A Succinct Answer to Brad DeLong’s Question

Economist Brad Delong’s Question of the Day:

Barack Obama Does Something Really Stupid: Tire Tariffs

Why oh why can’t we have better Democratic presidents?

The answer to the question doesn’t even lie in economics. Dr. Brad DeLong usually wants to know why we can’t get a better press. Well, here at The Confluence, we like to help. This should buy that vital clue. We can’t even get a populace that recognizes that it’s the hypothesis that’s the best guess and the theory that is nearly ironclad when using the scientific method.

You remember all those controversial untested theories? Like Gravity? Brownian Motion? The Earth is round? The Earth orbits the sun? When the price goes up the quantity demanded goes down? (Alright, I put in just ONE economic theory for you.)

Charles Darwin film ‘too controversial for religious America’

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.

… US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as “a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying”.

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

“That’s what we’re up against. In 2009. It’s amazing,” he said.

“The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

“It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There’s still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It’s quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.

Sigh. These people vote and reproduce. Somebody help us! Open thread.

oh, and

Definition of Theory:

Noun

• S: (n) theory (a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena) “theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses”; “true in fact and theory”
• S: (n) hypothesis, possibility, theory (a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena) “a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory”; “he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices”
• S: (n) theory (a belief that can guide behavior) “the architect has a theory that more is less”; “they killed him on the theory that dead men tell no tales”

digg!!! share!!! tweet!!! fight ignorance!!!!

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Update Link to Gallup Poll 200th Darwin Anniversary and the graphic so you can see the question wording.

Borrowing a turn of Phrase …

Paul Krugman’s Saturday blog post takes a defensive tone with Marc Ambinder who once called Krugman and a group of other liberal thinkers “reflexively anti-Bush”. Krugman expected a better apology from Ambinder after it was confirmed by former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge that the White House did, in fact, play politics with the Code Orange terrorist warnings. Evidently, there was an email between the two and Krugman felt the exchange wanting. Here’s his rationale.

But I’d like to return to one point: even after retracting his statement about people who correctly surmised that terror warnings were political being motivated by “gut hatred” of Bush, he left in the bit about being “reflexively anti-Bush”. I continue to find it really sad that people still say things like this.

Bear in mind that by the time the terror alert controversy arose in 2004, we had already seen two tax cuts sold on massively, easily documented false pretenses; a war launched with constant innuendo about a Saddam-Osama link that was clearly false, and with claims about WMDs that were clearly shaky from the beginning and had proved to be entirely without foundation. We’d also seen vast, well-documented dishonesty and politicization on environmental policy. Oh, and Abu Ghraib was already public knowledge.

Given all that, it made complete sense to distrust anything the Bush administration said. That wasn’t reflexive, it was rational.

I’d like to borrow the example and phrase because some of us around here are perpetually called “reflexively anti-Obama” or, of course, called racist because it’s a much more pejorative and personally damaging label. This is simply because we see similar patterns of behavior in Barrack Obama and his administration. Notice that Krugman has a laundry list right there in that second paragraph of things that made him rationally distrust anything the Bush administration said. I personally have my own laundry list of things that makes me rationally distrust anything the Obama administration says. It starts (but does not end) with the pledge to vote against FISA.

This American Life

My thoughts appear to be a bit disjointed today so I thought I’d paste together some links I found over morning coffee and let you all hash them over.

First, from the annals of No kidding … yes, you are a young con (artist), I offer up this you tube of some newbie conservative boys. They call themselves the ‘young cons’ and they prove, once again, that young privileged white boys can’t rap. Hide your young!

Next up, is the answer to my question why aren’t we hearing anything about POTUS and his Poll numbers anymore? Well, according to Rasmussen: “Overall, 54% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove.”

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 34% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of 0. That’s the highest level of strong disapproval and the lowest overall rating yet recorded (see trends).

We continue also to see an erosion of support from left blogistan as David Sirota asks: Whither the sacred campaign promise? Is it just possible that one of these guys will eventually say that some of us were right one day?

But then behavior by President Obama suggests a more systemic assault on the campaign promise is under way.

It started in December, when he was asked why he was making Hillary Rodham Clinton his chief diplomat after criticizing her qualifications and promising Democratic primary voters that his views on international relations were different than hers. He responded by telling the questioner “you’re having fun” trying “to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign.” The implicit assertion was that anyone expecting him to answer for campaign statements must just be “having fun” – and certainly can’t be serious.

A few months later, in reversing a 5-year-old commitment to support ending the Cuban embargo, Obama offered no rationale for the U-turn other than saying he was “running for Senate” at a time that “seems just eons ago” – again, as if everyone should know that previous campaign promises mean nothing.

At least that was a response. After the New York Times recently reported that “the administration has no present plans to reopen negotiations on NAFTA” as “Obama vowed to do during his campaign,” there was no explanation offered whatsoever. We were left to recall Obama previously telling Fortune magazine that his NAFTA promises were too “overheated and amplified” to be taken literally.

It’s true that politicians have always broken promises, but rarely so proudly and with such impunity.

I’m just going to leave the last word to Stevie Wonder:

People keep on learnin’
Soldiers keep on warrin’
World keep on turnin’
Cause it won’t be too long

Powers keep on lyin’
While your people keep on dyin’
World keep on turnin’
Cause it won’t be too long

I’m so darn glad he let me try it again
Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin’
Till I reach the highest ground

Rightwing Canards 101

In 2008, I decided to go from blog lurker, to thread poster, to front-pager.  It has been one strange trip that has been both oddly satisfying and exasperating. I think I popped out of the womb with an opinion and a need to express it.  If my first grade teacher Miss Pearl Jensen of Herbert Hoover elementary school could speak to this, she’d probably say, that child has too much to say and I just felt the need to “shake the toenails off her” all the time.   She used to pick  me up, shake me, and scream that at me. I assume she’d do that again if she met me today.

My mother was always being called to school about me because I was always saying something.  In fourth grade, I refused to say the pledge of allegiance because I saw absolutely no use in it.  I announced in fifth grade, after reading my social studies assignment on eastern religions, that I must be a Buddhist because it’s the first religion I’d read about that didn’t seem less real than ‘The Hobbit’.  I’ve always been in trouble throughout my corporate work life for being ‘verbose’, ‘glib’, and ‘mouthy’.  Thank goodness for academic freedom where I can now get away with it.  So,  I guess you shouldn’t be surprised that I would eventually find a home as a front pager some where.

Since front-paging really doesn’t come with instruction manuals, other than the usual, wow, we like the sound of how you write, knock yourself out here, I’ve had to learn by the hunt and peck method.  I’ve learned which buttons attract what type of nasty comments.  I usually avoid pushing those buttons because frankly, unless it’s really important, I hate doing troll duty.  Some how, there’s just one button I keep pushing.  It is the “I hate your source” so you must be a ______ button.

Look, I’m used to writing scholarly stuff and finance reports.  I recognize that sometimes the people who drive you the craziest can some times come up with a good point and good data.  Other times, the people you really want to support and put forward can come up with some stinkers.  This is a blanket warning to every one who ever reads my stuff.  People that you disagree with can frequently be quotable as more than just examples of wingnuts.  On the other hand, some times people that you disagree with, and get quoted a lot can be very very very wrong and what they say will be printed over and over and over and over.  The only thing I think is completely over the top is taking a comment out of context and creating a moonbat feeding frenzy with it.

With that statement and story, I present to you Michael Tomasky of the Guardian (last time I checked both reliably liberal and credible sources) and ” How they lie: a case study; Did an Obama judicial nominee really express a preference for Allah over Jesus? No, not by a long shot”.  Tomasky basically chases down one of those right wing memes around the web, then exposes that meme as untrue by actually using (gasp) facts  and showing the context.  His gut told him with a title like that,  it was undoubtedly one of those right wing smear jobs, but he didn’t just take it at gut or face value.  He chased down the truth before he pounded out the story.  In other words, he acted like a journalist who writes a blog rather than a blogger that acts out what he supposes is journalism.

so, it appears

I’ve been tagged in some bizarre Puma equivalent to a chain letter  where  I have to tell folks 6 random things about myself and then tag six other bloggers to do the same.  The easy part is tagging six other bloggers … don’t hate the player folks, hate the game!

So, here’s the easy part first.  (Hey, doing the easy things first got me through school, what can I say?)

http://www.partizane.com/

http://thatsmeontheleft.blogspot.com/

http://spiral-gate.blogspot.com/

http://huntingdonpost.wordpress.com/

http://ladyboomernyc.wordpress.com/

http://annabellep.wordpress.com/

Okay, six random things about me:

1)  I wrote a song that Beyounce recorded.

2) I would eat sushi everday if I could afford it.

3) I had a speaking role in a French Movie of the Week that was filmed in New Orleans called Scarlette’s Children.  I played a waitress at cafe du monde even though the scene was filmed in the courtyard of a hotel and not cafe du monde.

4) I have a hobby of being a sound engineer … I’ve mic’d Elvis Costello, Joss Stone, Keith Richards (and had a 2o minute conversation with him in which i understood NOT one word, but said, really? and yes?  a lot), all of the Nevilles,  the ZZ Top dudes, was supposed to but refused to mic Nelly, mic’d Randy Newman several times and a whole bunch of other folks …

5)  This is a picture of me playing one of the big steinways at Carnegie Hall a few years a go

6) My favorite movie of all times is Local Hero.  I own every single session of Cowboy Bebop.  My steinway grand and the front two rooms of my house were used in the imax movie Hurricane on the Bayou as the supposed home of Allan Tousaint.  He plays my piano and watches out for Hurricane Katrina.  The stupid crew filmed and left my kitchen door open and you get a great view of the kitchen sink area where they stacked a bunch of cans of soda pop, I did actually straighten up for them but cringe every time I see that.  They shot most of it from outside my dining room window because my house is really small and the imax cameras are HUGE. As a matter of fact, I’d bet the IMAX screen is about twice the size of the two rooms they used for the set.

Update: here’s a pic of my dining room/piano room with the kitchen door CLOSED.

 

U.S. introduces new generation of Stud Missiles

WASHINGTON (AFP) - CIA agents are offering the potency drug Viagra and other gifts to win over Afghan warlords in the US-led war against Taliban insurgents, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Viagra: Bombs AWAY BOYS!

Alright, why does the CIA hate Afghani women and goats so much they have to hand over viagra to warlords?

The aging chieftains often have up to four wives and are open to the Viagra pill as a way to “put them back in an authoritative position,” said another official.

…

Life is now much more HARD in the Afghani resistance.  It seems giving out birthcontrol to hapless burkha-clad women is  a problem, but giving viagra to their nasty old husbands is strategy to win the war on terrorism.  If most of these old dudes have at least four wives and some of them are young woman, I’d just like to say, way to go CIA, we’ve just upped the ante on torture policies.

If you really want to dig a little deeper into this, just go to the comments section of the Al Arabiya News Channel.  Yes, I went there.

Beacon of  wisdom and light Alamgir-Pakistan posted this:

for the deprived american female soldiers who probably masturbated…ooops masterminded this operation. I’ve heard planeloads of blonde “women rights” activists and reporters are available in the Afghani beauty parlours and ministries fighting over picks of native flavour. They get off on the idea of “sleeping with the enemy”… ha! what else can you expect from the daughters of the west. they are the civilised ones after all.

Jamal equates it with suicide-bombing:

WHEN U ARE FIGHTING UR ENEMY,U WILL USE ANY WEAPONS THAT CAN HELP U TO DEFEAT UR ENEMY.IF KIDNAPPING,SUICIDES,CAR EXPLOSIONS,BLOWING UP HOSPITALS AND SCHOOLS,KILLING WOMEN,AND DOING DRUGS IS LEGAL FOR TALIBAN TO USE,VIAGRA IS LEGAL TO THE U.S. TOO.

The BBC outlines this charming anecdote:

In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more.

“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people,” the Post quoted one agent as saying.

“Whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra.”

‘Silver bullet’

The newspaper said the use of Viagra had to be handled sensitively as the drug was not always known about in rural areas.

It quoted one retired agent as saying: “You didn’t hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones.”

In the case of the 60-year-old warlord – the head of a clan in southern Afghanistan who had not co-operated – operatives saw he had four younger wives.

The pills were explained and offered. Four days later the agents returned.

“He came up to us beaming,” the Post quoted an agent as saying. “He said, ‘You are a great man.’

“And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area.”

Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people — whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” one CIA operative who has worked in Afghanistan was quoted as saying.

 Ah, my tax dollars at work.  Maybe the Obama Adminstration will send Pastor Rick Warren over there to give them copies of  “The Purpose Driven Life” as phase two of this all out assault on the Taliban.

of dakinis, wonkettes, and pumas …

Open Thread for discourse.

The Dakini’s Office Pool

 

It’s almost the New Year.  Having once dated a New Yorker for an extended period of time, I got used to William Safire (whose column I miss a lot) and his end of the year Office Pool.  He always had a list of predictions that challenged you to beat the pundit.  Some of my favorite questions had to do with the results of elections as well as topical things like the number of troops left in Iraq by the end of the year.

You can be as snarky, hopeful, truthful, or scary right on as you wish. 

 

Here’s a few of them to get you started:

 

Brilliance as an expression of Humanity

just because …

Italian Text

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o, Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che tremano d’amore
e di speranza.
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun saprà!
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò
quando la luce splenderà!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
che ti fa mia!
(Il nome suo nessun saprà!…
e noi dovrem, ahime, morir!)
Dilegua, o notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle!
All’alba vincerò!
vincerò, vincerò!

 

English Translation of “Nessun Dorma”

Nobody shall sleep!…
Nobody shall sleep!
Even you, o Princess,
in your cold room,
watch the stars,
that tremble with love and with hope.
But my secret is hidden within me,
my name no one shall know…
No!…No!…
On your mouth I will tell it when the light shines.
And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine!…
(No one will know his name and we must, alas, die.)
Vanish, o night!
Set, stars! Set, stars!
At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!