Pangloss

Dan Rather certainly thinks so! Did you catch this quote from Friedman in that video, btw?

And which alien species is secretly running it??

This spate of hurricanes got me thinking about safety in Caribbean nations. Hurricane safety is, of course, a vital issue in regions where hurricanes are prone to cause great damage. While a lot of progress has been made in the science of prediction and understanding the mechanism of hurricanes in recent years, as well as how to defend buildings and people against their power, a lot of work needs to be done in third-world nations, some of which are gravely vulnerable. Just to look at a worst-case scenario for a moment, a brief glimpse at Haiti would seem to be in order. The other day Ike (which is currently blustering my house with its outer bands as I write this) passed far to the north of Haiti, hitting only with its outer bands of tropical storm-force winds. And yet 48 people were killed. This followed Gustav the week before, which hit more directly, killing over 500 people. And of course back in 2004 there was a storm that killed a whopping 3,000 people. Ugly business! But just because a country is "third world" doesn't mean it has to suffer so much. Many Caribbean nations have far better preparedness. Cuba is somewhat famous for its planning, and it's notable that right after Ike near-missed Haiti it slammed full-force into Cuba, running down virtually its entire length as a hurricane, and yet only four people are reported killed. So what is the secret? Well clearly organization plays a major role, and governmental organization is something that Haiti desperately lacks these days. Cuba has strong government organization, and while their human rights abuses leave a lot to be desired, they do put a lot of work into evacuation planning. And who's going to argue with a Cuban army soldier who's telling you to get out of your house RIGHT NOW? Unfortunately Cuba's preparedness seems to more or less stop there. They simply don't have the resources to require more stringent building codes. And that problem is very common across the Caribbean -- nobody has the money for tough building codes. And the sad thing is that some of the most vulnerable spots, like Great Inaqua, are already operating under the full involvement of American corporations, yet without the benefit of protection of American law. (Virtually everyone who lives on Great Inagua is employed by Morton Salt, and virtually everyone who lives in Great Inagua is homeless today because of Ike.) So... what can be done about this? What if we annexed (assuming they gave their permission via democratic process) some of these countries, starting with the most severely depressed and disorganized ones like Haiti, into the US as protectorates? I think we all know what the international outcry would be like if the US took over Haiti. But can anyone really argue that Haiti would be worse off rather than better off? Would YOU rather live in Haiti than in Puerto Rico? Or even Cuba? Part of the problem there would be the burden to taxpayers. But would it really be all THAT expensive? Surely giving Haiti a basic services infrastructure would be cheaper than giving one to IRAQ, which we've been doing on an emergency-spending (i.e. exorbitantly expensive) basis for the past four years. What would be the benefit to American taxpayers? It would have to be something they don't get now. I suppose you could make a case for cheap island vacations "within the US". Maybe the greater level of immigration could do something about cheap labor for low-paying jobs that "Americans don't want"? I don't know, I'm open to ideas here. Actually annexation might in some cases make sites less desirable for businesses because of increased regulation, but the labor would still be cheap for a while, and new markets for sales would be created. And your labor would be better protected over the long run, which is also good for business. I think the best argument for this sort of thing is that it's a global economy now, and a global society. Why not bring these people into an enlightened, educated, freedom-loving, democratic, opportunity-filled society? Isn't it just... more sauce for the American goose? What's not to like? What do you all think? Am I power-mad, expansionist crazy, or is there some reasonable justification for this?

This conversation between you and waitforufo is probably as boring for the rest of the membership as mine with bascule at the moment. I don't think waitforufo has produced a lot of substance, no, and I told him before that he shouldn't have started on the invective, but if you continue it this is where it goes. You should probably give up on trying to convince him, just as I should probably give up on trying to get bascule to stop using ellipses and just say what he feels.......... I do have some advice: Find some common ground and agree to disagree on the rest.

If I did that at least I'd be speaking my mind instead of hinting at something that I want people to think but that I don't have the guts to come out and say because I know I'd have to defend it. Oh look, here you go again: It's funny how you say it and also demonstrate its falsity in the same sentence. No, you're selectively emphasizing worst-case scenarios that even analysts don't agree on. You're insisting that the worst must be true, in spite of the fact that it appears to be more like the lowest probability, not the highest. If you were giving "equal coverage to both" you'd be posting threads about positive news. Falling gas prices. Rising home sales. Stuff like that. Odd that I haven't seen any such posts from you. Why is that? I know you do, that's why you feel you have to spin back in the opposite direction. The problem comes when the spin you feel you're encountering isn't there to begin with. This is the problem with assuming a partisan belief system -- it forces you to react to everyone else as if they're a partisan too, even when your reason and intuition are screaming at you that it's not the case. But you're a smart guy; you'll figure it out eventually. Dr. Pangloss prescribes two Obama administrations, and call me in eight years.

No, you're right, it isn't. Which is why I objected to the word "unravel".

We're all doomed! Is there any truth to the rumor that the LHC is powered by one of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Point_Module

That wasn't really what I was asking. I wasn't suggesting the buyout solves all our problems, whatever they may be. I was suggesting that our problems really aren't that severe. And they aren't. And the moment Obama is elected exactly 45% of the country will stop telling how bad things are and start telling you how good they are, and another 45% of the country will stop telling you how good things are and start telling you how bad they are. And that will tell us exactly squat about the economy, solve no problems, and move us forward not one inch. At any rate, I don't disagree with your assessment. You always seem to change the subject when I challenge you on one of your partisan statements. It never works, you know. You said that the buyout pointed to problems that remain. I asked you what those were, and you listed stuff we already knew. That doesn't answer the question. Tell us what the buyout tells us that we didn't already know. What has it "pointed out"? It isn't well. It's undergoing a period of "slow growth", at under 2% per year. But it's not "unraveling". You haven't made that case, and I suggest that you cannot. Mortgage crisis != economy. That would be, in answer to your question, an example of spin. The economy isn't unraveling, it's simply struggling.

LOL! Okay, fair enough. Okay, and I happen to agree with your assessment of Palin, but it shouldn't scare you. Warning: A bit of a diatribe coming here, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I'm going to speak to a larger issue for a moment. I think that being "scared" is one of the reasons we're struggling with partisanship in this country right now -- people getting scared when they really have no reason to be. Republicans aren't on the wrong side of the global warming issue (for example) because of secret conspiracies or being in bed with corporations, they're on the wrong side of the issue because people have allowed and encouraged them to go there. And it gets worse: Democrats aren't on the RIGHT side of the issue because they're the good guys in white hats with perfect ideological ideals. They're there because people have allowed and encouraged them to go there. All it takes is a quick glance at the history books to see both parties on the wrong sides of issues. So while I know that's an honest sentiment from you, and I respect that, I think you have to ask yourself, where does it come from? Where I think it comes from, this kind of emotion, is our drama-oriented media and our do-or-die society. It isn't real. And saying that it is real isn't just bad politics, it's bad policy. How many times have we seen policy formed on that awful, subjective basis? It's like playing with a live wire and saying "who cares if it's live, so long as it shocks the OTHER guy first!" That's the source of my objection to any ABB posts around here -- exaggeration for political purpose is counter-intuitive. It goes against reason. Against logic. Against well-considered, thoughtful, progressive measures. In short, if you really think it's that bad if John McCain gets elected, you probably need to step back and re-assess your own partisanship and ideological motivations. After all, what are you going to do for the next 4-8 years if he gets elected? Stew about it? Automatically oppose everything he does the moment he tries to do it, regardless of how logical it may be? Well people have been behaving exactly that way for the past 16 years, and where has that gotten us? How's that working out for us so far? Are we making progress? Are we conquering global warming, or are we stuck in a political quagmire over it? Have we actually resolved ANY issues, or have we just beaten each other into submission over some of them and moved on to more exciting, newspaper-selling topics? I think those of us who put reason ahead of faith have the highest obligation to do something about this problem. We're the ones who are supposed to know better, so at the very least we shouldn't be succumbing to it ourselves. So, in this election, don't be afraid of something that can't hurt you, and instead choose to get behind progressive, positive motivations instead of scary, negative ones. It's got to be more productive!

Are they? Do you have any links on that, saying "sold" rather than "put"? Never mind, I just found one: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/05/plane_not_sold_on_ebay.html That's McCain, not her -- the article goes on to say that she's been more precise in her comments on the subject. But you're right, the campaign needs to stop doing that, across the board.

Well I admit I'm only following this conversation with half an ear (and I doubt anybody else is following it at all since it kinda degenerated), so I hope this doesn't come acros as picking on you, but to be blunt you're not really qualified to say whether she's "failing on a national stage", since you've got a predetermined opinion on the matter. And you sound kinda silly trying to convince people that you have an objective opinion on the matter. And the polls seem to reflect that. Obama had a huge lead amongst white women voters before the Palin selection; that's turned around by a whopping 20 points. That's why they're in a statistical dead heat now in several polls. From page 3 of this story: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5752204&page=1 I don't think you can really say that she's "failing on the national stage".

Oh? What problems remain that the bail out of Fannie and Freddie point at? Then this should be a strong indicator to you that the sky is actually not falling. Er, I mean, the economy is not "unraveling". It's not the anti-Bush that prompts me to respond with my own opinions. It's the spin.

I wasn't sure where to put this, it's kind of a "current events" story, but it wasn't political and it wasn't computer science, so this seemed like the logical place. Check out this Forbes story: http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/08/ual-tribune-bankruptcy-biz-media-cz_ja_0908ualstory2.html To break it down, apparently this morning at 10:53am some financial analyst happened across a 6-year-old story about UAL declaring bankruptcy, and thought it was a NEW news story, so he published it to his financial subscribers. Within ten minutes 24 million shares of UAL stock had changed hands, with the stock crashing from $12.45 to $3! NASDAQ halted its trading at 11:06am, just 13 minutes after the error, but of course by then the damage was done. Yowsa! Wired has a shorter story on it here: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/six-year-old-st.html I think it's an interesting story about the pitfalls of hyper-connected information sources in the digital age.

I think what she actually said was that she "put" it on ebay, not that she sold it there. Someone would have to look up the text of her speech to be sure, though. Clearly the implication was that she sold it there, but that's not particularly important because it did sell and she made what was probably a reasonable percentage of the investment back for that plane type and length of ownership. (In fact the original deal that the previous governor made was a pretty good one -- $2.7 million for a 7-10 seat corporate jet with a bathroom in the year 2005? Only if you buy one that's 18+ years old, which they did. I don't know all the ins and outs of that issue or anything about Alaskan politics, but that's hardly an extravagance.)

Uh, it's a statement of fact quoting the first post of this thread, iNow. Wups, I added "-ing" to the end. Somebody call a lawyer. line[/hr] Not if you cherry pick carefully enough, wading through thousands of articles about the market being up over the news and analysts all across the United States and Europe being happy with the decision. Here are 6,702 articles that say so: http://news.google.com/?ncl=1241810220&hl=en&topic=h Looks like a couple of those express concerns similar to the ones you raised. And I happen to agree with you -- those are valid concerns. But they're not a reason to declare that the economy is "unraveling". You should be more honest with your intentions, and admit that you wouldn't be interested in this story if it couldn't be spun anti-Bush.

Well first of all if you don't like all the ad hom, don't start the ball rolling down that hill in the first place. I agree he's leaping to a conclusion based on facts not in evidence, but that's his opinion, and if it's partisan, he's not alone. Hint, hint. Isn't this a great metaphor for how society handles "debate" these days? The facts suggest that X or Y may be true, so the liberal says X must be true, the conservative says Y must be true, and then they yell at each other for leaping to conclusions, and nobody bothers to find out which one is correct. Around and around and around we go, where it stops nobody knows. Wee!

It's frustrating when people use an ellipses to hint at something, but won't really come out and say it, isn't it? At any rate, this is good news, not bad news. The bad news is what we already knew, that these companies were mismanaged and poorly overseen even though they controlled vast sums of government-backed money. That shouldn't have happened, it IS the Bush administration's fault even though the process started during the Clinton administration, and that's where we're at. The good news is that the government is taking the proper course of action to straighten it out. And just as happened with the S&L "crisis", we'll get it taken care of and move forward. The sky won't fall, and the economy won't "unravel". All the stories today are about how the financial world views this as a positive sign. Well, all except for Bascule, who sees this as a sign of further "unraveling".

Mmmkay, that was a four-year thread bump. I seriously doubt he's still looking for this title.

So we shouldn't ask her what her position is? I disagree. She either thinks it's okay to ban books, or she does not. The fact that it came up during one of her tenures in public office, however small the office and brief the tenure, is plenty reason to believe that she may have come to a decision on the matter, and therefore is sufficient justification for requiring her to state a position on the issue. And I do mean "requiring". The only reason NOT to ask her this question would be partisan in nature. Apf. That's like saying it's okay that Nixon broke the law because Woodward and Bernstein were out to get him. If she didn't want to know the answer to her question, then she should not have asked it. But I'm not leaping to conclusions about her position, I'm saying we have a valid reason for asking her what it is. I kinda like that "J. Edger iNow", btw. You should adopt that, iNow. It's quite clever and, IMO, quite a compliment. So he disagrees with you. You'll live. Welcome to the club! Grab an "I debated iNow and lived to brag about it" button from the table in the corner.

It's not "nothing", it's a clear indication of a policy she thought worth considering. Clear enough that I think it would be reasonable to ask her what her feeling on that subject is today. If she is not in favor of banning books in public libraries, then that's fine, but it's a reasonable question to ask.

Interesting articles, thanks. According to those links, it's not a very desirable option, with the UK considering banning abortion when it's done for those reasons (but how would they enforce that?). It doesn't sound like that happens very often, but it sounds like a bad idea when it does.

I saw Joe Biden on Meet the Press this morning, and I was pondering his position on abortion, which I think is interesting. In a nutshell, he believes that abortion is wrong, but he supports the right to have that choice and he votes in favor of abortion rights. This is an interesting position, and I think a great example of the value of middle ground / common ground reasoning. I can understand how some, especially religious folks, see this as hypocrisy, and/or just plain wrong. For one thing, from a unilateral perspective it seems like something that just cannot be anything other than wrong. Life is life, right? And even from a non-unilateral position, when looked at superficially, it certainly looks like political posturing, or outright hypocrisy. But life really isn't that simple. It's complicated. Things happen. Sometimes awful things happen, like rape and other violent crimes. Sometimes you have to look at situations that don't have ANY reasonably good outcomes. That's just how things are sometimes. Nobody said it would be easy. And look at what this kind of complex, textured response gets you: Biden gets to take a stand that almost nobody else can take on the subject, which is that abortion shouldn't happen as a form of casual birth control. Who else can take that position? Someone who's unilaterally opposed to abortion cannot make that distinction, because they're already biased against its use. And people who are unilaterally in favor of abortion are often criticized as being too permissive, of treating life too cheaply -- Biden clearly can't be accused of that. Just the opposite, in fact -- Biden could even be said to take it MORE seriously than anyone taking a unilateral view. In short, on this issue at least, the middle ground is the HIGH ground. It's BETTER than being unilateral. It's more realistic. It's more encompassing of possibilities. It's more fair. It's more reasoned, and reasonable. Just exactly what this country is supposed to be all about, right? What do you all think?

It's interesting to me that when 90+% of women are having Down babies aborted, physicians and scientists express serious ethical concerns and people talk about "Eugenics by abortion". But when a conservative Bible-thumper decides to have such a child, words like "excusable" suddenly get trotted out.

That's an interesting subject in itself and may deserve it's own thread. I must confess I don't know enough about the pros and cons of trade balancing along a wage-earning axis (perhaps scaled for cost-of-living). I'd like to learn more about it.

Thanks.