Evil or Stupid? We Report, You Choose

Talking Points Memo
The Daily Show
Is Fox News Evil or is it Stupid
By John Stewart


Ya just gotta see this:   Evil or Just Plain Stupid? 
(watch it all the way through, it gets better as it goes along)

The Daily Show correspondents Wyatt Cenac and John Oliver debated last night whether Fox News' Fox and Friends was being evil or stupid when they didn't reveal the connection between Fox News and the funder of the Cordoba House Islamic center near Ground Zero. Or, as Jon Stewart put it, "the terror funder is Rupert Murdoch's News Corp funder. Nooooooo!"

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Oliver defended Fox News as stupid: "Things are hectic on the morning show. Plus Gretchen [Carlson] wasn't there and she's the only one who knows how to use Google."

Cenac argued that they were evil, since they avoided showing pictures of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal because "he already looks like he's about to feed Timothy Dalton to his white tiger."

Oliver said he has to believe they are stupid, "because if they're not as stupid as I believe them to be, they are really f*cking evil."

Cenac replied: "And if they're not as evil as I think they are, they are stupid. We're talking potatoes with mouths."

[ Read original article ]

Money Talks and Bullshit Squawks

August 28, 2010
New York Times
The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
By Frank Rich

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.
[ Read original article ]

A Charitable Explanation

New York Times Magazine
August 20th 2010
The Charitable-Giving Divide
By Judith Warner

His study, written with Michael W. Kraus and published online last month by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.

“Upper class” people, on the other hand, clung to values that “prioritized their own need.” And, he told me this week, “wealth seems to buffer people from attending to the needs of others.” Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients in the greater generosity of those with lower incomes. And these two traits proved to be in increasingly short supply as people moved up the income spectrum.
[ Read original article ]

The Problem with Presidents

August 16 2010

Newsweek
We need global, not just national, leaders.

by Kishore Mahbubani

10 leaders who have managed to win respect

Mao Zedong was right. we should always focus on the primary, not secondary, contradictions. And right now, our primary global contradiction is painfully obvious: the biggest challenges of governance are global in origin, but all the politics that respond to them are local. There are many wise leaders around the world, but there is not enough global leadership.
[ Read original article ]

Be More Like Ike

[Fareed is a very bright guy, I'm sure.  While he has been wrong more times than right (think Bush/Cheney, Iraq war, Afghanistan, etc....), they say even a broken clock is correct twice a day.  This article and the next are the two examples I can think of where the clock is actually spot-on]

Newsweek

August 16, 2010

Republicans should heed Robert Gates
by Fareed Zakaria

Robert Gates’s latest efforts at reforming the Pentagon are modest. He is not trying to cut the actual defense budget; he merely wants to increase efficiency while reducing bureaucracy, waste, and duplication. The savings he is trying to achieve are perfectly reasonable: $100 billion over five years, during which period the Pentagon will spend approximately $3.5 trillion. And yet he has aroused intense opposition from the usual suspects—defense contractors, lobbyists, the military bureaucracy, and hawkish commentators. He faces spirited opposition from his own party, but it is the Republicans, not Gates, who are abandoning their party’s best traditions in defense strategy.

[ Read original article ]

Mr. President, Please Raise My Taxes!

August 01 2010
Newsweek
We can’t afford the Bush cuts anymore.
by Fareed Zakaria

For the last few months, we have heard powerful, passionate arguments about the need to cut America’s massive budget deficit. Republican senators have claimed that we are in danger of permanently crippling the economy. Conservative economists and pundits warn of a Greece-like crisis, when America can borrow only at exorbitant interest rates. So when an opportunity presents itself to cut those deficits by about a third—more than $300 billion!—permanently and relatively easily, you would think that these very people would be in the lead. Far from it.
[ Read original article ]

Miles-Per-Gallon Is Just Stupid

By John Voelcker
Senior Editor
Green Car Reports.com
March 13th, 2009

Americans aren't stupid. We're just badly informed. And occasionally, stubborn.
Why else would we ignorantly cling to using miles per gallon as the way to measure how efficiently a car uses fuel?

But maybe you don't quite see the problem. OK, so here's a little test:  Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg?

If you're like most Americans, you picked the second one. But, in fact, that's exactly backwards. Over any given mileage, replacing a 10-mpg vehicle with one that gets 20 mpg saves five times the gasoline that replacing a 33-mpg vehicle with one that gets 50 does.

[ Read original article ]

Are the Kids Alright?

Here is a NYTimes graph of the responses from kids when asked how they feel

 [ Read original article ]

Is this really the best we can do?

[The following article is probably the most thorough and illustrative examination of just why the U.S. government is so unable to provide leadership up the the task of meeting the challenges of our times.  If you want to know why the U.S. finds it so difficult to provide even basic governance on critical issues where other countries have made such amazing progress (see next article on Portugal's alternative energy project that took them to 40% alt energy sourcing while the U.S. remains stalled and deadlocked trying to reach 6%, or why China can install 7900 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years while the U.S. still has not even one mile to match), then read this article and form your own judgement.]

Read this and ask yourself:  Is this really the best we can do?  If so, what does that mean for our future?

August 9, 2010
The New Yorker
The Empty Chamber: Just how broken is the Senate?
by George Packer

“Sit and watch us for seven days,” one senator says of the deadlocked chamber. “You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing.” 

This is just one of those days when you want to throw up your hands and say, ‘What in the world are we doing?’ ” Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, said.  “It’s unconscionable,” Carl Levin, the senior Democratic senator from Michigan, said. “The obstructionism has become mindless.”

[Read Original Article]

New Study Analyzes Effect of Bush Tax Cut Expiry

August 10, 2010
NY Times
Study Looks at Tax Cut Lapse for Rich
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — As debate heats up over President Obama’s proposal to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy but to extend them for everyone else, a nonpartisan Congressional analysis circulated on Capitol Hill on Tuesday provides a look at the impact the plan would have on high-income taxpayers.

Given the progressive nature of the federal income tax system, in which tax rates increase with income, even the richest households would continue to pay the four lower rates on up to the first $250,000 of their income, under the approach being pushed by Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress.

The president has vowed to extend the tax cuts for individuals with less than $200,000 in annual taxable income and couples with less than $250,000 — about 98 percent of American households. About 315,000 households report adjusted gross income of $1 million or more.

Taxpayers with income of more than $1 million for 2011 would still receive on average a tax cut of about $6,300 compared with what they would have paid under rates in effect until 2001, according to the analysis, which was prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation at the request of the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee.
[ Read original article ]

YES They Did!

This is a fascinating article about how Portugal increased their clean energy 17% in 5 years, for a total clean energy contribution of 40%.  Consider now that the U.S. is currently at 5% renewable energy, and will struggle mightily to hit a 2025 target of 16%.  Portugal shows it CAN be done.  YES, they did!
______________________________________________
August 9, 2010
NY Times
Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

LISBON — Five years ago, the leaders of this sun-scorched, wind-swept nation made a bet: To reduce Portugal’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, they embarked on an array of ambitious renewable energy projects — primarily harnessing the country’s wind and hydropower, but also its sunlight and ocean waves.

Today, Lisbon’s trendy bars, Porto’s factories and the Algarve’s glamorous resorts are powered substantially by clean energy. Nearly 45 percent of the electricity in Portugal’s grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17 percent just five years ago.

Land-based wind power — this year deemed “potentially competitive” with fossil fuels by the International Energy Agency in Paris — has expanded sevenfold in that time. And Portugal expects in 2011 to become the first country to inaugurate a national network of charging stations for electric cars.

“I’ve seen all the smiles — you know: It’s a good dream. It can’t compete. It’s too expensive,” said Prime Minister José Sócrates, recalling the way Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, mockingly offered to build him an electric Ferrari. Mr. Sócrates added, “The experience of Portugal shows that it is possible to make these changes in a very short time.”

[ Read original article ]

Money & Happiness

August 7, 2010
NY Times
But Will It Make You Happy?
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

SHE had so much.

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.

Her mother called her crazy.
[ Read original article ]

Read another article on same topic: Big Money vs. Job Satisfaction - NYTimes

Deja Vu All Over Again

August 7, 2010
NY Times
A Gift the Wealthy Don’t Need
By ROBERT H. FRANK

A central lesson of the Great Depression was that economies mired in deep downturns seldom recover quickly on their own. Consumers won’t spend because they’re worried about losing their jobs — if they haven’t lost them already — and are busy paying down debt. Companies won’t invest because they already have more than enough capacity to satisfy existing demand. That leaves government. It’s the only remaining actor with both the means and the motive to bolster total spending substantially.

Yet in 2009, when economic stimulus legislation was proposed in Congress, many people insisted that the extra government spending would do no good. They argued that the prospect of big fiscal deficits would cause consumers to save more to meet higher future tax bills, thus offsetting any stimulus effect.

That might have been true of some consumers, but most hadn’t been saving nearly enough to begin with. By spending wildly before the downturn, many were content to ignore the prospect of having to eat pet food during retirement. Why would a vague threat of higher tax liabilities at some unspecified future date impel them to save more?
[ Read original article ]

The Science of Cutting the Queue

August 7, 2010

Getting in (and Out of) Line

By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

MUMBAI, India — In India, waiting in line is not for the soft-elbowed.

When a line becomes necessary — say, while boarding a plane — some dutiful citizens will rise and form its initial trunk. Then, when the trunk appears too long to some, it sprouts branches. People create their own lines by standing next to, say, the fourth person in the trunk and hoping that others line up behind them. This process continues until you have a human evergreen tree, a single-file trunk of tender fools with impatient foliage on both sides.

There is a feline quality to standing in Indian lines. Certain parts of the man behind you — you don’t know which — brush against you in a kind of public square spooning, the better to repel cutters. (Women do less touching.) Still, this is no deterrent to cutters. They hover near the line’s middle, holding papers, looking lost in a practiced way, then slip in somewhere close to the front. When confronted, their refrain is predictable: “Oh, I didn’t see the line.”

[ Read original article ]

Its Not the Heat; Its the Stupidity

July 20, 2010
NYTimes
Overcome by Heat and Inertia
By DAVID LEONHARDT

This city just endured its hottest June since records began in 1872, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So did Miami. Atlanta suffered its second-hottest June, and Dallas had its third hottest.

In New York, the weather was relatively pleasant: only the fourth-hottest June since 1872. Then again, New York is on pace for its hottest July on record.

Yet when United States senators and their aides file into work on Wednesday, on yet another 90-degree day, they may be on the verge of deciding to do approximately nothing about global warming. The needed 60 votes don’t seem to be there, at least not at the moment.
[ Read original article ]

What 7 Republicans Could Do

July 20, 2010
NY Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The hour is late, but there is still a sliver of time to pass a serious energy bill out of this Congress. To do so, though, would require President Obama to rustle up votes with a passion that he has failed to exhibit up to now, and, more importantly, it would require at least seven Republican senators to put the national interest above party and politics. Yes, I know that is all unlikely. You can laugh now. But just remember this: If we don’t get a serious energy bill out of this Congress, and Republicans retake the House and Senate, we may not have another shot until the next presidential term or until we get a “perfect storm” — a climate or energy crisis that is awful enough to finally end our debate on these issues but not so awful as to end the world. But, hey, by 2012, China should pretty much own the clean-tech industry and we’ll at least be able to get some good deals on electric cars.
[ Read original article ]

Unemployment Data

[ Read original article ]

We’re Gonna Be Sorry

July 24, 2010
NY Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

When I first heard on Thursday that Senate Democrats were abandoning the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil, I remembered something that Joe Romm, the climateprogress.org blogger, once said: The best thing about improvements in health care is that all the climate-change deniers are now going to live long enough to see how wrong they were.

Alas, so are the rest of us. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.
[ Read original article ]

Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative in Decades

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Who Cooked the Planet?

July 25, 2010
Paul Krugman
NY Times

Never say that the gods lack a sense of humor. I bet they’re still chuckling on Olympus over the decision to make the first half of 2010 — the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died — the hottest such stretch on record.

Of course, you can’t infer trends in global temperatures from one year’s experience. But ignoring that fact has long been one of the favorite tricks of climate-change deniers: they point to an unusually warm year in the past, and say “See, the planet has been cooling, not warming, since 1998!” Actually, 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year to date — but the point is that the record-breaking temperatures we’re currently experiencing have made a nonsense argument even more nonsensical; at this point it doesn’t work even on its own terms.

But will any of the deniers say “O.K., I guess I was wrong,” and support climate action? No. And the planet will continue to cook.
[ Read original article ]

Win or Lose: A Summary of Voting Systems

This is a fascinating read for poli-sci nerds on the nuances of various voting systems.  Who'da thunk that none of them work perfectly!


Anthony Gottlieb
July 26 2010
The New Yorker


No voting system is flawless. But some are less democratic than others.


Wheneverthe time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic.
[ Read original article ]

[ Read original article ]

Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

By David Stockman
NY Times

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.
[ Read original article ]