebody else would have. They actually came kind of late to the mortgage orgy. The reason they wanted to loosen the standards is because they were losing market share to the other big (and private) mortgage buyers. The guys that were buying the really toxic stuff would have been more than happy to buy the Alt-A stuff Fannie and Freddie were picking up. In other words, the mortgage crisis would have happened no matter what Fannie and Freddie did.

The truth about Republican attempts to prevent the crisis.

It is true that some republicans proposed the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 bill to rein in Fannie and Freddie and that Barney Frank opposed the bill. But the republican controlled congress never brought the bill up for a vote. So the Democrates didn't have the chance to vote against it or filibuster. What's more, John McCain signed on to the bill only two months before the housing bubble collapsed. His efforts would have done nothing to actually prevent Fannie and Freddie from buying risky mortgages, because they had already been bought. McCain even said he didn't see it coming before he said he did see it coming.

Uncle Orson calls the media dishonest because they didn't report the story the way he would have liked it reported, but his version of the story just isn't true. So who is to blame? Well Alan Greenspan blames himself. I think FactCheck.org does a pretty good job of summing up who is responsible:
So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

Obama's Cruel Tax on the Poor

2008-11-04T12:48:00.000-08:00

You've got to love Uncle Orson. He writes some of the best fiction. Take his most reason column "America Unplugged! Obama's Cruel tax on the poor." Uncle Orson uses the familiar strategy of accusing your opponent of holding a certain position and carry that position to a ridiculous extreme. According to Uncle Orson, Barack Obama opposes coal (even clean coal) so much that only the wealthy will be able to heat their homes and power their electric cars and all the poor people will starve and freeze.

It's a heckuva argument. The only problem with it is that it is a great big giant stinking lie. In his acceptance speech and the debates Obama explicitly supports clean coal. On his website he says he will "Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology." He also supports nuclear and offshore drilling.

Uncle Orson blasts Obama for supporting a "Cap and Trade" plan for carbon emmissions saying that it is too expensive and won't work. But John McCain also supports "Cap and Trade". So they both like clean coal and they both like cap and trade. The reality is that you couldn't squeeze a razor blade between their positions, but Uncle Orson calls this "Obama's cruel tax on the poor" while giving McCain a free ride.

Uncle Orson follows this with a nearly incomprehensible diatribe comparing concern about global warming to worshipping a false god. I wish I could say that he was drunk when he wrote it (because it sure sounds like it), but I'm pretty sure he doesn't drink. He might want to start after Tuesday. This is a theme through much of his political writing, and it's ridiculousness is only matched by it's earnestness.

Now if he would only spend this time writing the next Pastwatch book. That'd be nice.