Opinion Forum

Opinion Forum Is No Longer Posting New Articles

May 22nd, 2013

Opinion Forum is no longer posting new articles. All previously posted articles are still available, and commenting remains open. Articles can be found in the list of those most recently posted or in monthly archives located on the left sidebar. All articles can be searched using the site search box on the right sidebar.

Government Needs to Get Bigger. Quickly.

May 20th, 2013

By Dan Miller

There is far too much subversion for a small Government to handle. The Administration needs to be protected no matter how high the cost.

Considering all the matters with which our grand and glorious Federal Government is forced to deal on a daily basis we need more, not less, of it. It cannot be expected adequately to respond to the many vicious attacks coming from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy unless it expands sufficiently to deal with them. Here, for example, is a vile attack published by one member of that disgraced conspiracy, the Daily ~~Pest~~ Beast.

Following the attack in Benghazi, senior State Department officials close to Hillary Clinton ordered the removal of a mid-level official who had no role in security decisions and has never been told the charges against him. He is now accusing Clinton’s team of scapegoating him for the failures that led to the death of four Americans last year.

Cognitive Biases Are Bad for Business

May 20th, 2013

By Dr. Jim Taylor

The conventional wisdom in classical economics is that we humans are “rational actors” who, by our nature, make decisions and behave in ways that maximize advantage and utility and minimize risk and costs. This theory has driven economic policy for generations despite daily anecdotal evidence that we are anything but rational, for example, how we invest and what we buy. Economists who embrace this assumption seem to live by the maxim, “If the facts don’t fit the theory, throw out the facts,” attributed, ironically enough, to Albert Einstein.

But any notion that we are, in fact, rational actors, was blown out of the water by Dr. Daniel Kahneman, the winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for economics, and his late colleague Amos Tversky. Their groundbreaking, if not rather intuitive, findings on cognitive biases, have demonstrated quite unequivocally that humans make decisions and act in ways that are anything but rational.

Cognitive biases can be characterized as the tendency to make decisions and take action based on limited acquisition and/or processing of information or on self-interest, overconfidence, or attachment to past experience.

Hail to the Chief! Of What?

May 19th, 2013

By Dan Miller

When He appears officially it is played. Who is the Chief? Of what?

Writing about Hail to the Chief here, I observed that President Obama is the chief only of the military.

Obama and Islamists Unite to End Abuse of Women

May 19th, 2013

By Dan Miller

Inadequately covered females force male members in the Religion of Piece to react impurely. Ditto in the U.S. Armed Forces. That must cease, right now. No matter how hard the task may become, the rank and file must embrace Our Loving President’s creative solutions.

President Obama’s gracious embrace of Islamism and his own heroic assassination of Osama Bin Laden have brought peace to the Islamic World including even the United States. Because of his historic foresight in making it perfectly clear that “the future must not belong to those who ~~speak accurately of~~ slander the prophet of Islam,” we are no longer under threat of attack by ~~Islamic terrorists~~ extremists and instead face only sporadic and ineffective workplace violence such as (allegedly) engaged in at Fort Hood by the sadly misunderstood Major Hasan.