Our President and First Fan has been catching a lot of events while in China for the Oympics. Too bad Bush doesn’t know how to hold the American flag. Somehow, I cannot imagine China’s Paramount Leader Hu Jintao making this kind of gaff.
Via Sara
Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, has a great article in the Guardian about how in contrast to the right, the left has a coherent agenda. It’s one that offers not only higher growth, but also social justice.
One part that I found damning was that it is estimated that within a few years, America will have more people working in the security business than in education and a year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard.
That is one scary stat but the article overall isn’t a scary one, rather it is a very good argument for the left’s agenda.
Via Neu
One thing that really bothered me about Hilary’s campaign was how time and time again it did not pay for the goods and services it used from very same people it supposedly was “fighting for” – small business owners. Here is just one example:
Dakota Pizza, a restaurant owned by Stephen Bledsoe in Wynnewood, PA, fed Clinton, her campaign and the press corps that traveled with her more than $11,000 worth of grilled shrimp, sandwiches, “hand-crafted” pizza and salads leading up to the April 22 primary. He received a partial payment, but is still owned $5,933. “I can’t believe that someone of her stature will not have the ability to repay what they owe,” he said.
I have been following this trail of unpaid bills all over the country and always figured that Bill would just have to give a weeks worth of speeches once she dropped out to handle the damage. Therefore, I almost spit up the coffee I was drinking when I read an email from the Clinton campaign which featured the subject line, “Keeping my promise.” In this missive, Hilary had, to borrow one of Obama’s words, the audacity to ask and expect her supporters to help her resolve her campaign debts. I mean, for fuck’s sake she raised $237 million (!) yet still had more than $22.5 million in debts as of the end of May. That includes $12 million that the New York senator loaned her campaign.
Is this the person we want trying to balance the budget?! If anyone has a debt after raising almost $240 million, it because of one simple reason: grossly negligent financial management. I for one never reward anyone for that type of behavior, least of all a former first lady and current U.S. Senator.
If you you think I’m kidding unfortunately I am not – please see the image below that I grabbed from the email:
After getting sufficiently angry, I have started to think differently about this situation and have sort of come full circle because Hilary has truly inspired me in my approach towards my household finances. I think I’m going to send an email to all my friends and family asking them to help me “retire my debt” (aka pay off my mortgage) so that “we can keep fighting together” (whatever the hell that means – it sure does sound good though). In fact, I might actually carry a balance forward on my credit cards starting now. Who cares that I’ll get hit with 22% a month in finance charges: I can just get my “supporters” to retire my debt for me! Thanks for the swell idea HRC!
My friend, who has been working on Obama’s campaign for the last almost two years now, sent me the video below which, while being Pro-O, is definitely entertaining.
Via YLFO
I love New York, especially when especially big things happen and today it’s “Two for Tuesday!” here in the Big Apple:
1. The NY Football Giants celebrated the aftermath of the catch (aka an improbable super bowl victory) with a ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes. The last time a parade was held there was pre-9-11 when the Yanks won the World Series. I was there, just like I was in ’99. Everyone loves a parade, especially if Boston is miserable as a result.
2. The Democratic Primary in New York was held today – I voted before 8:00 am and the woman who handled my registration remarked, “I remember you – you vote in every election.” It’s true, I do. I firmly believe that if you do not vote, you are not truly a citizen and therefore you do not have the right to complain about whatever you find lacking in your society (and you know how much I love to complain). While I didn’t create the world I live in, I can help to alter it as much as possible. Voting is one concrete way you can help affect change. Each vote matters, whether you think it does or not.
Let’s save for another post the ludicrous fact that before I even had a chance to vote, my democratic choices were winnowed down to two ( I would liked to have voted for Joe Biden). The great fact of the day is that I had the singular pleasure of actually voting for a great friend of mine – he was on the ballot in my district as a delegate for Barack Obama. While I have friends and family who are elected officials, I never got to pull a lever for them. The only downside was that I couldn’t bring Bingham in with me – they were cracking down this year.
As an aside, did you know the Dead got back together to rock out for Obama? I think that is pretty cool.
Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate to their students how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result which they call a “dollar auction.” As you read on, keep the whole Iraqi war debacle in mind.
Here is how the “dollar auction” works: a dollar is offered for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle – the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well.
Initially, almost every student gets sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.
The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears. The highest bidders now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player.
If this strategy is followed, the highest bidders usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster. Just like the war in Iraq. Hmmm. Has anyone in the current administration taken Econ 101?
This isn’t my original thought: Oliver R. Goodenough wrote about the dollar aution in the Rutland Herald, but I liked it so much that I thought I should share it with y’all.
Via Neu
I’ve been catching up on old Thomas Friedman columns and getting nice and angry about what is taking place in the good old USA. Here is the last part of his recent Charge It To My Kids column:
Previous American generations connected with our troops by making sacrifices at home — we’ve never passed on the entire cost of a war to the next generation, said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who has written a history — “The Price of Liberty” — about how America has paid for its wars since 1776.
“In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mr. Hormats, “Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes — and nonessential programs have been cut — to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.”
In his celebrated Farewell Address, Mr. Hormats noted, George Washington warned against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burdens we ourselves ought to bear.”
I once again have started to day dream about moving to Canada…
Stanley Fish was asked 10 questions about democracy by the BBC. Two questions are related to one another: “What is the biggest threat to democracy?” and “Can terrorism destroy democracy?” and I thought I would share his responses I thought they were not only insightful and sum up how I feel:
The answers depend on what you think democracy is. I tend to resist romantic definitions that feature phrases like “noble ideal” and opt instead for something more analytic: democracy is a form of government that is not attached to any pre-given political or ideological ends, but allows ends to be chosen by the majority vote of free citizens.
What this means is that democracy is the only form of government that, at least theoretically, contemplates its own demise with equanimity. Democratic elections do not guarantee that the victors will be democratically inclined, and it is always possible that those who gain control of the legislative process will pass laws that erode or even repeal the rights – of property, free expression and free movement – that distinguish democracies from theocracies and monarchies. (Some would say that this is exactly what has been happening in the past six years.) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes captured the fragility of a form of government that can alter itself beyond the point of recognition when he said that if his fellow citizens want to go to hell in a handbasket, it was his job to help them, even if he deplored the consequences. Democracy, then, can be said to be its own biggest threat.
Terrorism presents a parallel threat from the outside. The danger is not so much that terrorists will defeat democracies by force as it is that, in resisting terrorists, democracies will forgo the procedural safeguards (against warrantless detention, censorship and secret surveillance) that make a democracy what it is. (Again, some would say that is already happening today.) If terrorists can maneuver democracies into employing tactics indistinguishable from theirs, it could be argued that they have won no matter what the outcome on the battlefield.
For more on this topic, check out www.whydemocracy.net
Straight from the “you can’t make this stuff up” department is this bit of news about how Nebraskan State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. While Ernie says he is trying to point out how frivolous lawsuits can be, I pray that he does not believe in a vengeful God after reading the suit’s language. If God exists, he, she or it might very well be pretty pissed after reading it.
First off, the lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.”Second, it says God has caused “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.”
Third, it also says God has caused “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.”
I wonder who will win..
The NYT leads off its article about Alberto Gonzales leaving his post as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government this way:
“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally done something important to advance the cause of justice. He has resigned.”
Just like most of Bush’s other appointees, A.G.A.G. was much more focused on keeping Bush, he supposed boss, happy than keeping his real boss, namely the American Public, happy. I thought it couldn’t get worst after Ashcroft, the man who lost to a dead man when running for Senate, became AG. I was wrong. It got a lot worse.
The further quote the NYT:
There was a more basic problem with Mr. Gonzales’s tenure: he did not stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, as an attorney general must. This administration has illegally spied on Americans, detained suspects indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” run roughshod over the Geneva Conventions, violated the Hatch Act prohibitions on injecting politics into government and defied Congressional subpoenas. In each case, Mr. Gonzales gave every indication of being on the side of the lawbreakers, not the law.
Angry yet? Yes? No? Well, here is more for you:
Mr. Gonzales signed off on the administration’s repugnant, and disastrous, torture policy when he was the White House counsel. He later helped stampede Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed illegal C.I.A. prisons where detainees may be tortured and established kangaroo courts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to keep detained foreigners in custody essentially for life. He helped cover up and perpetuate Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping programs, both in the counsel’s job and as attorney general. The F.B.I. under his stewardship abused powers it was given after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the name of enhanced national security.
In summation, the editorial wraps it up this way:.
Mr. Gonzales, for all of his undeniable deficiencies, merely reflected the principles of this administration. His resignation is a necessary but hardly sufficient step in restoring the nation’s commitment to the rule of law..
I hate to even mention it but lame duck or not, Bush is the leader of this country until January, 2009 and he will be responsible for picking the next AG as well. Hopefully we have reached rock bottom. Someone should tell Bush that when you are in a hole, stop digging, or at least start digging sideways and not further down.