The president is making sense
Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.URL: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/the-president-is-making-sense/
Somehow UPS and FedEx can compete against the post office for package delivery and express delivery. The latter can even compete against email and the dwindling number of Fax machines out there. But the health care companies are special. They must never be forced to compete. Or disclose. Or anything. Doing so would break the whole system.
Prairie dog escape artists
It took just 10 minutes for a dozen prairie dogs to outwit the creators of the Maryland Zoo's new $500,000 habitat.Prairie dogs return to Md. Zoo - baltimoresun.com by way of Schneier on Security
None got away, but for a few anxious minutes, they found every weakness in the enclosure built to hold them. Zookeepers had to bring out nets to catch escapees.
I'm surprised that none attempted to use social engineering by acting really cute. That would totally get my son to open the door of the display.
Ahmadinejad reelected in Coup
A few thousand Iranian young people demonstrated in Iran on Saturday morning to protest the announcement by that country's Interior Ministry that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a second term by an overwhelming margin of 63 percent. The president's rivals decried ballot fraud and many observers saw the results as a hard-liner coup. If the government really has descended to the level of fixing the presidential elections, it is a sign of deep insecurity and fear of change, as Tehran is challenged by the Obama administration's outreach and by reformist stirrings among youth and women. ...Salon.com | Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud
The final vote counts alleged for cities and provinces, even more so than the landslide claimed by the incumbent nationally, strongly suggest a last-minute and clumsy fraud.
All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.Gary Sick on Iran's Coup
I talked to my brother who is in Tehran a couple of hours ago. YouTube is apparently down (filtered). The satellite TV and international radio stations (SW) are also jammed. But apparently a VOA satellite TV station has started to broadcast on a new frequency and so they have access to that. They had also lost the cell-phone service. (The phone system is operated by the Ministry of Technology and Communications; so it is state run.) It really is feeling like a coup.From The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Awful. Simply awful. I fear that things will become far more unstable and possibly violent as Ahmadinejad looses what little popularity he has and the scope of the fraud becomes public.
Brad DeLong: Robert Reich Writes About the Debt Scare
Back in 1992 the real interest rate on a ten-year U.S. Treasury bond was 5% per year. Right now the real interest rate on a ten-year U.S. Treasury bond is more or less zero. Borrow back in 1992 thinking that the government is going to repay its borrowings ten years down the road and ten years down the road you find yourself paying back $1.65 in real purchasing power for each dollar you borrowed in 1992. Today you find yourself paying back just $1 in real purchasing power ten years from now for each dollar you borrow today. As Commander Whorf would say if he were an economist rather than a Klingon professional practitioner of coercive violence: "Today is a good day to borrow," for the government at least.Robert Reich Writes About the Debt Scare
Brad DeLong summarizes Robert Reich. Today's must read economic blog post.
frailty, temptation, and common miscalculation
“You knew the risks. Either you felt you were above the law or you had some kind of death wish.”Out to Lunch: Eliot Spitzer | vanityfair.com
His response was that neither was the case. “It’s a story that has been repeated since our earliest days as a species. It’s both obvious and not susceptible to an answer,” he insisted. “Nonetheless, we are led down a certain path. It wasn’t hubris or a death wish—but frailty, temptation, and common miscalculation.”
Great interview with Spitzer. The cynic in me thinks he is just trying to rehabilitate his image so he can run for office at some point in the future. The idealist in me thinks he just wants to get past his mistakes and contribute to society again.
Pot, Meet Kettle
the picture that those Republicans painted of Sotomayor doesn’t seem to be supported by her actions. The Scotusblog examined her court of appeals decisions in race-related cases and found that she rejected claims of discrimination 80 percent of the time.Op-Ed Columnist - Pot, Meet Kettle - NYTimes.com
Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had occurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided panel opinion, the dissent’s point dealt only with the technical question of whether the criminal defendant in that case had forfeited his challenge to the jury selection in his case. So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1.scotusblog: Judge Sotomayor and Race — Results from the Full Data Set
I'm waiting for the right wing and the libertarian spit-ballers to shift their arguments against Sotomayor. I'm guessing they'll claim that the facts don't actually demonstrate that she is able to be impartial but instead show that she is biased and incompetent at exercising her biases.
Apportioning Blame for the Deficit
David Leonhardt's column breaking down the "causes" of the budget deficit has been widely reported and the bottom line repeated many times:
President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying.
This is a must read.
Google Squared
Google Squared is much cooler than Wolfram alpha. Try searching for a 1997 movies or types of tea. This is the nicest search engine enhancement I've seen.
Flashing bunny bins tackle litter
The 5ft (1.5m) rabbits, whose ears light up when rubbish is put in them, will be tested for four months.From BBC NEWS | UK | England | London | Flashing bunny bins tackle litter
Mr Smith said he designed the bin because the amount of rubbish in the capital "just looks dreadful".
Now I know what London parks to avoid after I rewatch Donnie Darko. Other than that, I think its an interesting idea.
Fox Business Network Thinks "Microsoft" and "Apple" Are Search Engines
At least Fox didn't accuse Mozilla's Firefox of being socialist.
Bizarro World by Lee Camp
Via
Lee Camp: WATCH: California Banning Gay Marriage -- Part of A Trend?
Looking forward to Htrae day next fall.
Socialism
The RNC just adopted a resolution that urges President Obama, "the Congress and the Democratic Party to remember what made our country great and to stop pushing our country toward socialismFrom GOP won't rename Democrats, after all - War Room - Salon.com
I wonder if the GOP realizes that for many people, the phrase socialism conjures up images of West Germany and not East Germany. For the millions of young voters who came of age after the Wall came down, socialism means:
- Free health care
- Free collage education
- Six weeks paid vacation
The Conscience Clause
I wonder if the Conscience clause could be used by doctors to deny treatment to politicians who voted against Stem cell research. Or by pharmacists who refuse to dispense antibiotics to people who don't accept evolutionary biology.
Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs
Wolfram Alpha seems to have a lot of potential but seems to be missing a lot of questions.
Each of those resulted in no useful data. Each of those resulted in useful data in Google or Google news. On the other hand, the did have time for easter eggs. 10 Even Better Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs
tea party logic
Yanked from crooks and liars. I'd really like to ask the woman holding the Cut Taxes not Defense sign one simple question. What do you think pays for our socialist, public sector funded army?
China Far Outpaces U.S. in Building Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants
But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost. While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month.China Far Outpaces U.S. in Building Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants - NYTimes.com
China is switching to cleaner burning coal power plants. We can now retire the old canard that even if we lower carbon emissions, China won't; therefore we shouldn't.