I love seeing references to Swiftboats. But you know what you never see, it’s the Kerry denial. Still waiting.

The scary thing is how vicious these people are.
How un-American they are. No wait I’m wrong, African Americans could only vote after 1964. Our country was built on ignorance and religion.

We forced the native people off their lands and had presidents who though “the only good Indian was a dead one”(Andrew Jackson).

So this does not surprise me at all. They are sad silly people who live by ignorance and fear.

I bet they also believe that snakes talk and that when they get to heaven they will be riding a winged horse and that Jesus will be sitting on the right side of God(that strange being from space) wearing a white gown with gold piping like a majorette. Funny thing is Jesus was born in Nazareth which makes him a foreigner as well and he also redistributed the wealth which makes him a socialist as well. He was also a Semite.

“Reality has a well known liberal bias” – Stephen Colbert

Oh, Peter, Peter. I had to laugh out loud at you last two comments. You are one condescending and bloviating dude, if I’ve ever ‘met’ one on the internet

Feel free to point out where anything I said is wrong. Everything I’ve said about how humans make choices is well-documented in the scientific literature.

Or is it the larger philosophical points that make you uncomfortable? Do you disagree that the sheer complexity and subtley of human behavior and motivation is one of the most amazing and wonderous things in nature? Or that the power of a mere gesture or phrase to impact millions of people doesn’t say something incredible about homo sapiens?

I hope Obama wins today, but do you disagree that if McCain pulls an upset it would be absolutely fascinating and provide fodder for discussion and analysis for many years to come?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL20TdHjX2s&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_313679

If McCain had started criticizing Bush last June and nominated Senator Snowe or Collins, he’d have demolished Obama, and all these conservatives who are crying now would be preparing for a big barbacue, or whatever it is they do when they celebrate.

Professor George can expect a respectful audience here. I will say I do not understand the professor expecting to get away with making the argument that Sara Palin’s problems were somehow caused by the media.

I will not accept that. Sara Palin was ludicrously unqualified to be a vice presidential candidate. The hoax carried about by two clowns from Canada — which in my opinion is not being discussed enough — illustrated for all to see that Palin simply is not smart enough for the highest office in the land.

I’m not attacking anyone. Heck, I’m not smart enough for the highest office in the land.

Obama sure is, and he proved it by nominating Biden.

“Crabs” in a bucket doesn’t “explain” anything. Humans are not crabs – we are marvelously complex social organisms.

I recently heard a lecture by E O Wilson where he remarked that humans are the most socially sophisticated species on earth. The only other species that can create social structures as large and complex as we do are bee and ant colonies but they’re all related – essentially every member of the colony is a sibling, which gives them a huge advantage! Humans do it on the strength of a brain that is highly evolved to navigate incredibly large and complex social networks, said Wilson.

So from my point of view the amazing, intricate, hyper-sensitive and emotional aspects of our personalities, including all our emotions and affliliatory behavior, are not a degradation, but one of the most amazing achievements of nature. By contrast, trying to reduce us to computerlike rational utility maximizers is the more cynical point of view.

So the ability of a candidate to move millions of voters with a gesture or a subtle turn of phrase is as amazing as watching that comet explode over our heads last year – a true marvel of nature and nothing to be cynical about.

“Should” is a value judgement, so it depends on their value system. If you don’t specify the value framework it’s like asking what’s “11+11″ without saying if you’re in binary, octal, decimal or hex.

They could

1. Find out what their constituents want and vote accordingly, on the basis that it’s their job to represent their constituents

2. Vote their conscience

3. Vote with their caucus, to support their party

4. Vote in whatever way would look good on a political resume for a future election

5. Vote to satisfy a wealthy donor on the theory that it takes money to win an election and they want to keep their job (don’t we all?)

A case could be made for any one of these.

I’m a vocal sort of constituent – I like to write letters to my congresscritters and to newspapers. I’ve been published in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Newsweek, among others. So naturally I think my elected officials should vote the way their most vocal constituents tell them to. So far they have not taken this sage advice.

Do you have any evidence for this?

As an investor managing a pretty large retirement portfolio I spend a great deal of time studying balance sheets. I don’t see the evidence of what you’re tallking about. How many balance sheets have you even looked at?

True, true. But how do *you* make *your* decision *after* knowing how the mob operates? Do you go along with the mob since the decision of the mob will prevail anyway, or do you make a decision that you *know* is the right one and different than what the mob made?

But you still haven’t shown that it is cynicism. I would suggest that your repeated use of the term “mob”, above, suggests you are more cynical and less dispassionate than me.

I’m a policy wonk – I like to study economic data and candidates’ voting records and the history of other countries’ policy initiatives with regard to industrial policy, trade, health care, etc. So when I vote I base *my* vote on that research.

But I know that I’m very unusual in that respect. Just because most people aren’t “rational utility maximizers” (to use the phrase from classical economics) doesn’t mean rational utility maximizers don’t exist. I could probably give a 10 minute standing-up dissertation on Japanese economic policy for the last 20 years; I can compare the differences between the German and British healh care models; I know what’s in the Constitution and the federal budget. But the average voter is not like that, and isn’t interested in being that way, and for all my rationality I’m rational enough to recognize that. Also N.B. that I’m not suggesting that it’s “better” to be a policy wonk; to the contrary – wonks and nerds are probably evolutionary flaws that under better circumstances would be culled from the gene pool.

So if I were running a politcal campaign I would design it to appeal to the way most people really are and not to policy wonks like me.

Hope is the expectation of a desirable result in face of odds and the evidence to the contrary.

The voters for Obama and McCain must “believe” that their candidate will make a difference that will be to their own personal benefit, regardless of the current economic situation and the reality of the country being broke already.

No one from the followers of either side wants to believe that they must now make personal sacrifices, not only in financial sense, but also in limits in their so called personal expectations and choices.

For instance the social costs of divorce, teen pregnancy, health care, child raising, crime, justice, gay rights, disappearing morality all have costs that can be translated in to dollars.

Free trade may get us more stuff, but it is also the cause of lower wages, lack of health care provided to workers, lack of full time permanent employment and more.

The excess spending on the military where billions nay trillions of dollars are wasted and stolen and misspent, (yes I know this personally).

The United States today is becoming more and more like a third world country. Is there a Plan?

True, true. But how do *you* make *your* decision *after* knowing how the mob operates? Do you go along with the mob since the decision of the mob will prevail anyway, or do you make a decision that you *know* is the right one and different than what the mob made? That’s where your cynicism enters the picture and that’s what I refer to. It’s the equivalent of crabs in a bucket pulling down on another crab trying to get out of the bucket.

Then again Peter, you have 20+ years of experience on me, so who knows, maybe I’ll come around to your viewpoint by that age. But I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it, not before.

This republican taling point is complete non-sense. It’s the same non-sense as “leaving the free-market to run themselves”. It has FAILED over and over again.

Giving a tax-cut to a company and HOPING that they are MORAL enough to use the extra savings to help workers is simply a naive theory WITHOUT factual support.

I wish Tom and other news people would challenge this Republican talking point.