Pangloss

Do we owe something to animals?

(grin) You really would have to see the lamp post in question. But you'd outlaw it. Even thought it has no impact on you. Nope, I'm not making you marry a lamp post. Finally, an admission that the person who gets to decide this is not you. Now we are in agreement. And the answer to your question is "yes", because I believe in the rule of law, Scrappy, and I'm glad to hear that you do as well. It's unfortunate that you're not willing to admit that what you're proposing is an intrusion on someone else, and what I'm proposing is NOT an intrusion on someone else, but I'm okay with that -- we can't always agree on everything. Thanks.

Couldn't resist the subject line. Obama and Gates are ending the practice of extending tours beyond the service agreements promised to the troopers. I'm sure he's doing this because, as the right keeps telling us, Obama hates the troops and can't stand to support them in any way. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802504.html

And I respect yours. When we have to two opposing opinions on an issue' date=' how do we decide which one is right? In this country we take a vote. Right now the vote is 96% in my favor and 6% in yours (based on DOMA states v. SSM states). That's why my opinion is superceding yours.[/quote'] This is also a dodge and a change of subject. You're right in pointing out that the majority of the country is imposing its will in spite of the fact that it isn't being harmed, though. The question is whether or not that's fair. You know what happens when the majority of the country believes something that, by its own definitions, isn't fair to a minority of the country, right?

That could happen, but these are the people who know exactly what's coming, so it's child's play to pay themselves ahead of a final collapse. And of course there's a massive difference between a "massive bonus" and the amount of money it takes to run a large corporation, so they can be "out of money" in terms of what it takes to operate, but still have plenty to pay off their golden parachutes and run for the hills.

Maybe not, but he's at least partially responsible for the fact that John McCain is not President today. But I agree with this point in general. I wouldn't say "equally" -- he's clearly biased left, but I don't think that was your point, I think your point was that he attacks idiocy all around, and that's true enough -- for what he considers to be idiocy, which at the moment happens to largely be what you and I also consider to be idiocy. The larger point being that some kinds of demagoguery are good because of what positions the demagogue is preaching? That's an interesting proposition.

Well here we go. So far only the right-wing press is latching on to this, because the left-wing and mainstream press sees ACORN as a harmless and positive influence, but they're clearly partisan-left and take many positions on political issues. Even setting aside the accusations of voter fraud that plague ACORN, why would you want an organization that has a clear, stated position on social issues organizing and training census workers? How does that even make sense? http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/17/lawmakers-concerned-role-acorn-census/ Here's a link to ACORN's web site, which is chock full of positions on social issues: http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12340 Notice how they don't attack Republicans or explicitly support Democrats -- that's what qualifies them for 502©3 non-profit status (definition of non-partisan). There's absolutely nothing wrong with what they do (unless the voter fraud allegations are proven) -- the question is why you would want them to participate in a process that, by definition, NEEDS to be objective and scientifically accurate.

The same could be said of Rush Limbaugh. Actually if you look at the historically significant awakening of the right in the 1980s and 1990s, for which he is a major catalyst, he could be viewed as making far more of a "difference" than Jon Stewart. And in a very real way Jon Stewart is an answer to Rush Limbaugh, much as Air America is. Actually he does "prattle off substanceless partisan points that his audience wants to hear." He seems to be aware of the down side of this and tries to avoid egregious examples of it, but he still does it from time to time, especially with regard to Bush and in particular with Iraq. He should have a lot of egg on his face over Iraq, but I don't hear him apologizing or admitting he was wrong about whether the mission could be successful. He didn't blow that call because he was being objective and keeping an open mind, he blew that call because he was predisposed to think Bush and war to be wrong and unacceptable. They are more obvious about it, and less valuable in their commentary, I agree. I am with you 100% about the greater value being in Stewart's corner, both in terms of reason and in terms of presentation. My point really is just that that doesn't mean there isn't danger in what he does. It's only playing with a smaller fire. But hey, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, I don't know. Stewart isn't exactly the "mad lust for power" type. Substantive and interesting, as well as insightful and producing a useful educational experience for many in his audience.

I'm basically coming to agree with the above, in spite of my initial leaning in the other direction. Which brings us back to an interesting conundrum: These companies have incredible leverage over the economy, and yet there's very little we can do OTHER than bail them out. We can threaten to NOT bail them out (say they insist that they will give all the bailout money to their executives and throw mud in our eye to boot), but that hurts us more than it hurts them, because in the end that will loot their own company and retire on their golden parachutes ANYWAY. Which brings us back to regulation on the front side. Doesn't that pretty much put the kybosh on pure market, unregulated economics, folks? If credit has leveraged the economy up to this incredible level of power over the people, how can we possibly consider deregulation ever again? It's the Tragedy of the Commons on steroids so powerful a professional baseball player would shy away from using them.

What "stuff" would that be? I don't take my talking points from neocons, and I'm not listening to Rush Limbaugh or any other conservative commentators these days. And as far as I can tell 99%+ of the reaction to Stewart is positive and of the hero-worship variety.

Wow... a bump more than five years old -- that'll certainly make you popular with the community. Wanna talk about whether Iraq might have WMDs? (lol)

Right, plus I think it would get annoying really fast, trying to find a surface, trying to get an object recognized in bright lighting conditions, trying to get the projector to stop overheating, etcetcetc. OTOH if they can do this in an object this size, there may be other possibilities, like building it into a hat or maybe the phone itself.

Rush Limbaugh is deeply concerned with what he perceived to be the liberalization of America, the shirking of responsibility, the socialization of economic policy, and so forth. And Jon Stewart being seen as an oracle is a negative, not a positive. The difference is only in degree, IMO. Jon Stewart Version 1.0? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Appuleius_Saturninus

In reading that CNN article further, it does sound like the soldiers pay premiums on these private policies. Ugh. I really think somebody just screwed the proverbial pooch over in the West Wing. Maybe somebody lost their temper in a phone call with a private insurer who didn't want to pay for flu shots -- "Fine, we'll charge you for the combat injuries too!" -- something along those lines, and then it just spiraled out of control. I don't mean to sound like an apologist -- a screw-up is a screw-up -- but this sort of thing happened a lot in the early days of the Clinton administration too.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/obama.veterans/ This seems to me to fall under the category of "rookie mistakes". Basically the White House tried to push a plan to have soldier's private health insurance policies pay for their combat injuries. It was a real facepalm moment and VA groups quickly met with the White House and Obama quashed the plan, which was DOA with Congress anyway. Probably what happened is that somebody at the White House tried to push a little harder on the issue of getting these companies to pay for non-service-related injuries, which is a notorious problem -- they tend to try (often successfully) to dodge those costs and get the VA to pay for them, and getting tougher on those payments is a reasonable thing to do. I'm not real clear at the moment on whether these soldiers get the same policies, negotiated by the government directly with private suppliers (like companies do), but according to the CNN article above the veterans do pay premiums on these policies, which means they are THEIR policies, not the government's, which means there is a long-term impact to the individual for charging these companies with combat-related treatment (i.e. higher premiums). And of course combat injuries are clearly not the responsibility of insurers, and the long-term impact on the soldiers' ability to get future insurance would be cast into doubt. Of course the right is already running away with it, and not without merit -- it was an incredibly stupid and ill-conceived notion. But the VA is getting billions more than it asked for in the new budget, so the idea that Obama "hates the troops" is pretty laughable. Expect this to continue to have play amongst moderate conservatives in coming months and years, though. Politically speaking this was a total hand-in-the-cookie-jar moment. Shades of Clinton's first year in office here.

Interesting idea. It's a device based on off-the-shelf parts that's powered by your cellphone OS and adds an external camera and projector that you wear on a neck lanyard. The projector projects an interface onto any surface in front of you, including your hand. So you hold out your hand and a phone keypad appears on your fingers, and you can punch them to dial a number. Hold out your wrist and a watch appears on it to show you the time. Or if you're talking to someone the system can project personal information about that individual right on their clothing (lol). Or if you're shopping the system can recognize the data and provide more information about it, check it off a shopping list, compare prices, etc. The device also interprets gestures, so you can for example hold your fingers in a box-like formation (like a movie director) and the system will take a picture of that area. Walk up to a wall and display all your images there, or spread out a Google Map and see where you are and where you need to go. Simple tricks, but the implications are pretty cool.

Allowing them to fail would have hurt us, and it's perfectly reasonable for government to take steps to avoid that kind of pain. It's what I pay them for. I am coming around to the argument that contracts shouldn't be voided retroactively (even though that's certainly possible if we're going to void MORTGAGE contracts -- what's the difference?), but I see NO reason why we cannot stipulate in the future that if a company wants bailout money then they have to either renegotiate or otherwise destroy their compensation agreements with their employees -- or they don't get any money. We can most certainly do THAT.

Okay. But why do you feel that it's necessary to define marriage for other people? I respect your opinion on it. I'm just wondering why yours needs to supersede mine.

Good article -- Cohen captures my concerns very well. He also brings up a point I hadn't considered, which is simply that CNBC could not have known about the problem. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, but it does support the view that they can't be held responsible. And therein lies the real rub -- Stewart is a demagogue, no different from Rush Limbaugh, he's just a bit more polite and realistic about it. Like all demagogues there is both great power and great danger in that role.

Yes, that's the option on PIG -- let it fail, as punishment for not dealing with the compensation issue. Which is perfectly legitimate -- they have an obligation to us that they have not fulfilled, regardless of the reason why. Not only that, but we may have ultimately done the job we needed to do -- the purpose of the bailout wasn't to save PIG, but to temporarily avoid crashing the economy. If the circumstances have changed (and I'm not sure if they have or not) then it may no longer be necessary to save PIG. Wups, I meant AIG. Yeah. BTW, I think the way to handle this in the future is just to require that bailout money cannot be given to companies unless they resolve all compensation issues to our satisfaction before they can be given the money. Compensation agreements can be renegotiated before the fact -- if it's important to those managers to be bailed out, then they can rewrite their agreements with the company to our satisfaction first. Or just fire the management team, which would be my preference anyway. If they have golden parachutes, they can't have compensation money. That simple. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedInteresting.... Chuck "I Killed IndyBank" Schumer said this afternoon that Congress may pass a law taxing the AIG bonuses at 100%. http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/03/17/2009-03-17_aig_bonus_checks_may_be_taxed_at_up_to_1.html

Hey Scrappy, how come you haven't answered my question? Why not? How does this hurt me?

Government subsidies can be a violation of free trade agreements, depending on the exact effect. For example, when the EU gave Airbus completion money for the A380 project, and the US sued them in world court (or the eight or ten times the EU has sued the US in world court over Boeing tax subsidies).

Fascinating, thanks. I've read many times about how this is supposed to be an advantage, but I've never read exactly why.

Interesting... this could have WTO implications. It sounds like a government subsidy.

George Will made a great point this weekend. He said that if they can direct judges to tear up mortgages then they can certainly direct judges to tear up compensation agreements. A contract is a contract, and I didn't here ANYBODY complaining about the tearing up of mortgage CONTRACTS. This is a bit of a surprise, though, given that just yesterday the administration sounded like they were going to let AIG go ahead with this (e.g. the Larry Summers quote). There was already some compromise on the plate, in the form of top executives taking little or no bonuses -- they were mainly for middle and lower management and employees. But note that the article says that the administration is NOT trying to stop AIG from paying out ANY bonuses. Apparently this is a bit of an exploration, to see what CAN be done, and perhaps limit them to a greater extent than the current level, since it's taxpayer money, if they can. I agree that it's a good thing.