Only the most idiotic and hatefully prejudiced members of the human population of the globe can be in denial of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses emitted by our industrial civilization. 2014 was the hottest year on record, and most climate models show the heating up to be accelerating. At best politicians dither, and of course in most countries they are backed by the vast majority of people who don't want to give up the benefits of industrial civilization, much as they might whine about some of the negative consequences.
Where it will end exactly is hard to predict even with computer models, but as a rule of thumb I am going with the earth going back to conditions last seen during the Permian.
The Permian was hot, by our current standards. It ran from about 300 million to 250 million years ago. It followed the Carboniferous, which was when much of the coal and petroleum we've been burning started to from. It ended with a mass extinction, followed by the Triassic (which featured large lizards and the first dinosaurs).
The Permian is not a bad time to go back to, on the whole. In fact it was warmer (on average) than the Carboniferous, but not as hot as the Triassic. It was about 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than it's been on earth lately. Of course then, as now, some places were considerably hotter than others.
But life thrived anyway. It was an important period in the evolution of life, as amphibians began to give way to reptile-like creatures and even the earlier mammal-like creatures. In the oceans Trilobites were still in good supply, but going extinct. Seed ferns appeared, but some of the landscape might seem familiar to us, as the earliest conifers appeared. On the other hand, cockroach like insects did pretty well. If you don't like cockroaches, you won't like the New Permian.
Cockroaches should do well as things heat up, but in the evolution of life, predictions are just guesses. Maybe rats will do well. Maybe reptiles will start getting bigger again. But it won't be just a repeat of the Permian. Because I think Homo Sapiens will survive. Perhaps renamed Homo Stupidius.
Another difficult guess is how many humans will survive the coming die off. Will most of us cooperate to stay alive, with the population reduced to maybe 1 billion from the current 7 billion? I doubt that, but it is possible. I think people will cut each others throats for the last remaining air conditioned theater tickets, or grass-fed beef, or whatever else has not disappeared but reminds the survivors of the good old days.
I expect humans to evolve after the winnowing. We'll see who can take the heat. Small noses are probably out. Big noses help to cool hot air on the way to the lungs, and to retain moisture as air leaves the lungs. While cold-blooded animals will likely get bigger, humans may get smaller. Body mass, which generates heat, shrinks at a faster rate than skin surface, which helps cool the body off. Unless it is so hot that skin surface admits more heat, so it is better to be big ... in which case people will evolve to be the size of elephants. Or at least Rhinos. Which would give Republicans an advantage.
But most promising is the potential for what biologists call radiation. Not atomic radiation, but the evolutionary branching out of one life form into different niches, followed by specialization and eventually by forming new species or even whole new groups of species.
Radiation typically occurs when a dominant life form is wiped out. That is how a few mostly small mammals that had been hiding in holes came to replace the dinosaurs. A few million years later there were mammals of all sizes occupying all kinds of niches, from herbivore to omnivore to carnivore. So you might, in a million years or so, get cow-like homo species and wolf-like species and certainly sloth like species, snake like species, and maybe even bird men.
But can't we do anything to stop this disaster? Can't we save the current flora and fauna and temperature range? Clearly no. It is over. Industry won. It bought politicians and scientists and propagandists and the general public. They delayed and weaseled and made money on the side selling solar cells and wind mills.
So adapt or perish. Of course, it make take a few hundred generations to see what type of humans will ultimately emerge from the die off.
Of course I could be wrong. We could be headed to the Devonian instead. Average temperature 6 degrees Centigrade above the current era. Giant insects and scorpions dominate a landscape of primitive plants, with a few amphibians walking around. Happy hunting. Or avoiding predators.
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Friday, June 15, 2012
Healthcare Where Everyone is Above Average
In this essay, above average is bad. Out of range is bad. It is there on black and white, on a piece of paper: you need drugs. And more frequent doctor visits. And frequent diagnostics, mostly involving sucking your blood out, to make sure there are no side effects to the pharmaceuticals and to monitor just exactly where you are in the range.
It is a scam worthy of such greats as Ponzi, Madoff, and Joseph Kennedy. Going to a doctor in the U.S. is like walking into a casino: the odds are against you, the house always wins. When every last penny has been drained from your pocket, they toss you out, to go an earn some more money or to die impoverished in the streets.
Look at the nature of averages. Or more precisely, in this case, what the statistics boys call "median." Half of the population will be above the median, and half below it. The median is defined that way.
Now take some blood tests. Typically blood pressure, triglycerides, glucose, white blood cell count, and a couple of different kinds of cholesterol.
What are the chances, per the statistics boys, that you will have nothing above average, and therefore need no medication (if the average or below is the standard of health)?
Keep in mind this is not about sickness in the ordinary sense of people who feel sick or have obvious symptoms. This is a test that includes healthy people.
Each test is independent, so to get the answer, you just keep multiplying by 1/2. The order does not matter, but let's say it goes like this:
You have a 50% chance of having high blood pressure. 1 times 1/2 is 0.50.
You have a 50% chance of having high triglycerides. 0.50 times 1/2 is 0.25.
You have a 50% chance of having high glucose. 0.25 times 1/2 is 0.125.
And so forth: white blood cells, 0.0625. Cholesterol 1, 0.03125. Cholesterol 2, 0.015625. That is about 1.6%.
In other words, of 1000 people getting this set of tests from a doctor, only 15, maybe 16 will be fully healthy. Everyone else will need some help from the pharmaceutical industry to get "at the lower end of the risk factors."
Just to be sure to pick your pocket, they don't test you against your age class. Most people see a gradual increase in blood pressure as they age. The doctors don't say to you, "for a 60 year-old male, you are below average! See me again in five years." No, you get compared to the healthy 30 year olds. If you are 60 or older, the chances that you have average or better blood pressure are thin. In fact, there may be something wrong with you, like a weak heart.
The human body has been evolving for some 3 billion years. Modern medical science has been around for about a century. Who are you going to trust, Mother Nature or some gal or guy who went to medical school dreaming of making big money?
We don't need everyone to be below average for all health risks. We need to look at what is normal, and only treat conditions that are at least two standard deviations outside of normal. Which means only the roughly 2% of people who get extremely high results, and 2% of people who get extremely low results. May 4% at each end, just to be safe. [This would not apply to actual diseases like diabetes. Everyone with diabetes should get treatment. Almost everyone in the U.S. needs to eat less and exercise more.]
There is likely a good reason that blood pressure increases as we get older. Lowering the blood pressure to a pre-defined standard probably just insures that blood is not getting to where it is needed in our bodies. [This is my hunch, and if someone will grant me a few tens of millions of dollars, I would be happy to hire professionals to test it.] Someday some enterprising scientist will find that "normal" blood pressure causes senior dementia, or some other result worse than the slight increased risk of dying of a heart attack before your kidneys or liver or brain fails.
They never give you unbiased statistics. When have you ever seen a chart of how many people have heart attacks and strokes who don't have high blood pressure? In fact lowering blood pressure, unless you have really, really high blood pressure, is not likely to change your cause of death.
Scientists — real scientists, not the ones funded by industry — will tell you that even when you are trying to do totally honest, accurate science, there is a danger called selection bias. This amounts to rejected data that would prove your bet hypothesis is wrong.
Selection bias can happen even in an academic context. The reason is that certain results, interesting results, are publishable, but the negative results are not. Scientists like to publish. Their careers usually depend on it.
The pharmaceutical companies themselves have found that out when buying potential drugs that academic scientists claimed would be cures. One study by a major pharmaceutical company found that, for almost all of the drug candidates in a batch they bought, they could not replicate the "good" results.
I believe that doctors can help some people some of the time, and in good medical science. But you can't always believe the medical consensus.
Recently a panel of medical experts recommended against a test that has always been supposed to be indicative of prostate cancer, PSA. The knew that PSA results only correlate loosely with prostate cancer. Yet doctors turned high PSA results into a lucrative business of "cures." Looking at a broad range of statistics, the panel found that the negative results from all that expensive "curing," including death during surgery, more than washed away the occasional live saved. Cancer sounds scary, but most prostate cancers evolve slowly. Most men with prostate cancer die of something else, something unrelated. So the panel suggested stopping PSA tests unless there was a good, obvious reason for them. [New Data on Harms of Prostate Cancer Screening, New York Times, May 21, 2012]
Oh, the howls of the financially wounded. The oncologists and urologists, the main beneficiaries of the PSA scam, attacked the panel with vigor. They only care about Science when it is in their financial favor.
The average person is not in a position to argue knowledgeably with their physician about whether they really need a blood pressure or cholesterol pill. Half the American population does not believe in evolution. They don't believe the human body has evolved to optimize its own health and longevity. Sadly, the other half tends to believe in anything presented as science uncritically. In theory they know there is good science and bad science, but in reality they have to rely on their doctors.
We need to rethink medicine from the ground up. We need to ask ourselves how it fits into our other values. Do we let children live in poverty, or underfund our public schools or other important public while paying vast sums for cancer therapies for the over-80 set that, at best, extend miserable lives for a few weeks?
We have evolved a culture that has made us a nation of pill-popping hypochondriacs. Part of this is because costs are masked: for most people, someone else is paying the bill.
I am not against wonder drugs. I am not against necessary surgeries, or preventative medicine that really prevents disease. I want a science-based health system that takes into account economic realities. That is what we need, not what we have.
It is a scam worthy of such greats as Ponzi, Madoff, and Joseph Kennedy. Going to a doctor in the U.S. is like walking into a casino: the odds are against you, the house always wins. When every last penny has been drained from your pocket, they toss you out, to go an earn some more money or to die impoverished in the streets.
Look at the nature of averages. Or more precisely, in this case, what the statistics boys call "median." Half of the population will be above the median, and half below it. The median is defined that way.
Now take some blood tests. Typically blood pressure, triglycerides, glucose, white blood cell count, and a couple of different kinds of cholesterol.
What are the chances, per the statistics boys, that you will have nothing above average, and therefore need no medication (if the average or below is the standard of health)?
Keep in mind this is not about sickness in the ordinary sense of people who feel sick or have obvious symptoms. This is a test that includes healthy people.
Each test is independent, so to get the answer, you just keep multiplying by 1/2. The order does not matter, but let's say it goes like this:
You have a 50% chance of having high blood pressure. 1 times 1/2 is 0.50.
You have a 50% chance of having high triglycerides. 0.50 times 1/2 is 0.25.
You have a 50% chance of having high glucose. 0.25 times 1/2 is 0.125.
And so forth: white blood cells, 0.0625. Cholesterol 1, 0.03125. Cholesterol 2, 0.015625. That is about 1.6%.
In other words, of 1000 people getting this set of tests from a doctor, only 15, maybe 16 will be fully healthy. Everyone else will need some help from the pharmaceutical industry to get "at the lower end of the risk factors."
Just to be sure to pick your pocket, they don't test you against your age class. Most people see a gradual increase in blood pressure as they age. The doctors don't say to you, "for a 60 year-old male, you are below average! See me again in five years." No, you get compared to the healthy 30 year olds. If you are 60 or older, the chances that you have average or better blood pressure are thin. In fact, there may be something wrong with you, like a weak heart.
The human body has been evolving for some 3 billion years. Modern medical science has been around for about a century. Who are you going to trust, Mother Nature or some gal or guy who went to medical school dreaming of making big money?
We don't need everyone to be below average for all health risks. We need to look at what is normal, and only treat conditions that are at least two standard deviations outside of normal. Which means only the roughly 2% of people who get extremely high results, and 2% of people who get extremely low results. May 4% at each end, just to be safe. [This would not apply to actual diseases like diabetes. Everyone with diabetes should get treatment. Almost everyone in the U.S. needs to eat less and exercise more.]
There is likely a good reason that blood pressure increases as we get older. Lowering the blood pressure to a pre-defined standard probably just insures that blood is not getting to where it is needed in our bodies. [This is my hunch, and if someone will grant me a few tens of millions of dollars, I would be happy to hire professionals to test it.] Someday some enterprising scientist will find that "normal" blood pressure causes senior dementia, or some other result worse than the slight increased risk of dying of a heart attack before your kidneys or liver or brain fails.
They never give you unbiased statistics. When have you ever seen a chart of how many people have heart attacks and strokes who don't have high blood pressure? In fact lowering blood pressure, unless you have really, really high blood pressure, is not likely to change your cause of death.
Scientists — real scientists, not the ones funded by industry — will tell you that even when you are trying to do totally honest, accurate science, there is a danger called selection bias. This amounts to rejected data that would prove your bet hypothesis is wrong.
Selection bias can happen even in an academic context. The reason is that certain results, interesting results, are publishable, but the negative results are not. Scientists like to publish. Their careers usually depend on it.
The pharmaceutical companies themselves have found that out when buying potential drugs that academic scientists claimed would be cures. One study by a major pharmaceutical company found that, for almost all of the drug candidates in a batch they bought, they could not replicate the "good" results.
I believe that doctors can help some people some of the time, and in good medical science. But you can't always believe the medical consensus.
Recently a panel of medical experts recommended against a test that has always been supposed to be indicative of prostate cancer, PSA. The knew that PSA results only correlate loosely with prostate cancer. Yet doctors turned high PSA results into a lucrative business of "cures." Looking at a broad range of statistics, the panel found that the negative results from all that expensive "curing," including death during surgery, more than washed away the occasional live saved. Cancer sounds scary, but most prostate cancers evolve slowly. Most men with prostate cancer die of something else, something unrelated. So the panel suggested stopping PSA tests unless there was a good, obvious reason for them. [New Data on Harms of Prostate Cancer Screening, New York Times, May 21, 2012]
Oh, the howls of the financially wounded. The oncologists and urologists, the main beneficiaries of the PSA scam, attacked the panel with vigor. They only care about Science when it is in their financial favor.
The average person is not in a position to argue knowledgeably with their physician about whether they really need a blood pressure or cholesterol pill. Half the American population does not believe in evolution. They don't believe the human body has evolved to optimize its own health and longevity. Sadly, the other half tends to believe in anything presented as science uncritically. In theory they know there is good science and bad science, but in reality they have to rely on their doctors.
We need to rethink medicine from the ground up. We need to ask ourselves how it fits into our other values. Do we let children live in poverty, or underfund our public schools or other important public while paying vast sums for cancer therapies for the over-80 set that, at best, extend miserable lives for a few weeks?
We have evolved a culture that has made us a nation of pill-popping hypochondriacs. Part of this is because costs are masked: for most people, someone else is paying the bill.
I am not against wonder drugs. I am not against necessary surgeries, or preventative medicine that really prevents disease. I want a science-based health system that takes into account economic realities. That is what we need, not what we have.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Creationism and Free Markets
Religion and politics can make even stranger bedfellows than politics alone.
One of my favorites is the Free Market and Creationism combo of the Christian Right. But then wasn't it transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?" The inconsistencies between free market ideology and creationism are seldom examined, but require a very, big mind to have room to keep them separate.
The benefits of free markets were first described by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations. He showed how men and women, each individually selfish, could compete with each other in producing (and consuming) goods in an unregulated market. The result would be an improvement in the overall good of the community, just as if the individuals had been acting out of community spirit. This non-obvious result, that selfish behavior could have a positive result for the whole community, was called the Invisible Hand.
Right wing Christians, or at least pundits who pretend to be Christian, love free markets. They love private wealth, and their basic Christian doctrine can be summarized as "every man for himself." Out of the random transactions of free markets is born capitalism, and from capitalism comes everything good in the lives of free market pundits, Christian and pagan alike. They hate central planning by governments. They hate the strong-arm five year plans of the old Communist regimes. They even hate the gentler planning by Democratic governments that seek to ameliorate some of the situations where the Invisible Hand has not worked out quite so well for a few ten millions of American citizens.
Not all right-wing economic commentators are Christian, or even Creationists, but plenty are or pretend to be. Creationism is the opposite of free market ideology. Its mildest form, Intelligent Design theory, states that complex things, like the earth and its creatures, must have been created by an Intelligence, i.e. God. It rejects the scientific observation that complex things can be created over time by natural processes, also known as the theory of evolution (by natural selection).
The more fundamental Christian belief is that the world was created exactly as described in the Old Testament of the Bible: a particular God (not Allah or Zeus, or even Gunputty, mind you) created the world and all of its creatures in seven days. Since this has no basis in science, or even in pragmatic observation, Intelligent Design theory was designed to offer an alternative to the theory of evolution in U.S. public school system biology classes.
The difficulty of applying the Creationist mindset (the need for a dictatorial controlling intelligence to get anything done) to the economic system of the United States of America is a blessing. Things seem to happen in the economy without God sticking his nose into our business.
Adolf Hitler did not like quantum physics, but he was okay with natural selection. Hitler was Roman Catholic, and he did like controlling Germany's economy. I think the mutual hatred of Catholic and Communist leaders in that era had much to do with their mutual desires to run command economies. All the Catholic dictators of Europe of the 1930s and 40s, Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Philippe Petain, and Hitler ran command economies, just like Joseph Stalin did in the U.S.S.R., then the only communist nation.
Protestant Christianity, in its diversity, has a long historical association with the merchant class. The Catholic Church mostly sided with the aristocracy during the formative centuries of the modern epic. The merchant class does not like to be dictated to. Hence its ideology of individualistic interpretation of the Bible and support for republics or, if necessary, democracies.
The divide, then, is not so wide. Creationism is an assertion of Biblical authority. Protestantism is associated with the idea that the business of Christianity is business. Christian businesses (including preachers and pundits) need to appeal to their target market. So they promote Creationism to further their own self interest. Free markets also promote their self-interest because the people with the most money to give (buying advertisements to sell over-priced gold on radio shows, for instance) are still mostly from the merchant (business people) class. It is all about self interest. If there were gods, they would probably want nothing to do with it.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Charles Darwin Was God's Prophet
Charles Darwin is hated by fundamentalist Christians. To accept Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selectiona as true, to them, means having to abandon their belief in the literal truth of the King James translation of the biblical books into what is now archaic English.
As a writer I have to appreciate the idea that one of God's principle activities was writing a book, and of course I am impressed by the fact that it is a best seller and the strongest backlist title in history. Also, it is encouraging, because my own writings have not sold well so far, and neither did God's early on. Bible sales did not really take off until the time of Martin Luther.
And if God is a writer, and had a successful book, don't you think he would want to do a bit more writing?
I think the concept of God is confusing [See God: A Confusing Concept]. Some people, however, have made an identity between God and Nature, and for educational purposes I'll go with that dual-natured god in this essay.
Let us suppose that God or Nature has prophets. These human beings get the truth about something or other from God and make it known to the rest of us. The Old Testament Jews had prophets, but so did the far-more-ancient Egyptians. Jesus is accepted as a prophet by many people who do not believe he is God. Mohammed declared that he was a prophet, and that worshipping him as the Christians worshipped Jesus Christ would be blasphemy.
But when you think about it, what these people revealed was good, but just a tiny bit of what God could reveal. I am a big fan of ethics, whether you want to take them from practical experience or from some higher authority. Predicting war or revolution or droughts or plagues is also all good and fine. Prophet is an honorary title I am willing to bestow when appropriate.
What Charles Darwin revealed was the fundamental order of nature, or at least of plant and animal life. True, he spent his life in careful study, observation, and experimentation. He thought a lot. He delayed publication of The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin himself was part of nature, part of creation. He claimed no supernatural powers. If you believe God creates everything, then God created Charles Darwin. If God inspires everything, then God inspired Charles Darwin.
Not remarkably, God's second book, the Origin of Species, (unless you count the New Testament as his second book) is much better written that his first book, the Bible. It documents the facts pointing to evolution by natural selection in a compelling manner. The contradictions in edicts we find in the Bible are largely eliminated. A big picture is painted out of small details. Troubling questions are asked and answered. Homely examples from the breeding of dogs and pigeons are given. Anyone with an open mind can understant it.
Having unveiled the true basis of life, and of the modern science of biology, God inspired mankind to get about the business of extending our knowledge of Nature. The science of genetics was worked out. The molecular basis of inheritance, DNA, was discovered. Now we have wonder medicines starting to be produced for ailments that were previously incurable. All because God revealed the Truth to the Prophet Darwin.
The Catholic Church, if it had any sense, would discover that Darwin was a saint. Many, many medical miracles have occured from people subscribing to the theory of evolution. We know the Church recast a number of pagan gods as saints; why not Charles Darwin?
The earth is not such a big place any more. It is crowded with people. It exists in the context of a Universe so large that even scientists cannot tell us exactly how large it is. Many of God's creations are being destroyed because of human overpopulation and its attendant polution and destruction of natural habitat. God has given warnings. Nature has made the consequences of continuing on our current path clear. Natural disasters and the toppling of evil and incompetent governments are upon us.
It is too bad Charles Darwin was not an American. I think the American fundamentalists would have a lot more trouble attacking God's True Prophet if it were unpatriotic to do so. The people of Great Britain should be proud to have produced such a man. But America has its Prophets of Nature too. John Muir, for instance. We should be proud of them.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Evolution of Republican Presidential Candidates
Music evolves. Housing design evolves. Anyone who has studied the history of the Republican Party knows that even the Republican Party has evolved over the decades.
But three out of the ten major Republican Party Presidential nomination candidates does not believe in Evolution. That is, they don't believe in Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Maybe they believe that animals and plants evolved over the ages by some other means, such as their God's direct engineering efforts. Maybe they believe the Universe and earth were created in 7 literal days. They did not get a chance to elaborate last night. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas all raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in Evolution.
Well, former Democratic Presidential candidate (and three time loser) William Jennings Bryan did not believe in evolution either. There is some evidence that Bryan was a good man, but then he was never elected President.
You have to wonder about Sam, Mike, and Tom. Was their anti-evolution stand genuine, or a desperate plea for the votes of those who failed to get a decent education in America's public, private, or religious schools?
The current big three, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mitt Romney, are not nutcases. They are fairly good representatives of the people who have already made it in America. They are going to keep the burden of taxation from the all-too-overloaded backs of the rich. They might even ease that burden for those whose incomes are a mere $100,000 to $200,000 per year. To a large extent they represent corporate America and international corporations as well. They are not against science, which has made their friends a heck of a lot of money. Rudolph Giuliani was even kind of pro-choice on the abortion issue. Which is not a bad tactic, considering that most of the other candidates are fighting over the hearts and minds of the Pro-Fetus voters.
Rudolph Giuliani wants the estate tax abolished. Like the old Republicans who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, he has some passion there. If the estate tax were abolished then people who inherit billions of dollars from their ancestors can just pay tax on the dividends (there is currently no tax on capital gains until an asset is sold) and pass along the whole bundle tax free to their descendents. The truly rich can live a nearly tax-free existence. No pesky 15% social security tax, none of that un-American income tax, and if you buy your stuff in the right states you can avoid sales tax too.
The Republican policy on illegal immigration varies but it seems to amount to another profit maximization scheme. As long as there are illegal immigrants there is a source of cheap labor. The only real problem with illegal immigration for them is if some terrorists slip in with the job-hungry or if their voter base gets disgusted and votes for an anti-immigrant Democrat.
It is sad that the Republican Party can't live without its aristocratic backers and the deluded poor peasants who dwell on their modern-day plantations. I kind of like the idea of the small-town era Republicans: honest, civic-minded and open-minded small business families who really were proud to be in the party that ended slavery and stood against the racist Democratic Party regime. They were the original backers of Planned Parenthood, national parks, and a de-politicized civil service. But those families have been wiped out by international corporations and Walmart, leaving behind a gang of irrational fools who worship money but overcompensate for that by refusing to see big picture realities like global warming, evolution, and the equality of men and women regardless of race, creed, or economic circumstance.
See more of my political analysis at www.iiipublishing.com
But three out of the ten major Republican Party Presidential nomination candidates does not believe in Evolution. That is, they don't believe in Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Maybe they believe that animals and plants evolved over the ages by some other means, such as their God's direct engineering efforts. Maybe they believe the Universe and earth were created in 7 literal days. They did not get a chance to elaborate last night. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas all raised their hands to signal that they did not believe in Evolution.
Well, former Democratic Presidential candidate (and three time loser) William Jennings Bryan did not believe in evolution either. There is some evidence that Bryan was a good man, but then he was never elected President.
You have to wonder about Sam, Mike, and Tom. Was their anti-evolution stand genuine, or a desperate plea for the votes of those who failed to get a decent education in America's public, private, or religious schools?
The current big three, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mitt Romney, are not nutcases. They are fairly good representatives of the people who have already made it in America. They are going to keep the burden of taxation from the all-too-overloaded backs of the rich. They might even ease that burden for those whose incomes are a mere $100,000 to $200,000 per year. To a large extent they represent corporate America and international corporations as well. They are not against science, which has made their friends a heck of a lot of money. Rudolph Giuliani was even kind of pro-choice on the abortion issue. Which is not a bad tactic, considering that most of the other candidates are fighting over the hearts and minds of the Pro-Fetus voters.
Rudolph Giuliani wants the estate tax abolished. Like the old Republicans who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, he has some passion there. If the estate tax were abolished then people who inherit billions of dollars from their ancestors can just pay tax on the dividends (there is currently no tax on capital gains until an asset is sold) and pass along the whole bundle tax free to their descendents. The truly rich can live a nearly tax-free existence. No pesky 15% social security tax, none of that un-American income tax, and if you buy your stuff in the right states you can avoid sales tax too.
The Republican policy on illegal immigration varies but it seems to amount to another profit maximization scheme. As long as there are illegal immigrants there is a source of cheap labor. The only real problem with illegal immigration for them is if some terrorists slip in with the job-hungry or if their voter base gets disgusted and votes for an anti-immigrant Democrat.
It is sad that the Republican Party can't live without its aristocratic backers and the deluded poor peasants who dwell on their modern-day plantations. I kind of like the idea of the small-town era Republicans: honest, civic-minded and open-minded small business families who really were proud to be in the party that ended slavery and stood against the racist Democratic Party regime. They were the original backers of Planned Parenthood, national parks, and a de-politicized civil service. But those families have been wiped out by international corporations and Walmart, leaving behind a gang of irrational fools who worship money but overcompensate for that by refusing to see big picture realities like global warming, evolution, and the equality of men and women regardless of race, creed, or economic circumstance.
See more of my political analysis at www.iiipublishing.com
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