Re Michael Grunwald

Tread On Me 

There are two threads of though that seem to be missing from the current debate. One is the fact that private actors if they act in concert can be just as threatening to freedom as government. Though I can pee in a cup, free from fear, the fact that I need to even think of such things if I want to fully participate in society is a serious erosion of Freedom. If Government forbids employers from asking me for my Facebook password, then it's pretty clear that the government is DEFENDING my Freedom against Private sector infringement.

The second thing that seems to be severely misunderstood is Miranda. The point of Miranda is to prevent Police from beating confessions out of suspects who may or may not be guilty. It doesn't even prevent police from beating confessions out of people. It just stipulates, that if they do so, they can't use those confessions in court. 

It's a very important right to preserve for obvious reasons, but it the idea that we can't question someone without reading his rights, when we already have more than enough evidence to convict WITHOUT his statements, is to blow the problem up out of proportion. Miranda is an  important right to defend. This is not a good case on which to hang your defense.

For the record......

To make it official, I am not among the one's who's immediately clamoring for stricter gun control laws, but the people who are arguing against them might just change my mind. What a heaping pile of idiocy!

Just sayin.......

As long as news organizations think that the causes of Global Warming are worthy poll questions, misinformation will continue to run rampant. The planet itself really doesn't CARE whether people think temperature trends are caused by human activity or not. Science is not a matter of opinion.

Oops

Those of us who pay attention to the political landscape on a daily basis have trouble understanding the viewpoint of people who don't pay any attention at all. The entire Romney campaign is based on the assumption that his target audience doesn't know any better. His most severe miscalculation was thinking that Ohio autoworkers might be among those who don't pay attention.

TPM Prime

TalkingPointsMemo has a new 'prime' site up. The first thread was full of introductions. Here's mine:

I'm 54 years old. I spent 17 years working in manufacturing, working my way up from QC technician to Production Manager. In that capacity I was instrumental in helping to resist several Union organizing drives. I was convinced that Labor Unions had performed an important service in the past but had outlived their usefulness. Then the company was acquired by a much larger entity. Needless to say, within two years I was busy deciding the order to let people go as we shuttered the plant. Having no particular ties to the area, my wife and I then relocated to the US Virgin Islands where I split my time as an Office Manager by day and a Musician in the evenings. I feel very fortunate, but I nevertheless have strong opinions about how the dire state of our economy is directly related to the fact that we have allowed our manufacturing capacity to be outflanked. It's an issue that NEITHER party seems willing to address in any forceful manner.

More on Romney's tax plan.

It's no secret that I don't think that the deception inherent in Mitt's tax plan is getting enough coverage. He's refused to say how he would offset the revenue losses. But more importantly he's relying on the same "growth fairies" that the GOP has been selling for as long as I've been paying attention to politics (Hint: that's 40 years) Here's the question. If tax cuts invariably lead to growth that in turn leads to more revenue, then why aren't the Bush tax cuts doing JUST THAT for us now? They're still in place. If they worked, then they're still working. If they aren't working then what possible basis do we have to believe that we just need more of the same to make things right?

Fact check?

There's a fundamental problem with Romney's tax plan which is creating havoc among the "fact-checkers" His plan is basically this: 1 Keep all the Bush tax cuts 2 Cut all tax rates by 20 percent across the board 3 ? 4 Continue to collect as much revenue as you had been. As long as CNN et al are willing to pretend that "?" represents an acceptable enunciation of a tax policy then they are going to continue to get their "facts" horribly wrong. This is NOT an acceptable situation!

As long as national reporters are willing to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast, Romney will get away with asserting 6 impossible things before breakfast.

And the Hits keep coming.

There are many different words you can use to describe slandering 146 Million working Americans. Patriotic is not on the list. Wrapping yourself in the flag means nothing if you don't also respect that we are a Government of the People.

Why is Romney getting bad press? Because he's earned it.

The New Rupublic

But the stories about this episode have made Romney look bad because, you know, Romney looked bad. Even staunch conservatives and Republicans, like Peggy Noonan, were taken aback at Romney’s reaction. It was based on false premises and, these conservatives felt, it was wildly inappropriate. (As Sophie Quinton noted in the Atlantic, it was the very nearly the opposite reaction that Ronald Reagan had in 1980, after the failed mission to rescue the Iranian hostages.)

Found Via Eschaton

One of the most blatant paradoxes of today's Republican party is how they like to scream and moan about deficit spending but that the moment anyone mentions that increasing revenues would address the problem they utterly clam up. The following article is a long read but it explains clearly the History behind this particular brand of doublethink: PDF File The money quote comes from Milt Friedman:

There is an important point that needs to be stressed to those who regard themselves as fiscal conservatives. By concentrating on the wrong thing, the deficit, instead of the right thing, total government spending, fiscal conservatives have been the unwitting handmaidens of the big spenders. The typical historical process is that the spenders put through laws which increase government spending. A deficit emerges. The fiscal conservatives scratch their heads and say, “My God, that’s terrible; we have got to do something about that deficit.” So they cooperate with the big spenders in getting taxes imposed. As soon as the new taxes are imposed and passed,the big spenders are off again, and there is another burst in government spending and another deficit. (1978b, 11)

About those taxes.......

The problem with Capital gains taxes, is that its not their rates that determine economic activity, It's the anticipated change in their rates. If rates are scheduled to go up, a flurry of selloffs will follow resulting in stocks losing value and more cash (and cash equivalents) being hoarded. If rates are scheduled to go down, then investors will prefer to sit tight on their appreciated assets, and wait for the taxes to drop before they cash in. The resulting distortions are what cause people to claim that lowering taxes cause revenue windfalls. They're one shot deals that don't continue after the new rates are settled in. I personally find it difficult to justify that people who live on their investments are taxed significantly less than people who earn salaries. I'm all for simplifying the tax code but none of the proposals on the table do anything but make the stratifying of our society even worse than it already is.

Re: The vanishing Middle Class

What's actually killing the middle class is the disparity in standards of living between the USA we know and love and the rest of the developing world. Neither party is actually willing to discuss the problem in detail because neither party has a solution. The difference though is that Obama is at least willing to use phrases like 'investing in education' and such to act a:as if the problem exists and b: as if something can be done about it. Romney OTOH, simply wants to make sure that money earned offshore can be repatriated tax free.

Responding to the quote below:

Whether we like it or not, we're going to move away from manufacturing towards a service based economy There's the problem in a nutshell. Whenever we think of any activity that earns money, we have to ask ourselves, "How does this add value?" Measured in terms of fulfilling actual human needs as opposed to simply drawing attention and cash, the only activities that actually add value are farming, manufacturing and transportation. Everything else is a matter of trading cash for vapor. Thinking that the American economy can make do without actually producing anything is the number one fundamental problem with out current economy. It's also the number one topic that everyone refuses to talk about.

I'll need this for tomorrow.......

Some edumacation for the trolls:

There has been a five percentage-point Democratic advantage, on average, in Fox News polls this year. In this poll, the Democratic edge is nine points. That may or may not be on the high side, although it is similar to other recent national polls conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, which puts Democrats up 11 percentage points and the Pew Research Center, with Democrats up by 13 percent.

That my friends is Fox news taking away the number one excuse the Teaheads offer when confronted with a negative poll. OVERSAMLPLING!!!!!!! Link

Every Day Is Thursday.

This appeared within 24 hours of a "FactCheck" that came to the opposite conclusion. Posted here for easy access.

Quick Test

2012-07-US-Sapphire 1

The two most important counters to the Obamacare as tax increase meme:

1: In the anti-injunction section of his ruling Roberts makes clear that the Congress did not intend for the penalty to be regarded as a tax. Anyone who uses this as a basis to claim that "Obama lied" about raising taxes are themsleves, lying. 2: It's a tax that NO ONE has to pay. The mandate is not a tax. The penalty is. It results in no ones taxes going up except in the rare event that they steadfastly refuse to provide for their own medical care. Furthermore the HCR law DOES include some taxes which the Republicans are respinning as affecting earners under 250K. But in each case, the claim is based on the actual payers of the tax passing them on to their customers as higher prices. This does NOT constitute a tax. People who claim otherwise are lying

Where I can Find Them

SB 1070 falls.

No one covering the latest Supreme court ruling seems to be noticing this crucial point:

(2) It is not clear at this stage and on this record that §2(B), in practice, will require state officers to  delay the release of detainees for no reason other than to verify their immigration status.  This would raise constitutional concerns.   And it would disrupt the federal framework to put state officers in the position of holding aliens in custody for possible unlawful presence without federal direction and supervision.  But §2(B) could be read to avoid these concerns.  If the law only requires state officers to conduct a status check during the course of an authorized, lawful detention or after a detainee has been released, the provision would likely survive preemption—at least absent some showing that it has other consequences that are adverse to federal law and its objectives.  Without the benefit of a definitive interpretation from the state courts, it would be inappropriate to assume §2(B) will be construed in a way that conflicts with federal law.  Cf.  Fox v.  Washington, 236 U. S. 273, 277.  This opinion does not  foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.  Pp. 22–24.

In other words 2(B) stands if and only if in actual practice it is not allowed to be the basis to detain anyone.

It has become fashionable now that Obama has created a 'Dream Act by Fiat" for Republicans to complain that he 'didn't do anything about immigration" when the Democrats controlled Congress.

Senate Republicans Block DREAM Act for Illegal Immigrants"

Needless to say, this is a lie........

The Individual Mandate Circa 1993

Left on a techie thread.....

Every time I call a company have to navigate a seven layer maze in order to reach a human I am reminded that the entire rationale for the technology that businesses buy is to eliminate jobs. In a day and age when entry level positions simply don't exist, celebrating additional triumphs of robotic thinking strikes me as horribly misguided.

I'm posting this as a constant reminder that no matter how far we think we have come, the past is not too far behind us. This is a page from The Rand McNally Grammar School geography textbook published in 1899.This is what my paternal Grandfather was taught in school!

The difference between Jobs, Job losses and Job loss rates seems to confuse people so I thought I'd draw my own picture. The blue bars represent the public sector job loss data that is often published on Left leaning sites including the White House. The red line is just the sum of those job losses or if you want, just label it Jobs. The green line (with the black trendline) is the month to month variation of the red line. I only mention it because Heritage once created a graphic designed to treat it as significant that there was an inflection point in it just as HCR was passed. I hope this chart demonstrates just how ridiculous THAT chart was.

On Gay marriage and Obama's 'evolution'

I'm delighted that Obama cited the Golden Rule as one basis of his decision. What strikes me more than anything is the volume of Scripture that people have to ignore in order to justify actively opposing Gay Marriage. If the Gospel teaches us anything its that 1: Our responsibility is to keep our own House in order and concern over condemning others is itself sinful. 2:Prayer should be a private matter between you and your Creator and that public displays of piety count for naught. 3: We are ultimately judged by how we treat prisoners and beggars and outcasts. Engaging in behavior designed to create outcasts is directly contrary to Jesus's direction. It never ceases to amaze me how many people fail to notice these simple points.

Decisions, decisions......?

What I find fascinating at this point is the Republicans seem completely undecided whether Obama is a ruthless thug or a spineless pushover. Having to decide definitely throws them off their game.

The Buffet Tax.....

As an actual policy proposal, the Buffet tax is a really bad idea. It just adds an additional layer of if/then calculations to a tax code that's already virtually incomprehensible. The value it brings to the campaign though is that it demonstrates in stark terms that the Right doesn't care about deficits and in spite of all the wailing and rending of garments, they never did. The fact that it would only cover a small percentage of the deficit is NOT an argument against it. If I have a chance to save 15% on my mortgage payments by refinancing, I'm not going to turn it down just because I still have to pay the rest. The bottom line is that the entire campaign strategy being presented now, is a direct result of the debt limit battle in August. Having demonstrated that Eric Cantor's agenda has dire real world consequences, Obama's now going to run directly against it.

Old Time Rock 'N Roll (Solo Break)

Comment on the IL Primary.

Illinois is unique in that it has all the demographic elements of the entire country laid out in sharply defined geographical boundaries. The city of Chicago is ethnically diverse and solidly Democratic. The surrounding counties (DuPage and Lake) in particular are entirely filled with the sort of preserve-my-wealth Republicans who nevertheless feel comfortable with the city, actually know gay people and are mostly uninterested in the Culture wars. From I-80 south OTOH the entire rest of the State is cornfields peppered with pop. 2000 town and a few minor almost-urban areas (Champaigne, Kankakee, Peoria, Springfield, Joliet) It is there, where fear of strangers, open unapologetic racism, and religious certainty are all welcome, that Santorum is able to shine. The reason that Romney is the inevitable nominee, is that the third category is a large area but very sparsely populated. (Don't tell any of those inhabitants that they don't represent the real America though) Those are fighting words!

The biggest LLC checks to Restore Our Future in January came from entities close to one industry: short-term lenders.

It's interesting that it takes a discussion about campaign finance to finally begin a discussion about predatory lending. As the rich and the poor choose up sides in our political system and invest their best efforts aligning sympathy from those who are neither rich nor poor one simple fact gets easily lost in the noise. Being poor is expensive. It's often said "it takes money to make money". Just as true is a similar slogan. "It costs money to need money" Between the lack of credit and the lack of transportation, not having a leg-up in life ends up being a chronic condition. Of course the reason this sees little discussion is that it interferes with the notion that the poor are just parasites who deserve their fate. At the end of the day though, any business model that relies on the ignorance of its customers is NOT an example of normal Capitalism at work.

Recession?

While everyone goes back and forth arguing over what a recession is, it obscures an important point. We are not in a recession and haven't been for a long time. Corporate profits are quite healthy. Productivity is healthy. The stock market is healthy. What isn't healthy is the job market. The irony then is the fact that we can lay the blame for our current morass on one place and one place only. The Job Creators®. For a bunch of folks who insist that the government can do no right, the current crop of Republicans are sure spending a lot of time blaming the Government for a situation that's directly under the control of the private sector. But as I've said before, when you're a purchaser of labor, high unemployment is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Ron Paul

The central paradox surrounding the Republican party is that they profess to hate the Federal government as an encroachment on their freedom, yet that hatred suddenly evaporates when the portion of the Federal government in question is the one that actually has control of all the weaponry.

Another Swampland Post:

Oddly enough I just used the phrase 'the politics of bedwetting' on the Ron Paul thread. I should have saved it for here. Anytime a commenter here (of any persuasion) makes a confident statement about the impending victory of their side in an upcoming election I am reminded of the tendency of people to think that their familiar world extends much wider than it actually does. They know how their neighbors vote and assume that that viewpoint is widespread. The downside to this style of thinking though is that the outer edge of this 'sphere of familiarity' represents a much sharper border in people's minds than it is in real life. No matter how frightening or foreign or dangerous a place seems, it's home to the people who live there and people are WAY more alike than they are different. (It may not seem that way until you remember that the next closest point of comparison are apes) We often marvel at how small the internet makes the world seem, but it's still no substitute for actual travel.

Posted on a Swampland thread re: Teacher's Salaries.

I knew it would be only a matter of moments before we got crowds of people demonstrating the inadequacy of public school teachers by displaying their own ignorance proudly. The truth is that a bad teacher can't keep a motivated student down and a good teacher can only marginally help someone who's uninterested in learning. How we succeed as a nation has a lot more to do with whether we hold education as a value in the first place. The fact that an entire movement is being built up around shouting down experts, decrying elitism (except among skilled gamblers), targeting bright people as worthy of scorn and flat out denying the utility of science says 10 times more about how we are going to fare as a nation than whether schoolteachers manage to pull down 60K or settle for 40. This Heritage foundation (lying with graphs since 1973) study is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Saved

I was told to save this link I wonder why?

Efficiency......

Every time I make a phone call to a large company and am greeted by a robot, I am reminded of the fundamental conflict that is at the heart of our current employment crisis. There is a tipping point past which the drive for 'efficiency' is self defeating. There isn't a company on the planet who's primary purpose is "creating jobs" Creating jobs is an unfortunate byproduct, like friction. Unfortunatly creating jobs is also how one creates Consumers aka Buyers. Until we are willing to look at 'creating jobs' as a value in of itself and decide that we're willing to do what's necessary to make it happen, our 'jobless recovery' has all the makings of a new status quo.

Now that that's over.....

Now that this is over and we can "pivot" to jobs, it's time to realize that bringing back jobs is going to require significantly more effort than anyone is currently suggesting. Ever since the Clinton years (yes Clinton) there has been a concerted effort to move manufacturing jobs to places like China, Mexico, India and Brazil. As I've been documenting for a while these places are Dreams of low wages, lousy work conditions and no regulation. (Something to bear in mind whenever anyone complains that it's stifling regulation that chases companies away. They're half right, but imitating our competitors is a lousy idea.)

In the meantime, the steady erosion of manufacturing jobs was effectively masked by Home-equity-driven Consumer spending and Housing bubble-driven construction jobs. (The abrupt end of the Credit Card gravy train is part of the reason people are so confused about the Federal debt. They keep comparing it to consumer debt.)

So there are two things we have to come to grips with.
1: We are never going to compete with the Chinese by 'deregulating'. There's nothing desirable about the result.
2: Home construction jobs aren't coming back and they weren't a good way to drive the economy in the first place. We need to write them off.

Whats the solution. D@mned if I know, but I do know that the current arguments we're having don't even BEGIN to address the actual problem.

Why I am now a Liberal

See this is where your mistaken about me. I'm fully aware that the impulse to regulate can lead to ridiculous extremes. I know that Union rules can lead to ridiculous inefficiencies and be harmful to well intentioned companies. I know that investment decisions are always made with the regulatory environment in mind and that potential areas of growth can languish as a result. If Conservative arguments didn't at least sometimes have merit, then it wouldn't have been possible to end up in our current mess where people think that if a little is good, a lot must really rock.

But I'm also aware that certain industries are harmful to the Commons in ways that aren't reflected in their balance sheets unless the harm is codified as taxes and regulations. I also know that companies would gladly pay less that a dollar an hour for labor if they could find a way to get away with it.

I'm old enough to have watched the baseline of 'reasonable' in this country drift so far to the right that Gov Jim Thompson of Illinois and for that matter Richard Nixon's politics would be instantly written off a "socialist" today. (You may recall that Nixon was the one who created the EPA in the first place. The problems it was set up to address are very real and many of them have been mitigated as a result.

The problem with today's Right Wing is just like that of a substance addict. Their personal dissatisfaction just translates into needing MORE of whatever it is they think will help and negative consequences are washed away in a flood of denial.

As I've been saying all along. If the National Association of Manufacturers AND the Chamber of Commerce and NRO think you've gone off the rails, it's time to step back and reevaluate where you stand

Re. The Debt Limit......

Let me type slowly and clearly. The Republican Party does not and never has cared about debt or deficits. They only care about taxes. The current round of negotiations proves that this has not changed. In the meantime the tax cuts that have been in place for the last ten years have accomplished nothing EXCEPT exacerbate the deficit. If they were the key to job creation, then no one would be complaining about current unemployment.

The problem with employment is unrelated to the current discussion. The housing equity bubble allowed both new home construction and consumer spending to continue well past their natural due date as the actual basis of our wealth, was carefully and deliberately relocated to China, India, Mexico and Brazil.

One other thing remains certain. No matter how you feel about the ability of tax revenues to create jobs, the idea that suddenly cutting off those revenues will do anything but make unemployment worse is sheer fantasy or (more likely) craven dishonesty. The Republicans know that their current threats are designed to make the economy worse.

The opportunity is here, to intelligently address these problems but the primary impediment to the whole process is centered rather firmly in the Tea Party wing of the Republican caucus. You would think that when the same organization that sunk millions of dollars into advertising designed to sink Obamacare, goes on record as opposing your negotiating strategy, that it would be time to reconsider, but ignorance and nihilism seem to be calling the shots and the moment.

Note To Eric Cantor

When you've lost the Chamber of Commerce And The National Association of Manufacturers then you are officially off the rails.

http://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/hill-letters/110712DebtCeilingLetter_0.pdf

E-Verify Employment Check........

No one can deny that proper enforcement of employment restrictions can and will be remarkably more effective at stemming illegal immigration than the system of random harassment that we currently have in place. But I'm am also very wary of "technological" solutions to the problems. In an age of 10+ percent unemployment I still have to jump through 14 hoops if I ever want to talk to a human being on the telephone at any large company. It's time we understood that "efficiency" and "full employment" are in direct conflict with each other and stopped worshiping efficiency at all costs.
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My slogan for years has been "Never Trust A Robot". Nothing I see coming down the pike has changed that outlook.

Why "Church of Reagan" doctrine is wrong........

What activities that make money add value and which one's extract value instead? Contrary to the dichotomy Conservatives dish up about how the only the private sector adds value and the government extracts it, the real difference requires more detail to flesh out. Building roads (a government activity) clearly adds value, and reselling naked CDS's (private sector) clearly fails to add value. Yet one is a highly revered innovation and the other is a parasitic confiscation of private revenue,

You decide......

Stolen From a Swampland Comment

Paul Ryan's plan to "revitalize" Medicare is conceptually similar to the Allies plans to "revitalize" Dresden.

On the Changeover at DOD and CIA

I'm wondering how well Obama will do motivating the DFH contingent to help with his reelection, since it was clear from the moment he arrived in DC, that he would do absolutely nothing to dislodge the actual power structure that remains in place no matter who is in the White House. Empire is Big Business.

I look forward to watching Ron Paul run for President. Expect hours of entertainment as the Republicans suddenly have to decide whether they're anti-Obama Doves or double-down Hawks.

For Easter Weekend......

America's appetite for military hardware and (to a lesser extent) military intervention seems to track a similar pattern as an individual addicted to drugs or alcohol. The more one consumes, the less effective it is at solving the problem it attempts to address but the only choice that seems open is to simply consume more. We need at some point to break the cycle.

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It's now clear that anyone who thought that a vote for Obama could accomplish that was seriously mistaken.

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Salon Letters

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(link provided as evidence that I harbored no such expectations....)

Fermilab Makes Major Find: Shuts Down in September

This:

Fermilab Makes Major Find: Shuts Down Sept.

Reminded me of this:

Robert R. Wilson


In 1969, Wilson was called to justify the multimillion-dollar machine to the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Bucking the trend of the day, Wilson emphasized it had nothing at all to do with national security, rather:

It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.

Sad but True

I happen to think that the mental machinery that drives schoolyard antics and the one that drives Statecraft happens to be identical. Thats why watching Statecraft play out so often resembles a slow-moving train-wreck. You can see clear as day what is happening but remain powerless to stop it.

The Business of Business

I've always held that the fundamental problem with the US economy is that all the manufacturers who moved their operations overseas and the Big Box retailers who drove small businesses out of business by offering cheap products produced overseas utterly failed to realize that the same people they were avoiding paying labor costs to were their customer base! Easy Consumer credit only managed to mask the problem long enough for everyone to fail to see the direct cause and effect.

That's why the pathetic attempts to blame public sector Unions are so lame. We're all in this together and the failure to recognize this simple fact is leading to quite avoidable tragedy.

Until then

As soon as we've amassed 150 thousand troops in Tunisia, let me know. Then we can begin comparing Libya to Iraq. Until then............

Deficit? What Deficit?

I happened to see 10 minutes of CNN today (Bank line). They spent all sorts of time speculating on what effect turning over operations to NATO would have on the odds of the USA getting stuck in a long term conflict. Not one word was spent on odds of the USA getting stuck with the bill.

Reposted where I can find it

Interestingly Meltdown provided us with a perfect example of how Fox news cherrypicks research results to come to precisely the opposite conclusion as the study's authors.

Compare:

Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.

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With:

The study found that among the nation's younger Muslims, 26 percent say homicide bombings can at least rarely be justified "in order to defend Islam from its enemies."

So a subset of a subset of the sample answered the question wrong.

Specifically:

Overall, 8% of Muslim Americans say
suicide bombings against civilian targets tactics
are often (1%) or sometimes (7%) justified in the
defense of Islam.

Troubling? Indeed.

A reason to attack Islam as a religion and spend hours in public forums explaining how evil it's practitioners are? Not so much.......

Perspective

One of the things I've noticed as I've grown older is that events happened in the distant past, counterintuitively seem more recent and pertinent. When i was in high school, it seemed that anything happened before the Kennedy assasination was in a different world. Now I can not only see clearly the ways we're still "fighting the civil war" but, in the current populations of the western Hemishpere, see the results of migration patterns that were laid out in the fifteen hundreds.

This perspective is helpful because it helps remind us that things we now all agree are "unthinkable" like slavery and naziism are really NOT all that far removed from our current era. We're still nowhere near as civilized as we give oursleves credit for.

Wisconsin

It pays to remember that we are just now witnessing the second shoe dropping on the long-term 'starve the beast' strategy. All the whining you hear about "there's no money", "We're broke" and "the spending is unsustainable" are a direct result of the decade long mantra of 'cutting taxes will grow the economy" and "It doesn't make sense to punish our most productive sector". The fact that cutting taxes didn't grow the economy and that corporations have been particularly stingy in the "job creation" even though profits are at pre-recession levels reminds us that if we let the Republicans get their way, we'll be right back to the stagnation that marked the Bush years (only with a higher baseline of unemployment.)

Blaming public sector workers for what's wrong with our economy is a particularly brazen crock but apparently there's no shortage of people willing to play along.

On Religion:

The number of Creators of The Universe is somewhere between zero and one. At some point we're all going to have to learn to share..........

Someone somwhere.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the notion that someone somwhere is getting something they don't deserve drives 90% of our discourse.

Re: Iraq

For me, the number 1 lesson of Iraq remains, "A large number of people believing something to be true does not constitute evidence in its favor"
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Any time anyone defends a propostion based on it's popularity, we can point to Saddam's WMD's for instant refutation.

On a discussion about the "Ground Zero Mosque"

It's threads like these that remind me that for many people, religion isn't about worshiping the Creator of the Universe but rather just identifying who you're supposed to hate. I have news. The number of Creators of the Universe is somewhere between zero and one. At some point, we're going to have to learn to share.

Original link has gone bad.

I've always kept a link to John Ashcroft's diatribe against the clipper chip, because it serves as a healthy reminder that the desire to spy on people is a fully bipartisan impulse. That link no longer works but here's a copy:

http://www.badattitudes.com/AshWeb.html

Re: any time Israel/Palastine comes up.......

I just enjoy how the same entity can be a fierce aggressor with no moral compunction whatsoever and a whimpering powerless victim cowering before it's enemies simultaneously. (Notice that I don't even need to specify which entity I could be referring to)
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Just another demonstration of the irrelevance of reality when it comes to tribal/political debates.

Re: BP CEO "I Want My Life Back"

Just as I ask those who insist that "the government is inherently inefficient" to look at the lines of accountability to determine why they might think that and to identify where the real problems lie, we can perform the same exercise on BP. There were problems with the well that caused significant concerns among personnel there. But the lines of accountability, the determination of what sort of behavior is rewarded and what sort of behavior is punished, determined that the best course of action was to shove the problems under the rug.
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The nature of Corporate organization almost guarantees the response. Would the CEO have approved had he been informed? Probably not. That's why he wasn't informed

Regarding Arizona

Everyone arguing about the law, pretends that it only affects resident aliens. This is simply false. The law as written (yes, I've read it) creates unequal treatment under the law for Hispanic citizens. This is directly counter to the forteenth amendment which guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens regardless of race. Simply stating that the cops can't use race to base their targeting decisions when they in fact have no other basis BUT race to do so, is to deny simple reality.

Thought For The Day

The only people who participate in deciding whether a certain Military action was "worth it" are the people who survived the result. Sort of a skewed dataset if you ask me!

One of the problems with "Centrism"

One of the problems with "Centrism" as currently practiced is that you end up with either the worst of both worlds or an absolutely incoherent and unprincipled position.

To take an obvious example. Many liberals think that torturing prisoners is wrong and should be treated as a war crime pursuant to laws currently on the books in this country. Many conservatives think that torture is AOK because obviously anyone who 'wants to kill us' deserves every moment of agony that can be managed. Centrists on the other hand agree that torture is wrong and illegal but that nevertheless the people who actually did it should be rewarded for their service.

Not much in the way of moral clarity in THAT neighborhood....

Evolving thinking

Back when debate among Swamplanders revolved around whether insisting on the public option was worth holding the entire HCR effort hostage, I spent a lot of time defending Insurance companies against what I saw as a knee-jerk anti-business attitude among my fellow commenters.

Now that I have seen how Blue dog Democrats have aquired a well-honed ability to absolutely lie about their concerns and actually hold out to vote AGAINST reducing Federal outlays for health care, I now see that my loyalty was severely misdirected.

These guys really ARE in the pocket of Aetna and really ARE willing to screw their constituents in order to placate their sponsors.

Finally something new worth posting

The entire theory behind medical insurance existing is that the healthy subsidize the sick. If that weren't the case there would be no value in insurance in the first place. Everyone could keep a savings account for the money they'll need when they succumb. What insurance offers, is the opportunity for someone who gets sick unexpectedly to draw out of the pool before they've paid in fully. Insurers guarantee themselves that they collect more in premiums than they pay in benefits and pocket the difference in administrative costs and profits. Obviously the notion of a 'fair share' under a system where the healthy already pay in more than enough to cover the sick AND the overhead is absurd on its face. Yes the young pay more than their fair share. That's the whole point of insurance. Mandates don't change that one iota.

The Ridge By Fairchild Park

There's a place I often think of
And though it's just a lark
A short straight stretch of two lane road
Just down from Fairchild Park
But each and every morning as I drive over the ridge
An island vista opens to remind me where I live.

It doesn't photograph too well
Wires get in the way
But still it serves to set the mood
Of each unfolding day
And if the horizon's hazy
Well that's just the road you're on
But you know that life is looking up
When the islands meet the dawn

So if you know the North Side
You know just where I mean
And so you know just where to go
To catch that Island scene
It may be just a workday
In just another week
But past the ridge by Fairchild park
Is a whole new world to seek

Left on a Joe Klein thread.

Yesterday I refered to 'the circles you travel' in an effort to defend your gratuitous "I criticize Liberals too" disclaimer in an otherwise refreshingly candid article. Today you reward me by ignoring the fact that Charles Krauthammer is clinically insane.

I know I've been sidetracked and this is seemingly off topic but when I was looking for an example of an 'evil corporation' for a post a few days ago, I went immediately to a Rent-To-Own Site because I know they are in the business of gouging the poor. Until I went to their site, I didn't realize how thoroughly they do so. They offer a $180 two week loan at a flat fee of $30 dollars and hence charge and legally collect 521.43% APR. You thought that the 18-22% the credit card companies get was unconscionable? The point is simple. Corporations are not constrained by conscience. The only way to avoid shameless exploitive behavior is to either make it prohibitively expensive or illegal altogether.
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I think the debate often gets sidetracked when we talk about parasites and make it seem that we're seeking revenge for insurance companies greed. Like the proverbial scorpion crossing the river, Insurance companies can, should and do whatever they can get away with. Our job is to make sure that 'what they get away with' actually serves the public.

My last two health related posts:

My father passed away in 1989 at age of 62. He might not have, but a committee at the privately owned Hospital where he received his care determined that at his age, a lung transplant would not be an efficient use of a limited resource.

My mother passed in 2005 at the age of 76. She had a living will properly drawn out, and cleary spelled out DNR orders. Both died in their own homes.

Anyone who speaks cavalierly about how health care isn't rationed yet but will be under Obamacare or how there's something wrong with providing sensible counseling to people facing serious illnesses is not only hopelessly ignorant but probably heartless as well.



The sad truth is, is that there comes a time in many peoples lives where aggressive Medical treatment is indeed a waste of money. Being appalled and frightened by that fact is a symptom of being human.
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That fear is now being cruelly exploited to derail sane debate about vitally important issues.
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That is nothing short of criminal

Left on a GG thread

I like to point out that the founders were well aware of the various paths toward the abuse of power and tried their best to plug them all. And yes that includes guaranteeing a citizen's ability to defend himself in cases where 'any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends'

That is of course why Constitutional guarantees are necessary, because they run directly counter to human nature especially in times of fear. As I've said before, if the temptation to torture weren't common then the freedom from self-incrimination wouldn't be necessary to enunciate. If the temptation to railroad criminals weren't common then the right to a jury trial wouldn't have been mentioned. Each of our Constitutional guarantees stands directly in the path of the easy way out. That's why they are there.

JNS and Sarah, the condensed interview:

Q1-Why is Government bad?
Q2-Really?
Q3-Was resigning a great move or merely a good one?
Q4-Hillary's a whiner-Why aren't you?
Q5-What now?
Q6-Just can't get enough rally's eh?
Q7-Until your ready to run again?
Q8-Care to unload on Obama?
Q9-Again?
Q10-and once more?

Proceed with caution!

Trying to thread the needle.....

The whole theory behind free-market Capitalism is that it harnesses individual self-interest in a way that ends up spreading benefits widely. As I've often said, it's good at accomplishing some things, other things, not so much. But whatever solution we propose to whatever problem we perceive has to take in account the fact that individual self interest isn't going to go away and that any solution that doesn't take it into account is doomed to failure.
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The other point is that a lot of political arguments are based on others being 'undeserving'. Spob made clear several threads ago that his arguments against any Health-care reform was based on the notion that some undeserving poor person who brought it upon himself might nevertheless get some health-care on the public dime, therefore costing spob personally. In his worldview, poor people are morally suspect freeeloaders.
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But you folks who are arguing over how evil Insurance companies and lobbyists are are applying the same kind of thinking. By assuming that powerful people are powerful by virtue of their gaming the system, you blind yourself to their worldview which only suggests that they are delivering a valuable service at a fair price and bemoaning people who want something for nothing.
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There's nothing inherently evil about being poor and there's nothing inherently evil about being rich. Only when we get past the stereotypes and ask ourselves how we can design a sytem wherein individual self-interest nevertheless results in widespread benefit then we will be dealing with the Health-care crisis rationally.

Where the Right went wrong in one sentence or less:

The problem as I see it is that having started with an idea that seemed plausable in the Eighties concerning competitition and markets and efficiency, instead of testing that idea and checking where it made sense and where it didn't, they instead proclaimed it as an article of faith, and now that it's slammed against the wall of reality they refuse to consider that perhaps they've failed to correctly identify the problem that their solutions are supposed to solve.

re: Sotomayor

The lack of background being provided behind her 'controversial' quote is the real sin of ommission in this entire discussion.
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She was invited to speak at a memorial lecture specifically on the topic of diversity on the bench and in courtrooms in general. The subject of how background and heritage might affect decisions from the bench was the topic under discussion
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She gave a lengthy speech on the subject but the only way they could hang her for an inappropriate statement was to slice it not just out of the paragraph it appeared in, but to chop the sentence itself in half in order to excise the phrase "I would hope".
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The fact that this isn't explained in absolutely every story discussing the subject is solid evidence that the media is utterly uninterested in truth if it interferes with the outrage and controversy that is their bread and butter.
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Even when the coverage is sympathetic to the candidate it's only centered around questions as to whether her critics have gone too far
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If you ask me, the whole process is downright disgusting.

Read the Whole Thing

Left on a Joe Klein thread re: Torture photos

I'd like to once again remind everyone that the pictures that were going to be released aren't CIA types carefully applying graduated techniques to elicit confessions but are home-movies of US soldiers run amok. If nothing else, they serve as a stark reminder that when cruelty is officially sanctioned, the normal checks to evil behavior are gone and this is what ensues. It's simple human nature and labels like "American" or "Taliban" don't change the basic equation.
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The the moral authority that the US has enjoyed in the past is a direct result of our adherence to the principles of human rights even when it was inconvenient (or frightening). It's not too late to regain that authority, but if there isn't a sharp break between the current administration and the last one, then all the justification we have to engage in geopolitics in our current "world leader" role will dissolve into dust.

Quoting Karen Tumulty....

Providers now get paid according to how much care they provide, rather than how good it is. If a botched surgery lands you back in the hospital, for instance, that means more profit for the health-care industry. "They are often penalized if they provide more efficient care, if they reduce readmission rates," Orszag says, adding that changing that kind of perverse incentive will be a major focus of health-care reform. .

The great thing about this paragraph is that it is way more generally applicable than just within the health care debate. Anywhere where we can ask ourselves "where are there situations where the optimum business decision is one that resuts in harm?" After all, you can't ask and should never expect businesses OR individuals to do anything but what is in their own best interest within the law.
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This is the one thing that "Church of Reagan" zealots look right past. There are things that markets are good at doing and other things at which the really suck! Failure to consider that possibility is precisely what's brought us to our current brink.

Thought for the day...

Paul thinks the world would make more sense if people stopped talking about places as if they were people. The United States says one thing, Israel feels differently and Iran reacts emotionally and Saudi Arabia is not amused.
File Under Stupid Human tricks......

Also worth preserving......

Here's a little thought experiment for Ann to try on for size. Imagine two scenario's.
An omnipotent supreme being with unlimited capability decides one day to create intelligent living creatures and impart into them not only intelligence but also free agency and a strong sense of right from wrong.
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Or a vast universe comes into being through a poorly understood physical process and across vast lightyears of space and across billions of stars in another poorly understood but incredibly rare physical process self-replicating molecules form and start a long and treacharous journey down a path wherin they form cooperative structures and across eons of time grow into forms that eventually become intelligent living creatures that not only possess intelligence but also free agency and a strong sense of right from wrong.
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In which scenario are such life forms to be considered more precious and in which scenario is the prospect of destruction of the creature's habitat and planet more dire?
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Certainly the belief in an omnipotent Creator that can declare "do-over" at any moment leads to a more cavalier and LESS moral attitude than faith in a self-discovering physically realized Universe that our current scientific understanding portrays.
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Your conviction that science operates in a realm free from moral or ethical inquiry is not only factually incorrect but it is also deeply offensive.

Amy Sullivan inadvertantly steps in it.

The Kids Are Alright

In an otherwise unremarkable post celebrating a teenager who aced the SAT and ACT's she throws in this line:

is surprising is that by all accounts Willa is no vocab-memorizing automatron but rather a normal, down-to-earth kid with a playful sense of humor.

For reasons that are obvious only to those who know me, this raised my hackles.

Here are my two responses:
I'm going to look at this as an opportunity to examine prejudice as a general phenomenon. Amy writes this:

What is surprising is that by all accounts Willa is no vocab-memorizing automatron but rather a normal, down-to-earth kid with a playful sense of humor..

And no one seems to notice that she's no less guilty of trying to pigeonhole people than someone would be if they made blanket assumptions about hip-hop fans or Muslims.

There's a smart kid who's otherwise just like kids everywhere. The only thing surprising is that anyone finds that surprising.

There is a great deal of cultural pressure in this country to NOT succeed academically. Without even delving into how such forces can disproportionately impact minority students, anti-intellectualism is a potent and exceedingly harmful force in this country. Don't believe it? Let us relive those heady weeks of 'bittergate' and remember how much backlash there was against Obama for the crime of being 'elitist'

Just so I know where to find them:

Links of evil:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/03/02/shocking/#comment-47333
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http://www.altermedia.info/civil-rights/the-problem-with-whites-by-prof-kevin-macdonald_689.html

More religion

In response to this

Beginning with the first of the Ten commandments, it's an unfortunate fact that much of the Religious intolerance that exists in the World is a direct result of the contents of the Religious tenets themselves. If you, like me, believe that there can be only one Creator of the Universe, then the notion of different versions of God competing for loyalty is easily recognized as absurd. That doesn't prevent millions of people from nevertheless falling into just that trap. This is where the Gospel teachings come in so handy. Certainly Loving your enemy, Refraining from judging lest you be judged and Tending to the log in your own eye rather than the speck in your neighbors is inconsistent with religious intolerance let alone seeking to harm those who don't share your specific beliefs.

Posted for easy linkage

Originally from a Swampland thread:

There is nothing at all surprising about the inability of capitalism to produce a private, free-market health insurance plan that works in favor of the people subscribing to it..

Can we get that engraved somewhere? A big problem with our debates nowadays is that people have had 'free markets' preached to them for so long that they treat it like some kind of magical deity instead of a simple mechanism to allow for the pricing of goods and reasonably efficient way to allocate resources.
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There are many problems that markets are unable to solve because no participants have a financial stakes in the solution. I still think that Hog Manure Odor Abatement represents a perfect example but there are many others. Pig farmers don't mind the smell and their neighbors have no recourse but to use government to hold the farmers accountable for the problem. So we can either shut down the hog farms thus directly interfering in the 'market' or create incentives or spend public funds to deal with the problem.
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There are way too many people who aren't willing to think such problems through and way too many others who have a strong discentive to even talk about it.
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Of course hogsh!^ isn't the only example but ever since John McCain decided to make fun of it, its remained one of the most accessible.

Garlic for the Zombie Lie

I'm posting this link because the notion that waterboarding yielded actionable intelligence and might therefore be justified is going to continue to rear it's ugly head at frequent intervals and will need to be bashed in the skull each and every time.

Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots
Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida Produced False Leads, Officials Say

By Peter Finn and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 29, 2009; A01

Random Comments

One of the ironies of Obama decrying the Boom/Bust economy is the fact that in includes vast swaths of the Clinton Presidency as well. Well before "Housing bubble" entered the vocabulary, Dot-com bubble was a household word.

You'd think the the Republicans would catch on that they can improve the economy AND blame a Democrat while embracing Obama's current efforts!

Another thing worth remebering about Boom/Bust is that the boom half of the cycle is just as unhealthy and crippling as the bust portion. It's the period during which people are extracting wealth from the economy while not putting anything of particular value into it.

Which of these are too insulting?

Having joined the #badgeofhonor list of twits blocked by Jake Tapper, I invite both my readers to ascertain which of my posts was sufficiently bile-laden to justify such treatment:

phd9: @jaketapper The 'insult' threshhold will always be lower to the recipient than the provider.

phd9: @jaketapper The Leno transcript has 4430 words and yet you have nothing to report on but two of them - mumbled at that. Agenda much?

phd9: @jaketapper When I think 'populist' - Orange County in number one on MY list!

phd9: @jaketapper re: Confidence. Look on the bright side. He didn't say he's doing a heck of a job.....

phd9: @jaketapper The AIG bonuses were "contractual" obligations. Yet the Big 3's UAW contracts were abrogated. Why not AIG's?

phd9: @jaketapper I know chasing earmarks are fun - BUT!http://mediamatters.org/items/200903130027?f=h_column

phd9: @jaketapper Two thoughts re partisanship 1. Never underestimate the power of selective attention. 2. How did we get to this point?

Twitter won't let me post this:

It's nice that everyone hates the AIG bonuses. Where was the outrage over their equally grotesque salaries?

Re: Judge selection....

The task of actually applying Constitutional tests to statutes is significantly less difficult than people make it out to be. It only becomes a problem when the clear text of the Constitution runs counter to the current public will. It's worth noting that this is why its necessary to have a Constitution in the first place. Without a document in place to enumerate our inalienable rights, the tendency of majority blocs to oppress minority viewpoints would be nearly irresistable.

Re: Animal Spirits

In response to this

You keep capitalizing "Animal Spirits" in a way that either stresses it as unique or mocks it (I'm not sure which.)
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From my perspective though you are treating as remarkable, something that is blindingly obvious. Humans ARE animals. We are capable of rationality but it is not our standard operational mode. The fact that we hold ANYTHING of value beyond what we can eat, drink or breathe is an artifact of our evolutionary history. Our historical fascination with precious metals in particular reveals that what we regard as valuable is entirely arbitrary and that there is no such thing as "intrinsic value"
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Why then should it be surprising that the health of our economy depends entirely on the mindset of its participants?
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I could expand on this and point out how our whole political system revolves around the notion that if we throw our money into a big enough pile so that counting it is no longer intuitive, when we then remove it again in manageble chunks, it feels like we've gotten something for nothing.
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We refer to the process as 'earmarking'
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The only arguments between the the two political parties is whether it's preferable to spend more than you collect or collect less than you spend.

More earmarks....

The problem with earmarks is that EVERYBODY does it. For weeks now I've been comparing the Federal trough to a lottery pool. Everyone pays into one big pot and then competes to see who can draw the most money back out. If anyone were serious about reducing earmarks, then they would simultanously be favoring doubling State Income or Sales taxes. By acting like a financial heat-sink, the Federal government gets to participate in the sleight of hand that allows people to think that they're getting something for nothing.
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The only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans howl about the process while the Democrats simply shrug their shoulders and proceed.
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Guess which approach is more dishonest?

Re: Earmarks

I wish that if people were going to play silly games with big numbers, that they'd take the additional step of dividing by 250,000,000 to get the figure 'per American'
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Not only would this knock the numbers down to a more easily imagined size, they would allow for more direct comparisons to typical American families other expenditures.

Obama at Health summit

If there is a way of getting this done where we're driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I'd be happy to do it that way.
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I'm starting to get tired of people regarding "The Market" as if its some kind of magical diety. In any situation, it's important to examine motivations and incentives and assure oursleves that the actual incentives lead to the behavior we want. In many cases, the market is the best way to acheive this but in certain cases it fails miserably.
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There is no 'market' for electricity and phones in many rural areas. There is no 'market' that will assure that hog farms don't pollute their surroundings. And there is no market that will allow people who are already sick to get their health needs paid for.
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There is an appropriate time and place for Government action and it doesn't betray any Conservative principles to acknowlege the fact. We've been lied to for so long that this simple truth is no longer on the radar.

Pointing outward.

Much of our political thought involves imagining undeserving people who are getting benefits at our expense. It works in two directions. Whether you imagine shiftless unemployed people who nevertheless manage to go to doctors and send their kids to school, or fat-cat bank executives flying down to the VI for 'retreats' on their yachts on the government dime, the process of imagining itself drives our emotional reaction and eventually our voting behavior.
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I only say this because, while its easy to demonize "bank shareholders" as deserving what they get, the truth is that many 'shareholders' are in fact Mutual Funds that are holding the retirement savings of millions of ordinary Americans.
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Much of what we face now will be a matter of allocating discomfort so that we feel we're rising and falling together, but the process of pointing outward to decide who should be hurting hasn't helped us so far and won't help us in the long run.

Watching the speech

I have to admit that while watching Obama speak, I found myself wondering how he thought he was going to pull off everything he was describing. All this stimulus, all this bank bolstering AND a reduced deficit?

I'd even be interested in Republican counterarguments except for one rather important detail. They don't believe a word of their own arguments. The key to balancing any budget including our Federal one is to spend less than you take in. While pretending that the Democrats want to spend more than they take in, the Republicans instead insist on taking in less than they spend. Add to that, their record of keeping the GWOT off-budget and you have a perfect formula for graft and dishonesty.

I don't know how Obama is going to manage to reduce the deficit but stopping lying is certainly a good first step.

The Unlikely Planet

In just about the time it takes to draw a single breath
A vision found its way into my mind
It wasn't very much now Not a case of life or death
But it really seemed important at the time

I saw a distant planet Way out there in space
A whole lot like the one that we are on
But I noticed one big difference as I walked around the place
I couldn't see any fighting going on

So I walked up to a stranger The first one I could find
And I asked him how it was that this could be
At first he looked at me as if he thought I'd lost my mind
But then he answered simply "History"

He told me that they once had wars that nations lost and won
And everybody feared the next attack
Until someone discovered that it wasn't any fun
If the people you were killing didn't fight back

Well the changes happened slowly as changes always do
But common sense soon won out over strife
And do unto your brother as you want done unto you
Became the accepted way of life

So now you've heard my story of the planet out in space
But I guess that it was just a foolish thought
For who out there will listen to an idea so out of place
As we gear up for the next war to be fought.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the (economic) Bomb

I have often marvelled at how anything aquires value. An object is worth exactly what you can get someone to pay you for it. Therefore all 'value' is, is a consensus opinion on what something is worth. This can be quite unrelated to the costs associated with producing the said item.
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So while it is true that we have been selling vapor for the last 30 years and paying for it with equally gaseous currency, as long as there is a sufficient consensus to agree that the illusion is worth maintaining, then it will remain in everyone's interest to continue to insist that the Emperor's outfit is resplendent. That is why I don't think our economy will actually collapse. It's built on a psychological effect for its foundation and there are too many vested interests who will do whatever is necessary to maintain their position.

My Theology in a nutshell:

(as posted on Facebook)

I have always held that the Universe should be credited at having least as much consciousness as it's contents. I therefore don't call myself an atheist. Beyond that......

All I mean is that if we strip away the limitations of our own viewpoints - stuck in time, looking out from inside our own skulls, then there is plenty of room within the physical Universe for what we would call God. I like to think of the Universe itself as in the process of discovering its own existence and we are tools in that endeavor.
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Life is the interface through which molecules can learn of stars

Apropos of nothing......

Part of the confusion about the nature vs nurture debate is that its all an artifact of the way we chop up realms of knowlege. When you refer to something as 'biological' you pretend that that doesn't encompass sociological and anthroplogical considerations as well.
A better illustration of what I mean is the misuse of the term "natural." Human society is a part of nature. Therefore strip-mines, auto-assembly plants and breast implants are every bit as 'natural' as beaver-dams and coral reefs

Klein links to Sully - I comment

>Klein
Sullivan
Me:
The system is correcting itself after one of the most unbalanced periods in American history. But it took the self-restraint of one man to do it.
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Do we want to credit this to the system or an individual? If McCain had won would Sully still call the system self-correcting?
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I detect a severe amount of wishful thinking here. The system is still broken. The crimes of the torturers are still unpunished. Rove is still ignoring Conyers. The telecoms are still officially above the law.
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Obama may understand the Constitutional limits of the Presidency but that doesn't mean that they have been restored. We just got lucky this time.

Posted on an Amy Sullivan thread

I look at the whole problem as a window into human nature. As JayAck points out above the same people who object the loudest to abortion rights also object to sex education and other forms of contraception. This clearly demonstrates that their objections have less to do with the fates of unborn souls than it does with discomfort over recreational sex.
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So what is the association between authoritarian religious beliefs and discomfort with pleasure? And why do the same people who experience such discomfort with sexual pleasure nevertheless have such enthusiasm for warfare? Again, it's obvious that concern over innocent souls has absolutely nothing to do with the question.