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This is probably the first Memorial day I have had off in my adult life, gotta say it is great. Just got back from a long bike ride, I wish every day was a holiday.
I hope everyone is having as good of a day as I am.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 1:08 PM UTC
Steve Benen asks when people will stop covering Sarah Palin’s hateful vile missives:
Former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who seems unfulfilled unless she’s engaged in some kind of pointless feud, has decided to lash out wildly at an investigative journalist. The details aren’t especially interesting….Newt Gingrich is mad as a hatter, but the political establishment still takes him seriously and showers him with the attention he craves — but the larger observation is compelling and persuasive. Palin just keeps getting more ridiculous, and there appears to be no breaking point. No matter how far she goes, there is no threshold to cross.
Part of the thing with Granny Palin and her clan is that they are sort of entertaining, and like any group of reality show stars they are pretty much a trainwreck, almost everyday Bristol Palin starts to look more like Snooky from Jersey Shores. Palin’s fans don’t realize that she is a joke and unfortunately they probably never will.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 8:17 AM UTC
This is a bit old, but it’s worth commenting on regardless. Nick Kristof — an otherwise admirable guy — thinks it’s appropriate to chastise poor Africans for their consumption choices in the pages of the New York Times:
There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous:
It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.
Kristof comments that this “probably sounds sanctimonious, haughty and callous” and well, it does. Kristof comes dangerously close to sounding like the domestic commentators who blame the problems of inner-city African-Americans on a lack of personal responsibility and some kind of unique black “pathology.” These are the folks that chastise poor blacks for owning cell phones or drinking alcohol, as if that — and not broader systemic problems — is to blame for their poverty. Indeed, I’ll go ahead and quote South African blogger Sean Jacob’s charge that Kristof all but endorses “19th century views in which Westerners, and particularly white Westerners, decide whats good for poor, third world, mostly black, particularly black people.”
I had a similar reaction to a lot of what Kristof wrote while he was in Africa, I don’t doubt he cares but he seems to have a bit of the “great white hunter attitude”; although I think that is the attitude of most the groups over there who claim they are trying to help.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 5:51 PM UTC
A lot is being made of the Rand Paul implosion:
It’s basically this — all the stuff Paul is getting in trouble for now are things that would just be really tough to use against a candidate in a GOP primary in Kentucky, or frankly most red states, especially in 2010.
One of the things we rely on in politics is an adversary system to weed out bad apples. We don’t just rely on the press. We rely on the self-interest of the candidates themselves to ferret out weaknesses and warning signs in their opponents. In this case, though, was Trey Grayson going to go after Paul for his archaic and troubling views on civil rights? In a GOP primary in Kentucky in 2010? I doubt it. And pretty much the same for thinking there shouldn’t be a minimum wage or that Mexico and Canada are going to take away our liberty or that there shouldn’t be an Americans with Disabilities Act or all the rest.
I think the Libertarian implosion may have started with Sue Lowden and her “chickens for check-ups debacle. Libertarian/Conservative ideas don’t work. If you want to see them in practice go to Somalia or Haiti; this becomes obvious when they are even challenged a little bit, hopefully obvious enough that these idiots wont get elected.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 9:58 AM UTC
Bike racing is starting to look a lot like Baseball, only bike racing is still cooler:
The cycling community gathered in this farming town for Thursday’s start of Stage 5 of the Tour of California was left stunned by allegations made by cyclist Floyd Landis that seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and other top American riders were involved in blood doping before 2006.
Landis, who lost his own 2006 Tour de France title because of a failed doping test and was subsequently banned for two years despite years of denials, not only has admitted his own use of performance enhancing drugs during races but also reportedly sent e-mails to cycling and anti-doping officials detailing how Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer and Dave Zabriskie schemed to engage in blood doping. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the allegations on their web site late Wednesday night.
All the accused riders are in the Amgen Tour of California, which starts at 10:45 a.m. and travels to south to Bakersfield.
A spokesman for Team RadioShack said team manager Johan Bruyneel, whom Landis accused of teaching him the ins and outs of blood doping, Armstrong and Leipheimer will speak to reporters before Thursday’s stage gets underway. Armstrong, however, briefly told reporters Thursday morning that the allegations are not based in fact and denied ever being involved in doping or using performance enhancing drugs.
This isn’t news to people who follow the sport but I guess it is a shock to some people.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 2:37 PM UTC
I caught a little bit of Ran Paul on the Racheal Maddow show last night, and the guy seemed unable to answer a simple questions. Maddow kept asking him if he supported the Civil Rights Act and he kept trying to make some sort of vague argument about guns in church; which I think is part of the problem with libertarians as a whole, there ideas sound great in a philosophy paper but fall apart pretty quickly in practice. In fact I think you can probably say that about the entire conservative movement.
Obvioussly in the case of Rand Paul he knows that he would offend his followers if he said he supported the civil rights act, but he would offend the rest the country if he came out against the civil rights act, so instead he talked about guns in church.
For a better discussion of this see Pandagon
Posted by John Rove as Words at 10:02 AM UTC
From Andrew Sullivan:
I’m a college student (should be writing my final paper right now, in fact), so there isn’t any real stigma regarding smoking marijuana, but I do it for a much different reason than most of my friends. I’m 21 and I have rather severe Attention Deficit Disorder, something I’ve struggled with my entire life. The only medication that works for me at all is Adderall, which I think of as meth for rich people. However, while taking 25mg a day allows me to function normally as a student, it also makes me miserable. My medication suppresses my appetite to the point where I can’t smell food without feeling nauseous, makes me panicky and paranoid, exacerbates my already bothersome insomnia and migraines, and (perhaps worst of all) destroys my sex drive. My doctor’s response to these terrible side effects was more medication, mostly sedatives that make me feel like I’m walking on the bottom of the ocean and put me into an uncomfortable, dreamless sleep-coma.
I hated my life. I almost dropped out of college after my first semester because the idea of spending four years jacked up on Adderall, not sleeping, barely eating, and uninterested in the beautiful college girls all around me, was completely unbearable.
Andrew, weed is nothing short of a miracle for me.
I had smoked it before and enjoyed it, but never while I was taking my medication. A couple tokes and my headaches disappear, my appetite comes back with a vengeance, and my panicked paranoia melts into comparatively blissful relaxation. A couple more, and I can get a full night of deep, restful sleep, something I have trouble with even without amphetamines in my system. Even when I’m not taking Adderall, marijuana helps: my ADD causes my thoughts to jump constantly from topic to topic, my hands get restless if they’re not continuously occupied and I’m always twitchy (which is exhausting when you do it all day) – all of this is much better when I’m stoned. Plus, it’s fun! I can stare at the wall forever if I want to! Maybe that’s not such a novelty to you, but for me, it’s like having a superpower.
Because of weed, I don’t have to choose between being functional and feeling good. I don’t like having to break the law, but as a well-off, clean-cut white college student in a state with relatively relaxed cannabis laws, the risk for me is minuscule, and well worth the reward. In every other aspect of my life, I am a model citizen – there’s not so much as a parking ticket on my record. I’m careful and responsible about my drug usage, and try to buy from people who grow it themselves and aren’t using my money to fund violent gangs. That billions of dollars are wasted in this disastrous War on Drugs and thousands of lives are ruined, all in the name of protecting me from something that makes my quality of life significantly better, is a national outrage.
But big Pharma isn’t making any money from pot
Posted by John Rove as Words at 8:09 PM UTC
Alison Schrager reports “The paper finds the cost of adopting a black baby needs to be $38,000 lower than the cost of a white baby, in order to make parents indifferent to race. Boys will need to cost $16,000 less than girls.”
Ross Duochethat did a column on another aspect of this a few days ago as well:
A] lot of the differences between “red” and “blue” family structures, as sketched in Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s recent book, are driven by higher abortion rates in liberal states. And it really is striking, when you dig into the data, how much of the blue-state advantage in preventing teen births is made possible by abortion. Rhode Island’s teen pregnancy rate is identical to West Virginia’s, but West Virginia’s teen birth rate is 33 percent higher. California’s teen pregnancy rate is higher than Alabama’s, but California’s teen birth rate is 20 percent lower. Kentucky and Maryland have the same teen pregnancy rates, but Kentucky has almost 60 percent more teenage births. And so on
And yes I know I misspelled Douchehats name, for some reason I just can’t seem to spell it without the word “douche” in it.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 3:30 PM UTC
From Mathew Yglesias:
Suppose we have 100 mortgages that pay $1 or $0. The probability of default is 0.05. We pool the mortgages and then prioritize them into tranches such that tranche 1 pays out $1 if no mortgage defaults and $0 otherwise, tranche 2 pays out $1 if 1 or fewer mortgages defaults, $0 otherwise. Tranche 10 then pays out $1 if 9 or fewer mortgages default and $0 otherwise. Tranche 10 has a probability of defaulting of 2.82 percent. A fortiori tranches 11 and higher all have lower probabilities of defaulting. Thus, we have transformed 100 securities each with a default of 5% into 9 with probabilities of default greater than 5% and 91 with probabilities of default less than 5%.
Now let’s try this trick again. Suppose we take 100 of these type-10 tranches and suppose we now pool and prioritize these into tranches creating 100 new securities. Now tranche 10 of what is in effect a CDO will have a probability of default of just 0.05 percent, i.e. p=.000543895 to be exact. We have now created some “super safe,” securities which can be very profitable if there are a lot of investors demanding triple AAA.
Suppose that we misspecified the underlying probability of mortgage default and we later discover the true probability is not .05 but .06. In terms of our original mortgages the true default rate is 20 percent higher than we thought–not good but not deadly either. However, with this small error, the probability of default in the 10 tranche jumps from p=.0282 to p=.0775, a 175% increase. Moreover, the probability of default of the CDO jumps from p=.0005 to p=.247, a 45,000% increase!
Now I understand the entire mortgage mess; People tried to apply the laws of physics to finance and it didn’t work.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 6:54 PM UTC
Politics in Florida is always interesting:
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist spent most of 2010 a pitiful figure, falling behind an upstart Tea Party opponent and struggling to remain competitive in a senate primary when only two years before he was a presidential kingmaker and widely viewed as a future vice presidential or even presidential contender. But now he seems to be having if not the last laugh than at least biggest current one. Another poll is out showing Crist not just ahead in a three-way race for Senate but by a significant margin — six points over Marco Rubio and 19 points ahead of Democrat Kendrick Meek. And now Sen. Reid’s office is calling Crist’s office to chat.
I wonder if this isn’t the start of an independant caucus, which might make sense, right now the indepandants are established political figures but someone might be able to run on a platform of being smarter and more realistic than a tea-bagger, and less of a wimp than a Democrat and perhaps win.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 10:01 AM UTC
This is pretty funny:
Last night, Stephen Colbert named George Rekers, a leader in the ex-gay movement and a co-founder of the Family Research Council, his “Alpha Dog of The Week” after Rekers was caught coming back from Europe with a male prostitute, hired from RentBoy.com.
Colbert owned up to hiring a lot of his own crew from RentBoy.com, including his new (and quite muscular) cameraman, Julian.
He also noted: “Jesus spent time with prostitutes. That’s why good Christians should always ask themselves ‘WBWJR — What Boy Would Jesus Rent?’”
Priests claim they live like Jesus, and we all can see how that works out for them, so maybe there is something to Jesus renting boys. Although my guess is that if Jesus really existed he was more like a rock star with plenty of female groupies to choose from.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 10:42 AM UTC
I have tried to get my mond around this for awhile, I have always assumed that conservatives just have an irrational fear of wildlife but maybe the urge to destroy wild animals and the places they live is more ingrained than just fear:
Whatever the ostensible excuse the Taliban had for destroying the Buddhas, outsiders can clearly see that they’re motivated mainly be a petulant unwillingness to engage or regard anything that makes them feel smaller or less important. Pleasure and beauty offend fundamentalists, because these things are out of their control and present a threat to their death grip on power. Art reminds people that there’s something more than the tightly controlled, colorless existence offered by fundamentalism, and so the fundamentalists are wary of it. In Afghanistan, they just destroy amazing pieces of art that remind you of the long history and imagination and diversity of humanity. Here, Christian fundamentalists fight against pop culture by replacing it with weak replicas that are meant to satisfy the urge without giving too much of that dangerous pleasure.
The struggle between environmentalists and wingnuts has a similar flavor to it. Wingnuts mock and deride environmentalists for their awe at the grandeur of nature, for their desire to let it exist uncontrolled and unexploited by humans. Nature can quickly make a person feel small and mortal. You look over vast ecosystems clipping along doing their own thing indifferent to you, and you realize that this was all here before you were, and will all be here when you leave. Unless, of course, you level it, take all the resources, and leave a wake of destruction in your path. A lot of environmentalists use rape metaphors when describing what polluters do to nature, and a lot of feminists criticize them for it. But it’s hard not to think of it in those terms when the pro-pollution side glories in the same kind of metaphors.
I think conservatives really do hate the idea that the earth existed without them, hence they insist the earth is only 6000 years-old and only the creatures we see today ever existed. The earth was probably a pretty cool place without people and it will probably be a pretty cool place after we are gone; I don’t get why that bothers some people.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 7:31 PM UTC
The Wall Stree Journal has an article up about what might have prevented the Oil-Spill in Louisiana. The interesting part is that the safety device, that would have cost about $500,000 was not required thanks to Dick Cheney’s energy commission. This makes me think that Cheney was so effective at gutting enviromental regulations that we probably cannot trust the oil industry to drill safely in the U.S anymore. It may be time to end oil production in the U.S before the country becomes uninhabitable.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 11:07 AM UTC
