Like Her or Hate Her.....

Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) does get it.

Which is nice.

These are the sort of words we should be hearing right now:

We’re never going to decrease the deficit until we create jobs, bring revenue into the Treasury, stimulate the economy so we have growth. We have to shed any weakness that anybody may have about not wanting to be confrontational on this subject for fear that we’d be labeled not sensitive to the deficit. … The American people have an anger about the growth of the deficit because they’re not getting anything for it. … So if somebody has the idea that the percentage of GDP of what or national debt is will go up a bit, but they will now — and their neighbors and their children — will have jobs, I think they could absorb that. … If we pull our punch, as they did in the mid-30’s, we shouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself.

When unemployment starts coming down, then pull you foot off the gas.

-Cheers

It is hard to have a public debate....

...On issues when this is the sort of "informed" opposition you are interacting with.


The interviewer is far more reserved then I would have been. Know-Nothings proud as pie of their know-nothingness.....

Maybe it should give you pause if you can not articulate the policies of a preferred candidate. No it is not rocket science, but it is complex. You simply wanting a thing to be simple does not make it so.

-Cheers

New Levels....

I know this will sound naive, but it just dawned on me, that in mass the base of the Republican party only believes in the Constitution and government when they are in charge. But more importantly, they firmly believe there political opponents are evil.

If you have a different opinion from them, you are a traitor, socialist, Hitler loving Marxist. This is arguably, the most depressing thought I have had in a while. There is a significant portion of the population, that believes, firmly and completely, that I am not a "true" American because I do not agree with them. They are completely and incorruptibly right and virtuous. While my views are not only wrong, but evil.

I was blissfully unaware of this. Now I know and now I shall act accordingly. If you want to believe "birther", "tenther", "young earth" crap, you have officially been given notice, that my assault on your fallacious beliefs will be directly proportional to the fervor with which you believe them.

So if someone is foolish enough to ask me why I think Sarah Palin is a horrible for this country. I will simply tell them that she is a buffoon. She has shown, not one ounce of deep knowledge on any subject and yet you celebrate her for that. She is a being of pure ambition and limited logic. So yeah, I think she and those who support her are incapable of being good stewards of my or my children's future.

I am completely okay with the notion of disagreeing with someone on issues. But they must at least have an opinion that they can clearly articulate. If they can not. If they just mouth and regurgitate sound bites, then I have no time for them.

What the world needs now is thinkers and innovators, not demagogues.

-Cheers.

-----Edit Jon Stewart beats me to the punch.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Weekend Round-Up

Back to the grind. Good weekend, got to hang out with a nice group of people this weekend. Leigh was in town, though sadly with out her lovely husband Louis! Got to hang with my boys Mike and Tyler. Scuba was a fine host and hosted a fun party. The vets represented. Echo rocked on the beer pong table. DMB did me a solid and danced up a storm.

Went to a stellar event at Seven Saints. They hosted one of the owners of North Shore Distillery.
It was quite informative and we tried many interesting beverages. It may have spawned the creation of a new drink (thanks Julia for the input).

Now on to the other stuff.

Two articles this morning caught my eye.

Those who know me know how this sort of thing irks me. I definitely do not want someone who shows such a disdain for science to ever have their hands on any levers of power.

And another religiously-tinged article about PTSD and its treatment or lack thereof.

Now I can get my week started right! Nice and angry. :-)

-Cheers

My new favorite site!

There are entertaining sites, and then there are entertaining sites.

This is a one man crusade (actually I think it is two dudes) to crush the duckface picture phenomena.

Don't know what a "duckface" is? Well...just take a look on over there and you will get the
information that you need.

Stop Making that duckface!

-Cheers

Party like its 1937!

I hope that this is not something that the administration is planning.

White House Aims to Cut Deficit with TARP Cash

Literally it is the most stupid thing I have heard in some time. It is like people refuse to learn the lessons that history teaches us.

Reminder FDR listened to those who were clamoring for "deficit reduction" and that plunged the US back into depression.

I make this simple statement ignore the budget hawks for now. Do what we must to repair the economy and get job growth positive. I guarantee the public will not say a fucking word about the deficit if that happens.

-Cheers

The two articles you should read

If Democrats/liberals/progressives read one article this year, it should be this one by Tim Ferholz at the American Prospect.

Basically Mr. Ferholz takes on Peter Bienart over the direction a "big tent" coalition should take. Mr. Bienart makes the case for smart centrists policies to prolong the large majority. I tend to agree with Mr. Ferholz when he says (emphasis added mine):

Believers in the Big Tent, like Peter and myself, have to be very careful about the compromises they make. If you lose track of what the point of politics is -- what you leave behind -- then you risk betraying the entire progressive agenda. If Peter thinks today's progressives should choose economic issues over other ones, he should make that case explicitly. But he shouldn't pretend that it's a normatively good choice. There's going to come a time when this Democratic majority has the chance to do something so big and important that it will destroy itself by alienating its conservative and moderate members. Maybe it will be gay marriage, maybe it will be the Freedom of Choice Act, who knows. I hope the leadership at the time has the principles and the guts to pass the law and blow up their majority. That's what it's there for, after all.

This is by definition what leadership means. Sometimes you will pay a price for your decisions. Even if they make for a better society in the long run, there are always consequences in the short. Accepting that, and being thoughtful yet bold are what those moments are made for.

And secondly, if you have not seen it. There is a snowball that survived a little longer in Hell today. Sean Hannity apologized to Jon Stewart last night about this piece that run on the Daily Show the other night. And here is a nice summation of what Stewart actually did by Will Bunch, and why it is so embarrassing for the mainstream media organizations.

One final article for the science oriented of you out there.

-Cheers

Random Musings

So I have been going back and forth on a couple different ideas for posts recently. Not really making much headway on any of them at the moment. A lot of complaining with little to no solutions.

But for the sake of brevity these are some good articles on topics of the day:

• The Cost of Doing Nothing (health care)
• Two great articles on how dysfunctional our bicameral system is today. Here and here.
• Every piece of news is always good news for conservatives/republicans.
• Excellent Quote from the CBO
• A good set of predictions about the next 4 years
  

I have said it many times before, but what I find most troubling about any public debate is that lack of any real discussion on the merits of the program or policy. It is always discussed under strictly ideological terms. The process is what matters. The question is always "What can pass?", and never "Is this any good?" or "Does this accomplish what we need it to.".

Compromise is always the order of the day. Bipartisan is the cry. Even though you are dealing with a minority party that has offered very little in the way of solutions, and has not given even one vote if those solutions are included. That is not compromise. That is capitulation.

Also moderation, centrism and bipartisanship have become fetishized. Even moderation, needs to be done in moderation. Sometimes there is no viable middle ground. If you build only half a bridge, all you have is a useless structure. It can not even perform the job it was ostensibly built for.

Sometimes you need bold and radical decisions and actions. But the other truth is you will never have unanimous support. Someone will always object to what you are doing. Whether there is merit or not to the criticism ( see death panels, and tea parties).

That is the world we live in now. If democrats in congress and Washington are wondering why they are seeing their support slip and the enthusiasm gap widen. They have only look at their own craven actions. From the President on down, they have yet to lead.

Now I am not expecting sweeping transformation to have happened over night. But accomplish something. The stimulus was too small. Why? Because a few centrist Senators, needed to exact their pound of flesh. So they could be seen as deficit conscious, and budget hawks. Where those cuts necessary? Did they make any sense at all? Who knows. Nobody asked, why these cuts needed to be made. And more importantly, nobody has gone back and asked them, "Since you requested to have those funds to help states meet budget shortfalls removed from the stimulus package x number of state employees have joined the ranks of the unemployed. Why again was it so necessary to cut that funding?

Basically failing to address the largest financial disaster since the Great Depression is better then possibly over compensating for it and saving a few more jobs of this countries citizens.

All I can say is I am glad that I do not live in Nebraska, Maine, or Arkansas. Ben Nelson (D-NE) in particular should be singled out for absolutely mind-numbing idiocy on these issues.

At some point someone needs to explain to me why "liberal" is such a bad thing. I mean other then the standard "I hate dirty fuckin' hippies", of course.


So much for brevity or coherence.....
-Cheers

One and done....

Got a couple of posts percolating in my brain, but I read the most interesting take down of new book "Superfreakonimics".

Now there are many facets to this argument. But I must say Elizabeth Kolbert has perhaps the best one. With this passage standing out:

But what’s most troubling about “SuperFreakonomics” isn’t the authors’ many blunders; it’s the whole spirit of the enterprise. Though climate change is a grave problem, Levitt and Dubner treat it mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are. Leaving aside the question of whether geoengineering, as it is known in scientific circles, is even possible—have you ever tried sending an eighteen-mile-long hose into the stratosphere?—their analysis is terrifyingly cavalier.

There are some other well thought out and thorough take downs here, here and here.

-Cheers

Weekend Round-Up

Pretty full weekend. So full in fact still recovering.

By and large it was pretty fun. I think there were some serious hangovers on Saturday, but it did provide me with the quote of the week: "You have to believe me. I am not wearing pants!".

I can both attest to the veracity to the preceding statement and the fact that the speaker did, indeed, lack pants.

Brian and Julia were wonderful hosts. Thanks to them for throwing a bang up party.

Movie night went well. A nice low key evening, the Zuppa Toscana turned out well. Possibly a bit too spicy for some, but I thought the heat complemented the creaminess of the stock. Ideally a wonderful hearty soup for a fall day. It was 70 degrees outside not quite what I had in mind.

Well I should be back to posting about health care and general politics tomorrow. Lots of developments over the weekend.

-Cheers

Yeah...I know about Rule # 2...

Or as I like to affectionately refer to it, the "Katy Rule" (from the infamous 'Roman's Rules').

Rule #2:

And lo it was said, "One should never begin a thought with the phrase, 'Where are my pants....'. Nothing good shall ever follow.".

However statistical analysis, the form of a Venn diagram, may be a dispositive to this time honored rule.


-Cheers

Meet the new boss...same as the old

So it is no secret that I have a thing about torture and its practice in these United States. To say that I pay attention to the cases involving alleged torture of detainees or laws with circumvent or abridge civil liberties would probably be an understatement.

That all being said I have to look on this development, brought to us by Glenn Greenwald, as an amazing disappointment.

Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39). In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

We tortured an innocent man, and we will not even admit it. The president promised a better policy, where these sorts of things did not happen. But more importantly, he promised a country in which people were accountable for their actions. This was breaking the law. Those involved should face some punishment and the individual deserves some redress or at the very least the chance to confront his captures in court.

To deny him that, is a denial of our most fundamental values. The very values that this country was found on. The very values that the current occupant of the White House campaigned on and was swept into office on.

I understand that governing is hard, and that the world is dangerous. But when you succumb to this sort of barbarism you are no better then terrorists you vilify.

It is not necessary to act in this way. Hell Canada gave a good example of how you actually handle this.

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation. That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded"categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada."

You want to change how we are perceived worldwide. Own up to what we did.

-Cheers

Compelling Posts....

Today I read two posts that I felt were pretty compelling and show the absolute dearth of substantive discussion going on today.

The first was posted by Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic. With this extremely introspective line in the opening paragraph:

Truth is that compared to the other economic problems we face, debt isn't much of a problem. But -- and this was the point I was trying to make -- it's become a problem because political elites have willed it to be a problem (and Americans seem to agree.)

From there it just got more interesting. With commentary by real economists! Discussing real policy implications and prescriptions! Not overly obsessed with process.

Next up we have Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, once again doing a yeoman's work on health care.

He puts the lack of real dialog on costs, in stark contrast with just a few graphs:


Again why do we let pundits dictate what the relevant parts of our debates should be?

-Cheers

Most intimidating cover ever.....

That man just scares the bejeezus out of me.....

-Cheers

Franken Amendment redux

Evidently one of Senator David Vitter's (R-La) constituents, was not pleased about his vote on the Franken amendment. So she confronted him on the issue.

I happened to find his answers less then compelling.



Personally I feel every "no" vote on this amendment should be explained. I would like members who side with the views of corporations over the right of due process for constituents, to have to explain themselves.

-Cheers

Word of the Day

Today's word is brought to us via an analysis of the differences in the democratic and republican caucuses. Why there seems to be more unity and uniformity in one caucus as opposed to the the other is of interest during these tumultuous debates over health care.

Variegated

–adjective

1.	varied in appearance or color; marked with patches or spots of different colors.

2.	varied; diversified; diverse.

---

And it is easier to build consensus around a “nothing” menu of 1 than it is for a more variegated menu of limitless options of “something.”

-Cheers