Climate Change

Here on the east coast, we're just coming out of a tough winter.  And of course, some folks have had lots of fun ridiculing Al Gore because of it. (the guy practically invites abuse - it would be rude to deny him)  Anyway, aside from the Politics of Schtoopid, there's an attitude here that seems to get people thinking a) whatever is happening here is happening everywhere; and b) whatever is happening here is all that matters, because the East Coast of the USA is the center of the universe and everybody secretly wishes they were us.

In the meantime, some interesting things were actually taking place up there in Canuckistan.  Here's that story.

Smartly Sexy

If there's anything hotter than a smart chick being smart, it hasn't been discovered yet. Wouldn't it be nice if we got this kind of programming on TV instead of crap like Judge Judy and Jersey Shore?

God And Country

The 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco says the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is OK because it's a patriotic thing and not a religious thing.  Fine.  But the ruling itself is a nice bit of hair-splitting - aimed at mollifying both sides rather than trying to get to a point of Settled Law - and so it's mostly bullshit.

I'm conservative, so I think first and foremost, that there's no way I'm going to hold myself liable to taking a Loyalty Oath.

Second, even if I go along with this crap, I much prefer the original.

Third, I have no allegiance for bed sheets or underwear or upholstery, so I intend never to pledge my allegiance to a flag.  The ideal itself is what's important - not the symbol.

Finally, if I ever feel the need, I'll recite my own version:
"I pledge allegiance to The United States of America. One nation; indivisible; with liberty and justice for all."

The Cost Of "Living"

"Healthcare Reform" right now is all about "reforming" the way we do the insurance part of it.  I've been thinking the process has to deal with 2 main parts - the cost of insurance, and the cost of care itself.  Now I think we're looking at breaking it down a little further and directing the effort first at getting as many people covered as possible, and then taking another look at what it all costs so we can start trying to figure out ways to push down on those costs.

Here's a look at what's been happening to the premiums we pay if we get insurance thru our employers:

Quote For The Day

The Mustache of Understanding gets one right.

“Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”  Tom Friedman - NYT

Today's Campaign Poster

God Love The Onion

The Movie Of Movies

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

Ahh - Now I Get It

I've had a nagging suspicion for a while now that we weren't seeing quite the whole picture of how our economy was changing over the last 15-20 years.  Turns out it's mostly because we haven't been measuring (or reporting) things like Productivity very well.  And actually, you could make a decent case that while our fearless leaders have known about this all along, they've steadfastly refused to explain it to us clearly - instead, we just get the usual happy-talk about how great everything is and if you're not able to participate, then you must be doing something wrong.

Above all, if offshoring has been driving much of our supposed productivity gains, then the case for complete free trade begins to erode. If often such policies simply increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers, with no gains in true productivity, then they don’t necessarily strengthen the national economy.

The Op-Ed piece homes in on the disconnect between stagnating wages and the big increase in productivity that we keep hearing is supposed to drive up a worker's earnings.

Read it here.

Hold The Testosterone Please

Mike Mullen continues to say things that could prove dangerous to his career and reputation.

First, he criticized DADT a while back - right there in front of a Senate committee and everything - and now this.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday evening that there are limits to American military power and diplomatic efforts must be just as important if not more so. But despite recognition of this, the military has become the default for American foreign policy.

Limits to our power!?!  Diplomacy!?!  How long before the wingnuts start to go after Mullen and his boss, Bob Gates for being appeasers, and soft on terrorism?  Also, I'm guessing that once the campaign against them starts, whenever Limbaugh or Cluster Fox refers to either of them, they'll be identified as "Obama's".  ie: Obama's Sec'y of Defense Bob Gates...or Obama's top military adviser Adm Mullen.  That way, the rubes can conveniently ignore the facts and concentrate on misspelling their protest signs. 

Taibbi On Healthcare Reform

As much as Obamacare sucks, though, the alternative is even worse. For one thing, the defeat of Obama's health care initiative would set a decisive precedent: that even a transcendently popular new president armed with a congressional supermonopoly is forbidden to so much as put a regulatory finger on an organized, politically connected industry. For another thing, Obama's pukish bungling of health care may achieve what previously seemed impossible: exhuming the syphilitic corpse of George W. Bush's Republican Party, and, shit, who knows, maybe eight years of President Sarah Palin.

Read it all here.

Bring The Stupid

Yeah, it's a cheap shot.  Guess what?  Don't care.

Crock Of The Week

"Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves" -Richard Feynman

A Free Market Economy

One of the problems with any "system" is that when we see something that works for some things, we assume (even insist) that it'll work for everything.

High Country News has a good piece on the unintended consequences of our reliance on Private Sector solutions to certain Law Enforcement and Public Health problems.

The drug industry is the second-largest source of foreign currency in Mexico, just behind oil. It earns somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion a year -- no one really knows, including the people in the industry. It also creates enormous numbers of jobs in the U.S.: We spend billions a year on narcs, maintain the world's largest prison industry, which is absolutely dependent on the intake of drug felons, and we have about 20,000 agents on the border who feed off drug importation. The rehab industry is also a source of a large number of jobs since many well-heeled defendants pick mandatory treatment over prison. Many county and local police departments now get fat off of RICO suits based on drug offenses.

Once we made it profitable for some people to fight "The War On Drugs", it didn't take long for them to figure out that it's not in their best interests to win it.

Ten Years Of Hell

Read this from Nieman Watchdog.

Despite catastrophic events, it is folly to expect the suffering of millions and an onslaught of inconsistent facts to wipe out an economic theory whose tenets were and still are so convenient for so many powerful economic interests. At present the defenders of the efficient market hypothesis are engaged in trying to pin the cause of the financial crisis on the government. (If the financial crisis was the result of government policies, then one could still plausibly claim the market to be rational, efficient, etc.) Their targets include the mortgage practices of the quasi-government lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the low interest rates of the Federal Reserve, and a pessimistic speech by President George W. Bush. The problem with this “blame-the-government” approach is the disproportion between these purported causes and economic effects. As Paul Krugman noted,

“[N]one of the proposed evil deeds of policy makers were remotely large enough to cause problems of this magnitude unless markets vastly overreacted. That is, you have to start by assuming wildly dysfunctional markets before you can blame the government for the crisis; and if markets are that dysfunctional, who needs the government to create a mess?”