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June 08, 2011 03:32 PM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 77 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

–Vaclav Havel

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77 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

  1. From another crazy online rag that seems to think that congressional freshmen are, indeed, a discernible, specific (rather than ‘random’) class of legislators.  Damn those libruls!  Don’t they get it?  THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE!!!

    POLITICO: GOP freshmen spend big bucks on office budgets

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/s…

  2. logic

    Definition

    logВ·ic[ lГіjjik ]NOUN

    1. philosophy theory of reasoning: the branch of philosophy that deals with the theory of deductive and inductive arguments and aims to distinguish good from bad reasoning

    2. system or instance of reasoning: any system of, or an instance of, reasoning and inference

    3. sensible argument and thought: sensible rational thought and argument rather than ideas that are influenced by emotion or whim

    4. reasoning of particular field: the principles of reasoning relevant to a particular field

    5. relationship and pattern of events: the relationship between specific events, situations, or objects, and the inevitable consequences of their interaction

    6. comput circuit design in computer: the circuit design and principles used by a computer in its operation

    1. cut and paste

      Definition

      Verb: Move (an item of text) using this technique.

      Noun: A process used in assembling text on a word processor or computer, in which items are removed from one part and inserted elsewhere.    

      1. cut  and  paste  

        Definition

        adjective

        Informal made or composed by piecing together parts that already exist, often in a way that suggests haste or lack of inspiration

      1. Jeez, and here the rest of us are fighting for better education, health care, and truly equal rights. All we have to do is move!

        Lame from any side.

          1. Right?

            How about just making an effort to not be an ass? But maybe that’s out of line. Just wave a nearly naked picture of Brad Pitt in front of me and I’ll shut up.

  3. from Grim & Carter – HuffPo

    Forget near-record gas prices and 9 percent unemployment. For most of 2011, the Senate has been completely absorbed in a debate over swipe fees. On Tuesday, with cable news programming blasting identical Weinergate details on an endless loop, Democrats and Republicans were locked in closed door meetings to debate swipe fees, preparing for the floor vote on the issue.

    Why has this issue received more attention from the Senate than any other? Simple, it’s not importance that drives the Senate, it’s money.

    Thus far, it’s been an epic lobbying battle pitting Wall Street against Walmart, one so heated that Washington insiders jokingly refer to it as “The K Street Full Employment Act.”

    And the only reason the top Wall St banks might not get what they want (as they usually do), is that they have everyone else on the other side – businesses, consumers, logic, etc.

    Unfortunately I’m guessing our two esteemed Senators will do as they normally do – vote with the banks and provide some lame excuse.

    disclaimer – my company like all others has to pay the usurious fees on credit card transactions. However, we minimize this by requesting payment via check and 98% of our customers pay that way.

  4. They could be doing a lot more. A lot.

    Jared Bernstein

    Common sense ideas that I believe most people share: how do we get out of this mess if we’re going to whack away at schools? And surely we need to fix stuff that’s falling apart. And you know what: I kinda like the security of knowing there’s a guaranteed pension out there (Social Security) and health coverage I can depend on (Medicare). And don’t tell me “sorry, we can’t afford that” while you want to cut taxes for the one group that’s actually been doing the best lately — the wealthiest among us.

    Mike Lux

    Given the makeup of Congress, Obama has just one chance to dramatically improve the American economy before the 2012 election, and that is to move aggressively to revitalize the housing market. He’ll have to take on Wall Street to do it, and he’ll have to pick a fight with them and their Republican allies in Congress. It’s a political fight worth having, and most importantly it would put our economy on the right path by giving it the jumpstart it needs.

    Unfortunately I think Obama will keep looking for the middle ground and the Republicans will keep playing rope a dope on him to leave him dangling out there. But he will not take on Wall St.

    2. The fundamentals for the housing market are so whacked right now, that hoping for a recovery would be ridiculous. The whole reason that housing collapsed was that there we were lending money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back. As a result, there was a bubble. We built too many houses. Now prices have collapsed and lots of mortgage holders are underwater. I really don’t see how you stabilize prices unless you give everybody underwater a big check, and that just props up housing prices at unrealistic levels. Unless housing resets to sane levels, the next generation is screwed.

    3. I see the decline in property values as nothing more than a market correction following a decade of artificially creating housing demand and increased prices. This entire recession is almost solely based on the idea that too many home loans were given out to non-creditworthy borrowers leading to deceptively higher prices. The result was that home buyers made poor investments paying much more for their homes than what they were actually worth.

      It’s no surprise housing prices are around where they were at the time President Bush called for every American to own a home.  I would suggest caution toward any policy meant to improve the housing market. We do not want to create another bubble. Getting people out of bad loans may be a way to go, but NOT relaxing loan standards to encourage more people to buy.

      2. The ongoing transfer of wealth from the middle and working classes to the richest 2% is having a long-term dampening effect on aggregate demand.  Real wages for everyone but the very rich have been stagnant for 30 years. The supply-side chickens are coming home to roost, and we are well on our way to a new era of feudalism.    

      3. This entire recession is almost solely based around the idea that credit derivatives, (re)insurance, and other financial gimmicks oversold and overrated trillions of dollars worth of financial instruments.

        If the U.S. housing market had tumbled absent the mortgage derivatives market and its various linked derivatives and insurance markets, we would have suffered a minor recession.  Instead, we had a worldwide event that may yet look like a second Great Depression.

        1. The intertwining of investment banks and investment insurance companies created a devastating domino effect. But that’s how they managed to get so many people home loans -minimizing risk by insuring bad loans. Problem was, no one considered the risk to the insurance company (AIG).  

          1. No-one considered the risk side of the equation at all.  It was all supposed to magically work, selling perhaps $60 trillion in derivatives against less than a tenth that in assets – a stupid shell game.

            It’s schemes like this, and the near total disconnect between stock trading and real corporate value, that have me 100% convinced that the capital gains rate is essentially a sham designed to protect the investment class against paying their share of taxes.

        2. What he suggests is adjusting all underwater mortgages to 95% of the home value at a 30 year fixed rate. And that would go a long way toward stabilizing the industry because the foreclosure rate would drop a lot.

  5. (CBS) – Celebrity news website TMZ claims to have emails sent from Rep. Anthony Weiner to a porn star with whom he had a long-term online relationship, urging her to lie about their contact and even offering his own PR team to help her deal with expected media queries.

    According to TMZ’s report, Weiner emailed Lee on June 2, asking if she wanted to “talk to a professional PR type person… I can have someone on my team call.”

    In an email TMZ says Weiner sent the previous day, he suggests a line Lee might want to feed to the media if they come asking about her relationship with him: “Have a couple of iterations of: ‘This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don’t know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That’s it.'”

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50…

    Not the source I’d quote. But if CBS, home of 60 Minutes Mike Wallace sources is quoting them, then it must all be good right boys and girls.

      1. Here I was enjoying a day on the the blog without Weinergate.  So far this schmuck has forced apologies to a slime ball, caused the Rachel Maddow Show to become intensely boring (yeah, Rachel, stop the presses, we know the GOP formula is IOKIIAR without most of a show devoted to this newsflash) and caused Jon Stewart to injure himself while “resigning”. Please, Rep, Weiner, just pack up whatever it is you’re packing down there and go home already.  And, no I’m not going to click on the video.

          1. Besides, nothing in connection with this endless story could shock me. He’s not dismembering and eating a baby is he?  If not, I’ll just skip it. Thanks just the same.

          2. other than Astley, is that I not only made the three clicks suggested to me by HuffPo, but also tried to analyze the resulting picture. FWIW, too blurry. But, oh, the questions!

            It’s shocking because it’s not something I do with much of my time. You know, a frank analysis of franks. I can’t decide if I recommend it or not. Not linking to it though. The site freaks will have to go in search of it.

          2. He’s recruiting the hell out of the midwest, and the 2012 scholarship class is nearly full.  Team alumni are behind him hugely, and I think attitude alone will earn the team eight wins this year.  I suspect Nebraska will probably win the Big Ten title, but I haven’t followed the other teams closely enough, so who knows, Wisconsin?  Watch out in the nxet few years though, the dude’s for real!

  6. Just Months After Jeopardy!, Watson Wows Doctors With Medical Knowledge

    A know-it-all robotic physician’s assistant that you can talk to from anywhere with a handheld device. Reminds me, again, of Star Trek, “Computer, across how many worlds has the epidemic spread?”

    A software program won’t be perfect, but neither are doctors. And with the explosion in medical knowledge, a program has a distinct advantage in bringing all research to bear.

    I think we will find this common in 10 years. That might bend the cost curve downward – a lot. If so, it also means a lot of healthcare jobs are going to shrink greatly and/or disappear.

  7. New Google R&D Team Charged With Making Renewable Energy Work For The Market

    Who knows if they’ll come up with something others won’t. But you have very smart people there working in a very focused and productive environment that emphasizes finding what works. There is also a lot of self interest as Google consumes a lot of electricity in it’s data centers. Lots and lots and lots.

    And they’re serious:

    The ultimate goal is eminently practical: “RE < C,” Google’s long-established project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal. The urgency comes in the addendum to that formula: “Within a few years.”

    2. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com…

      A new study estimates that indoor pot-growing operations in the United States burn about $5 billion worth of electricity annually, or roughly 1 percent of national power consumption. That’s enough electricity to power two million average homes.

      …

      a single joint contains the equivalent of roughly two pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of running a 100-watt bulb for about 30 hours on the California grid.

      …

      In California…indoor cultivation is responsible for a whopping 8 percent of household electricity usage…and producing the annual carbon emission of a million average cars.

        1. The conditions are pretty strictly controlled. But you’re right that prohibition forced cultivation indoors, where it has become highly refined and energy intensive.

          1. I know a guy in ABQ, an old hippie type, who claims MJ is environmentally sound, but indoor grow operations are the reason MJ is so potent nowadays. They use huge amounts of electricity, so unless it’s wind and solar, it’s not environmentally sound at all.

            1. even if it is less intense.

              Outdoor weed can also be processed into “hashish”–what the state of Colorado calls “infused products” or, simply, “marijuana,” depending on how it’s made–for people who want something stronger.

              1. but it becomes an issue of margins and good old fashioned business. And I think most people wanting organic are just trying to avoid pesticides and additives (whatever the latter might be in MJ production – I have no idea). For most people, the concept of the environmental impacts of agricultural production are still new and obscure. (For all their emphasis on “local,” I find produce from Chile and NZ at Whole Foods all the time.)

                In short, I think you’re speaking about a small number of people. But if MJ is ever legalized and you can just grow it in your garden with your tomatoes and carrots…

          2. Doesn’t it grow like, well, a weed if just seeded outdoors? Seems indoor cultivation is the reason we keep hearing alarmist stories about marijuana being “100 times more potent than 30 years ago!!!!” or whatever.

            Not that I would know anything about that. (No, seriously, I don’t. Never smoked.)

            1. it apparently is terribly weak. Very low THC content.

              Back in the late 80s, some friends of mine in a couple of punk bands went on a midwest tour. Apparently they found a bunch of MJ growing near the place of a gig (I think they were playing outside of Lawrence, KS), took a bunch of it, went to a 7-eleven afterwards (so sometime after midnight) and spent half an hour or longer drying it out in the microwave. (Obviously the clerk didn’t care.) All for naught – the whole batch had the THC content of a single joint made from the smuggled stuff. But a great story.

            2. Usually it wasn’t grown this far north, though, until more recent times. It does require care though — indoors or outdoors — for that purpose.

              I suppose the “weed” label goes back to the days when hemp was no longer grown for industrial reasons. When it was outlawed for such uses, it still grew feral as a weed in places like Nebraska and Kansas and elsewhere.  

      3. $5 billion in energy used to produce $40 billion worth of income, as the article points out.

        Maybe we do need the NREL in Golden, after all!

  8. I guess all the puffy-eyed people walking around today are Chris “Push Poll” Romer supporters.

    C R – hope you heard the fat lady sing last night.

  9. This week, I bid the world of journalism good-bye for a job in another field; it’s been a pleasure lurking and occasionally sharing news from the political world with y’all.

  10. Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand Problem

    I am fairly certain that when Paul Ryan first decided to publicly share his admiration of Ayn Rand, he could not have imagined it would lead to him speed-walking to his SUV to avoid a young Catholic trying to give him a Bible and telling him to pay more attention to the Gospel of Luke. But that’s what happened Friday morning in downtown Washington after Ryan spoke to the surprisingly smallish crowd gathered for Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Conference.

    These days, when people question a politician’s “morality,” they usually mean his or her personal behavior and choices. But an interesting thing is happening right now around the GOP budget proposal. A broad coalition of religious voices is criticizing the morality of the choices reflected in budget cuts and tax policy. And they’ve specifically targeted Ryan and his praise for Rand, the philosopher who once said she “promote[d] the ethic of selfishness.”

    Across the street from the Faith & Freedom Conference Friday afternoon, a group of religious leaders continued the attack on what they now consistently refer to as “The Ayn Rand Budget.” Father Cletus Kiley, a Catholic priest, declared the Ryan budget “does not pass our test” of Catholic teachings, and suggested that supporters of the budget “drop Ayn Rand’s books and pick up their sacred texts.”

    http://swampland.time.com/2011…

    And boy, I can’t WAIT for the spot on this website to start airing in some Repub districts….

    1. I don’t think most conservatives see any conflict between Randian economics and Christian faith. God helps them that help themselves and all that.

      So long as you say you’re anti-abortion, pallin’ around with atheists won’t matter.  

    2. is that Ayn Rand’s philosophy has atheism at its base. She believed that this life was it, there was nothing more, so you better get what you can NOW.

      It’s kind of hard to reconcile with Christ’s teachings, although that hasn’t stopped “gospel of prosperity” types from reaching similar conclusions.

  11. I just wanted to point out that I’m proud of Colorado’s record of electing talented politicians of color — Wellington Webb, Federico Pena, Regis Groff, Terrance Carroll, Obama’s victory, and now Michael Hancock, among many others.  

    That’s all.

    1. I had no idea voters were so racist. Or people making endorsements. Win schmin, I found the blatant racism both appalling and embarrassing.

      1. But at least this obviously wasn’t a case of all white voters voting for the white guy. Saw many Mejia and later Hancock signs in mainly white south Denver neghborhoods.  

  12. But if anyone knows of a strict grammarian with blogging/online publishing experience who is looking to get into online media and would be interested in a Denver-area entry level editorial position, have them email me a resume.

    (Unlike David I don’t like to post under my real name, so further details will have to be via email.)

  13. Obama holds big 2012 lead over Republicans

    (Reuters) – President Barack Obama retains a big lead over possible Republican rivals in the 2012 election despite anxiety about the economy and the country’s future, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday.

    Obama’s approval rating inched up 1 percentage point from May to 50 percent but the number of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track also rose as pricier gasoline, persistently high unemployment and a weak housing market chipped away at public confidence.

    Obama leads all potential Republican challengers by double-digit margins, the poll showed. He is ahead of his closest Republican rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, by 13 percentage points — 51 percent to 38 percent.

    http://www.reuters.com/article…

    There’s some more poll-related bad news for you after the jump, ‘tad….

    1. It has nothing to do with his ability to win the 2012 race. As I have said before, Obama wins re-election 57-43. It shouldn’t be difficult either; he’ll have $1 billion, the unions, enviros, glbtq, Silicon Valley, every GE employee, 75% of racial minorities, and 47 million Americans who are on food stamps. How can he loose?

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