Rich Man's Disease

Now that the class warfare season has begun, with the Rich attacking the Poor, debaters and bloggers should be careful how we employ certain terms, one of which is "the rich man's disease." This concept, the philosopher Wittgenstein might point out, has several quite unrelated meanings or uses. It's easy to confuse or conflate them.

In one context "rich man's disease" is a reference to sexual addiction, a malady found only among the wealthy. It has never been diagnosed in the poor, who are merely lewd or sluttish.

In a second context "rich man's disease" is kleptomania, a treatable disorder. Again this emotional problem doesn't develop among the poor, who merely steal things and go to prison.

A third type of disorder--and a considerable handicap--attacks rich Christians, who are nearly all born with a reading comprehension deficit. For example, they read the Bible without comprehending key passages like "Sooner shall a camel (or rope in some translations) pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter heaven." To date there is no known cure for this disease and no attempt to find a cure.

In discussions with the rich, we should at all times remain polite and supportive, keeping in mind that we might be addressing someone burdened with diseases unavailable to the likes of us and someone certain to go to Hell if the Good Book has any truth in it.

Can Obama Win?

The cable and network analysts of our Presidential horse race are a waste of time, unless you find them entertaining, and I do. If you want to predict who will win the popular vote in the next election consider the following.

1. The campaigns by the Democratic and the Republican candidates will cancel one another out. Also the campaigns will be followed only by voters who are already committed. Republican and Democratic voters cancel each other out. Everyone else will find the campaigns an annoyance and pay them little attention.

2. The election will be, like all Presidential elections, a referendum by the voters on the party in power in the White House. Should that party remain in power in the White House because it's doing okay or not?

3. The criteria used by our pragmatic, uninformed, independent voters in judging the White House will be varied and subjective. The election will not be decided by one or two factors like the economy or foreign policy or who is likable.
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Most of the above comes from THE KEYS TO THE PRESIDENCY by Allan Lightman and Ken DeCell, who have worked out a list of 13 factors that enable them to predict the popular vote in Presidential contests. Their system has worked for the last 33 Presidential elections. No other predicting system comes close to that record.

Note that the 13 keys predict the popular vote and not the outcome, which has been stolen several times by Republicans (Hayes/Tilden and Bush/Gore come to mind).

This method does not use polls, because polls are, as many have learned, unverifiable and unreliable.
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The Thirteen Keys

There is no way to weight these keys and apparently no need to do so. The operating rule is that if five or fewer of the following keys are false, the incumbent party wins the popular vote. To date this method has been accurate in every case.

True or false is determined by general voter perception, not by right or left ideology.
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1. The White House incumbent party gained seats in the last House election. (False)

2. There is no serious contest for the incumbent party's nomination. (True)

3. The incumbent party candidate is the sitting President. (True)

4. There is no significant third-party candidate. (T/F)

5. The economy is not in recession. (T/F)

6. Real per-capita economic growth is positive. (T/F)

7. The incumbent has made major changes in national policy. (T/F)

8. There is no sustained social unrest. (T/F)

9. There is no major incumbent party scandal. (T/F)

10. There has been no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (T/F)

11. The administration has achieved a major success in foreign or military affairs. (T/F)

12. The incumbent candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (T/F)

13. The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (T/F)

Veronica's Secret

Veronica's Secret, whatever it was, turned out to be the best kept secret of the 2oth Century. To this day no one has revealed the secret, but it's not because of lack of research. When I received the Veronica's Secret catalog in the mail, I studied each page closely, hoping to find clues, and so did many other scholars. Somewhere in those photographs of busty young women in their underwear lay the answer. . . .

I believe it is now clear that at least one person has figured the secret out, and that is Sarah Palin, who, each day, looks more like a Veronica's Secret model, only older and with a gigantic gong (old football term for a player's head). Palin is as welcome among male political reporters, including liberals, as a Veronica's Secret catalog. In fact, nearly all men in politics gravitate to her, except for Michele Bachmann's husband.

We'd better start counting on this new Veronica's Secret factor playing big in future American politics. By 2016 we are likely to see one of Fox News' row of indistinguishable blond ladies leading the Republican ticket (and keeping the secret, of course).

The Gaddafi Loyalists

As a leftist--a pragmatic one--I've had no problem deciding which side to support in the Arab spring. When ordinary people go into the street to overthrow a brutal dictator with tanks, I hope they succeed. I find it sad that a few people on the Left support the tyrants, but then some people are daft.

I'm not talking about pacifists. They oppose violence and war as a matter of principle, and I respect that. I'm talking about flat-out support for tyrants like Gaddafi.

Two of the leading Gaddafi loyalists are people I long admired--and I was wrong to do so. Cynthia McKinney has celebrated the vicious 40-year reign of Gaddafi in many venues in the Middle East, including Libyan television. Celebrating Gaddafi seems to have become her new profession. Hugo Chavez is on the net with a video I've watched in which he claims that the fall of Tripoli's Green square happened not in Libya but in Qatar, where it was staged with actors.

McKinney and Chavez are, of course, trapped in ideologies that make it impossible for the United States to be on the right side of an issue even by accident.