All Things in Moderation

One more piece of the picture of the Obama Administration as routinely practicing all the forms of impropriety and graft of which Democrats used to accuse the Bush/Cheney Administration is this story about the WH pressuring an Air Force General to change his testimony to be more favorable to a large Democratic Party donor’s business interests.

Speaking of Ponzi schemes. [While this blog is still private, I’ll note that I was born and raised not far from there and know this community pretty well. This comes as no shock to me.–QB]

Speaking of Michael J. Fox (which we were, earlier today), do you folks know that Nike has made a limited run the Nike Mag shoes from 2015 that Marty McFly wore in Back to the Future II?

They are being auctioned off for a good cause. If you have $2000 or so to spare for a pair of shoes, you should buy some.

[What? It’s the end of the day.–KW]

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US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has warned European leaders to stop the “loose talk” about divisions over how to solve the eurozone debt crisis, the Dow Jones news agency has reported. Speaking at a closed meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Poland, he is reported to have told them that the divisions were “very damaging”. The eurozone ministers delayed a decision on Greece’s next bailout loan.

Yet they did announce tougher economic governance rules. Set to come into force for all nations in the European Union (EU) from October, they will make it easier for states to be punished for overspending. Mr Geithner reportedly said: “What’s very damaging is not just seeing the divisiveness in the debate over strategy in Europe but the ongoing conflict between countries and the [European] central bank.”

He said that “governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets”. BBC

Sounds like a Labor thug! The unhinged will go off!. Timmy is advocating wanton violence against catastrophic risk mongers.
But seriously, some guy from the US saying, ‘don’t talk back,’ at least he didn’t say, ‘eat your peas.’ Loose talk, is that what opposition to can kicking bank bailouts is called nowadays? I’ll bet the old farts in the German Parliament are not amused.

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My maiden blog post. We’ll see if it generates any interest. . .

I’ve been thinking about gerrymandering and redistricting a lot lately; here in Utah we’re picking up a fourth congressional district and so, in addition to the normal horseplay that goes on (see what happened last time they redistricted and tried to gerrymander our lone Democrat out of office: http://tinyurl.com/5uj4p44. Jim Matheson is the rep for the second district, that one pin-pointed in SLC and then winding around to the east and south), they’re trying to decide whether or not to concede that the urban Wasatch front (centered on Salt Lake City) votes differently than the majority of the rest of the state and set up the new CDs in such a way that we’ll have a pretty reliably Democratic CD, with the other three being solidly Republican, or whether to try to gerrymander four Republican districts out of the state and leave Democrats twisting in the wind again. They’ve even set up a website seeking input from residents (http://tinyurl.com/64z8czp).

This also ties in with the thinking that I’ve been doing about Pennsylvania’s move to try to change the way their Electoral College votes are allocated in order to make the state less reliably blue in presidential elections (which Nate Silver isn’t at all sure would work out for Republicans in the end: http://tinyurl.com/3ow8zfn)

So here’s my question: why do we gerrymander? I understand that politics is a contact sport, and both sides try their best to tip the scales in their favor, but does that actually give us the best government for our money? One of the perennial problems here in Utah is that, because districts from state legislative on up have been so gerrymandered that one party or the other is a virtual shoe-in for the election, voter turnout is traditionally very low. This also leads to the fact that incumbents win re-election something like 90% of the time (nationwide), whether they’re really doing good work for their electorate or not. Why not create non-partisan committees in every state to do the re-districting in a geographically coherent manner? Does designing a district in such a way that it votes reliably for your candidate, regardless of the needs of the individual voters in disparate parts of the district, make for good governance?

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This is launched off some of Shrink’s points about China. Hi, Shrink!

I’ve pointed to this video by Hans Rosling before. Yes, I’m doing it again.I love this quote early on from the video: “The world view that my students had corresponded to the state of the world the year their teachers were born.”

The point being, I would still argue that, broadly, the developed world is dragging the developing world into the 21st century (over years, not news cycles) and that the big data points support this view. Or you could say the developing world is joining the developed world, whether or not we’re doing anything to make it happen.

Whichever way you look at it, things are much better than they were, and are likely to become much better still.

Okay, and this is tangential to my main point, but since I can’t embed videos in comments, I’m going to do it here. Hans Rosling talks about how ending poverty is crucial to controlling population growth. And it’s true: the best birth control in the world is not laughter, it’s money.

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Thought I’d go ahead and put up the daily post for suggestions and questions since I’m here. I think if we try to keep them consolidated into one post per day, they’ll be easier to track. /okie ocd

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A man dies and goes to hell. There he discovers that he has a choice: he can go to capitalist hell or to communist hell. Naturally, he wants to compare the two, so he goes over to capitalist hell. There outside the door is the devil, who looks a bit like Ronald Reagan. “What’s it like in there?” asks the visitor. “Well,” the devil replies, “in capitalist hell, they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives.”

“That’s terrible!” he gasps. “I’m going to check out communist hell!” He goes over to communist hell, where he discovers a huge queue of people waiting to get in. He waits in line. Eventually he gets to the front and there at the door to communist hell is a little old man who looks a bit like Karl Marx. “I’m still in the free world, Karl,” he says, “and before I come in, I want to know what it’s like in there.”

“In communist hell,” says Marx impatiently, “they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil, and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives.”

“But… but that’s the same as capitalist hell!” protests the visitor, “Why such a long queue?”

“Well,” sighs Marx, “Sometimes we’re out of oil, sometimes we don’t have knives, sometimes no hot water.”

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An open thread to end the day. Please use it to catch up with others and feel free to post whatever suits your fancy. Just so you know I’ll put this up tomorrow as a scheduled post and any of you “We’re all Administrators Now” can drop a link or comment in prior to posting.

Here’s my comment for tonight.

There has been much discussion of Social Security over the past several months and in particular the last few weeks. I think it’s appropriate at some point to remember why it was enacted in the first place and a quote from FDR seems appropriate.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

I hope you’re all working on conversation starting posts for tomorrow.

I put this in early tonight since no one seemed to have a post going. Come on you guys, we need commentary to comment on, lol.

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