Obama Meets Unconditionally With Warmonger

     I found the title for this post somewhere else.

On Keynesianism: The Ship Of State

On a stately cruise across the ocean \
our great Ship of State sail with Two Captains.
One looks on high and Always Steers Starboard \
One a bit lower and always cries "Port!"


     Keynesianism says the government should be counter-cyclical.  When the the environment of the government (the economy) is contracting, government should expand. The Democrats always want the government to expand.  Keynesianism also says that when the economy expands, the government shouldn't.  The Republicans always fight to contract the government.

     There are no politicians who respect this divide.  If elected I will be both Democrat and Republican, depending on the times.

NewsBusters Bans Me

     They'd been threatening for a while. I think it was a combination of things. Quoting scripture to them probably irked them to no end. I think some of the people believed I was lying about being a Marine. I know I pissed off one of the authors who had the gall to deny that Republican lawyers tried to block military ballots in Florida in 2000. Because I am banned, I'll never get to school the 'tard.

     NewsBusters is run by some hard-core partisan Republicans, but the reasons to focus on them are serious.  One) They are listed in news.google.com! This website breaks news? I never saw it. Total media criticism (some little of which is actually fair).  Two) They only have a reasonable number of commenters.  You can interact, in real time (if you are kinda fast), and people might be rude (they were vile, folks, you must have a very, thick skin) but at least there are some people who try to rebut you (and generally fail).

     Oh well, Newsbusters, I was a criminal to the Democratic Party to feed you any good tidbits.  I tried to temper your Reagan worship by pointing out he funded Pol Pot.  I tried to temper your horrid grasp of the facts.

The Balinese Gamelan

     Did I post this stuff before? I am unusually intrigued by the Balinese Gamelan.

African Guerillas: Raging Against the Machine

     That is the title of the book I was trying to read yesterday.  It presumed I knew a lot more about all the wars and secessions in Africa since 1970 than I did, but I still dug it.  Editors Morten Bøås and Kevin C. Dunn put together some good stuff. For those who don't know, you can get most european characters by looking at a chart of "html entities"

     The most fun part was at the beginning, when they are dissing the people who call African wars "resource" wars.  I had always found this term problematic, but they say (and, to a degree, show) that the claim is absurd and is usually made by people who want to portray the rebels as bandits/theives, so that no quarter need be given.

?Wild? Guess?

     Byrd is stepping down from the most powerful committee in the Senate.  Byrd, a Klansman decades ago, and publicly apologetic for it, is voluntarily giving up power?

     I am reminded of Trent Lott losing his leadership post, for praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat (segregationist) campaign for President.

     Name someone who voluntarily gave up the #1 spot.  Maybe this had something to do with Obama's victory?

Finally

     Eli at Lefti alerts me to this article from the NY Times, which finally addresses the Georgian aggression in South Ossetia by our dear ally, Saakashvili. Obama, McCain, and the entire U.S. press corps ate up Saakashitti's repeated claims that big bear Russia was bearing down on poor, defenseless, Georgia. I blogged a ton about it at the time.  My conclusion seems a bit optimistic.

Laurent Nkunda

     Do I like this guy? I like his style...

Laurent Nkunda, leader of the rebels inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, allied with the Tutsis in Rwanda (Rwanda, BRAVE ALLY IN THE COALITION OF THE WILLING!) and seen here wearing what appear to be U.S. military camouflage.

     In case you don't recall. The first Congo war put Laurent Kabila in power, and he was sponsored by, among others, the Tutsi government of Rwanda which was mad at Mobutu because he led Hutu rebels operate from eastern Congo (the Kivu region). When Kabila got in power, however, he didn't put a stop to it, either, so the Rwandans, among others, started the Second Congo War. Kabila died, his son was put in the Presidency, but that didn't change anything. That war only officially ended in 2003, but the fighting continues, and has been the most deadly war since WWII.

     The American international war reporters have shown virtually no interest in it. Few christians or arabs or muslims are involved, plus, the main mineral there is in your cellphone. It does American reporters no good to tell you the truth. There is no money in it. Does anyone want to let me run a newspaper's international reporting?

Juan Williams: None Dare Call Him Republican Stooge

     Today he was on the O'Really? show saying John McCain III should have been running ads about Reverend Wright for months.  My opinion on this matter is recorded.  I think most public officials visit the Church of the Invisible Sky Fairy in order to fit in, not because they believe all that jazz.  I know they don't believe all that jazz.

Braggin'

     I made this map of the 2004 New Hampshire.  You won't see a better political map of New Hampshire.  Note how you can read all the town names.  Note the subtle use of the entire color gradient.
NH House 2004

Game "Theory" and Development Aid

     Our policy maybe should _not_ be to help where things are worst.  This gives a certain incentive to just throw up your hands and wait for the cavalry. 

     Now, I just said may main metric was "body count." so I'd be a hypocrite, and certainly mean, to say that "oh, you folks are hopeless and dying, no help for you!"  But certainly we give aid to countries without bodies piling up.

     Oh, for development aid, I might never forget Beatrice Lorge Rogers' Intra-Household Resource Allocation.  It's a very other-centric way to look at why sometimes development aid is a massive fail.

     And, for some other reason, I can't forget a story I read in the London Economist a decade ago about Mozambique.  Mozambique had made some major progress.  They were building infrastructure.  They weren't, to the best of my knowledge, doing it with forced peasant labor.  Then disaster struck.  The weather.  Major storms.  Washed away some roads.  They effectively slipped back to where they were before their efforts.

     So, where should development aid go?  I say it should go to countries which are making the right effort and either having some success, or failing only because of forces beyond their control.  It's more like helping someone trying to get over a wall than anything.  In these cases, recall, there are some people already in the industry or sector we are trying to support, people who have achieved some sort of success.  If the people aren't prepared for the development aid, the effort is much more likely to fail.

Snorting Coke Off A Hooker's Tit at the Cockfight

     Libertarians want all the "victimless" crimes to be legal.  The London Economist (boo! the war in Iraq! boo London Economist) has an official policy of LED, Legalization, Education, Discouragement, and they run favorable stories about how Amsterdam deals with the issue.

     I think that drugs that kill brain cells in order to work (e.g. Cocaine, Inhalants) aren't the same as other types of drugs.

     Regardless, there are some massive, decades-long conflicts funded by drugs in the Andes and Hindu Kush.  Having the U.S. enforce its morality abroad kills foreigners dead.  So, I am quite pleased to read that Evo Morales of Bolivia is booting the DEA.  In a different version of the story, it is noted that "The DEA has not been officially notified of any suspension or expulsion, spokesman Garrison Courtney said Saturday."  What's he waiting for, a boot-print in his derriere?

The Timeless Wisdom of F. M. Cornford

     We aren't electing Barack Obama because he has any special insight into the mix of Islam, Oil-ogarchy and terrorism.  We aren't electing Barack Obama because he's just the kind of Keynesian the current insanity merits.

     In 1908 F. M. Cornford wrote Microcosmographia Academica: Being A Guide for the Young Academic Politician. By "Academic" he is, in fact, referring to the politics of Oxford University.  That is of no moment.  His truths are timeless, as is in evidence when he describes two of the five Parties.

A Conservative Liberal is a broad-minded man, who thinks that something ought to be done, only not anything that anyone now desires, but something which was not done in 1881-82.

A Liberal Conservative is a broad-minded man, who thinks that something ought to be done, only not anything that anyone now desires; and that most things which were done in 1881-82 ought to be undone.

We should have gotten over this racism thing decades ago.

Iraq Update

     U.S. Troop deaths tied with lowest, July 2003.  The lies thrown out by Bush and McCain concerning Iraq were so numerous, I can only bring up a few now. One huge campaign lie told by the Bush administration (back in 2004) was "that as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down."  Since Bush was sworn in again in January, 2005, the total number of Iraqis "standing up" has increased over 418,000 (125K to 542K).  At least 50,000 of these are now at Operational Readiness Assessment 1.  In January 2005 there were 150,000 U.S. Troops in Iraq, now there are 146,000. 

     The article also says that without an agreement BY DECEMBER, the U.S. has no legal role in Iraq.  If anyone knows what I can do to prevent an agreement from passing, please let me know.  The way out of Iraq has always been them asking us.

     Reagan, on 12/4/1992 said one report said there 160 border disputes in post-Soviet Russia. I should review them all.

Sarah Palin Cost McCain the Election (UPDATE1)

UPDATE 1: Added paragraph about McCain's motivations

     Not because she is retarded.  Not because she has the policy acumen of your average hockey mom, but because she has no experience.  The morning she was selected I knew it was all over for John Sidney McCain III.

     See, you can argue that the Biden selection was a semi-cynical ploy to beef up the Obama ticket's foreign policy credentials, but I don't see how it helps with the current economic situation.

     No, the Palin selection undermined the most effective argument the McCain campaign had.  This argument had been used by all the major McCain supporters.  Before that it had been used extensively by the campaign of Hilary Clinton.  It was an argument that made me worry.  It was an argument which I know was influencing some people who might not have wanted to vote for Obama for other reasons (racism, Hillary supporters).

     The Palin selection undermined the experience argument completely.

     So, we have three choices.  We can believe that McCain had no idea about what every Republican in America was saying about Obama and experience.  We can believe that this choice was forced on him by Ralph Reed, or the likes of him.  Or we can believe that John Sidney McCain the Third wanted the Democrats to win.  The most generous answer, of course, is the last.  And if it is true, we should thank John McCain. : And even if it isn't, we should thank him for a mostly decent fight.