Reflection on the 2012 election for POTUS

Here are some thoughts about the recent election for President of the United Status POTUS.  I will state once again I am not an Obama fan.  Also I am not a Romney fan.  However in reading the post election news something caught my attention and thus led me to write this post.

Judgement is demonstrated in many different ways and is demonstrated to the world in part by what choices are made and by how one perceives and acts on the news of the world. Judgement is one of the many factors need to demonstrate the competence for any high level executive position including the position of POTUS.

John McCain demonstrated a lack of competence by selecting Sarah Palin for the vice-presidential slot on the 2008 Republican ticket.  His judgement was flawed. McCain considered Sarah Palin to be qualified to be one heartbeat away from the position of POTUS; not a demonstration of judgement..  As much as I dislike many of the Obama policies I suspect that McCain would have been worse.

During the days following the recent election I started seeing reports about how Romney was 'shellshocked' at the loss.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/
What I want to know is how could Romney have been 'shellshocked' when the overwhelming signal from the polling was that Obama was in the lead?  This is not a case of being 'disappointed' at close loss.   'Shellshocked' means you truly expected to win without a doubt  but lost big.  But some might say 'It was not Romney's fault.  His advisers and pollsters mislead him.'  To which I reply 'One key responsibility of any executive is to pick top quality advisers and to be able to detect when they are spouting nonsense.'

Anyone could check the trend lines on
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
For the three weeks prior to the election the Obama trend was up and the Romney trend was down.  Anyone with a basic understanding of statistics should have seen that there was a lot of data pointing to an Obama victory.  If the internal Romney pollsters were saying something different then why did not Romney bring in a variety of statistics professors and professional pollsters to look at the internal Romney numbers.  So far I can find no evidence that this was done.  Anyone who claims any sort of management or executive competence should have seen this.  Not Romney; he was 'shellshocked'.  I am trying to be nice so I will simply say that I find Romney 'Incompetent for the office of POTUS'.

However it does bring to mind the someone with a distorted worldview who was POTUS for two terms; Bush/Cheney.  I list it this way since it was always unclear to me the extent to which Bush was a puppet and Cheney the puppet master.    Bush/Cheney serves as a perfect example of being unable to see beyond a narrow self-serving and inaccurate view of the world; perhaps self deluding would be an apt description.  Remember the special intelligence channels setup by Cheney; remember all of the nonsense about  a quick withdrawal from Iraq; remember the nonsense about the entire operation paying for itself via oil; remember the reports of Bush blathering on about Gog and Magog to French President Jacques Chirac in 2003; remember all of the lies.  Bush/Cheney was a disaster.  And we suffered through eight years of it.

So whenever I start feeling unhappy about Obama winning the election I can reflect that it might have been worse; it could have been Romney.

Election Notes

Tomorrow Nov 6 2012 is election day in the USA. I have decided to put some of my thoughts on this blog although for a long time I was considering just not blogging about the election because I find it so sad and disappointing.

During the early primaries I expressed my dissatisfaction with Ron Paul  http://blog.lightingonemorecandle.com/2011/12/ron-paul-for-potus-no.html
and some may wonder if I am advocating Gary Johnson. No not at this point. I am still undecided. I have a very high standard and right now I am not sure if Johnson measures up. The primary issue for me is reproductive rights. Since this a topic that Johnson might have changed his views on recently I am still investigating. As far as I am concerned anyone who says "well we will just throw questions about reproductive rights back to the individual states and let them enact the restrictions" is not a Libertarian. To save space I refer people back to my blog post on Ron Paul.

What Obama, Romney and Stein? Let us begin with Stein. Jill Stein is the Green Party candidate and while I do not support many of the Green Party positions at least Stein appears to be more honest than many politicians. I was not expecting much from Obama after he won four years ago and he has been worse than even I imagined; of course McCain and Palin would almost surely have been worse. The Romney campaign is a joke. I find his lack of honesty and his lack of integrity to be just sickening. The polls at this point seems to be leaning toward an Obama victory. If Obama does win the election it might be in no small part to Obama looking intelligent and honest when compared to Romney.
Update: Election day and things still look about the same.  Also fixed a typo.

Topics from Violence to Thinking to Race

I have been somewhat busy recently and not blogging as much as I had planned.  So I will now cover three items briefly.

First is the book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker.  This is a book which covers humans from pre-history to modern times.  As the title indicates Pinker thinks that overall human violence has declined.  And not just declined a small amount but has actually declined significantly.  Pinker gathers some impressive evidence.  Personally I am less persuaded by his discussion of pre-history however I find his discussion of the decline of violence in periods where we have good historical records much more convincing.  It is a book well worth reading.  Particularly if the first things that occur to you is that he can not be correct because of WWI and WWII and the death campaigns of Stalin and Mao.

Another tremendous book is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman who is a Nobel prize winner (Economics).  Kahneman is a psychologist who has studied human cognitive biases and modes of thinking.  This is one of those books that when you finish you realize how important are the insights and begin to think that within a few years it will be difficult to call yourself an well read and knowledgeable person if you are not familiar with the ideas in this book.  It is that full of insights.  Read it.  In fact as much as I recommend Pinker I suggest reading Kahneman first.

The third item for this blog entry is the play Race.  I saw it at the San Jose Stage.  This is an extremely powerful play at many levels.  It deals with race.  You probably figured that out from the title.  But is more that just a feel good play about race.  This is a raw look at race and sex and the tangled mess of taboos, myths and hidden thoughts that surround them.  It is one of the best plays I have seen.  It is really that good.  The production by the Stage in San Jose was brilliant.  This is a play for mature people; not just mature in years but mature in emotion and intellect.  This play discusses rape and uses the n-word, c-word, f-word and other words that are not for the immature.  If you are mature then I most strongly recommend this play.

Salad Recipe

I have created a recipe for a salad and decided to put the information here in order to make it easier to provide the recipe to anyone one who asked such as this weekend a friend gave me three wonder cucumbers (Thanks Karen) and I said I was going to make a salad. This salad works well in hot weather and does not contain lettuce.  I am really tired of salads which are mostly lettuce so I have created a healthy salad that contains no lettuce but does contain both fruit and vegetables.  I have served this at Burning Man and at Ephemerisle and it seems to always be well received.

My recipe is as follows:
Main ingredients:
   cucumbers    (about 35-40% of volume)
   apples           (about 30% of volume)
   onions           (about 10% of volume)
   bell peppers  (about 20-25% of volume)
The above proportions can be varied according to taste.  Just clean and chop and mix in a big bowl.  I find that chopping things at about 1 to 2 cm in any dimension works well.
Available to be added as each individual wants
   walnuts
   balsamic vinegar
   olive oil
Or go wild with one or more of the following
   dried cranberries
   sesame seeds

The version above is vegan friendly.  For those who want fish I either prepare a batch with wood smoked salmon mixed in or just put the salmon on a platter and let people add their own.

About acceptance of LGBT relationships

I have been very busy the past couple of months and had not commented on several items that I had originally intended and I still might get to them eventually.  What I do want to bring to your attention is something that Greta Christina wrote recently.  Greta had an unfortunate incident in which she injured her knee.  The part of her blog post that I want to call to your attention is where she starts to thank people and in particular two groups; those who have does evidence based science so that our medical technology is better than in was in years past and those who have worked for LGBT rights.   It is this last point that Greta illustrates so well when she talks about how Ingrid was able to say "She's my wife" and everyone on the medical and emergency services understood and accepted the relationship.

As a straight white guy it is sometime difficult for me to articulate all of the nuances related to gender or race as compared to someone who has real live experience and can offer better explanations and expositions.  Our society is stronger and richer when we discard race and gender bigotry.

I strongly suggest reading Greta's blog entry:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/07/19/history-my-bum-knee-and-some-people-i-want-to-thank/


I also recommend reading Greta's blog in general.  I do not always agree with all of Greta's position however when I disagree I find that she has articulated a position which makes me think deeply and seriously about my own positions.

Obama and same sex marriage

I have watched the Obama interview segment where he says that he is now OK with same sex marriage.  That his thinking has evolved.  And that is good.  However I was a bit surprised when he started talking about it being a state issue and not a Federal issue.  I would have thought that someone who had been a law professor would have at least discussed how the Loving case concerning marriage between persons of different races related to the same sex marriage issue.  I have mentioned the Loving case previously: http://blog.lightingonemorecandle.com/2012/01/loving-photos.html?zx=8c33a255864e86cc

For a short essay on my feeling about marriage and political philosophy:
http://www.alf.org/marriagemoulton.php

Technical glitch on contact form

Recently there was a technical glitch on the contact form on my main website.  If you used that form to send me a message it might have been delivered mangled or not delivered at all so might be a good a idea to try again.  Sorry for the inconvenience.