Not Enough Time For Meaningful Post

So apparently Americans see China as an economic threat. The past nearly 10 years has demonstrated rather effectively that Americans tend to be terrified of silly things while real scary shit has us mostly non-plussed (well, until it explodes a la housing bubble).

China is an economic threat like al qaeda is a legitimate military threat to us. China is insanely heavily dependent on us for their economic well being. We buy the crap they make. For China to become a real economic behemoth they would need to be buying our crap. Their growth is insane because they are so far beneath us in standard of living and they have a massive population. Slight improvements in their structure yield massive jumps in GDP.

For all the noise about how much of our debt they own, that is an investment. They buy our debt so we can subsidize our economy when it falters so we can buy their crap. If we end up in some form of contraction, China will be hit hard. Yes, they also trade with Europe, but the only market that could replace us is their own, but that would require more domestic disposable income, meaning higher prices to manufacture, which would mean higher prices and less exports internationally. If they ever stopped pegging their currency to ours that could happen and it would be good for them. It would also lead to (US) domestic goods being relatively more affordable to produce, so it would probably be good for us too.

Now That's an Idea

I don't read Digby as much as others (too often evokes sympathy anger), and I have a feeling that this suggestion is mostly posited as counter to the asinine abortion tagalong to the House's HCR (Health Care Reform) bill. Still, I completely agree with it.

Homebuyer Credit Should End

I know I took advantage of it. It was really conincidental that I was looking to buy my first place when the credit became available. I priced it into the house (and hope that the homeowners did not, but I really can't know if my realtor told theirs that I was a first time buyer; I hope not), and since I didn't think that home prices had fallen enough, it was helpful.

That said, the program is really (like the tax breaks for mortgage interes) a payout to people sufficiently well off to buy/own a house and that don't really need it. Moreover, it becomes counterproductive if it applies to everyone rather than just first time buyers as it looks like it will.

Tax credits/breaks for homeowners artificially raise the price of housing (much like low interest rates). This is not so much a problem if it only applies to a small subset of potential buyers (like first timers or people in the bottom one or two tax brackets or--and I know this would piss a lot of folks off--minorities). When it applies to all homeowners, however, every sale price gets to be bumped by some amount--in this case the whole price of the credit.

Encouraging home ownership is not really bad, but I don't think it much needs encouragement either, and if all the tax code is really doing is encouraging higher home prices, it should be abandoned. I don't want my house to go down in value but it won't bother me much if it does. Prices are currently (still) too high.

Plus sized?

I realize that the world of modeling is severely fucked up, but it still drives me nuts that normal (if that) women are "plus-sized" and "normal" models are thin enough to be almost invisible save for their heads when viewed from the side.

Dumb thing on CNN talking about "women of all sizes" being gorgeous, but they are really talking about normal women ("plus-sized" models). So 1. plus sized modes are not the equivalent of "women of all sizes" and 2. you have got to be fucking kidding me that some meaningful fraction of the people in this country are going to look at a plus sized model and--because of the small amount of excess body fat that is not noticeable at all when clothed other than giving them nicer curves--say or think "Damn, she's ugly!" Seriously? They are normal sized women and they are fucking models. Of course they are gorgeous.

This is news to the 0.000005% of the population that takes fashion and modeling seriously. For most (particularly heterosexual male) viewers it is just a chance to see some nearly naked lovely ladies on CNN, and for the rest it is a complete waste of time.

(Found the video online.)

Yes, I realize that body image issues have been common for women for some time and are becoming more common among men, but calling plus-sized models "women of all sizes" is problem, not solution.

Deficit Hawks are Morons

If the "fiscal responsibility" gurus of the US Senate and House were actually remotely concerned about the deficit and fiscal responsibility they would be screaming bloody murder about the war in Afghanistan and supporting a health care reform bill with the strongest no-profit option (e.g. public) possible.

Too bad we are ruled by people with a 3rd grade understanding of money and economics (and for that matter, war).

Obama's Major Failing

I've said before that unless the Obama administration rights the wrongs of the Bush administration regarding torture, and the often unlawful prosecution of the war on terror in general, I will not vote for him in 2012.

Glenn Greenwald discusses these things frequently and here is discussing more recent rebukes of the present administration from the New York Times and The Nation (two largely pro-Obama publications). Unlike the hate driven, sometimes racist, and more often than not false criticisms from the tea-bagging right, these are not imaginary accusations. They are based on the real actions that this administration has taken.

Modern (Western) civilization is dependent on the rule of law being absolute. No one person or group can be above the law. The law exists to protect society from each other, from ourselves (on occasion), and from government. If the president, whose job is to enforce the law, is not subject to it, then our society has failed. The threat of losing an election is not adequate punishment for permitting--through failure to prosecute--torture, but it's all I am capable of.

The People Who Need To

Will not be the ones who read and comprehend this. Jenny McCarthy, Robert Kennedy Jr., Glen Beck, and more: anti-scientific, illogical, child endangering fools all. The sad paradox is that hoping for this idiocy to end means hoping for many children to get sick and die, because that is the only thing that will stop it. And if the anti-vaccination crusade continues and grows sick and dying children is exactly what will happen. It's already started; it's just not yet enough.

Maybe if we pass a law that states that any parent whose child dies from a disease preventable by a vaccination they refused can be prosecuted for manslaughter. At least the risk of their gamble will be somewhat shared.

Conflicting Thoughts

On the one hand the attention paid to Prejean and her boobs is ridiculous and certainly does say something about our society in that a woman receives a greater platform and can have more influence on the public dialog by being a ditzy, artificially busty beauty pageant contestant than a woman who actually has informed views or expertise, or more than half a functional brain (those women tend to get attacked, unless they are pretty, in which case they are largely ignored while being stared at).

On the other hand "Princess Jesus Boobies" is hilarious.

You Go Bob!

Bob Herbert's op ed in the Times is great. Until you realize that it is not going to be heeded in any meaningful way. The masters on Wall Street own our collective asses, and while many politicians are doing wonderful jobs complaining about their disgusting practices, it is a bare handful that actually have the will to do something. Both parties are owned by Wall Street and other moneyed interests (like, say, health insurance companies).

The sad fact is that unless we have publicly funded elections this will continue to be the norm--the people/groups that fund candidates have a weighted say in policy, i.e. the poor and middle class will always be screwed--but since publicly funded elections are a threat to entrenched political leaders they are not ever likely to exist.

Words that Fail the Heart

Two beats so close to seem as one
She stares, a question asked, a winsome look
He starts, then stops
Hesitancy ends the turn of phrase
Wondering at what's been lost
For fear of what could not be gained
Conversation renews but less
Fading now
The stuttering beat of his heart now one of loss
He wishes he had spoken
He fears for what would be
His heart beat catches in his throat
That refuses to pass the words it wants
Words he knows have failed him

"I love you"

The beating tries to choke out

There she goes

His friend.
His heart's pain.
It's revenge to come when he's once more alone.

primal

friend lover confidant
those words the ghost he seeks
that one's diaphonous visage in his head
his mind melds so with hers
his heart he opens forth
his body she won't touch
he loves
he leaves
he cries
friend and confidant so true
lover not to be
he screams to the cold night

Peace?

On the one hand Obama really hasn't done anything particularly Nobel Peace Prize worthy (detainees still in Gitmo, torturers running free in the US, still in Iraq, soon to be further into Afghanistan...8 yrs in, Israel still defends firing bazookas at those with slingshots, Hamas and many others in the Mid East still want Israel wiped off the map, and violence in this country seems to be up--fueled by the crazy Obama hatred).

On the other hand, you could pretty much hear the entire world release its collective breath when, on election night 2008, the angry warmonger candidate lost and the thoughtful, (somewhat) anti-war candidate won. With nations less concerned that a crazy US Commander in Chief will decide to randomly bomb them, there's a fair chance they will be more open to dialog. I'm not so sure that there would be any more war if McCain had won, but the world would be a whole lot more nervous.

Update: Matt Taibbi explains my thoughts on this way better than I ever could (what with it being his job, and him being good at it and all).

My Suspicions are Thus

The health care debate has been driving me crazy on the hyperbolic idiot opposition front, but I haven't really done or said much on the Obama front of this "debate," and that is largely because my only real gripe is that he started with his stated position from the campaign rather than something like single payer. More, I kind of got a feeling that his hands off approach (as opposed to his dealings on the stimulus) had some purpose. This little explanation of the (possible?) strategy makes sense to me.

Obama is a calculating politician. One who knows the Senate fairly well I'd guess, and that that body is the one with a massive inertia. Mostly it just sits still. On rare occasion it will move a bit but hardly ever beyond a snail's pace. Slow steady pressure probably works best to get the damn thing moving, and if he can get the Senate to a favorable point on this issue he probably will have pretty smooth sailing on getting legislation he wants passed for the duration of his presidency. ...Especially considering that, despite the noise from the crazies, he is not even close to radical.

Presidents Are Neither Idols Nor Demons

My life has seen exactly one president who did not seem to be turned into idol and demon by his supporters and detractors: George H. W. Bush (Ok, I'm not so sure about Ford, but he lost his bid for reelection when I was like two weeks old). Carter, Regan, Clinton, Dubya and now Obama all have sprung their own personal bands of worshipers and screaming angry detractors.

My personal politics and philosophy are that Dubya was a disaster, Regan was a net negative, Clinton was meh, Carter I judge as a good person who was president at a bad time and who did a poor job of responding to problems (at least publicly in dealing with the American people), and Bush the elder was a decent though hardly great president. Obama has not been in office too long yet, and my opinion is decidedly split: bailout bad, though not his fault; stimulus good though not enough; no prosecution of torturers deplorable, but we'll see what comes; foreign relations good, but those wars are still sticky; gay rights forgotten; and health care will continue to be frustrating until a bill is actually passed, and then maybe still.

Obama has not done anything to be compared with Hitler or Stalin, nor has he done anything to receive the benefit of any and all doubt. There is a cult of the presidency that goes beyond the office and which I find strange and creepy.

I thought that W was a horrible choice for president, but I agreed with him (still do) on immigration. I think Clinton was ok, but he was one more in the line of financially deregulating chief executives (I have no idea why the right gets a louder voice in economics even with Democratic presidents, but we are seeing that again with Obama--the left response would have been bigger stimulus w/o tax cuts and to nationalize any bank "too big to fail"). I voted last fall for the person I felt would make a better president. Given the alternative, I'm fairly sure that the Democrats could have nominated anyone and still received my vote.

Obama could well be(come) a transformative president--he certainly was such as a candidate--but he is a politician, not a deity, and I will always be somewhat suspicious of anyone who desires that office, power and corruption and difficulty and all.

The Way The World Works*:

*Well, it should be!

Answer: Speed Bumps

I know that most drivers (myself included) are not huge fans of speed bumps. I've a pretty strong feeling that this is because, unlike other things--like, say, speed limits--they actually limit a driver's ability to drive really fast. Even stop signs (and, definitely yield signs) are only partial solutions (in my experience, neighborhoods with many stop signs have many people running stop signs).

Just imagine if every neighborhood, and in urban centers, every street (possibly excluding major thoroughfares) had speed bumps (just before/after each intersection, and maybe every 1000 ft otherwise). It would slow traffic putting walkers, bicyclers, children playing soccer all in less danger of being run over. It would also reduce traffic by making that short cut take a little longer. It could even encourage people to walk or bicycle 1-10 blocks to the store rather than drive it every day.

In the grand scheme of things, it isn't even that expensive, just a bit of extra asphalt/concrete and a form when roads are constructed, and could be done on the resurfacing schedule, or in places with good long lasting roads (i.e. concrete surfaces, mostly in places without real winter), start with more direct through roads first then move onto side streets...maybe ignore cul-de-sacs all together.

Just to say: I would like a speed hump on the road in front of my house.

Organic Farming

Here is an overview of some studies about good things related to organic farming.

I've a minor gripe related to lumping genetic engineering in with the rest of "conventional agriculture" as genetic engineering is borderline necessary if people want to reduce fertilizer and pesticide use, and it is mostly just selective breeding on a massively accelerated scale.

Aside from that, however, a lot of neat tidbits are bundled up in this little article along with one claim that really stands out:

There’s another benefit to switching to agro-ecology, but the benefit is more systemic: under pretty conservative assumptions, switching from conventional agriculture to organic agriculture in developing countries boosts productivity massively.

I can understand that the switch in certain places (i.e. those not well suited to corn belt developed conventional agriculture) could yield improved productivity. Overall, this statement is wildly misleading: if conventional agriculture was not far more productive in general it wouldn't be used (it is quite expensive), but there is no reference in to which "developing countries" and more importantly what is meant by the word "massively"--if this massive improvement only applies to farmland that currently yields 1% of global food production upping it to 2-5% (or really even 10%) that is a massive improvement that could have a huge local impact, but is really not meaningful on a global level.

The problem is that the bulk of the world's food production is guaranteed by conventional agriculture as practiced in the US, China, Canada, Russia, France...maybe Brazil and India fall in here, though conventional methods may not be as big a help there, and I know that India is in trouble precisely because they have been employing US style ag.

I wish I could dig up the link now, as it is from a rather knowledgeable farmer and discusses some of the downside of many/most farms going organic, because the biggest problem with everyone going organic is that it would result in the starvation of tens of millions to billions more than we experience now.

Organic farming is good, but organic farming is exactly what we had 100+ yrs ago in the world. It does not produce as much food, and it requires more labor to produce less (even with modern equipment). For our world to go back to organic farming today we would either need major changes in diet (e.g. way less meat for everyone, particularly Americans), or we will have to accept a global population drop due to much more starvation.

Of course, a callous person might go on to say that a global population reduction would be pretty good for the planet--as we need it--as well.

Beck is an Entertainer

Is kind of the jist of this Greenwald post I liked. Oh, and that the tea baggers are not really Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or left, or right, or remotely uniform in their beliefs beyond a general distrust of government.

Right Leaning Governing of a Left Leaning Nation

In an interview, Sen. Jay Rockefeller said:

What about Olympia Snowe?

I think the world of Olympia Snowe. She's got incredible courage, and the Republican leadership is brutal in the way they apply pressure. Much more so than the Democrats.

How so?

For example, when Clinton was elected president, and George Mitchell was majority leader, [Clinton] came to our Democratic Caucus, because he thought it would be nice to break bread with us. Mitchell told him he had to leave. They were part of different branches of government. And so Clinton and his Secret Service had to turn around and walk out. It was a historic moment. On the other side, there were very few caucuses that Dick Cheney didn't attend himself. That's why whether it's intelligence or environment or elsewhere, they [Republicans] bring the hammer down in a way Democrats aren't good at, which I'm sort of glad about.

The added emphasis is important for one reason: it means that Republicans accomplish more with less. They are doing very well to block legislation now despite being very much in the minority. Democrats never managed the same even with a 51-49 minority. Republicans when in a bare majority pushed through tons of legislation. Democrats with a very large majority are failing at that.

Now, philosophically, I agree with the Senator in that such harsh treatment of dissent is a bad idea. But in our two party system if only one party routinely pulls with all it's got, then that party will win far more than it should, and the country will in effect be governed more strongly by that side.

I do not believe that dissent should be squashed, and I enjoy discussion and differences of opinion. If I can't hold my view point up to criticism then maybe it is not terribly valid. If I can walk away from an argument without my opinion changed then I consider my personal position the stronger (note that this is based on underlying personal philosophy and not related to an inherent "right" and "wrong" side to any given debate).

However, I also want the U.S. government to be democratic and representative. Right now, with the dynamic Sen. Rockefeller described it is not, and until the GOP wants to engage in reasonable discourse, the only meaningful option is for Democrats to cut them out of the debate, and pull together to do whatever they, as a caucus want, until the Republicans realize that everyone is better served by thoughtful and forthright discussion.

Yes, the Review is Real

I got to this page and had a good laugh, but I thought it was fake. Then I went to the link to the NY Times review of the game. The reviewer either is stupid, was high, or is being so obtusely ironic, that the review would have found better footing in the New Yorker, which instead gets to mock.