Hilarious April 30, 2009

Let me make sure I’ve said this correctly.  Here is what is not hilarious:

• The “Photo Op” in which the President’s 747 (which is only called Air Force One if he’s actually aboard, and he was not) essentially buzzed Manhattan, escorted by a fighter jet, in order to take a picture of the plane flying over the Statue of Liberty with Manhattan in the background.  New Yorkers were understandably terrified.
• The fact that this debacle cost…I am not making this up… $360,000.  Of our money.

Here, though, it what is hilarious:

• Scott Kelly using Photoshop to create the same picture, using stock photos, in less than two minutes.

I Am Not Making This Up: April 30, 2009

Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, actually wrote the following as his lead paragraph in a piece entitled “The Black-White Divide in Obama’s Popularity.”

“On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.“  (my italics)

See, it turns out that some of the people who like President Obama and his policies are actually black people, and of course they don’t count.

As Large as the Stimulus Bill is… April 30, 2009

…and it is really large: it is still not as large as the cost of the Iraq War.  So far.

To put this war in perspective: if you had spent a million dollars a day, every day since the meridian of time, you would have spent about $733 billion by now.  Meanwhile, as I write this, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exceed $850 billion.

Nobel Laureate and Columbia professor Joseph Stiglitz estimates that when we are done accounting for this war, its cost will exceed $3 trillion.  Even adjusted for inflation, it is already the case that this is the second-costliest war in US history, behind only WWII.

Makes the video I posted yesterday even more galling, as one wonders how much of it has just been wasted into the pockets of war profiteers.  And ultimately, we have to ask: was this the best use of that money?  I agree that we had to do something; but did we do the best thing for our country?

There are a lot of problems more pressing than extremist Muslims (and more easily solved) that could have been tackled, if you ask me.

Wars are Lousy With Profiteers April 28, 2009

If you haven’t already, you need to see this:

Repeat After Me: Macroeconomics is not Microeconomics April 26, 2009

Despite my inherent prickliness, I have Facebook friends.  I know, I know.  But I actually do.

Several of my Facebook buddies are young conservatives, mostly friends of my kids, and they are spectacularly uninformed while maintaining very strong opinions.  Daily posts decry the excesses of the Obama administration: every new dollar spent is an outrage.

Every single one of these neophytes has the same problem: they believe that our national economy, and in fact the world’s macroeconomy, works just like their own personal finances.  This is a budgeting problem, according to these naive Limbaugh/Beck acolytes.  Tighten the belt, spend less.  What works at home will work everywhere.

If only.

Macroeconomics, my young friends, is to microeconomics as particle physics is to middle-school frog dissection.  Macroeconomics is complex enough that they give out Nobel Prizes for exceptional expertise in the discipline, it is nuanced enough to have schools of thought, and it is above all nothing at all like home budgeting.

Our current problem is not a scarcity problem: it is not a national version of being laid off and needing to watch our expenses.  Rather, it is a demand problem: we aren’t spending enough in the aggregate.  Spending, in this macroeconomy, is a very, very good thing.

I understand.  You don’t get it.  (And believe me: I understand that your mentors on schlock radio don’t get it.  Wow, they really don’t.)  It’s counterintuitive.

Just try to remember: if it was as easy as a home budget, they wouldn’t give out prestigious medals in Norway for it.

Cheney Says the U.S. Gained Valuable Intel From Torture, and I Don’t Care April 26, 2009

The news these days is about the supposed efficacy of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Former Vice President Cheney suggests that there are memos out there which would “show the success of the effort,” and “show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”  And you know what?

I don’t care.

Doing the wrong thing successfully doesn’t make it right.  We are the frickin’ United States of America, for crying out loud, and our destiny is to be a beacon of goodness and light for the rest of the world.  No matter how corny that my sound, I really believe it.  And torturing people is not only illegal in these United States, it is inimical to everything we are.  We are above it.  Torturing is for dime-store dictators and thugs.

The current line of defense (“But wait!  It worked!”) is the worst kind of ethic imaginable, and of course opens us up to endless abuses if followed to its logical end.  No, criminal law has long had the concept of malum in se (wrong in itself), and instead of the twisted logic of efficacy we should be returning to our ethical roots: torture is malum in se, inherently wrong, and bits and bobs of useful information (and it is highly debatable as to whether we received any useful information, while it is entirely clear that tortured prisoners sent our agents on countless wild-goose chases) don’t make it right.

Now, it would take guts to feel (rightly or wrongly) that American lives might be at stake if you don’t use “enhanced interrogation,” and yet still choose to do the right thing, to be that beacon to the world.  That would be courageous, I admit.  It would require leadership that values American ideals above all, leadership that understands that dropping our standards is delivering to terrorists a certain victory.  It’s the kind of leadership we did not get, and most pointedly did not get from former Vice President Cheney.

Please Tell Me This Guy Will Lose His Next Election April 23, 2009

I’m not saying anything about Texas, especially since cousin Andrew and soon-to-be-niece Aimee hail from there.  But it is a representative government…

Remarkably, and I don’t think this speaks well for our system of government: Representative Barton (R-Texas) is a ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and is in fact a former chairman of that committee.  Apparently it’s possible to be less well-informed on a particular topic than most fifth-graders, and still hold a powerful position making important policy decisions on that very topic.  Yikes!!