We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Before a federal tax on Christmas trees, why not a special tax on Thanksgiving turkeys first, then we can get to taxing the trees. By the way, CO2 makes Christmas trees grow faster and thicker, so how about a subsidy for CO2 production? Just a thought for the highly-educated geniuses in Washington.
First off, I've found an excellent site with all of the upcoming debate dates and videos of the past debates here.
As I see it, there are a three aspects to these political debates that, in general, the pundits out there either don't get, or refuse to acknowledge because it would devalue their article. Or, in some cases, negate the need for the article altogether.
The first is not recognizing that debates have procedures, no matter what the topic or venue. For example, if an opponent has used up his allotted time barking at you and continues to do so, the proper procedure is to address the moderator, not get into a cat fight with the asswipe breaking the rules, thereby breaking them yourself.
Here's Charles Krauthammer after the last debate, when Perry went bananas on poor Romney's ass:
Worse, Romney turned to the referee — moderator Anderson Cooper — with a plaintive "Anderson?" seeking intervention. An uncharacteristically weak moment.
That is precisely incorrect, and I saw this evaluation a lot after the debate. There are protocols in place for almost any endeavor where people get together, be it school board meetings, town hall meetings, the Rotary Club, the local kids' treehouse, you name it, and political debates are no different.
We tend to throw the words 'moron' and 'imbecile' around a lot in the blogosphere, but I believe the correct word in this case is ignoramus.
And then there's this from candidate Jon Huntsman, who sat out the debate:
"I was totally embarrassed -- completely embarrassed by the lack of seriousness, the lack of focus on the issues that really matter to the American people -- issues about reviving our economy and addressing joblessness were given short shrift," said the former Utah governor.
Sounds mighty powerful and caring and candidate-y, doesn't it? Well, Jon, here's the thing:
The candidates don't get to pick the topics!
I've seen the whiny "But they're not talking about the important stuff!" all over the place, including the comments here. Either these people have no business behind a keyboard, or they're purposefully glossing over the obvious so they'll have something to bitch about. As the renown TigerHawk says, can you think of a third alternative?
(As a small side note, I often use Tige's great question when reading an AGW article. I think at the time, either this moron actually believes this tripe, or he's lying through his teeth for a greater purpose, most likely his wallet. Can you think of a third alternative?)
And the worst of all is the dispiriting tenor of the bloggers. "Oh, Crap, Another Debate" blares Hot Air. "What A Snoozer!" screams PJ Media. It's been getting worse and worse as the debates roll by. This will sound absolutely ludicrous, but I'm the only blogger I see who's remaining excited about them and trying to keep our collective spirits up. Yes, I excoriate the candidates mercilessly at times, but I'm also quick to pass along kudos when I feel they're deserved. I crack jokes, I point out that Michele looks particularly hot tonight, I keep us in tune with the audience's reactions, like who got the first big applause, who got the biggest applause, and which candidate is the only one to get soundly booed so far (I wouldn't want to mention any names, but his initials are R.O.N. P.A.U.L.), all in the hopes of inspiring people to stay involved and upbeat.
Everybody else acts like watching and reporting on them is a chore.
The point is, with people being distracted by Thanksgiving and Xmas, the next few months are going to fly by and the primary elections will be upon us. After four months of steadily-increasing ennui, do the bloggers expect everyone to suddenly catch fire at the last minute just because they tell them to, or will the momentum that builds from apathy be too strong?
And, will it be too late?
As for tonight's debate, the subject is economics. Stand by for a bunch of complaints tomorrow from various pundits and commenters whining, "But they didn't talk about the important stuff!"
The debate will focus exclusively on the nation's economic challenges including the national debt, jobs and taxes.
Seriously, is it possible for them to be any clearer?
Game time is 8 pm EST, CNBC. The assholes aren't streaming it, so I'll miss it.
As a small side note, I've been pushing for Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin for the V.P. slot since the beginning. Add this to the reasons why.
Actually, what would be great would be for Rice University’s Baker Institute to invite me to be a visiting professor for a semester, and teach an interdisciplinary (the kinds of fields Nourbakhsh identifies, plus law and law-and-economics) version of this for non-STEM students, a version for STEM students, and then a separate course on military robotics — strategy and policy, law, and ethics (UAVs, other battlefield robotics, targeted killing and the future of covert action using robotic and remote-directed systems, and the future of autonomous systems and autonomous weapons systems.
I don't care about income inequality. I care about the absolute condition of the poor--whether they are hungry, cold, and sick. But I do not care about the gap between their incomes, and those of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Nor the ratio of Gates and Buffett's incomes to mine. And I'm not sure why anyone should. Other than pure envy, it's hard to see how I could somehow be made worse off if Bill Gates' income suddenly doubled, but everything else remained the same.
But while I do not care about gaps and ratios, I do care about opportunity.
Easist way to reduce income inequality is to tax the top 10% to the point that they decide that working hard just isn't worth it. Easiest way to reduce asset inequality is to tax property and assets until people give up on owning anything or saving any money.
Big Labor’s victory over John Kasich’s reforms in Ohio is a reminder to conservatives that we’re still a long way from closing the deal. A majority of the citizenry seem to agree that the nation’s mired and that their homes and jobs and futures are sinking with it. But that same majority is not yet sold on transformative rollbacks of government and the public sector. They seem to think that out there somewhere there’s a way to get the good times back that’s more or less pain-free. More fool them – which is to say Obama & Co will have a pretty good shot at fooling them.
This afternoon I had lunch and a stroll along the ocean with a new friend, Jonathan Spyer. We struck it off immediately when he said the only organization he ever joined which he promised to obey was the Israel Defense Force. This mirrored my experience in joining the US Marine Corps. Our normally rebellious spirits matched.
Spyer was in San Diego to speak about his new book, The Transforming Fire: The Rise Of The Israel-Islamist Conflict. I’d read some reviews before, all laudatory, from the left-leaning Haaretz to the right-leaning Weekly Standard. After reading the book and talking with Spyer, although the focus is on what Israel faces and the book doesn’t delve deeply into US or European foreign policy, the book could have just as easily been sub-titled The Rise of the Western-Islamist Conflict But What Israel Realizes And The West Doesn’t.
Spyer’s motivation for writing the book was being blown out of the tank he was driving in the 2006 war in Lebanon, a draw that was poorly prepared for, poorly conceived, poorly executed but required the utmost – which was given – of soldiers on the ground. Spyer wanted to explore in depth what Israel is facing. Again we clicked, I having similar motivation after my tours in Vietnam.
Spyer brings to his book much more than being a frontline soldier, or his travels throughout the Middle East, or his fascinating return to Lebanon after the 2006 war. British-born Spyer has a PhD in Middle East politics from the London School of Economics, and served in the Israel Prime Minister’s Office. What makes his book interesting and not dry is his weaving of his personal experiences and observations into his learned descriptions of Middle East Politics.
At lunch, Spyer acknowledged that the current state of affairs in the Middle East is more negative than when he wrote the book. The “Arab Spring” unleashed violent animus toward Israel that is encouraged and supported by Iran, toppling formerly controlling, hostile but more benign toward Israel rulers in Egypt and Tunisia. Iran seeks to align a bloc with Hamas in control of Gaza, Hezbollah in control of Lebanon, and Syria as a client state of Iran as a funnel of training, arms and missiles to Hamas and Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia is comparatively weaker, as are Sunnis right now, but struggling to counter Iran’s Shia influence. For now, Iraq is slipping into Iran’s orbit, largely due to Iran’s cat’s paw there, Muqtada al-Sadr’s influence on the dominant Shia coalition in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the US is withdrawing from its former predominance in the Middle East, and Europe continues pursuing its mostly economic interests there.
That leaves Israel with the question of how to survive. Among militant Islamists is the illusion that Israel is ultimately doomed due to its smaller population and adherence to values and institutions less militant than theirs. On the contrary, Spyer points out, Israel is relatively militarily and financially stronger than ever. More important, Israel’s population has largely moved past its former Ashkenazic and Sephardic divisions, or its left-right divisions, and through common experience with failed hopes and ruthless adversaries molded a more united and nationalistic leadership and purpose. Remnants of the old left are still common in academia and media but depend on the attention they are granted by Western media although their internal influence is otherwise negligible.
Longer term, Spyer is optimistic. As Spyer ends his book, and still believes:
In all these areas, the challenges are immense. Nevertheless, eventual success is likely. Iran and its allies suffer from the fundamental problem that they cannot produce societies in which people want to live. Rather, they create immensely repressive internal arrangements, coupled with and endless repeat of acts of military theater, which then brings down retribution and suffering on the populations they control. The anger and sense of humiliation that they are focusing on is real. But once it becomes clear that they are not in fact able to bring the victory, they are likely to decline.
In the meantime, Israel must strike hard when necessary. Otherwise, patience is needed in the Middle East cold war with Islamists. Israel may pay harsh prices along the way, but an Iran-led Islamist encirclement will erode first. I’m reminded of our protracted conflict with the Soviet Union and all’s surprise when its walls fell.
What will follow, I asked Spyer. Most likely some sort of military-commercial elite regimes, like before, still hostile toward Israel and the West, still mired in backwardness, but a lesser threat to Israel. The transforming fire is a crucible in which weaknesses are revealed and the product strengthened. The ultimately stronger is Israel’s abilities and resolve based on Western values that too many in the West have abandoned.
I have had a few interesting experiences with my patients and bill paying over the past few weeks.The business aspect of my practice is usually routine and unremarkable, but these stood out:
1. Phone message from a wealthy law firm partner one hour before his initial consultation: "Dr. Bliss, I just found out that you are not on my insurance so I decided not to come in."
(I threw a fit.)
2. An email from a college student patient with no money who I have seen on a charity basis "Dr. Bliss, my Dad" (who is unemployed) "and I were talking, and decided that we need to pay you something for the phone time and emails to adjust my medicine while I'm away at school. Please calculate something and put it on my account."
(I explained that I do not charge for brief phone calls or emails.)
3. Patient in the office "Dr. Bliss, you made a mistake on last month's bill." "Oh I did. I'm sorry." "Yes, it's the second time in two years when you undercharged me. Please correct it."
(I was naturally pleased by her honesty.)
4. Patient in the office: "My husband nickels and dimes me about every expense for the kids, and last week he went out and paid cash for a new Escalade for himself." "Did he?" I replied, "That's funny, because he told me on the phone that you all had no cash and asked that I give you a discount for a while." "Oh yes," she said. "I'm not surprised. His rule is 'Only suckers pay retail.'"
(I told her that as of today, it will be the full original fee because I was not pleased being one of his suckers.)
5. Business guy: "Doctor, will you take a discount for cash?"
("No. I happen to be one of those people who reports all of my income.")
A teacher put a sample of her 6th Grade summary math exam online, here.
I had forgotten what sorts of things 6th Grade math entailed, but found that I did not forget any that basic stuff because one keeps using it in daily life. 6th Grade math is fun math, no abstractions at all.
David, I am sorry to inform you that Americans have no interest in being ruled by our betters. We just don't believe they are better, and have little evidence for it since after the founders.
William F. Buckley Jr:
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles."
Full Civic Literacy ExamAre you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better?
Sowell on income inequality: Young people make less money than more experienced people, single-parent households have less income than two parent households. So what?
It's about greed and the Blue Food Bowl. The middle class of America is increasingly dependent on government money, directly or indirectly, rather than on private industry - and the financial industry is in with the whole program. There are good reasons for the financial industry to be almost entirely Democratic and in political alliance with the government food bowl.
What all three groups share is a burning desire for more: a hunger and demand for ever larger amounts of government revenue and power. Money and power for the government enable the upper middle class good government types to dream up new schemes to help us all live better lives and give government the resources for the various social, ecological and cultural transformations on the ever-expandable goo-goo to-do list that range from a global carbon tax to fair trade coffee cooperatives and the war on saturated fat. All these programs (some useful in the Via Meadia view, others much less so) require a transfer of funds and authority from society at large to well-socialized, well-credentialed and well-intentioned upper middle class types who get six figure salaries to make sure the rest of us behave in accordance with their rapidly evolving notions of correct behavior.
That is, in accordance with our betters.
and
The cops, the teachers, the firefighters, the sanitation and transit workers: these are most of what remains of the backbone of what used to be the organized working class. Many who don’t work directly for the government work for the health care industry, where government and private insurance payments have kept the blue model alive for employees. Others work for infrastructure and construction companies – much of whose business comes from government. Their ranks were once swelled by reasonably well-paid manufacturing workers and other private employees in what was once a job-rich metropolitan environment. A few private bastions of the middle middle class remain (workers in the cooperative buildings where the überrich live, for example), but these days the purely private sector middle middle class is in full scale retreat in cities like New York and public and quasi-public sector employees take the lead.
This group doesn’t get paid as well or enjoy the prestige of the goo-goos, but they have built structures and institutions that secure them a middle-middle class existence. In the public sector at least they have done surprisingly well at passing their jobs and connections down to future generations. As the urban middle middle class shifted from a largely private sector group to a group primarily dependent on public sector spending and jobs, the political balance also changed. Like the goo-goos, the urban middle middle class needs more revenue from the rest of society: people in this group want the number of jobs in their institutions to grow and naturally enough they want to be better compensated: more take-home pay, better benefits, a younger retirement age with a more generous pension.
and
Threats to the food bowl both unite and divide the Party of Blue. All of them agree that federal revenues should be higher and that much of that money should flow to the cities and states. This preference helps hold the Democratic Party together and – combined with other groups (like big agriculture) that get fat subsidies – helps the Party stay competitive at the national level.
But when cuts must be made, or when limited resources must be divvied up, the groups divide. The goo-goos are willing to cut middle class entitlements and government pensions to fund upper middle class social priorities. Which, they will argue, is more important: to pay (excessive, irrational) pensions to superannuated firemen and cops. or to build a pathbreaking carbon cap and trade system that could save the planet? They are ready to sell state unions down the river, as Democratic politicians ranging from California’s Jerry Brown to Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel to New York’s Andrew Cuomo are doing as I write. But they prefer a peaceful and gradual approach that does not reduce the Democratic Party to a state of civil war and can present themselves to the unions as a lesser evil than Republican red staters who want to kill the unions altogether.
Government employees have a simpler point of view: they want the money and they want it now. They want it without reforms and they want it while they continue to enjoy their traditional privileges and perks.
It's not a Big Tent, it's a giant food bowl provided by a shrinking base of taxpayers. See Greece...
This was such a rare, wonderful event that I thought I'd bump this back to the top so you can get a flavor of what happened over the weekend. The video's available for watching.
Well, that was different.
Imagine, if you dare, two fierce competitors vying for the nomination fighting it out eye-to-eye in yet another political bloodletting on national television.
Over the next hour and a half, the following harrowing events occur:
— When the candidates are asked a new question, they decide between them who should answer first.
— The candidates are welcome to talk as long as they want. When the other wants a turn, he wags a finger and the floor is turned over to him when the next conclusion is reached.
— At one point, a candidate answered a question for about three minutes, then the other candidate talked for about three minutes, then the first candidate apologized and said he hadn't really stated his answer very well the first time, so he took another three minutes, resulting in a much better, clearer answer.
— When the candidates were invited to ask the other a biting, crippling question that would put their opponent's greatest weakness on display, one candidate referred to the other's extensive business background as a CEO and asked him what advice he'd pass along to the current crop of CEOs. Then that candidate referred to the first candidate's extensive political background and asked him what three things had he learned looking at the system from the outside.
— One of the candidates told a lengthy joke and everyone had a really good laugh.
— While they didn't wish to appear rude, it was clear that they didn't want the members of the audience to break in with applause any more than they had to. After all, it is a small breach of etiquette to interrupt someone while they're talking, and thankfully the audience took this slight with good grace.
— Over the course of an hour and a half, these two big, warm, lovable guys who were nothing but smiles all evening long used the words "cheaters", "liars" and "crooks" about a thousand times. They didn't hold anything back. With both of them, it was like a given that every government institution is filled with X percent of the aforementioned cheaters, liars and crooks. They were merciless.
In brief, it's the old "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system" routine for radio & TV, albeit on a nationwide scale for the first time. The big dif is that the usual test lasts for a minute, whereas this is going to last for more than three.
Since I don't own a TV or have a radio handy, my only question is whether or not those loud emergency sirens are going to light off. We have a Coast Guard station not far from here and I presume they have one. After four articles, all I could come up with was this:
The test does not affect any planned tests of local outdoor warning siren systems or 911 callback systems.
Which doesn't really answer the question, in the sense that they could be planning on testing the sirens at the same time. You would think they'd want to, given the opportunity. But if they do light off those suckers, imagine the people who are unaware of the test and think it's just another 1-minute drill. And then it keeps going... and going. What a surprise when they suddenly conclude that there actually is a nuclear missile on the way.
Of course, if the Russians have planned their missile attack to coincide with the test (an insidiously clever plot, to be sure) and there really is a nuclear missile headed your way, simply do as we did in our school drills back in the 60's and crawl under your desk.
The lost Leonardo - London's National Gallery will exhibit 'Salvator Mundi' in a show of Leonardo da Vinci. The painting has attributes suggesting it's of the period, and experts have weighed in positively.
The big college scam - It's bad enough; the president's loan initiative will make it that much worse
"If it was a kill mission you don't need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades," he added, explaining they were forced to shoot Bin Laden as he reached for his AK-47.
...the chairman of the supervisory board of China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, put further distance between China and the eurozone bail-out, saying that Europe’s bloated welfare state meant that people did not work hard enough.
“I think if you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of their worn out welfare societies,” Jin Liqun said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. “I think the labour laws are outdated – the labour laws induce sloth, indolence rather than hard working. The incentive system is totally out of whack.”
Eurozone leaders had been hoping that China would use some of its trade surplus to back the bail-out fund.
“I don’t know what I am going to do!” said Katchpole, a freelance account manager at a political consulting firm called Winning Over Washington. (Its main client is the progressive group MoveOn.org.) “I am going to have to defer my loans. I have no idea. Why should I be expected to pay them off now? Why are colleges charging interest on that stuff? Give us a break. Really.”
She is infantile. Purchases a service, but doesn't want to pay for it. Borrows money, but doesn't want to pay it back. Boo hoo.
Good grief. 44% of NY residents support these smelly low-life losers, bums, perverts, slackers, paranoids, anthropology majors, commie wannabes, community organizers, and potheads? I don't believe it.
An RCT is a "randomized controlled clinical trial."
We have discussed the scientific fallacy of "data mining" here in the past in which, instead of testing an hypothesis (aka the Scientific Method), the researcher simply asks the computer to find any correlations in the mountain of collected data. That is not science. This is typically done when a researcher has a mound of data which did not support his hypothesis. So as not to waste it, he asks the computer to find something else in it.
In any mountain of data, some correlations can be found if only by laws of randomness - see the legal hoax of so-called Cancer Clusters.
Often enough, when you read "Study says...", you are reading a report from data mining. Our readers know that a statistical correlation often - or usually - means nothing, but data-mining "information" is non-information. Generally speaking, newspaper reporters never passed Statistics 101. (I did, but found stats difficult to explain to innumerate juries who even get confused by basic algebra.)
Even medical professionals get taken by this growing technique. It's most common when secondary studies use the database from participants in a randomized controlled trial to look for correlations not to scientifically test a hypothesis, let alone one the original trial had been designed to fairly test. Carefully controlled clinical trials are concerned with causes and effective treatments. In contrast, multivariate analyses of large databases, with their statistical manipulations and regression computer modeling, are statistics. Statistics is about correlations. It's not biological research.
It's close to being the perfect food, containing pretty much all you need to survive. How the Potato Changed the World - Brought to Europe from the New World by Spanish explorers, the lowly potato gave rise to modern industrial agriculture.
What is "lowly" about the sacred Mashed Potato? asks I. We only grow the pre-mashed varieties at my house, genetically-modified to contain the butter, salt, and cream genes.
The premium varieties of potato, of course, come with a thick rare rib-eye on the side.
(It's remarkable to consider all of the things from the New World which changed the Old World: corn - maize, potato, tomato, syphilis, squash, etc.)
For those of you who, like me, are regular viewers of Newsbusters' Newsbusted videos (examples here) here's the Israeli counterpart, Tribal Update. Not as brief as Newsbusted, but as funny in poking holes in Israel leftist pretensions.
Buckley, If Not God, Returns to Yale-What the late, great controversialist would have said to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and today's conservative talking heads.
The newly formed Spokes Council claims to adhere to the “statement of principles” adopted by the New York City General Assembly, including “direct-democracy, non-hierarchy, participation, and inclusion.” The Spokes Council differs from the NYC-GA, however, in three main respects: the Spokes Council has the power to exclude new groups that don’t receive a 90% majority vote for admission; in the NYC-GA, everybody technically has the right to speak, whereas in the Spokes Council each Working Group has a spokesperson, who can be recalled only by a 90% majority; and the NYC-GA allows one vote per person, whereas the Spokes Council operates more indirectly, granting each Working Group one vote.
When I pointed out the contradictions these differences present to the Council’s stated principles, the leaders of Sunday’s teach-in insisted that the Spokes Council was the most participatory, democratic organization possible—the same slogan they repeated last month about the General Assembly. I felt like I was watching a local production of Animal Farm.
"I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. Throughout the day I'm constantly asking myself questions about what I'm doing, why I am doing it." --Barack Obama
Confusing an inner dialogue with speaking with God is never a wise plan
Today it's a powerful and majestic predator, which comes to mind because our friends who cover hawk migration in New Haven, CT, have seen a few of them passing through recently.
Lucky them. I have never seen a Golden Eagle in the Eastern US, but have seen them in the West, where they are not uncommon. Medium-sized mammals are their main prey, and the wide, open spaces are their dominion.
Picture by J. J. Audubon, as can be easily recognized by the awkward and un-lifelike pose of the animal. Audubon typically painted from dead specimens - he was a famous shot with a rifle, and he liked to get a good, close look at the animal he was painting.
If you haven't seen the movie Moneyball, then do. Jason and I had our Little League schedule interrupted by a rare rain in San Diego, so we went to see the film. It will rank as one of the top baseball films ever, the acting by Brad Pitt and all others excellent.
But, the movie is about much more than baseball, as is baseball itself. Jason and I discussed its lessons after, about deportment and courage in leadership, about relations among management and players in tough situations or conflict, about the practical uses of education, and so on.
One of the lessons isn't in the movie. The judo use of statistics by a team, the Oakland Athletics, far outspent by such rich teams as the Yankees, to find undervalued players was successful but once the success is shown, other teams adopted it. The niche was lost as many exploited it, which reduced its power by any one team. The traditional "art" of experience returned to the fore but adjusted by this innovation. That is, in a nutshell, the path of innovation, useful improvements that energize competition and up the play to everyone's benefit.
I know they want to tax the air, 
Have you heard about this?
10 Unbelievable Things the Chinese Believe
...get a dog.
It's close to being the perfect food, containing pretty much all you need to survive.
How New York City 
powerful and majestic predator, which comes to mind