Politics
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Michael Moore the inverted prophet
He did Bowling for Columbine, and the Democratic party changed positions on gun control, he did Fahrenheit 911 and Bush got re-elected, and now he has a new movie coming out on health care. Does that mean health care is going to be deregulated?
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Monday link roundup
- A useful post from CodingHorror.com on interface friction
- Al Gore, like Ann Coulter, seems to be a mac person
- A blog for women! And one of the editors might be someone I went to high school with.
- Kuler! The Adobe web color harmony tool – via this site
- Co-Mapping (mind mapping software) looks cool
- Properly bashing ethanol
- HiddenUnities and PurposeSlog have posts on the Wire and 24. I helpfully added the Shield in the comments. All excellent programs, though 24 is basically a commercial for the cell phone industry, not torture.
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We live in scary times when Bill Maher is right about something
Check out this post from The Agitator. The whole “They hate us for our freedom” bit sounds nice, and is partly true, but it is the most useless adage ever created. If we’re going to reduce the number of terrorists to zero (the goal) we’re going to need to do more than just proclaim our greatness and ignore all specifics. Sigh.
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Wars in the Middle East are officially a vested interest
I read this article on CNN.com
White House taps general for ‘war czar’ post
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon’s director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a “war czar” after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.
and was reminded of this Albert Jay Nock quote:
Experience has made it clear beyond doubt or peradventure that prohibition in the United States is not a moral issue; it is not essentially, even, a political issue; it is a vested interest.
and this H.L. Mencken quote:
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
We have this horrible tendency in our culture to see the means (a big new bureaucracy) as an end in itself, nay, an achievement. What endeavor has failed because there are too few managers? The right managers, sure, lots of failures due to a lack of them. But too few?
Plus an additional bureaucracy just creates it’s own principal-agent and knowledge problems.
Functionally Lute will probably serve as a dedicated adviser, but why the title Czar? All of the Russian Czars were an odd combination of stagnant, incompetent and murderous. Why is that some role model.
Sigh.
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Today’s quote of the day goes to…
Cokie Roberts who characterized Barack Obama as “the candidate from Whole Foods”.
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Manhattan project for energy independence
Some ideas never go away; to wit, in what way does the statement, said by many “we need a Manhattan project for energy independence differ from Soviet industrial policy? It’s quite different from the original Manhattan project in that it’s quite wide in scope and chases an ill defined goal, whereas the original Manhattan project was quite specific in both method and destination.
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Benchmarks of seriousness
I was taking an advanced economic history class during the Republican “Revolution” of 94. Someone asked the professor if there was any historical precedent for radical change following a big party switch in Congress alone. He cited many near examples I don’t remember but then said “We’ll know if they’re serious about cutting spending if they get rid of farm subsidies.”. It’s now more than twelve years later and farm subsidies are going strong.
I was reading this interview with George Schulz and he, talking about oil dependence, had the line
I won’t believe we’re serious about it until we’re willing to remove the tariff on import of ethanol. And take quotas off sugar and a few things like that.
which is a fine benchmark to tell if anyone really cares about oil dependence. Support for nuclear power is a good one too.
For some technical background; American ethanol production is one of the least efficient efforts in the world, largely because we make it from corn (which we have a lot of) which is a poor source material. Sugar (of which we grow very little) is a far better source material. The American climate is not well suited to grow sugar, but it is well suited to grow corn. Both the corn and sugar lobbies are well organized and powerful and benefit greatly from subsidies and tariffs.
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The Japanese seem to be outdoing us in crazy
Check out the speech below. It takes a certain amount of gravitas to be against majority rule and run for office on the explicit platform of destroying the county, but you just can’t hold back street musicians.
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The funniest thing I read today
It comes from the blog of Anderson Cooper, which graces us with
Cameras followed the governor as he shopped for groceries. All he had was $21.00 to spend on food for an entire week. That’s the average amount of money allotted to a food stamp recipient. He had to say “no” to organic bananas and Swiss cheese.
Does anyone expect food stamps to be more than just barely adequate (if that)? Is there anyone laboring under the idea that life on food stamps is an excess of luxury, filled with store bought organic foods?
One of the more annoying human tendencies is that everyone would think like we do if only they had access to the same collection of facts. Thomas Sowell put it best with
Facts do not ‘speak for themselves.’ They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
If you don’t convince someone of the flaw in the theory, all of the “awareness” in the world probably one reinforces one’s original worldview.
And on the awareness stunts, nothing beats death row inmates going on a hunger strike to protest conditions. How can anyone top that?
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Bold new insight
Barack Obama is a lot like Lenny Kravitz. Both have a well defined personal story which makes for an easy story for critics and pundits. They both sound just like vague rehashes of the Kennedy era so they seem familiar to those in the pundit demographic. Both were barely born then, so the talking heads can proclaim them to be “new”. Both are of mixed race ancestry so people can feel good about themselves for saying they like them. Both have problems with “authenticity”.
Where’s my CNN.com column?