Category Archives: Current Affairs

Government spending and the economy

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

I often wonder if the people who say that The government can’t make jobs. are just bullshitting or if they really believe it. I wonder the same thing when I hear Romney talking about President Obama – although he rarely uses President when referring to Obama – wanting to make the United States weak. My gut reaction is that they really do not believe it and they are just bullshitting but I am not so sure.

As an aside; this is one of the positions that people seem to come to from the completely opposite position without ever having stopped in the middle. When I was a young boy, Negros were Uncle Remuses that sort of sat around – rather than working hard because they didn’t have the Protestant ethic like White People – being kindly; then, with no stop in between, they became Black Panthers who were scary. In the same way, it used to be that Roosevelt – people who thought this didn’t call him President Roosevelt – didn’t end the depression, the depression only ended because we started spending lots of money – government money – on the war; now the same people say spending government money will not end a recession. End aside.

Anyway, it does seem self evident to me that the government can  make jobs. When the government hired companies to build the Golden Gate Bridge, they, in turn, hired workers. When the Obama Administration gives money to California for the Highway Department and they hire companies to rebuild the rest stop at Black Mountain Road on Highway 280, those companies hire workers. The additional work results in additional jobs.

But, somehow, by saying The government can’t make jobs. over and over again, people start to believe it. (I used to think that the left’s constant yammering about the right wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade was similar, but, after seeing the anti-contraception – not to mention anti abortion – legislation passed in Republican majority legislative bodies, I am ready to admit I was wrong.)

Even if the meme does work, even if the people saying The government can’t make jobs. really do believe it, it is still bullshit. The Obama Administration created jobs with the Stimulus Bill and definitively made the Great Recession a little better.

Atrial Fibrillation and Obamacare

Americana, Current Affairs, Obama, Psychological Musings

 

Last week, I had a dizzy, nauseous spell – eposode as I don’t like to call it – and went to my doctor. Then, on the next day, to my cardiologist. It turns out that I have Atrial Fibrillation – and I don’t think that is the right way to put it, although I am or I caught Atrial Fibrillation is certainly wrong – and I am now wearing a new Holter monitor. A   Holter monitor records heart activity over a period of time. In this case seven days, my first one was for twenty four hours and was so big I had to wear it on my belt – this one is just stuck to my man boob and it lasts for seven days. Ain’t progress grand.

 

Speaking of progress, for some reason – maybe because a large percentage of doctors are conservative – the medical profession has resisted computerizing records. I am 71 and my files would require a wheelbarrow to carry around if most of them hadn’t – fortunately – been lost. The file at my cardiologist is probably about an inch and an half thick and I have only been going to her for about four years and she is only one doctor. As an aside; What we really need is a chip similar to the chip our cat has but that is going to be a real fight. I see over at Last Days News – where they tell us that These End Times Prophecies are 100% Accurate! In case you had any doubts- that a The Bible says those who take the 666 Microchip will receive the Wrath of God. I am not a Christian and I am not much of a believer in the Bible as an authority but if it really does mention Microchips, I will be instantly converted. End aside.

Anyway, on to Obamacare and computerized records. This week, both my doctors – well, I have more than two, but both doctors I went to – are deep into switching over to computers and it already seems to be paying off. My primary doctor entered her notes into the computer and my cardiologist has them the next day when I go to her office. I leave the cardiologist with a printed list of instructions rather than oral instructions and an hand scribbled prescription. I have a question about my meds and call the cardiologist, her assistant looks up my files at his desk, and in about fifteen second gives me my answer. Last month, he would have had to call me back.

By the time Obama leaves office five years from now, I suspect that few people will still want to revoke Obamacare.

Why are we in Afghanistan? We shouldn’t be.

Americana, Current Affairs, War

I don’t understand why we are in Afghanistan. I don’t understand what we are fighting for. I don’t understand what our men – and women – are getting wounded and dying for. I don’t know, even, how we would know if we were winning.

We are paying for truck companies to bring supplies in from Pakistan and up the highways across Afghanistan that, in many cases, we paid to build; then the truckers have to pay off the Taliban to pass on those highways. Or get killed. We are fighting the Taliban and funding them. And we can’t stop because we need the supplies to fight the Taliban but, if we were not fighting them, they wouldn’t be getting all that money. It is more bazaar than Catch 22.

Our strategy is to develop Afghanistan but almost everybody we hire is corrupt and Karzai’s family is especially corrupt. Because we are there, houses in Kabul rent for over $6,000 per month. The owners now live in Bahrain or Dubai, or some other nice safe place on the Gulf Coast. Drug export is a – if not the –  major source of export income for Afghanistan and the counter-narcotics mission is a waste of time and resources that just alienates the Afghans we are trying to get on our side.

Paradoxically, under Obama, we now have more troops in Afghanistan so we can fight the “big war” with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. The plan in Afghanistan is to flood an area with troops, secure it, then rebuild it, and leave them a new, rebuilt area, in control of our “good” Afghan allies. In Vietnam, this was called the Oil-blot Strategy with fortified Strategic Hamlets. It doesn’t work.

When Obama first started talking about Afghanistan being the good war, I thought it sounded like such a good idea. I was wrong – which means nothing – and Obama was wrong – which means a lot. We should get out. Say it was a mistake, say we got Osama and we won, say whatever; just get out. This will not end well and it is time to cut our losses.

 

Dinosaurs were birds department

Current Affairs, Evolution

One of the things that interests me about Science is how it is a reflection and enlargement of an individuals reaction to change. A healthy individual. When I was at college, one of the required courses was a two year general science course that included Chemistry, Physics, Geology, and Astronomy, among other things. At the end of the Geology stint, we talked a little bit about continents floating around which was a theory put forward by a sort of loony German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener. I remember our teachers pretty much ridiculing him and his theory as being pretty far out and unproved although he did have some interesting points. It sounded more plausible to me than to the teachers, then I forgot about it.

Years later, I got interested – maybe obsessed is a better description –  in human evolution. I read everything I could find on human evolution and, in passing, started seeing lots of references to  plate tectonics. All of the references seemed to take the floating continents for granted. In fact almost everything seemed to be based on the reality of the floating continents. The geological community had gone from denial – Wegener seems loony – to bargaining – maybe Wegener has some good points but there is more/less to it than that – to acceptance.

I have posted about this before, but it is interesting – much more than interesting, really, fun – to see the same thing happening with dinosaurs. They used to be slow and stupid; cold-blooded. Then, maybe, warm blooded – but that seemed sort of unbelievable. Then, OK, maybe warm blooded but still like reptiles. Then, maybe – but probably not – the predecessor to birds.

Now, they have found a new fossil Talos sampsoni – nice name, BTW, Talos for talon, I presume and sampsoni for Sampson; Sampson talon –  and the talk is how the animal is a fast killing machine using its talons. All the bird-like characteristics are just taken for granted. He/she does give Angry Birds a new meaning.

The Free Press

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

Check out the two pictures above. According to Sociological Images, what really happened is that the police complained to the New York Times and they changed the article. I am not much of a conspiracy kind of guy but I do think that the press does have a point of view and is susceptible to influence. Even the New York Times. We liberals think that Fox is a right wing propaganda machine and the rest of the press is neutral. That is not true.

Almost all the press is owned by the establishment  and tends to back the establishment and protect the establishment and listen to the establishment. We, on the other hand, are pretty much trained to passively and uncritically absorb whatever is in front of us. So when the New York Times says that In a tense showdown over the East River, police arrested hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they marched onto the bridge’s Brooklyn-bound roadway we believe it. Except that that isn’t what really happened.

 

 

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