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Paul Brandon

Paul Brandon's picture
Mankato, MN
Commenter for
5 years 22 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 05/03/13 at 01:49 pm in response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson and the 'attack on fact'

Confirmation bias predisposed Bush/Cheney to lie about WMD.
I suspect that they at least partially convinced themselves, rather than cynically making up a story from whole cloth. Maybe more so on the part of Bush, who also wanted to avenge (and surpass) his daddy. All sorts of psychological(tm) issues there.

Posted on 05/04/13 at 10:08 am in response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson and the 'attack on fact'

Who needs freakin' facts?
We create our own reality (and then live in it).
......without apologies to Karl Rove, et. al.

Posted on 05/05/13 at 09:09 pm in response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson and the 'attack on fact'

says that the 40% number is based on old data, and may or may not be accurate today. What it does not say is whether the actual current number is any more likely to be lower than higher than 40%.
What we do know is that Congress has discouraged the kind of research necessary to provide a more accurate measure.

Posted on 05/05/13 at 09:14 pm in response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson and the 'attack on fact'

the effects of the stimulus spending.
It was about 1/3 of the amount considered necessary to revive the economy. As a result, it resulted in some improvement, but not enough.

On the Bush front, if he didn't lie then he was incompetent.
And it was he, not Clinton, who started a war.
Clinton was aware of the uncertainty and risks involved; Bush preferred black and white.

Posted on 05/07/13 at 08:58 pm in response to Kathleen Hall Jamieson and the 'attack on fact'

The NSA, or the intelligence group that Cheney set up when he didn't like the answers that the NSA gave him?

And I don't believe that Obama ever claimed that a $700B stimulus would be as effective as a $2T one; just that even the smaller stimulus (the most he thought was politically possible) would reduce employment relative to NO stimulus.

Posted on 05/01/13 at 09:05 pm in response to How a heavy police presence in high-crime neighborhoods hurts democracy

law enforcement decisions were supposed to be made on the basis of guilt and innocence.

And I don't think that the black-on-black crime rate is 40 times as high as the white-on-white rate.

I agree that the war on drugs has become a war on Americans, and that is a major part of the problem. I don't think that Americans are ten times as likely to use drugs as Swedes.

Another feedback loop is recidivism: incarceration has been shown to make the commission of crimes more...

Posted on 05/02/13 at 09:23 am in response to How a heavy police presence in high-crime neighborhoods hurts democracy

If the extra police are used mainly to stop and frisk randomly or racially chosen individuals (as in NYC under Giuliani), then it is starting to look like occupation by a foreign army. It's true that NY's crime rate dropped, but it also dropped in other cities that did not use aggressive police tactics.
On the other hand, if the extra police are used in community outreach functions, then it can be productive.

The other number that hasn't been given much attention here is the -...

Posted on 05/04/13 at 10:12 am in response to How a heavy police presence in high-crime neighborhoods hurts democracy

Correlation does not imply causation.
The rich are more likely to cheat on their income tax and commit other major financial crimes.
Does this mean that being rich makes one a crook?
I'll leave the more likely explanation as an exercise for the readers.

Posted on 04/30/13 at 09:43 am in response to New DSM (psychiatry's 'bible') may be out of date before it's published

We behaviorists have known this for years!
The DSM's weakness has always been that it describes symptoms (behavior patterns) out of context. Since similar effects can have different causes, it lumps together problems due to different circumstances that call for different solutions.
There's no substitute for treating each individual as an individual, and looking for the specific cause for a specific problem, and them outlining a suitable treatment program.
Given this, the...

Posted on 04/30/13 at 12:46 pm in response to New DSM (psychiatry's 'bible') may be out of date before it's published

I think that you're reifying an inferred hypothetical construct.
Another term that you might look up is 'homunculus'.

This sort of dualism has a long history; see
McCorquodale, K. & Meehl, PE (1948). On a distinction between
hypothetical constructs and intervening variables. Psychological Review, 55, 95-107.