This post "Implications: CNN Engages as Censorship-Agent for President Obama to Omit Pro-Life Content" kinda got me worked up.  Please take a look I completely disagree with Mike7Woodson that it is censorship by CNN. I actually think CNN wouldn't run the add because they didn't think Obama gave his permission for the use of his image in that kind of ad. I Rec'd it in hopes of drawing a little more attention to it.  Then the more I typed in comments the madder I got which leads to this post on a variety peeves.

 

Almost without exception those Pro-lifers (hereafter PLers) that are the most vocal also support the exercise of the death penalty by the "State". THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF HYPOCRISY and if it could be distilled down to a picture I am sure you could find it next to the word Hypocrisy in the dictionary.

 But these aren't the only things that perturb me when it comes to those that oppose choice because it seems that their concern for the "child" vanishes AT BIRTH.

These hypocrites shed many a tear for those never born while ignoring the starving and homeless and abused children that suffer EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I've always wanted to make this argument to the "life begins at conception crowd".

"If life begins at conception then will you be letting people drive at 15 years 3 months of age, and vote at 17 years 3 months and drink at 20 years 3 months?

"PLers" will most assuredly say that is stupid and picky, but until the pro-life community is as pissed off about starving children and homeless children and abused children as they are about choice then their opinion is just SOMETHING TO BITCH ABOUT!

I truly believe that.

You NEVER hear those on the right advocating FOR children that are starving or homeless or abused, in fact they seem to go out of their way to forget about a child once they are born. They seem to have NO problem cutting food stamps and housing assistance for the poor, and they have no problem forgetting that children make up the majority of  the poor in this country.

The right must have "a something" to bitch about. Can you imagine if they suddenly got everything they wanted,... well... God help "U.S." all because I have no idea "WHO" they would turn on next.

Think about that. Who would the right go after next if they actually got their way? Because IT WOULD BE "PERSONS" that embody what they are offended by, AND THEY WOULD DO IT WITHOUT MERCY as they have shown in the way they confront those at clinics.

I also have a problem with those on the right that are against choice EXCEPT in the case of rape or incest or .... . You are either Pro Life or you Aren't no exceptions. 

Someone will undoubtedly turn this back and ask how can I be pro choice and against the death penalty. My answer to that is that I believe in the RIGHT of privacy and it gives us ALL control of our bodies and I am against the death penalty because you can NEVER FIX A MISTAKE if you kill an innocent person and punishing someone with life in prison is cheaper and worse than execution.

Those that talk of life without talking about the starving and the homeless and the abused,  and at the same time support the death penalty are not just hypocrites, they are F@#KING HYPOCRITES.

I am more concerned about the person than I am ideas. In general I believe that that those that are "Progressives" are more concerned about how the state interacts with the individual; and "Conservatives" are more concerned about how the individual interacts with the state. And when you are more concerned about the state, the individual becomes irrelevant and just gets in the way of the state's goal(s), rules and edicts. 

This is what "the war on drugs" has become it has become a "idea war" that ignores all evidence that it is a useless war. It ignores every other reasonable idea to deal with the problem of drugs. It ignores the fact that if you took the profit out of drugs (legalization AND regulation) very few people would want to fight about them. 

The war on drugs is the perfect lesson in supply and demand economics, the harder something is to get the higher the price people are willing to pay for it. Want to win the "War on Drugs" make drugs less profitable by making them easier to get. JUST LIKE ALCOHOL became a lot less profitable after Prohibition when the government got into the liquor business by regulating, selling and TAXING it. I know many believe that I am truly off my rocker but do the research yourself, do you really think the drug lord would have the money to pay his soldiers if the US government got in the business like they did with alcohol.

So PLers educate this pro choice person, what would you do if your every wish came true? WHO would you attack next?

I look forward to the arguements.

Today is a pain day for me, please ignore the rambling nature of  this. I will do better, I promise!

 

President Barack Obama has undertaken a very ambitious agenda for his administration.  The economy, the War in Iraq, stem-cell research, health care....  The GOP wants him to proceed more slowly.  They claim that the President's plate is too full and his strategies are wrong.  Having observed Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign, I am confident that he has a well thought out plan to achieve his desired objectives.  I think the President's decision to go full speed ahead is a firewall against efforts by the GOP to act as obstructionists.  It is no surprise to me that yet again his strategies appear to be far superior to those of his opposition.

Nonetheless, the GOP is still trying to promote an outdated agenda that the American people soundly rejected with their election of President Obama.  Similar to questionable tactics used during the campaign season, the GOP is tossing things up into the air and waiting to see where they land and it they sprout roots. In other words, while the President is pushing ahead with many initiatives, the GOP is pushing ahead with mini initiatives designed to derail him. 

There have been the Rush Limbaugh silliness about wanting the President to fail, GOP Governors playing politics with stimulus bailout monies and the latest, GOP U.S. Congressman Bill Posey trying to get traction with yet another silly Republican effort to insinuate that the President is not legally qualified for his office. They are using their trademark wedge driving tactics to try and distract the public from serious business. Are Republicans really that dense? Do they think that Americans are in a "hoodwink me" state of mind?  They don't get it. Then again, maybe they do and just don't give a damn about anything but a selfish obsession to return GOP dinosaurs to power. A mid-term elections spanking may be the only stimulus that will convince them to straighten up and walk right.

The Washington Post is reporting; AIG Paying Millions in Bonuses Despite Receiving Federal Bailout:

Despite receiving $170 billion in federal aid and recording a staggering loss for the last quarter, insurance giant American International Group is doling out tens of million of dollars in bonuses this week to senior employees.

The White House is not pleased:

While AIG agreed to pay the bonuses months before the government's rescue of the company began, the matter still is a source of anger for government officials. In a phone call on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told AIG Chairman and chief executive Edward M. Liddy that the payments were unacceptable and needed to be renegotiated, according to an administration source.

But of course AIG has an excuse for everything (emphasis mine):

The company has since agreed to change the terms of some of these payments. But in a letter to Geithner, Liddy wrote that the bonuses could not be canceled altogether because the firm would risk a lawsuit for breaching employment contracts. Liddy also expressed concerns about whether changing the bonuses would lead to an exodus of talented employees who are needed to turn the company around.

There is is a common clause in contracts, "Force Majeure," which essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, or the collapse of the World economy. 

I say, give 'em all a buck.  Pat them on the head.  Tell them to sue.  That's what's happened to their customers.  And, we've had it up to here...

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"Anything you can do, I can do meta..." ---Douglas Hofstadter, "Godel, Escher, Bach".

Philosopher Thomas Nagle sparked discussion with a paper entitled "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" Daniel Dennett points out that he did not ask what it's like to be a brick. I'll point out that bricks and bats don't  (it seems likely) ask what it's like to be anything. But the foundation of our version of self-awareness seems to involve pretty much nothing but knowing what something is like. Or more generally, everything we do, and think about, is about something.

"Aboutness" is another way of referring to meaning, inspired by Jon Stewart telling Jim Cramer "This song ain't about you." He was referring to Carly Simon's song that famously referred to, while claiming not to, James Taylor.

The world seems to be trending toward a recursive runaway. Stuff exists, but we are the main thing worrying about why it does. We worry that it might mean something that there is anything (actually, most of us hope so, fervently). Bats are less likely to worry so, if the lack of recorded songs or published arguments on the topic are an indication.

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I don't get here every day - and the recommended posts seem to cycle out about every 24 hours so I know I miss a lot of good ones. I know someone tried to start a daily thread where everyone could list their favorite posts but I didn't have time to keep up with all of those, and I guess not enough people participated to keep it going. 

I wonder if it would be possible for TPM to add a sidebar that would list the most highly recommended posts of the week. Or maybe have a TPM editor's post every Saturday where they give links to the readers' posts with the most Rec's for the week. 

Or is there a tool already available that would help me find older posts with lots of Rec's? 

The G-20 is hosted by the United Kingdom in 2009, and it consists of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. They met Saturday in Horsham in southern England. Membership includes:

The G20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and The European Union who is represented by the rotating Council presidency and the European Central Bank. To ensure global economic fora and institutions work together, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank, plus the chairs of the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank, also participate in G-20 meetings on an ex-officio basis.

Working groups -- the UK . . . has established four working groups to advance this work for the next Leaders Summit on 2 April in London. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was optimistic world leaders would reach an agreement at next month's G20 summit in London, despite signs of rifts between Europe and the United States. The workings groups focus on:

1. Enhancing sound regulation and strengthening transparency


2. Reinforcing international co-operation and promoting integrity in financial markets


3. Reforming the IMF


4. The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs)

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner issued a statement and a G-20 Fact sheet (pdf-4). Secretary Geithner's demand for larger stimulus packages from other countries was dropped in favor of language emphasizing the good cooperation among the countries. There was not yet a commitment to put more money into the International Monetary Fund. The meeting's news, according to the Saturday The New York Times, is generally neutral to positive. To quote:

Finance officials from rich and developing countries pledged to boost the role of the International Monetary Fund and make a ''sustained effort'' to restore global growth after a key conference that sought to bridge deep divisions on how to tackle the financial crisis.

The key priority must be restoring frozen bank lending through cash infusions and dealing with the shaky assets souring bank's balance sheets, the gathered finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 countries said in a statement at the end of talks in southern England.

The statement did not back a U.S. push for concrete, coordinated efforts for governments to spend more money to boost their economies. It acknowledged the importance of the stimulus efforts already in place, and called for stronger financial regulation.

Other news and views --BBC News has good coverage of the "nuts and bolts" of the gathering, including a Communique and Key Agreements. The story from China's point of view can be found at the China Daily. For the best in depth analysis of the meeting's modest outcomes, turn to the Financial Times, my favorite newspaper.

See also Behind the Links, for further info on this subject and Twitter NYT story.

Carol Gee - Online Universe is the all-in-one home page for all my websites.

Technorati tags: news international news G-20 economic crisis

By voting to fund the war in Iraq every single time Bush asked Congress for a Supplemental Appropriation, and sending more troops (17,000) to Afghanistan than he was withdrawing from Iraq (12,000), Barack Obama has defined himself as an “anti-war” candidate that only the Pentagon could love.

Now “Honest Obe” and the Bush/Cheney tool that he held over as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, have decided that what the United States really needs…

…what the United States really needs…

…what the United States really needs…

What the United States really needs is the ability to fight three wars at the same time!

The protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forcing the Obama administration to rethink what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time. In an interview with National Public Radio last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made it clear that the Pentagon was beginning to reconsider whether the old two-wars assumption “makes any sense in the 21st century” as a guide to planning, budgeting and weapons-buying.

The good news is that Mr. Gates and “Honest Obe” aren’t planning to fight four wars at exactly the same time.

Another formulation envisioned the United States defending its territory, deterring hostility in four critical areas of the world and then defeating two adversaries in major combat operations, but not at exactly the same time.

So serially or simultaneously, at home or abroad, on air or sea or land, the White House and Department of Defense are making plans for the United States to engage in virtually any number of wars…

…except zero.

What started out as an illiterate racist diatribe titled Obammanables Are Failure As Prez provoked an onslaught of delicious recipe ideas at Talking Points Memo, an award-winning online news organization that features political commentary from both its editors and readers. 

William Greider outlines a solution given by Jane D'Arista, an
economist and retired professor in a piece from the Nation.

It sounds good but this last part has bothered me.

But where does the Fed find the money to
make all these transactions? Essentially,
it creates the money. That is basically
what occurs routinely whenever the central
bank decides to inject new reserves into
the banking system. It is accomplished
with a computer keystroke crediting the
money to the private bank's account (and
money is extinguished whenever the Fed
withdraws reserves). The mystery of money
creation defies common reason, but it
works because people believe in the
results. The money supply relies on the
"full faith and credit" of the society at
large--pure credit from the people who use
the currency. The public's faith can be
enlisted in the national recovery, a far
better option than spending the
hard-earned money that comes from
taxpayers.

Sounds too much like Peter Pan. You know the part where
he asks the audience to Believe in Tinkerbell to save her.
If not she will simply fade away to nothing. Isn't Magical
thinking part of what got us into this mess ?
 
Well our economy is fading away to nothing and I really, seriously
doubt that anything I or anyone else believes is going to change
that.

C

The Wapo tripe this morning about Obama "blaming Bush" is laughable.

When Obama says he inherited a mess, he is not JUST talking about Bush, but about the entire extended list of culpable bad managers, including Bush, but not excluding many others, including some of the Blue Dog Dems who helped concoct the bankruptcy bill.

When a President is not yet 100 days into office, it is pretty safe to conclude he inherited any serious complications that occur.

Much like IOIYAR (It's OK if you're a Republican) permeated our politics, RANTB (Republicans are NEVER to blame) has become the new patent denial.

http://indianaoracle.wordpress.com

Debating what is best for the country right now is the right thing for us to be doing. Blindly following the ideas of this administration, or any other for that matter, is (while understandable) inadvisable under these circumstances. We need to think for ourselves. The stakes are really high this time.

One of the problems we are having is separating out ideology - difficult at any point in time. We have been conditioned by the media, political campaigners, some educators, and others, to view things along these lines. And also encouraged to listen to our emotions first, which, of course, is our basic nature anyway. The governing model of the folks that work to influence us is that "ideas rule".

But stop for a minute and leave the name Obama, Bush 43, Keynes, FDR, and all that out of it. Resynch to the true nature of what is being proposed both at the macro and micro level.

Macro refers in this case to progress in the overall economy, e.g. is bank lending occuring.

By micro I am referring to whether we can afford to eat and clothe ourselves, and live inside shelter in safety - Maslow level.

Now ask yourself, from what are being proposed as solutions, which, if any, do I (my own personal opinion) feel will directly result in the most immediate and positive economic effect while doing the least harm to the future of our economy.

Do not focus on the micro at the expense of the macro. Try to separate out disinformation and people pushing our emotive buttons (not easy) and try hardest to think not as others may have conditioned you.

It is an interesting exercise and what the country needs from us.

Please do not take this as my being patronizing. That is not at all the intention. I, too, have some strongly held opinions. But being for or against Obama, Bush or anyone else is something I manage to filter out. That allows, me at least, to see things differently. Perhaps it will work for you.

This never happened: A President, a Democrat, whose daughter has been kidnapped, possibly by Arab terrorists, decided to step aside temporarily so that government policy was not directed by a distraught father. Since there was no Vice President at the time, this meant that a Republican, the temporary Acting President. When the issue of how such a move could be a windfall for the Republican Party, and Democratic Party leaders complain, the White House chief of staff, in words written by Aaron Sorkin, tells them

"I'm not prepared to think about politics when we're under terrorist attack. The Republic comes first."

Those were the days.

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Well, I guess that about says it all.

If I were a graphic artist I would Photoshop this to make my post cooler. But I'm not, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

The original 1965 movie poster:

Join the Feral Cats of Freedom as we cough up fur balls of truth from the crap we've digestted from the Fat Cat News, bloviators of blather.  Today from 2PM-5PM Mountain Time.  Live streaming at Democracy's Edge Talk Radio

We will have local SEIU organizers on at 2:30PM PM Mountain Time.  There is a rally in Bozeman today to support EFCA at noon.  Busy day for me.  Dean Baker has an excellent piece at tpmcafe on the war on EFCA and the false information from the Fat Cat News.

At 3PM (5PM Eastern) , Discussing Pakistan with Robert Naimon Senior Policy Analyst and National Coordinator at Just Foreign Policy. Naiman has worked as a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. He has masters degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Illinois and has studied and worked in the Middle East. Naiman edits the Just Foreign Policy daily news summary and writes a blog on Huffington Post.

At 4PM, my guru, Glen Ford of blackagendareport.com will talk about the "Economic "N" word"  i.e. nationalization.

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As Josh points out on the front page,(http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/if_you_remember_not_long.php) the Chinese, in the usual subtle manner of tyrants and despots throughout history, are reminding us that they have us by the financial balls and are not shy about reminding us of that by giving the American jewels a warning squeeze to let us know who now is boss.  There is, of course, little difference between a capitalist tyrant and a communist one.  Neither has the best interest of the common people at home or abroad at heart.  In this case, the oligarchy of China has been able to maintain and even increase power for itself domestically as it makes the truly great leap from ham-handed communist economics and politics to China, Inc.  For the first time, a ruling oligarchy seems to have successfully and permanently fused capitalist power with self-perpetuating oligarchical power under the banner of communism.  If power corrupts, and I believe it does, then the level of danger the Chinese oligarchy represents is unparalleled and growing both for the Chinese people and the rest of the world because of their success at integrating their system as they have.  Soon, the previously inward looking giant will begin casting it's gaze abroad in a far more active way.  This is so not because the Chinese themselves are evil but because they are human.  We Americans have always held, as our founders did, that the inevitable result of too much power concentrated in the hands of a few will be abused and result in tyranny.  No human being can long resist the temptation of power and the abuse of it. 

Whatever internal democratic reforms may have been made in China in recent times, the basic power equation has not changed one iota.  The largely unknown powerful few in China are not at all shy about asserting their power and dominance and insist on being in charge at all times in internal affairs.  They have been lying in wait for many years to do so on a world scale.  Like some in America, many of them believe it is China's destiny to dominate the world.  I distincly recall seeing an interview with a Chinese President on CSPANN back during the Clinton years when he calmly asserted that it was only a matter of time before China asserted itself as the dominant nation on earth.  He said they had no doubt about it and were in no hurry because it was inevitable.  The idiotic American imperial adventures of the neocons since the installation of the Bush junta did nothing to discourage this tendency among our powerful rivals in China nor in Russia for that matter either.  In fact, one of the most profound and malignant legacies of the Bush tyranny worldwide is the encouragement it gave to the lawless, inhuman, brutal regimes around the globe to do as they please without regard for international law, any sense of morality, ethics or humanity.

Bush and the necons and all those who did not vigorously oppose the shortsighted policies of the Bush administration bear responsibility for taking the United States from a position of strength and full independence at the end of the Clinton adminstration to a position of weakness all around in the aftermath of Bush's profligate, shortsighted, and irresponsible years of misrule.  Democrats in Congress are not at all blameless in this regard, but it was fully the policy of the Republican tyrant and his henchmen that put us in the unenviable position we are in today.

China was happy to lend us all the money in the world and was delighted to trade with us as long as their national interest was the primary beneficiary of the deals being made.  They knew they could rely on the American capitalist class to sell out the interests of their own country in the pursuit of quick and easy profits.  And they did just that. 

With patience and calm did the Chinese outplay and outfox the American dunce in chief and his gang of looters for eight long years.  The trade imbalance went off the scale.  Our debt to the Chinese became astronomical and continues to grow now because we have no other choice but to turn to them. Our currency is teetering on the brink of becoming no more sound than that of any other banana republic.  Our unsustainable binge of militarist adventurism abroad has weakened our military strength.  Though we continue to be in denial about it, any sustainable economic recovery will require that the United States seriously cutback on the obsence, wasteful, and pointless war spending it consistently engages in regardless of whether or not we are actually at war.  All of the worst problems Eisenhower warned us about regarding the Military Industrial Complex have come to full fruition.  If we hope ever to restore our nation we must free ourselves from the stranglehold of that complex.  If we do not, it will metastisize to the point where it will destroy the nation and itself.

Will the United States ever be able to get itself out of debt to the Chinese so that our governments and people in the future are not beholden to the Chinese oligarchs as we are today?  The true answer is that we don't know, but we must hope so.  It will take discipline and it will mean we can never again let the kind of criminal tyrants who ran roughshod over our government and our national interest in pursuit of private gain return to power.  In my opinion, there are dozens of matters upon which Bush and his gang of thugs should be put up on charges and tried beginning with war crimes and crimes against humanity.  But among the crimes of the Bush years was weakening our nation to the point of handing a significant portion of our economic future over to an udemocratic, foreign oligarchy.  Bush may well turn out to be the great American Judas who sold out his country for thirty peices of Chinese silver.

The only card the US really has to play at this point, as Josh points out, is that if the oligarchs of China have us by the balls, well, it is a mutually threatening dillema in that we have theirs in our hands too.  While the Chinese remain in a far more powerful position, being the creditor, we too have a firm grip on the Chinese family jewels because we owe them so much.  What the US owes China could well represent the sort of unmanageable toxic debt to China that the mortgage crisis represents to US financial institutions. 

In the end, I hope and pray the US disentangles itself from this very poor position because of the threat it represents to the long term health and prosperity of our people.  But it will be important for the preservation of liberty here at home that Americans understand and remember exactly what it was that put us in this position and who is respnsible.  The tyrant Bush put us in this position.  He was the leader of the many criminal enterprises that laid America so low.  Bush's henchmen and his party served as accomplices.  The silence of many Democrats and in the media also aided and abetted these efforts.  The nuances of why those who knew better did not raise the alarm and put a stop to it all matters little at this point.  They failed to protect our country and their failure now leaves us prostrate and weakened in the face of all manner of danger at home and abroad.

If we are, in the future, to restore America's moral authority in the world which many of us believe has always been our national mission and destiny ("novus ordo seclorum"), then all of us must make sure the bumbling foolishness that got us in this position is never repeated. 

Craig Crawford revisited our little group again yesterday and gave us more positive reinforcement for continuing our look at the universal rules of the newtwebblogosphere. And ever since I got those depends I was prepared for such a visit. Now remember, I am using Craig's essay, but these rules apply here in different words but with the same intents --and just about everywhere else.

The rule we are about to examine involves anonymity, aliases and assineness. Assineness is not a real word according to MS, but it starts with A and....Anyway the discussion concerning what names we take on the blog reminded me of an old story. As a matter of fact, one of the oldest stories.

Ulysses had been trapped by the Cyclops in a cave who began eating his friends in a most unprofessional manner. But our hero devised a plan as to how he was going to escape from the cave and from the island where the cave was situated.

As part of his plan, and this Greek planned ahead, believe me, not like these financial experts, especially the ones left holding the bag on these bundles...but that is another story.

The first part of the plan was to misdirect Polyphemus. So when the Cyclops inquired as to our hero's real name, Ulysses responded: I AM NO ONE.  Ulysses knew that the Cyclops would have more reason to believe him if he responded in capital letters. The Greek used this ruse because he predicted that if he ever were to escape, Polyphemus might track him down by looking him up in Facebook or some such device and hunt him down later. Polyphemus might also notify the authorities or begin civil proceedings against the Greek at a later date.

Now, Ulysses did escape by stabbing the monster in his one eye (most people realize that the Odyssey could never be written today because it makes fun of handicapped monsters and those who go through life half-blind) and hanging onto sheep in a rather scandalous manner proscribed by some laws noted in Exodus. As the Greek was escaping with his friends who had not been eaten, the Cyclops yelled loudly to his comrades who were positioned very far away. Something like the first use of a telephone.
                            
The Monster's friends called out:

WHO HAS HARMED YOU POLYPHEMUS?

You had to call out in capital letters in order to be heard. Anyway, the Cyclops replied:

NO ONE HAS DONE THIS THING TO ME!!!

And so his friends, misunderstanding a proper name to be a denial of any assault by a third party returned to their own cannibalistic practices. (Although, if one is a cyclops, and proceeds to ingest the flesh of a human, is it really cannibalism? It was issues that this that initiated the Classical Period of the Greeks centuries later)

At any rate, this was the first example in human history of man using an alias for his own purposes.

Which brings us to the  Universal Canon of Ethical Blogging Number 4:

                          THE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

4. Own your comment. Only registered Typepad users who have been approved by the host are allowed to post comments without moderation. Newly-registered users or those who haven't recently commented might see their first comment held for review. If so, send an email to cqtrailmix@verizon.net to expedite review and post future comments without delay. There are very few reasons why the host might not approve a new commenter, such as supplying a fake email address, impersonating others, trying to return afer being banned or devising a screen name clearly meant to insult another commenter or the blog community as a whole. See Typepad's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for more information about the responsibilities and rights of approved commenter on this blog. To register with Typepad, simply click "Sign in to comment on this entry" above the comment box at the end of the Comments section (to reach the section, click "Comments" in the byline below the headline of Craig's latest entry).
 

Now referring back to our Greek example, one might think, if it is good enough for Ulysses, it is good enough for me. But the rules must be different on the netwebblogosphere unless, of course, your friends are being eaten. I mean who is going to blame you in the end if you lied about your true identity in order to escape being eaten?

REMEMBER, for every rule there is an exception.  And that your Honor, is the case for the defense.

Now comes the laborious task of parsing this rather long rule which is why I skipped it in the first place until I remembered the story of Ulysses and then.....

1.  Apparently, if you follow the identification rules contained in this Canon, you may comment anytime you wish about anything. As long as it is in compliance with all the other rules, but let us not become pedantic because we will never get through these rules.

2.  If you are new to the site, there will be a 'screening process'. Now that is important. We all must undergo screening processes. And sometimes they are good.  I recall when I was conducting tests in 2000 to screen aspiring employees for the grand census, a woman came in with dark glasses and a seeing eye dog. We administered the test in brail to the lady and everything went fine. (You see, plan for the unexpected) Following the examination I was cleaning up and I happened to look out the window into the parking lot and the lady opened a car door and the dog entered. Why was this out of the ordinary. Well she proceeded to get into the car herself AND DROVE AWAY. Now if the DMV had provided a real screening process, perhaps the roads would be safer.  THIS IS A TRUE STORY. I know, you are thinking this schmuck lies all the time, but this is a true story.

After 'surfing' the netwebblogosphere for five months, I would have thought there was no screening going on at all.  Believe it or not, there still are a few blog sites that will not print my comments immediately. Hahahahahahaaha. Don't tell Josh.

You can understand why some sites like Trail Mix might wish to take some precautions as they do here at TPM.

3.  They do allow you to Email something to them, requesting an exemption from the early warning system.    

4.   Why would you be denied access in the first place?

•     A. If you choose to supply a fake email address.  This puzzles me. If you email         me something, is there not a return address? The sites computer would surely inform then that this email address is some subterfuge?
•     B. Impersonating others. I can understand this problem. When I go to the bank and      attempt to access someone else's account, hypothetically speaking, they usually ask      me-I mean they would hypothetically ask me-to show some sort of ID and they never       accept a library card. How fair is that. I mean if the library is going to trust you to take       their big tomes home for weeks you thing that the bank would gladly accept the word         of the librarian. After all she is professional and....but I digress.    Driver's license, ha if      they let blind people drive why on earth would you rely on the DMV over a librarian.           I'm just saying.  Oh and do not use the names of famous people because they check       those names real close. I mean, why would they not believe that I really was Perry           Como? I mean how would they know? Ha. I think they were just discriminating against       Italian people anyway.
•     C. Banned. If you have already been banned, you cannot come back. It is kind of like    when you commit a felony you cannot vote. That is because you lost your civil rights. I      mean, how was I to know that Felix had a gun, we were just going to shoplift up to the      limits of a misdemeanor charge and.....ah who needs to vote for the school board             anyway.
•     D. The name. If you wish to blog here, it would be rather stupid to use a name like TPM  SUCKS THE BIG ONES. Besides, other commenters might feel that you are         attempting to cast aspersions upon them. YOU ARE A POOPY PANTS might not            work either. Especially if you were to find some avatar commensurate with the                   message. Or QUINN DESPISES LITTLE PUPPY DOGS, this might be considered a         personal attack on an individual.

The rest of the rule really is meaningless to me. I will say that Typepad used to show up all the time for me. It took me a month before I could sign in on a regular basis. I had been to fifty blogs and was using different names like IMNOONE. Geez, I wonder where I got that one. Of course at some sites there were already scores of IMNOONE' believe it or not. I am never half as clever as I think I am. At any rate, I kept forgetting what my 'sign in' name was at all these sites. That is why I just use my real name now. I only forget that once in a while.

But fellow TPMers. Give us your thoughts about this rule and keep your comments down to 70,000 characters if you might. Scroll memory again.



 

Spring break is upon us and the students are leaving in droves.  I have a couple of hours before I leave campus with my colleague (not to Fort Lauderdale I hasten to add), and this may just be long enough to finish my rambles on the common man in classical music and musical comedy.  I don't mean this little series to be a compendium of musical theatre history; nor do I have it in mind to thoroughly analyze each opus from overture to reprise.  My aim is much more narrow: to look at the depiction of the working class and to some minor extent, the middle class in select but somehow typical productions of their era, and to muse about what the work seems to be saying (or not saying) about social class in America.  My thesis is economic progressivism has declined across the years, and, added to a rightward shift in other media, has left a diminished platform for progressive socio-economic ideas.

Rushing to a conclusion, I'd like to consider four more works-apologizing if I omit something dear to anyone's heart.  These are A Chorus Line (1975), Working: The Musical (1978), Ragtime (1998) and Les Miserables (1985, UK, 1987 USA), if I were to honor chronology, I should reverse the last two-but as the song goes, in the case of Les Miz, "I'm It's still here".   

A Chorus Line is probably too familiar to most to require a synopsis.  A Chorus Line was one of two shows I've seen from standing room only positions.  We watch individual aspirants for a position in the chorus demonstrate their dancing skills and expose their innermost secrets to the probing questions of the choreographer.  Seeing as he's going to roboticize them by the end,  which should he humiliate them by probing their dysfunctional families and their private sex  lives?  And we see them transformed from unique human beings to cookie cutter clones of each other.  The symbols of aspiration and "success" are interesting to me.  As aspirants the dress and dance individually.  Success comes in the form of glitter and glitz, spangles, and Top Hat, White Tie and Tails-Putting on the Ritz, but in the flimsiest of gold lame.  (For sheer fun, I don't think one can beat the Young Frankenstein version of Putting on the Ritz).

The Dancers Before:

go out and tell the story.
let it echo far and wide.
make them hear you.
make them hear you.

how that justice was our battle and how justice was denied.
make them hear you.
make them hear you.

and say to those who blame us
for the way we chose to fight
that sometimes there are battles
which are more than black or white.

and i could not put down my sword
when justice was my right.
make them hear you.
make them hear you.

my path may lead to heaven or hell
and god will say what's best
but one thing he will never say
is that i went quietly to my rest.

go out and tell our story
to your daughters and your sons.
make them hear you.
make them hear you.

proclaim it from your pulpit.
in your classroom with your pen
teach every child to raise his voice
and then, my brothers, then

will justice be demanded
by ten million righteous men.
make them hear you.
when they hear you
i'll be near you again

Powerful, yet from the lips of one soon to be dead at the hands of the representatives of the power structure, and the show concludes with a "what happened to them" scene replete with oppression and dreams denied.  Ragtime was a beautiful show, lavishly staged (quaternary fair warning...I've not seen it live).  It ran 834 performances, a not unrespectable run, and won a fistful of awards.  But I'm wondering why it isn't running still, a foolish and unanswerable question.  You can tell I'm heading to another fair warning, can't you?  I'll let you count this one yourselves.

The question leads me to the last musical I want to bring up for discussion, Les Miserables.  I'm a cockeyed optimist and an incurable romantic.  I love Les Mis.  I've seen it at least a half dozen times in London.  Every time I conducted a student group I put the show on the agenda.  The Les Mis cup sits in a proud place in my kitchen, when it isn't holding coffee at the computer.  The book and the musical are full of take-to-the-streets revolutionary fervor and resentment against the oppressive upper class.  There are interesting parallels between Les Mis and Ragtime.  Jean Valjean, now a respectable factory owner, joins the students on the barricades.  Younger Brother joins Emma Goldman's crusade and spends the rest of his life fighting for the under class.  And compare the lyric of the finale reprise in Les Mis with the Ragtime lyric above::

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Courfeyrac:
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Startlingly similar, both noble, both calling to action.  Here's my query.  Why does Les Mis go on and on and on and on, and why didn't Ragtime do the same?  I'm going to pose a few tentative answers, aside from any question of comparative quality of the productions.  (One source implied that Ragtime was too lavishly expensive in its mounting to succeed financially-yet Les Mis requires equally lavish resources, so that doesn't seem to hold water).  Critics called Ragtime "awash with nostalgia," as if the same wasn't true for Les Mis.  Here's a few possibilities.

• American radicalism is too scary for Americans in the latter years of the 20th century.
• Americans have been cozened into believing a right-wing meme: poverty is the fault of the poor.
• Americans love the downtrodden-as long as they're exotic, and far far away.
• Americans had their revolution in 1776, and it was so perfect America doesn't need to contemplate another.
• The French on the other hand, are kind of crazy anyhow-they can't get revolution right so they have to have them over and over again. 
• All of the above
• None of the above.

Anyhow-Is it fair to say that leftist politics and musical comedy are more estranged from each other now than they were in the days of Yip Harburgh and Finian's Rainbow?   I would argue so, and not to the benefit of the left. 

Next time-maybe an introduction to Ralph the Repairman and Reggie Van Gleason III.  What do you think?

But before we pass from the sublime to the ridiculous, One Day More! so I can wet another kleenex. 

1. What I Did for Love
2. One Singular Sensation
3. What I Could Have Been
4. Make Them Hear You
5. Do You Hear the People Sing?
   
6. One Day More
   

Editors note: The editorial referenced here was proudly lifted from: www.ft.com/capitalismblog  (feel free to lift the comments, particularly if they are good)

Its the weekend! and I thought a good time for a themed bash.  Here at the cafe, we seemed to be blessed with a fair number of econ experts lurking around these parts, and I thought some of them might want to grab an amphora and join us in a classic greek symposium on the Financial Crisis!!!

.

I am also thinking that the coming change of seasons might be a good time to reflect back on the underpinnings of our economic order.  Specifically, some of the profound thinkers on whose shoulders we now again stand upon...but this time facing a cliff.

So we have dug 'em up and shared our best uppers and they are here now ready to tell us how to solve everything.  Just remember, drink deeply.  For those of us whose econ is a little rusty there is a link under each contributers picture taking you to some sort of rendition of their work. But don't worry to much, the salient stuff will be skimmed over in the key note address. 

Because I am too lazy to write the piece myself I enlisted a teacher famous for his work on the mechanics of piston operations under Great Powers, Mr. Paul Kennedy. He graciously wrote this essay in todays'  Finanacial times

Todays Round table discussion will feature the following commentators: 

Adam 'my middle name ain't lassie faire, I'm Scottish! Smith

"My god, what happen to your morals?"

Karl 'I am not a marxist' Marx . 

"Collapse did it, who'd a thought!! Ha!                    

Now Scandinavia, what a place!.,,    .               

uh .why is everyone 

giving me that look?" 

Joesph Schumpeter 

"oh jeez you woke me up for this? Can Capitalism survive? no I don't think it can.  But maybe this quote is helpful: Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it."  

John Maynard Keynes

with his wife, Ballerina Lydia Lopokova 

(once a bloomsbury hippy always a bloomsbury hippy)

"Oh good, finally you have called me back to fix Bretton Woods, About time, I have been worried about the inevitable imbalances for a very long time.."

Read the big four to know capital's fate

By Paul Kennedy\Published: March 12 2009 20:42 

What, then, is capitalism's future? Our current, damaged system is not, despite Marx's hopes, to be replaced by a totally egalitarian, communist society (such arrangements might be there in life after death). Our future political economy will probably not be one in which Smith or his present-day disciples could find much comfort: there will be a higher-than-welcome degree of government interference in "the market", somewhat larger taxes and heavy public disapprobation of the profit principle in general. Schumpeter and Keynes, one suspects, will feel rather more at home with our new post-excess neocapitalist political economy. It will be a system where the animal spirits of the market will be closely watched (and tamed) by a variety of national and international zookeepers - a taming of which the great bulk of the spectators will heartily approve - but there will be no ritual murder of the free-enterprise principle, even if we have to plunge further into depression for the next years. Homus Economicus will take a horrible beating. But capitalism, in modified form, will not disappear. Like democracy, it has serious flaws - but, just as one find faults with democracy, the critics of capitalism will discover that all other systems are worse. Political economy tells us so.

But what has happened over the past decade or more is that many governments let down their guard and allowed nimble, profit-seeking individuals, banks, insurance companies and hedge funds much greater scope to create new investment schemes, leverage more and more capital on the basis of increasingly thin real resources and widen dramatically the pool of gullible victims (silly, under-earning individuals, hopeful not-for-profits, Jewish charities, friends of a friend of an investment manager, the list is long), thereby creating our own era's spectacular equivalent of the South Sea Bubble. As in all such gigantic credit "busts", many millions more people - the innocent as well as the foolish - will be hurt than the snake-oil salesmen and loan managers who perpetrated these so-called "wealth creation" schemes.

US presidents, in confronting crises, have often let it be known that they are serious students of history and biography. George W. Bush, an unusually voracious late-night reader, devours books on the lives of Great Men, including his hero Winston Churchill, (who in turn liked to read about his illustrious ancestor, Marlborough). Barack Obama looks to biographies of Abraham Lincoln for inspiration.
Given the enormity of the banking, credit and trade crisis, might it be worth suggesting to Mr Obama and his fellow leaders that they study the writings of the greatest of the world's political economists, instead? After all, we may be in such a grim economic condition that the clever direction of budgets is a greater attribute of leadership than the stout direction of battleships.

Since today's leaders cannot possibly read all the major works of political economy, let us help them by selecting four of the greatest names from Robert Heilbroner's classic collection The Worldly Philosophers : The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers: Adam Smith, the virtual founder of the discipline and early apostle of free trade; Karl Marx, that penetrating critic of the foibles of capitalism, and less reliable predictor of its "inevit-able" collapse; Joseph Schumpeter, the brilliant and unorthodox Austrian who was certainly no foe of the capitalist system but warned of its inherent volatilities (its "perennial gale of creative destruction"); and that great brain, John Maynard Keynes, who spent the second half of his astonishing career seeking to find policies to rescue the same temperamental free-market order from crashing to the ground.

Perhaps the supremely gifted playwright Tom Stoppard could put those four savants on stage and offer an imaginary weekend-long quadrilateral discourse among them about the future of capitalism. Failing such a creative work, what might we imagine the four great political economists would say about our present economic crisis?
 

Smith, one imagines, would claim that he had never advocated total laissez faire, was appalled at how sub-prime loans to fiscally insecure people contradicted his devotion to moral economy, and was concerned at the deficit spending proposed by many governments. Marx would still be badly bruised by learning of Lenin and Stalin's perversion of his communistic theories, and by the post-1989 withering-away of most of the world's socialist economies; yet he might still feel pleasure at modern financial capitalism foundering on its contradictions. The austere Schumpeter, by contrast, might be lecturing us to swallow another decade of serious depression before a newer, leaner form of capitalism emerged again, though with lots of evidence of severe gale-damage (the end of the US car industry, the decline of the City of London, perhaps) in its wake.

And Keynes? My own guess is that he would not be very happy at today's state of affairs. He might (only might) regard it as fine that he was quoted or misquoted millions of times in today's media, but one suspects that he would be uneasy at parts of Mr Obama's deficit-spending scheme: at the US Treasury's proposal to allocate more money to buying bad debts and rescuing bad banks than investing in job creation; at a Washington spending spree that seems unco-ordinated with those of Britain, Japan, China and the rest; and, most unsettling of all, at the fact that no one is asking who will purchase the $1,750bn of US Treasuries to be offered to the market this year - will it be the east Asian quartet, China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea (all with their own catastrophic collapses in production), the uneasy Arab states (yes, but to perhaps one-tenth of what is needed), or the near-bankrupt European and South American states? Good luck! If that colossal amount of paper is bought this year, who will have ready funds to purchase the Treasury flotations of 2010, then 2011, as the US plunges into levels of indebtedness that could make Philip II of Spain's record seem austere by comparison?

In the larger sense, of course, all four of our philosophers would be correct. Capitalism - our ability to buy and sell, move money around as we wish, and to turn a profit by doing so - is in deep trouble. No doubt Smith, as he watches the collapse of Iceland and the Irish travails, is reconsidering his aphorism that little else is needed to create a prosperous state than "peace, easy taxes and tolerable administration of justice" - that did not work this time. By contrast, rumbles of satisfaction might be heard coming from Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, causing excitement for the still-considerable numbers of Chinese visitors. Meanwhile, Schumpeter will have due cause to mutter: "This is not a surprise, really." As for Keynes, we might imagine him sipping tea with Wittgenstein at Grantchester meadows, pursing his lips at the incapacity of merely normal human beings to get things right: at our tendency to excessive optimism, our blindness to the signs of economic over-heating, our proneness to panic - and our need, every so often, to turn to clever men like himself to put the shattered Humpty-Dumpty of international capitalism back together again.

All these political economists instinctively recognised that the triumph of free-market forces - with the consequent elimination of older social contracts, the downgrading of the state over the individual, the end of restraints upon usury - would not only bring greater wealth to many but could also produce significant, possibly unintended consequences that would ripple through entire societies. Laissez faire, laissez aller was not only a call to those chafing under medieval, hierarchical constraints; it was also a call to unbind Prometheus. Logically, it both freed you from the chains of a pre-market age, and freed you to the risks of financial and social disaster. In the place of Augustinian rules came Bernie Madoff opportunities.

By the same instinctive reasoning, most sensible governments since Smith's time have taken precautions against citizens' totally unrestricted pursuit of private advantage. States have invoked the needs of national security (therefore you must protect certain industries, even if that is uneconomic), the desire for social stability (therefore do not allow 1 per cent of the population to own 99 per cent of its wealth and thus provoke civil riot), and the common sense of spending upon public goods (therefore invest in highways, schools and fire-brigades). In fact, with the exception of the few absurdly communist states such as North Korea, all of today's many political economies lie along a recognisable spectrum of more-free-market versus less-free-market arrangements.

Now I am sure that you all have some very important thoughts ready to get up on the board.  But in case your stuck, or looking for some ideas, or maybe something to get you in the mood.  I have prepared this fun video with girls singing through a retail shop getting items ready for the party. 

If your still stuck I can offer the following hints: durable goods, means of production, how last years' model is so creatively destroyed, And since we're not in it for the long run just where exactly are we going to dig (what tools)?  

Oh and DickDay promised Free Jello shots for the commenter who first spies a us origin product. You don't want to miss that.

 

            "Own" is misleading. We need a different verb for it.

            Your own home: the American dream. It's yours. You got the mortgage, paid money down and X dollars a month for thirty years, it's paid up. Your house.

            As long as you pay the ever-rising property tax.

            You sort of own it.

            If you get poor, get old (practically the same thing), lose your job, if inflation creeps up on you, the County will sell your tax, which means the County will sell your home. Some places you have a year to pay it off after the tax sale, some places not. When you get behind in your taxes, you are evicted.

            There are people, there are companies, that make money buying taxes, getting properties at tax sales for peanuts. It's a business, perfectly legal. Business is business.

            Think about condominiums. You buy a condo in Florida in a nice building near the beach. What do you own? You have certainly bought something, quite a lot of money changed hands.

            The common areas, the hallways and so forth, belong to the association, which owns the building and grounds except for the apartments. You are a member of the association. Your share, if it is a large building full of people, is less than one percent. And of course there are costs: management, maintenance and repairs, painting, things the association (a democratic institution) decides must be done to the bushes, the play area, the pool.

            What you have bought is the right to use your apartment as long as you keep up the payments--keep up the payments!--and don't offend the neighbors.

            House, farm, apartment, what you buy is the conditional right to use a property so long as you can keep paying for it one way and another, and the right to pass this right to your heirs. If you have enough money and don't get old and forgetful and alone, probably you can keep using it. This is property ownership. It sounds a lot like rent.

            There are some things an American can pretty much own outright. Your car, once the payments are made, is yours; your right to drive it is conditional, but the car is yours. Owner's license, driver's license: if you don't have one or the other, you can't drive the car. Insurance. Inspection.

            Always there's the question of money.  

Your car is yours. If you can't drive it you can find a place to keep it for free, if you don't mind backwoods, mountains, deserts, and the like. If you're recently homeless, maybe you're living in your car, which you truly own if it is paid up. Maybe the whole family: husband, wife and children. It's good to have a place of your own. The authorities look down on this, though. You'll be able to keep the car, but your children may be confiscated.     

            Your clothes are yours, including shoes, watch, earmuffs and so forth. 

            We've always known that we can't take it with us; nowadays a lot of us can't have it while we're here, either. A lot of folks are fired. A lot of people are living on the streets.

            The USA is a rich country. A lot of poor countries are really poor. You can't imagine.

            Who owns the world, anyway?

. . . what's up in the press?

Healthcare fix crucial to recovery: Michigan forum

Reuters - ‎Mar 12, 2009‎

By Michael Strong DEARBORN, Michigan (Reuters) - "Michigan is the poster child of why reform needs to happen," Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm told ...

The Formual that killed Wall Street.

A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that
a math wizard like David X. Li might
someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all,
financial economists-even Wall Street
quants-have received the Nobel in economics
before, and Li's work on measuring risk has
had more impact, more quickly, than
previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions
to the field. Today, though, as dazed
bankers, politicians, regulators, and
investors survey the wreckage of the
biggest financial meltdown since the Great
Depression, Li is probably thankful he
still has a job in finance at all. Not that
his achievement should be dismissed. He
took a notoriously tough nut-determining
correlation, or how seemingly disparate
events are related-and cracked it wide open
with a simple and elegant mathematical
formula, one that would become ubiquitous
in finance worldwide.

For five years, Li's formula, known as a
Gaussian copula function, looked like an
unambiguously positive breakthrough, a
piece of financial technology that allowed
hugely complex risks to be modeled with
more ease and accuracy than ever before.
With his brilliant spark of mathematical
legerdemain, Li made it possible for
traders to sell vast quantities of new
securities, expanding financial markets to
unimaginable levels.

His method was adopted by everybody from
bond investors and Wall Street banks to
ratings agencies and regulators. And it
became so deeply entrenched-and was making
people so much money-that warnings about
its limitations were largely ignored.

Then the model fell apart. Cracks started
appearing early on, when financial markets
began behaving in ways that users of Li's
formula hadn't expected. The cracks became
full-fledged canyons in 2008-when ruptures
in the financial system's foundation
swallowed up trillions of dollars and put
the survival of the global banking system
in serious peril.

Very interesting explanation. I highly recommend it.

C

In addition to all of the perks that come with being President of the United States, such as Marine One, a mansion, and staff ranging in the hundreds, is the responsibility to appoint new Justices to the United States Supreme Court; and with growing concern that current Justice Ruth Ginsberg is likely to step down due to health problems and the fact that she is rather old, the President is likely to face one of the toughest fights of his life as he begins the search process for Ginsberg's replacement (and there is much speculation that he already has), if she does indeed step down in the fear future.

Justice Ginsberg recently alluded to the possibility of a vacancy in the near future, though the Justice did not give any names, the likeliest of people to step down would be herself.

Ginsberg is an important Justice on the proverbial Bench. Currently the only woman on the Supreme, and only the second in the entire history of the United States. Ginsberg is also one of the Court's most "outspoken" liberal members, with a long history of supporting progressive policies, such as abortion rights. Replacing her will be a tough political battle, that will likely reveal the real ideological character of the President, exposing him as either the progressive we believe (and hope) he is or unveiling a moderate Democrat on the ideological and social issues that continue to divide the country.

This is because the progressive members of the Court, or those who would be described as such based on their judicial record, are in steady decline. Justice O'Connor was the essential moderate and could have been replaced as such; however, now, if Ginsberg does indeed step down relatively soon, there would only be three on the Court's liberal wing: Breyer, Scouter, and Stevens. And three plus a moderate is hardly acceptable. Especially as the social issues a gearing up for a come back in the judicial branch.

With all that the current President has to deal with, finding a replacement for Ginsberg is probably the last thing he wants to do, as it holds the potential the blow whatever spirit of bipartianship that he has managed to muster up until now out of the water. Progressives are likely not to bend on this issue in the spirit of compromise, because the new Justice is likely to be there much longer than Obama will be, and have an impact on the makeup on the court for a generation. Social Conservatives, who will be pleased to see Ginsberg step down, are likely to go into hyper-mode pressing the President not to give into the "extreme left-wing of his Party" and instead select a moderate, because a new moderate on the Court is ultimately a win for the social conservative agenda.

One thing does seem clear, if Ginsberg does step down, the replacement is almost certainly to be a woman; after all the idea of an all male Supreme Court in the 21st century seems absurd. And that leads into the "Clarence Thomas Dilemma" and the whole issue of judicial affirmative active. However, the response to me seems obvious, while merely finding a federal appeals court judge that fits the demographic of the day is something we should find unappealing, we want the Supreme to be representative and reflective of the American people, or else we run the risk of creating a judicial oligarchy.

Since the Supreme Court does not hear cases in the conventional sense, but rather serves as the highest appellate court in the land (with limited jurisdiction elsewhere), that is tasked with deciding the constitutionality of various issues for the American people, it is important that when the Justices begin to deliberate someone in that room can connect with the court case beyond a legal frame of mind.

Many people, social conservatives especially, like to shout that the Justices should only have the law as a reference, such an expectation is ridiculous and impossible to achieve. Everyone, from Presidents all the way down to janitors, bring with them their past experiences, personal philosophy, biologic makeup, etc; and utilizes all of these things when they engage in decision making. Human beings lack the ability separates these variables of life when making a decision.

Imagine for one second had a slave escape the Southern states before the Civil War, declared a citizen in the North, given an education, and eventually appointed to the Supreme Court.  How would we expect him to rule in the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision? Would we expect him to see merely the law and rule with the overwhelming majority of the Court, or would we expect him have his experience as a southern slave inform his judicial philosophy.

In the same sense how can we assume a court composed solely of men to fully grasp what it meant to have the government regulate the body in terms of reproduction.

Justice Ginsberg was of course not just a woman, Ginsberg brought with her an extinguish career of working and supporting those which the government, and the law, often overlooked or purposely discriminated against. And one that remains clear in all of this is that Justice Ginsberg replacement will have big shoes to fill, and will hopefully continue Ginsberg's legacy.

I'm sure that many of you reading this have been reveling in Jon Stewart's take-down of banks, speculators, and financial commentators this week on The Daily Show. I have too. I think my favorite part was from last night's floor-wiping spectacular with Jim Cramer.

"Listen, you knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months, the entire network was. For now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst."

Exactly. You go, Jon!

Of course, he's taking a lot of flak about this from various sides - even the New York Times was a bit of a scold in their article today. So we at ACORN are taking a minute to thank Jon Stewart and The Daily Show for actually staying on this story and taking some of the biggest culprits to task.

And we'd like you to join with us and send him a thank you message as well. In a few days, we're going to deliver a big "Thank You" directly to The Daily Show's HQ in New York with all the messages.

Read more »

Just sayin' Tell me about YOUR week. =D

Robert Kuttner gives his perspective on the financial collapse.
He list three reasons why he thinks this worse than 1929.

Finance: A Doomsday Machine. The financial system
is in far worse shape than it was when the stock
market crashed in October 1929. In the 1920s, we had
a stock market bubble, mainly because people could
play the market "on margin," borrowing to invest in
stocks. There were also scams like the original Mr. Ponzi's.
Like the present decade, the Federal Reserve helped to enable
the game, with low interest rates and few rules.

Collapsing Wealth, Dwindling Demand.
The economy now bears all the hallmarks of a depression.
Between the housing collapse and the stock market crash,
American households are out several trillion dollars (in the
1920s, there were no 401 (k) plans and less than 2 percent of
Americans owned stock).

When people are suddenly out a lot of money, they spend less.
Weak demand in one sector cascades into other sectors. People
spend less on autos, air travel, hotels, restaurants, clothing -- any
optional purchase. Business sales and profits are down, which
causes other layoffs, and the cycle deepens.

A Debtor Nation. America in 1929 was a major international
creditor. Today, we are the world's biggest debtor. The financial
bubble of the past decade, puffed up by foreign borrowing,
created the illusion of prosperity.

During the bubble years, the borrowing from overseas
disguised domestic weaknesses, such as ourmuch diminished
manufacturing sector and the fact that wages for most Americans
were not keeping up with inflation. Households, like Wall Street,
became overly reliant on debt. For now, foreigners are still willing
to lend us vast sums, but that may not continue indefinitely as
nations like China invest more in their own internal development.

In 1933, we could go off the gold standard, not hold the dollar
hostage to international currency trading, and concentrate on
domestic recovery. If foreign currency traders feared that deficits
would cause a drop in the value of the dollar, they didn't matter
because we didn't owe them anything. This time, we have to
worry about keeping their confidence. (The only reason why
the dollar is holding its value is that the euro, for now, looks
even shakier, and the Japanese and Chinese are resisting
letting their currencies appreciate -- but that could also change.)

He offers a solution that we have heard time and again
but the administration refuses to look at.

All of these economic calamities have solutions, but each
is more radical than what's currently on offer. The
government will have to temporarily nationalize major
banks, sort out good assets from bad ones, and then
return banks to responsible private ownership. To cure
the housing collapse, government should directly
refinance mortgages, rather thantrying to bribe banks to
ease terms.

Deficits will have to be a lot larger before they can get smaller.
That should not require a war; this is just as grave a national
emergency. Those deficits could purchase much broader
prosperity, just as the World War II deficits did. If foreign
borrowing dries up, we may need to sell massive amounts
of recovery bonds to Americans, just as we relied on war
bonds rather than borrowing from abroad
during World War II.

But neither Obama or congress or his treasury secretary
will look at any of these solutions. Just another case of common
sense being trumped by politics and ideology......Stupid.

Oh and read the whole article. It is really quite good.


Addendum: I just got through watching the end of NOW
on PBS and Kenneth Rogoff a Harvard economics professor,
says just about the same thing.
 
C

.
Anyone who spends enough time on-line is likely to encounter some pornography from time to time.  Statistics would indicate that several million people actually seek it out on a regular basis.
So lets say someone like myself-- not me certainly but someone like me -- happens upon a website like...oh...YouPorn for instance and someone has some natural curiosity and decides to" take a long hard look at it "(Dave Berry).  Perhaps someone feels titillated and decides to indulge his purient interest (the someone here is probably a him).  Someone eventully finds a kind of queasy feeling creeping over himself. A creepy feeling.  He feels, finally, like a creep.

I mean who ARE these people in these videos?  And why is someone like me participating in this system of degredation that brings an odd wierdness to something as nice as sex?

Why in the world am i blogging this at TPM?

Well the Kwame sexting feature here has given me the porno-creeps.  The guy's political career is finished and that's OK with me.  He seems to deserve to fall.  He's been caught with his pants down and he's hanging out for all the world to see.  But are we really required to look?
I mean do you really want to have a look?  It's not that I feel sorry for him really Its just so embarassing -- I mean for someone like me.  People are imperfect and foolish and that's why we value privacy.  I want everyone to value Kwame's privacy because I want everybody to value mine.

What do you think?

Should Josh take the personal texts down?

With a starting point on cmaukonen's blog, the question was raised if this bill would interfere with the operation of local farmer's markets and our enjoyment of same. There has been some discussion about the broad strokes of this bill and if it will affect those of us with backyard gardens.  I mean, for cryin' out loud....the government is gonna stick their noses into my pea patch?  Holy crap!

So, I tried to find out if the sky was actually falling.

First of all, I want to state that H.R.875 is still in its infancy.  It was introduced Feb. 4, 2009 by Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and at this point has been referred to the House Agriculture Committee for consideration.  It is during these points in a bill's life that changes are made so if you want to express a viewpoint now is the time to do it!!!  Call or write your congress person and let them know your concerns now.  And keep in mind this bill is still a long way from becoming law.

Some highlights of the information I found:

A press release from DeLauro's office with this assurance:
 

the bill does not apply to vendors at farmer's markets, and therefore will not change the way this business runs. It is meant to address food sold in supermarkets.

and

there is no language in the bill that would stop or interfere with organic farming.

Full article here.

I checked in with LocalHarvest and here is what was being discussed on their forum pages.

Scroll down to the post by Ohiorganic.  It's a statement from Food& Water Watch with easily understood information.

And another with some back and forth by a few commenters.

Big, long article by Gregg Carlstrom about the bill and why it was introduced.

My intent here is not to persuade your personal viewpoint one way or the other, just to get the information out there so you can come to your own conclusions.  I have drawn mine.  Rant follows.  By all mean, feel free to ignore it.  And feel free to add your viewpoints.  This issue hits close to home for many of us.


Grrrrrrr.  The more times I go over this bill, the more apt I am to believe this is not only to update a 70 year old FDA provision and create a new Food Safety Administration, but a direct consequence of 'self-regulation' and other fairy tales from the past 8 years.

bushco was so busy protecting us from terrorists they didn't protect us from ourselves. (Duh.) Regulations concerning food safety were blatantly ignored...because the honchos of the 'food establishments' knew they could get away with it.

Self-regulation.  HA. 

The number of  USDA and FDA field inspectors were always being cut to trim budgets.  There just weren't enough of them to go around and even when the 'food establishments' were caught red handed in violating rules, they ignored the reprimands.  The FDA and USDA looked like toothless fools and the public suffered for the sake agribusiness's bottom line. 

How many salmonella outbreaks have there been in the last 8 years as compared to all the years before?  I don't know...I'm not gonna look it up today.  All I know is I'm scared of salad.  E-coli in the lettuce.  E-coli in the spinach. And the tomato scare last year....that ended up being not tomatoes at all but bad peppers.  Tainted rice meal in pet food!  Now we have the bad peanut butter thing. 

Frankly. I'm all for tighter regulation in our food supply AS LONG AS THEY LEAVE THE LITTLE GUYS ALONE.  THEY ARE NOT THE ONES CAUSING THE BREAKDOWN IN FOOD SAFETY. 

And I will continue to buy dirty carrots from the local organic farmer no matter what!  
And eggs from the guy that lives down the road with the small flock of hens! 
And strawberries from the pick-yer-own place! 
And...well, you know what I mean.
Okay.  Rant over. :o)

New on the horizon concerning Food Safety Systems.  Thanks, Nika!

Assorted links:
Rep. DeLauro
LocalHarvest
Food & Water Watch

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Who knew there were so many FDA bills?  Not me.  But, I do now.  Presented in order of introduction......

S.3385 - A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to the safety of the food supply.  It was introduced 7/31/2008 and has 5 co-sponsors.  No action has been taken on this bill since the day it was introduced.

H.R. 759 - To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to improve the safety of food, drugs, devices, and cosmetics in the global market, and for other purposes.  Introduced 1/28/2009.  It has 8 co-sponsors.  No major actions have been taken.

H.R. 875 is a bill to peel off the Food part of  Food and Drug Administration, consolidate it with other agencies concerned with 'food establishments', and set it up as a single agency.  The FDA would then become known as the Federal Drug and Device Administration.  The resulting separate agencies would be overseen by the HHS.  It was introduced 2/4/2009.  This bill has 40 co-sponsors.  It has been referred to House Energy and Commerce and House Agriculture but no action has taken place since the day it was introduced.

S.425 - Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act. It was introduced 2/12/2009.  It has no sponsors and no major actions have been taken.

The end.





 










 


 

The names and details herein have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike.

 

I've been in Mexico over a month now and I've befriended two businessmen, an economist, two chefs, a university professor and poet, a stucco/plaster trabajero, an electrician, a truck driver, and tonight I met el Cabron.  After a scenic, traffic-free ride of 300 km, I arrived at a city which counts itself the center of the Mexican revolution.  I check into a hotel in the heart of town, and setting out to explore on foot, eventually stop at a neighborhood taberna for an afternoon cerveza.  On the return journey to my hotel, I initiate a one man pub-crawl, and eventually settle into a chair at the end of the bar  on my third stop.  I am joined shortly by two Mexicanos.  The one sitting closest introduces himself as Martine and we begin to talk.  At some point he says he is a "cabron" and asks if I know what that means.  There are different definitions, so in the end, he elucidates that in his case it means a powerful dude, (to paraphrase).  He tells me that he speaks some English, which is an inestimable advantage if one isn't fluent, (which I'm not).  He talks of Pancho Villa, a commoner, who killed the son of a wealthy landowner who had tried to rape Pancho's sister.  Wanted for the murder, Villa fled, first turning to robbery and eventually to revolution.  He was the first General in the Mexican revolution, and became governor of Chihuahua.  He lived and was assassinated in the town I'm in right now.  Martine professes his undying admiration for Villa, his true cabron, eventually slipping his shirt over his head to show me the central part of his back, which bears a tattoo of a likeness of his hero.  Much of the rest of his body displays tatoos of a cruder design.  I ask where he learned his English, and he confides he had studied enough to get by while serving 17 years in US federal prisons for killing a man with a gun.   He says he didn't need to learn much English as he was part of and protected by his Mexican brotherhood while he did his time.   I remark that killing someone with a gun is too easy in the heat of an argument, and he agrees, although  I don't think he supports gun control legislation.

 

As we speak he tells me he doesn't like gringos, but he sees in me, someone he can look in the eye, and not hear bullsh#t, when we talk.  He introduces me to his companion, Javi, who in turn professes his allegiance to Martine, his hermano or brother.    As we talk, Martine expresses his respect, and identifies himself as the Cabron in this city.  He looks me in the eye and pays me the compliment of calling me a cabron, and we exchange the 'secret' handshake common to all streets between Juneau and Central America.  Others in the bar come by after witnessing this endorsement, and pay respect to Martine and, (oddly enough), me.  I am beginning to believe Martine is in fact a heavy dude in the local scene.  He tells me I need not worry about anything while I am in his city, as I have his protection for as long as I am here.  I laugh and tell him that I generally don't worry about such things, but thank him for his consideration.  Martine initiates a terrorist fist bump as if to endorse my attitude.  He asks if I like to smoke pot, which I do on occasion, and tell him so.   After we finish our beers, he invites me to join them for a ride, and to smoke some 'mota'.  In my year of living dangerously, I accept his offer.  I make the decision that a life lived in fear is not an option... today at least.  If he is planning on 'rolling' me for the few hundred pesos in my wallet, or kidnapping me for ransom he isn't batting an eye.  On some level I trust him and we depart to the parking lot and Javi's truck.  On the walk, I am asked bluntly if I am an FBI or DEA agent. When I burst out laughing, while declaring that I'm neither, I think he believes me, but warns nonetheless, that if he finds out otherwise, he will kill me.  After satisfying himself that I am who I say I am, he confides that he is the big pot grower in this area of Chihuahua.

 

 

Read more »

  Is america still the land of the free? I would like to point out a couple of things that make me wonder how long we will have free choice. 

     One is seatbelt laws. what right does the goverment have to tell me I have to wear one?

I mean its not like DUI laws wear if you break them you can hurt someone else. I don't wear a seatbelt becouse I have seen people die in car wrecks becouse of them. Now I know there are times when seatbelts save lives but it should be my choice.

  The second law that bothers me is a city law but in Kansas there trying to make it a state law and that is smoking in public. The state and city should be allowed to make there buildings smoke free' But business owners should have the right to make there own choices    If non smokers don't want to be exposed to second hand smoke don't go to the businesses that allow smoking. Don't make me have to smoke only at home.  besided I pay a lot of money in cigarette taxes to be allowed to smoke.

What is the state and federal goverment going to do when they loose all the taxes paid on cigarettes? My estimates might be a bit off but I just read that there is 400 billion cigarettes smoked every year. Thats 20 billion packs with $1 federal tax on every 1 of them. Then it varies by state but here in Kansas theres 79 cents per pack.

 I'm sure there are better things to grip about but these 2 were on my mind today so lets see if I'm the only one bothered by this trend of the goverment going were it don't belong. thank you

Kilpatrick texts are the photo essay?

a) Are you guys fucking serious?
b) Is this an attempt to gain fair & balanced credentials at the expense of journalistic merit?
c) Is this some obviously not very "post-racial" voyeurism into the lives of some bourgeois Black people?
d) Is this TPM's version of Star/People/National Enquirer style compassion (see Rhianna/Chris Brown)?
e) It was written?

LIke, I think, everyone else, I was delighted to see John Stewart put the screws to Jim Cramer as he did last night.  He was reasonable, prepared, made his points clearly and without the use of any ad hominem attacks.  He understood what he was talking about.  Stewart now has now been elevated almost to the level of folk hero for his refusal to simply roll over and accept the absolutely bullshit lies that our establishment/status quo spits out on a daily basis.  Every accoloade he receives is deserved.  Our collective hats are off to him for publicly calling the hypocrisy and lies of the powerful on the carpet for all to see.

We can revel in Stewart's laudable feats, but when we look just a tiny bit deeper our jubilation is really because we are in a "better laugh than cry sittuation," aren't we?

I think Stewart himself has made this point in the past but last night's performance really spotlights it: if John Stewart who is a professional comedian with a show on a network dedicated to comedy is the best, hardest hitting and most fearless "journalist" in America what does that say about our media and the alleged "journalists" who are in it?  Last night Stewart pointed out that CNBC had not done it's journalisitic job regarding the rampant fraud and ponzi schemes of Wall Street and he was correct to do so.  But what about the New York Times?  What about the Wapo, the Boston Globe and on and on and on?  What about the NBV Nightly News?  How about ABC or CBS?  CNN?  Where have all these wealthy millionaire journalists as the Daily Howler likes to point out been?  They sure as hell weren't being watchdogs for the people.  They sure as hell weren't playing their role as the 4th estate.

The corruption of the powerful elites in our society is widespread and malignant.  We cannot expect the people who worship and promote the thieves who run Wall Street to look out for the interests of the public as many so naively have assumed they would.  They have failed utterly in their primary public obligation.  All of them.  And they have failed because they share the same warped values and the same aspirations of the wealthy criminals who drove our economy into the ground for their own personal gain.

And what of government?  Where were our regulators, legislators, etc...?  They too were completely asleep at the wheel.  Government was negligent at best and complicit in much of what has gone on and now our Treasury Secretary spends his days trying to figure out not how to save the people of the United States, but how to save the very criminal businessmen from the consequences of their immoral and unethical and probably illegal activities.

I am glad we have John Stewart, but it is a sad, sad commentary on our nation and our society and particularly our alleged elite classes when he is the number one defender of truth, honesty, ethics and decency in the United States.

Glenn Thrush over at Politico has flagged an item from the Weekly Standard that definitely deserves some attention.

It appears that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has $100,000 in money donated by one Bernard L. Madoff. 

This would be an ideal time for Sen. Bob Menendez, DSCC chair, to show some actual leadership, especially after his embarrassing behavior in the omnibus bill debate.  And I think we should do all we can to encourage young Robert to give back this (obviously dirty) cash.

With that in mind, please avail yourselves of the contact information below.  I'd love nothing better than to help refund some of the $50,000,000,000+ that Madoff has stolen over the past two decades, and get some completely unnecessary taint off our party's brand in the process.

Senator Robert Menendez

DC Office:  317 Senate Hart Office Building, 202-224-4744

Newark, NJ Office:  973-645-3030

Barrington, NJ Office:  856-757-5353

Website:  http://menendez.senate.gov

Web e-mail:  http://menendez.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm

As WhoRunsGov has noted, Menendez has a bit of a history when it comes to campaign finance.  If he is not pressed on this issue, it is safe to say that Madoff's contribution will remain in the DSCC's coffers, and be a valuable tool - for the Republican noise machine. 

When former Sen. Henry Ashurst (R-AZ) was congratulated for seeing the light on an issue he'd reversed position on and voted against, he said, "I didn't see the light - I felt the heat!"  Let's see if we can't warm things up a bit for Menendez and get him to do the right thing.  (Any NJ readers, your contribution would be especially appreciated.)

Apparently Ann Coulter's book sales are way down.

Since the Republicans in the Senate have preemptively told our good President that failure to re-appoint Bush judges would be met with a possible filibuster of his appointments, maybe two can play that game.

Maybe we need to demand that someone in the House Democratic leadership should declare that any meddling by the US Supreme Court in the Franken/Coleman matter may subject the justice or justices voting to take the case, to an Impeachment proceeding (even without a 2/3 support for conviction in the Senate-- see William Jefferson Clinton).

The Constitution provides that Justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior" and I think meddling in this would be exemplary of bad behavior--see Bush v. Gore.

The Republicans tell us that President Obama is attempting to adopt European socialism in the USA. However they are actually trying to establish European separatism as an alternative.  Let's face it; Europe is an amalgam of over 20 separate countries with few mechanisms for coordinated Fiscal Policy. Monetary Policy is centralized through the European Central Bank in the same manner that our Monetary Policy is centralized through the Federal Reserve System. However, Europe does not have a strong central government to design and implement fiscal policy. As a result, even the Europeans have doubts about their ability to recover. Each country is pretty much on its own regarding stimulus issues. That means if Italy tries to increase spending and create jobs the result could be that the new spending ends up creating jobs outside of Italy. This would happen if France decided not to stimulate its economy. As a result wages, and therefore, prices would be lower in France and the Italians who were hired under the stimulus would buy French goods. This would result in sporadic growth in Europe and a prolonged recession.

American governors who refuse the stimulus money would be placing our country in the same boat a Europe. The lack of spending in their own states would lead people to relocate to states where the stimulus money is working. The result would be a continued recession in their own states and a delayed recovery in the country as a whole as unemployed workers cross state lines.  The only reason to seek this type of scenario is to be able to say: "See the stimulus didn't work so vote Republican."  The Republicans are willing to see the country suffer so that they can regain power. It is this selfish approach which can threaten the state of the Union. The Republican Governors are traitors who have stronger loyalties to their party than to the country.

 Links to four articles that may broaden your perspective on the global economy:

("Crammer" is intentional and this is how I will refer to Jim from here on out. Crammer is so much more appropriate for what he does anyways)

I know this is gonna sound a little strange but I tend to notice strange connections

At 2:30 pm today VH1 Classic played the following tunes/videos

1. Money For Nothing - Dire Straits

2. The Man Who Sold The World - David Bowie 

3. Runaway - Bon Jovi

4. Midnight Rider - The Allman Brothers Band

5. Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith (Not the original video I think, It was the phone sex video)

Now I realize that at first these videos don't seem to have anything to do with each other but look at it this way

The first two are rather self explanatory  Money for Nothing and The Man Who Sold The World sounds like both CNBC and "Crammer".  Follow those with Runaway, something that CNBC is trying to do. Now add Midnight Rider (one of my all time favorites) a song about a guy that has "One More Silver Dollar" and I suppose that you could be talking about CNBC viewers or if you prefer "Ain't Gonna Let Them Catch Me Now" could refer to Santelli as he ran away from the Stewart show even after agreeing to appear. Perhaps Rick "Midnight Rider" Santelli would fit.

 And finally, the Sweet Emotion "phone sex video" could be interpreted as a warning to never believe anything you hear. (You need to see this video to see what I mean but needless to say that the the girl on the other end of the phone, looks nothing like she did when the song started, at the end of the song.)

As I sit here typing this up  they have played "Another Tricky Day" by The Who  and Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly" which has a line in the chorus that says "what goes up must come down" and "coming down is the hardest thing" And Bad Company "Deal With The Preacher" isn't CNBC just preaching the religion of Wall Street for Wall Street. 

Have I lost my mind?

Yea I realize I sound REALLY REALLY weird, but I just kinda notice things that I AM SURE AREN'T REALLY THERE! I mean come one Viacom doesn't really own both channels, do they? You tell me.

☺☺☺☺

I'll get to my main point eventually, but bear with me while I meander my way there. Let me start with a first stupid question of the kind philosophy professors like to ask:

 

How many people are there in this room?

 

If you invited Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Descartes into a classroom and asked them that, the first two would start counting the animate human-shaped bodies. Maybe prod the inanimate ones slumped over their desks to see if they are alive, but basically an easy enough task to get to a number. Descartes would get stumped. After all, a person is someone with a self-conscious mind, and how the hell can we tell what's going on inside those casings of flesh and bone? Some of those bodies might be mindless zombies! And how can we tell whether some disembodied mind might be lurking about?

 

Well Descartes comes out looking a bit silly here. But even for the 'common guy' things can get complicated. For instance, what about that computer in the corner? (Okay, imagine we're in 2025 with some advances in AI). Is that a person?  Or imagine one of the animate bodies stabs the guy next to him to death, for the simple reason that he'd be able to get out of the room faster - well that one's obviously an insane psychopath. And we don't consider that kind of individual fully endowed with personhood - we lock them up in padded rooms where they can do no harm to real people. Or what about the company or institution which owns the building where you're sitting? It has a kind of personal status - it has rights and obligations, goals and values, just like the rest of us.

 

A little anecdote: I had to deal with my phone company a few days ago to get back some money they had stolen, and, naturally, got stuck on the phone with them for about an hour (on my dime, of course...). I first 'communicated' with some answering robot which involved responding by hitting some number between 1 and 4. After about 15 minutes I gave up and called the reception desk of their main office, and eventually was connected to a voice that was ostensibly a 'person'. But not really, because the voice kept blatantly and repeatedly lying to me. So I was connected to series of other lying liar voices, until one finally promised that the company would send me a mail accepting to give me my money back. So how many people did I talk to? I count 'One' - the company. And even there I'm not sure. It definitely met the diagnostic check-list for the aggressive narcissistic personality disorder associated with psychopathy. (See this for a better discussion of corporate personhood.)

 

Which brings me to Cramer and our society's general attitude to psychopathy. I watched his performance on the Daily Show, and saw a man worried about the consequences for him and his career as reel after reel of his immoral and criminal mendacity and fraud ran before his eyes. I saw no comprehension in him of what was really Wrong in his actions. It showed towards the end, as he blurted out in his defence: "But there was a market for this stuff!" By which I understand "I was paid good money to lie and cheat, what's wrong with that?"

 

Now, I can almost understand how his brain got that way. After all, our society locks up some psychopaths; whimsical stabbing, hacking, maiming of living human bodies, we generally agree, must be stopped. But others, who express their mindlessness a bit more subtly, make the cover of Businessweek or get glossy puff piece bios written about them. They've become our Heroes. But with the current financial problems, these poor psycho-heroes now find themselves vilified, and they don't understand. You see it in the wild eyes of Dimon, Fuld, Thain, Weill, and others, as they try to explain why they destroyed the economy for their personal gain: "Hey, but no one was stopping us...!?!" Implying sotto-voce "being pathological self-interested profit maximizers is what we are supposed to be!" And they go on, uncomprehendingly demanding that their continuing insanity deserves Bonus Compensation. Someone needs to gently give these individuals nice white jackets with very long sleeves, and drive them off to a mental health facility. Fast.

 

Reshaping our society so that we stop encouraging, applauding, and honouring these various forms of psychopathy is the bigger issue. And, no, it's not just Vice. I realise many people will disagree with me here; we want to see this kind of behaviour punished. Fine. But being vicious requires a minimal moral knowledge - being aware that it's Wrong. And we, as a society, conceded at some point that these general patterns of behaviour were not Wrong. They were Great! "Greed is good" started out as an ironical lesson within a morality tale, yet lived on to become the mantra of a generation. And so, understanding how we got to the point of cheering on the budding psychos among us would be a first step in the direction of righting the things we should have known all along were Wrong.

 

Anyway, these are the kinds of thoughts I have as I watch CNBC and try to count how many people there are on the other side of the screen. I'm still trying to get to 'One'...

 

 

If you read Krauthammer's column today--in which he analogized the repeal of the Bush stem cell policy to the experiments of Mengele--you would think that Obama had opened the door to the creation of a human Xerox machine.  

President Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, President Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

 I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

 There is a good reason that Obama didn't do it, and didn't need to do it.  Congress has made it illegal, in a resolution that has recurred every year since 1996.  Federal funds simply may not be used for this purpose.  Krauthammer's article deliberately does not mention this point.  (Yes, I said deliberately.  His dishonesty is calculated.).

As we travel through the universe called the netwebblogoshphere, we come upon many strange and wondrous new worlds filled with both familiar and alien peoples. In just a short period of time I have learned that there is life on other planets. Because some of the comments and posts that I have read could not have been prepared by human beings.  This continuing saga was based upon an essay prepared by Craig Crawford who has been a journalist for decades and runs a blog called Trail Mix at Congressional Quarterly a site I hit everyday. But the rules are all applicable here.

Mr Crawford was kind enough to join in the discussion during my first post on this issue, which was the first time that I actually wet myself blogging. Thank the good lord (blesses himself) for depends which I had been using for those 'just in case' moments. I did feel better when I discovered it was the extra cup of coffee I had left on my lap. But I am sticking to the depends anyway, just in case.

It may also be a good idea to keep a bib on at all times while you sit in front of the screen because every now and then I regurgitate as it were reading some of the comments and blogs available for review.  In fact, I have done so rereading some of my own stuff!!! Really, do not do this everyday . Do not be like me. Get a life for Chrissakes!! Get a job or Chrissake. Contribute something to society. As a matter of fact what are you doing reading this drivel at this very moment? Be like the Green Giant in my Arthur Saga and join a health club or sign up for a good porno site. They are available everywhere and for free because they make their monies selling accessories. At least that is what I learned from bill o'reilly. Because VIEWING porn sites is a mortal sin and I like to stick to venial sins like failing to wear a seat belt, jaywalking and running a hedge fund.  But I digress.

I am postponing discussion of #4 and moving onto #5.

So we move on to Universal Canon of Ethical Blogging Five:

                            THE TIME/SPACE CONTINUUM


 5. Be succinct. Blog commenting is not a place for lengthy lectures. Keep it short and to the point. You will find that your comments will be much better read. Generally, comments beyond 150 words should be reviewed before posting, in case a bit of editing might improve the readability of what you have to say.
    
Now I do not worry about this canon much because I have an 'at home'editor. Her name is Sheilla and, except for spelling, she is very good and even offers some ideas to me if I am staring at a blank screen for more than an hour or so. And it is so funny because Sheilla will just come and go. When people visit me, which is at least once a month, she disappears. And then she will just 'be here' out of the blue, so to speak.

Since that nice lady gave me those pills to take every morning, Sheilla does not show up that much anymore so we must remember to take personal responsibility for our own blogging. In other words on the web, act like a republican, take personal responsibility for your own actions unless you work in the stock market or something like that. But never, never write like one. And if you read a comment from a repub, (except for Jason, I like Jason) always wear depends and a bib.

Now there is only so much time and space available in the universe. I know this as fact, because they told me that on the Discovery Channel and the Discovery Channel would never lie to me.  That fellow with the cambell soup can who said that everyone has fifteen minutes of fame is just wrong. I mean there are over 300 million people in this country alone and if everyone got their fifteen minutes of fame it would take at least 300 thousand years or something like that for everyone to get their fame time in. I cannot get this calculator to work but it has to be something like that.

So everybody cannot just run on and on and on or everybody on the net would lose their short term scroll memory and then the entire netwebblogosphere would explode, destroying many lives and making most blog advertising moot.

Now I am going over that 150 word maximum for several reasons. First I love to hear myself type. Second, I have to stay sober till the first again, and this helps me take my mind off of fun times. Third:

Its my blog and I can do what I want
Its my PC and I can think what I want
Show me I'm wrong
Give me a cite
And I will for sure
Tell you to go fly a kite


I also like to hear myself sing.  Which is why the court order took the sound out of my computer.

Oh, and I should clarify, the 150 word limit is really not a limit, per se (I love to use latin words, it makes me feel learned). The rule is a guide to tell you that if you write over 150 words you should take more care to edit. And besides, whenever I write over 150 words, no one reads it anyway.

But take a look at a perfect example from our own Sleepin'Jesus. He was commenting on a blog discussing certain improprieties in the financial markets:

I believe I heard at one point that the English once threw bankers into a bag full of snakes that were then tossed into the Thames. Sounds apocryphal, but not likely. It'd be too cruel and unacceptable to treat snakes this way.

Do you see how terse Sleepin' is in his comment? To the point. Well edited. And reciting history at the same time. This type of writing should be taught in all our elementary schools, the children would be more apt to stay awake after lunch.

And further our Sleepin' clarified his point by underlining that he wished no harm to come to the snakes which would or should satisfy our friends from the ASPCA.

Another good example of proper use of #5 in blogging is a comment by Bwakfat to one of the other rules commenting previously logged:

Trucknutz! Your forgot buttsects, too. I'll let it slide this time. Oh, and you misspelled rules, you fluffy lil dawg!"

We had been discussing spelling or tone or something. But what Bwak proves in this instance is that you could always have comments ready before you even read the blog.

My third example involves a reply to somebody else's comment. Actually it was mine. I was waxing philosophically about how one can never prove a negative. Orlando noted:

I can prove that George W. Bush is no longer president.

As I was preparing a five hundred word response to Orlando's reply I noted that she might be providing a bit a satire to the discussion. I, of course, sent Sheilla over to have a talk with her about this.

So please review this new rule and respond with as few words as possible and always recommend my blogs or I will send Sheilla over to your pc and she will really lay down the law.




 

This is getting to be a daily occurence @ WSJ: daily polls showing how bad Obama is doing. First there was yesterday's debunked report saying that most economists give Obama a failing grade, when the story actually shows that a MAJORITY of economist APPROVE.

Now today the WSJ is pushing this Rasmussen report that Obama's poll numbers are dropping. Oh, really? Notice how this is not true on other natl polls. Just on the Rasmussen report. Well, Matt Yglesias gives a good report here on Rasmussen's conservative ties.

Turns out, Rasmussen is different in that they require approve / disapprove instead A,B or C: unsure. But you can see clearly the positive trend for Obama at the natl poll link I provided above.

Lastly, the point where he tries to make that Bush W was higher in 2001 in March than Obama is absolute BULL. See the actual polls from Bush here and notice that his APPROVALS where LOWER. Rasmussen uses his own concocted DISAPPROVE categories, bunches them together, and uses the DIFFERENTIAL to prove his point.

But no other natl poll service does this, including Gallup.

Draw your own conlusion about the WSJ's agenda. I was stating early today that if Obama would accounce capital gains tax cuts, the WSJ would stop this nonsense. Until then, the WSJ will continue to try to tell us "main streeters" that "wall street" thinks Obama really stinks.

Did you think I was going to nail Jon Stewart?  Nope!  I would just like to point out that the biggest entertainers are politically bent.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on one side and Rush Limbaugh and the Bobbleheads on the other.  These "entertainers" cloak themselves in this mantel to ward off any serious questioning of their programs.  This also enables them to waive off any criticism that people were following their advice.  They are entertainers.  Don't take them seriously.

It's a  very sad statement, however, that the entertainers are taken more seriously then the news networks who we should be taking seriously.  It is readily apparent to pretty much everyone here that the news is a joke and the jokes are the news.  Very sad indeed.

Perhaps too much ink has already been spilled - or more accurately, bytes expended - on the Chas Freeman appointment.  For a relatively obscure appointee to an intelligence post that most of us probably have never given a moment's thought to and aren't likely to again, the subject has been blogged and flogged beyond recognition, touching on such blood-pressure-raising issues as the influence of the so-called "Israel Lobby," the scope of its influence, the "divided loyalties" of Israel's supporters, and the role of the United States in the Israel/Palestine conflict.  With the fallout over Ambassador Freeman's withdrawal and the debate sure to continue, I'm posting this clear-headed analysis by Freeman supporter, David Rothkopf, from Foreign Policy (via Jeffrey Goldberg) that shines a light through some of the heat generated on both sides.  Along the way, he makes some apt observations about the nature of the blogosphere, specifically responding to the anti-Freeman effort, but that apply equally to many of his defenders. 

Full disclosure:  Unlike Freeman's detractors, I can't say I was terribly moved one way or another by the prospect of his taking the position.  On balance, I found the arguments against him a bit more compelling, though not necessarily significant enough to scuttle the appointment.  While I am not opposed to diverse voices, including critics of Israeli policy, in the foreign policy/intelligence community, Freeman's writings and speeches struck me as excessively focusing blame on one side only.  Moreover, his "realist" perspective, carried to its logical extreme, offended my beliefs as to the moral dimension of foreign policy.  My not-so-strongly-held belief was reinforced by Freeman's intemperate statement withdrawing his name for consideration that seemed to justify the worst fears of his critics.  What I found more interesting, though, was the debate surrounding the appointment,  In particular, rather than engaging the substance of the critique that originated from diverse sources across the political spectrum, MJ Rosenberg and other "pro-Israel, pro-peace" advocates depicted the spectrum of opposition as a coordinated effort by the monolithic Israel Lobby, opposition to which is seen as necessarily for the good.  By lumping all criticism of Freeman together under the banner of his most reactionary foes, these commentators ape the methods of those they seek to oppose and perpetuate a narrative that does a disservice to their cause.  

That said, here is Mr. Rothkopf's post.

There was a lot I didn't like about the Chas Freeman debacle, but the thing I did not like most was the degree to which it offered apparent support to the "theories" of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. 

Freeman's own response to his lynching-by-blog cited the Israel lobby in language so full of anger that you can easily tell it was written in the heat of the moment. For those who would argue this proves he was too intemperate for the job, please. He was publicly pilloried, his exceptional career negated by arguments that were for the most part lies and distortions. He had been unable to respond publicly to them for weeks. Frustration built up. And frankly it is easy to see how and why he may have concluded that his downfall was proof of the existence of the Israel lobby. Personally, I have really been struggling with that issue for the past few days myself, wondering whether it was time to acknowledge that perhaps Walt was right.

Walt, needless to say, did a little victory dance as well, offering commentary that was supposedly focused on the injustice done to Freeman but which really was a smug "I told you so" laden with a list of co-conspirators with names so Jewish that I could hardly read it without cringing. He added his obligatory "some of my best friends are Jewish" sentence listing some Jewish supporters of Freeman and threw in his tired old "I am the one who is a real friend of Israel" trope saying, as he always does, "I really have the best interests of that country at heart and if they would only listen to me they would be much better off."

Freeman, I can forgive. He had every reason to be angry. Walt, not now, not ever, because whatever the pale intellectual merits of his hackneyed argument may be, he and Mearsheimer know full well that their prominence on this issue has come not because they have had a single new insight but rather because they were willing and one can only believe inclined to play to a crowd whose "views" were fueled by prejudice and worse. They may not be anti-Semites themselves but they made a cynical decision to cash in on anti-Semitism by offering to dress up old hatreds in the dowdy Brooks Brothers suits of the Kennedy School and the University of Chicago. They did what the most desperate members of academia do, they signed up to be rent-a-validators, akin to expert witnesses who support the defense of felons with specious theories served up on fancy diplomas. They would argue that they were daring to speak truth to power.  In reality they were giving one crowd in particular precisely what it wanted to hear.

Believe me I don't lightly come to the ultimate conclusion that this incident should not change my view of their work. I was appalled by the mob mentality generated by the blog debate on the Freeman nomination. It produced some serious misgivings on my part regarding even being involved in the blogosphere because so much of what passes for discourse in this world is undistilled opinion and emotion designed to bind and stir up like-minded audiences. The rest is more like grafitti than thoughtful commentary, designed to leave a wannabe commentator's mark on the side of a passing issue.

There is no doubt that a small group of virulent supporters of Israel were at the heart of the movement to undo Freeman. This group was very effective in getting its message out and in mobilizing some in the government such as Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer to become their advocates. That in this instance, this small group acted to lobby on behalf of what they viewed as the interests of both Israel and the United States cannot be denied. But here is where the Walt argument starts to break down for me. The implication is that because these people had an interest in Israel, they put that interest before that of the United States, and I know for a fact that many of the people listed by Walt as Freeman's attackers certainly do not. Walt self-servingly implies that because some argue for strong U.S. support for Israel that means they are not putting America's interests first -- whereas it is also possible (and I think for the most part true) that these people feel that it is precisely because they put U.S. interests first that they end up advocating a close relationship with our most dependable ally in the Middle East. 

You want to debate whether Israel is a good ally? Fine. I'm ok with that. It even seems like a reasonable thing to do on an on-going basis as far as I am concerned.

My problem comes with the implication that those who support Israel are necessarily twisted by dual loyalties into positions that undermine the interests of the United States whereas those whose position is essentially to step back from America's historically strong support for Israel are "realists" who somehow have the best interests of the U.S. at heart...that somehow Walt & Co. are better Americans. 

That's the insidious heart of this. (Although there is almost something comical about arguing that it is "realist" to bank on the benefits that will accrue from better relations with Arab regimes that are notoriously willing to say one thing publicly today and do something entirely different later on and which are, in a number of case, at serious risk of being toppled. This is precisely the brand of "realism" that led to our successful support of the Shah, Pinochet, Marcos, Suharto, and a host of other leaders who have permanently tarnished America's reputation in the world. )       

Furthermore, of course, there are several other problems with the Walt argument that remain even after the events surrounding Freeman's appointment. First, is related to an earlier point: The implication that when the U.S. government supports Israel it's because of the actions of this lobby and not because it is actually in the interests of the United States to support Israel. There is the notion that support for Israel comes from a monolithic group rather than one that is not only ethnically, geographically, economically, and otherwise diverse but one that holds a variety of nuanced views on a host of issues regarding Israel and the Middle East. 

There is also the idea that somehow this group is so powerful that it is dictating policy rather than trying to influence it like every other lobbying group in Washington, that somehow it is privileged or more successful among interest groups. More successful than the farm lobby in winning government appropriations? Hardly. And our farm subsidies because they are so hugely distortionary to trade are a source of tensions in a host of relations worldwide. More effective than a Cuba lobby that has gotten the United States to support a ridiculous, failed policy for 50 years? Not. (We allow more open exchange with North Korea than we do with Cuba, an impoverished, literally crumbling nation with no strategic significance whatsoever.) More inclined to put cultural considerations first than any of this country's national or ethnic special interest groups? Come on. Why, why, why, you have to ask yourself would you want to single out this lobby for special criticism? And why, if your purpose was to argue for a different U.S. policy in the Middle East, would you choose to focus your efforts on attacking the people who support an opposing view rather than on the merits of the policy you advocated? What makes the idea of this particular lobby more sinister than all those farmers or Cubans or African-Americans or gays or union members or Arabs or Taiwanese or Christians? 

No, there is only one reason to argue that the Israel lobby is somehow special or of special significance. It is to suggest that American policy in the Middle East is being driven by the interests of an especially unsavory group of ultra-powerful people who are masters at manipulating Washington. And we know who they are right? Well, actually, we do...it's the oil companies. But therein lies my point. The "Israel Lobby" is a distraction, a distortion and a vessel in which to carry and by which to explain and even excuse the hatreds and prejudices of a small group. It distorts reality, implies coordination where there is none, implies consensus across a group of people with widely divergent views, misinterprets the actions of a few as a plan of the many, overstates the influence of those it argues are involved, indicts the motives associated with a whole class of ideas enabling them to be dismissed before they are fairly considered, and seeks to argue that normal behavior in a democracy is somehow sinister for one group when it is healthy for others. Further, it tars opponents as members of a lowly lobby while reserving the intellectual and moral high ground for the views of Walt & Co. -- "you lobby, we are patriots." 

Did a small group of misinformed, intellectually intolerant individuals stir up a wave of criticism of Chas Freeman that distorted his record to the point that it was impossible for him to assume the role for which he was nominated? Yes. Are many associated with historical support for Israel? Yes. In so doing did they lead to a great disservice being done to Freeman and to the U.S. government? Also yes. But is it fair to say that they represented the views of the broad spectrum of people who support a strong U.S. relationship with Israel? No. Is it fair to say that all were part of an orchestrated attack? No. Further, while I hate what happened, as Americans we must defend the right of the Freeman opponents to lay out their views...and many of those concerns, the ones based on facts, were perfectly legitimate to raise. The problem is when political leaders cave to the sentiments of the electronic mob. In so doing, it is they and not the critics of the choice who debase the process and rob the government of the diversity of perspectives it needs. The actions and arguments of some members the anti-Freeman crowd disgusted me. But it was in the capitulation to them that the greatest disservice was done.             

It's time to lay to rest the myth that spending billions on more high tech is the salvation for rising healthcare costs. Some people will peddle any notion to avoid addressing the best way to rein in costs, pushing the insurance companies out of the way with a single payer system.

It's become an article of faith that a national system of electronic medical records would produce huge savings.  President Obama made it a centerpiece of his healthcare plan during the campaign (as did Sen. John McCain), and has emphasized it repeatedly in legislation and speeches.

As a first step, the stimulus bill allotted $17 billion in incentives to prod doctors and hospitals to get on board during a five year period beginning in 2011, along with financial penalties if they don't.

The administration has relied in large part on a RAND study claiming savings of $80 billion a year through the nirvana of what Wall Street Journal reporter Anna Wilde Mathews caustically referred to as "whizbang computer systems." The President cited the $80 billion figure again during the White House health-care summit last week.

Or, as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs asserted, "The health IT in the economic recovery plan will make health care more affordable, will save patients' lives, and increase the quality and the outcome of the health care that millions of people are provided."

He might want to take a mulligan. As a series of reports this week make clear, the bloom is coming off the rose.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Medical School faculty Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband debunk the received wisdom, noting:

Following his announcement, we spoke with fellow physicians at the Harvard teaching hospitals, where electronic medical records have been in use for years. All of us were dumbfounded, wondering how such dramatic claims of cost-saving and quality improvement could be true.

It's not, they conclude. And they are not alone.

The RAND study has been sliced and diced fairly regularly now by, among others, one Peter Orszag, now the White House budget director.

Last May, when Orzag was director of the Congressional Budget Office, CBO examined the Rand report and a parallel study concluding they "appear to significantly overstate the savings for the health care system as a whole -- and, by extension, for the federal budget." Summing it the CBO findings, Orzag concluded that while the technology, in combination with other moves, may help reduce expenses, "by itself it typically does not produce a reduction in costs."

Another report from Avalere Health, quoted by the Associated Press this week, concludes it will cost providers far more to implement the golden goose systems than they will get back in return.

Using government cost estimates, Avalere researchers found that it would cost about $124,000 for a single doctor or small practice to upgrade to electronic health records over the five year period from 2011-2015 when the stimulus bill offers incentives to do so.

But the total incentive payments a doctor could get over that time period only add up to $44,000. In 2015, penalties start to kick in for doctors who haven't switched to electronic record-keeping. But in one scenario mapped by Avalere, the starting penalty would be $5,100 a year -- far less than how much it would cost to install and maintain an electronic health system.

In other words, a pig in a poke. And, that's just the supposed financial benefits.

Registered nurses have long raised alarms that some of the technology may be intended to displace staff or an RN's professional judgment, which is especially critical with the complex medical conditions seen in the patients who get through the hospital doors these days, and said those billions could be better spent on actual care delivery.

Many doctors, like those in the Journal report, are speaking out now as well. Groopman and Hartzband note "there is no evidence that electronic medical records lower the chances of diagnostic error." And they point to studies that raise further doubts. For example:

A 2008 study published in Circulation, a premier cardiology journal, assessed the influence of electronic medical records on the quality of care of more than 15,000 patients with heart failure. It concluded that "current use of electronic health records results in little improvement in the quality of heart failure care compared with paper-based systems."

Another such warning came from MD Scott Haig this week in Time who describes the frustrations of doctors who are forced to use such systems "or risk losing our hospital privileges" if they don't.

Yet some big hospital chains are spending billions of dollars for the high tech hype with despite the lack of evidence it will produce either cost savings or improved healthcare.

Haig wonders who is really behind it. the new digital world order, and concludes:

Not surprisingly, nationwide adoption of Electronic Medical Records is being pushed hardest by those who would profit financially from it. The slightly embarrassing financial reality of EMR is that large, mechanized medical operations like hospitals, clinics and big multi-doctor practices stand to make quite a bit of money by adopting them -- given our current convoluted system of paying for health care. Two clear factors make EMR a money-winner: improved billing and internal cost control.

And, there's another hook for the insurers here, Haig notes:

Computerized medicine means both more information -- and less medicine. Less therapy, less surgery and less testing too. That's how it saves money. A variety of promising terms describe it -- terms like targeted treatment, algorithmic patient-care, fiscally responsible medicine and evidence-based practice -- but for doctors treating patients, one word describes how computerized records save money. Denial. EMR has the potential to greatly increase insurance company denials of the tests and treatments that doctors order.

Big profits, for the tech corporations that manufacture them, and the software companies that design them. Better bill collection for the hospitals. Improved billing, and fewer nettlesome claims for the insurers whose first priority is always receiving payment, not actually paying for care. Who would have guessed? A boondoggle for some, it looks like, and misplaced priorities for the rest of us.

Stewart has used his medium and position to clearly show how utterly naked the entire illusion of the US Financial Market has become---it is the Emperor's Clothes in real time. The game was clearly simple; the derivative market was simply about the largest raid on the US savings assets that included the home market, 401K, IRA and pension funds. It was an unspoken conspiracy and collusion where they held the propaganda machine with all the business news, the agents of sales, the actual holders of banks, the ratings services, and the government.

How is 35-to-1 leverage sane? The bubble was "30% return from 1999 to 2007" the cheerleader's  response. Selling the idea that you don't have to do anything is the big lie.  Is US  wealth our collective labor (meaning hard work) or the collective paper value of the illusion?  Yesterday I had a conversation with a former mortgage broker who said that you have to make your money work for you?

I said money does not work, that is a metaphor!  People work, labor is hard work, money can be a result of hard work if someone buys it and you invest in things that are based on hard work---hoping it results have an added value. Added value is not about a zero sum game, there is loss value to zero sum transactions the only increased value in society comes from non zero sum efforts where collective efforts create greater results. He was still too addicted to understand, he wanted the casino to reopen, he didn't want to work anymore he simply wanted to make money off of other people.

Yes, I hope we as a society to go out and fully investigate the entire ruling class that has raped our society over the past decade, Cheney's hit squads, all the war crimes and unconstitutional surveillance activities, but also the financial robberies constituted by Wall Street and beyond. Funny thing, I recall that in the late '70's and early '80's there was a call for "ethics classes" in business and college schools. It didn't materialize and this is the generation outcome---Cramer and his ilk who still can't see that they are naked cheerleaders.

Cramer for all his attempt at mea culpa was actually unrepentant, he was still cheerleading the cause----he didn't get it even though he was as naked as a patient in a doctor's examining room. Kudo's to the comedians who see all the hypocricies. What has really got the attention is that Stewart's ratings are going up like a rocket.   

The following should be of interest to those complaining about the state and local jobs created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as not being created fast enough to really get the economy moving.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation announced yesterday that 53 road projects throughout the state will be financed by $75 million in stimulus funds.

It is also worth noting that the Minnesota DOT is handing out contracts for those projects - starting today.

To review:  ARRA was signed into law on February 17.  We're starting to see that money hit the economy, in the form of awarded contracts, on March 13.  And there may be even earlier examples; I just happened to run across this one. 

Twenty-four days.  Even Smilin' Bob would say this is a fast-acting stimulus. 

After watching Jon Stewart, Dave Letterman and other comedians tear apart false representations and false bravado in the recent past, culminating with last nights' dressing down of Wall Street by Stewart,  it would seem that our esteem journalism academia (as well as our society) would be well served add to journalism degree curriculum classes that hone comedic skills. Maybe offer comedy and satire as a minor degree with the journalism bachelor.

 

It seems that the comedic arm of our media are the only ones that are coming anywhere near the bullseye of journalistic accuracy.    

I like this latest example of the inside-the-beltway DC media protecting the old ways of DC:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19961.html

This is of course just the latest example of this, and Politico is a common offender.

But what I love about this story is that Jonathan Martin somehow finds a way to try to position a commendable ethical stance of blocking lobbying and big biz influence in the Obama administration as a bad thing.

Most of the arguments are based on flimsy points such as it is taking sooooo long to fill all the admin's positions. Which kind of seems like a trap. Put pressure on Obama to fill positions quickly with questionable candidates so that the press can then create buzz about sordid details of someone's shady past.

While it seems like a no-win situation whereby if Obama had no rules against lobbyists, he would get slammed as well, it seems more like DC just protecting their own. Slam Obama for taking so long to fill positions so that hopefully he'll back down and the 1000s of DC insiders with lobbying ties can get jobs!

It was brutal. And all of it needed to be said. It was, however, hard to watch at times. I don't hate Jim Cramer. I love Jon Stewart, for all the reasons we all watch The Daily Show as our source of real news in America. It's so on-the-money. But I couldn't help feeling, and I know I may be skewered for this, that Jon Stewart is big coward. Many big name, network news personalities have appeared on The Daily Show. Many men and women who used their air time to promote and defend George W. Bush and the disaster that is Iraq and now our economy. His treatment of them is dramatically different then what he did to Jim Cramer. I'll use one example, though I think there are many: Brian Williams. Mr.Williams, when he was primarily on MSNBC routinely mocked Al Gore, the MSM favorite whipping boy during the 2000 Presidential campaign. Later, along with many of the other network/cable talking heads, he cheered on the lead up to the war. We all know the rest with how these people became surrogates for Bush's crimes. When these people have appeared with Jon it's playful back and forth, with some bite but very little bark. It's safe, and within the rules. Everyone comes away still able to be invited to the same parties. These MSM people have as much blood on their hands as George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, go down the list. Jim Cramer is an easy target. Stewart was right. But he has not and will never do the kind of brutal, evisceration to big name news personalities that he did to Mr. Cramer. Just think what could have happened if a Brian Williams, a Tom Brokow, a Tim Russert, a Barbara Walters, a Charlie Rose, stood up and said on the air, this is madness, what are we doing. You know, pulled an Ed Murrow. They didn't. But they get the playful treatment. Cramer got ruined. Jon Stewart, I still love you man, but I think you play the game.

Tying health care to employment was a way that companies lured workers after World War II.  But now look where it's led:  Health Care has become entangled with gay rights!    And not only that, the ridiculous question is being asked:  Will Obama ensure the gay partners of government workers?  

Why are we even in this position?  If health care benefits were rights of each person, then whether you are gay or straight or celibate, man, woman, child, transsexual, bisexual - it would not matter!

So instead of simply advocating for single payer health care which functions like Medicare (tied to your social security number, not an employer), we would not have a ridiculous article in the New York Times this morning - woefully worrying:  "What will Obama do?  Will he ensure gay partners?"

Health care should not be something you have to marry to get!  It should not be something you have to find a job to get!  It should not be connected to your sexual orientation!  It should not be something you have to worry about getting!  FULL STOP!

Heath care should just be there!  No questions asked.  Except - may I see your Public Health Card?

Otherwise, look at the new issue that's being dreamed up here.  Will gay partners be insured by the federal government?

Obama Is on the Spot

In separate, strongly worded orders, two judges of the federal appeals court in California said that employees of their court were entitled to health benefits for their same-sex partners under the program that insures millions of federal workers.

But the federal Office of Personnel Management has instructed insurers not to provide the benefits ordered by the judges, citing a 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act.

Why are we even in this position?  This just proves how insane the whole health care debate has become!

We need one simple refrain:  Health care, a civil right, for each man, woman, and child!
   

  

A machine to read the mind came a step closer on Thursday, when scientists at University College London released the results of an experiment in which brain scans revealed the location of people moving around a virtual reality environment.

Demis Hassabis, co-author of the study, said it was "a small step towards the idea of mind reading, because just by looking at neural activity we were able to say what someone was thinking"...

Four volunteers navigated around a room in a computerised virtual reality game while the researchers examined their hippocampus with an fMRI scanner...

"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality room," said Eleanor Maguire

But Dr Hassabis said it would be at least 10 years - and probably much longer - before the technique could be used in forensic investigations, for example to tell whether a suspect was lying about whether they had been at a crime scene..

While this sounds great as far as rooting out criminals, it's a bit scary too.  Reminds me of the movie Jim Carey played in called "Liar, Liar" in which he played a lawyer that couldn't tell a lie.

Imagine in the future going to work with a mind reading machine, something the size of an ipod, that would allow you to read your coworker's minds at any given point.  Even worse, imagine them having one of their own.

How would it feel to go on a date and know what that date is thinking?  Geez, that would be weird! "Honey, you look beautiful tonight."  Your machine starts beeping like a cell phone....it says, "Too bad your hair looks like crap though."

I guess we have to remember that where there is good, there's also the bad....LOL

The Obama administration's first 50 days has been characterized in part by "transparency," by high expectations from the public for a quick fix to its ailing economy, by the synthesis of a number of policies into a single, long-term budget plan, by an apparently change-oriented approach to national security, and by its amazing speed of action.

President Obama's transition to a "transparent" administration started with his inaugural address, and progressed quickly after that. The Obama administration was instructed on January 20 and 21 that it would be doing business in the sunlight. Memos were issued on transparency and open government, as well as how the Freedom of Information Act was to be implemented. The MSM coverage continues to benefit from that transparent governing style, but that brings with it the likelihood of quick criticism of whatever the administration does.

There are those who see the future of capitalism* in President Barack Obama's hands. A recent WSJ/ABC poll of economists revealed some dissatisfaction with the administrations handling of the economy to date. Responses pointed particularly to delays in enacting key elements, that have led to uncertainty about the bank rescue plan. If the criticism came from Wall Street from the beginning, it also came from Republicans in Congress.

President Obama has used a policy-based budgeting style. The GOP has launched a united attack on President Obama's budget, CQ Politics reports (3/11/09). They plan to challenge the assumptions and content in President Obama's budget and offer alternatives," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana). In general congressional Republicans have resisted everything the administration has proposed. They have adopted a "just say 'no' " approach, and have remained fixed in the post 9/11 reactive view that all that matters is the "War on Terrorism."

While congressional hearings in recent days have highlighted the persistent threat of terrorism, our chief spy master , Director of National Intelligence, Ret. Adm. Dennis Blair, says, "It's the economy [as the main] intelligence" issue according to CQ Politics (3/7/09). The article raises the question of whether the intelligence community is up to the task of gathering the requisite amount of economic intelligence information. To quote:

. . . a reeling world economy [is] again forcing economic matters to the forefront of intelligence concerns. In an annual global threat briefing to Congress, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in prepared remarks that "the primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis."

After seven years of intelligence community reports that placed a heavy emphasis on terrorism, Blair's declaration was a "sea change," said John Parachini, director of the Intelligence Policy Center at the Rand Corp.

Who knows what the next 50 will bring as the president reaches the magical "first 100 days" mark. With the fast pace adopted by President Obama, it is a big challenge to remain abreast of what is happening. Among several other e-mail resources, I rely on this national security newsletter from Congressional Quarterly - Behind the Lines (newsletter of 3/11/09) by David C. Morrison. I conclude with a couple of excerpts that apply to the preceding paragraphs. To quote:

Feds: The global financial crisis threatens U.S. national security, The Associated Press' Stephen Manning has military and economic experts telling a House panel yesterday. Federal cybersecurity efforts would be in "grave peril" if passing oversight from DHS to the NSA led to intel community domination, Threat Level's Kim Zetter has an ex-homelander testifying this week -- and check The Washington Post's Brian Krebs on the mounting power struggle. U.N. human rights investigators have announced a global investigation into secret detention practices, saying they would not relax scrutiny of U.S. counterterrorism policies under President Barack Obama, Reuters' Stephanie Nebehay notes. The Obama administration will appoint a senior diplomat as a special Guantanamo envoy, underscoring the importance it places on persuading other countries to accept detainees, The New York Times' William Glaberson and Mark Landler relate.

. . . Unlike other officials recently, a Pentagon intel chief testified Tuesday that Iran does not have highly enriched uranium to power a nuclear warhead, AP reports -- while a Boston Globe op-ed underlines the dangers of "intricate and foolproof verification schemes."

References:

1. *The Financial Times In Depth: "The Future of Capitalism" - A major new series.


2. Secrecy News from the Federation of American Scientists, by Steven Aftergood: Includes Presidential Policy Directive on "Organization of the National Security System," and "Opening the Files on Bush's Secrets."


3. Pipes: Change Tracker - by ProPublica. This is a great resource for tracking any changes made at the several White House and government websites.

See also Behind the Links, for further info on this subject.

Carol Gee - Online Universe is the all-in-one home page for all my websites.

Technorati tags: news news and politics politics obama economic crisis national security

 

I am a financial layman with no comprehension of the particularities of the derivative markets but I have maintained attention to the global context of this financial meltdown. So tell me where I have this wrong. The conversations we are having now about AIG, bailouts, Cramer vrs Stewart and the G-20 summit are all circling around one subject; who is going to be taking the final big losses when we hit bottom? Bondholders? Stockholders? Taxpayers? In which country? In what proportion? Are the recent global market rallies in anticipation of a verdict for bondholders and stockholders and against taxpayers? Is this all coming to a head at the G-20?

To that possibly volitile mix I will add one other point of context.

We are in a transition from an era of cheap energy to an era of expensive energy. One way to understand current market volatility is the revaluation of all global assets in light of the changing variables of energy inputs. Our infrastructure is based on cheap energy and the length of the recession may depend on the effective use of stimulus globally to build new infrastructure based on expensive energy.

The changing costs of energy and the internalizing of formerly external costs of energy usage also changes the calculation of possible future economic growth. Or, to put it another way, we need the market to redefine growth as efficiency. We need real competitive functioning markets in order to squeeze every possible efficiency out of all the energy we can produce. Not to produce economic growth but to survive.

 

The one thing that keeps rearing it's head these days is
the comparison between what's happening now and the
1930s onward. I will admit that I am even guilty of this but
in good company as a number of economists have been
doing as well.

There a number of differences between the two most of
which have been gone over significantly already. The most
important one, though is the specific cause and the long
term effect. Especially on the stock market and the banking
industry.

One needs to be reminded that the wounds suffered by the
stock market were entirely self inflected.  The abrupt rise
and subsequent fall was due entirely to stock manipulation.
Systematic driving of stock prices far above anything reasonable
by small groups of investors for the sole purpose of reaping their
own personal rewards. Nearly all the stock owned by individuals
was purchased on margin. That is loans, not just from investment
banks but from commercial bans as well. Everybody wanted to get
in on what appeared to be a good thing. When the crash of 29 came,
as inevitable as a winter snow storm, followed the the nearly complete
collapse in the early 30s - almost everyone lost everything that
they had invested and even owned. Stock became nearly worthless.

The banks that had been financing this orgy were left, as we all know,
with little or no capital. People lost their life savings, even their current
pay checks.

The societal and psychological effect of this was two fold and lasted
for generations. The small investor fled the market not to return in
any number for a very, very long time. Wall Street was inhabited
almost exclusively by large institutional and corporate investors
who tended to be very conservative and long term. The private,
small investor fled to savings bonds and municipal bonds if they
invested in anything. If one looks at the market performance from
the late 40s through the 60s you will see what appears to be
modest growth when actually, RCA, GM, Westinghouse and
the steal industries were doing very well indeed. Home appliances
were dominated by RCA and its subsidiary Whirlpool and GM
was leaving the competition in the dust.  

The banks and consumers became very conservative as well.  The
era of anything goes was over.  Banks became more cautious in
their lending and the consumer became more cautious in their
borrowing.  And nearly all loans and mortgages were through
small local banks, savings and loans and credit unions.

Now don't get me wrong. I do not see anything bad about this
at all. In fact a more conservative and responsible approach
to finance is a good thing and the regulation that occurred after
FDR was elected is need now as well. Maybe more so.

I just wanted to point out that the two events are similar in
nature but quite different in specifics.

C

 

Rasmussen writes an opinion column in WSJ and says this:

Polling data show that Mr. Obama's approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001

 

Rasmussen thinks the reason is policy:

The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration's policies and their impact on peoples' lives.

 

He lists the specific concerns (spending too much, raising taxes on everyone, overextending instead of focusing on economy, etc) and shows that more americans oppose Obama's budget now than support it.

The most striking thing to me is this: Republicans have some of the lowest approval numbers and are blamed for many of the problems.

And yet, the specific republican talking points (overspend, overtax, etc) seem to be capturing the mood of what more and more people think.

If this is true, then there is more than bravado to their claims that they will lose on policy but win on message, their polls must be showing the same trends. It also means that Obama is going to become even more like Bill Clinton fairly soon, to triangulate on issues (eat this Theda). And finally, we should expect even more partisanship a-la the WH-coordinated trashing of Rush.

 

First it was Michael Steele, then Newt Gingrich... where's the love for Rush? After all of these years of service to the Republican party fanning the flames of bigotry and indignation--what's not to like about an overweight college dropout who yells at you daily? 

Apparently, some Republicans are coming to think that for every one vote Rush gains the party , he loses two or three...
Popycock!

The Dream Ticket
Palin/Limbaugh 2012

After watching Jon Stewart last night expose and eviscerate Jim Cramer for his stock-bubble pimping, the question we all should be asking is:

Why is a comedian, an admitted "fake news show" anchor, the only journalist in America to have seriously questioned the media's role in the self-selving corporate fraud that has cost millions of citizens their homes, their savings, their jobs and their pensions?

Listen to Lou Dobbs, and it's illegal immigrants who are somehow responsible. Listen to Rush Limbaugh, and it's leftists and Democrats. Listen to Fox, and it's people who don't listen to Fox.

Listen to Michael Steele and ... well, it's hard to figure out exactly whom he's blaming, but it sure isn't the people who for at least the past eight years controlled Wall St., the government, and -- above all -- the mainstream media.

Cramer's pathetic defense last night was that his stock-market advice (which millions followed) was merely "entertainment."

So here's the underlying message to take away from Stewart's show: it's not that the MSM were unaware of who the thieves are, or even that they were complicit with the thieves. They ARE the thieves.

 . . . wanna buy a new improved vacuum cleaner ?

Warning in advance -- the following commercial announcement is brought to you by:

Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than $5 trillion in annual revenues and nearly 10 million employees. Member companies comprise nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets and pay nearly half of all corporate income taxes paid to the federal government. Annually, they return $133 billion in dividends to shareholders and the economy.

Business Roundtable companies give more than $7 billion a year in combined charitable contributions, representing nearly 60 percent of total corporate giving. They are technology innovation leaders, with more than $70 billion in annual research and development spending - more than a third of the total private R&D spending in the U.S.

Here's the pitch:

Business Roundtable's Health Care Reform Plan

Health care delivery needs a new business model: one that puts customers in the center and uses the power of the market to lower costs, improve quality, create more consumer choice and expand accessibility.

Business Roundtable has a four-pillar plan that, we believe, will put us on the path to a competitive health care system:

• Creating greater consumer value in the health care marketplace by using health information technology and empowering consumers with more information about good quality health care.

• Providing more affordable health insurance options for all Americans by creating an open, all-inclusive private market for health insurance and replacing today's fragmented state-by-state market with multistate markets. To ensure that insurance plans are solvent and meet certain minimum requirements, the role of individual states as the primary regulator should continue. Broader, more competitive markets will create more choices for more health care consumers.

• Engaging all Americans in taking an active role in their health care. First, this means placing an obligation on all Americans to obtain health insurance either through their employer or the private market. Second, we must encourage all Americans to participate in employer- or community-based prevention, wellness and chronic care programs.

• Offering health coverage and assistance to low-income, uninsured Americans that create a stable and secure public safety net. This assistance would be financed from the cost savings and efficiencies generated by a more competitive and value-driven health care system.

Today, our health care system leaves major consumer needs unmet, costs unchecked and basic practices untouched by the productivity revolution that has transformed every other sector of our economy.

The Business Roundtable Health Care Value Comparability Study should add to the urgency felt by all major U.S. stakeholders to stimulate faster improvement in the performance of America's health care system. We can do better. The global competitiveness of U.S. employers and workers depends on it.

This executive summary of the study is available online (.pdf)

Just give the "more competitive and value-driven health care system" with "broader, more competitive markets [that] will create more choices for more health care consumers" another chance.

It all sounds like the same old song and dance routine we have all heard before.

It all sounds so well prepared. 

~OGD~

If you ever have read George Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, (and if you haven't you should) you know that the Minitruth, Newspeak for the Ministry of Truth, was a branch of the totalitarian government of Oceania, who was responsible for revising history and making history fit into the ideology of Big Brother.

Now that the Bush Administration has become a relic of history, former high-level Bush Administration officials, such two former Press Secretaries and Karl Rove, have sought out to engage in a little revision of the past eight years themselves. Since the inauguration they have been making appearances on the usual television shows retelling the Bush years, under the guise of attempting to get the "story straight", but in reality contradicting with the established facts in an effort to deceive the American people (again).

The height of this absurdity was during Hardball with Chris Matthews, when former Press Secretary Ari Fleisher went into a spectacular tangent that defied logic. Going beyond just the standard talking points, that we have come to expect, but going so far as to argue that the current President should be thankful for what President Bush left him.

And then came the creme de la creme, when Fleisher repeated the now infamous Bush talking point, "we have not been attacked since 9/11." The absurdity of that statement is beyond reason, because it suggests that President Bush effectively took over the Oval Office on September 12th, 2001, and the country ran (rather smoothly) without a President for nine months. This statement, which has been repeated throughout the conservative media, absolves President Bush of any responsibility as it relates to foreign policy and defending the United States from enemies foreign and domestic. It holds someone else accountable for the attacks on September 11th. Shocking, though not surprisingly, some pundits have gone so far as to blame President Clinton for not killing Bin Laden during his eight years in office, even though President Bush essentially sat on his thumbs for nine months before he decided to trample on the Constitution.

Chris Matthews though, clearly shocked and bewildered, like many of us I am sure, did not let Fleisher get away with his lapse of reason being passed off as "setting the record straight". He did what journalist were supposed to do and followed up with Fleisher, and from there the discussed spiraled into chaos.

Arianna Huffington forewarned about this attempt by former Bush officials to retell the past eight years weeks ago, when many of us where obsessed with Rush Limbaugh and his shenanigans (see here); and Fleisher got caught when Matthews realized what was going on and now the rest of us are hopefully awake to what is going on now.

With new reports coming to surface that the former President turned the United States into a dictatorship during the years after the terrorist attacks and when he left office forever in January; through the legal maneuvering of officials like John Yoo, legislation such as the Patriot Act, and instilling a sense of a fear from the ambiguous enemy simply referred to collectively as "terrorists", and the use of Orwellian diction like "Homeland Security" and "Freedom Fries" (See Victory Gin); it is crucial that we do not allow a calm demeanor to fool us.  

President Bush said he believes that history would judge him, and absolve him of his crimes, both constitutional and ethical, it is our responsibility to make sure that we do not let his cronies do the writing.

This post first appeared at Clips 'N Chips

Just the title of the post made that spot on my forehead between my eyebrows compress tightly, almost painfully.  Republicans are determined to oversee the StimPack!  There's a trillion dollars there and they think that's something important, all of a sudden.  Here's yesterday's post by Elana Schor here on TPM for reference.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/republicans-who-opposed-the-stimulus-now-want-to-oversee-it.php?ref=fp7

To be Christian about it, I have to say, "Forgive them for they know not what" hypocrites they are.  Obama has declared that his Administration is going to be transparent.  Numerous steps have been taken to do just that.  But these self-righteous leaders of the free world, the ones who are sure they are the only ones who know how to spend money wisely, are determined to dispute and object to every decision this Administration makes.  They are acting as though there is something going on under cover of darkness.

There is a new Administration in the White House now.  If they want to know what is going on with the StimPack, there are web sites that detail everything.  There is no need to be a watchdog.  People can check into it for themselves now.  Looking for Joe Biden?  Well, he is not in any undisclosed location, I am fairly certain of that. 

Since Republicans all of a sudden have taken an interest in where the money goes, I do not wish to discourage them.  Maybe they can spend their time checking into where the first half of the bank bailout money went?  You know, the hundreds of billions of dollars Dubya released with no strings!  Or maybe they can look into where the money is going for all of those thousands of contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Because at last look, I believe there were still billions of dollars that have gone unaccounted.  I even recall that, early in the war, we were paying for firetrucks before they even had paint on them.  Did Republicans ever do anything about that?  They did not even know.

Based on their history, this sudden concern is easily seen for what it is, grandstanding.  It's part of the philosophy that has been spread around like a plague, that government cannot do anything right, and they put their efforts into actually making certain government never did anything right.  Might regulation of the SEC be an example?  It is truly astounding that they have the temerity to stand up now and assert some kind of concern for government spending when for the past eight years they could have cared less. 

With the annoucement of Gov. Sanford and of any other Governor who plans to reject or turn down the provisions and/or funding of Economic Recovery Plan, it is time for President Obama to act for the middle class and for the hurting people by turning down any request for a waiver(s). The decisions of these Governors will hurt people who are already hurting...it is an immoral act in my opinion.

Mr. President, you have to work with the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in Congress and practice bi-partianship there but now you must act for the people who need you the most, be the leader you promised to be and back Rep. Clyburn who is stepping out front in SC to lead your causes. Don't let us down while these anti-middle class politicians attempt to block relief and hope for many people needing to believe in you!

Use your authority now!

Good evening TPM and Daily Show fans, and welcome to my liveblog of one of the most anticipated, lopsided, heavyweight media showdowns of the year:

In the first corner with the red trunks, tattered reputation, terrible financial advice, and stock tips that will most likely not give you mad money but just make you mad.....Jim "The Mad Man" CRAMER!!!!!! (booooooo)

And in the other corner with the blue trunks, devoted fan following, terrific sense of humor, and the relentless ability to skewer the ridiculous in the press and the government.....Jon "The Man" STEWWWWWWWWWWART!!!!!! (yaaaaaaay)

This match will be scored at ringside by the esteemed panel of judges (the Daily Show viewers).  The man with the greater arguments wins, and a TKO will decide the match immediately.  Please add your comments, tips, suggestions, links, and videos below.

And now, ladies and gentlemen.........LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!!

Daily Show interview with Jim Cramer, Part 1 (unedited & uncensored)

Daily Show interview with Jim Cramer, Part 2 (unedited & uncensored)

Daily Show interview with Jim Cramer, Part 3 (unedited & uncensored)

11:00 -- Welcome to Brawl Street!  Get ready to buy low and sell DIE.....

11:05 -- Ooh, a swing and a miss by Cramer by saying he's a "fan" of the Daily Show.  Stewart does not take well to buttering up!

11:07 -- An right hook by Stewart to the gut of Cramer, by suggesting CNBC scale back Cramer's hours!

11:09 -- Ouch!  An upper right by Stewart by calling "Mad Money" snake oil!  And showing the "Mad Money" promo for the snake oil that it is.

11:10 -- A real market/unreal market analogy by Stewart!  Followed by Stewart airing a clip of Cramer ostensibly manipulating the stock market!

11:12 -- Stewart rares for an uppercut by calling Cramer's work as "dangerous" and "dubious" that "capitalizes Cramer's adventure!"

11:13 -- Cramer ducks and dodges by admitting how wrong he has been, explaining that he's "trying"!

11:14 -- Stewart calls Cramer's work "bull!"  A devastating punch to Cramer's cynical, ducking-and-dodging face!

11:15 -- Cramer "tries to report the news"!  Stewart lands a haymaker with the fact that CNBC has hosted Bear Stearns reps, and another haymaker with the accusation that CNBC pretends to protect the innocent!

11:16 -- "I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a f***ing game."  An incredible jab to the stomach by Stewart!

11:17 -- Cramer admits that an executive of Lehman Brothers lied to him!  And he calls for indictments!  Which corner is he fighting in?

11:18 -- Stewart continues the assault of CNBC's shenanigans!  A battering, if you will.

11:19 -- Cramer begs for forgiveness about how all those execs lied to him and how he believed the market would keep going up!

11:21 -- Ooh, by the end of the 6th round, Cramer tries to use the excuse that "there's a market for this stuff."  Stewart counterpunches with, "There's a market for cocaine!"  Nasty punch, that was!

11:22 -- The fight has been halted temporarily due to either a) the interview running too long, or b) Stewart pummeling Cramer's ass too damn much!  It will return after the commercials!

11:24 -- "What is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street?"  Stewart is landing punch after punch after punch....Cramer responds with....."We have interviews with people who haven't been telling the truth!" and "Have we made a lot of mistakes?  Absolutely!"  Uh oh, we're in the "made a lot of mistakes" territory!!

11:26 -- Stewart backs off from the assault by saying that Cramer had become the face of his own bloodied shame!

11:27 -- Stewart lands a devastating uppercut by suggesting that CNBC should cut back its "in Cramer we trust" motto, and The Daily Show will go back to making fart noises!

11:28 -- And THAT'S IT!  THAT'S IT!  The match has been stopped!  Jon Stewart has defeated Jim Cramer by TKO! (obliterated Cramer, more like)

11:29 -- Stewart kicks Cramer's battered body while it's down by showing a clip Jim Cramer on Martha Stewart's show as the Moment of Zen!

11:31 -- Even the match is over, the ass-kicking continues by countless Kos readers who are replaying Stewart's domination of Cramer in their brains!

11:33 -- This now begs the question....if 8 minutes of the interview were edited out, how much MORE was Jim Cramer's reputation bloodied up (that which we didn't see)?

11:35 -- The media has not seen this kind of argumentative ass-whoopage since Katie Couric defeated Sarah Palin's intellect and Stewart depanted Tucker Carlson!

11:40 -- Final score: Stewart, 348 punches to the kisser....Cramer, -14.

11:41 -- Well fans, that should wrap this up.  Stay tuned for the next installment of this incredible heavyweight series: "Jim Cramer Spends The Rest of His Life Eating Jon Stewart's Sh*t."

***********************

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

 First came the babies. Then came the fertility specialist, the Botox, the blogs, the 911 calls, the bewildered grandfather, the overwhelmed grandmother, the food stamps, the student loans, the TV interviews, the publicists, the new house.  And yes, now the parody...  (Can't this lady do anything one at a time!?!)

 

See "Can't Keep On Making More Babies" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbYhe-L3EDo

 

See more parodies at http://parodyandson.blogspot.com

I signed on to comment on someone else's post, but no one has talked about this yet.

Jon Stewart ripped Jim Cramer a new one on television tonight.  Cramer was on the verge of tears.  Wow.  I loved it, but I cringed the entire time (I know, I shouldn't have).  Stewart was not playing around, making nice or being cute this time.  This is the Stewart that hooked me on the Daily Show back in the fall of 2001.

What do you all make of this?

I'd say Jon Stewart should get the higest journalistic award of the land, but people like David Gregory end up getting those. And Jon doesn't deserve to be among those morons.

David Letterman didn't wait a minute or didn't waste a second in unraveling  Palin and Campaign suspension hoaxes before the election and now Jon Stewart held a mirror for CNBC and to the likes of Cramer and Santelli.

All I can say is true journalism is still alive but only in unexpected places.

 

I never thought I could be a bigger fan of Stewart. Bravo.

 

In place of another recursive exchange over a woman's right to choose, I am wondering how you might weigh in on this set of questions, fellow blog mates:

       To what extent is our right to choose being responsibly exercised by the generation of American women born after the seminal Roe v. Wade decision? 

        Is a woman's choice entirely, forever, or unimpeachably private?  Are there not individual, familial, or societal factors to be included in an intelligent matrix  for defining a socially responsible choice to abort? Put differently, what constitutes a responsible exercise of choice?  Have you or someone you know chosen to abort?  Knowing what you know now, would you/they still have done so?  What resources would you offer  to those considering abortion to better inform their decisions?

       To what degree is it a woman's responsibility to take conscious care that she does not conceive, given that she and her partner already know that they will not choose to raise a child at the present time -- or carry a baby to term?  Is adoption made viable when patients are counseled about their options? Should it be? What do men feel when abortion happens in their lives?

       I wonder if we might create a wise forum around  such questions, pooling our insights, research, and experience. Looking forward to your thoughts and feelings.

 

       Best, as ever,

       Tish

      

This bit of wisdom from Jack Welch.

Jack Welch, who is regarded as father of
the "shareholder value" movement, has said
the obsession with short-term profits and
share price gains that has dominated the
corporate world for over 20 years was "a
dumb idea".

In an interview for the Financial Times'
series on the future of capitalism, the
former General Electric (NYSE: GE - News)
chief said the emphasis by executives and
investors on shareholder value since he
spelt it out in a speech in 1981 was
misplaced.

Mr Welch, whose stellar record in his two
decades at GE helped make shareholder
value popular, said that it was wrong for
managers and investors to set consistent
earnings growth and steady share price
increases as their overarching goal.

"On the face of it, shareholder value is
the dumbest idea in the world," he said.
"Shareholder value is a result, not a
strategy...your main constituencies are
your employees, your customers and your
products."

Mr Welch spoke at the weekend, before
Thursday's news that GE, which he left in
2001, had been downgraded by Standard &
Poor's, losing the pristine triple A
rating it had held since 1956.

I'm...I'm...utterly speechless...Ya think ??? Now I'm no
business tycoon type by a long shot. But it seems to me
that if your products suck, your employees are pissed off
and the consumers want to cover you with syrup and lock
you in a greenhouse full of wasps - your company is not
in good shape no matter what the current stock price is.

Apparently this concept has not been grasped by corporate
America for quite some time. And seemingly Wall Street
has been equally clueless about this as well.

No wonder we are in the shape we currently are in.

C
 

by Erin Ferns

With an estimated 23 million 18-29 year old citizens turning out to vote in the 2008 presidential election, it is easy to assume that young people today have overcome the stereotypical image of "apathetic youth." Yet, while the last few election cycles show an ever-growing interest in political engagement, young people are still underrepresented in the U.S. electorate--a problem that seems to have more to do with lack of access than lack of interest.

Read more »

Politicoclimatologists are perplexed by the big cloud of stupid that continues to hold position over the Republican Party and are comparing it to the obvious problem of Global Warming.

Citizens can expect sudden flurries of inane claims; rapidly swirling low pressure credibility systems; thunderstorms of bigotry; each punctuated by shitstorms of unusual economic size.

"To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early 1990s..."

Looks like Bernie might have screwed 'em again. No 1992 fraud, no1992 SEC negligence, no big settlement. 

From the early '60s to the early '90s, Bernie legitimately never made a bad call. Or so he says.

Time will tell but I predict the Feds will treat the other Madoffs with kid gloves. Otherwise, Bernie's memory will suddenly improve and he will recall another warehouse full of old records that prove the fraud was ongoing for forty years, thereby giving the victims a strong basis to sue the government for not investigating him in 1992.  

A leveraged buyout, so to speak.

If the Madoff victims ever successfully sued the SEC,  the floodgates would be opened and the SEC would be tied up in litigation until the end of  time. The Madoff victims pose a much bigger threat than your average disgruntled fraud victim. They organize, apply political pressure and work the media. A fair number of them still have considerable resources.     

Bernie's testimony is literally worth billions of dollars. The SEC would be dead in the water if he ever got on the stand. Search the SEC website for "Madoff".  Bernie had his hand in any number of SEC decisons made at the expense of the ordinary investor and who knows who he has on the hook for shady trading.

Me, I'd like to know if Bernie knows who made big bucks offshore when the NYSE was closed for several days.

The guy is OCD and his storage facility in Astoria was filled with paperwork of some kind, something I read about just once and, as far as I know, has not been mentioned in the press again.  

Being a control freak, Bernie probably planned his own demise. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if negotiations had been ongoing before the aging drama queen confessed to his crimes in classic grade "b" fashion.

If nothing else, his family can accurately gauge their own fair value now that a market price has been established. Marked to market, as they say. 

That's my theory.

Seymore Hersh has reportedly said that:

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

"It's complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It's a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you've heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.

"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

"I've had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: 'What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don't get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee.?'

"But they're not gonna get before a committee."

I've always thought that the Bush administration was behind Yasser Arafat death.  I said it back then and I continue to believe it.  It was just to obvious that after years and years of the man being around, suddenly he gets sick and just up and dies.  What's your opinion?

I'm not saying this man didn't deserve to die, he did terrible things over the years; but we have a law saying no assassinations --- did we do this one?

In 2003, Arafat ceded his post as Prime Minister to Mahmoud Abbas amid pressures by the US. In 2004, President Bush dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner.

In September 2005, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that French experts could not determine the cause of Arafat's death.

Ashraf al-Kurdi, a personal physician of Arafat for twenty years who had also treated the Hashemite kings of Jordan, later declared that nothing in Arafat's medical report mentioned the existence of any infection.

I sure am glad that I don't have any Credit Cards.

During these tough economic times,
national credit card companies have
decided to make the lives of consumers
even tougher. Cardholders are receiving
junk-mail-looking letters in the mail
warning them of an interest rate hike
coupled with an "opt out" clause. The
interest rate increase is substantial. For
example a woman in Iowa reported an
increase from 13% to 25%, a Chase card
customer received notice her interest rate
would increase from 4.24% APR to 9.24% and
a Capital One cardholder with a current
interest rate of 5.37% has been told her
rate will increase to 13.9% on purchases
and 24.9% on cash advances.

The "opt out" portion of the notice makes
for an even more stressful decision. In
some cases, the cardholder will have to
pay off the balance of the credit card
within the 30 days and then close the
account.

Since credit card companies are targeting
customers with already low interest rates,
more than likely the cardholder won't go
anywhere.

Janes Brain of the Daily Kos, a victim of
this new scheme investigated further:

   1. They're raising the interest rate on
      my current balance & future payments
      to 22.85%.

   2. They're reducing my payment cycle to
      23 days.

   3. They're increasing the delinquency
      rate to 26.99%.

   4. If an account's finance charge is
      less than $1.00, they're increasing
      it to $1.00.

   5. Interest will now be compounded on a
      daily basis, rather than monthly.

   6. They may contact you using any
      number you've ever provided them and
      that includes being contacted by a
      pre-recorded voice, even if you are
      charged for the call under your
      phone plan.

Yep..real sweat hearts, every one. Just because the default
rate is rising, the economy is in the toilet and about to be
flushed - no reason not to sock it to the consumer.

C