Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Largest Ideological Group: Conservatives

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Despite all the blathering in the media about the death of ‘conservatism’ (especially in light of recent major gains by liberal politicians), a recent Gallup poll finds that the single largest ideological group between liberals, conservatives, and moderates is—surprise—conservatives. I have said a number of times that the population of the United States averages ‘center-right’, and the Gallup poll perfectly reflects this. According to Gallup, 9 percent are ‘very conservative’, 31 percent are ‘conservative’, 35 percent are ‘moderate’, 16 percent are ‘liberal’, and 5 percent are ‘very liberal’.

The fringes, left and right combined, account for only 14 percent of the population. Center-left (half of the moderates and the ‘liberals’) account for 33.5 percent of the population, while center-right (half of the moderates and the ‘conservatives’) account for 48.5 percent.

It’s easy to dismiss the ideals of conservatism—limited government, fiscal conservatism, traditional values, etc.—because of the trouncing of Republicans in the 2008 elections, but to do so would be to mis-read the situation. Yes, Republicans were slaughtered in the election across the board. But Republicans, under President George W. Bush, have hardly been acting like conservatives lately. Government spending grew under Bush. The country ran huge deficits under Bush. There was little movement in support of traditional values under Bush. The list goes on.

Read more . . .

The ‘Do Not Call’ Loophole

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loophole-callOne of the few good things our federal government has done for us in the realm of domestic policy in the last, oh, fifty years or so was the establishment of the National Do Not Call Registry. This registry allows you to declare your desire to not receive annoying telemarketing phone calls, and the nation’s telemarketers are required to comply (lest they be levied significant fines).

There are a couple of loop-holes. Politicians and non-profits can still bother you, for example, as can companies with which you have an ‘existing business relationship’ (whatever that means). But in my experience, I used to get tons of telemarketing calls on my cell phone (even though it was always illegal for them to call cell phones), and those calls have all-but-stopped since I signed up for the ‘do not call’ registry.

There’s one festering loop hole that I’ve run into a couple of times though. Companies can apparently call you with-impunity from Canada. For example, 204-975-3301—a Manitoba number—has called me thrice in the last week. I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize, and they haven’t left messages, but a quick Google search reveals that lots of people get annoying, repetitive calls from these people.

Canada does have a ‘do not call’ registry, but it won’t accept U.S. numbers. I can file complaints with the appropriate U.S. and Canadian authorities, but I doubt it’ll do any good. A company in Manitoba is not subject to U.S. law, and what does the Canadian government care if a few people in the U.S. are being annoyed by one of their businesses?

Wedding and Whatnot

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Another busy weekend going on. We spent much of the day today up in Maryland at a wedding. Many congrats and happy prayers for Kelsey and Duane! May God bless your union. It was a beautiful wedding and a great reception. Melissa was the photographer, so she was running around most of the time. I was just there as a friend of the couple and photographer’s stuff carrier. We also had dinner with my parents, who are in town for the weekend.

Aside from that, we’re working on stuff related to the house. The paperwork has all been up-in-the-air much longer than we were told to expect, and it’s starting to get annoying . . . especially since, under the ingenious economic policies of Barack Obama (D) and the Federal Reserve, the mortgage rates have jumped a full percentage point in the last two weeks and we’ve possibly lost the chance to lock-in the good, low rate we had initially been offered. Not cool. Things had been going very smoothly until this mess. The rate jump is largely (surprise!) our government’s fault, but if the companies involved had been acting promptly we might have been able to lock in a rate earlier when they were lower.

Why do these things need to be so complicated?

Anyway, those ate most of after-work time yesterday and most of the day today. Tomorrow is chock-full of church stuff and a few other things I’d like to do. Hopefully I’ll get at least a short bike ride in and some writing. We’ll see how it goes. Have a great rest of the weekend!

Why the Jews?

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Michael Gerson wrote a great piece for the Washington Post with a simple, direct title: “Why the Jews?”

The Jewish people have been subject to incredible persecution and abuse for thousands of years, including the abject evil of the Holocaust at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II. Yesterday, a white supremacist and anti-Semite walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and fatally shot a security guard before being critically injured by return fire. Thankfully the attacker was stopped before killing others.

I haven’t covered this story because, frankly, isolated incidents of violence in Washington, DC, are not newsworthy. But this incident is a reminder that, against all reason, antisemitism still exists in this world.

So why the Jews? Why are the Jewish people the recipients of such constant, inexplicable hatred from certain corners of society? I agree with Gerson that there is likely no sufficient explanation, but I would venture a guess: The Jews are God’s chosen people. People who oppose God do so—on their own or through Satanic influence—by targeting the peoples and institutions closest to him. They target Jews. They target essential social institutions like the Church, and essential norms of human behavior like marriage. There is a kind of sad, amoral, perverse logic to the moral flash-points of the last 100 years.

Widespread violence and discrimination against Jews is a sign of deep, fundamental moral disorder in a society—prevalent today in the Muslim world and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. One isolated incident does not indicate the U.S. is following in these footsteps, but we must be constantly guarding ourselves against this kind of evil.

Oh No! Pandemic! RUN!!!

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Swine Flu ‘outbreak’ to be a global pandemic, the first flu pandemic declared by the body since 1968. This is a real head-scratcher though. The WHO is clear in its declaration that the word ‘pandemic’ does not connote any particular level of severity, but merely geographic spread. The Swine Flu is, by all accounts, quite mild and relatively harmless by flu standards. It is being declared pandemic because it is present all around the world now after having started off in Mexico.

But . . . wait a minute here. The regular seasonal flu spreads worldwide twice each year, once in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter and again in the Southern Hemisphere’s. These regular, seasonal flus—which kill an average of 36,000 people in the United States annually—do not constitute a ‘pandemic’, so why does the Swine Flu? Even with the WHO declaring that the word ‘pandemic’ has nothing to do with severity, most people interpret the word as implying the disease is something they have to worry about. The media’s ongoing fascination with the Swine Flu as some kind of AIDS-like super-bug just adds to the insanity.

Let’s get some perspective. The Swine Flu’s current U.S. death toll is 50 in the U.S., out of 15,500 confirmed cases. The seasonal flu average is 36,000 deaths/year and 5-20 percent of the U.S. population (so about 15,300,000 cases in a mild year). By my calculation, the severity of the Swine Flu is thus currently about 0.14 percent or 0.10 percent the severity of the regular, un-newsworthy, un-pandemic, boring old seasonal flu, depending on whether you calculate based on deaths or the lowest average number of infections.

So let me join with the rest of the world and scream: IT’S A PANDEMIC! OH NO! RUN!

Now let’s go about our regular business like rational, thinking adults who aren’t particularly worried about the relatively small chance of catching a mild flu with a scary name . . . please?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.