Pangloss

That's interesting, I did not know that.

Fair enough. And here's an example of inciting rhetoric right here: "Economist" Paul Krugman is wasting no time blaming conservatives for this incident, in spite of the fact that he appears to have as much left-wing background as right-wing. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/assassination-attempt-in-arizona/?src=twt&twt=NytimesKrugman This bit is amusing: Gee, Krugman, throw down a match on a gas-soaked woodpile and walk away, why dontcha. ------------------------- Sure, I guess the thing I don't understand is why it matters at all. The pundits are building score cards so that they can throw atrocities at one another as examples of why we should or should not enact health care reform! Does that actually make sense to anyone?

That's great, ydoaPs, I guess we agree then that video games and rap music should not be censored regardless of any political statements they contain. Glad to hear it. (rofl) What do you think about the evidence that this guy is more, or at least equally, left-wing than right-wing? Inconvenient for the anti-Palin/anti-tea party crowd, isn't it?

I didn't say majority. Here's a general article you can read about games whose primary purpose is not entertainment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_games No dodging, please. Are you saying that no popular music ever attempts to motivate people outside of the boundaries of entertainment? Getting back to your point, we can include your hair-splitting qualification if you like: So would you support censorship of video games and rap music in cases where their stated purpose is to enact political change?

I can if you like, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that rap music is not intentionally motivational beyond the scope of entertainment. That one piece mentioned that this particular whacko's music behind one of his videos was "let the bodies hit the floor".

Of course, many of them very much are.

Those who want to paint Jared Loughner as a conservative are going to want to reconsider. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47257.html Aside from apparent insanity, any political views appear to be more in the realm of anarchy and general dissent. This is a crackpot protester of the general type we see at G8 summits and anti-globalization rallies. Of late he may have taken to hanging out more with the local gun-toting tea party-aligned extremists, but it would be pretty foolish to label him as being aligned with any mainstream American political ideology. -------------------- So do you feel that video games should be censored, then?

Yes it is, in my opinion. Oh it's not that -- I agree that flakey people might draw their motivations from elevated rhetoric, rap music, or violent video games. What I'm saying is that isolated incidents, whatever their motivations, are not indicators of trends. Nor should they be influential on public policy. I'm not going to demand that people watch what they say because some crazy person might go and shoot someone. Crazy people will find a reason to shoot someone. The political rhetoric is bad because it's pointlessly divisive and obstructive, not because it may occassionally lead to a mass murder by someone who would have just found their motivation elsewhere were the rhetoric not so elevated.

The elephant in the room of American politics this week will no doubt be the Giffords shooting in Arizona. As you've probably heard by now, a young man with a semi-automatic pistol with an extended ammunition magazine ran into a supermarket crowd that was gathering to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a "town hall" setting. Six people are known dead, including a nine year old girl and a Bush-appointed Federal judge, and 19 injured in an event that would have rocketed to the top of the news cycle even without the congresswoman's presence. Some updated background here: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/01/09/congresswoman_critical_6_dead_in_tucson_rampage/ American politicians were universal and immediate in their condemnation of the event, and offered prayers for the victims and their families. While it's a little early yet, it does appear that the attack was politically motivated. The young man in question reportedly has some YouTube videos up showing his opposition to the congresswoman's policies, and he may have had accomplices with similar ideological motivations. Health care reform and immigration may have been amongst his complaints. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this very soon. Giffords won a close election against leading tea party candidate Jesse Kelly, a 29-year-old war veteran who ran on a platform of independence and economic reform, complete with Palin endorsement. But from what I understand, while the election was somewhat acrimonious, it wasn't over the line and both candidates stayed on the issues, as can be seen in this story (with video) from last August. Kelly joined in the condemnations of the attack today, offering his prayers for the victims. Of course, the left side of the blogosphere is already suggesting that this was inevitable. I'm sure we'll hear plenty of that over the next few days as well. I tend to agree that the level of rhetoric in this country is too strong, but I think it's ridiculous to blame violence on rhetoric. It's the same old media problem: Isolated incidents are not valid evidence. What do you think?

That's clear, and it was two generations ago, amidst decades of postwar line-drawing all over the Middle East. There's a reason they don't call it the Ottoman Empire anymore. Your comparison with the Cherokee was interesting.

They were NOT the only ones making that argument, but more to the point, what you implied in your previous post is that they lied to authorities about being the property owner in order to steal it from its rightful owners. This is a distortion of both arguments and facts.

You mean the overwhelming, international claim of Israeli statehood. But isn't it just as ridiculous to claim that it's someone else's home? Whose home was it 15,000 years ago? All those claims are nonsense if you just go back far enough. So you might as well draw a line at some point in time and try to move forward.

Excellent point. Exactly. It's not just about World War 3, Marat. You're not wrong suggesting that cut-backs are possible. Your error, IMO, is in suggesting that a military is no longer necessary. Conflicts still happen, and like it or not your peaceful worldview relies upon remotely deployable American military power. Without the American military, Saddam would still occupy Kuwait today, and Saudi Arabia as well. North Korea would be dictating over South Korea. Iran would control the Persian Gulf. The Taliban would still be busy repressing women and blowing up Buddha statues in Afghanistan. And deployable is expensive. It costs a lot of money to project power. That's why nobody else does it.

I'm not sure I followed that. Why should the rate be higher just because the volume is higher?

The existence of nuclear weapons didn't stop the proxy wars or direct invasions in Eastern Europe. Prague Spring? Hungary 1956? Korea?

Perhaps. It's certainly a sad state of affairs when we're arguing over which broken arm of government is most in need of wasteful overspending to make up for its brokenness. I loved this sentence, btw: Nicely said! Of course, German students had that luxury in the 1980s because American tanks and aircraft were based nearby. It's easy now to pretend that the Soviet Union had no interest in Western Europe, but there are plenty of Hungarians, Czechs, and Poles still around who remember things differently.

Well I found a great deal wrong with it. Source? This page lists the United States at 33rd out of 197, with the actual number at only 0.63%, compared with 0.29% for first place. I'm not going to lose any sleep over that. That doesn't really tell us anything, since the top 15 (or 30 or more) may all be really excellent. Source? Uttery misery, you say? According to the Census Bureau: - 43% of all "poor" households own an average 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath house - Almost 75% of "poor" households own a car; 31% own 2 or more - 97% of "poor" households have a color television; over half own 2 or more - 78% have a VCR or DVD player; 62% have cable or satellite TV - 89% have a microwave oven; over half have a stereo, more than a third have a dishwasher - Only 6% of all "poor" households are overcrowded. More than 67% have more than two rooms per person. - Average child dietary consumption of poor children is on par with children of middle and upper income parents - 89% of poor families have "enough to eat"; only 2% report "often" not having enough - 80% of all "poor" households have air conditioning - The average American "poor" person has greater living space than the average person in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and many other European cities. (The average citizen there, not the average "poor" citizen.) http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/08/how-poor-are-americas-poor-examining-the-plague-of-poverty-in-america That's not the sole purpose of the American military. We also have treaty obligations to support other countries from aggression, and those treaties are widely supported by international opinion. It's true that the world is angry with us over Iraq, and understandably so, but if we were to pull back and South Korea were to fall then I'm sure we'd be blamed for that as well. I agree, and I think we can curtail military spending. IMO the problem is in the structure of the government's arrangement with the military-industrial complex, and in the systemic nature of procurement practices. It's too difficult to get good projects made, with Senators looking after their home states and not thinking about what the best equipment might actually be.

Interesting story making its way around the Web this week about China's new stealth fighter, which had been thought to be further off in development. Someone spotted one sitting on a runway. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/05/china.us.fighter.jets/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20

This is one of those mixed-up cases that, it seems to me, will likely be difficult for a jury to sort out. A man is being charged with "hacking" and faces up to five years in prison after he read his wife's email and apparently (it's not real clear) discovered she was cheating on him. She filed for divorce, which according to the link below was finalized, but she still lives with him. She also gave him her password on previous occasions. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/12/michigan-man-faces-felony-charges-5-years-in-prison-for-reading-wifes-e-mail.html In terms of this specific case, to me this crosses the line into that gray zone of marital disputes where both sides seem to share responsibility. I actually have a personal rule about not getting involved in marital disputes between friends for exactly this same reason, and I imagine a lot of you feel the same. But there's a larger issue here which is interesting. Should it be legal for spouses to read each other's email without the other's permission? Most would agree it's wrong for someone to hack into someone else's mail. Why should it become legal just because they're married? On the other hand, is it really that different from sending a private investigator to see if a spouse has been cheating? Also, getting married changes the law in other ways, so maybe it should apply differently here as well? My personal opinion is that it's illegal and should be illegal. But it does raise a bit of a question in terms of the simple mechanics of a relationship. The problem I forsee here is that one partner says it's okay for the other partner to read their email, and then, during a nasty breakup, they tell a judge that they never gave any such permission. If proof exists that they read the mail, but no proof exists of permission being given, then the first partner is screwed. Egad, do I really need to get that permission in writing? What do you all think?

We don't have wealth transfer in the United States. That's not the purpose of the progressive tax system, nor the purpose of our spending programs. Perhaps they do in your country, I don't know. At any rate, that sounds to me like a great rationale for a flat tax system.

Consensus-building and finding of common ground, sharing of concerns, determination of facts, communication of facts, and so on. Ever wonder how a politician arrives at his or her position? We ask them The Question at the first possible opportunity (and in fairness they contribute to that problem by running TOWARDS the cameras), but they have to form their opinion somehow, through some process. At any rate, they don't do it in a vacuum, and they certainly don't do it on live television. They talk to people, and when they do that they ask questions that, if asked in a public forum, would make them look ignorant, biased, rude, wrong-headed, etc. This is where that old axiom comes from about legislation and sausage-making. It's disgusting, but it doesn't really matter. But yes, the fact that THAT has to take place also opens the door for corruption and hidden agendas. But there's nothing we can do about that -- full transparency doesn't solve this problem because the process still needs to take place. So that leaves us with voting for integrity, supporting freedom of the press, and the occassional legislative tweak here and there. Best we can do. I'd agree with that. And the method that's harmful is partisanship. And if you've only ever voted for one party, you're part of the problem. Well that's your opinion. Apparently Alaskans apparently have a different take on it. But it's not as if she actually usurped power in some sort of illegal, or even quasi-legal manner. She ran for office. The people elected her. Way it goes. And frankly, those votes might actually reflect what they wanted her to do. They may have wanted her, for example, to not vote in favor of DADT unless the military leadership supported it, and the panel report came back saying it would be okay. BTW, John McCain actually took that exact position (both of them), saying he would support it if those things happened, and when they did he changed his mind, even calling it a "sad day in America" when it passed. That would have cost him my vote. But telling me you're going to support gay marriage if and only if X, Y and Z happen, and then supporting it when X, Y and Z happen, I'd be fine with that. That's how politics SHOULD work, IMO.

I agree, but just because they're making deals behind the scenes doesn't mean there is corruption. The problem is a lack of honest and intelligent leadership, and not having a plan. Banning back room deals (for example) would be treating the symptom rather than the disease, IMO. We do a lot of this, and we're always surprised when They seem to find a way around the rules. Go figure, right?

Sure. And that's often true on the small scale, but IMO, as a big picture view, the notion isn't very compatible with Occam's Razor. In short, in order to rule from behind closed doors they would have to always resist the constant onslaught of natural frustration in order to put up the planned, assigned front that was agreed upon. A more reasonable explanation is that sometimes it happens that way, but usually what we see is what we get. By the way, back room deals aren't always a bad thing, in my opinion. For one thing, it's one of the ways a minority can check-and-balance the majority. And it's the activist's best friend. If you want social justice, prayer in public schools, wealth redistribution, marriage defined as man-and-woman, open borders, closed borders, whatever, you need back room deals, because the majority is rarely your ally. People with money don't lose their rights as citizens the moment they get a little ahead. You may be right about the current bent of the Republican party, we'll have to wait and see. But in my opinion it's not wealth conservatives fight to maintain in general. It's opportunity.

An interesting post from Facebook's staff on Thursday shows statistics on user posts. Facebook looked at about 1 million English-language status updates, filtering them against a collection of 68 keywords and then correlating the data against two factors: User age, and number of friends. This graphic shows the results: Facebook's assessment: Also, I thought this bit was interesting: Makes sense, right? You might have to take a look at some samples to check your algorithm, but you could have the computer remove the names of the samples you pull, so the data stays private. I think it's interesting to see this kind of work being done. 600 million people collecting themselves voluntarily into an organized data set is just a dream come true for all kinds of social research. I think we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg here. Facebook's article here: Interesting analysis by PC Magazine here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374718,00.asp

The "lame duck" Congress passed a lot of legislation right at the end, and all the media outlets were talking about it last week. The extending of the Bush tax cuts lead directly to agreement on the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell", ratification of the latest START treaty with Russia, and funding for 9/11 first responders. (Some background here.) I think this is a very positive sign of what we can hope to see in 2011. I believe there will likely be more hurdles, but both sides came out ahead here and important legislation was passed. What do you all think?