Just Making a Comparison...

A friend of a friend posted this picture a few days ago -
The picture itself is fairly offensive - showing our current sitting President, elected by a majority of the voters, alongside a list of some of the worst dictators of the last century. In fact, the poster got called out on that, but defended herself with the claim that this was only showing leaders in the two categories. It wasn't meant to imply that Obama himself is a murderous megalomaniac...it just happens that his opinions and policies regarding personal weapons place him in the same group as all those horrible people.

Yeah, right. Just a coincidence. Okay, let's look at this a bit.

First, of course, is the obvious - these names and faces were not chosen at random. If we're looking at world leaders associated with gun control...where's Tony Blair, who got the 1997 Firearms Act passed in the UK? Ronald Reagan, who endorsed the Brady Act? Angela Merkel, who signed a measure in Germany that even bans Tasers? I'm guessing that they weren't considered scary enough - especially Reagan. Including him on the list would have confused the target audience severely, I suspect. It is fairly obvious that this list was designed to provide a group of absolute villains specifically for the purpose of ranking Obama alongside them. Showing that some reasonable people support certain gun control measures would have been counter-productive to this Orwellian hatefest.

Second, to be a fair comparison, Obama's policies have to actually qualify him as a leader looking to strip citizens of their right to own guns. Does he have that sort of record? I haven't seen much on that from him. Back in June, he apparently put out some executive orders that would result in computerizing background checks, increased enforcement of existing laws, and improving interstate cooperation. None of which sounds quite like prying guns out of peoples' hands - and I haven't even found confirmation that the orders were issued. Even the NRA says he hasn't done anything on the issue - though of course that only means it's a conspiracy to do more later. But before you go lumping our President in with a bunch of dictators...shouldn't you be able to point to something he's actually done?

Third, the others in the group really ought to belong there, too. Some of them, sure. Stalin, yep. He instituted gun control in the Soviet Union. Amin, Castro? Couldn't find anything on them. Though Uganda seems to me to have been a failed state under his rule, so I wonder just how effective any gun laws really were...and I suspect that it isn't all that relevant in Cuba, where most of the populace can't afford food, let alone a handgun. But Lenin? Gun control in the Soviet Union appears to have started under Stalin, not Lenin. And Hitler? It turns out the 1938 German Weapons Act completely DEregulated long guns and ammunition, as well as liberalizing the rules on licensing. (In fairness, it also made it illegal for Jews to own any guns at all - but considering all the other antisemitic legislation of the time, it hardly seems fair to characterize that as gun control.)

So tell me again - is this really a picture showing the category that Obama's actions have placed him in, alongside all these historical villains? Or is this yet another attempt to demonize the President with lies, half-truths, and innuendo?

Of course, if you wanted to do it right, you could leave the picture exactly the same, and merely change the captions - the pictures in the bottom row are all leaders who believed that they had the right to murder their own citizens purely on their own word. But the people who put out this sort of thing seem to be just fine with that.

Making A String of Plug-in Jack-O-Lanterns

My family likes jack-o-lanterns. Been too busy to make new ones lately, but the last several we did were the artificial foam rubber sort, which means we get to reuse them every year. But with ten of them on the porch, getting them lit every night got to be a nuisance - not to mention costing us a fortune in batteries every October. What I needed, I decided, was a way to light them up that I could plug into a wall outlet.

There were a few restrictions, though. Those fake pumpkins are melty and flammable, so it had to be a cool light. And I really wanted to mimic the flickering light of a candle, which meant no colored compact fluorescents. Last Christmas, though, I decided that LED Christmas lights would be just the thing, and this year, I finally got it done.

First, though, please note that I'm not an electrician. I can't guarantee that I did any of this right, that it won't set your pumpkins on fire, fry your wiring, or destroy your house. It's working for me so far - but the month is young. Try this at your own risk. Here's what I did.

1. Figure out how many lights you need. Like I said, I have ten to light, and the light strings that looked like my best choice came 60 to a string. Just guessing, I thought six would be too few, but 12 would be enough - so I bought two strings. As it happened, that seemed to work pretty well - somewhere in the 10-15 bracket is probably good.

2. Select your light strings. Critical to my plan was a multi-function set - I needed lights that would flicker or shift. It is also important to decide what colors you want. Obviously, red, yellow, and orange are best for imitating candles. All I could find, though, were white and multi-color sets, so I grabbed two multi-color strings. I knew there wouldn't be enough warm colors, so I picked up a third regular string (no special functions) for the spare bulbs.

This was my first surprise - same brand, bought at the same place, but the bulbs from the spare string wouldn't fit the multi-function string. Very annoying, especially since the multi-function sets turned out to be only three colors - red, green, and blue - which meant I was stuck with two-thirds the wrong colors. I strongly suggest you buy a completely identical set for your spares...and maybe open the box to see exactly what you're getting before you make your selection.

3. Get your extras - wire, connectors, electrical tape, and a wire stripper if you don't already have one. How much wire you need depends on how far apart your pumpkins are, and how many wires your light string have - remember you'll need to splice each wire separately. Since my multi-function sets had four wires, that meant even my reasonably small porch took four 25-foot spools. I discovered that the light strings use 18-gauge wire, but the smallest spools I could find were 16-gauge - seems to work, though.

4. Re-arrange your bulbs. Mentally divide your string into whatever number of lights you decided to use - mark them with bread ties, or clothespins, or whatever. If any of your pumpkins can use your blue and green bulbs, great - swap 'em out to get the extra reds and yellows for the others. Otherwise, you'll just need to swap bulbs from your spare strings.

This was my second surprise - LED bulbs are NOT reversible. If you put it in the wrong way, it may be dim or not light up at all, and may also dim the entire rest of the string. So as you're swapping bulbs, check it with each swap, and if one doesn't light, rotate it 180° and try it again. I found it easier to just leave the string plugged in while I was switching them out - which is probably not the right thing to do, but it worked for me.

I also discovered that you can swap LED bulbs in the bases, just like the old-style lights, when the bases from different strings don't fit. It turns out that most of the "bulb" is just a plastic cap, though, and the caps from different bulbs probably won't fit. For this purpose, it doesn't really matter - the bulbs won't show, anyway. But it's something to keep in mind for the ones on your Christmas tree.


Once you have all the lights set the way you want, it's time to start rewiring. Just snip each wire between the sets you've arranged, and splice in a length of wire to extend the set. I strongly suggest you do one wire at a time to make sure you don't get any of them confused. Accidentally splicing the wrong wires together would probably be a bad thing. I used wirenuts to do the splicing - just strip off a little insulation from both wires, twist them together, and twist on the wirenut. I then wrapped electrical tape around it all - partly to help hold it secure, but mostly to try to water-proof the connections a bit.

Repeat that for each wire...then again for each group of lights. Just like when you were swapping bulbs - plug the lights in and check your work frequently. (Obviously, this is NOT a good time to leave them plugged in while you work.) It would be very frustrating to get one bad connection and have to recheck or resplice half a dozen to find the bad one.

Eventually, you'll get all the wires done. It should look something like this:
And the hard part is done.

Now all you have to do is stick the lights in the pumpkins. Just lay them out, cut holes in the back of the pumpkins, and stuff the lights in.


Get them pushed down into the bottom of the pumpkin as best you can. Ideally, the bulbs won't show - the light will still glow just fine. (By the way, those are baggies full of aquarium rocks - fake pumpkins are very light, and tend to blow away if you don't weight them down. This lighting method has the added bonus of hooking them together. I'm hoping it will help hold them in place.)

Pick your light setting - something that will flicker and shift. Having several lights in there, preferably of slightly different colors, should give a nice candlelight effect. Or maybe you prefer a flashing set, or slow color change - whatever you like. Plug the string into a timer or dawn-to-dusk switch, and you should now be able to leave the whole thing alone for the rest of the month, and still have a nice display every night.

Magical Thinking

Stage magic is very cool. For me, though, it gets even more interesting when I find out how the tricks are done. I'm not the only one - Penn & Teller, among others, frequently include the secrets behind (some of) their tricks right in the act, which tells me that a lot of other people like knowing about the reality behind the magic.

But the secrets are only cool when the trick works. Learning how to force a card is just not that interesting when the person teaching you can't shuffle without sending cards flying around the room. And finding out the trick of sawing a woman in half is much less impressive when it involves burying the assistant later - in two coffins. There has to be something real to go with the explanation.

Scientific theories are much the same, doubled and redoubled. A good theory not only tells us how and why something happens in nature, it lets us use that knowledge to make predictions, develop technology, and make our lives better. In science, the term "theory" is the highest accolade a concept can achieve, and the value we gain from them is hard to overestimate.

But the basis for any scientific theory is careful observations. You have to know what is happening before you can even try to explain why and how. A detailed theory of how sheep fly could lead to new concepts in aerodynamics, improved aircraft, maybe even a step towards anti-gravity - except for the indisputable fact that sheep don't fly so much as they plummet. Once again, there has to be something real to go with the explanation.

For the last few decades, conservatives have been championing an economic "theory" - in essence, that low taxes improve the economy, raise tax revenues, and create jobs. It's an attractive idea, fairly simple, and easy to see how it should work. After all, the people who own businesses are the ones who create the jobs and fund the paychecks - so if they have more money, they can do more of that. Makes perfect sense. There's only one problem - it doesn't appear to work. Ever. I can't find any evidence that lowering taxes provides those benefits - in fact, what little evidence I've seen seems to point the other way. It appears to me that the conservatives have ignored step one in creating their theory - observing what actually happens.

I mean, let's look at our current situation.

• The top tax rates for both corporate and personal income are nearly the lowest they've been since World War II, and they've both been that way for several years - and there are no jobs.
• Exxon-Mobil set new records for annual earnings in four of their last six years, and are on track to beat their second-best this year - and there are no jobs.
• A company that makes expensive tech-toys for wealthy people now has more cash on hand than the U.S. government - and there are no jobs.
• The top 1% of the nation's wealthy hold about one third of the total wealth. The top 10% hold two thirds. The gap between rich and poor hasn't been this bad since just before the Great Depression - and there are still no damn jobs.

Please, conservatives, stop telling us how and why keeping low taxes for the rich is supposed to benefit all of us. I've heard it enough that I can sing along. Instead, show us that it actually works - show us something real to go with the explanation. Or shut up and get out of the way.

Revisiting Global Warming, Part 1

My dad posted a link to a local San Diego news show debunking the global warming myth. I’ve watched part 1…here’s my initial thoughts.

The first three minutes were spent telling us just how terrible – and expensive – it would be if we believe all this global warming nonsense and try to act on it, with an emphasis on new taxes and new spending. Well, that’s undeniably true – but says nothing about the truth or falsity of anthropogenic global warming. It appeared to be a classic argument from consequences fallacy – claiming that if something were true, it would lead to bad results, so it must not be true. More charitably, it might instead have been an attempt to show the importance of the issue by showing the consequences if we wrongly take action. Either way, it is completely useless for determining the truth or falsity of the proposition.

The show then presented six scientists who made various statements about the errors in the science that claims to show evidence of man-made global warming. Two of them didn’t actually make any researchable claims, simply stating that the other side’s science was faulty. The other four said things that can be examined, though. Let's look at just the first one.

Dr. Craig Idso noted that, in that famous graph of CO2 to temperature over the last 650,000 years, the level of CO2 actually lags the rise in temperature. That would seem to disprove the cause-and-effect relationship, as the purported cause, CO2, comes after the effect, the higher temperatures.

The problem is that things are more complicated than that. According to several other scientists, as noted here, historically warming trends have started from cyclic orbital variations that cause the Earth to receive more or less sunlight. When we get more, things warm up. This causes the oceans to release CO2, hence the lagging rise in that gas. However, that increased CO2 level then serves to amplify the warming trend, as well as spreading that trend planet-wide rather than concentrating it at the poles.

And obvious even to me, a non-scientist – that long-term graph didn’t show the effects of a man-made increase in CO2 because there hasn’t been one before. On a 650,000 year timescale, the ability of man to dramatically affect CO2 levels is pretty concentrated on the far right end of the timeline – the CO2 levels there looked significantly higher than anything seen before. So stating that the natural pattern has always been temperature first, then CO2, doesn’t do anything to disprove AGW, which has never before been possible.

So what does this prove? Not a durned thing. Dr. Idso demonstrated that the graph in An Inconvenient Truth oversimplified the situation, leading to the wrong conclusion. The several scientists referenced in the link above showed that Dr. Idso ALSO oversimplified the situation, leading to the wrong conclusion, and thus returning to Gore’s conclusion. It’s possible that there is yet another level of complexity that would invalidate that one. And another beyond that...

All this really shows is that this stuff is complicated. And for this reason, I'm not going through the other claims to try and counter them - I am pretty certain that such counters are out there on the web, and it wouldn't take any more time to find them than the two minutes it took me to find this one. But I’m not qualified to sort out all the conflicting claims. Neither is Arianna Huffington, nor Glenn Beck. Nor is John Coleman, the host of the video. And since I know pretty much everyone who reads this blog, I can state with fair assurance – neither are you. That’s why, as I discussed in an earlier post, I find it necessary to use other means to make my judgment on this issue.

I've got more to say on this, specifically regarding the financial factors on both sides. But it'll probably be several days before I get that one up. If you want to criticize Gore or the scientific establishment for their self-serving attempts to enrich themselves by promoting this, please wait for that post - but for anything else related to AGW, feel free to comment on this one.

Where Is the Honor?

I happened to pass by a fraternity house at Valdosta State University on Friday and saw what appeared to be the beginning of a formal ball. The young ladies were all dressed in lovely gowns, looking like a classic collection of Southern Belles. The young men wore matching outfits – costume replicas of Confederate Army uniforms.

Why is there such a tendency here in the South to venerate the Confederacy and the Civil War? I understand the desire to honor heritage, and maintain tradition, and all that – but the Confederacy? It was, after all, a would-be nation that existed for barely more than four years, almost 150 years ago. Surely no one can claim that their ancestors were born and raised in the CSA, simply because four years is far too short a time to raise a child. There was little time to develop Confederate traditions, to create a Confederate heritage – so what exactly are these people honoring? Many people decry the immigrants who fly the flags of their home nations, screaming that they're in THIS country now, they should be honoring their new home instead of their old. Doesn't the same logic apply even more strongly to those flying the flag of a nation that existed so briefly, so long ago?

The brief existence of the CSA is entirely entwined with the Civil War. To honor the Confederacy's heritage is to honor their side of the war – for there are few other lasting accomplishments to be honored. Not to put too fine a point on it...the CSA was a treasonous organization devoted to ripping the United States into two nations, seriously damaging both. Had they succeeded, I would see a point in honoring the founders of the CSA just as we now honor Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the other founders of the U.S. But they didn't. What is it about the losing side of this war that makes it so deserving of honor, especially honor by citizens of the nation that won?

These days you can find innumerable celebrations of the heritage of the Confederacy strewn throughout the South – replicas of the battle flag fly everywhere, monuments and events such as that formal ball pay honor to the fallen Confederate soldiers, and so forth. As a soldier myself, I can certainly understand the desire to honor the fallen. But why honor only one side, and the losing one, at that? Some of the displays include their own apologetics – the bumper stickers that show the battle flag and the slogan “Heritage, Not Hate,” for example. They ignore the reality – there is no heritage of the Confederacy besides the hate. The only reason for the war was to maintain slavery. Many people these days like to claim it was about “States' Rights,” and the loss of power to the Federal Government – they ignore the fact that the only right those states really cared about was the right to enslave other humans. The public statements and documents of the time make it clear – the overwhelming cause of the secessions and the war was the question of slavery. That is the heritage these people are now celebrating. That is the cause they are honoring. That is the tradition they are maintaining. When I saw those students gathering for their event, they appeared to all be white. All things considered, that's not really a surprise.

A Convincing Majority

Science does not depend on majority vote. Truth will out, no matter how many people speak lies. So why do I take guidance from the consensus in regards to global warming?

Well, really, I don't. It's more a starting point. Here's how I really came to my conclusions.

Ideally, of course, I would research it myself and draw my own conclusions from the data. Sadly, I have neither the expertise, the training, or the time to do that. So I have to turn to those who do - the experts in the related fields.

That's where the consensus comes in. Just as I don't have time or expertise to research ot myself, I am equally unfit to judge the relative arguments. Under the basic principles of science and peer review, the conclusions shared by an overwhelming majority of scientists are generally the best available explanations for the data. Not necessarily "right" - but most likely to be closer to the truth than any other explanation out there.

For this issue, though, even the consensus seems fuzzy. I'm pretty sure that it is intentionally obscured by one side, so I'm already leaning towards the other - but let's abstract the process one step further, as a check. Let me look at who I know is lying.

I can hear my right-leaning friends and relatives now - "Al Gore! He's lying! He's just in it for the money!" Well, maybe so. The problem is, his investments make just as much sense, maybe even more, if he truly believes man-made global warming is fact. Did he put his mouth where his money is, or vice versa? I don't know, and neither do you.

There's some lies in the arguments that are easier to spot and confirm, though. First are the frequent petitions, conferences, and so forth that claim to show the growing opposition to the scientific consensus. Every one I've looked into, however, shares some common flaws -
they include people with no relevant expertise. One of them accepted participation from anyone with a science degree...even just a Bachelors of Computer Science. None of them appear to limit their participants to just those who have actually studied relevant subjects.
They often include people who never agreed to participate. This includes using deceptive questions to claim that support for one concept (Should we continue to research man-made global warming?) is also support for a more extreme idea (Is the consensus on global warming overblown?). In extreme cases, people have been added to the lists based on out-of-context statements in their published works - and have been kept on the lists even after they specifically requested to be removed. In one really extreme case, some of the people added to the list were dead!

In any event, even if we were to blindly accept their lists of "experts" who claim global warming is a myth...they are an insignificant percentage of people worldwide with the same qualifications. We can use their standards - include anyone with a B.S. degree - and their claim of 31,000 signers gets drowned in the millions of people worldwide with such degrees. Or we can limit our consideration to only those with relevant training and experience - in which case the vast majority of their side drops out, leaving only a few well-publicized scientists bucking the conclusions of their peers.

Other common tactics include the use of misleading statistics. Often a report will note two data points - say, a recent average temperature, and an equivalent reading from some years or decades past. Lo and behold, the two temperatures are virtually the same - the more recent might even be colder! Obviously, the Earth is not warming at all. On further, deeper investigation, though, one often finds some missing elements. It may turn out that the data points listed were from one location, while other locations showed significant warming over the same period. Or a closer look at the entire series of data will show that the latest reading is an outlier, much lower than the trend, and the carefully selected earlier reading was a higher-than-normal outlier - a trend line considering only those two points shows no change or even slight cooling, but a trend line showing all the intermediate readings shows clear evidence of warming. Or the report may claim that an effect limited to one area can be generalized to a whole continent. Or they may simply be reporting the variations caused by methodology errors as solid data to confirm their views.

So there's where my conclusion really comes from. Not the mere existence of a consensus that humans are causing our climate to change - that consensus seems pretty well confirmed to me, but as I said, science isn't majority-rule. No, the real convincer for me is how often, and how badly the opposition has to lie to try to create doubts in public opinion. If they really had facts on their side, they'd use them. Apparently, they don't.

O'Same

I remember why I voted for Barack Obama. It was partly because I loved the idea of having a smart, well-educated person in the office of President, making decisions based on a rational appraisal of effectiveness rather than ideology, and with a thorough understanding of Constitutional limits. It was partly because I was truly frightened by that pathological liar and Christian Dominionist that McCain chose for a running mate. But it was mostly because I felt we needed a significant change from the failed policies of the previous Administration, and it seemed that "McSame" would not provide that.

Let's look at what he's actually done, though. Sure, the Republicans have attacked his every move, but that's purely reflex with no apparent cerebral involvement, so we should probably look a little closer. Shall we start with the economy?

• Continued the TARP bailouts. I'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do - a collapse of our banking system would have been a bad thing, though I do feel that direct assistance to those facing foreclosure would have been more effective for both the homeowners and the banks, and possibly cheaper. But as that was a Bush-initiated program, there's certainly not much change there.
• Massive stimulus package. New program, yes. Clearly, though, TARP was a stopgap to save the banks, and was never expected to totally solve the economic woes. No doubt McCain would have come up with a different focus, and different marketing tactics for his plan - but from what I've seen of the consensus from economists, pumping massive amounts of borrowed government cash into the economy was the only realistic answer to the short-term crisis. (It causes long-term harm, yes - but if the country is on the verge of economic collapse, long-term is not really the issue.)
• Transparency of the process. This is something Obama promised for TARP and the stimulus. I really haven't heard much about it since he took office, though. Anyone know if he actually provided such a change? Do we really know where that money is going?
• Nationalizing GM. Clearly not something the Republicans would have done, right? But I seem to recall a major public outcry about the lack of control we kept over AIG and the other financial institutions, who took the TARP money and used it to pay their executives, instead of actually, you know, benefiting the economy. When it came time to bail out the car companies, McCain would have been under heavy pressure to put some strings on that money, to maintain some control over how it was used. I believe that, again, it would have been spun a little differently. That would have been easy - the Republicans wouldn't have complained since it was their own plan, and decrying Socialism really isn't a normal Democratic position. But regardless of the change in spin, the effects would have been similar.
• Health care. Not that Obama has yet accomplished anything there, but he's trying. Here's a spot that I think I see a little difference...but mostly in timing. Health care reform has been put off for a long time, and public opinion was clearly pushing for action. McCain might have been able to delay working on that, but I think the economic problems - especially massive layoffs with the attendant loss of insurance - would have forced him to do something about it sooner or later.

So, not much change there. Okay, what about the War on Terror?

• Closing Gitmo. On his first day in office, if I recall. Yeah, McCain wouldn't have done that. But it turns out that's more of a pretty symbol than anything substantive. It's been six months of the promised year, and there's still 245 prisoners there. And now, it seems, Obama's own Justice Department is arguing that these prisoners can still be detained even if they are acquitted of any crimes.
  
• Iraq. It seems we are finally, slowly, getting out. I believe, however, that the timetable was set before the election - admittedly, partly because of pressure from Obama and the rest of the Democrats. I suppose President McCain might have changed it, slowed it down, but I don't believe public opinion would have encouraged him in that. While I'm glad Obama is moving the right way here, I still can't count it as a change.
• Afghanistan. Honestly, I haven't been following the news there like I probably should. I counted both Iraq and Afghanistan as long-term failures years ago - we may or may not be able to maintain peace there for as long as we stay, but it will fall apart when we leave. So I lost interest in the details. Anyone want to fill this one in for me?

Okay, how about civil liberties vs. executive privilege? This is where I was really hoping to see something significant.

• State Secrets Privilege - Bush's Department of Justice asserted that if the Executive Branch declares material related to a court case classified, then the court must dismiss the case entirely. This in effect removes any check on executive authority from the Judicial Branch - the courts are not even allowed to hear evidence of government wrongdoing, let alone rule against it. Obama's DoJ has repeatedly asserted the same privilege. In press conferences, he speaks of more limited means to protect classified information in court case - but when his spokesmen are actually in court, he continues to claim an expansion of executive authority that would completely nullify the checks and balances against him.
• Protection against false imprisonment - we've already discussed that one. Obama is willing to continue to hold a person found innocent of any crime, as long as he can claim a national security reason.
• Fourth Amendment protections - Obama reversed himself on the question of immunity for telecom companies for warrantless wiretapping even before the election. At best, he has promised not to use the authority to wiretap without a warrant - but he doesn't seem to agree that the authority doesn't exist.
• Torture - Bush, of course, enabled and approved it through the use of poorly reasoned legal justifications and renaming it "enhanced interrogation." Obama railed against it in the campaign, but since then he has threatened our closest ally, the United Kingdom, with the reduction of intelligence-sharing if they revealed memos detailing torture. He has retained and even promoted some of the Bush Administration officials that oversaw the torture and rendition programs. And he has called for investigation and prosecution of torture committed by other nations, while steadfastly refusing to take such actions here in our own. The net result is basically the same as his position on wiretaps - he's promising not to use the authority, but he is leaving the door open through a lack of legal action and precedent to change his mind, or for future Presidents to revisit it.

Very disappointing. How about other social issues?

• Supreme Court nominee - the more rabid conservatives have attacked Judge Sotomayor on her empathy, her race, and her gender, but frankly they were threatening to filibuster even before Obama picked her. Again, their objections are reflexes with no connection to objective reality. In the real world, Sotomayor appears to be a very moderate selection, with a tendency to support authoritarian claims of power from police, prosecutors, and presumably the President in his attempts to retain the excessive authority Bush claimed for himself. At best, we can hope that the Sotomayor pick might be better than an right-wing extremist the McCain might have (or Palin certainly would have) chosen.
  
• Gay marriage - Obama's DoJ has argued against overturning the clearly unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act. Many of the states have been moving forward on this, but apart from this one negative move, Obama hasn't done any more than McCain would have.
• Gays in the military - Obama hasn't done anything towards removing Don't Ask, Don't Tell - exactly as we might have expected from McCain.
• Medical Marijuana - Obama has made statements that his DoJ would stop harassing people who grow, distribute, or use marijuana in accordance with state law, even if that conflicts with Federal law. But the DoJ was still raiding medical marijuana dispensaries as late as March, and the Attorney General confirmed that the arrest and conviction of Charlie Lynch for operating such a dispensary is completely in accordance with the new Administration's policies.
• Legal Representation - Obama's DoJ even encouraged the Supreme Court to overturn the long-standing principle that a suspect should not be questioned by police without his attorney present, once he's asked for one.
  

Conservatives have spent the last several months crying about how that change we asked for is going to destroy the country. Maybe they're right. Before I can believe them, though, I think I'd have to see some of that change...and so far, I haven't.