Pangloss

Well this would focus specifically on articles, not books, and would focus specifically on articles related to politics. It's also meant to be topical -- Sundays in particular are really hot and heavy with political publishings all over the Web. I never have time to sort through them all, and always end up missing things that I later hear about in discussion. This is meant as a kind of manual RSS feed for interesting political and current events stories. By the way, I've got several items ready to go for both threads, but I'm trying to figure out how to switch off the double-post-merge feature so I can put them in a separate post. I may just have to wait 24 hours. I'm looking into it. Also moderation is not turned on in the FAQ thread (I'm not sure yet if it can be switched on at the thread level; I'm looking into it), but it's cool to post away in either thread and I'll move or remove posts as needed. Probably after I post a couple of examples it'll become more clear what I'm shooting for. I may not be explaining it very well.

I don't know if this is what ParanoiA meant, or how this would apply to this specific situation, but Alan Greenspan himself wrote a classic argument about how regulation itself causes the need for regulation, back in his objectivist days. The general idea of the argument was that by imposing regulations we forced companies into a mode of seeing those regulations as a kind of boundary, an outer marker of legitimate behavior, as opposed to working entirely within a framework of supply and demand. Once we put that boundary in place, businesses immediately pushed right up against it, and over time began to see a need to feel the precise edges of those boundaries, and operate under the presumption that any area of profit not specifically prohibited should immediately be explored, rather than deciding whether it was a good idea to explore it -- any ethical or moral ambiguity was erased by the government's imposition of what is permitted and what is not. One could say that those areas of ethically bad business practices would have been explored anyway had their been any profit to be gained, and that's a legitimate point (e.g. the tragedy of the commons), but we essentially gave businesses a leg up, convincing them that it was a good idea to hire mountains of lawyers and create scenarios of plausible deniability, and so forth. Look at it this way: In our modern world we take it as given that business is better equipped to deal with legal matters than government. Isn't that kinda crazy -- the opposite situation from what we should want? You'd think you'd want the government in charge and on top of legal matters, and business always ill-equipped and always behind the 8-ball, mostly concerned with making money and not really interested, much less motivated, in exploring bad business practices. The idea of businesses hiring lawyers to explore regulations should be a very alien concept -- it should seem crazy and far-fetched to us, instead of the accepted norm. Mind you, I happen to not agree with this reasoning, and think it inherently flawed. I think ultimately those areas get explored anyway, because human behavior is such that the first time a baby is killed by a product you end up with regulation anyway -- it's inevitable. So Greenspan's point, if accurate, was ultimately moot. So as I say I don't know how this applies here or if that's what ParanoiA meant, but it at least legitimizes for the sake of argument the overall concept of how regulation can create a situation in which businesses behave badly.

I've added two new sticky threads to the Politics subforum. The first one is an FAQ and a collection of helpful reference links. This is intended as a user-contribution thread, especially with its third purpose, which is to serve as a reference collection for previous discussions on hot-button issues, like abortion, gun-control, etc. That's going to be a moderated thread, so expect your post to be deleted and its content added to a master reference list. The second thread is intended as a rolling collection of interesting reading links. It is entirely user-driven. I'm sure we all read articles around the Web that for whatever reason don't come up in conversation here, but are still interesting and worth reading, and are therefore worth passing along to our fellow members. The idea is to keep the extraneous conversation in that thread to a bare minimum -- no discussion, just links to the articles. You can include a bit about what the article is about, but don't reply to a previous post's thread or content except to correct a broken link or add another article on the same subject. We want this thread to be easily searchable for potential use in discussions. Make sense? Any questions or comments on either thread please post them here.

(Note: This thread has been merged into the FAQ.) This thread is intended as a reading list for the members, by the members. It is open and unmoderated, but a few rules apply. The general idea is to post links to articles here without any discussion. You can explain briefly what issue the article addresses or why it is interesting, but the idea is not to provocate or advertise or evangelize a specific point of view. It's okay to pass along an article you feel might convince people of a certain viewpoint, but the purpose of the thread is really to share articles of interest that we come across in our own reading outside of the forum. So a few ground rules: 1) No replies to specific posts, except for the following reasons: a) Correcting a broken link (expect me to edit the broken link and delete your reply). b) Add another article on the same subject. 2) Just include the links, without explanation if possible, but if necessary a brief explanation of the link is okay. 3) Try not to hound us with a bunch of links on the same subject. If you really feel compelled to do that, I can gather some links from previous posts into a single post for you. Or just do that yourself and I'll delete your previous posts in the thread. 4) Please try to keep the physical length of your post to a bare minimum, to allow for rapid reference scanning by members later on. We want to be able to search and refer to this thread in discussions; that's part of the idea (this is also part of why the extraneous conversation is being kept to a minimum). I'm starting a separate thread to discuss this thread, so you can post any questions there.

Politics FAQ & Useful Links This post is intended to be a reference for three kinds of information: 1) How to go about posting on the politics board (rules and guidelines) (coming soon). 2) Helpful links to reference sites that are useful for discussion here. 3) Links to previous discussions on hot topics so you can refer back to how we talking about an issue before. To that end I could use everyone's help, especially with the second and third points, which you can start adding to right now by replying to this thread. This thread will be open but moderated -- I'll be able to see your replies but I'll only tap certain ones for visibility. Others will be deleted after useful information is culled and added to the FAQ post. You can contribute to the guidelines section as well if you want to write up any helpful suggestions about posting here. FAQ Post Begins Here --------------------- Frequently Asked Questions about the SFN Politics Subforum section[/hr] Useful Reference Links for Political Discussion section[/hr] News section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) BBC Front Page (CDarwin) Legal References section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) Pending Government Legislation Watch List section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - Regarding current US wiretapping regulation. Government Watchdogs section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) GovTrack - Useful for looking at specific legislation in US legislature. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Government Offices & Individuals section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) US Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain, Official Web Site US Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Official Web Site Historical References section[/hr](Submitter in parentheses) Significant SFN Political Discussions By Subject section[/hr](Listed by Date of Thread Start) Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction 7/1/08 US Economy, Late Bush Administration 7/3/08 FISA and Other US Wiretapping Laws/Legislation/Discussion 7/4/08, 7/9/08

That's a good point, I definitely expect to see a few subtle political messages from the athletes, if only expressions of empathy. I'm not so sure about the idea of Bush trying to open a political dialog while at the games -- other countries might see it as inappropriate, not just China. Perhaps after he leaves.

Yup, I can understand and empathize with the OP on this as well. I do share Bascule's general lack of support for protesters -- IMO it's not ironic to haul away protesters at a rally, it's appropriate. The people who were there came to hear the president speak, not some closed-minded partisan like they can find on any Web discussion board. That's not violating free speech, it's supporting it. The very last thing those protesters wanted was for Bush to get his speech out unimpeded! (I see it the same way I see greeting a political figure whom I disagree with. I'm always polite and personable and cordial -- why not? What could I possibly accomplish by being rude and disrespectful? Absolutely nothing that would actually matter to me. Would I really like my society better if it could actually be changed through a shouting match or a violent confrontation? Hardly!) That having been said, I support the general sentiment of the protest movement. I may not have a lot in common with anti-war protesters, but I do think the fact of their existence speaks volumes for the current state of our society. Heck, on some issues they make themselves wrong just by their very presence. Martin Luthor King, Jr., is a hero to me in a lot of ways, some of them quite subtle and inobvious. I hope by that you didn't mean that the crowd supported the protesters. The New York Times didn't seem to agree, saying they were shushing the protesters. But it wouldn't surprise me if there was some brief empathy expressed.

Ok, thank you. I appreciate your answering my question directly, and I respect your opinion on it.

Well you're right, I should have been more specific, because I know you know where I was coming from but I didn't mean you paint you with the denier brush. Apologies again. What I meant was that (iirc) you routinely challenge conclusions and assertions in the GW debate that are drawn on correlative evidence, on the general grounds that we haven't accounted for all the variables. I'm actually using my own phrasing here because I can't recall offhand how you usually put it, but I'm on the right track here, aren't I? If not I'll withdraw the comment. Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

To be honest, I think some people take Pseudoscience & Speculations too seriously. It's crackpot-land. Let 'em rant. If we can pull an interesting nugget outta here now and then, great, but don't lose your lunch over it.

You mean regulation? Yah, that's what I was trying to say in my last post. Even the most ardent supporters of regulation stop short of proposing regulating all aspects of society, thus proving that even they believe that an in-between position is correct. Not marxism/stalinism, and not objectivism/pure-capitalism either. In between.

What exactly is your point, bascule? Making your opponent wrong, or just demonizing conservatives? If you're just going to post snarky comments I recommend your blog space for that.

I'll let you know.

I agree that careless deregulation can be detrimental. Unfortunately deregulation has become a polarized partisan issue -- one side trumpeting it as always bad, the other side as always good. The truth is in between. And the fact of that matter is that it's "something in between" for even its most ardent proponents and opponents, when they stop demonizing their enemies long enough to admit it. Regulation proponents never propose regulating every single aspect of society, and deregulation proponents might say so, but they shut their mouths when the next disease rears its ugly head or the next time a passenger plane falls out of the sky. In between.

I'm just responding to what you said, which was "People are free to preach abstinence from their own pulpit or streetcorner." That sounded to me like an opinion separate from the present discussion, and you were saying that you don't think abstinence advice should be included in other programs. That IS a common opinion here, so it was a reasonable and accurate response to what you said.

I understand your point, but that's pretty common lingo. He's definitely in the "yes" column on the current bill, he's just saying he'll get it changed if he can, and there's no way this one gets dropped in a committee. Here's the appropriate entry at GovTrack, btw, if anyone wants to follow this: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-6304 I'm toying with the idea of including GovTrack links to bills we discuss here in Politics. Any thoughts or feedback on that idea would be welcome.

Oh my god, you've got tons of evidence that the administration knew there was oil in the Middle East!!!! Wow, I'm amazed Bush is still in office. Does Michael Moore know about this?!

We don't have a free market economy, we have a compromise between an open market and a controlled economy that we call a "free market economy". The debate is just about how much control you apply and where you apply it. So highly generalized appeals to fear and ignorance, like comparisons with 1929 or talking about how much money CEOs make while people can barely pay for Xbox 360 games, aren't going to teach us anything.

Columbian president Alvaro Uribe put on a freaking clinic on democracy in action this week, showing every other nation on this planet how it is bloody well done. What an amazing story. That hostage rescue was just a great story all by itself, but it's fitting into a larger picture of Columbian success against Farc that's really impressive. I think it actually makes me jealous -- I wish my own government and intelligent services could pull off this kind of stuff. The dramatic helicopter rescue of the hostages, all accomplished without a single shot being fired, is already seen as an amazing intelligence operation. All pulled off by a Latin American intelligence outfit long viewed with scorn and derision by the major countries. Not anymore! Even better, this boosts internal AND external support for Uribe. Not only has he won instant international admiration and gratitude, he's also won a great deal of awe and respect. His approval rating is at a whopping 80%. Farc is now seen as on the run and facing inevitable defeat -- this in a country where corruption and criminal control is legendary. A place where nobody ever thought a free and law-abiding society could ever happen. Even Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has come on board, of all people. Just six months ago Chavez was calling for Farc's international status to be changed from terrorists to freedom fighters and threatening war with Columbia; today he's cheering Uribe's success and regretting his earlier harsh words! That's incredible. And the punch line couldn't possibly be any better: In the process of doing all this, Uribe rescued a political opponent! The Beeb has a great writeup of the whole situation here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7489173.stm

Obama is apparently planning to vote for the wiretapping law as it is following the House's passage last week. The Senate is currently debating the bill, which is expected to pass the Senate and be signed by the President. Some interesting commentary from the Obama web site: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rospars/gGxsZF/commentary This might get under the skin of some of his base, but I think he deserve a lot of credit for a thoughtful and measured position here, as well as a very forthright responsiveness on the subject. No duck-and-cover act here. He lays out exactly what's right and what's wrong about it, what parts of it he's got problems with, and what he plans to do about that after it passes. Is it just me or does supporting Obama feel like graduate-level citizenship?

That's a much more purposeful and meaningful (and reasonable) argument, thank you.

I was thinking about that last bit: "Any attempts to meddle in China's internal affairs will fail." That's classic China don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out politics, there. They even historically apply that argument in the case of Taiwan, although I dimly recall something recently about how they've stopped doing that. They know better than to use statements like that right now, and I'm kinda surprised they let it slip out. Just this week they starting direct flights to Taiwan, so they're definitely playing ball. Something about that Sarkozy situation must have gotten under their skin a bit. Interesting stuff.

Lance, it's surprising to me that you use a correlative case here, given your opposition to global warming.

Interesting question, though. Are we saying there's never any additional nutritional value from more expensive selections? I'm sure we could find some exceptions to that, but could it be right as a general rule?

K, now read the rest of the OP: