Excellent piece on the assassination of abortion provider George Tiller
This person apologizes for her lack of eloquence in describing the kind of doctor that George Tiller was, but I think she did a great job
Kansas TV station 12 has the latest on the hunt for the killer
Speaking of ranting, raving hatemongers, George Miller, the highest-ranking Republican officeholder (Senate Minority Leader), refuses to condemn Rush Limbaugh, et al, who are making wild, hysterical claims about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee
Obviously, Miller is absolutely terrified to get on Rush's bad side.
People are suggesting that Sotomayor, as a member of the National Council of La Raza, is thereby a member of a hate group, akin to the Nazis and the KKK. Here's their side of the story
Rachel Maddow takes that talking point apart
Ed Rendell does not wish to see Joe Sestak run for Arlen Specter's seat
Oh, and I did a piece on different computer operating systems and how they interface with each other. Short answer - you can work with documents that are created on other operating systems, but you can't move programs that are designed for one operating system to another. You can work with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on Linux Ubuntu (add to it, delete from it, print it and save it), but you can't move the MS Excel program to Ubuntu.
The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar
2009/05/31
2009/05/30
Ubuntu vs Windows
As yer resident techno-geek, I spoke with a buddy of mine today and he was unclear as to the distinction between Microsoft and Linux operating systems. There are essentially three operating systems in use today, with many, many smaller, more specialized ones in use. They're Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu Linux and the whole Apple line.
Microsoft has two versions of Windows out today, the home version is XP, the business version is Vista. Linux has many, many versions, but the primary, flagship version is Ubuntu. Apple has some interoperability between itself and both of the other systems but essentially if you want an Apple computer, it's because you're working on projects that don't really need to interface with other systems, i.e., graphic design.
Do Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux interact?
We-l-l-l, that depends on what you mean by that. Can you install a Windows program like Frontpage or Powerpoint onto an Ubuntu operating system?
No.
Ubuntu comes with Open Office, which is very similar to Microsoft Office. Ubuntu has many other programs which are very similar, but no, you can't take a Windows program and install it onto Ubuntu.
Can you open up and use Windows documents, like a Powerpoint presentation on an Ubuntu operating system?
Yes.
There may be a problem with documents created via more complex programs, such as with graphic design or database programs, but straightforward word-processed documents or basic spreadsheets will have no difficulty being translated.
Creating HTML, or Internet-readable documents, is a bit of a special case. HTML was specifically designed to work on any and all operating systems. If you download or call up a document that's been written in HTML, then no matter what kind of operating system you've got, you should be able to read it. I use the program Mozilla Seamonkey to write HTML documents on both my Windows XP desktop computer and on my Ubuntu Linux laptop computer. The program comes in both "flavors," Windows and Linux, but the documents that I create don't need any obvious adaption procedures to be written on first one machine and then the other.
So yes, there's a high degree of interoperability between Windows and Linux operating systems, but they're not identical. There is a very high likelihood that a document written on one operating system is readable and writable in the other, especially if the document is written in HTML.
Update: a buddy of mine responded to reading the above: "Good job! But one question: why do you use Mozilla to create your documents rather than Microsoft Office Word ?" My answer:
When I do my weekly report for new visitors to my church, I do it first in Linux Open Office Spreadsheet, then I keep the original copy and create an exact duplicate in Microsoft Excel (as everybody else has MS Office). The OO sheet is about 10 kilobytes, the MS Excel sheet is over 100 kilobytes! The balance is all just excess code. Worthless filler. I've seen the same thing happen in MS Word vs Mozilla Seamonkey. This is a real problem for modifying a document on the web (Besides being harder to pull up or download, the prawnworks.net home page is about 150 kilobytes as it is) as I often go into the code to find and fix problems. Having so much filler just makes it more difficult.
I'm completely unimpressed with MS Word as when I copy an article and save it to read later, Word takes all the indents out! It doesn't copy the article in a way that I can distinguish the speaker from lengthy quotes. Very aggravating as the blogs I read very frequently use indenting.
Did I mention you shouldn't get me started on why I prefer OO to MS?
And my buddy then wrote back: "I promise I won't do this anymore!
:-))))))))))))))))))))))))
Microsoft has two versions of Windows out today, the home version is XP, the business version is Vista. Linux has many, many versions, but the primary, flagship version is Ubuntu. Apple has some interoperability between itself and both of the other systems but essentially if you want an Apple computer, it's because you're working on projects that don't really need to interface with other systems, i.e., graphic design.
Do Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux interact?
We-l-l-l, that depends on what you mean by that. Can you install a Windows program like Frontpage or Powerpoint onto an Ubuntu operating system?
No.
Ubuntu comes with Open Office, which is very similar to Microsoft Office. Ubuntu has many other programs which are very similar, but no, you can't take a Windows program and install it onto Ubuntu.
Can you open up and use Windows documents, like a Powerpoint presentation on an Ubuntu operating system?
Yes.
There may be a problem with documents created via more complex programs, such as with graphic design or database programs, but straightforward word-processed documents or basic spreadsheets will have no difficulty being translated.
Creating HTML, or Internet-readable documents, is a bit of a special case. HTML was specifically designed to work on any and all operating systems. If you download or call up a document that's been written in HTML, then no matter what kind of operating system you've got, you should be able to read it. I use the program Mozilla Seamonkey to write HTML documents on both my Windows XP desktop computer and on my Ubuntu Linux laptop computer. The program comes in both "flavors," Windows and Linux, but the documents that I create don't need any obvious adaption procedures to be written on first one machine and then the other.
So yes, there's a high degree of interoperability between Windows and Linux operating systems, but they're not identical. There is a very high likelihood that a document written on one operating system is readable and writable in the other, especially if the document is written in HTML.
Update: a buddy of mine responded to reading the above: "Good job! But one question: why do you use Mozilla to create your documents rather than Microsoft Office Word ?" My answer:
When I do my weekly report for new visitors to my church, I do it first in Linux Open Office Spreadsheet, then I keep the original copy and create an exact duplicate in Microsoft Excel (as everybody else has MS Office). The OO sheet is about 10 kilobytes, the MS Excel sheet is over 100 kilobytes! The balance is all just excess code. Worthless filler. I've seen the same thing happen in MS Word vs Mozilla Seamonkey. This is a real problem for modifying a document on the web (Besides being harder to pull up or download, the prawnworks.net home page is about 150 kilobytes as it is) as I often go into the code to find and fix problems. Having so much filler just makes it more difficult.
I'm completely unimpressed with MS Word as when I copy an article and save it to read later, Word takes all the indents out! It doesn't copy the article in a way that I can distinguish the speaker from lengthy quotes. Very aggravating as the blogs I read very frequently use indenting.
Did I mention you shouldn't get me started on why I prefer OO to MS?
And my buddy then wrote back: "I promise I won't do this anymore!
:-))))))))))))))))))))))))
2009/05/26
Bolton's "special interests"
I must say, I truly appreciate the opinion piece by the former UN Ambassador John Bolton. In it, the guy who accomplished pretty darn close to nothing during his tenure in that job, tries to make it sound as though the Obama Administration was doing something wrong by not continuing Bush's failed policies. He complains that Obama, by canceling the highly provocative, destabilizing Missile Defense system in Eastern Europe "is simply giving it away." Well, yeah. When you have an item that's not doing you any good and the other country considers it a threat, i.e., it's actively hurting your relationship with the other country, it's a good idea to get rid of it.
I was most puzzled by the following statement:
What in the heck is a "dangerously low warhead level"? I learned during the late 1970s that nuclear weapons are only good for deterrence, so if both sides have say, 50 weapons of each type, plane-delivered bombs, ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles, then both sides are "deterred" and everybody's happy. China has 100 to 200 warheads. That appears to be a completely appropriate amount. It's hard to see why any more are needed. With the US currently having almost 6000 nuclear warheads and Russia having over 4000, it's not at all clear what a "dangerously low warhead level" would be.
Bolton wants the US to preserve tactical nuclear weapons. It's difficult to understand why. They're the worst of both worlds. They're harder to secure and as they're less destructive, they have less deterrent effect. They can't be used as any sort of true "tactical" weapon (Any use short of national deterrence) as any use of nuclear weapons will inevitably escalate into full-scale, all-out world-wide destruction. As someone who was a history major during college, I generally hate using the word "inevitable," but this scenario was gamed out during the 1970s and no one ever came up with a way to prevent the situation from escalating all the way up to the complete destruction of the human race.
Why Bolton wants to pursue an arms race in outer space is another puzzle. If there's currently no threat to our satellites from any other nation, why create a threat that others will have to respond to? Why does the US want to create a threat where none currently exists? Does that serve any purpose other than creating jobs in the arms industry? Back during the 1980s, President Reagan would derisively refer to "special interests." Are arms manufacturers pitting their own "special" financial interests against the interests of the American taxpayer?
I was most puzzled by the following statement:
Fortunately, Russia seems likely to save us from the dangerously low warhead levels proposed by Senator John Kerry and others, but the risks of foolish, unnecessary concessions remain high. [emphasis added]
What in the heck is a "dangerously low warhead level"? I learned during the late 1970s that nuclear weapons are only good for deterrence, so if both sides have say, 50 weapons of each type, plane-delivered bombs, ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles, then both sides are "deterred" and everybody's happy. China has 100 to 200 warheads. That appears to be a completely appropriate amount. It's hard to see why any more are needed. With the US currently having almost 6000 nuclear warheads and Russia having over 4000, it's not at all clear what a "dangerously low warhead level" would be.
Bolton wants the US to preserve tactical nuclear weapons. It's difficult to understand why. They're the worst of both worlds. They're harder to secure and as they're less destructive, they have less deterrent effect. They can't be used as any sort of true "tactical" weapon (Any use short of national deterrence) as any use of nuclear weapons will inevitably escalate into full-scale, all-out world-wide destruction. As someone who was a history major during college, I generally hate using the word "inevitable," but this scenario was gamed out during the 1970s and no one ever came up with a way to prevent the situation from escalating all the way up to the complete destruction of the human race.
Why Bolton wants to pursue an arms race in outer space is another puzzle. If there's currently no threat to our satellites from any other nation, why create a threat that others will have to respond to? Why does the US want to create a threat where none currently exists? Does that serve any purpose other than creating jobs in the arms industry? Back during the 1980s, President Reagan would derisively refer to "special interests." Are arms manufacturers pitting their own "special" financial interests against the interests of the American taxpayer?
2009/05/25
Free speech, Iran & the Taliban
I don't know if I'm exactly disappointed by the Iranian action against Facebook. In order to be disappointed, one has to expect good things. I guess I'm miffed that Iran has failed to come up even to the sorry free speech standards set by G. W. Bush, who had set up "Free Speech Zones" at Republican campaign events, usually allowing protesters to set up only in places that were at a good distance from where they could be seen or heard. Bush's 2004 campaign rallies were often by-invitation-only affairs.
In any event, Iran has decided that as supporters of Reformist candidate Mir Husain Musavi were using Facebook to help conduct a campaign for him, that they would shut off access to Facebook. This is a pretty sorry response that shows a real lack of confidence, demonstrating that the Iranians have an authoritarian fear of free speech.
Bad news for the US, the Taliban in Afghanistan is showing smarts and savvy in the public relations component to their fight against the government of Hamid Karzai. The US dropped a number of bombs in a battle near Farah, Afghanistan, on May 4. On May 20, the American command finally came out with an interim report on the Afghani casualties.
By contrast, the Taliban typically engages in a firefight with US and/or Afghani troops and the US has timed them at being able to get a report on the air with the BBC in 26 minutes after the firefight has concluded. One of the big problems of course, is that the US doesn't want to put out anything false, so that results in some unavoidable delays. The US is trying to do better and to respond more quickly.
In what's a clear case of good news, Pakistan had a few battles with the Taliban in the Swat Valley, but had aroused suspicions as to whether they were really and truly fighting or whether they were conducting a campaign that consisted more of press releases. The Pakistani military took a strategic hilltop overlooking the valley, then invited Aljazeera English to the hilltop to film the fact that, yes indeed, the hilltop was now in their hands.
In any event, Iran has decided that as supporters of Reformist candidate Mir Husain Musavi were using Facebook to help conduct a campaign for him, that they would shut off access to Facebook. This is a pretty sorry response that shows a real lack of confidence, demonstrating that the Iranians have an authoritarian fear of free speech.
Bad news for the US, the Taliban in Afghanistan is showing smarts and savvy in the public relations component to their fight against the government of Hamid Karzai. The US dropped a number of bombs in a battle near Farah, Afghanistan, on May 4. On May 20, the American command finally came out with an interim report on the Afghani casualties.
By contrast, the Taliban typically engages in a firefight with US and/or Afghani troops and the US has timed them at being able to get a report on the air with the BBC in 26 minutes after the firefight has concluded. One of the big problems of course, is that the US doesn't want to put out anything false, so that results in some unavoidable delays. The US is trying to do better and to respond more quickly.
In what's a clear case of good news, Pakistan had a few battles with the Taliban in the Swat Valley, but had aroused suspicions as to whether they were really and truly fighting or whether they were conducting a campaign that consisted more of press releases. The Pakistani military took a strategic hilltop overlooking the valley, then invited Aljazeera English to the hilltop to film the fact that, yes indeed, the hilltop was now in their hands.
2009/05/23
A "conflict" that never should have been
We've seen people arguing that the current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was briefed on torture while she was still House Minority Leader and the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. The lefty response to this accusation has been two-fold. If she is indeed guilty of having "enabled" or "approved" of torture, sure, okay, let's have her standing in the dock along with the known criminals of the Bush Administration. The "Bushies" are the guys who should be doing hard prison time here in any event. If Pelosi should join them there, okay.
The second question is "Is the accusation accurate?" The answer to that is a bit less clear, but as of this point (23 May), those who say she wasn't accurately briefed on waterboarding have pretty much won the argument.
As to what the current debate is all about, member of al Qaeda Abu Zubaydah was captured on a raid on safe houses in late March 2002. The FBI had custody of him at first and claim that their reasonably gentle methods of persuasion got some useful information out of him. The CIA took custody of him in April and immediately began torturing him via waterboarding (What US soldiers in the Philippines in the early 1900s referred to as "the water cure").
A major problem with the accusation that Pelosi was informed as early as September 2002 though, is that the reference in the CIA notes of the briefing state simply that she was informed of "EITs" or Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. That indeed might mean that she was informed of waterboarding, but that's an awfully thin reed upon which to rest one's case. Deprivation of sleep could count as an EIT, but would not immediately or forcefully "shock the conscience." There's no reason anyone would remember such a reference as a particularly shocking act, but it also would fit under the definition of EITs. Some careful parsing of DCI Porter Goss's version of events asks the question as to what exactly Pelosi and others were told and it's far from clear they were told of waterboarding.
It's also far from clear just what she could have done about it.
The House of Representatives allowed the issue to get so far out of hand that Republicans were able to get a vote (They lost, 252 to 173) on an investigation, just of Speaker Pelosi and not of the torture issue as a whole. Of course the traditional media, as hopelessly corrupt and decadent as it is, despite having been informed right from the beginning that "the CIA's list might not be accurate," didn't really focus on that crucial point until Time Magazine finally acknowledged on 20 May that there really was no conflict between Speaker Pelosi's recollection and Bob Graham's (Retired Representative D-FL) careful, exhaustive notes and the CIA's version. It's just that the CIA's version is obviously incorrect. Amazingly, the WaPo is not yet ready to give up on the clearly wrong interpretation and continues to insist that there just might be something to what is, by now, clearly a non-story. Pelosi herself has said:
Sadly, to view the whole discussion on waterboarding as a partisan "gotcha" talking point, as a Democrats vs Republicans or better yet, as a "hard left" vs "non-partisans" issue appears to be the only way that our NY Times/WaPo/Sunday talk shows traditional media press corps is able to comprehend the issue, or indeed, much of any serious issue. It's an extremely, pathetically sad commentary that parts of the press corps even concentrated on criticizing a 69-year grandmother's looks. This was an extremely good point about the press corps in general:
As the news guy Mark Halperin put it: "Drudge rules our world." The press corps is obviously infatuated with a reporter whose stock-in-trade is gossip and triviality.
The second question is "Is the accusation accurate?" The answer to that is a bit less clear, but as of this point (23 May), those who say she wasn't accurately briefed on waterboarding have pretty much won the argument.
As to what the current debate is all about, member of al Qaeda Abu Zubaydah was captured on a raid on safe houses in late March 2002. The FBI had custody of him at first and claim that their reasonably gentle methods of persuasion got some useful information out of him. The CIA took custody of him in April and immediately began torturing him via waterboarding (What US soldiers in the Philippines in the early 1900s referred to as "the water cure").
A major problem with the accusation that Pelosi was informed as early as September 2002 though, is that the reference in the CIA notes of the briefing state simply that she was informed of "EITs" or Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. That indeed might mean that she was informed of waterboarding, but that's an awfully thin reed upon which to rest one's case. Deprivation of sleep could count as an EIT, but would not immediately or forcefully "shock the conscience." There's no reason anyone would remember such a reference as a particularly shocking act, but it also would fit under the definition of EITs. Some careful parsing of DCI Porter Goss's version of events asks the question as to what exactly Pelosi and others were told and it's far from clear they were told of waterboarding.
It's also far from clear just what she could have done about it.
Should Sen. (sic, she's actually a Rep.) Pelosi have held a press conference and outed Bush? Should she have leaked classified information? Should she have tried to stop Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld by any means possible? And how do you suppose the Republicans would have responded if Pelosi had tried to impede Bush? (which is something they now condemn her for NOT doing)
The GOP controlled the House and would have given Bush anything he wanted. Why then didn't Bush take the lawful path and simply ask Congress to change the laws banning torture?
The House of Representatives allowed the issue to get so far out of hand that Republicans were able to get a vote (They lost, 252 to 173) on an investigation, just of Speaker Pelosi and not of the torture issue as a whole. Of course the traditional media, as hopelessly corrupt and decadent as it is, despite having been informed right from the beginning that "the CIA's list might not be accurate," didn't really focus on that crucial point until Time Magazine finally acknowledged on 20 May that there really was no conflict between Speaker Pelosi's recollection and Bob Graham's (Retired Representative D-FL) careful, exhaustive notes and the CIA's version. It's just that the CIA's version is obviously incorrect. Amazingly, the WaPo is not yet ready to give up on the clearly wrong interpretation and continues to insist that there just might be something to what is, by now, clearly a non-story. Pelosi herself has said:
"I have made the statement that I'm going to make on this," Pelosi (D., Calif.) said yesterday at a televised news conference from Washington. "I don't have anything more to say about it. I stand by my comment."
Sadly, to view the whole discussion on waterboarding as a partisan "gotcha" talking point, as a Democrats vs Republicans or better yet, as a "hard left" vs "non-partisans" issue appears to be the only way that our NY Times/WaPo/Sunday talk shows traditional media press corps is able to comprehend the issue, or indeed, much of any serious issue. It's an extremely, pathetically sad commentary that parts of the press corps even concentrated on criticizing a 69-year grandmother's looks. This was an extremely good point about the press corps in general:
Additionally, this staunch avoidance of anything approaching a substantive assessment of the actual illegal conduct, in favor of a petty fixation on the partisan "helps or harms" game, helps only the "side" that has committed the crimes and wrongdoing.
As the news guy Mark Halperin put it: "Drudge rules our world." The press corps is obviously infatuated with a reporter whose stock-in-trade is gossip and triviality.
2009/05/21
Traditional media's take on Republicans
Interesting piece in Yahoo! News today. It features a "challenge" by Rush Limbaugh for MSNBC to not mention him for a month and see what happens to their ratings. He claims that the network is getting good numbers because they're featuring him. Of course, ignoring Limbaugh is an awful idea because like mushrooms and vampires, demagogues like Limbaugh need darkness to really thrive. YN presents his challenge as a "win-win" because
The piece mentions Dick Cheney and features a video screen capture of him up top, Limbaugh is pictured further down and there's a further item on Cheney. So what does the RNC Chairman Michael Steele say about the Republican efforts to steal the limelight away from President Obama?
Okay, so clearly Obama beats the stuffing out of two old, heavyset white guys who are both losing their hair, but it's not at all clear that they're any more "serious" than he is. The item further down in the piece is one where Cheney and Obama are both scheduled to make speeches on the same subject on the same night. The "storyline" is that they're making "dueling" speeches. Um, no they're not. Cheney is clearly just repeating the same ol', same ol' worthless junk he's been repeating for months now. His motivation is obvious. He's worried that the Bush Administration will come to be seen just as the Salem witch trials are or as the Joe McCarthy era is. He's worried that the years 2001-2008 will come to be seen as a dark blot on American history, as an era best forgotten or glossed over.
The American people decided last November that Barack Obama best represents them. According to CNN in late April, 69% of Americans approved of his job performance. Obama really appears to be enjoying the job and is clearly putting everything he's got into it. Also, Obama has never insisted that he be surrounded only with friendly people who agree with him. Bush did rallies during the 2004 campaign that were attended exclusively by friendly audiences. We know that when Bush found himself dealing with a critical reporter, he got really bent out of shape about the whole experience. I do not believe that Cheney, on the other hand, has ever done an interview with a hostile or even a vaguely critical, reporter.
If MSNBC takes Limbaugh's challenge, everyone will be watching the "little TV network" to see if it's keeping its promise; ratings will rise and both sides will get a whole lot of free publicity. Done and done.
The piece mentions Dick Cheney and features a video screen capture of him up top, Limbaugh is pictured further down and there's a further item on Cheney. So what does the RNC Chairman Michael Steele say about the Republican efforts to steal the limelight away from President Obama?
"He's young. He's cool. He's hip ... he's got all the qualities America likes in a celebrity, so of course he's going to be popular ... but this is not American Idol. This is serious ... and we are going to take them on."
Okay, so clearly Obama beats the stuffing out of two old, heavyset white guys who are both losing their hair, but it's not at all clear that they're any more "serious" than he is. The item further down in the piece is one where Cheney and Obama are both scheduled to make speeches on the same subject on the same night. The "storyline" is that they're making "dueling" speeches. Um, no they're not. Cheney is clearly just repeating the same ol', same ol' worthless junk he's been repeating for months now. His motivation is obvious. He's worried that the Bush Administration will come to be seen just as the Salem witch trials are or as the Joe McCarthy era is. He's worried that the years 2001-2008 will come to be seen as a dark blot on American history, as an era best forgotten or glossed over.
The American people decided last November that Barack Obama best represents them. According to CNN in late April, 69% of Americans approved of his job performance. Obama really appears to be enjoying the job and is clearly putting everything he's got into it. Also, Obama has never insisted that he be surrounded only with friendly people who agree with him. Bush did rallies during the 2004 campaign that were attended exclusively by friendly audiences. We know that when Bush found himself dealing with a critical reporter, he got really bent out of shape about the whole experience. I do not believe that Cheney, on the other hand, has ever done an interview with a hostile or even a vaguely critical, reporter.
2009/05/15
Right-wing commenters
In response to a Inky piece about the Army Experience Center, we get comments like:
followed by:
shortly before that:
Erm, okay. We peacenik lefties are the ones consumed by hate. Right. Sure. Okay.
We then see in comments for a piece about Speaker Pelosi and the CIA's briefings on waterboarding:
Have to say, though, that the funniest comment came a little later than these first five:
Drudge is not an advocate - Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!!! Heh, that's a good one. As if Drudge was ever anything other than a partisan hack. Now do online sources like Drudge out-scoop traditional news sources like the Inky? Unfortunately, yes. That happens all the time. The blogger emptywheel displays her impatience with the traditional media:
Um yeah, sure, I remember the outrage over there being no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. As the WaPo put it in
June 2004:
Problem of course, was that there was no documentation for any such connection. Had there been any substantive outrage over the conscious and deliberate deception, why did so many Americans believe as late as this that there had been such a connection?
Unfortunately, a lot of this unhinged hatred for progressives results in eliminationism, a desire to simply eliminate whole categories of people. It's very distressing, but the tendency is far more widespread than most folks would like to believe. I'm pleased to note that the author of the piece I linked to is a bit of a free-speech fanatic. I share his belief that the answer to bad speech is better speech. Ignoring the bad speakers or trying to suppress them is a losers game. It's far better to put a spotlight on them and to show people what we're battling than it is to try and sweep everything under the rug.
Posted by ark 06:00 PM, 05/14/2009
I can envision one day the use of real people as targets. The protesters, code pink, ACORN, MADD. Well, one can dream can't he!
followed by:
Posted by steimel 08:27 PM, 05/14/2009
ARK, I share your dream.
shortly before that:
Posted by steimel 08:25 PM, 05/14/2009
Do you protestors ever take the time to protest a cop killer, or a video game? ... Its about your hate for the armed services of the USA.
Erm, okay. We peacenik lefties are the ones consumed by hate. Right. Sure. Okay.
We then see in comments for a piece about Speaker Pelosi and the CIA's briefings on waterboarding:
Posted by STEVE5444 03:13 AM, 05/15/2009
Damm Nancy.. You were kept out of the loop,, shucks, Everyone knew except you.. maybe because you have a BIG MOUTH and don't know when to shut it...
Posted by blombard 06:14 AM, 05/15/2009
This woman should be convicted for stupidity. How in the world did she get elected. Ohhh..now I remember she used the millions of dollars her husband stole from military contracts to fund her political agenda. Off with her head.
Posted by nuggett 07:06 AM, 05/15/2009
Yeah right ????? What a crock !!! She and her party will bring down Obama with their greed and pork....Not hard to believe that this woman is a politican.....She lies and back stabs and must have pictures and lots of money to get wehre she is.....If George and Chenney are the best the republicans can produce....they should not be embarrassed as Pelosi is the cheese of the Democrats......NOW that is embarrassing....
Posted by snad264 07:17 AM, 05/15/2009
This broad is an idiot! The fact that she is House Speaker is quite disturbing. She is an embarassment to the Democrats, and drags down the Party in a similar way former V.P. Cheney hurts the Republican Party.
Posted by PhillySteve21 07:24 AM, 05/15/2009
Actually, it sounds as if she knew about it the WHOLE time and is only now trying to distance herself! This woman is absolutely insane.
Have to say, though, that the funniest comment came a little later than these first five:
Posted by tr88 07:38 AM, 05/15/2009
Good to see the Inquirer getting on this story a month after the Drudge Report isnt it? And Drudge is free. The difference is Drudge is a real news source, not an advocate.
Drudge is not an advocate - Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!!! Heh, that's a good one. As if Drudge was ever anything other than a partisan hack. Now do online sources like Drudge out-scoop traditional news sources like the Inky? Unfortunately, yes. That happens all the time. The blogger emptywheel displays her impatience with the traditional media:
Mark, Mark, Mark. I spelled this all out here, back when it became apparent to anyone with a command of the English language that Goss' dispute with Pelosi had nothing to do with her contention (which was clear even then) that the CIA hadn't told Congress that it had already been using waterboarding.
And here's an interesting one:Posted by TylerDurden 08:32 AM, 05/15/2009
If she [Pelosi] were a Republican, the media would be outraged. Since she's a Democrat, it's ok that she's clueless.
Um yeah, sure, I remember the outrage over there being no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. As the WaPo put it in
June 2004:
The finding challenges a belief held by large numbers of Americans about al Qaeda's ties to Hussein. According to a Harris poll in late April, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent to 36 percent, believe "clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found."
Problem of course, was that there was no documentation for any such connection. Had there been any substantive outrage over the conscious and deliberate deception, why did so many Americans believe as late as this that there had been such a connection?
Unfortunately, a lot of this unhinged hatred for progressives results in eliminationism, a desire to simply eliminate whole categories of people. It's very distressing, but the tendency is far more widespread than most folks would like to believe. I'm pleased to note that the author of the piece I linked to is a bit of a free-speech fanatic. I share his belief that the answer to bad speech is better speech. Ignoring the bad speakers or trying to suppress them is a losers game. It's far better to put a spotlight on them and to show people what we're battling than it is to try and sweep everything under the rug.
2009/05/14
Mary Matalin speaks up for Dick Cheney
Mary Matalin has come to Cheney's defense:
Okay, what did Obama say he was going to do? In MyBarackObama in the defense section, he speaks of "restoring" frayed alliances. That sounds to me like GeeDubya messed things up and Obama felt he had a mandate to fix them. It doesn't sound like there was much investigation to be done. Alliances needed to be restored because they were obviously frayed or broken.
Was torture "working" in any meaningful sense? Not according to former Army Intelligence Officer Stuart Herrington, who said:
It wasn't necessary to "look at the stuff and see what is working," it was already obvious that it wasn't "working."
If there are no "politics" to his appearing on the teevee, why won't Cheney appear with interviewers who will challenge him? If he's just going to be talking with people like Bob Schieffer of "Face The Nation," who didn't ask any tough questions or as Air America pointed out "he'd have no problem testifying before Congress about the torture memos, but stopped short of promising to do so under oath." Meaning he doesn't want to, y'know, actually be held accountable for anything he says.
What I find very disturbing is the tendency of people in the press corp's "village" to try and find some sort of middle ground in the "debate" (If you can dignify the discussion with that highfalutin' term) over torture. Folks, there IS NO "middle ground"! It's wrong, period! The idea that we should let people like former President Bush trust their "guts" is insane! Bush's "gut" is absolutely the worst guide to anything wise or sensible I can imagine.
“If Barack Obama had come in and done what he said he was going to do and look at the stuff and see what is working, then Cheney would have continued to do what he was doing — working on memoirs, finishing his house,” she said. “He’s got a good life. He’s got stuff going on. He doesn’t care about being on TV. There’s no more politics there. He’s not settling any scores. He just wants people to understand.“
Okay, what did Obama say he was going to do? In MyBarackObama in the defense section, he speaks of "restoring" frayed alliances. That sounds to me like GeeDubya messed things up and Obama felt he had a mandate to fix them. It doesn't sound like there was much investigation to be done. Alliances needed to be restored because they were obviously frayed or broken.
Was torture "working" in any meaningful sense? Not according to former Army Intelligence Officer Stuart Herrington, who said:
"We have lost the moral high ground,"
"If we use torture when we question prisoners, we forfeit the right to demand that anyone treat our soldiers decently if they are taken prisoner,"
"If we engage in that kind of activity, we put our soldiers at increased risk."
It wasn't necessary to "look at the stuff and see what is working," it was already obvious that it wasn't "working."
If there are no "politics" to his appearing on the teevee, why won't Cheney appear with interviewers who will challenge him? If he's just going to be talking with people like Bob Schieffer of "Face The Nation," who didn't ask any tough questions or as Air America pointed out "he'd have no problem testifying before Congress about the torture memos, but stopped short of promising to do so under oath." Meaning he doesn't want to, y'know, actually be held accountable for anything he says.
What I find very disturbing is the tendency of people in the press corp's "village" to try and find some sort of middle ground in the "debate" (If you can dignify the discussion with that highfalutin' term) over torture. Folks, there IS NO "middle ground"! It's wrong, period! The idea that we should let people like former President Bush trust their "guts" is insane! Bush's "gut" is absolutely the worst guide to anything wise or sensible I can imagine.
2009/04/28
Answer to Austrian Economists
I wrote a piece called "The Great Recession." It prompted a follower of the "Austrian Economists" (A Libertarian group) to ask whether the Federal Reserve was pumping too much money into the economy and whether that was causing recessions.
I said I'd look into it and finally went to my local library after a few unsuccessful internet searches and asked about Federal Reserve Board interest rates going as far back as possible (It was easy to find rates going back a few weeks or months, but the librarian had to search for a bit to find them going back further) and I then pulled up a list of recessions (That wasn't hard at all).
Recession of 1953
Recession of 1957
Recession of 1960
Recession of 1980
Recession of 1990
Recession of 2001
Recession of 2007
Non-recession of 1970
Non-recession of 1996
Non-recession of 2006
So what do we have?
1953, interest rates in the two years beforehand were completely flat.
1957, we see what looks like a classic rise with rates going from 1.50 to 3.00.
1960, rates wobbled from 2.94 to 1.75, but then rising from there to 4.00.
1980, 6.37 to 11.27 in a straight line upwards.
1990 saw a very gradual rise from 6.00 to 7.00.
2001 saw another gradual rise from 4.50 to 6.00.
2007 saw a rise from 3.25 to 6.25.
With the non-recessions, we see a rise from 4.50 to 6.00 in 1968-69 not leading to a recession.
1994 to 1995, a rise of 3.00 to 5.25 did not lead to a recession.
2004 to 2005, a rise of 2.00 to 4.75 did not lead to a recession.
So, the initial question I received after I wrote my piece on the economy was "Why didn't I account for the actions of the Fed?" What does the Fed do? Basically, it sets the interest rate. The reason why the economists I read did not account for the interest rate set by the Fed appears to be that there's really not much of a connection between what interest rate the Fed sets and how the economy reacts (Note that the list of recessions I linked to above lists a different reason for each recession). It appears there's usually a rise in the interest rate in the two years before a recession, but not always and sometimes it's a steep rise and sometimes it's a gradual one. 1950-1970, rises tended to be extremely gradual with not much change from quarter to quarter at all. That period saw three recessions.
The early 1980s saw extremely high interest rates, going up as high as 14.00, as Paul Volcker was using those rates to eliminate the inflation that had persisted so stubbornly up to that point.
So I find the explanation that the Fed plays an extremely decisive role in the ups and downs of the economy to be an unconvincing one. Obviously it plays a role, but there appear to be many other meaningful factors that also affect the economy.
I said I'd look into it and finally went to my local library after a few unsuccessful internet searches and asked about Federal Reserve Board interest rates going as far back as possible (It was easy to find rates going back a few weeks or months, but the librarian had to search for a bit to find them going back further) and I then pulled up a list of recessions (That wasn't hard at all).
Recession of 1953
| 1951 1Q | 1951 2Q | 1951 3Q | 1951 4Q | 1952 1Q | 1952 2Q | 1952 3Q | 1952 4Q |
| 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.75 |
Recession of 1957
| 1955 1Q | 1955 2Q | 1955 3Q | 1955 4Q | 1956 1Q | 1956 2Q | 1956 3Q | 1956 4Q |
| 1.50 | 1.63 | 1.75 | 2.25 | 2.50 | 2.65 | 2.75 | 3.00 |
Recession of 1960
| 1958 1Q | 1958 2Q | 1958 3Q | 1958 4Q | 1959 1Q | 1959 2Q | 1959 3Q | 1959 4Q |
| 2.94 | 2.03 | 1.75 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 |
Recession of 1980
| 1978 1Q | 1978 2Q | 1978 3Q | 1978 4Q | 1979 1Q | 1979 2Q | 1979 3Q | 1979 4Q |
| 6.37 | 6.50 | 7.23 | 8.26 | 9.50 | 9.50 | 9.69 | 11.27 |
Recession of 1990
| 1988 1Q | 1988 2Q | 1988 3Q | 1988 4Q | 1989 1Q | 1989 2Q | 1989 3Q | 1989 4Q |
| 6.00 | 6.00 | 6.00 | 6.50 | 6.50 | 7.00 | 7.00 | 7.00 |
Recession of 2001
| 1999 1Q | 1999 2Q | 1999 3Q | 1999 4Q | 2000 1Q | 2000 2Q | 2000 3Q | 2000 4Q |
| 4.50 | 4.50 | 4.50 | 4.75 | 5.00 | 5.50 | 6.00 | 6.00 |
Recession of 2007
| 2005 1Q | 2005 2Q | 2005 3Q | 2005 4Q | 2006 1Q | 2006 2Q | 2006 3Q | 2006 4Q |
| 3.25 | 3.75 | 4.25 | 4.75 | 5.26 | 5.75 | 6.25 | 6.25 |
Non-recessions
Non-recession of 1970
| 1968 1Q | 1968 2Q | 1968 3Q | 1968 4Q | 1969 1Q | 1969 2Q | 1969 3Q | 1969 4Q |
| 4.50 | 5.20 | 5.50 | 5.25 | 5.50 | 5.95 | 6.00 | 6.00 |
Non-recession of 1996
| 1994 1Q | 1994 2Q | 1994 3Q | 1994 4Q | 1995 1Q | 1995 2Q | 1995 3Q | 1995 4Q |
| 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 4.75 | 5.25 | 5.25 | 5.25 |
Non-recession of 2006
| 2004 1Q | 2004 2Q | 2004 3Q | 2004 4Q | 2005 1Q | 2005 2Q | 2005 3Q | 2005 4Q |
| 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.25 | 2.75 | 3.25 | 3.75 | 4.25 | 4.75 |
So what do we have?
1953, interest rates in the two years beforehand were completely flat.
1957, we see what looks like a classic rise with rates going from 1.50 to 3.00.
1960, rates wobbled from 2.94 to 1.75, but then rising from there to 4.00.
1980, 6.37 to 11.27 in a straight line upwards.
1990 saw a very gradual rise from 6.00 to 7.00.
2001 saw another gradual rise from 4.50 to 6.00.
2007 saw a rise from 3.25 to 6.25.
With the non-recessions, we see a rise from 4.50 to 6.00 in 1968-69 not leading to a recession.
1994 to 1995, a rise of 3.00 to 5.25 did not lead to a recession.
2004 to 2005, a rise of 2.00 to 4.75 did not lead to a recession.
So, the initial question I received after I wrote my piece on the economy was "Why didn't I account for the actions of the Fed?" What does the Fed do? Basically, it sets the interest rate. The reason why the economists I read did not account for the interest rate set by the Fed appears to be that there's really not much of a connection between what interest rate the Fed sets and how the economy reacts (Note that the list of recessions I linked to above lists a different reason for each recession). It appears there's usually a rise in the interest rate in the two years before a recession, but not always and sometimes it's a steep rise and sometimes it's a gradual one. 1950-1970, rises tended to be extremely gradual with not much change from quarter to quarter at all. That period saw three recessions.
The early 1980s saw extremely high interest rates, going up as high as 14.00, as Paul Volcker was using those rates to eliminate the inflation that had persisted so stubbornly up to that point.
So I find the explanation that the Fed plays an extremely decisive role in the ups and downs of the economy to be an unconvincing one. Obviously it plays a role, but there appear to be many other meaningful factors that also affect the economy.
2009/04/27
Conversation with a conservative: political behavior comparable?
I challenged a conservative on an online discussion board following an article on which lefty sources he was familiar with as he kept complaining that I wasn't well informed and that I kept making old, discredited arguments.
My answer:
Now, folks in the traditional media like to assume the attitude of "A pox on both your houses" and many, many times it's completely inappropriate. Here's a piece on two sets of political ads. In the first set, former PA Senator Rick Santorum makes factually incorrect suggestions, the other set of ads are entirely accurate. Both sets of ads are "tough," but otherwise are quite different. The problem that the piece points to is that the reporter treats them as equivalents, which they very clearly aren't.
But it seems to me that reading the quickie summary of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and reading the frames within which a typical Daily Kos post looks at a public meeting (at which the issue of gays is discussed) that "A pox on both your houses" is a pretty good way to look at the issue.
This post views politics in much the same way that Alinsky suggests. Words are viewed as useful tools with which to persuade people. Both sides present their positions with all of their agonizing and debating in the past. For the activists, all of the pertinent questions have already been answered to their satisfaction. The purpose of the debate is not for us all to sit and reason together, but to sell a position to the public at large.
It's of course pretty ludicrous to suggest that the party of Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti, Ronald Reagan's William "October surprise" Casey, the elder George Bush's Lee Atwater and the younger George Bush's Karl Rove is in any way a moral paragon that liberals compare at all badly to. But manipulating information in order to present it in the best, most politically effective light is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's recognize that there's absolutely no necessity, whether we're using Saul Alinsky or not, to be dishonest. The current debate over torture is an instructive case. Former VP Cheney gave an interview in which he claimed that there were still-secret documents that exonerated the Bush Administration on torture.
So no, the former VP isn't precisely lying. He's just making misleading statements that are difficult to disprove. This was a tactic used constantly during the Bush years, the continual referencing to information that very few people had access to. "Yeah, yeah. The info's solid. Just trust us!" Of course, all of the secret information turned out to be just so much nonsense. Do groups on the political left have that option? No, such groups don't have the option of keeping crucial information on national security threats inaccessible to the government of the United States. If they have important information and don't share it with the government, they're then criminally liable if an attack occurs. "Radical" groups don't have the same option to get away with being able to mislead the public as groups in charge of the government do. It's also useful to keep in mind the fact that the government has become much more close-lipped with information since Alinsky's book was written and that the internet has made it much easier to double-check partisan claims.
Is there anything to the idea that if "radicals" take over the US, that the US will experience a repeat of Cambodia 1975, with the cities emptied and intellectuals forced to work on farms in order to punish them for being snobs? I don't think people on the left are naturally or inherently superior to those on the right, but something very crucial happened between the time Alinsky wrote his book and today.
The Soviet Union collapsed.
One of Karl Marx's ideas was that states could transform. That a state could start out as capitalist, become socialist and proceed to being communist. Not only did capitalism prove to be far more durable than Marx thought, but the Soviet Union started out being a centralized, militaristic and tyrannical system. What was it when it collapsed? It hadn't changed a bit. It was still a centralized, militaristic and tyrannical system.
What lefties, liberals and progressives concluded from that was that political systems, as they grow from being small political groups to running whole states, don't change. They change scale, but they don't change their essence. If we want to end up with a system that's egalitarian, that takes advice from all quarters, that respects the contributions of everyone and allows even opponents to make the occasional contribution, then we have to begin that way. It has to be built that way from the ground up.
Obama "talks about how he will change the universe for the better, but what he really means is that he will stifle debate, defame excellance (sic) and reward mediocrity." Of course all of that is merely guesswork, a presumption that our president will ever be so powerful that he can simply disregard the desire of the people that form his political base. Sorry, but after working with progressives for several years, I just don't see us as "stifling debate." The right-wing pundit and occasional Bill O'Reilly guest Michelle Malkin used to work as a reporter under the editorship of the highly respected progressive writer David Neiwert and refers to him as a "free speech absolutist."
Yes, the website Daily Kos (DKos' "Vision for America") deletes the comments of people they call "trolls." These are comments that are simply disruptive. Comments that a moderator disagrees with politically can only be combated by making a disagreeing comment after it. We as moderators for PhillyIMC and the IMC community in general observe much the same set of rules. So no, the left community in America does not quite come up to Neiwert's standard, but I don't think we fall much short of it and I don't think there's much risk of our copying the Khmer Rouge upon taking control of America.
rich 2056, I have read Saul Alinsky's "rules for radicals". What else is there to read. It lays out Obama's campaign stratagy and defines the moves he is making since taking office. As far as I am concerned any progressive is just someone that can't make it on his own. Got a job yet? He talks about how he will change the universe for the better, but what he really means is that he will stifle debate, defame excellance and reward mediocrity. He does not know how to make money but is very good at taking it from those that have it. The progressive movement is probably the greatest threat this country has ever faced. No, Rich, I am familiar with "your kind" and I would hope that you would go somewhere else with your drival.
My answer:
Here's a summary of "Rules" Nothing here about radicals being dishonest or deceptive. Alinsky even advocates that radicals have alternative solutions available for the problems they call attention to. [The discussion board generally doesn't allow links, but they allowed my follow-up with the link to be posted as it was clearly relevant to the discussion]
Now, folks in the traditional media like to assume the attitude of "A pox on both your houses" and many, many times it's completely inappropriate. Here's a piece on two sets of political ads. In the first set, former PA Senator Rick Santorum makes factually incorrect suggestions, the other set of ads are entirely accurate. Both sets of ads are "tough," but otherwise are quite different. The problem that the piece points to is that the reporter treats them as equivalents, which they very clearly aren't.
But it seems to me that reading the quickie summary of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and reading the frames within which a typical Daily Kos post looks at a public meeting (at which the issue of gays is discussed) that "A pox on both your houses" is a pretty good way to look at the issue.
On points, the hearings were a resounding victory for the pro-equality side. There's simply no other way to judge it. Our side was on-message, tightly-focused, full of emotional and often-heartbreaking stories, and at the same time respectful of religious groups, who will be affected not a whit by the bill.
The other side came off as a ragtag bunch of whiners and fearmongers and faux-experts citing crappy science. Crappy, crappy, crappy science. Listening to audio only, I had to occasionally check to make sure I hadn’t time-warped back to the 1960s. By late afternoon, the anti-gay crowd could barely muster the energy to clap for their own speakers. It was...kinda pathetic, really. [emphasis in original]
It's of course pretty ludicrous to suggest that the party of Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti, Ronald Reagan's William "October surprise" Casey, the elder George Bush's Lee Atwater and the younger George Bush's Karl Rove is in any way a moral paragon that liberals compare at all badly to. But manipulating information in order to present it in the best, most politically effective light is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's recognize that there's absolutely no necessity, whether we're using Saul Alinsky or not, to be dishonest. The current debate over torture is an instructive case. Former VP Cheney gave an interview in which he claimed that there were still-secret documents that exonerated the Bush Administration on torture.
The Bushies want this question — “did torture stave off terror attacks and save lives?” — hovering in the air. There’s plenty of evidence that torture hasn’t worked at all and has done more harm than good. Even some former Bush administration officials have conceded it hasn’t done anything to stop terror attacks.
But it’s easy for the Cheney camp to muddy the waters and turn this into a matter of debate by citing unspecified classified info that supposedly supports the claim that it has saved lives — info that we’ll never see.
So no, the former VP isn't precisely lying. He's just making misleading statements that are difficult to disprove. This was a tactic used constantly during the Bush years, the continual referencing to information that very few people had access to. "Yeah, yeah. The info's solid. Just trust us!" Of course, all of the secret information turned out to be just so much nonsense. Do groups on the political left have that option? No, such groups don't have the option of keeping crucial information on national security threats inaccessible to the government of the United States. If they have important information and don't share it with the government, they're then criminally liable if an attack occurs. "Radical" groups don't have the same option to get away with being able to mislead the public as groups in charge of the government do. It's also useful to keep in mind the fact that the government has become much more close-lipped with information since Alinsky's book was written and that the internet has made it much easier to double-check partisan claims.
Is there anything to the idea that if "radicals" take over the US, that the US will experience a repeat of Cambodia 1975, with the cities emptied and intellectuals forced to work on farms in order to punish them for being snobs? I don't think people on the left are naturally or inherently superior to those on the right, but something very crucial happened between the time Alinsky wrote his book and today.
The Soviet Union collapsed.
One of Karl Marx's ideas was that states could transform. That a state could start out as capitalist, become socialist and proceed to being communist. Not only did capitalism prove to be far more durable than Marx thought, but the Soviet Union started out being a centralized, militaristic and tyrannical system. What was it when it collapsed? It hadn't changed a bit. It was still a centralized, militaristic and tyrannical system.
What lefties, liberals and progressives concluded from that was that political systems, as they grow from being small political groups to running whole states, don't change. They change scale, but they don't change their essence. If we want to end up with a system that's egalitarian, that takes advice from all quarters, that respects the contributions of everyone and allows even opponents to make the occasional contribution, then we have to begin that way. It has to be built that way from the ground up.
Obama "talks about how he will change the universe for the better, but what he really means is that he will stifle debate, defame excellance (sic) and reward mediocrity." Of course all of that is merely guesswork, a presumption that our president will ever be so powerful that he can simply disregard the desire of the people that form his political base. Sorry, but after working with progressives for several years, I just don't see us as "stifling debate." The right-wing pundit and occasional Bill O'Reilly guest Michelle Malkin used to work as a reporter under the editorship of the highly respected progressive writer David Neiwert and refers to him as a "free speech absolutist."
Yes, the website Daily Kos (DKos' "Vision for America") deletes the comments of people they call "trolls." These are comments that are simply disruptive. Comments that a moderator disagrees with politically can only be combated by making a disagreeing comment after it. We as moderators for PhillyIMC and the IMC community in general observe much the same set of rules. So no, the left community in America does not quite come up to Neiwert's standard, but I don't think we fall much short of it and I don't think there's much risk of our copying the Khmer Rouge upon taking control of America.
2009/04/20
DNI McConnell's credibility
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell claimed a little over a year ago that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being uncooperative:
This testimony, the "only three times" claim was produced many times by conservatives seeking to minimize US culpability.
But now we have access to the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report. In it, the CIA IG John Helgerson details that actually, KSM was waterboarded a total of 183 times and another suspect, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.
As the blogger Marcy Wheeler points out, Steven Bradbury (Who wrote two of the "Torture memos" released by the Obama Administration on 16 April) is conflating effective interrogation with the sheer number of reports. Waterboarding KSM and Zubaydah produced lots and lots of reports, but it's far from clear that it produced any useful intel. In fact,
And as was pointed out in 2007,
So, it's hardly the case that "breaking people" will produce useful, actionable intel. In Zubaydah's case, we saw just the opposite, we saw wild goose chases where law enforcement personnel were kept busy chasing all sorts of improbable leads.
In other words, no, waterboarding (Controlled drowning) is NOT an effective method for getting uncooperative suspects to talk. What it produces is garbage.
Unfortunately, although the Obama Administration deserves great credit for doing as much as they have, they don't appear inclined to punish the torturers. Here's a petition folks can sign to encourage them to do so.
DIRECTOR McCONNELL: Let’s take it from the beginning. Has waterboarding ever been used by a professional organization whose mission is to extract information? The answer is yes. You might ask what are the circumstances? Three times. Situations where there’s been interrogation over a period of time. It was unsuccessful. Water boarding was used and then information started to flow.
This testimony, the "only three times" claim was produced many times by conservatives seeking to minimize US culpability.
But now we have access to the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report. In it, the CIA IG John Helgerson details that actually, KSM was waterboarded a total of 183 times and another suspect, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.
Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogations of KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, "Soon, you will know." Id. We understand that the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogation of KSM, Zubaydah, and others, by contrast, has yielded critical information. See IG Report at 86, 90-91 (describing increase in intelligence reports attributable to use of enhanced techniques). (emphases added)
As the blogger Marcy Wheeler points out, Steven Bradbury (Who wrote two of the "Torture memos" released by the Obama Administration on 16 April) is conflating effective interrogation with the sheer number of reports. Waterboarding KSM and Zubaydah produced lots and lots of reports, but it's far from clear that it produced any useful intel. In fact,
By CIA's own admission, they used waterboarding with Abu Zubaydah at a time when he was already completely compliant with interrogators.
And as was pointed out in 2007,
....Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda....Zubaydah said banks — yes, banks — were a priority....And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation's economy would be crippled. And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.
Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried.
In other words, no, waterboarding (Controlled drowning) is NOT an effective method for getting uncooperative suspects to talk. What it produces is garbage.
Unfortunately, although the Obama Administration deserves great credit for doing as much as they have, they don't appear inclined to punish the torturers. Here's a petition folks can sign to encourage them to do so.
2009/04/16
Heads up on release of documents
By this afternoon (Apr 16th), the Obama Administration will decide whether or not to release four Bush Administration documents and whether to release them in a complete form or as heavily redacted documents, with large areas blacked out. Understand, these are legal opinions on the issue of interrogation and torture, they're not intel or operational reports. There's absolutely no legitimate reason to redact or withhold a single word of the documents.
As to how newspapers will treat the story tomorrow, it's a good bet they'll try to place it on page A5 or A7. It's doubtful they'll cover it with any due diligence.
Secret law is a serious threat to democracy. There's absolutely no reason as to why, in a democracy, a secret law should ever exist. If the Obama Administration endorses keeping these four laws secret, our president will deserve the insult of being called Barack "W." Obama.
As to how newspapers will treat the story tomorrow, it's a good bet they'll try to place it on page A5 or A7. It's doubtful they'll cover it with any due diligence.
Secret law is a serious threat to democracy. There's absolutely no reason as to why, in a democracy, a secret law should ever exist. If the Obama Administration endorses keeping these four laws secret, our president will deserve the insult of being called Barack "W." Obama.
2009/04/10
Fascinating other side to the story
We in the progressive community have long been very, very sour on the idea of the Bush Administration following up the occupation of Iraq by invading Iran. Very shortly after the fall of Baghdad, a Bush official boasted "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran." He was expressing a view that had deep roots. Both Israel and the US have been eager to take out Iran since the 1978 Iranian Revolution that had overthrown the Shah and that put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. In early 2006,
The author details the many obstacles that have held back that invasion. A very primary reason it has never taken place is that the US Army in Iraq is essentially hostage to an Iranian counter-strike. Iran is right over the border and has had a healthy cross-border trade with Iraq for as long as both countries have existed. Iran has much more internal cohesion than Iraq and is a great deal stronger. The US Army, not wanting a draft (Which would energize the peace movement back home in any event) and being stretched to the max, would very quickly find itself in severe trouble if Iran were to launch guerrilla attacks in Iraq on US troops.
Time Magazine noted in mid-2004 that
Time Magazine also took note of the Colin Powell camps' lack of enthusiasm for an invasion of Iran and their preference for a negotiated solution. Even so, as late as mid-2008, VP Cheney's daughter, undoubtedly speaking for her father as well as many other frustrated neo-cons, declared to Iran:
Fortunately, the Obama Administration has made it quite clear that force is indeed "off the table."
Very interestingly, it now appears that the lack of enthusiasm for invading Iran was one that many other countries shared. Bush Administration official David Wurmser describes the reaction he got in European capitals when he brought up the subject of a US attack on Iran:
As Iran is much closer to Europe than it is to the States, it may very well be that Europe was primarily interested in self-preservation, but I find it very highly interesting that Europe prevented the US from making what could have been a very costly mistake, a mistake that could very well have ranked with the utterly disastrous Athenian attack on Syracuse of 415-413 BC.
Nearly three years after the Iraqi invasion, the real men are still stuck in Baghdad. Yes, there has been a great deal of talk about attacking Iran: plans in place for air strikes on Iran's revolutionary guards, on its nuclear installations and other WMD sites, and even talk of a ground invasion. There have been reports of spy flights over Iran and operations by special forces inside Iran. Israel too has been goading the US to strike, and if the US shrinks from this duty, threatening to go solo.
The author details the many obstacles that have held back that invasion. A very primary reason it has never taken place is that the US Army in Iraq is essentially hostage to an Iranian counter-strike. Iran is right over the border and has had a healthy cross-border trade with Iraq for as long as both countries have existed. Iran has much more internal cohesion than Iraq and is a great deal stronger. The US Army, not wanting a draft (Which would energize the peace movement back home in any event) and being stretched to the max, would very quickly find itself in severe trouble if Iran were to launch guerrilla attacks in Iraq on US troops.
Time Magazine noted in mid-2004 that
...despite the enthusiasm of those who most aggressively championed the Iraq war for taking on Iran, the results of the Iraq war may, paradoxically, have actually strengthened the position of the Mullahs in Tehran, by making their cooperation essential to achieving U.S. objectives.
Time Magazine also took note of the Colin Powell camps' lack of enthusiasm for an invasion of Iran and their preference for a negotiated solution. Even so, as late as mid-2008, VP Cheney's daughter, undoubtedly speaking for her father as well as many other frustrated neo-cons, declared to Iran:
"[D]espite what you may be hearing from Congress, despite what you may be hearing from others in the administration who might be saying force isn't on the table... we're serious." Asked about an Israeli strike on Iran, she said: "I certainly don't think that we should do anything but support them."
Fortunately, the Obama Administration has made it quite clear that force is indeed "off the table."
Very interestingly, it now appears that the lack of enthusiasm for invading Iran was one that many other countries shared. Bush Administration official David Wurmser describes the reaction he got in European capitals when he brought up the subject of a US attack on Iran:
“Every time in this period I landed in a European capital at [U.N. Ambassador] John Bolton’s request to discuss Iran, the first thing I got was: ‘What is your end game here; are you going to use the information to pull another Iraq? Tell us where you are going with this before we tell you how much we will admit Iran is going down the path to a bomb in the U.N.’ When I failed to give them a guarantee that we will not strike Iran, they stalled on moving ahead with acknowledging or using the evidence in public which in private they accepted.” [emphasis added]
As Iran is much closer to Europe than it is to the States, it may very well be that Europe was primarily interested in self-preservation, but I find it very highly interesting that Europe prevented the US from making what could have been a very costly mistake, a mistake that could very well have ranked with the utterly disastrous Athenian attack on Syracuse of 415-413 BC.
2009/04/07
Question on Atlas Shrugged
The question was posed "What's so awful about Ayn Rand? Is this woman regarded as evil?" My impression from people in the left blogosphere who have talked about her is no, not exactly. I'd say that the general impression of her is that if you've read Atlas Shrugged in high school or college and you think she's wonderful, not a problem. If you've been out of college for a few years or are in your mid-20s in any event and you still think she's wonderful, you've got a problem.
Back during the Roman Republic, the Plebeians and the Patricians also had a problem. From 494 to 287 BC, the Plebeians took off a total of three times and the Patricians had to make do without their labor until they said "Uncle!" and the Plebeians then returned under new conditions.
In the modern era, the Knights of Labor won a strike against the railroads in 1884. The idea of having labor unions (As opposed to the craft unions of the Medieval era) caught on and striking, or withdrawing one's labor from the company, became a popular means for winning concessions.
Rand extended the idea of denying ones' labor to intellectual work and the hero of Atlas Shrugged, an architect, denied his intellect to society until society begged him to come back under better conditions. And wel-l-l-l, that's a nice idea, but personally, I've worked in both military and civilian departments where we had to do without a leader for awhile and we usually weathered the period just fine. That's not to say leaders are useless. But it is to say that followers, laborers, are more indispensable than leaders are. Intellects are crucially important when one is building something new, they're not so critical when one is simply trying to maintain ones' situation as is.
I went to a presentation on Venezuela, where we were told that the oil field technicians and executives took off to protest the presidency of Hugo Chavez. The workers who were left got to work, analyzing and reverse-engineering and figuring out how the process was designed. A few months after the intellectually bright people had left, the oil fields were pumping just as much oil as before. This suggests that if Rands' imagined scenario occurred in real life, society would have hit a "bump in the road" but it would have ultimately gotten along just fine.
So I really don't buy a crucially important tenet of Rand's philosophy. She seems to believe (No, I never actually read the book, I'm just passing along "received wisdom" from writers of the left blogosphere) that "extreme capitalism" is a good thing. Being an adherent of the "anti-globalization" and "fair trade" (As opposed to "free trade") movements, I don't agree with that at all.
Not sure that my economic philosophy falls into any easily-defined category. People have described me as a standard "plain vanilla" leftist. I'm aware that both classic Russian communism and classic Barry Goldwater/Ronald Reagan/Grover Norquist capitalism have failed (Not that I subscribed to that "flavor" of capitalism since a year or two after Reagan took office in any event). I've tried to define my philosophy more with specific real-world examples than by naming any particular people I've taken after.
Back during the Roman Republic, the Plebeians and the Patricians also had a problem. From 494 to 287 BC, the Plebeians took off a total of three times and the Patricians had to make do without their labor until they said "Uncle!" and the Plebeians then returned under new conditions.
In the modern era, the Knights of Labor won a strike against the railroads in 1884. The idea of having labor unions (As opposed to the craft unions of the Medieval era) caught on and striking, or withdrawing one's labor from the company, became a popular means for winning concessions.
Rand extended the idea of denying ones' labor to intellectual work and the hero of Atlas Shrugged, an architect, denied his intellect to society until society begged him to come back under better conditions. And wel-l-l-l, that's a nice idea, but personally, I've worked in both military and civilian departments where we had to do without a leader for awhile and we usually weathered the period just fine. That's not to say leaders are useless. But it is to say that followers, laborers, are more indispensable than leaders are. Intellects are crucially important when one is building something new, they're not so critical when one is simply trying to maintain ones' situation as is.
I went to a presentation on Venezuela, where we were told that the oil field technicians and executives took off to protest the presidency of Hugo Chavez. The workers who were left got to work, analyzing and reverse-engineering and figuring out how the process was designed. A few months after the intellectually bright people had left, the oil fields were pumping just as much oil as before. This suggests that if Rands' imagined scenario occurred in real life, society would have hit a "bump in the road" but it would have ultimately gotten along just fine.
So I really don't buy a crucially important tenet of Rand's philosophy. She seems to believe (No, I never actually read the book, I'm just passing along "received wisdom" from writers of the left blogosphere) that "extreme capitalism" is a good thing. Being an adherent of the "anti-globalization" and "fair trade" (As opposed to "free trade") movements, I don't agree with that at all.
Not sure that my economic philosophy falls into any easily-defined category. People have described me as a standard "plain vanilla" leftist. I'm aware that both classic Russian communism and classic Barry Goldwater/Ronald Reagan/Grover Norquist capitalism have failed (Not that I subscribed to that "flavor" of capitalism since a year or two after Reagan took office in any event). I've tried to define my philosophy more with specific real-world examples than by naming any particular people I've taken after.
2009/03/31
The Great Recession
I was communicating with a conservative in an online forum and he said: "...common sense and growing numbers of people around the world are basically saying that Obama's policies are throwing gas on the fire. Nobody, no country has ever spent it's way out of debt!" Well, that may be true (Though it seems to me that spending on solid, serious investments would indeed get a country out of debt as a positive side effect of growing the economy) but that's not relevant to the economic crisis that the US finds itself in today. The crisis is more accurately described by Simon Johnson, who used to be the chief economist for the International Monetary Fund and speaks of countries that find themselves needing assistance:
Just as with the S&L crisis of the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, where 747 Savings & Loans collapsed at the cost to the Federal Government of a little over $160 billion, private investors took increasingly risky gambles with their money in the (justified) confidence that the government would bail them out. The group Wall Street Watch put together a 231 page PDF detailing just why the current crisis occurred. Following are their 12 main reasons:
Does the Obama Administration appear to have things under control? Paul Krugman looks at the plans to spend multiple hundreds of billions of dollars and how it will impact "Mr. Obama’s promise that his plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010." Krugman states: "It’s a credible promise — his economists used solidly mainstream estimates of the impacts of tax and spending policies." Krugman's worry is just that the stimulus is too small, that Obama doesn't plan to spend enough to offset the jobs that have already been lost. So there are certainly problems, but it appears that our government is at least headed in the right direction.
The economist Dean Baker agrees that the stimulus plan is a good one, but that a third stimulus is needed. Baker is the fellow whose constant refrain, whenever the traditional media touts a "mainstream" economist, is to point out that the particular economist "Didn't see an $8 trillion housing bubble developing (And in many cases, they still haven't acknowledged that the bubble ever existed in the first place)!" Baker adds (PDF) that the insistence of many Administration economists that they encourage the payment of bubble-inflated prices for housing continues to complicate the picture.
The problem with American auto companies is also quite serious, but various bloggers seem pretty happy about the Administration's response. Yes, the Administration is being tougher on the auto companies than on the bankers and financial companies, but there doesn't appear to have been much choice in the matter.
The one really sour, disappointing, hugely frustrating part of the picture has been the response of the traditional media. Relentlessly concerned with trivia, focused on personalities and not upon policy, the media seems determined to not finger the last Administration as being in any way responsible for anything.
If you don't know where you came from, how are you supposed to know where you're going?
UFPJ-DVN's economics blog
Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.
Just as with the S&L crisis of the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, where 747 Savings & Loans collapsed at the cost to the Federal Government of a little over $160 billion, private investors took increasingly risky gambles with their money in the (justified) confidence that the government would bail them out. The group Wall Street Watch put together a 231 page PDF detailing just why the current crisis occurred. Following are their 12 main reasons:
- In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.
- Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting — tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.
- The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives — which became the basis for massive speculation.
- Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
- The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.
- Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal “risk-assessment models.”
- Federal regulators refused to block widespread predatory lending practices earlier in this decade, failing to either issue appropriate regulations or even enforce existing ones.
- Federal bank regulators claimed the power to supersede state consumer protection laws that could have diminished predatory lending and other abusive practices.
- Federal rules prevent victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought their loans from the banks that issued the original loan.
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
- The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.
- Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms.
Does the Obama Administration appear to have things under control? Paul Krugman looks at the plans to spend multiple hundreds of billions of dollars and how it will impact "Mr. Obama’s promise that his plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010." Krugman states: "It’s a credible promise — his economists used solidly mainstream estimates of the impacts of tax and spending policies." Krugman's worry is just that the stimulus is too small, that Obama doesn't plan to spend enough to offset the jobs that have already been lost. So there are certainly problems, but it appears that our government is at least headed in the right direction.
The economist Dean Baker agrees that the stimulus plan is a good one, but that a third stimulus is needed. Baker is the fellow whose constant refrain, whenever the traditional media touts a "mainstream" economist, is to point out that the particular economist "Didn't see an $8 trillion housing bubble developing (And in many cases, they still haven't acknowledged that the bubble ever existed in the first place)!" Baker adds (PDF) that the insistence of many Administration economists that they encourage the payment of bubble-inflated prices for housing continues to complicate the picture.
The problem with American auto companies is also quite serious, but various bloggers seem pretty happy about the Administration's response. Yes, the Administration is being tougher on the auto companies than on the bankers and financial companies, but there doesn't appear to have been much choice in the matter.
The one really sour, disappointing, hugely frustrating part of the picture has been the response of the traditional media. Relentlessly concerned with trivia, focused on personalities and not upon policy, the media seems determined to not finger the last Administration as being in any way responsible for anything.
The media's refusal to involve the Bush administration in any of a wide array of stories about the economy deprives their consumers of the very analysis of policies that would help them understand and evaluate proposals to address the crisis.
If you don't know where you came from, how are you supposed to know where you're going?
UFPJ-DVN's economics blog
2009/03/21
President Obama reaches out to Iran
President Obama reached out to Iran on the 20th of March with a video message where he made it clear that the US was knowledgeable of, and respected, Iran's people and culture. He offered Iran the chance for the "Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations" and offered some conditions for that to happen. Basically, Iran must be a responsible world citizen. WorldTribune.com says "Israel has sought a U.S. commitment to limit its dialogue with Iran" but that the "White House and the senior echelon of the Obama administration have refused a dialogue with Israel on the Iranian threat."
Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi had no difficulty getting access to all manner of US officials upon his visit last year with the Bush Administration, but didn't find his reception very warm with the Obama Administration. He was able to get a meeting with only National Security Advisor James Jones and Jones only wanted to discuss Israeli relations with the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Obama Administration refused to "make it clear that the military option against Iran's nuclear program exists."
The Wall Street Journal makes it clear that conservative pro-Israelis have something to worry about.
It was wryly noted that the competition was hot and heavy, but Robert Spencer of "Jihad Watch" was the first right-wing blogger "out of the gate" to deploy words like "appeasement" and "aggression." And the Rosett Report of Pajamas Media was the first to bring up Neville Chamberlain and Munich in 1938. Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that supports U.S. engagement with Tehran, notes that: "[Obama is] signaling he’s not looking for regime change; he’s recognizing Iran’s system." That's a pretty darn huge difference between this president and the last one.
Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment evaluates Obama's efforts in the following way:
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sounds very unimpressed with Obama's overture, showing that it's far too early to judge the results.
Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi had no difficulty getting access to all manner of US officials upon his visit last year with the Bush Administration, but didn't find his reception very warm with the Obama Administration. He was able to get a meeting with only National Security Advisor James Jones and Jones only wanted to discuss Israeli relations with the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Obama Administration refused to "make it clear that the military option against Iran's nuclear program exists."
The Wall Street Journal makes it clear that conservative pro-Israelis have something to worry about.
The Obama administration is considering lifting a ban on regular diplomatic contacts with Iran and looking at ways to develop a direct line of communication to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said officials briefed on the deliberations.
It was wryly noted that the competition was hot and heavy, but Robert Spencer of "Jihad Watch" was the first right-wing blogger "out of the gate" to deploy words like "appeasement" and "aggression." And the Rosett Report of Pajamas Media was the first to bring up Neville Chamberlain and Munich in 1938. Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that supports U.S. engagement with Tehran, notes that: "[Obama is] signaling he’s not looking for regime change; he’s recognizing Iran’s system." That's a pretty darn huge difference between this president and the last one.
Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment evaluates Obama's efforts in the following way:
Ultimately it takes two to tango, and at the moment, hardliners in Tehran who are not interested in having an amicable relationship with the United States have an inordinate amount of influence.
Rather than strengthen these hardliners, Obama’s overtures will put pressure on them to justify their often gratuitous enmity toward the United States. Most Iranians recognize that, in 2009, the “death to America” culture of 1979 is obsolete—it only prevents the country from fulfilling its enormous potential.
Whereas the Bush administration united Iran’s disparate political actors against a common external threat, the Obama administration, I believe, is going to deepen the divisions and incongruities among Iran’s political elites.
2009/03/13
Glenn Beck becoming increasingly unstable
Okay, Glenn Beck brings up what appears to be a reasonable point: "If you're a conservative, you're called a racist. You want to starve children."
Now, the Governor of South Carolina is Mark Sanford and he wants to reject (On behalf of SC) $700 million is stimulus money from the Federal Government. The youngster Ty'Sheoma Bethea wrote a letter to the President asking for money for South Carolina's schools. Well, the money from the AR&R Act would do precisely that, it would pay to keep 7500 teachers on the job and cover new construction.
Beck is not precisely correct, people aren't saying conservatives want people to starve (Though one has to wonder what Limbaugh meant when he said he wants our president to fail), but to not want South Carolina schools to stay in operation, that sounds an awful lot like a distinction without a difference.
Yet, Beck says that "the American people...feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody's hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you on both sides."
But one of those "sides" appears to be completely deranged! One of those "sides" seems to hate the American citizenry!
Beck goes on: "And every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into [Michael McLendon, the killer of 10 people in Alabama]?"
Glenn Beck appears to be going further and further away from reality and further towards justifying violence carried out on a mass scale.
Fox News is becoming increasingly irresponsible by allowing this lunatic a public platform. Fox really needs to fire this guy.
Fox News Channel
1-888-369-4762
Comments@foxnews.com
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Now, the Governor of South Carolina is Mark Sanford and he wants to reject (On behalf of SC) $700 million is stimulus money from the Federal Government. The youngster Ty'Sheoma Bethea wrote a letter to the President asking for money for South Carolina's schools. Well, the money from the AR&R Act would do precisely that, it would pay to keep 7500 teachers on the job and cover new construction.
Beck is not precisely correct, people aren't saying conservatives want people to starve (Though one has to wonder what Limbaugh meant when he said he wants our president to fail), but to not want South Carolina schools to stay in operation, that sounds an awful lot like a distinction without a difference.
Yet, Beck says that "the American people...feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody's hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you on both sides."
But one of those "sides" appears to be completely deranged! One of those "sides" seems to hate the American citizenry!
Beck goes on: "And every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into [Michael McLendon, the killer of 10 people in Alabama]?"
Glenn Beck appears to be going further and further away from reality and further towards justifying violence carried out on a mass scale.
Fox News is becoming increasingly irresponsible by allowing this lunatic a public platform. Fox really needs to fire this guy.
Fox News Channel
1-888-369-4762
Comments@foxnews.com
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
2009/03/11
The sad case of the WaPo media critic
And then we have the very sad case of the WaPo media critic Howard Kurtz not understanding a really basic, fundamental issue concerning the media. Radio ratings technology is stuck back in the 1960s, with really outdated methods and technology. There's simply no way to accurately measure a radio hosts' audience. This problem could be solved with enough money, but there's no motivation for anyone to spend that money as advertisers really aren't all that concerned with exact audience figures and no one else really cares very much at all.
So when Kurtz claimed that Rush Limbaugh's ratings had doubled since January, he really wasn't basing that claim on anything more than guesswork. Neither Limbaugh nor the Limbaugh-backer who provided the original guesstimate would go on record to say that the claim that Kurtz quoted was anything more than a wild guess.
The suggestion has been made that Limbaugh's audience is probably comparable to that of Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC. That would make sense as that would be consistent with "Bell Curve" theory, which holds that the audience for the extremes on the political spectrum would be about the same. That's not to say that the hosts are at all alike. Maddow is a cheerful, polite, humorous and well-spoken host. It appears that Limbaugh similarly appeals to the base of his party.
The traditional media sticks with the figure of 20 million for Limbaugh's audience because Limbaugh put that figure out many years ago and no one has spent the money necessary to authoritatively say otherwise. Maddow and Keith Olbermann both get about 1.4 million viewers for an average show. So instead of Limbaugh's audience jumping from 20 million to 40 million as Kurtz suggests, it's more likely to have jumped from 1.4 million to something short of 3 million. Of course, the very high probability is that it only jumped to 1.6 or 1.7 million.
Sadly Kurtz, who again is a media critic, is still defending his original estimate. So I guess we need a media critic to keep an eye on the media critic.
So when Kurtz claimed that Rush Limbaugh's ratings had doubled since January, he really wasn't basing that claim on anything more than guesswork. Neither Limbaugh nor the Limbaugh-backer who provided the original guesstimate would go on record to say that the claim that Kurtz quoted was anything more than a wild guess.
The suggestion has been made that Limbaugh's audience is probably comparable to that of Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC. That would make sense as that would be consistent with "Bell Curve" theory, which holds that the audience for the extremes on the political spectrum would be about the same. That's not to say that the hosts are at all alike. Maddow is a cheerful, polite, humorous and well-spoken host. It appears that Limbaugh similarly appeals to the base of his party.
The traditional media sticks with the figure of 20 million for Limbaugh's audience because Limbaugh put that figure out many years ago and no one has spent the money necessary to authoritatively say otherwise. Maddow and Keith Olbermann both get about 1.4 million viewers for an average show. So instead of Limbaugh's audience jumping from 20 million to 40 million as Kurtz suggests, it's more likely to have jumped from 1.4 million to something short of 3 million. Of course, the very high probability is that it only jumped to 1.6 or 1.7 million.
Sadly Kurtz, who again is a media critic, is still defending his original estimate. So I guess we need a media critic to keep an eye on the media critic.
2009/03/07
Sanity returns to US-Russia relations
Six months ago, the US confronted Russia over the much smaller state of Georgia in the South Ossetian War. The US Establishment was trying to present the war as an heroic "David vs Goliath" tale of the brave and noble Georgians standing up to their much bigger and stronger neighbor, Russia. The liberal blogger Juan Cole caught Fox News in a D'oh! moment when Fox interviewed "an Ossetian-American 12-year-old girl who thanks Russian troops for saving her from Georgian aggression." As Georgia had indeed started the war, the Fox News people frowned and sputtered and fumed, but couldn't come out and flatly contradict the girl.
The US had been supporting Georgia in the years before that to such an extent that the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili felt confident that if he attacked the ethnic Russian citizens of the Georgian province of South Ossetia, that the US would come to his rescue. Oops! The US promptly demonstrated that it was a paper tiger that was completely incapable of coming to the aid of an alleged ally.
Now it appears, the US has thought better of its earlier stance. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, didn't completely ignore Georgia, but said:
The BBC adds:
And that:
So Georgia is not entirely kicked to the curb but it's quite clear that good relations with Russia have taken priority over the previous, untenable, relationship with Georgia. Cole suggests that helping Afghanistan while maintaining hostility towards Russia was simply not a realistic option.
A member of the local NorthWest Greens, Arn Specter, has been documenting relations between Russia and the US, looking at the relationship through the view that "neo-cons aim to achieve full military domination over the rest of the world" via building a Missile Defense system and just generally taking a very hostile view of pretty much everything that Russia does. Of course, it's possible that a major reason that the Obama Administration has been unenthusiastic about neo-con ideas is that Missile Defense is a complete turkey of a system. It does the job of funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to defense contractors, but never did and probably never will actually defend America.
So, brava to Mrs Clinton! Pursuing better relations with Russia is the practical and sane thing to do.
The US had been supporting Georgia in the years before that to such an extent that the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili felt confident that if he attacked the ethnic Russian citizens of the Georgian province of South Ossetia, that the US would come to his rescue. Oops! The US promptly demonstrated that it was a paper tiger that was completely incapable of coming to the aid of an alleged ally.
Now it appears, the US has thought better of its earlier stance. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, didn't completely ignore Georgia, but said:
"We can and must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest, including helping the people of Afghanistan," said Mrs Clinton.
The BBC adds:
US foreign policy is now very much a team game and US Vice-President Joe Biden will be in Brussels next Tuesday for a more detailed exchange of views on Afghanistan.
And that:
Mrs Clinton added that Nato "should continue to open Nato's door to European countries such as Georgia and Ukraine and help them meet Nato standards".
So Georgia is not entirely kicked to the curb but it's quite clear that good relations with Russia have taken priority over the previous, untenable, relationship with Georgia. Cole suggests that helping Afghanistan while maintaining hostility towards Russia was simply not a realistic option.
A member of the local NorthWest Greens, Arn Specter, has been documenting relations between Russia and the US, looking at the relationship through the view that "neo-cons aim to achieve full military domination over the rest of the world" via building a Missile Defense system and just generally taking a very hostile view of pretty much everything that Russia does. Of course, it's possible that a major reason that the Obama Administration has been unenthusiastic about neo-con ideas is that Missile Defense is a complete turkey of a system. It does the job of funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to defense contractors, but never did and probably never will actually defend America.
So, brava to Mrs Clinton! Pursuing better relations with Russia is the practical and sane thing to do.
2009/03/05
Letter to Inky on newspaper bureaus
I agree with Trudy Rubin that newspaper bureaus are a very good thing. What does a newspaper provide for reporters that they can't get through the blogging experience? Well clearly, as Media Matters has been documenting in the case of George Will and the global warming issue, the editorial "layers of management" have been pretty useless when it comes to correcting a "star" writer with decades of experience.
Will and some junior "go-fer" editor disagree on some point and it's pretty clear that the star will prevail. Officially, technically, during the first years of the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice was the boss of Donald Rumsfeld, but looking back at how the National Security Advisor "managed" the Secretary of Defense, it's not at all clear that she ever did more than make a few meek and mild suggestions every now and then. Seems to me that Will and the layers of management at the Washington Post have a relationship similar to that of Rumsfeld and Rice.
I think, to use the economists' term, there's a definite "diminishing marginal utility" to being in a large news-gathering bureau. Resources spent on allowing a reporter the time, the travel and telephone expenses, the use of things like the LexisNexis service and the sheer utility of being able to tell a potential interview subject "Hi! I'm from the Daily Tribune of Oshkosh and we'd like to get your views on..." all have an upper limit beyond which adding resources is not very useful.
Still, those are all resources that aren't available to your average blogger. The Washington Post story on the Walter Reed Hospital and how wounded soldiers were being carelessly warehoused was clearly a story that required time and resources to collect. It also helped the cause of better care for those soldiers that a high-profile publication was able to use its megaphone to force changes in the system.
So yes, Rubin is correct. With the qualifications I've pointed out, newspapers are valuable institutions that should be preserved.
Will and some junior "go-fer" editor disagree on some point and it's pretty clear that the star will prevail. Officially, technically, during the first years of the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice was the boss of Donald Rumsfeld, but looking back at how the National Security Advisor "managed" the Secretary of Defense, it's not at all clear that she ever did more than make a few meek and mild suggestions every now and then. Seems to me that Will and the layers of management at the Washington Post have a relationship similar to that of Rumsfeld and Rice.
I think, to use the economists' term, there's a definite "diminishing marginal utility" to being in a large news-gathering bureau. Resources spent on allowing a reporter the time, the travel and telephone expenses, the use of things like the LexisNexis service and the sheer utility of being able to tell a potential interview subject "Hi! I'm from the Daily Tribune of Oshkosh and we'd like to get your views on..." all have an upper limit beyond which adding resources is not very useful.
Still, those are all resources that aren't available to your average blogger. The Washington Post story on the Walter Reed Hospital and how wounded soldiers were being carelessly warehoused was clearly a story that required time and resources to collect. It also helped the cause of better care for those soldiers that a high-profile publication was able to use its megaphone to force changes in the system.
So yes, Rubin is correct. With the qualifications I've pointed out, newspapers are valuable institutions that should be preserved.
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