Friday, February 26, 2010

Assume we have a can opener ...

This is really funny:

So there's a blizzard and Paul Krugman, John Cochrane, and Barack Obama are trapped in a room together. The power goes out and it gets cold fast.

PK: It's cold in here, let's build a fire.
BO: That's a good idea, Paul, but we have to be careful not to burn the house down.
PK: Look, if we build it in the fireplace...
JC: You guys are both idiots. The conservation of energy dictates that any heat created by a fire would be offset by heat lost somewhere else. The heat has to come from somewhere! Looks like you two need to go back to school and study your physics.
PK: ...
BO: Ok, here's what we'll do. I'll light this candle for two minutes, then to be sure we don't burn the house down, we'll blow it out. It'll be timely, targeted, and tempory.
PK: That's not gonna work. It's too small.
JC: We don't need to intervene with the climate! If we let nature take its course, eventually it'll be spring and we won't be cold anymore. Nature means for us to be cold right now; do you doubt the devine plan of nature?
BO: Ok, here goes... *he lights the candle*
JC: It's no warmer in here, I told you it wouldn't work. The heat has to come from somewhere!
BO: Nonesense, I have a team of scientists whose complex thermodynamic models show that it's .0003% warmer than it would have been without the candle.
PK: Ok, I give up.

This was a comment on Paul Krugman's blog. Thanks to Anthony C.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Come on, Cantor

In a way, it's admirable how well Eric Cantor stays on message, despite evidence of the falseness of his statements.

When he says "these bills are ultimately designed to lead this country to a single-payer system, something that the American people reject," I guess he means the Americans he talks to -- the wealthy and corporations who support him and conservatives who oppose expanding any part of the social safety net.

Unfortunately, many polls show that Americans actually favor single-payer: a NYT/CBS News poll from a few weeks back, some older polls. Polls have always shown people consistently support the public plan as well.

The Republicans have done a great job with obscuring the issues, though: polls also show that most people opposed to health care reform get the details of the plans incorrect when asked (for instance, insisting that the bills will increase the budget deficit when the CBO scoring of the House and Senate bills indicates the bills will reduce it). There is also the disingenuous strategy of pointing to polls indicating a plurality of opposition to the current health care reform bills without taking into account the opposition from the left that feels the current bills don't go far enough, or claiming that the Democrats are acting without Republican involvement, conveniently forgetting all the time wasted negotiating with the Gang of Six.

The Doc and Zen show

Ironic that Doc Rivers and Phil Jackson are both complaining about the salary-cap trade that shipped Zydrunas Ilguaskas from the Cavs to the Wizards. Everybody expects Z to get a buyout and go back to the Cavs after 30 days.

Even Rivers admitted it was great when the Celtics did the same thing with Gary Payton a few years back: “I loved it three years ago when we did it with Gary Payton if you remember, but now I think it sucks."

And how can the Lakers complain when they pulled a trade with a team whose GM at the time was Mr. Laker, Jerry West, and got Pau Gasol for a rack of balls and a case of Gatorade?

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Way to go, Oracle

No, not that Oracle. Congratulations to BMW Oracle for winning the Deed of Gift Match and the 33rd America's Cup.

Voinovich: "deficit hawk"?

What's up with George Voinovich? Now that he's a voluntary lame duck, he's suddenly found his true inner distaste for deficits? Where were these principles when they could have made a difference?

Few Senators are greater hypocrites than Voinovich. The Obama administration is responsible for about 10% of the current deficit, mostly through its efforts to stimulate demand via government spending. The economic downturn had already accounted for more. But the biggest contributors to the deficit, by far, are the two Bush tax cuts, the unfunded Medicare drug plan, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were funded outside the budget process. Voinovich voted for all of these without complaint, and voted against provisions to make them more affordable, such as an amendment that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Voinovich is only concerned about deficits when Democrats are in power and spending to increase the social safety net.

Friday, February 12, 2010

John McCain slips again

Leonard Pitts writes gold:

"Republican Sen. John McCain, more politically agile now that he has jettisoned the weight of integrity, promptly reversed a four-year-old promise that he would be guided in this matter by the opinion of military leaders, instead pronouncing himself ``deeply disappointed'' by Mullen and Gates's testimony."

Read the entire column at http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/1471808.html.

Facebook Follies

Oh. My. God.

Depending on your perspective, the comment stream accompanying this post is either pathetic, horrifying, or hilarious. Maybe all three.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php

(h/t to Daring Fireball)

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Time to bring it

A letter I wrote to the local paper recently:

Now that Scott Brown has won the vacant Senate seat from Massachusetts,
we'll really see what our federal government is all about.

So-called independent voters have already started calling for more
"bipartisanship", by which most seem to mean that the Democrats should
let the Republicans write legislation for them and pass the result.

Ever since President Obama's inauguration, the Republicans, the party
of "I've got mine," have done nothing but oppose. Bipartisanship takes
parties willing to compromise. The Democrats have bent over backward
to produce legislation that might possibly appeal to the Republican
minority, and to what end? Republicans are never going to vote for
anything that might anger their corporate sponsors, so any attempt at
bipartisanship was a wasted effort to begin with.

What can we expect from the Republicans? More of nothing: no proposals,
no legislation, no attempt at actual governance. As has been proven
again and again, Republicans are simply out of ideas.

What should the Democrats do? Pass legislation that helps people, starting
with health care reform. Clean up the huge mess the Bush administration
left behind. Make the Republicans stand up for whatever it is they believe
in. I, for one, would be interested in whether the Republicans stand for
anything (except, of course, tax cuts -- the solution to every problem).

The Democrats have a huge majority for a reason: Republicans proved
incapable of governing. People want the change Democrats promised to
bring. It's time to bring it.