From The Toot comes:
Agenda for the 1st Hundred Days:
1. Sharia.
2. Communism.
3. Compulsory gay marriage for all preschoolers.
4. Surrender to Aztlan.
5. Abortion legal until 12 years after conception.
6. NASCAR banned, replaced by all-male ballet.
7. Official language of the USA: Ebonics.
8. Christmas banned.
9. ‘Red Dawn’ banned.
10. Box turtles.
That should do it.
If nothing else, we will probably get competence.
From CNN:
Mortgage finance company Fannie Mae acknowledged Tuesday that it spent more than $6,000 on a golf outing after it was seized by the government earlier this year, but said it is halting similar company-sponsored events.
Can time be accelerated?
Like the Gettysburg Address, this CONSERVATIVE speech is impressive for its brevity:
“I know that a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, of undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without international support will fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I’m not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”
Barack Obama, 2002
If this report from the ACLU does not creep you out, nothing will. One can only hope that we are just 11 days away from a new era in government in the US which will start to recognize the Constitution as a currently applicable set of rules to live by.
According to The Decider and his Wizard Team, the Government has the right to stop and search/interrogate anyone within 100 miles of our borders, a so called Constitution Free Zone. Census data shows this includes 2/3 of the population including most of the major metropolitan areas.
So George Bush impersonates George Orwell? Brazil, maybe? Or have we just become too exhausted to complain further?
I live in California, about 20 miles from the water. Crap!!!! I may have to vote for self interest: That One ‘08.
Reason.com digs up this gem from Ron Paul’s position on the vote against Gramm-Leach-Briley back in 1999. This looks pretty solid today and is one more point why my ideal world election was Ron Paul vs “That One”.
today we are considering a bill aimed at modernizing the financial services industry through deregulation. It is a worthy goal which I support. However, this bill falls short of that goal. The negative aspects of this bill outweigh the benefits….
* The growth in money and credit has outpaced both savings and economic growth. These inflationary pressures have been concentrated in asset prices, not consumer price inflation–keeping monetary policy too easy. This increase in asset prices has fueled domestic borrowing and spending.
* Government policy and the increase in securitization are largely responsible for this bubble. In addition to loose monetary policies by the Federal Reserve, government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have contributed to the problem. The fourfold increases in their balance sheets from 1997 to 1998 boosted new home borrowings to more than $1.5 trillion in 1998, two-thirds of which were refinances which put an extra $15,000 in the pockets of consumers on average–and reduce risk for individual institutions while increasing risk for the system as a whole.
* The rapidity and severity of changes in economic conditions can affect prospects for individual institutions more greatly than that of the overall economy. The Long Term Capital Management hedge fund is a prime example. New companies start and others fail every day. What is troubling with the hedge fund bailout was the governmental response and the increase in moral hazard.
* This increased indication of the government’s eagerness to bail out highly-leveraged, risky and largely unregulated financial institutions bodes ill for the post S. 900 future as far as limiting taxpayer liability is concerned. LTCM isn’t even registered in the United States but the Cayman Islands!
As I have said time and again, and now everyone else is finding out, we are SOOOOO screwed
I really feel bad for Joe The Plumber, the involuntary draftee in McCain’s army. The best summary of Mad Max McCain’s draft of “Joe The Pumber” into his campaign comes from The Remmer Report:
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Joe, the plumber, Wurzelbacher of suburban Toledo, Ohio, was mentioned 25 times during the Wednesday debate. McCain, who never met the 34-year-old Republican, epitomized him as a victim of Obama’s tax plan. He said Joe was poised to buy his employer’s plumbing business but couldn’t afford the extra taxes because the company earned more than $250,000 per year. Turns out Joe doesn’t have a plumber’s license and could be sanctioned by the city’s plumbing control board. Turns out, Joe’s income last year was $40,000 and unlikely to buy the company. Turns out, Joe’s boss filed income tax reported earnings of only $100,000 last year and would not be subject to a tax increase under either an Obama or McCain tax plan. Analysts calculated even if Joe bought the company and earned more than $250,000 the increase in taxes from a 35% to 39% rate would be offset by credits for a employee health benefit plan and elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses. A sublimed Joe Wurzelbacher said Thursday he regretted opening his big mouth and never intended to be subjected to the national limelight. Another McCain miscue.
Better than the actual formal endorsement announcement:
I was cruising The Reality Based Community site this morning when I came across a reference to The Dunning Kruger Effect, which I had never heard of before, but the name just piqued my interest. Having followed the link and the kept on drilling, I cannot say I am now an expert but (a) I understand it and (b) I have had numerous personal encounters with it and (c) I may have some personal experiences with it:
Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
- Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
- Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
- Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
- If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.
After several studies, they found:
Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.
This is common behavior. In business, I see this in employees all the time. I see it in politics, even in my family. Now I am even aware that I may fall prey to this.
But now I have a name for it, so I am sure that like the drugs for “Restless Leg Syndrome”, we will soon see Big Pharma come to the rescue with a daily pill to save us all from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
How cool would that be? Give Sarah Palin a pill and she would suddenly be cured and realize what an incompetent moron she is? Start deliveries by the truckload to Wall Street and suddenly those folks would all realize what assholes they had been.