Senator Jimm Webb ended the Democratic response to Bush’s State of the Union thus:
These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.
Thank you for listening. And God bless America.
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Whoever it is they cart in to write on The Economists blog had some interesting comments about American politics:
My response, which I’d stand by this year, is that once you live in a rich democracy, it’s pretty much all gravy. The fights over income inequality, national health insurance, immigration policy, and so forth, all take place within a remarkably narrow range of national well-being, compared to the variance that currently exists around the globe. A big government health care system may cause your happiness to vary by a percent or so from this mean (which direction depends on your political persuasion), but it will not bring you within a few orders of magnitude of a peasant farmer living on the edge of starvation in Darfur. This brings me a certain equanimity when watching the successive presidents deliver their speeches.
This sort of cosmopolitan, we’ve solved all those problems conservatism is what eats at the soul of libertarianish writers like our The Economist fellow here. As a privileged member of an elite international news organization, the price of Gas in Kalamazoo, or the state of schooling in Indianola, Mississippi is a conceptual thing.
Political victory or defeat for this person means the recalculation of some utility functions due to a change in marginal happiness. Politics is worth a fighting effort, but change isn’t going to create anything beyond either annoyance or the abeyance of such.
The writer brings up the mass of third-world folks who doubtlessly could use some relief from a difficult life. But we are talking about the value of political action among ourselves in our society and nation. All the more conondrous to the homeless, to inner-city children, to the rural poor, to migrant workers, to the uninsured, and the like to be told that their struggles “all take place within a remarkably narrow range of national well-being” when they bite the tail end of that distribution.
Political argument may sometimes be foolish, but political apathy is much more deadly to our spirit.
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Words noticeably absent from Bush’s State of the Union transcript:
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The folks at Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon agree:
I am a tightwad.
Take the survey yourself.
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Daniel Gross notes that some strange people are suddenly starting hedge funds. For instance, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who never managed a dime previously:
Former foreign-policy hands such as Henry Kissinger supply advice to hedge funds and Fortune 500 companies on how geopolitical events affect their investments. Albright is taking this practice a few rungs up the value chain. Rather than simply sell advice based on her experience and connections, she’s selling investment-management services based on her experience and connections. Investment management has much higher profit margins.
As investment management continues to become more of a commodity firms and funds will continue to cut these Connections as Currency type deals.
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Jack Shafer remains willfully obtuse about linguistics in his review of “Unspeak” by british journalist Stephen Poole.
He says:
Unlike George Lakoff, who lectures the Democratic Party about the importance of “framing” political debates in order to win them, Poole dismisses this tactic as fighting unspeak with unspeak, as the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” schools demonstrate.
As Shafer’s past references have done, this entirely misses the point.
Lakoff doesn’t claim we “frame” our political debates. He claims we use frames to conceptualize the world and communicate our concepts. His political work is mostly concerned with discovering what political language reveals about the frames used during political debate.
Lakoff’s books treat the subject more closely. But his claims aren’t that we should use “pro-choice” to combat “pro-life”, but that we must recognize which frames are in play during a debate and use the proper words to activate those frames favoring our side.
Declaring something “unspeak” vs “natural language”won’t change the debate any. We will merely be using different words to activate same or similar frames.
(EDIT:In comments below Stephen Poole says he never made claims about “natural language”, so attribute this distinction to Shafer)
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From the comments of Jacob Sullum’s post about a paralegal who impersonated an attorney:
An attorney who represents someone who impersonated a lawyer has a fool for a client.
and
President Andrew Jackson didn’t have a law degree, and he was a pretty decent frontier lawyer. Of course, in those days, being a lawyer meant kicking people’s asses and challenging them to duels, but I digress.
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Matty Yglesias posted a recollection on something called “The Voyage of The Mimi“. Apparently it was a circa ’80’s educational programming starring young Ben Affleck.
I had no idea what it was about until one commenter wrote:
“I’m fairly certain that to this day I understand the basic principles underlying the construction of a solar still to collect condensation and provide drinking water in case you’re ever stranded in the wilderness.”
At which point it all came flooding back. The ship, the parkas, the wreck, the possible hypothermia solved by stripping down and cuddling, everything I had seen in whatever grade and class it was we watched it in its full glory.
I wonder if the condensation thing actually works appreciably?
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Henry Blodget writes in Slate:
The problem for investors is that even though stock-picking usually hurts returns, it’s extremely interesting and fun.
His article is a short primer on the usual efficient market/low-cost index funds position.
Good stuff.
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louismg looks at the effect of the A’s-Cisco partnership from a fan’s perspective:
With all that said, when one dissects what the networking giant aims to offer the A’s and their fans in the new park, it largely amounts to new ways for us fans to spend more money, not necessarily new ways for fans to see an improved product on the field.
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