The dangers of diplomacy...

Scary Stuff

My response to Westmoreland comment...

Saw a defense of Lynn Westmoreland and his voting record and gas prices... here was my response

How would increasing domestic production capacity bring down global oil spikes over long term. The short run aggregate supply curve shifts from the change in the commodity price but to counter that effect it would seem the data suggests increasing technologies that will help decrease our dependence on oil (like McCain wants). Such will also help our private sector... by helping stimulate buisness in a sector of the economy that will have huge long term growth potential for American businessness.

I'd be interested in seeing the economic data that backs your suggestion AND helps our long term economic growth. For now i'm unconvinced. Oil was yesterdays profit maker... we have to be on the cutting edge or we will fall far behind economies of China, India, and (gasp) Europe...

Westmoreland's policies continue to undermine our security, our economy, and our citizens here in the 3rd District.

regards,
Fellow 3rd District Voter
Jim Nichols
Chairman Henry County Democrats
www.henrydems.org
www.JimNichols4.com

Here in the South one has to wonder...

What ever happened to the "Business Republicans"

On Gay Marriage in California:

"You know, I’m wishing everyone good luck with their marriages and I hope that California’s economy is booming because everyone is going to come here and get married."

Source: Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenenegger

Blink 182 - Whats My Age Again? (Covered By 13 Year Old)

it appears nobody likes you when youre 13 as well...

Blog post on Habermas...

The Future of Human Nature

I’ve just finished reading “The Future of Human Nature” by Jurgen Habermas, the world renown German philosopher and one of the last true believers in the ideals of the Western Enlightenment. He has a really interesting argument against stem cell research and genetic engineering that is based on a completely rational-secular point of view.

Quote

However, there’s a difference between the negotiations carried out with North Korea and Iran. In the case of North Korea, there is a guarantee that North Korea will not be attacked if they are doing away with their nuclear program. But there is no guarantee in the air to Iran against an attack from the outside, even under any circumstance. And on the contrary, rather, I think they feel rather threatened by the military buildup of the US in the Persian Gulf. --Hans Blix **

Clinton as Hitler?

a little fun to break the tension

Can we justifiably say...

Read this...

I remain very grateful to my Catholic upbringing and education for giving me relative immunity to nationalism. In the 1950s, the nuns who taught me from age five to twelve were virtually all Irish or Irish-American with sentimental attachment to certain elements of Celtic folklore, but they made sure to inculcate into us that the only serious human society was the Church which was an explicitly international organization. The mass, in the international language, Latin, was the same everywhere; the religious orders were international. This absence of national limitation was something very much to be cherished. “Catholica” in the phrase “[credo in] unam, sanctam, catholicam, et apostolicam ecclesiam” should, we were told, be written with a lower-case, not an upper-case, initial because it was not in the first instance part of the proper name of the church, but an adjective meaning “universal,” and this universality was one of the most important “marks of the true Church.”

Then tell me this... can we not say--or at least question--that those who profess Nationalism fail to have heeded Paul's call of universalism? Is it not un-christian to pit one klan over another? If you believe in a historicist approach to Christianity I guess not--you are the chosen people. If you believe in the ethics of jesus and that Christianity is an action not some political propaganda to spew about I might speculate that you must.

quote

"One must, as it were, he said, consider the University as a complex machine with two interlocking parts, a Generator that was devoted to producing excellence in relatively abstract areas of research, primarily scientific research, and then a Transformer which turned the prestige acquired through this excellence into a force of repression, directed at legitimizing the deepest possible cultural and political conservatism. The combination of excellence and a strictly-enforced, backward-looking cultural ethos made the University an almost irresistible magnet for the extensive funding from the alumni, large corporations, and the government that fuelled the Generator." --Raymond Geuss Richard Rorty at Princeton: Personal Recollections

WTF???

So I've been reading newspapers since about 5:10 this morning... its now 6:36 and I just came across this in the Jeruselam Post: 'Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term'

I don't know anything about the Jerusalam Post. Is this just Bush PR going to Isreal? Is it legit--and if so why isn't in the Financial Times or New York Times??? My hunch is Bush PR but gee I never thought the American public would think invading Iraq was a good idea--so what do I know.

quote

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” --Albert Einstein **

No one flew over the nest...

If you've spent any time in a psychiatric hosptial you know the other end of this statement from a social worker in Baghdad

“Sometimes we are talking to them and trying to comfort them, but inside our hearts we feel pain because we also face the same problems,” she said. “We also have lost people, but we must pretend to be another person, to hide our real feelings and our real suffering.”

The perspective is so much broader and the chaos far more extreme but the fictions of "its okay" ring so hallow and don't really help no matter your geographic location or circumstances. Maybe thats why people who have been in similar situations are more effective than those who haven't.

I mean but go figure. The average Iraqi would probably get a short term stint in the hospital here in the U.S. just from the chaos and death and destruction they have seen in the past 5 years.

go read the rest: War Takes Toll on Baghdad Psychiatric Hospital

The U.S. and New Zealand are the only indust. nation allowing direct marketing to consumers!

Pharmaceutical Payola -- Drug Marketing to Doctors

In the meantime, a ban on Pharma gifts to doctors would be a modest step forward. In the United States, notes Petersen, "radio disc jockeys can't take cash from music companies. But when it comes to something like medicines -- which mean life or death for people -- doctors can take as much money as they want from the drug companies. We need a law to stop that."

A real artist...

understands that music is to be shared. If you want to make profits... go to business school.

Cheers to Madonna... go see her youtube intro message

Part 1 - Dinesh D'Souza Debates Peter Singer

Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx

motley collection of half-truths

"As vast experimental literature shows, our intuitive theories are often a motley collection of half-truths that get us through the average day rather than true redescriptions of the world." --Gary Marcus

This is what brings peace... Bush might learn from it...

Whether it was petty partisanship... or just not understanding forigen policy. Bush's statement on diplomacy with enemies was unacceptable and should be vocally condemned here at home.

If you want to create peace. If you truly want to win over the Arab "street." You have to show up at the table and talk. Dictators can't undermine you as well when you are actively engaging them.
In Qatar, Muslim, Jewish clerics meet

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — More than a dozen rabbis, including two from Israel, were in attendance this week as this conservative Muslim sheikdom opened one of the Gulf's first scholarly centers dedicated to interfaith dialogue.

The rare meeting of Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars in the heartland of conservative Islam is another sign of Qatar's efforts to present a moderate image as it bids for the 2016 summer Olympic Games. It's also part of a broader push by Arab governments for interfaith dialogue, even though most still do not recognize Israel.

The talks were not entirely smooth, and politics and disputes over the Palestinian issue did inevitably intrude, said Rabbi David James Lazar, leader of a synagogue in Tel Aviv.

Yet, the benefits for him were huge, he said — especially the ability to make personal connections with Arabs and Muslims "who otherwise I would have no contact with."

"For some it's their first chance ever to hear, not only an Israeli but to hear a Jewish rabbi speak ... And so one of my responses is trying to tell them the story of the Jewish people, which often they have not heard. The Holocaust," he said.

"I hear their story as well," he said. "It's an exchange of stories."

Another attendee, Rabbi Herschel Gluck, chairman of the Muslim Jewish Forum in Britain, commended Qatar for "being brave" by holding the conference.

"We know that hosting rabbis and an interreligious forum can be controversial in the region," said Gluck, whose group is based in a part of London where Jewish and Muslim communities sit side by side.

Some Qataris did criticize the gathering.

"This openness to other faiths creates confusion among our people and jeopardizes our identity," said one preacher at the local Fanar Islamic center, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

But other Qataris consider this and other changes made by Sheik Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al Thani as progressive and credit him for social and economic reforms since 1995.

Two months ago, the country also allowed the opening of its first-ever Catholic church. It has had low-level ties with Israel through a trade office for 12 years although it does not recognize Israel, and recently also invited Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to speak at a conference on democracy.

Ibrahim al-Nuaimi, the director of the interfaith center sponsored by the ruling family, said the goal is to "promote joint studies of academics from three faiths to foster understanding and peace."

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who heads Vatican's council for inter-religious dialogue and attended the conference, praised Qatar's efforts to include Jews.

"As religious leaders, let us promote a sound pedagogy of peace, which is taught in the family, mosques, synagogues and churches," Tauran said.

Efforts at interfaith dialogue got one of their biggest boosts when Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah met with Pope Benedict XVI last November at the Vatican.

In March, the Saudi king then made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews — the first such proposal from a nation with no diplomatic ties to Israel and a ban on non-Muslim religious services and symbols.

The moves, however, come amid rising tensions in the region and with peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled. Many also believe there is a growing gap of understanding between the Muslim Arab world and the West.

Muslims have been angered by cartoons published in European papers seen as insulting the Prophet Muhammad and by the pope's baptizing on Easter of a Muslim journalist who had converted to Catholicism.

The specifics of the Saudi king's initiative — and who would participate — still remain unclear, in particular whether Israeli religious leaders would be invited to a Saudi-brokered dialogue.

It also is unclear if the Saudi efforts would have any political component, or any eventual impact on stalled Arab-Israeli and Palestinian peace talks.

Lazar, the Tel Aviv rabbi, said he is no politician but will carry his warm impressions from the conference back to his students and synagogue — as he hopes Muslim clerics will, too.

Lazar said one Palestinian researcher at the conference confronted him about Israeli textbooks that were, in his words, promoting hatred of Palestinians among Israeli Jewish children.

"My challenge to him was, let us meet together ... and together we'll look at our textbooks, the Jewish textbooks, the Muslim textbooks and the Christian textbooks in Palestine and Israel — and together we'll find if they're educating children toward hate," he said.

Support Delta Flight Attendants!

I will have the pictures I took up soon!!

Something nobody has been able to answer for me...

There are a lot of very smart people who spend a lot of time creating very clever narratives about why Religion--more specifically Christianity--is a form of Revelation that is rock solid. The most truthful of true.

These are very smart people who are far smarter and better educated than I am; so maybe there is just something I don't quite understand.

I mean; I accept the a priori existence of God through the rules of our language, the likely a priori of its biological existence in our brains, the usefulness in the early development of our economy--its organizational and sociological capabilities.

But why do intellectuals adhere to it?

Some argue its a political alliance--a decision to pick one cultural faction over another, some say its needed to create and sustain community through the harsh truth of living, some argue that it is a useful means of explaining in narrative form important views to allow less educated people to flourish--which to me seems condescending of people and inaccurate aside from abnormal developments of some humans.

It just doesn't seem to add up. Doesn't inaccurate information harm our productive possibilities and humanistic capabilities? I don't know the answer to that one... any one care to give it a go?

Crisis in Lebanon...

Yesterday's financial times had a news article on the clashes going on in Lebanon. It was entitled Fear of Civil War as Lebanon clashes escalate.

The recent fighting between the Druze community a minority sect currently in power and Shia gunment is becoming increasingly violent. Death of 5 days of fighting is over 40 people.

The biggest threat is to the regional balance of power with Hizbollah fighters backed by Syria and Iran vs. a Government which is supported by the major Sunni states of Sadui Arabi, Egypt and Jordon. Which means we might want to reconsider our recent vocal condemnation of Iran and Syria which could add to the chaos in the reigion and more broadly may speak to the vital foreign policy questions that we in the Anti-war movement were asking--Is it wise to further destabilzie a reigion that is currently held together with wire string and glue? Is it wise to overthrow governments through external force and aggression rather than using the modal that worked for the United States of an improving market economy which raised incomes and education and created a class of merchants and business owners who desired and were able to overthrow governments the dictator (in our case a king) which uses the status quo political structure and factionalism for their own gains.

If someone invaded the United States and said--as all aggressor nations do--that they were coming to enlighten us and fix our problems. Would you and I not be on the streets attacking our liberator/occupier?

I don't have answers but it does give me pause and a need to reflect and educate myself more broadly on the issue.

This might cause to reflect on our past actions and apply what we've learned to future efforts internationally.

Philosophical Differences vs. Empirical Differences

Take a second to think about this point. Many times conservatives will try to end a political discussion with me by saying "ah, yes! Well it seems we just have philosophical differences. This statement has always bothered me and I figured out why about a year ago.

Many discussion I have are about issues like health care and education. But pretty much all of these discussions have to do with how you best get improvements in these goods and services.

example-- How many discussions with Conservatives do you get into; where they are arguing people don't need to get health care or good schools? The argument is about how you get those improvements not whether we want to or not. To argue people don't need health care when I'm arguing you do--that is a philosophical difference.

Now every once in a while you come upon someone who won't honestly admit what they really believe or want and will manipulate people by saying-- "oh this is the best way to get what you want." Thats a sham--that I find is pulled by some conservatives but not most of them--that is perpetuated upon the public.

So next time someone argue that you just have "philosophical differences" take a moment to reflect on it. And if you don't think so contend that argument!

Interesting take on resolving Darfur crisis...

A new chance for the people of Darfur

The regime is not monolithic. Factions within the regime might prove supportive of new policies aimed at tempering the climate of violence in Sudan, decreasing its trade dependency on China, improving conditions for refugees and lowering international tensions. Such policies might include:

Normalising diplomatic relations in exchange for removing obstacles to the deployment of UN-AU forces in Darfur.

Replacing sanctions on Sudan with new investment opportunities and gradually forgiving its foreign debt in exchange for achievement of benchmarks tied to repatriating refugees, rebuilding villages, and demobilising the Janjaweed;

Calling on not only the government, but also the rebel forces, over which the West has some influence, to bargain in good faith;

Engaging China's desire for international prestige by encouraging it to assume a public role in designing and overseeing repatriation, demobilisation, and vocational programmes;

Offering aid to the Sudanese in rebuilding the tribal reconciliation councils that were destroyed during the civil war;

Reintegrating Sudan into the international community through academic exchanges, conferences, political visits and the like;

Strengthening the AU, which Western analysts have consistently underestimated with almost indescribable arrogance, in order to foster African solutions to African problems.

The emerging policy consensus towards Sudan is predicated on an approach that has already undermined respect for Western values throughout the non-Western world. Its interventionist measures won't work. They are unrealistic and, ultimately, counterproductive. There is no time to lose in trying something new.

Great example of the concept of equilibrium that economist talk about.

For those who don’t know, equilibrium is an economic balance in which no individual would be better off doing something different. Basically an equality of supply and demand.

In my macroeconomics textbook written by Krugman and Wells they give the example of a busy supermarket when a new line opens up. People aren’t told to shift the sizes of the lines in the most efficient way; they just act out of their own interest to get into the quickest line causing the lines to even out equally. You don’t need to know the details of what happens when that new line opens up, how shoppers rearrange, who moves ahead of whom; what you need to know is any time there is a change, the situation will move to an equilibrium.

• Markets usually reach equilibrium via changes in prices, which rise or fall until no opportunities for individuals to make themselves better off remain.

• the fact that markets move toward equilibrium is why we can depend on them to work in a predictable way

transportation... "the market approach"

come back once you're done reading...

Ta-Nehisi Coates Sends Us to the Great Jon Chait On the Spiro Ted Agnewization of Hillary Rodham Clinton

of which I'll quote the Mankiw post on the gas-tax holiday at length because I like its point...
In Praise of Gas Tax Hysterics

Paul Krugman thinks all of the fuss about the gas tax holiday has become a bit hysterical. He agrees that the policy is a bad idea, but it is no big deal, so let's not focus on it.

Paul is right that the issue is, quantitatively, small potatoes, but I am nonetheless pleased to see it get so much attention. This issue is like the canary in the coal mine: No one really cares about the canary, but its condition tells us about deeper problems that lie below.

Many economic issues (e.g., health care, corporate taxation, the trade deficit) are vastly complicated, with experts holding a variety of opinions. When candidates disagree, it simply means that each is siding with a different set of experts, and it is hard for laymen to figure out which set of experts is right. By contrast, the gas tax holiday is not nearly as complicated, and the experts speak with one voice.

Why, then, are candidates proposing the holiday? I can think of three hypotheses:

Ignorance: They don't know that the consensus of experts is opposed.

Hubris: They know the experts are opposed, but they think they know better.

Mendacity with a dash of condescension: They know the experts are opposed, and they secretly agree, but they think they can win some votes by pulling the wool over the eyes of an ill-informed electorate.

So which of these three hypotheses is right? I don't know, but whichever it is, it says a lot about the character of the candidates.

Preach on Brother Herbert...

Seeds of Destruction

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

Just to clarify... I did say I was going to stay out of the primary decision. THe gas-tax holiday fiasco changed my mind. So I guess I'm a hypocrite

I put my lot in with scientist, doctors, and chemists; who tell me to take medications to help my health. I put my lot in with scientists and engineers every time I walk into a room and flip a switch to turn on a light. I even put my lot in with (gasp) economists, psychologists, physicists, lawyers; and basically anyone who spends a lot of time studying these issues.

Maybe I'm crazy... but I turned in my membership card to the flat earth society years ago. We need leaders who don't use hard working Americans lack of opportunity, time, and money to learn about all the complex issues that modern man now deals in. It was one thing to come out with a plan (which created a null set) but to than attack the opposition for being right on policy (just cause you want to get elected) is how we get ourselves into things like Iraq.

local politics... please come and and show your support...

relativism...

okay bad camera work... and you know... you know...

I have no real clue what the point of this is...

I guess too much avant garde art... or maybe poetic uselessness??? Does it really matter? This was me this morning...

another youtube IWW

IWW Documentary...

Seriously... thank god....

The last 8 years have proven how successful this has been.... Is Clinton really promising us 4 more years of no economists? Is that a promise or a threat.

Seriously folks.. this is absurd and sad...

Morning Links...

and then i'm off to the races...

Republicans strike back with own GI Bill plan

The Three Trillion Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

Hillary Clinton Doesn't Listen to Economists

CLINTON VS. ECON

A.I in NYT's

Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence

I'm reading/using his textbook this summer...

Changeless economy

Economics is a field where the information changes little from year to year? I’m currently revising the macroeconomic chapters — and everything has changed. We’ve gone from a world in which recessions were mostly generated by the Fed to control inflation to a world in which bursting financial bubbles lead the way, from a world in which discretionary fiscal policy was considered uncouth to one in which both parties feel it’s essential, from a world in which central banks were considered omnipotent to one in which my former department chairman is trying desperately to get some traction — and all of this has happened in just a few years.
I think they could have picked a better example.

A sucker is born every day...

So I guess I should have known better. But my stimulus package check was dropped into my account yesterday. I got $400. Both my fiance and I thought it was going to be $600--thats what you keep hearing in the news. Now I don't exactly know why I thought that the Bush Administration would lead me wrong... and I very clearly remember arguing with people that the average tax cut went to middle income people in the Bush Tax Cut plans. But gee's that sucks.

Now granted I didn't like the stimulus package to begin with cause it wasn't very effective way of stimulating the economy. Increasing food stampms/tanf would be the quickest and easiest way to jumpstart the economy. You don't have to change anything or pay for extra stuff... so there isn't a delay. All you do is immediately up the amount given out. And more importantly it goes to the people who need it the most in a down turn and they will put the money right back into the economy. You don't put a lot away into your roth ira when you don't have enough food to eat and such.

But nonetheless it passed so I'll take it. And like others I will put it towards paying medical bills... which isn't exactly the shot in the arm the economy needs. oh well such is life.

I have a question...

For those of you who don't know me: I don't have a PhD in climate sciences, in geography, in oceanography, biology; basically any area that may have some important information on global warming.

Now I have noticed a lot of people who have a passionate belief that global warming is a hoax. And they get really really deep in technical details about things that I have no fucking clue about and like to challenge me on it. None of these people have phd's. They don't actually have very in-depth intellectual competency in...well anything really. (whats the connection between believing in supply-side economics and not believing in global warming?--there is one, if you haven't noticed)

But my question is... why do all the PhD's not seemed to be bothered by all this gobbly-goop? I don't know nothing bout nothing when it comes to science. I put more trust in a phd than a guy who believes in the Fair Tax; thats just me.

Why would I trust a talk-show host over a guy who has spent years studying science? I mean seriously... I'm just askin'...

these things are mysteries to me.

China: Is political reform possible?

Dean Baker... Taming the giant corporation

unequal democracy