Wagers! Demand Wagers!

First, announcements.

- I speak for the Skeptics Society : In the year 2525: Big Science, Big History and the Future of Humanity at Caltech, Pasadena CA, May 30.

- May 21 I address the Singularity Group in New York City at the Hatchery at 1601 Broadway (7pm).

- June 10, I speak at The Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California.  

- After which I fly to give talks in Portugal (Porto) and Madrid.

So many exciting things are happening in our world... like we're about to have a spaceprobe zip by Pluto!  A month ago we orbited Ceres and found oceans!  Before that, human beings (well, Europeans) landed a probe on a comet!  Poverty is declining worldwide.  The U.S. economy is on a great path. The air is getting better and we've seized the right to aim cameras at the police! There are hard problems to solve, and every reason to believe that combinations of technology, law and individual initiative will solve many of them.

And yet, the merchants of gloom have us seized by the throat.

Desperate to turn us away from good news - and especially the confidence to believe problems can be solved - they cast a spell of despair, in all directions.  But let's face it... this illness is especially rife on one end of the lobotomizing political "spectrum."  An end that has simply gone insane.

              Is there something you can do?

Something simple and effective that will give you victory after victory in our ongoing culture wars?  Yes there is!  A simple trick.  One that works!  In fact, it works almost every time.

== The way to get yammering loonies to shut up  ==

Two news items show how fast Barry Goldwater is spinning in his grave.  First, U.S. House Republicans have voted to slash NASA’s budget for the Earth Science division. (Under Bush, they tried repeatedly to eliminate all uses of the word "earth" in NASA programs and missions.)  For 25 years, those who declare "we need more science" to prove/disprove climate change have systematically sabotaged the science that might resolve the issue to a precision demanded by Fox. This follows an earlier decision to to cut NSF’s geoscience budget. And the State of Florida's new regulation forbidding officials from ever even mentioning or considering rising seas or climate change.

This hypocritical cowardice is not aberration.  It is a core hallmark of the New Confederacy.

Here is another --

Jade Helm 15, a military exercise, brings wild speculation in Texas about ‘martial law’.  A large but relatively routine exercise to train troops in counter-terrorism methods has become the latest Black Helicopters fantasy in the minds of the whole posse comitatis crowd. Conspiracy theorists claim it’s an attempt to institute martial law, possibly in collusion with (I kid you not) Wal-Mart. Ted Cruz has signed up to share the Koolaid. (See: The Truth Behind Jade Helm Conspiracy Theories.)  And in response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has ordered the State Guard to 'monitor' federal troops there during the exercise. 

(Without explaining what 'monitor' means. Never mind that the president can legally federalize the national guard, any time he chooses, and the "state guard" in Texas is not what you think. Nevertheless, in fact, "Mr Transparency" wholly approves of "monitoring"! It is one cure for crazy.)

Yes, yes, this story makes way too much out of a fairly small phenomenon -- some far-right flakes hate-fantasizing about the US military.  Indeed, at the far ends, there are almost as many flakey conspiracy fetishist romantics on the left as on the right.  No, what's important here is the fact that the fanatical fringe on the right sits atop a much much bigger, only slightly less fanatical "main" body of confederates.

Put aside the spectacular insult to our men and women in uniform — any ONE of whom would blow the whistle if anything even 0.01% as nefarious were actually going on.  You know this is not about modeling reality, at any level.  

It is about stoking the insatiable engine of the Indignation Industry.  Hence, disproof won’t make a scintilla of difference.  Open transparency will help a bit. (I almost always prescribe big doses, to ensure that Big Brother does stay far away: as he is right now.) Transparency will limit the number of frenzied conspiracy nuts to a screeching small-but-deeply-harmful minority.  

But even transparency will only see to it that they'll back out of THIS howling mania, gleeful in the after-rush of sanctimony, looking for the next one to wave about, shrugging off any reminder that they predicted, in 2008, that "Obama will take all our guns." Safe in the serene knowledge that the rest of us will fight like hell to preserve their right to be raving morons.

Is the situation hopeless?  Not! As I said -- there is a method.  One that absolutely works. Let me repeat that. It works. 

Again, it works, absolutely. That is, if you parse it carefully.

And not one Blue American of stature has ever once (to my knowledge) actually used this sure-fire method for forcing conspiracy nut-jobs to back off.

== Demand wagers! ==

Put money on it. Offer odds. Insist they step up and offer stakes, like real-men. 

If they are so sure of their paranoid ravings — sure enough to throw America into fever after fever and thus harm us all and insult our professional warriors — then they ought to be willing… even eager… to take my money in a bet!  

What? No? Here's my money! If you are so sure, put yours on the table and then walk away with winnings, when your ravings come true!

Watch... oh watch how they backpedal, the instant there are actual consequences to foaming at the mouth.  The instant facts and evidence threaten to have real bite.

Let me link you to my earlier posting about this: Take the Wager Challenge and Help push back Culture War . And I am serious. It is a weapon Sane America never, ever uses… even though it is one that will work.  It works; and it is a sign of the raw stupidity of liberals, that they have not learned how to wield this sword.

Try it!  Read the write-up. Offer wagers. Watch how fast the cheap cowards back off!

== So why am I optimistic? ==

Remember the confident Republican declarations that Obama would not only take our guns, but give us $200/barrel oil?  

According to tech-economics guru Mark Anderson, the recent drop in the price of oil constitutes a “massive effective tax cut” for the world’s population. Compare estimated expenditures on oil and gas before and after the drop.

Past-year estimate: $866, 875, 000,000

Next-year estimate: $456,250,000,000

Change YTY: $410,625,000,000

Even accounting for a recent uptick, and the fact that all sorts of fatcats and intermediaries will siphon billions in price manipulations and collusively anti-competitive conniving — “Eventually, this tax cut will find its way through the system, driven (one hopes) by competitive market forces rather than by price manipulation schemes. Once this occurs, the world will have almost half a trillion dollars in unexpected windfall cash gains per year to spend on things like hospitals, schools, and infrastructure - right? Or, okay, weapons.

 “All in all, this change may represent the largest change in "externalities" costs the world has seen since World War II - except, perhaps, for the ramping costs of global warming.”

Oh, regarding that other thing - climate change: “How would you like some real estate in Miami? Waterfront prices are actually going up, while the local government is planning on buying 18 pumps to stave off sea-level rise caused by global warming - a term the governor's office has forbidden any state officer from uttering.”

In both cases, the driver that’s absolutely essential is new technology.  Those “game changers” I referred to, earlier.  And those won’t happen if anti-future and anti-science types — some on the far-left and nearly everyone on the entire-right — keep applying fanaticism to problems better addressed by vigorous and optimistic problem-solving negotiation and a can-do spirit.

== The biggest wager … Obamacare ==

With the next presidential election underway, all GOP candidates are swearing to make repeal of Obamacare their central goal, how’s that playing with the American people? Especially with this commie-disaster law ruining health care in America and enslaving everyone and sending costs skyrocketing… except …

...except that nothing of the sort is happening. “The problems that marred the rollout of Obamacare have been fixed. The law, meanwhile, is reducing the number of Americans who lack health coverage as intended, as a new report from the Rand Corp. shows. And just as important, many unintended consequences that critics of the law predicted have failed to materialize.” 

The Bush era skyrocketing of premiums has largely abated.  More people are getting reliable preventative care. Health related bankruptcies have plummeted. The number of people with employer-arranged insurance has risen, rather than fallen. There's been no socialist takeover of the health system. While there are flaws that merit fixing via negotiation, not one of the Chicken Little screech predictions of negative consequences has come true.  Not… even… one.

Oh, how I wish some of the cowards who I offered wagers about Obamacare would have had the cojones to actually put money where their frothing mouths were.  But none of the screeching ninnies would actually take a bet.  Demanding wagers did have one effect though.  They always shut up about the topic... around me.

And it was worth putting the United States through hell, freezing the political process in rigor mortis, such that the only thing the GOP-dominated House of Representatives did, month after month was pass shrill ACA repeals that they knew would never go anywhere… and you maniacs did all of that… over this?

The want the ultimate irony?

 When public approval of the ACA, which has been rising every month for the last twenty, finally passes a critical threshold, Republicans will suddenly remember… 

“Oh yeah!  The ACA was OUR PLAN ALL ALONG! It came from the Heritage Foundation and the GOP party platform and it was called ‘Romneycare’ at one point… It’s ours!  It was always our idea! We'll take the credit now, thank you.”

Watch.  That’ll happen. (Not one other person will be on record, having predicted it.)

 And the dittoheads will conveniently forget every shrill jeremaiad.  Only dig this well, please.  This time we will remember.  That you guys are completely insane.