Da Bears!

Frogsdong wanted to know what a Conservative was in the same way that the word is used for Liberal. He says that their base is evangelicals. That may be true, but that doesn’t make them Conservatives. There was a time (believe me on this one) when the base of the Democrat party was armies of unionized labor that would consistently vote Democrat.

But dis guy:



Ain’ a liberal.

These labels “Liberal” and “Conservative” are designed to drive an elitist wedge between the opposition’s leadership and their base of support, not alienate their base from our own leadership. So don’t call Christians stupid. Point out that charlatan ministers are in cahoots with crony capitalist who are attacking the foundation of Family life in America. While the charlatans are busy protesting Terry Schiavo, the Crony Capitalist Republicans made it easier for credit companies to force people into working overtime and take them away from their families.

Democrats, on the other hand, want to protect Family Resources.

All jews think alike

George Lakoff.

George Lakoff minus six hundred words and six days.

Ending Employer-Sponsored Healthcare

A healthcare plan that I think everybody can agree on. Businesses would benefit from the added flexibility of being able to hire part time workers. Employees benefit from an increased ability to strike a work-life balance by working part time during some periods and full time in others without having to worry about finding insurance. Periods of unemployment will not necessarily immediately imply a loss of coverage. If only there were some way to eliminate Employer Sponsored Insurance without eliminating the insurance companies that sponsor powerful political lobbies.

First off, why do we have ESI in the first place? Group insurance is necessary because healthy individuals will drop out of expensive insurance plans because it isn’t worth it for them, making the plans even more expensive for the remaining people. Healthy people will congregate in insurance companies that are cheap if unhealthy people can be screened out (getting sick is an awful obvious sign of ill health), leaving unhealthy people to congregate in their own ever increasingly expensive insurance companies. The market will naturally try to determine who is going to get sick before they actually get sick and charge them accordingly, thus defeating much of the purpose of insurance. I’ll call this the non-insuring insurance problem.

So employers step in as a quasi-random group allotment. Since the quality of a person’s output is almost totally unrelated to their health (workaholics), unhealthy get stuck in with healthy all in the same group purchase. So the insurance works the way it is supposed to by reducing the risk borne by individuals, not simply identifying it. But when you are fired or if you don’t work enough hours to justify the sunk cost of enrollment, you are back as an individual with the non-insuring insurance problem as above.

Why not let the Government step in as a randomizer of group allotments? It would be just like the GSEs that run the mortgage industry, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Have a couple or a triplet of GSEs buy up individual health contracts with politically correct indicators for risk. Obviously age would be included, but also tobacco use and potentially some measure of exercise or obesity like a body fat measurement, but probably no prior history. They would then sort those contracts into balanced lots and auction them in a secondary market, just like mortgages.

Ideally there would be levels of coverage that would go from a very broad level, covering standard stuff with a low cost/benefit ratio; and then there would be higher levels that cover more experimental or higher cost/benefit procedures. Coverage in higher levels would imply coverage at lower levels, so purchasing more or less insurance would not be a way to segregate: if you want heart attack insurance, you need level 1, level 2 gets you boner pills or some such thing. So everyone that has rich people insurance will share risk of boner pill need with other rich people, but also have to share heart attack insurance with the masses.

So we’ve got individualized health insurance without the non-insuring insurance problem. By eliminating the non-insuring insurance problem we are rendering a large part of the expertise of the companies obsolete. There is a lot of invested in sorting out who will get sick and who won’t. So what do the insurance companies get out of it?

Well, the market for health insurance will almost certainly expand to include people who were excluded because of working only part-time or unemployment. In addition, much of their expertise can be easily adapted to the new securitized environment. There still will be a need for accurate forecasts of trends in medical costs based on the approved factors as well as cohort analysis. In addition, there will be a lot of expansion into individual marketing because individuals need more marketing. Also, unlike the Clinton plan, there is no government ordained limit on healthcare spending. Hypochondriacs and the wealthy can buy access to as much medical technology as they deem appropriate. There would be no cap on funds to research future technologies if the demand exists. Plus maybe we’ll subsidize the individual insurance purchasers more then we subsidize the corporations currently; that would of course translate into more money for health insurance companies.

Daily Show Withdrawal

If you’re like me, then your shivering in a state of shock due to the sudden mid-week deprivation of The Daily Show. Normally you’d have a whole three day weekend to come to terms with an off week, but not today. So to assuage your most severe cravings, I found a link to Steve Colbert talking about his new show on NPR in May.

An Open Letter to Justice Ginsberg

Justice Ginsberg:

There really would be no more ideal time for you to make an announcement concerning your retirement then the day after the finale of Karl Rove’s attempt to change the national discourse back to reminding people how much the Democrats resemble hippies. Not only would this immediately shift the National Discourse off of Terrorism, but it also will be sure to exacerbate tensions between libertarians and christianists within the Republican party at a time when those tensions are already high.

Obviously the rumors of your colleague’s retirement will give the story legs. You don’t actually have to retire, or announce a date for retirement. All you would have to say is that you are on a path for retirement, which is technically true no matter what.

Maybe the Borg are the Good-Guys.

As promised:

Have you ever considered that the Federation in Star Trek could be a version of 23rd century christianist right wingers? In a post a few weeks ago, Ethical Werewolf displayed a letter he received from Matt Yglesias in which the topic of Star Trek economics is raised.

My hypothesis is that Star Trek exists in a computronium based economy. I don’t know the science, but I think this would explain the fact that complex items can be transported but not replicated. It could be like a telephone, in that a telephone would have existed independently of the ability to make sound recording using electromagnetics. Since replicators rely on the computer system of the ship to store their template, rather then disassembling small parts of the original and then reassembling before moving onto the next part, the storage and computational capacity of the computer could become an issue.

But with the introduction of bio-neural gel packs, it seems to be possible to store something with the complexity of a human intelligence inside a ship’s computer. The Emergency Medical Hologram on Voyager is a holo-sentience. In addition, downloading a mind seems to be a task simple enough for an out-law scientist operating in isolation, the equivalent of a mountain hermit, to achieve. Data’s creator Noonien Soong downloaded the consciousness of his wife into an android.

But Noonien did have an advantage over an ordinary hermit: he was genetically modified. Genetic modification is against the law in the Federation. This is because in their history, a genetically modified human named Khan took over almost all of Asia around the end of the twentieth century. After his defeat, a third world war was fought between the Eastern Powers and the West, which the West won. Disagreement over genetic manipulation may have been the casus belli.

So the Feds have a seemingly irrational fear of modification of humans. Data is only allowed to hang around because he is purely non-human. Jordy is the only cyborg, and even then he had to lose his sight naturally to qualify for modification. Genetic engineering is grounds for being ostracized from society. So it is only natural that the Feds would object to steps that would lead towards the downloading of humanity into faster thinking and more efficient computer-based holo-beings.

The Federation is so close to computer consciousness that an engineer who is trying to design an emergency doctor hologram practically invents artificial intelligence by accident. Indeed, it seems possible that Zimmerman was ordered or had to artificially hamper the program’s learning ability in order to avoid creating an artificial intelligence, as the EMH is supposed to start losing memory after 1500 hours. This problem was apparently small enough to be eliminated by the crew of a small ship isolated from communication within a few weeks, suggesting an artificial origin. The whole Daystrom Institute, which sent an agent to potentially sabotage or destroy Data, seems like a way to monitor and control genetically engineered scientists to take advantage of some of their talents while steering them away from “dangerous” research. Bio-neural gel packs seem to be able to store complexity on such a large scale that they are able to maintain not only the ordinary duties of running all aspects of a star ship, but also to store and operate the sentience of the EMH. So downloading of human intelligence seems only a hop skip and jump away, especially considering transporter technology, even for non-genetically modified humans.

The Federation could probably transform humanity into near omnipotent Q like beings if it chose to download our consciousnesses into computers and use the holographic/forcefield technologies instead of meat-bodies. Maybe the Borg are a species that didn’t go down this path of extremist species purity, experimenting with genetic modification early on, “assimilating” new species simply by sampling their genetic material and adopting interesting and inventive new genes. By the 24th century they have advanced technology and probably have largely abandoned organic tissue, but keeping the old meat bodies around as convenient sources of material and platforms for tools. They probably have a virtual existence in the collective, leaving their hollowed out shells outside to perform menial tasks. They may view assimilation as the preservation of distinctiveness since they are transporting consciousnesses from vulnerable meat bodies into the quasi-immortal computer network at their core.

The seeming zombie like quality of the Borg then becomes a sign of liberation from organic flesh into a sort of spirit existence. Maybe Seven of Nine’s actual consciousness is happily enjoying life (?) in a virtual Eden inside the computer network at the core of the Borg civilization, the hollow shell left may be modified to serve as a tool for exploration. Most of the organic consciousness generating mechanisms may be left intact but adapted or deactivated to prevent distress and make the Borg drone more efficient. When a drone does have an accidental reactivation of certain areas of its organic consciousness generating mechanisms, the resulting distress and disorientation is only natural and may be misinterpreted by other organic consciousnesses.

The Principle of the Bogeyman

I have recently begun contemplating whether having an effective bogeyman is key to building a successful coalition. Generally, the various factions that make up a party are in a zero-sum competition to move their own bits of policy to the top of the agenda, bits that do not necessarily enjoy majority support; being behind a losing agenda item may destroy the party’s base of power before action is taken on your own item. So there is a lot of intra-party bickering. We are witnessing this exact difficulty in the Republican party, which is fracturing because of Social Security reform and Terry Schiavo among other social issues. But all the various factions of the Republican party can always put aside their differences to get together for a good old fashion hippy ass-whomping. The hippy is their Bogeyman.

A Bogeyman is somewhat different from a Scapegoat. A Scapegoat is something to blame when times are getting tough. A Bogeyman is an entity that arouses a combination of fear and potency in the audience because it represents an enemy easily defeated, and indeed that has already been largely defeated. It is a scapegoat for when times are good. The two are really identical, the use of one term or the other is really a socioeconomic barometer. I hypothesize that Hippy would morph into Intellectual as we move from Bogey to Scape territory.

So who is our Bogeyman? The Crony Capitalist. Just like the Republicans and hippy-ass-whompings, there isn’t a Liberal on the planet that doesn’t get a smug sense of self-satisfaction when they see a man in an expensive suit getting led away in hand-cuffs. We may not all agree on universal healthcare, tax rates, or gay marriage, but we all love watching this Abramoff thing unfold. We may not agree about gun control, but we all love that sense of satisfaction we get when we see a company being busted for dumping pollution. And we all love to hate Halliburton.

The more we concentrate on grinding our boot into the face of crony capitalists, the better our internal cohesion will be as well as scoring points with swing voters. Boot grinding is an all around inclusive democratic activity, and the party that can organize a more effective (which is to say more enjoyable and satisfactory) stomping will usually control the democratic process. (Of course, that is a weakness of the democratic process. Thank G-d America isn’t a democracy.)

Beating Rove with a Figurative Baseball Bat

I know you’re pissed. What Rove said was wrong. But Rove would gladly be burnt in effigy, kicked in the teeth, or beaten with a baseball bat in order to discredit liberals. Yesterday, I said the media narrative revolves around the question “Are the Democrats anything more then annoying flies to be swatted aside?” Karl Rove actually is an insignificant fly. He’s a staffer.He actually is to be swatted aside. What he says can be dismissed.

But if you really want to hurt him you have to beat him with a figurative baseball bat: call Republicans corrupt crony capitalist thieves. Amanda calls it a double bind, I call it a Bogeyman, either way it’s exactly like hippy; it’s a characterization close enough to the truth that it is dangerous for its target to acknowledge it, even to deny it.

An example of a quote that puts this into action:

RUSSERT: Should Rove apologize?

DEMOCRAT: Well, Timmah, apologize or not, Karl is just trying to distract attention from the corruption of Delay and Abramoff. From day one, this Republican leadership has been looking for ways to bilk the American taxpayer, from No-Bid Contracts to missing billions in Iraq, to the Prescription Drug plan, to Social Security and now we are learning about Tom Delay getting bribes from Jack Abramoff. Of course they want to make a distraction.

UPDATE: This was originally intended as a clarification of my post from yesterday, although it could also be construed as a response to Digby.

Glass ⇒ Industrial Revolution

By popular request:

Thrm: Glass ⇒ Industrial Revolution

Prf:

Glass ⇒ Lenses
⇒ Observation of Operation of Gravity on Extraterrestrial Moons

Observation of Gravity on Extraterrestrial Moons ∧ Observation that Objects of Different Density Do Not Fall At the Same Rate in an Atmosphere ⇒ ∃ Vacuum

Vacuum ⇒ Atmospheric Pressure ⇒ Steam Engine
∴ Industrial Revolution

Commentary:

I am very much a technological determinist. To translate from Mathematical proof: The discovery of lenses is predicated on existing glass polishing technologies. Lenses are what allowed Galileo to see moons orbiting other planets. Through observation the operation of gravity on these moons, he was able to determine that the density of the planets was different, yet the action of gravity on each of them was the same. This led to his historic postulation that objects in a vacuum fall at the same rate.

The idea that interstellar space was filled (?) with vacuum was iconoclastic. It destroyed the notion that “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and led to subsequent research on atmospheric pressure by Torrcelli among others, this research eventually culminating in the discovery of the Steam Engine. Indeed, the Neucomen Steam Engine relied on the generation of vacuum to provide power, rather then the generation of positive pressure as in modern steam and internal combustion engines.

There are other inventions that contributed to the industrial revolution, such as the micrometer, which were developed due to the precision required by Astronomy. In addition, the use of lenses on the micro scale led to the development of the biological sciences. Indeed, the whole story of Astronomy is that doing things like staring off into space may radically change the way humans live in a positive way. Because of the recreational use of lenses, lenses made out of a material as valuable as gold in some times and places, we discovered science, medicine, and industry. I guess I should point to this post explaining that glass technology was relatively less advanced in the Orient then in the West until contemporary times.

I'm at Ezra's

I'm at Ezra's. Thanks for the opportunity.

Might put some stuff up over here though. Probably another trip to Bizarro World depending on the cable TV interviews this week.

Bizarro World Gephardt

So, I was thinking of not mentioning that the following quote is an actual quote form Gephardt because it seemed obvious in context. On second thought, the quote seems so outlandish that it may not be clearly an actual quote.

Dick from Inside Politics June 17, 2005:

Let me take you back to 1983. I know history's boring, but you've got to look at it to learn.

Note to Gephardt, it ain’t 1983.

Dick Gephardt desperately needs a time machine to get back to the present; that, or a quick tour of Bizarro World!

KING: Thanks Kitty, have a great weekend.

And now back to INSIDE POLITICS.

When Richard Gephardt was the House Democratic leader, he supported the decision to war in Iraq, no some of Gephardt's old colleagues in congress are calling on President Bush to establish the time table to begin withdrawing the troops. The president says no.

Today I talked with the former congressman and I asked him what he thinks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEPHARDT: We’ve got to succeed in Iraq. Put aside the whole debate about why we're there and even how we went there. I've been critical of the president and the way he went without the U.N. But now that we're there, if we leave arbitrarily before we've gotten a good result, we're going to buy ourselves lots more security problems here in the United States. We'll have terrorists galore in Iraq. And we'll send a message to the whole region that we don't clean up our messes and we don't do what we say we're going to do.

That said, this war has been mismanaged by the Republican leadership from day one. We went in without international support. We went in without the right number of troops. And we went in without equipping the troops we had with body armor and armored vehicles. That’s the fault of the Republican leadership that didn’t want to listen to those who said we were unprepared. Now some of my Republican colleagues think that exiting Iraq is the best solution. It may or may not be, but we must stop the mismanagement and corruption the Republican leaders are piling on top of this problem.

KING: Let me ask then, what specific policies are Democrats pursuing help our situation in Iraq?

GEPHARDT: Well first off, we need to get better congressional over-site of what is going on over there, You know, no more secret no-bid contracts. [Insert folksy business colloquialism here]. Then we’ve got to eliminate all the waste we find and find out what are the better ways of doing things and where we are currently going wrong.

You see, I believe in the power of the ingenuity of the American people. The shield of secrecy this administration is holding up prevents the American people from exercising that ingenuity and fully eliminating corruption [Sub-text: Screw their crony capitalism and the secrecy they use to justify it].

KING: Let's move on to the domestic front and the conduct of your party in the Congress in opposing this president. The president this past weekend at a big Republican fundraiser, he said this. He said, "on issue of an issue, they stand for nothing except obstruction.", They being, of course, the Democrats in that case.

There are some Democrats in Washington who think that's the right strategy, say no when it comes to Social Security, say no when it comes to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, say no on other issues and take that into the midterm elections a little more than a year from now. Is that enough, sir? Or do the Democrats need to be more articulate about what they would do in the alternative.

GEPHARDT: Well, John, you know, the Democrats stand up to protect the resources Americans need to succeed, like retirement security and education, we stand to protect the diversity of ideas that made this country great, and we fight corporate corruption.

Now when Republicans are attacking those values, when they attack retirement security by trying to privatize social security, when they attack the ingenuity that made America great by disallowing stem cell research, when they attack our individual rights like they did in the Schiavo case, and they enrich their buddies at Enron and Halliburton, of course Democrats are going to fight. Now of course, Bush isn’t going to like it, but I think that the American people appreciate it when we stand up and defend them, John.

KING: Assume nothing changes in the dysfunctional -- to use a kind word -- relationship between the president and Democrats at this moment moment, your party has underestimated this president and his political team many times in the past. Let's just take Social Security, is it enough for the Democrats to say we don't like his plan, his plan is bad? Or do they need to go to the voters and say here's what we would have done in the alternative?

GEPHARDT: What are you asking, John? If you’re asking if the Democrats will help the Republicans dismantle Social Security, I think the American people know the answer on that is no.

But I’ll tell you where the Democrats are taking action. We think it’s time that the minimum wage gets moved. We think its time hybrid technology gets looked in a serious way in this country. And we think we need tighter regulations on corporations so that we don’t have disasters like Worldcom and Enron.

KING: Let me ask you I question about Howard Dean, the man who leads your part. You just tried to take me back in history to the internet boom. I'll take you back to the last presidential campaign. He was one of the Democrats seeking the nomination. Many would say he has a habit of his tongue getting out ahead of him, saying things that get quite controversial. Is he doing a good job as chairman? Does he need to reign in some of the more controversial things he has said of late?

GEPHARDT: Well, let me first say that Howard is a very talented individual. I have high hopes for his leadership in the Democratic Party. My personal opinion is that some of the comments aren't helpful, but then again it wasn’t helpful for George Bush to call our invasion in Iraq a crusade. Now, I won’t attack the President or Vice President because they have an occasional slip of the tongue, but I think Howard agrees with me that their incompetence and corruption are inexcusable.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING; Congressman Dick Gephardt, former Congressman, a bit earlier today.

Commentary: Bizarro Gephardt manages to talk about the withdrawal proposal and turn it into an attack on the Republicans without expressing his own support for withdrawal nor disparaging the effort. The Bizarro Dems are completely agnostic on the issue until it shows whether it will succeed or fail on its own, then they will bandwagon. Until then, all the bad aspects of the proposal are the Republican supporters’ fault. If the audience likes the idea, it’s the Democrat supporters’ fault.

On this plane of existence Gephardt really makes the somewhat newbie-ish mistake of questioning the prudence of bringing up withdrawal. King punishes him for it, as you’ll see. The italic paragraphs are a question and its answer that was substituted in Bizarro World where Bizarro John King attempts to attack the weakness of Bizarro Gephardt’s first response in a way similar, but less effective, to the way the John King attacked Gephardt’s mistake in this plane of existence.

Other than that, the Bizarro Dems still use the elevator pitch in appropriate places, still connect any reference to Dean’s statements to the Crusader’s own mis-quotes as I explained before, still don’t apologize for “obstructionism” and call it fighting, and generally try to maintain solid message control.

As always, for comparison, the exchange as it manifested on this plane of existence:

KING:When Richard Gephardt was the House Democratic leader, he supported the decision to war in Iraq, no some of Gephardt's old colleagues in congress are calling on President Bush to establish the time table to begin withdrawing the troops. The president says no.

Today I talked with the former congressman and I asked him what he thinks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEPHARDT: I think I agree with the president on this. We've got to succeed in Iraq. Put aside the whole debate about why we're there and even how we went there. I've been critical of the president and the way he went without the U.N. But now that we're there, if we leave arbitrarily before we've gotten a good result, we're going to buy ourselves lots more security problems here in the United States. We'll have terrorists galore in Iraq. And we'll send a message to the whole region that we don't clean up our messes and we don't do what we say we're going to do.

So, I don't think this is a good idea. I think the discussion of it in a democracy, legitimate. And I admire the people that want to talk about this. But, you know, we're not sending the right message when this is becoming the dialogue here in the United States.

KING: Then how do you have the responsible political debate about the administration's policy without, as you say, Democrats going too far, even some Republicans going too far in demanding a date and timetable?

GEPHARDT: Well, in a democracy, you always have these debates. And that's part of the health of our democracy. And you know, some people will read it wrongly, but that's the price of having a democracy.

I have no problem with having the debate. I just hope that we make the decision that we're going to stick it out, try to get the Sunnis involved in this government. Try to get the Iraq security forces to be beefed up enough so they can do the security without us. And then get our people out at the right time when we've achieved the result that we set out to achieve.

The whole world is watching this. And you know, we need to hang in there. I do also though think the president's got to be more clear with the American people about the costs that we all have to bear to make this a success.

War is an ugly thing. This is tough stuff. We need people. We need money. And the American people have to be behind this effort, and the president's going to have to be very clear about why we're doing this, why it's important that we succeed, and then leading the American people, which is what his job is.

KING: Let's move on to the domestic front and the conduct of your party in the Congress in opposing this president. The president this past weekend at a big Republican fundraiser, he said this. He said, "on issue of an issue, they stand for nothing except obstruction.", They being, of course, the Democrats in that case.

There are some Democrats in Washington who think that's the right strategy, say no when it comes to Social Security, say no when it comes to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, say no on other issues and take that into the midterm elections a little more than a year from now. Is that enough, sir? Or do the Democrats need to be more articulate about what they would do in the alternative.

GEPHARDT: Well, John, you know, there's an old saying it takes two to tango. And I'm afraid that applies to this political situation. You know, the president does need to gain the cooperation, not only of his own party, but the opposite party in the Congress.

But to do that, you've got to reach out to people at the earliest moment when a debate really begins and try to collaborate with them, listen to them, respect their views, even if you don't agree with them, and then try to find common ground.

He's never done that on Social Security. He's not done that really on health care. He's not done that on a lot of the issues that are before the Congress now, the energy bill. You can go down the list.

KING: Assume nothing changes in the dysfunctional -- to use a kind word -- relationship between the president and Democrats at this moment moment, your party has underestimated this president and his political team many times in the past. Let's just take Social Security, is it enough for the Democrats to say we don't like his plan, his plan is bad? Or do they need to go to the voters and say here's what we would have done in the alternative?

GEPHARDT: Well, they're very right, I think in saying, look, if you want to get a collaborative solution, let's sit down, put everything on the table, let's throw off the table what neither side can live with, and let's figure out a solution.

Let me take you back to 1983. I know history's boring, but you've got to look at it to learn.

KING: Let me ask you I question about Howard Dean, the man who leads your part. You just tried to take me back in history to the 1980s. I'll take you back to the last presidential campaign. He was one of the Democrats seeking the nomination. Many would say he has a habit of his tongue getting out ahead of him, saying things that get quite controversial. Is he doing a good job as chairman? Does he need to reign in some of the more controversial things he has said of late?

GEPHARDT: Well, let me first say that Howard is a very talented individual. I have high hopes for his leadership in the Democratic Party. My personal opinion is that some of the comments aren't helpful. But I think he at the same time is motivating some in our base and he's also, I think, working hard to build the structure of the party at the grass-roots level.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING; Congressman Dick Gephardt, former Congressman, a bit earlier today.

The Dangers of Neo-Edwardianism

Majikthise makes some good points about the fact that excising the remnants of Victorian and Gilded Age elitist culture from American society is a good thing. However, we still have to be on guard for trending too far in the opposite direction. About a year ago, right before I started blogging, I posted on a subject related to this. In the post, I compare the youth or “Hook-up” (as it was dubbed in a NYT magazine article Yglesias pointed to) culture to the Edwardian culture of Gilded age Britain.

The intricate etiquette of Edwardian Britain is inverted in many ways, but just as strictly enforced, among the neo-Edwardian MTV generation as both cultures seek to maximize the utility of interaction with others. As Edwardian etiquette dictated that one must dress so as not to offend the sensibilities of others, neo-Edwardian etiquette suggests one must not dress as to give the impression that one would be offended at the appearance of others: one must appear to put no effort into one's appearance. As Edwardian etiquette dictates that banal and sexual language is to be avoided in order to give companions opportunity to exercise their higher faculties, neo-Edwardian sensibilities mandate that only banal and sexual conversation is permissible in order to minimize alienation due to incomprehension. What is missing in each case is a genuine interest in the humanity of one's companions. Whereas Edwardians used companions for stimulation and entertainment, neo-Edwardians use companions as endless fonts of approval and affirmation. This objectification is the problem with hook-up culture, not its polyamorous nature.

If you’re interested, read the whole thing. I try to blame Utilitarian philosophy, at least partially, and get into an argument about it in the responses.

Why Americans pee on your holy books

Dr. Black raises a topic I’ve been ruminating on.

I recently saw the movie Control Room which showed me how confusing it must be for Arabs to have the US Army come over and arrest them in the middle of the night, haul them away, pee on their holy books, and shove objects into their various body cavities. I’d like to take a moment and explain exactly why it is we are doing this.

First of all, it isn’t because anyone wants to steal your oil. That is way too blatant. The worst that we’ll do to the Iraqi economy is give you USA brand machines so that after we leave, you have to buy USA replacement parts with your oil money. So this might make you a little worse off if French (or Russian, or Japanese, or whatever) replacement parts are less expensive, but only because we are giving away the machines in the first place and buying all new French machines is too expensive. So all in all, Arabs benefit.

Second, there really wasn’t any real chance that the invasion would help Israel in any way significantly different from the way it would help Turkey or Saudi Arabia. America knew that if we were successful in making Iraq a rich stable country, all countries in the region would benefit from not having to worry about a big unstable cesspool of criminals and outlaws. However, should we fail and Iraq descends into chaos, Israel would almost certainly be harmed more then the rest of countries in the region, mostly due to its position as scapegoat.

So how do we as Americans benefit from the invasion? Well, if successful, the invasion would have created a stable country in Iraq and possibly provide a moderating influence on the region. But going in, there were many who knew we did not have a good chance at succeeding. So why did we still do it?

First, understand that it is not the entirety of the American people who wanted to go through with this invasion. The opposition’s reasons are about as varied as the reasons of the invasion’s supporters. Personally I am in the opposition because of the low chance the invasion had of turning Iraq into a rich successful country.

So who are these supporters and why did they support the war? The real impetus for the war came from a group of businesses that work to steal from the American people. Similar to the way your leaders may blame hardships on foreign businesses driving hard bargains, our leaders impose hardships on us that they justify by blaming faraway peoples. This manner of the leaders stealing not for themselves, but for the benefit of foreign thieving leaders (who then steal from the foreign people for the benefit of the native corrupt leaders) is not detected by some of the usual methods of detecting corruption, since they may blame the foreigners.

What is happening is these businesses, who are run by the same people as the people who are currently in control of our government (Bush and the Republicans) are taking money from Americans (in the form of taxes) and using some of it to help Iraq, but also keeping much for themselves, and sending much to their partners in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The reason the average American may have supported the invasion (and as I said, many did not) is that they are too busy with their everyday life to understand the complicated corruption going on. The media are partly to blame, since they could explain the situation. But they didn’t because they had a reason to go along with the war, and not inform the people of the corruption. This is because, effectively, the American people are going to pay for an expensive and exciting new show for their television networks. So they are also stealing from the American people in a way similar to Bush and his Republicans and their businesses.

None of these actors bears any particular malice for Arabs or Iraqis in particular. In fact, I suspect they have a mild wish for good things to happen to the Iraqi people since it would make further theft easier. However, even though the problem is not hatred, a possibly worse problem is the apathy of these interests. They simply don’t care if a lot of people (both American and Iraqi) die. They don’t care if Iraq succeeds. Much like Chalabi, they only care about enriching themselves, and helping or hurting others only in so much as it enriches themselves.

For similar reasons we are imprisoning random Arabs in GITMO. The corrupt interests in charge do not actually care about helping or hurting anybody, they simply do what they can to give the appearance that they are trying to help Americans (at least). Rounding up civilians within our borders that we can label terrorists is a lot easier and cheaper then actually attempting to prevent future attacks by making genuine attempts to create peace and justice. In addition, advocating for the rights of these detainees does not serve the purpose of giving the appearance of fighting terrorism. This creates the dangerous disregard for the well being of the detainees, the results of which you see in the torture scandals. This is definitely not intentional, since it does nothing to help steal more money, and in fact makes it harder. So the result is policy intended to minimize scandal only in as much as it minimizes costs.

What's the matter with Ezra and Kevin

Ezra Klein and Calpundit are all worried about what specific economic policies the Democrats are going to pursue in order to win over Thomas Frank’s Kansans. What he doesn’t understand is that it’s not what you say about the issues, its what the issues say about you. As I explained before, family resources are the obverse of family values, and as such, Democrats act towards family resources the way Republicans act towards family values.

The Democrat positions on the minimum wage and Canadian drugs are about as lame as a lot less lame then the Republican positions on stem cell research and Terry Schiavo. What policies do Republicans pursue that really advance “family values”, even the in the perverse meaning they have imbued in those words? Bush jumped ship on the gay marriage thing right before the election, and considering how unpopular abortion prohibition is, I don’t expect much action on that front either.

Why mine is better then Kos'

Kos is making attempts at a Democrat elevator pitch. Also, someone misunderstood his comments about abortion, which seem to amount to the idea that “abortion” conjures up bad images of fetuses, while something more abstract leaves more unsaid. I would compare it to old people having sex, another issue the Democrats support but avoid mentioning it by name since they speak in more abstract notions of keeping the government out of the bedroom. But as far as his discussion of the elevator pitch, even though I agree with his formulation I have to say that mine is better.

We practically come up with the exact same thing. All I have to add to it is that environmental issues fall under anti-corporate corruption because who is against the environment? Corrupt corporate interests. This is the liberal bogey to the conservative bogey: hippies. Who could be against a strong national defense? Smelly wooly headed pot-smoking hippy-dippy sixties relics. Boo! Also, a statement on foreign policy is unnecessary. Republicans house isolationists, neoconservatives, and realists in one party. Democrats also will have isolationist, neo-liberal, and realist elements.

Leisure Externalities

Klieman gives me an excuse to say something about leisure:

Solving the TGIF problem would, of course, leave unsolved another problem: according to the hedonics studies, a large proportion of people also don't much enjoy their leisure, and spend it watching television programs they don't much enjoy. But one problem at a time.

In my day job I am thinking about what made poor countries rich and rich countries poor since 1500, a question posed in a talk from Dr. Acemoglu. An aspect of the solution (IMHO) involves externalities in the production of human capital that pervert incentives.

For the uninitiated, an externality is a cost or benefit others receive when someone does something. If you smoke in a bar, the second hand smoke is an externality. Same for your green house gas emissions. An example of a positive externality is your participation in a telephone network. Since your participation makes everybody else’s participation more valuable (by increasing he number of people they can communicate with through the phone), this is an externality.

I think that leisure activity produces significant externalities that increase the value of leisure participation in others. So we may get into a situation where individuals start leaving the leisure sector because it makes private sense for them to enter the work sector, but the damage to the social fabric may be greater then the private benefits because the externalities produced for others is not taken into account.

Thus we may be worse off as a society. Sitting home alone watching bad sitcoms seems to indicate a coordination problem that prevents the realization of collective participation externalities. In other words, if all of our work schedules weren’t so hectic and all-consuming, we could hang out and watch bad sitcoms together, or throw a BBQ, or play a game of baseball, or argue politics, or etcetera. [Incidentally, that last one before etc. is very important.]

Update: I should have mentioned in the original that depressing the value of leisure also makes people more willing to accept crappy jobs. In other words, you don’t care about endless hours of tedious data entry because all you could do otherwise is watch stupid sitcoms.

Bizarro Dems on Dean

The current row over Howard Dean’s controversial statements has compelled me risk bending reality to open the portal to Bizarro World!

BASH:And, a short while ago, I spoke with Senator Harry Reid. We talked about a wide range of topics, but I asked by asking him about his meeting today with Howard Dean, and in the first part of my interview, I asked Senator Reid what the Democratic chairman said to him today and if he would describe Dean as apologetic or defiant.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REID: We meet every month. I was there with Senator Schumer, Senator Durbin, Senator Stabenow -- my leadership. And we talked about the issues before the American people. We didn't discuss any statements that any of us have made.

BASH: Didn't come up at all?

REID: No.

BASH: Let me just ask you about the statement -- he said recently, Monday, that the Republican party is pretty much a white, Christian party, not very friendly to different kinds of people. Recently, he has called Republicans -- he said Republicans have never made an honest living in their lives. Are those mistakes to say?

REID: There are a lot of statements that people make in public life that they wish they hadn't made, like the time the Republican leader of the Senate said life would have been better under the racist Dixiecrat policies of Strom Thrumond, or the time George Bush hurled an obsenity at a reporter, but what we're going to talk about is not statements that people have made. We want to talk about the our fight for the American people. The American people care that the Republicans are attacking fundamental aspects of American life. The Democrats are fighting to protect the resources the American people need to succeed, fighting to protect the rights of individuals that made our country great, and fighting the Republican corruption in Washington.

BASH: I hear you talking about those issues a lot, and clearly you're trying to talk about that now, but the question is, even when your top leader, the chairman of your party, talks about those issues, because, perhaps, not necessarily of the message, but the messenger, because he makes other statements and those are reacted to, and have -- they're such -- they end up being so controversial, doesn't that step on exactly what you are trying to do?

REID: Look, everybody mis-speaks at some time. George Bush labeled the war against terrorists a crusade-- not exactly the best phrasing when trying to win hearts and minds in the middle east. But I am not going to criticize his slip of the tongue. I will criticize the disastrous way he has managed our war against terrorists. He ignored the advice of high ranking generals, he manufactured intelligence, and he sent our troops over there without adequate body armor.

Through their incompetence and corruption, with no-bid contracts and missing billions in Iraq, the Republicans are practically making the case for us.

BASH: With all due respect, I have to ask you one question about, not just about Howard Dean, but about a statement that you made. You caused a little bit of a dust-up recently when you called the president a loser, then you apologized for that, but then you also said he was a liar and that you didn't apologize for that. Why is the president a liar?

REID: Of course, one statement I made about the president was four years ago, when he said he was involved in nuclear waste in Nevada and he misled the people of Nevada, clearly, without any question, and I said so.

In the past couple of years, he has lied to the American people about, he’s lied about saving social security, he’s lied about the cost of his prescription drug plan, and he lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I think the American people want the truth and I'm going to do the best I can to get the truth.

BASH: Last month is a speech, you said, quote, "Americans are sick and tired of getting caught in the crossfires of partisan sniping." Listening to Howard Dean and even, you know, using a word like liar, are the Democrats also contributing be to the partisan sniping that you say is eroding Washington?

REID: Dana, we have 1,700 American dead in Iraq, 15,000 wounded and the Republicans are doing nothing. If the Republicans are hurting this country, I think the American people will expect Democrats to stand up and fight.

Commentary: Other then the comparison between Dean and Trent Lott/ The Crusader, the Bizarro World Dems have abandoned apologetics for “partisanship”. Also, please note that complaining about the nuclear option at this point is lame (and will continue to be lame until a SC nomination comes up, then it’s the destruction of the republic). The original text is below.

REID: We meet every month. I was there with Senator Schumer, Senator Durbin, Senator Stabenow -- my leadership. And we talked about the issues before the American people. We didn't discuss any statements that any of us have made.

BASH: Didn't come up at all?

REID: No.

BASH: Let me just ask you about the statement -- he said recently, Monday, that the Republican party is pretty much a white, Christian party, not very friendly to different kinds of people. Recently, he has called Republicans -- he said Republicans have never made an honest living in their lives. Are those mistakes to say?

REID: There are a lot of statements that people make in public life that they wish they hadn't made, but what we're going to talk about is not statements that Ken Mehlman made or Howard Dean made. We want to talk about the positive agenda for the American people. American people don't care about statements that people make that may not be totally accurate. What they do care about is what we're doing about the war in Iraq; what we're doing about high gas prices; what we're doing about education, both secondary and elementary education; what we're doing about the staggering deficit that we have; pension reform; and on and on with issues that we think are positive and the American people care about.

BASH: I hear you talking about those issues a lot, and clearly you're trying to talk about that now, but the question is, even when your top leader, the chairman of your party, talks about those issues, because, perhaps, not necessarily of the message, but the messenger, because he makes other statements and those are reacted to, and have -- they're such -- they end up being so controversial, doesn't that step on exactly what you are trying to do?

REID: I think we have to focus on what is happening around the country. For example, in Nevada we just had some municipal races. The national party was involved in those races. We did well, and in the city of Las Vegas, we had a race that we probably wouldn't have run -- won -- but for him.

We have, in 18 different states, grass roots organizations are now established as a result of what Governor Dean has done. He's doing a great job in having grassroots activity across the country that were never there before.

BASH: With all due respect, I have to ask you one question about, not just about Howard Dean, but about a statement that you made. You caused a little bit of a dust-up recently when you called the president a loser, then you apologized for that, but then you also said he was a liar and that you didn't apologize for that. Why is the president a liar?

REID: Of course, one statement I made about the president was four years ago, when he said he was involved in nuclear waste in Nevada and he misled the people of Nevada, clearly, without any question, and I said so.

In the past couple of months, he said, on this nuclear option, told me personally he wasn't going to get involved. That wasn't true, and I said so. I think the American people want people to tell the truth and I'm going to do the best I can to tell the truth.

BASH: Last month is a speech, you said, quote, "Americans are sick and tired of getting caught in the crossfires of partisan sniping." Listening to Howard Dean and even, you know, using a word like liar, are the Democrats also contributing be to the partisan sniping that you say is eroding Washington?

REID: What I think is partisan sniping is when we have two months of our time taken to deal with five people who already have jobs, when, during that period of time we could have been done the Defense Authorization Bill. We have 1,700 American dead in Iraq, 15,000 wounded and we're not even taking that bill up here in the Senate. We should do that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Harry Reid, standing by his words.

Compensation and the Trade Deficit

Let me dispute Kash's assertion that compensation has moved in the same direction as the trade deficit. That hasn’t been true since 1998 according to the National Compensation Survey’s Employment Cost Index deflated by the CPI. The deflated ECI has exhibited anemic growth between Q4 2003 and Q4 2004 (and receding to no growth in Q1 2005 for that matter). Between Q4 2003 and Q4 2004 the trade deficit widened from 528 to 621 billion. Between Q4 2002 and Q4 2003 the deflated ECI grew 1.9 percent and the trade deficit grew from 515 to 528 billion. Between Q4 2001 and Q4 2002 the deflated ECI grew 1.0 percent and the deficit grew from 425 billion to 515 billion. Between Q4 2000 and Q4 2001 the deflated ECI grew 2.5 percent and the trade deficit grew from 397 to 425 billion. Before that, the deficit had been growing at about 100 billion a year since the Asian financial crisis in Q3-4 1997 through the internet boom, the ECI grew about 1.7 percent each year in ’97 and ’98, but slowed to .7 percent growth each year in ’99 and 2000.

Bizarro World Hillary

In the interests of humanity I have risked existence by bending the laws of Jewish Physics in order to peer into a nearby dimension where Democrats have evolved passed gelatinous masses of tissue into creatures with backbones and strong message control. These exotic alien creatures have been dubbed Bizarro-World Democrats. From Inside Bizarro Politics, May 26, 2005:

WOODRUFF: Many political observers say they believe Hillary Rodham Clinton has tacked to the center since becoming a senator. But our new poll shows that 54 percent of Americans would peg Senator Clinton as a liberal. 30 percent say they see her as a moderate.

During our interview today, I asked Senator Clinton about efforts to moderate her party's stand on abortion, and she insisted Democrats no longer need to be on the defensive on that issue.

CLINTON: I think that our goal as Democrats is to preserve people’s ability to make decisions for themselves, especially over their own body. This is why we have to oppose government interference in our most private decisions, especially concerning our bodies. You know, it’s why we had to oppose policies like the interference in the Terry Schiavo case.

WOODRUFF: Similarly, on the question of gay rights, aren't Democrats always going to be on the defensive? You now have 11 states that ban gay marriage. Should Democrats think about changing their position?

CLINTON: Well, Democrats believe that diversity is a large part of what makes this country great, and we seek to encourage that diversity. Sometimes I’m not sure the Republicans see it that way. How could the Democrats fail to protect this vital part of America when it’s under attack?

WOODRUFF: But Senator, how are the Republicans attacking when gay marriage is not already legal? Aren’t Democrats on the attack by suggesting a new idea?

CLINTON: Well, some people may think like that, Judy, but the fact is the Republicans are constantly trying to take away the rights that created our diverse society. Their intervention into the Terry Schiavo case was only the most recent example.

WOODRUFF: A lot of people give -- more broadly -- the Republicans credit for giving a narrative that they can say in just a few sentences. And criticize the Democrats for so often sounding like a string of policy statements from different interest groups. What, to you, in just two or three sentences, should be the narrative for the Democratic party?

CLINTON: Well, the Democrats want to provide families with the resources they need to succeed, like retirement security, education and healthcare. Democrats believe diversity of ideas is what made this country great and we want to protect that diversity. Most importantly Democrats stand against corporate corruption such as the scandals with Worldcom and Enron.

WOODRUFF: Three other quick things. 2006, you're running for re-election?...

Commentary:

For the next seventeen months the following equation will hold true:

Conservative social issues = Choice (or Control) over one’s own body = Terry Schiavo

Unlike my first encounter with Bizarro World Democrats, here the topic was social rather then fiscal issues. The case for how men making out with each other will make our country stronger is about as complex as the case for why giving money to rich people will help our country. That’s why abstraction is so important in the debate for the respective issues on the respective sides. If the individual details of the Bush tax cuts were discussed, it would probably be a losing issue, but since all the nasty give-aways to the rich are hidden under the ambiguous and abstract cover of improving economic growth [Don’t you see, the recession would have been worse if we didn’t cut taxes!], they succeed. In truth there is probably a stronger link between cultural tolerance and economic success then low taxes and economic success.

The italicized paragraph illustrates what happens should the press try to call the copious amounts of BS that is being shoveled. First, undermine the comment’s (and it is a comment) importance, possibly by saying “Well, Judy, the important thing really is…” or attributing the comments to a nebulous entity like “some” or an entity with questionable motives like “naysayers”, then repeat the relevant 1/3 of the elevator pitch.

For comparison, this is how the exchange was experienced on this plane of existence:

WOODRUFF: Many political observers say they believe Hillary Rodham Clinton has tacked to the center since becoming a senator. But our new poll shows that 54 percent of Americans would peg Senator Clinton as a liberal. 30 percent say they see her as a moderate.

During our interview today, I asked Senator Clinton about efforts to moderate her party's stand on abortion, and she insisted Democrats no longer need to be on the defensive on that issue.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLINTON: I think our goal is to reduce, as low as possible, the number of unwanted pregnancies, to try to help young women and young men make responsible decisions, to be there with adoption as an alternative for young women who do proceed with their pregnancy, to talk sensibly about providing emergency contraception after a woman's been raped. You know, I think that on the overriding goal of whether or not we want to criminalize abortion, criminalize women, criminalize their doctors, a vast majority of Americans say no.

But I think there is a very strong feeling that we should work together to try to create better conditions to reduce abortions. And I would just add that during the Clinton administration, abortions went down. And they've gone back up under the Bush administration. So clearly, what is being done by the current policies are not necessarily working.

WOODRUFF: Similarly, on the question of gay rights, aren't Democrats always going to be on the defensive? You now have 11 states that ban gay marriage. Should Democrats think about changing their position?

CLINTON: Well, I don't know many Democrats who support gay marriage. In fact, I don't and haven't for, you know, years before I became a senator. But I support giving people the right to enter into recognized relationships, that whether you call him civil unions or domestic partnerships, enable them to own property, to have hospital visitation. To me, that's a human rights issue.

Maybe I have just known more people than some of my colleagues, have because I've been blessed to know thousands of thousands of wonderful, patriotic, decent Americans, some of whom have committed relationships to their partners and who have suffered because when one was sick, they couldn't have that person by their bedside. I don't think that's right.

So, we basically have a lot of ‘on one hand, but on the other’ from Clinton on this. Normally she is quite good, like in the first half of the interview, but here the disunity and uncertainty of her party leave her in a compromised position. Naturally Woodruff nails Clinton with the punchline, ‘winning’ the exchange:

WOODRUFF: A lot of people give -- more broadly -- the Republicans credit for giving a narrative that they can say in just a few sentences. And criticize the Democrats for so often sounding like a string of policy statements from different interest groups. What, to you, in just two or three sentences, should be the narrative for the Democratic party?

CLINTON: Well, the Democratic party is responsible for most of the progress of the 20th century. It is the Democratic party that fought and stood for democracy and freedom. It is the Democratic party that created the ladders of opportunity that enabled millions of people to lift themselves into the middle class and fulfill their God- given potential. And it is the Democratic party that battered down the obstacles that stood in the way of women and minorities and others, having the opportunity to fully participate in American life.

And I think that if you really look at narrative of the 20th century, we're on the side of the continuing progress on behalf of the American people, and of America's leadership in an effective way at home and around the world. And the Republicans' narrative is really one that wants to turn the clock back. I think our narrative is better. We may not have done as good a job, perhaps, in communicating it and connecting with people, but that doesn't change the facts of what we stand for.

WOODRUFF: Three other quick things. 2006, you're running for re-election?...