Politics

Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"? Maybe someone somewhere fears social unrest? Martial Law on the cards maybe? http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/index.html

The inquiry into Alaskan governor Sarah Palin's actions has concluded, with the commission waiting for "take out the trash day" to release the results shortly after the close of Friday network news broadcasts. This was the probe into whether she acted improperly with regard to her former brother in law. She was let off the hook regarding the dismissal of the public safety commissioner, because she has the authority to fire that level of employee without cause. Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11trooper.html?em

From the debates: $3 million? Can't spend that kind of money, that's PORK! But another $300 billion bailout, some 5 orders of magnitude larger, is just fine! Anyway, $3 million "overhead projector" eh? Well... the scientists have responded: Here's a fun comparison of an actual overhead projector to the Alder Planetarium's Zeiss Mark VI star projector:: Article here: http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/1209674,adlerweb100908.article Here's the official statement released from the Alder Planetarium about McCain's remarks: http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/pressroom/pr/2008_10_08_AdlerStatement_aboutdebate.pdf courtesy BadAs…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3147266/Pakistan-facing-bankruptcy.html They have $8 billion in cash but $5 billion in outstanding liabilities, not to mention a leadership crisis. I don't think things are boding well for the 6th most populous nation on earth, which is also a nuclear power and harbors a nuclear scientist who not only knows how to build bombs from scratch but already sold secrets to Iran and North Korea.

CNN is speculating that a "perfect storm" of bad crap happening in America might be enough for Democrats to get 60 seats in the Senate, which would make them filibuster-proof and would undo the gridlock which has drug the current Congress down to record levels of disapproval: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/08/senate.election/index.html?eref=rss_topstories FiveThirtyEight, a multi-poll aggregator site specializing in predicting the outcome of elections, presently estimates that the Democrats will win 56 seats: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ I think it's unlikely that the Democrats could actually win 60 seats in the Senate, although it's certainly not …

Obama is starting to sing the right song, as McCain struggles for effective rebuttals. Just calling it like I see it.

http://www.keatingeconomics.com/ The Obama campaign has released a documentary highlighting John McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal. This seems unprecedented to me... has another presidential campaign ever produced a documentary about their opponent?

Interesting story on 60 Minutes tonight about the financial crisis. One thing they said that caught my ear was that some of the weird securities that involved the breaking up of mortgage-backed securities into tiny pieces and then remarketing them in creative ways were designed by "Nobel-track" physicists and mathematicians working on the side for the Wall Street firms. The complex algorithms designed by these people were supposed to reduce risk, and the managers took their word for it and leveraged to the hilt. Much of the crisis is blamed on mortgage failures, but in fact (again according to this story) 94% of all US mortgages are currently being paid on time. So…

Use for discussion on tonight's Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. What did you all think of the debate? Just to sorta kick things off, what did you all think of Gwen Ifill? It hasn't aired yet as I write this, but one thing that I'll be watching for is any sign of bias. Conservatives have suggested before the debate that she's biased because she has a book about Obama coming out early next year. I don't know about that, it's a biography, not an endoresment, but I guess an argument could be made for profit motive. What do you all think? (Here's an article on that.)

Pixar is taking a bit of a PR hit over its new movie WALL-E, which apparently plots a dystopia in which everyone is obese and the planet lies in ruins. Check out this google on "pixar" and "obesity": http://www.google.com/search?q=pixar+obesity&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Slate ran a piece on it today: Pixar's WALL-E Sends the Wrong Message And apparently this isn't just an anti-PC rant -- the movie isn't just seen as entertaining, it's seen as acceptable social commentary. And of course all of this plays right into the political scene of the day. The article pre…

People are calling their congresscritters in droves, and the near-universal outcry is "don't do it". It's interesting that we may have a situation developing where the American people are strongly opposed to something but lawmakers may end up universally agreeing that it has to be done anyway. The main objection from constituents seems to be about how the bailout protects the wealthy while their own retirement plans are drying up and their mortgages aren't getting paid. The lack of confidence in government clearly plays a role here as well, with Congress' approval rating being even lower than the President's. And current trends and sentiments about executive comp…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7635929.stm ach! so, there's a huge prohibitive tax on tobacco, we've got warnings 'reminding' us of some of the more extreme repercussions of smoking, soon we'll have pictures that would disturb most people indipendantly of wether they had anything to do with smoking (most people wouldn't like looking at a healthy human lung either), there's talk about only allowing the selling of 20-packs and not allowing them to be on display in shops, the age-limit recently went up to 18, it's illegal to smoke in public places (including pubs) and, just to ultra-annoy people, it's illegal to smoke in bus stops, or within 10 feet of an entrance…

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html Very interesting article. They say that if anything, the bipartisan repeal of Glass-Steagall helped soften the crisis (and quote Bill Clinton saying the same thing). They list the real causes of the financial crisis as:

In nearly 40 years of following politics I have never seen a populace more opposed to anything the government was doing than the current financial institution bailout plan (not Viet Nam, Iraq, Watergate, or even Guantanamo Bay). My personal opinion is that the American public realizes they are not being dealt with in an honest manner, even if they dont understand the intricacies of the problem. Economists can't come to a consensus about what to do,either. You have well respected and knowledgable economists weighing in at every point from total bailout and control by the gov to doing nothing at all. Without knowing anything else, you have two "experts" telling opposite thi…

This whole bail out and the state of the economy is really starting to bother me, and my first thought is: do we need to start teaching better economics in highschool? My second is: what are some good books on the topic - as free from political ideology as possible? I think I need to read up on everything from personal finances to Keynesian economics and the like. What my common sense tells me, is we are far too leveraged in debt, and as a culture we don't understand the fundamental implications of debt well enough. Americans are tied down with debt both personally, and nationally through our national debt and it seems to me unless a debt is going to bit…

Interesting story from the Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14088.html Apparently McCain began disseminating word that he build the winning coalition to pass the bailout bill hours before it failed. This was subsequently followed hours later by McCain accusing Obama of "politicizing" the bailout and not putting "country first". You know, one presidential candidate is certainly seeming almost clownishly "partisan"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nMuR1TFq1s

In case you missed the debate: http://www.youdecide2008.com/2008/09/27/video-obamamccain-debate-from-mississippi-926/

I guess you guys have heard about the current scandal revolving around the tainted milk in China. Thousands of babies sick, etc. This of course comes after a couple of rough years for Chinese manufacturers with various tainted product scandals (lead in paint, etc). It's an interesting combination -- an unregulated market + controlled press + very large population + one-child-per-family law + huge corruption problem. Quite the recipe for disaster, eh? It's become to common -- maybe we should bundle it all together, along with post-disaster governmental reaction, and label the phenomenon a "Chinese Fire Drill". One thing I've been wondering is whether they w…

... they hadn't even launched yet. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/151564/xinhua_runs_spacewalk_story_before_astronauts_leave_earth.html No matter how things change, they always stay the same! Here's a similar story from the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/3082804/China-fakes-reports-from-space.html Cute how a "technical error" can produce actual quotes from the future. To heck with space walks, these guys are time travelers!

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html Are you kidding me? The $700,000,000,000 figure didn't actually come from any sort of calculation? They just pulled it out of the air? "What's the biggest number you can think of?" "$700 billion?" "Sounds good to me!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090503351.html And the economy continues to unravel...

So, here's the latest. Obama puts up an ad and misrepresents McCain and Rush Limbaugh. Rush barely even tolerates McCain and has only recently started saying good things about him and it started with the Palin pick. Rush and McCain are on opposite sides in the immigration issue and Rush was pro-NAFTA, which is where the main comments come from. The Politico actually agrees with Rush on this and defends him, but oddly enough, I can't find the story on their page. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/18/obama-ads-linking-mccain-to-rush-limbaugh-stir-controversy/ Let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do it, as opposed to stupid and unskilled Americans…

Well, look at Johnny come lately. McCain says he's suspending his campaign and wants to postpone the presidential debates scheduled for this friday: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/mccain-suspending-campaign-wants-to-postpone-debate-2008-09-24.html What... the... hell? I'm not downplaying the seriousness of the financial crisis, but this is absurd. From what I can tell, McCain wants to push the $700 billion bailout through, and is going back to Washington to do so. Ugh.

...is disgraced Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina... ousted by the board for accusations of mismanagement and the most botched corporate merger since AOL / Time Warner. At a time when we're seeing an unprecedented failure of some of the country's biggest financial institutions, McCain has picked someone to advise him on economics who seems hand picks from the ranks of failure itself. This as the McCain campaign blasts corporations who leave their CEOs with a golden parachute: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/mccain-economic.html WTF?