Gold Bugs

Noah Smith is not a gold bug.

Noahpinion: What is the payoff structure of gold?:

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We're Number 1

8 appalling ways America leads the world - Salon.com:

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War on Terror

Egypt: Military announces 'War on Terror,' Calls for Massive Demos Against Muslim Brotherhood | Informed Comment:

It's always legit to label your opponents "Terrorists".

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We're #1

Economist's View: 'U.S. Health Spending: One of These Things Not Like Others':

in Health Care Spending and Putting People in Prison. Not Good.....





and from [Hullabaloo - We're #1]




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The Future of Cheap Labor

When will the corporations start moving production to Africa to take advantage of all that cheap labor.

Africa to own the world’s demographic future | | MacroBusiness:


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Elvis Costello

Saw both of these this morning. What a difference 30+ years makes.

Jokes

What's your favourite short joke that works on demand? : AskReddit:

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You say you want a Revolution?

Will the world ever see 1848 again  [Wikipedia on the 1848 Revolutions]

Also,...

From the comments found here:

Chris Hedges: “America is a Tinderbox” « naked capitalism:

"I think one of the problems is that most of the left leadership hails from elite academic circles, and in addition to their ideological blinders hasn’t given much thought as to what poor and working-class people really think. The elite leftist leadership has an idealized version of the lower socio-economic orders that doesn’t square terribly well with reality. "

You wouldn't want the "elite leftist leadership" of academia running your business or your government, why would you want them to run your revolution?

The Robots are Coming

"The Robots are Coming! No,..The Robots are here" or "Who's going to buy those Teslas?"

Peek Inside Tesla’s Robotic Factory. 3,000 employees..... and from this Motor City: The Story of Detroit

 And Ford’s technological innovations, culminating in the construction of the massive River Rouge plant—one that employed more than 90,000 workers at its peak—brought visitors from around the world to marvel at the might and ingenuity of American industry. 

90,000 then,.. 3,000 today? Again, who's going to buy those Teslas?

More on the rise of the robot from Balkinization: The River of Purchasing Power Dries Up at Detroit

This rise of [robotized manufacturing] violates the deal that the capitalists made with American consumers after the great Depression, which is that they would provide people with well-paying jobs and the workers in turn would buy the commodities the factories produced, in a cycle of consumerism. If the goods can be produced without many workers, and if the workers then end up suffering long-term unemployment (as Detroit does), then who will buy the consumer goods? Capitalism can survive one Detroit, but what if we are heading toward having quite a few of them?

and

Imagine that the mass market consists of a “river” of consumer purchasing power. Along the banks of this river are located industries of all types. When an industry sells a product or service to consumers in the market, it pumps purchasing power from the river. An industry also pumps purchasing power back into the river in two primary ways: first it pays salaries and wages to workers, and second as technology advances, the prices that the industry charges fall and this results in more money in consumers’ pockets. . .
...
At some point, the industries on the banks of our river will become too capital intensive (the machines they employ will begin to run themselves). Once this happens, they will collectively begin to pump more purchasing power from the river than they return to it. The river will begin to run dry. . . .

Add to this an elite corporate-political class taking and holding as much from the river as they can and there just isn't much left over for the rest of us.

Big Business is just not very good.

The Republicans hate big government. It looks like no one likes big business.

America’s Worst Companies To Work For - 24/7 Wall St.:

Worst Companies

More Worst Companies

Rating the Companies



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Negotiating with Israel

Juan Cole sums it up here.

"Whoever Speaks of 1967 borders speaks of Auschwitz": Israel's Cabinet not Serious about Negotiations for a Palestinian State | Informed Comment:

It is like negotiating with someone about how to share a piece of pie while that person is sneaking a fork into the pie and eating it up.

also, another fork full... Permits


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Justice?

How much can you afford?

Frankly Curious » Are the Rich Above the Law?:

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Israel vs Iran

Top 10 Reasons Americans should Dismiss Israel's Netanyahu on Attacking Iran | Informed Comment:

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Inflation. Or Lack of.

From: Econbrowser: What Were They Thinking?:

As the Fed sets in place the road map to withdrawing monetary stimulus, I wonder how it is that so many believed the Fed’s implementation of unconventional monetary policy would lead to surging high inflation. Examples include House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan, who stated in November 2008: 

"I think it's going to give us a big inflation problem down the road."

The source for the above statement, Reuters, also quotes Sarah Palin and Ron Paul.

The obvious point is that there has been little evidence of inflation “getting out of control”, even as several bouts of quantitative easing were undertaken. In fact, inflation and inflation expectations have been remarkably quiescent. Why were these people so mistaken? There are at least two competing explanations, consistent with the statements that were made, and the observations we have:

• The observers were ignorant of economics.
• The observers wished to whip up hysteria in order to prevent the Fed from undertaking expansionary policies. 

Both are plausible. The second possibility is more interesting to me (the first possibility is examinedhere). Why would these people wish interest rates to remain high? Perhaps they hoped that high interest rates would force a reduced level of government spending –- i.e., it would have “starved the beast”. 

I'd say both are true though a better #2 would be,..

• The observers wished to whip up "anti-government" hysteria in order to prevent any part of any Obama agenda.

If the administration was for it these people were against it whether it made sense or not.

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Working for the Corporation

Wal-Mart Is Scared of These True Stories From Its Own Employees:

And it's not just Wal-Mart, the corporate system, at least the part where most unskilled workers are,  is just a terrible place to work.  The workers are paid very little, have little or no benefits, have to work a lot of crappy, short, don't-qualify-for-benefits shifts, are subject to a lot of over-bearing policies designed to protect the corporate interests, are subject to dismissal at the whim of another discouraged corporate-slave, and have very little chance to really move up in the organization. Their work life revolves around doing what they can to help the company harvest money from the locals so it can be shipped off to some never-seen corporate master. Who the fuck would like that?

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Zimmerman

Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community:

I guess legally the case was hard to prove. With no witnesses and only one survivor, no one really knows what happened but it seems Zimmerman should had been guilty of something. I mean, if he hadn't been out on watch that night and hadn't pressed the issue no one would be dead. He clearly instigated a situation that ended in a death.

Let's assume a slightly different situation. Assume that all the known facts of the case remain the same except that Zimmerman had not had the gun. He confronts Martin on the street in the way that it appeared he did. A fight ensues and Zimmerman ends up beating Martin to death. Would he have been guilty of anything? What if Martin had beaten Zimmerman to death? Would he have been guilty murder? Would Martin have been acquitted on the stand your ground law?

It's looks to me like the "stand your ground" law gives a gun user an edge in court that he would not have had, had the gun not be present. Can you "Stand your ground" if you don't have a gun?


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Politicians vs The People

There's No Republican Party—There Are 5 of Them - Norm Ornstein - The Atlantic:

I'd say there are at least a couple Democratic parties. 1. The party of the liberal-wealthy-business-political elite who actually control the party and are very similar to the saner-side of the Republican party and,..  2. the rest of us, who don't have anyone else to vote for.

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Ron Dermer

Israels new ambassador to the US was born in the US but gave up his American citizenship, has close ties to Netanyahu and close ties to the Neoconservatives in the Republican party. A few notes from a couple of links. (emphasis mine)

Wikipedia: Ron Dermer

In 2005, while Benjamin Netanyahu served as Finance Minister under Ariel Sharon, Dermer was appointed economic envoy at the Israeli embassy in Washington, a post for which he had to give up his American citizenship.

Dermer is considered Netanyahu's closest adviser and strategic consultant. 

Netanyahu aide with neocon links appointed as Israeli ambassador to U.S. | Mondoweiss:

Dermer’s family has deep roots in Israel, and his first job was an assistant to the famous GOP pollster Frank Luntz. Dermer worked with Luntz and Newt Gingrich on a strategy that later manifested itself in Gingrich’s “Contract With America,” which offered a raft of policy prescriptions the Republican Party brought with them when they took control of the House in 1994.

He urged the U.S. to "crush the regimes in Baghdad and Teheran before they develop weapons of mass destruction."

Dermer is also opposed to a two-state solution--a hint that when Netanyahu mouths those words, he doesn’t really mean it. Dermer once told reporters that “the principle of two states for two peoples is a childish solution to a complicated problem.”

Actively worked for the 1994 Gingrich revolution. Gave up his American Citizenship to work for Israel in 2005. Pushed hard for the wars of the last 12 years. I'd expect him to be a fixture on our corporate media as an expert in "What is good for America",... like he cares about America?

What would we think if a US born Russian gave up their US citizenship for Russia and then continued to live in the US to work on behalf of Russia?

The mixing of US and Israeli politicians cannot be good for the people of the US.

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Running in 2016?

Delaware governor seeks to strengthen ties with Israeli business - Anglo File - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper:

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They Hate us for our Freedom

Yeah right.

Exclusive: US bankrolled anti-Morsi activists - Features - Al Jazeera English:

US taxpayer money has also been sent to groups set up by some of Egypt's richest people, raising questions about waste in the democracy programme.

Michael Meunier is a frequent guest on TV channels that opposed Morsi. Head of the Al-Haya Party, Meunier - a dual US-Egyptian citizen - has quietly collected US funding through his NGO, Hand In Hand for Egypt Association.

Meunier's organisation was founded by some of the most vehement opposition figures, including Egypt's richest man and well-known Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, Tarek Heggy, an oil industry executive, Salah Diab, Halliburton's partner in Egypt, and Usama Ghazali Harb, a politician with roots in the Mubarak regime and a frequent US embassy contact.

Meunier has denied receiving US assistance, but government documents show USAID in 2011 granted his Cairo-based organisation $873,355. Since 2009, it has taken in $1.3 million from the US agency.

Meunier helped rally the country's five million Christian Orthodox Coptic minority, who oppose Morsi's Islamist agenda, to take to the streets against the president on June 30.

and .....

But a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said American support for foreign political activists was in line with American principles.

They hate us because we meddle in their politics.

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Government vs Business

Those of you who think "Government is the Problem" read these two posts and ask yourself what your life would be like if you had to deal with businesses like these all of the time.

Why Comcast Would Rather Be Feared Than Loved - Justin Fox - Harvard Business Review:

Sometimes Customers are Stupid

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Music

One of the best videos of all time. Very simple. lots of emotion.
Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U - YouTube:

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Luck...

Stumbling and Mumbling: The wrong time:

"To put this another way, to achieve success it is not sufficient (nor necessary either - but that's another story) to be brilliant. You have to be brilliant at the right time. So, for example, if you'd forecast the financial crash in 2005 or 2006 and traded accordingly, you'd probably have lost money and been a failure. 

I suspect that, in many walks of life - the arts, business and finance - financial success requires a one standard deviation intelligence. Writers must be sufficiently smarter than their readers that readers feel their intelligence to be flattered, but not so much smarter that they appear weird. Investors must buy or sell ahead of the pack, but only slightly so, else they'll lose money waiting for others to catch up. Businessmen must anticipate what customers will want tomorrow, not 10 years hence. 

The point I'm making here is simply the obverse of that made by Malcolm Gladwell, who's pointed out that most of the richest men in US history were born into two periods: the 1830s and 40s, and the mid-1950s. They were born at the right time. Others, however, brilliant, were born at the wrong time. Which is one more reason, among many, why markets don't reward merit."

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United Businesses of America.

Why should we care about people? An update on "government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation".

Balkinization: From Status to Contract to Fealty:

"... on the trend: contracts to tie even low-wage employees to a given workplace, on penalty of not working at any competing business for months or a year afterward"

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The Republican War on Data

by Bruce Bartlett, a republican. Man,... those guys are crazy.

The Republican War on Data:

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Snowden Snow Job or Climate Change?

These three posts on a couple of different topics got me thinking about news and what the people believe is true in this internet age.

These two posts are about the same issue, the Snowden Leaks: Political Irony › Snowden Snow Job?: and  Have We All Been Fooled by Snowden?. (The second link has the details but I try to link to Political Irony whenever I can because its a great site.) The third is an unrelated propaganda piece by the evil Charles Krauthammer.  Flat-earther Obama's global-warming folly

The piece on Snowden is questioning whether he might really be a right-wing, anti-Obama type, who hated leakers and didn't care about wiretapping when Bush was in office but has changed his tune now, maybe, just maybe,... to discredit the Obama administration.

He was gung-ho for it when Bush was president. Which brings up an interesting point: his opinion of such programs abruptly changed when Barack Obama took office.

Add this theory to all the other Snowden smear stories from the corporate-government media and its hard know what to believe about his motives.

The Krauthammer piece is propaganda designed to cut on the administration while grabbing the ear of the average Fox news watcher. It includes

Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years — a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.

This is written to confuse the issue by cherry-picking the data. Yes, global temperatures have been flat for 16 years but look at these NASA charts and you can see that global temperatures are rising and why the Evil-One picked his 16 year time frame. Also, check out the now infamous George Will's Global Warming 10 year time frame.



So Krauthammer doesn't believe in global warming. We knew, or could have guessed, that. The more important part for this post is the use of "Flat-Earther".

It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite a recent Alaskan heat wave — a freak event in one place at one time — as presumptive evidence of planetary climate change. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite perennial phenomena such as droughts as cosmic retribution for environmental sinfulness.

Global warming believers have called the Global Warming Deniers "Flat-Earthers" for a long time and I believe with good reason (see *** below), but here Krauthammer is trying to turn the tables. I'd expect to see Fox News and other conservative media to run with this by using the term a lot in the next few weeks. If they do, in a few weeks the conservative base will have a new term to use when slamming the Obama or Liberals in general.

Anyway, the point of my post is that in this internet age with so many "news" sources available to the public, the basic aim of any propagandist for any side of any argument is to just confuse the issue with posts like these. Once the competing views are out there, the people are left dazed and confused, not knowing who or what to believe, so,.... they just chose something that supports their own beliefs. No one is any more informed, no discussion is allowed, and we just stay in our own camps hating the other side. I'm not sure a democracy can function in an environment like this.

tnb

*** "Flat-Earther" is generally defined as one who holds beliefs that have generally been discredited by science.

Now, I don't know if global warming is true or not. I'm not a scientist. Neither is Krauthammer. I do trust science and try to keep an open mind about things, so even though there are scientists who don't buy into the Global Warming theories, a large majority of them do [Wikipedia] [Krauthammers own WP]. So,.. I'm not going to cherry pick to confirm my belief. I'm going with those who do study the issue and I think most of them would agree that the term "Flat-Earther" fits Krauthammer, Will and the other Global Warming Deniers much better than it fits Obama.

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American Royalty: Liz Cheney

In Wyoming, a Cheney Run Worries G.O.P. - NYTimes.com:

"She has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, "

Liz Cheney - Wikipedia

Cheney is married to Philip Perry, the former General Counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security. She and Perry have five children: three daughters—Kate, Elizabeth, and Grace—and two sons, Philip and Richard. The elder four attend The Potomac School in Virginia.. 

Philip J. Perry (born October 16, 1964)[1] is an American attorney and was a political appointee in the Administration of George W. Bush . He was Acting Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, and General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security. He is a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C..

Before attending law school, Cheney worked for the State Department for five years and the U.S. Agency for International Development between 1989 and 1993. After 1993, she took a job at Armitage Associates LLP, the consulting firm founded by Richard Armitage, then a former Defense Department official and Iran-Contraoperative who later served as Deputy Secretary of State. 

American Royalty. They get good government positions early in their careers. Live in and around DC. Marry other powerful DC elites. Send their kids to elite DC schools. Get media positions for exposure. Then when all that isn't enough and they want even more power, they go into politics and since DC isn't allowed to have hundreds of house or senate members, they look around for some other state that they can call home.

What the hell is she doing running for office in Wyoming.

Also, why would any anti-government Tea-Bagger type vote for her? Liz, Her Family and her spouse have spent most of their lives on the government dole. Isn't this what the republican base hates?

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War on terror

Hullabaloo: Spying vs Leaking:

The war on terror is a great thing for those in power.

Governments around the world can basically do anything they like to any internal group and then, when that group fights back, the Government can brand them "terrorists", grab some US sympathy and maybe some US cash or military aid, and then,...  stomp on the group a little more without any repercussions.

And,... since those terrorists are everywhere and the people must be protected, those same governments can set up vast spy networks in the name of protecting their people from terrorists and if those same networks help the government spy on their own people, well,... that's just the price we have to pay to stop those terrorists.

And,.. anyone who might try to alert the people that their government is spying on them or generally doing something bad, can now be branded a spy and prosecuted because, you-know, the terrorists are our enemy and they got information from the leak.

It's a nice gig for those with the power of the state on their side.

One mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

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Snowden and Political Asylum

Venezuela's Maduro: Unlike US Asylees, Snowden didn't Blow anything Up, just said 'This is not Right' | Informed Comment:

Maduro pointed to the US allowing Luis Posada Carriles to live freely in Miami, even though he blew up a plane with 73 persons aboard and thereby nearly killed prominent American journalist Stephen Kinzer. It is thought that the US government protects Posada Cariles because he had worked for the CIA and could reveal many unsavory secrets if he were extradited abroad.

We just don't seem to care about our image around the globe. Bush took it about as low as it get with the wars and bullying. It improved in the early days of Obama but has been falling fast with our failing, greed-based economic system, our frozen political system, the continued meddling in the affairs of other nations, the spying on our own people and allies, and our undying love for the Israeli regime. If it wasn't for the 800 billion we spend on our military, the rest of the planet might be spanking our ass right now.

We used to be the good guys. What the hell happened? 

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Corporate Media

Your corporate media all think Social Security should be cut.

REPORT: Broadcast And Cable News' One-Sided Social Security Debate | Research | Media Matters for America:








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Laws for some of us.

You can lie to Congress under oath but you can't expose the truth to the people? I guess it's not the action that matters, it's which side of power you are on.

James Clapper, EU play-acting, and political priorities | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

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Innovation Clusters

Innovation Clusters and the Dream of Being the Next Silicon Valley | MIT Technology Review:

The big questions in this month’s MIT Technology Review Business Report are why technology clusters arise and what the ingredients are to create one. Unhappily for regions that have spent billions attempting to become the next Silicon Valley, the answers to these questions are still in debate. “Clusters exist—it’s empirically proven,” Yasuyuki Motoyama, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, told me. “But that doesn’t mean governments can create one.” 

What’s certain is that they are trying. The largest such effort we know of is the Skolkovo complex outside Moscow, where $2.5 billion is being invested in a university, a technology park, and a foundation. Another, in Waterloo, Ontario, aims at gaining a lead in a particular advanced technology, quantum computing. The price tag there: $650 million so far. 

The problem for governments is that they often try to define where and when innovation will occur. Some attempt to pick and fund winning companies. Such efforts have rarely worked well, says Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School. Governments can play a role, he says, but they should limit themselves mostly to “setting the table”: create laws that don’t penalize failed entrepreneurs, reduce taxes, and spend heavily on R&D. Then get out of the way.

I think in general, things that are forced just don't work as well as things that just "happen". Whether it's technology clusters, music scenes, revolutions, fads or just having fun, they tend to reach higher levels for the participants when they're spontaneous rather than scripted.

Companies, like Apple, Microsoft, Ford, etc don't start out to change the world or industry, they're just doing something they enjoy or are interested in. No one knows where the next music scene like San Francisco in the 60s or Seattle in the 90s will develop but you can bet it will be a surprise to the music industry. Kids playing a pickup game tend to have more fun than when playing in an "organized" sport. A spontaneous party/event will generally be more fun than a highly organized event. It's just hard to script stuff and keep it fresh.

The one thing that does seems to matter is a lot of intelligent, educated young people doing things they're interested in without the interference of a lot of rules imposed by the old guard. So maybe instead of a government,.. creating laws that don’t penalize failed entrepreneurs, reducing taxes, and spending heavily on R&D. Governments should focus educating young people and keeping the old farts who are in power out of their way.


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