Intermittent Picture

Center for Lessons Learned.

I try to make it no secret that I absolutely adore NPR's weekly radio show, This American Life.

I will remember the first act of this 2007 episode, Cassandra, for the rest of my life. I think it's the best 22 minutes of radio that's ever been produced. I've got it for you, right there on the other side of that blue link. Click on "full episode." Starts about 6 minutes in. I speak in superlatives because it really is that superlative.

Teh Google Protects Me.

Google sez: Everything on the internets is bad right now.

Welfare.

The Republicans have elected Michael S Steele as the head of the RNC.

Call me a cynic, but I fully expect that after he makes his introductory interviews upon taking the position, you will hardly ever see him on the TV, or quoted in publications, speaking out against anything except welfare and social spending.

Because we are a post-racial America. Prove me wrong, douche bag.

Fun Fact: Michael Steele is Mike Tyson's ex Brother-in-Law.

Quote of the Day

My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said "No, but I want a regular banana later. So, yeah."

Mitch Hedberg

Oohhh oohh 50s Ribosome!

Intermittent Picture

60.

Josh Marshall just made my day.

Political Capital Stimulus Spending

The stimulus sucks. I hate the House bill. Maybe the Senate one will do better, and since they both have to be reconciled to each other, maybe we'll be surprised by the political alchemy. I hate the Senate more than I hate the House, so you have no idea how much it chafes me to write this.

The current form of the "stimulus" is a complete waste of money. The tax cuts are just fucking stupid. A lot of the Democratic initiatives in the bill are fucking stupid, too. As far as I can tell, most of the spending is in the form of political caricature. Hundreds of billions going toward idiotic Republican tax cuts, and more hundreds on retarded government programs, with very little stimulative spending, with a large chunk going to states simply to keep them solvent, I suppose.

$42 billion, total, for transportation infrastructure development and expansion, outside of the state funding, which as far as I know does not have any sort of provision that would force states to augment this with their cut. Killing me here. Telecommunication and transportation projects should be half the entire stimulus, and instead we're talking about 5%? The proportion of junk/good stuff should look like the exact opposite of what we're getting from the House. I don't understand the necessity for that.

I'm sniffing a strategy here, and if I'm wrong, I will totally own up to simply being an apologist for Dems. I think that's fair, but I will defend myself by saying I don't agree with the strategy.

Let's say the economy can handle $400 b investment of infrastructure over the next two years. We just passed an $850 b or so bill which accomplishes very little to this end. So, best case scenario, the Senate axes $600 b of the stupid shit, gets a much smaller number, and is publicly prodded to double the stimulus specifically for infrastructure back up to that usable $400 b.

If it goes down like this, Republicans say they blocked the most egregious Democratic spending, Democrats get to say they blocked more Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and both sides get credit for the robust infrastructure money. Republicans win because people think they are a strong opposition party asserting conservative values, Democrats win because people think they are an effective majority party with liberal bona fides, and Obama wins a victory for bipartisanship.

(He'll need all he can get when they eventually have to nationalize the banks in the Swedish model sometime this year. I don't think there's enough job creation out there that will buoy home prices, so I think this nationalization event is inevitable. This will probably be the big story out of this mess, so obviously it deserves treatment later on. )

The problem, as I see it, both in reality and in my pet theory, is that they started out with far too little of the easy win stuff. $42 billion for transportation? Don't get this at all. My only guess is that the $30 b in highway stimulus funding is probably the cap on smart spending in this area, but that seems low. If only there was a very likable Republican as the Transportation Secretary that could sell appropriations committees on the benefits of more investment in rail and other transit. With the construction industry taking such a hard hit, it would make sense to me to spend more money building shit, so I hope we're looking at more than transportation.

I'm almost 90% sure I'm giving all of the players in this too much credit, though it is my hope that I haven't shot too far. It's far too early to tell what the result will be, and I think there will be errors in judgment, but I really do think there's a plan here that will be evident later--Goddamn I hope there is, anyway.

This is here and now, though, and when we get to the other side of this mess, I don't think this bill will be much of a factor in the history of the recovery.

Quote of the Day

I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.

Mae West

Yo Dawg.

Intermittent Picture

Better know a font.

Follow-Up to "Infuriating"

This will probably come as quite a shock to you, but even as I wrote that the Republicans were doing their best to water down the stimulus bill in the house, I knew they would never vote for it.

And not a single one did.

So I just wanted to say here, "I told you so," because I told you so.

It's just as easy, if not easier, to show you how this will work in the Senate.

TED #1

Psychological differences between liberals and conservatives.

Takes about 4 minutes, 45 seconds to get to the first fun fact.

First of many TED presentations I will be putting up on the blog. They're amazing.

If you want to learn more about TED, click here. Or here.

Quote of the Day

The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.

Thomas Jefferson

You know my baby, she won't let me in.

Tommy Friedman

In February 2002, I traveled to Saudi Arabia and interviewed the then crown prince, now king, Abdullah, at his Riyadh horse farm. I asked him why the next Arab summit wouldn’t just propose to Israel full peace and normalization of relations, by all 22 Arab states, for full withdrawal from all occupied lands and creation of a Palestinian state. Abdullah said that I had read his mind (“Have you broken into my desk?” he asked me) and that he was about to propose just that, which he later did, giving birth to the “Abdullah peace plan.”

Unfortunately, neither the Bush team nor Israel ever built upon the Abdullah plan. And the Saudi leader always stopped short of presenting his ideas directly to the Israeli people. Since then, everything has deteriorated.

So, I’ve wondered lately what King Abdullah would propose if asked to update his plan. I’ve even probed whether he’d like to do another interview, but he is apparently reticent. Not one to be deterred, I’ve decided to do the next best thing: read his mind again. Here is my guess at the memo King Abdullah has in his drawer for President Obama. I’d call it: “Abdullah II: The Five-State Solution for Arab-Israeli peace.”

At this point, I stopped reading, and instead proceeded to channel all of my telepathic powers to guess at what was in Thomas Friedman's mind as he filled the remaining column inches. I swear to you I have read no further down the column than I have quoted, nor do I ever plan to. Please read his column instead and let me know how I did:

Intermittent Picture

Infuriating.

Far from rolling over, House Republican leaders are trying to win concessions from President Obama over the massive economic stimulus package and have proffered a bill of their own to put on the negotiating table.

The counter-package would shift focus entirely from spending to tax relief. Though a full House vote on the Democratic package is expected in a matter of hours and President Obama said he's confident it will pass, GOP lawmakers are hoping their substitute proposal at least influences the final product.

Infuriating, but not surprising.

Official Pictorial Record of Congress, 2006-2008:

You Don't Mess with the Obama

Last month, I read with interest this piece in the Orlando Sentinel, detailing how the then-current head of NASA basically told Obama's people to shut the fuck up, telling the head of the transition team she was "not qualified" to speak of what NASA was doing. One of the administration's priorities is to cut NASA funding, including some of Griffin's pet projects, including a return to the moon.

Wise, wise strategy.

I don't think ideology should be a bigger consideration than competency in government service. I haven't really read anything that calls his competency in running NASA into doubt, but he gone.

Another comment Griffin made on NPR back in 2007 got him into some hot water as well. In an interview with Steve Inskeep he said,

I have no doubt that global -- that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change.

First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

I don't find this comment horribly offensive. He gets the basic facts right, and comes to a different, yet still reasonable, conclusion than most.

I think we've all been in situations where you chafe from having to explain your position to a person who is completely unqualified to accurately judge its merits. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for a rocket scientist. That's why there should be a buffer of bullshit artists between the accountants and the engineers. This was his job, and he failed to provide a compelling reason for continuing some of NASAs projects because he felt it was beneath him to do so. So in that sense, he wasn't competent. Anybody who has headed a project can tell you he failed miserably. I feel for the guy, I really do, but you can't successfully run an agency like NASA like the political climate is still what it was in 1957.

Calling the person holding your checkbook an idiot is not a good way to win the argument. It's one of those unfortunate facts of life that all the things so obvious to you are not self-evident to everyone else. Gotta learn to deal with that.

He's a brilliant mind, so I hope he lands somewhere where he can do the most good.

Factory Humor.

Yelling "Yabba-dabba do!" when the whistle blows at the end of your shift is something everyone should get to do at least once in their lives. It never stops being hilarious, no matter how many times I hear it done.

Quote of the Day

[F]ill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of long-distance run.

Rudyard Kipling

Must be strangely exciting, to watch the stoic squirm

Intermittent Picture

$4 Trillion

"The amount of working capital you'd expect the government to take into this would be around $3 trillion to $4 trillion," said Simon Johnson, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and author of its Baseline Scenario financial crisis blog.

Johnson, who until last year was the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said that banks will need more rounds of capital from the government because their cushion against losses is too thin. He also said that there is a need to get rid of some of the toxic assets weighing on financial institutions before they can recover.

This is the first time I've seen a real number tossed about that makes any sense. I think it's a realistic snapshot of how much toxic mortgages are out there, and their effect on housing prices for everything.

More debt will become this "toxic" debt as housing prices deteriorate, which will make more people walk away from their mortgages, which decrease prices further, which make more people walk away, and so on. The recession will get deeper, and will get wider, and will take all of the nation's credit the government is willing to pour into it and then some to prop up these prices without increasing the demand for housing.

In the problem is the solution. Increase demand for homes, and you've got the problem licked. The "toxic" debt is decontaminated. Banks become solvent. In a perfect world, banks behave well and will use that capital infusion to write credit. But they won't, they'll sit around, not spending anything, waiting for other banks to fail so they can buy them cheap. That's what happened to the first $350 b, and will happen to the rest if we continue to do this. Keep throwing money at banks, without doing anything for demand, and nothing will happen. It ain't gonna come back out again in the form of loans.



Imagine if you will American banks, each holding pieces of market share pie--their favorite food in the world. Now imagine that they've gathered around the opening of a very deep hole, into which they've thrown the US economy, a large anvil. Only after laughing at the anvil's pleas for help, does each bank realize that he is tied to the anvil with a very strong rope in a hopelessly tangled knot. They scramble frantically to untie themselves from it, but soon realize that they will never have enough time to free themselves. They know that if they put aside their pieces of pie, they have enough combined strength to pull on their ropes and stop the anvil from falling, and to perhaps even bring it back up to the surface.

But then they begin to peer at the big piles of rope in front of each other, uncoiling into the hole at a fantastic pace. None of the banks know how much rope the other banks have left before they're pulled down with the anvil, dropping their pieces of market share on the ground above for the others to split. Peering jealously at the other pieces of market share, the banks reason that surely some of them have ropes short enough to be taken down into the hole, and each feels confident they themselves have enough to not be dragged down before the anvil hits the bottom.

The first bank is swallowed into the hole, dropping his market share, which is hungrily scooped up by the others before it even reaches the ground. And then another falls into the hole with the same result. And finally the third. The fourth bank looks around at all his market share he's got, and as he prepares to take his first bite, is violently ripped away from it into the dark below.

The point is, banks are fucking stupid, and what they're interested in might not necessarily be what you're interested in. So if you need their help, you better fucking show each of them the knot they're in, how deep the hole is, and how much rope they have left.

Quote of the Day

My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week. We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we have had this week [...] We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves.

Harry Whittington, the man Dick Cheney shot in the face.

When the dogs begin to smell her

Biggest Game of Poker Ever.

The players: The American Government, Chinese Lending Institutions, American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry, the European Union, and Americans Who Shop at the Mall.

The American Government keeps getting shit hands, and is down about 5 years salary. They have a magic bag that produces unlimited chips from the Chinese Lending Institutions.

The Chinese Lending Institutions are not even playing a hand, they only play Go with friends back home. They're just betting on the American Government's hand with chips made from panda bear habitat.

The American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry has been bluffing fast and loose with a huge amount of bravado. This infuriates the European Union, who then proceed to copy him. However, the American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry knows that the American Government will spot him whatever he loses at the end of the game, and in fact has already given him decals he can put on his $5 chips to make them appear to be $50 chips. The American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry thanks the American Government with a gift of a $500 chip, which is really only one of those $5 chips that he's put his own decal on. The American Government wonders how anybody got a $500 chip at a $100 table, but they're not about to seriously ask any questions.

The European Union was sitting on two pair, kings and jacks, but noticed that since American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry drew 3 cards, they needed to draw 4. Now they realize they've given up a possible full house for a pair of treys and a queen. Their chips are exceedingly better made than the American chips, and come in 13 different colors, but they've set a goal of reducing this amount to only 3 colors by 2018. If they lose too many of them, Russia will pick a huge fight when they get home.

The Americans Who Shop at the Mall have no idea what they're doing. They need to lose some weight, and since they've seen it on ESPN, they figure poker must be pretty athletic. All they really know about it is that if they bet as much as they can for as long as they can, they might impress the hot chick that's been sitting with the American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry. Unsure how to play, they keep asking everyone else to teach them. The European Union keeps giving the Americans Who Shop at the Mall consistently good advice, which is automatically dismissed. They rely solely on the judgment of the American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry, who now owns their cars, houses, and children's college funds. Increasingly, they are uneasy about the Chinese Lending Institutions, who keep waving shiny plastic trinkets in front of them, which they immediately buy, remarking on their low price. Both the American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry and American Government have pressured Americans who Shop at the Mall to go all in, which they do, bewildered.

The American Government calls and shows a pair of deuces. The Chinese Lending Institutions ask for some of their chips back, which the American Government produces from the magic bag.

The EU folds.

The American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry has an ace.

The Americans Who Shop at the Mall have three sevens and two aces, which the American Commercial Banking & Finance Industry immediately foreclose on, while selling two junk cards to the American Government for $1.2 trillion. The Americans Who Shop at the Mall call on the American Government for help against this unfairness, and the American Government responds by giving the Americans Who Shop at the Mall one of its deuces, saying that it's worth two aces in blackjack, which they should learn to play in community college.

Get out of my head.

Krugman. Watkins. Stop it, or give me credit! First a Nobel laureate, now the goddamn blog of Harvard Business.

Given what [Obama] and his advisers know and believe, what should we be told and when should we be told it?

Let's suppose, for example, that the following is "the truth" about the US economy. What follows is pretty gloomy, but it's a simple extrapolation of the results of a compelling new study of the aftermath of major financial crises presented by respected economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff at a recent annual meeting of the American Economic Association. They made an equally bold and correct prediction at the same meeting last January that we were on the verge of a financial crisis. (The Economist is currently running an active discussion on the topic).

Unless Obama plans to budget for nothing but medicaid, unemployment, welfare, food stamps and free abortions, he can't tell a goddamn soul that he knows more than anyone else. That's why he needs Geithner, who knows how the game is played.

Intermittent Picture

Dead Cat Bounce.

Not likely.

So shittles for me, I suppose.

"I won."

Heh.

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

[...]

Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

The statement was prompted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona , who challenged the president and the Democratic leaders over the balance between the package’s spending and tax cuts, bringing up the traditional Republican notion that a tax credit for people who do not earn enough to pay income taxes is not a tax cut but a government check.

More of this, please.

Overton window, republicans are asshats, republicans are liars, republicans throw tantrums, Overton window, Overton window, Overton window.

(Edit--Imagine my chargin when I tried to link a previous blog post to this article, using the same argument Obama reportedly made during this conversation, that while people might not earn enough to pay income tax, they certainly pay sales tax, entitlement program taxes, property taxes--one way or another, etc., and realized I had deleted the draft because I couldn't bring it down to a reasonable length. Good on him, shame on me for not working harder to get that post ready in time. Krugman has a post on the disingeniousness of Republicans in regard to the stimulus as proposed, here. Worth a read.)

Testicular Fortitude.

Impeachment proceedings against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich are scheduled to begin Monday in the state Senate, but the embattled governor is expected to skip the trial and instead appear on several television programs.

Now, look. The man is in a difficult spot. He can't defend himself at the impeachment because he's in the middle of a criminal case. So going to the proceedings would be pointless. But you don't have to go on national television, piss off your lawyer and have him resign, compare yourself to Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and I forget the third guy, Jesus Christ, probably. You don't do that. You say you have evidence that proves your innocence? Show it at the trial, and shut the fuck up until then.

I can't say this is totally shocking coming from a man who blackmailed a children's hospital for campaign contributions.

It's clear by now that he's just doing whatever he wants. He said today that he considered Oprah for Obama's senate seat that eventually went to Roland Burris. Oprah? Fuck it, why not. He has nothing to lose, he might as well get as crazy as he wants and enjoy it. He'll have a few years in a federal prison to write his book, and the crazier he is right now the more stuff he can write about.

Anyway, as long as you're not pretending to govern, knock yourself out, man. Just don't touch the state stuff, let the grown ups do that.

Quote of the Day

If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond cleverly.

Donald Rumsfeld

Comin' home baby, now

Intermittent Picture

Zina Saunders

Quote of the Day

In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and a sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befal me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Emerson, Nature

Global warming, a word.

Click the picture for a larger size, or click here for the source.

One of the things Carl Sagan taught me was that some of the earlier astronauts, gazing upon the earth from their capsules, were amazed by how thin the atmosphere looked. Until I really thought about it, I always thought of it as some vast, tall layer of air that extends for miles and miles and miles above you before finally petering away, not, as what one of those astronauts described it, as an onion peel.

In reality, the troposphere--air--, ends at about 7 miles. The air is thin enough at 2 miles that you start to get a little loopy from the lack of oxygen, and the air pressure at 3 miles is only one tenth what it is at sea level. Nevertheless, 75% of Earth's atmospheric gases are found within this 7 mile boundary, with the remaining 25% between 7 miles and 75 miles above sea level.

Seven miles:


Or, a little lower than the cruising altitude of a trans-pacific airliner.

Every climatologist has his or her own pet theory for what climate change will mean for us as a species, with varying degrees of wars and famines and blights. But very few cannot agree with the data; that the amount of atmospheric carbon has risen 35% since the industrial revolution, and demand for energy is increasing. And nobody really knows what this will mean for the climate now, let alone after 20 more years of throwing the stuff in ever increasing amounts into the atmosphere.

We've only been at this pollution business in earnest for about 150 years. In that time the human population has grown from about 1 billion to over 6, and in the same amount of time we've gone from producing under 200 megatons of carbon from fossil fuels per year to over 6500.

And nobody knows what the consequences of this are.

My position, my entire position, in regards to climate change, to wit:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide retains heat.

Very minute temperature changes affect ecosystems in unpredictable ways to varying degrees.


There exists a positive correlation between global temperatures and carbon emissions.

Demand is increasing for fossil fuels.


Nobody knows what global climate change will mean. Probably pretty bad until a new equilibrium develops. Worst case: I am killed in a resource war. Second worst case: I die of starvation. Third worst case: I die of dehydration. Best case: I am sitting on beachfront property and its the Central and South Americans, the Europeans, the Kansans, the Asians and the Africans dying in the wars and famines and droughts.


People figured this stuff out in the 70s, but elected Reagan and Bush in the 1980s, and Bush again in the double-aughts, to prove something about the Vietnam war.


Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda again, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda again, al-Qaeda yet again, then Iraq again, with more al-Qaeda to follow.


How about we get some wind turbines?

Limbaugh.

So, President Obama met with GOP leadership last week in an attempt to get this new stimulus bill passed. In this meeting, it is reported he said,

"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,"

Goddamn right you can't. Unnamed white house staff insisted that this was an effort to make a large point about bipartisanship. Which is probably right, but I'm happy if Obama manages to marginalize Limbaugh, who is an asshat. And not just because his racist remarks don't go over as well on national TV as they do on his radio show. I'm not making an argument that this is a personal thing with Obama, but I'm sure it has to feel pretty good to needle Limbaugh all he can to make his political case.

Not one to take these things lightly, Rush responded:

There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier's plan is to isolate elected Republicans from their voters and supporters by making the argument about me and not about his plan. He is hoping that these Republicans will also publicly denounce me and thus marginalize me. And who knows? Are ideological and philosophical ties enough to keep the GOP loyal to their voters? Meanwhile, the effort to foist all blame for this mess on the private sector continues unabated when most of the blame for this current debacle can be laid at the feet of the Congress and a couple of former presidents. And there is a strategic reason for this.

Oh for fuck's sake. Nobody is blaming the markets for this mess, Mr. Limbaugh, you drug-addled piece of shit. Nice straw man. The blame rests on those in the government, Congress, previous administrations, etc, for opening the door to the kind of business behavior that is perfectly normal in a dysfunctional market.

Of course private institutions are going to maximize profits. They can do this by doing all sorts of things, the most egregious examples usually result in a feel-good movie about the little man fighting back, losing, and finding some token victory to cling to as the rain forest is cut down, chemicals continue to pollute, the neighborhood store closes down when a big box comes to town, or unsafe cars blow up their drivers, etc., etc.

Markets are doing what they do. There is nothing wrong with a company in a market trying to maximize profits. The market's function, in its entirety, is providing a way to buy and sell the products of capital and labor in the most efficient way possible. If they didn't, capitalism wouldn't work. To expect any more from it is both foolish and impossible.

This is the whole reason for government regulation. Left to its own devices, a market will eventually consume itself. With adroit regulation--rules of law governing market behavior, a market will not grow as rapidly, nor fall as low. Without it, you get market failure. Finding the right set of rules that continues to allow the market to operate to maximize profits in a sane, sustainable way that minimizes negative externalities is the government's job, as they are the only one who can impose rules on market behavior. Where the government fails to do its job, the market will inevitably fail in its wake.

Here comes the hydrogen bomb, I can almost hear its whistle.