Author Archives: Lila

Seniors Taking the Hit for Kleptocrats’ Sins

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“Elderly Americans with fixed incomes are increasingly being compelled to make seemingly impossible decisions, Shapiro says, such as choosing between paying their housing bills or their medical costs.

More than 54% of all senior households “do not have sufficient financial resources to meet median projected expenses based on their current financial net worth, projected Social Security and pension incomes,” according to the Brandeis study.

Some seniors are moving in with their children because they can’t pay all the bills. Census reports show multigenerational families are on the rise in part, experts say, because of the housing and larger economic crisis. An estimated 3.6 million parents (not all of them elderly) live with their adult children, according to 2007 census data, up from 2.3 million in 2000, an increase of 57%. In those households, the number of parents 65 and older was up 62%.

Others are turning to reverse mortgages, loans available for seniors 62 and older that allow them to get cash based on the value of their home with no monthly mortgage payments. Such a loan is repaid out of proceeds from the eventual sale of the home or from the borrower’s estate after his or her death…”

More at MSN money.

Social Science – Intellectually Shoddy?

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“I have observed that the closer one comes to the study of humans the shoddier the quality of the scientific evidence.”

Biologist Lynn Margulis at Pharyngula

Wittgenstein said much the same thing….

In the study of humans, the arts (poetry, stories, drama,  journalism, biography, cultural criticism, history, and philosophy) have much more to say, say it better and say it more memorably than most of the relevant academic disciplines. Margulis is  a proponent and co-developer of the modern version of the Gaia hypothesis (now regarded by some as a thesis) which can be said to view the Earth as a single organism. Arthur Conan Doyle, better known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, wrote a short story with that premise, When the World Screamed.

Obviously, its a thesis that environmentalists and communitarians will regard benevolently, and classical individualists at least somewhat suspiciously. But need it be so? After all, one man’s environmentalism is another man’s conservation; one man’s sustainability is another man’s thrift; one man’s cooperative is another man’s citizen republic…

I don’t mean to propose some kind of dishonest compromise between ideologies but just to rethink the confidence with which we assume that our actions cannot find a peaceable “way of going on” even when our ideologies cannot.

Murdoch Apologizes for NY Post Cartoon

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“NEW YORK – New York Post Chairman Rupert Murdoch apologized Tuesday for a cartoon that critics said likened a violent chimpanzee shot dead by police to President Barack Obama.

In a statement published in the newspaper, Murdoch said he wanted to “personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.” He said the Post will work to be more sensitive.

Murdoch said the cartoon was intended only to “mock a badly written piece of legislation.”

The cartoon, which was published Wednesday, depicted the body of the bullet-riddled chimp Travis and two police officers. The caption said: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

More here 

Comment:

I didn’t see this until now, and I have to say it seems rather racist, even if the intent were not. Calling George Bush “chimp” is different for the simple reason there’s never been a history of white men being seriously categorized as monkeys, with all the social fall-out attendant. The slur was personal in that case – it had no group overtones.  Black men, on the other hand, have had to contend with racial attacks in exactly this vein for more than a century, at the very least. There’s another angle to be considered. There are some people who find it incredibly enraging to have a black man as a president (I’m enraged by Obama too, but only because he’s a shill for the financial industry). Someone just might be incited to violence by inflammatory language and images..

Even if the cartoonist was only thinking of the animal that was shot and even though Obama didn’t write the stimulus bill, any editor with a modicum of sensitivity and knowledge of history, would have spiked it.

Of course, liberals can be just as guilty:  these cartoons of Condi Rice seem to go over the line.

And remember the New Yorker cover last year showing Obama in Muslim attire, with Michelle Obama as a Black Panther terrorist and the US flag burning? Editor David Remnick argued that the left-liberal magazine of choice of the literati was obviously satirizing the right’s view of Obama, but pictures are very different from words, especially pictures unqualified by anything else. To even my well-trained artistic and literary eye, the picture was a bit of a shocker, given the context (election year, first African American president).

Why not err on the side of safety? How about shocking us with truthful reports about the financial ties between our pols and pundits and Wall Street? How about shocking us with a close examination of the so-called conspiracy theories (about 9-11, about the FED), that the mainstream media never touch. Maybe that would take a level of bravery, analytical ability, and intellectual honesty that questionable sketches don’t require.

Alan Keyes Denounces Obama As Abomination

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Alan  Keyes, the conservative who lost to Obama in the 2004 Illinois Senator’s race, is back again with a fiery denunciation of the new President as a “radical communist” and “abomination” who “isn’t even a natural born citizen” and once (presumably when he was young) even supported setting aside babies who escape abortion for killing (?).

Inflammatory stuff….or speaking truth to power…. depending on what you think of Keyes.  Obviously, Fox loves him since they’ve been giving him a lot of air time on this, and the video is making a stir.

What is a “natural-born citizen”? It’s a citizen who meets one of  the legal criteria to be considered, by right of birth, a US citizen”. It’s not simply where you were born.  If you were born on foreign soil, you would still be a natural born citizen if at least one of your parents was a citizen who had lived in America for at least 5 years. Obama Senior was a Kenyan citizen. Obama’s mother was a natural born US citizen, although I’ve seen questions raised about that too.

There are also doubts if the marriage was a valid one under US law. Furthermore, Obama’s mother soon divorced his father and went on to marry another foreign national, with whom she moved to Indonesia.

The L. A. Times has a summary of the birth-certificate controversy, and here’s another at Salon, both of them from a critical point of view. I actually thought the issue had been laid to rest last year, but apparently not. Keyes and other members of the Independent party  filed suit  on November 13, 2008 (I was out of the country then, so I guess I missed it):  Keyes v Bowen, Superior Court, Sacramento, 34-2008-80000096-cu-wm-gds.

Previous suits on this issue have been dismissed because the plaintiffs lacked “standing” – which is the legal requirement that a matter brought to the courts have some specific, concrete effect on the person bringing the suit. You can see why. Otherwise, people would be cluttering up the courts with cases filed on theoretical grounds. Keyes, a former presidential candidate, does have standing, although that might be affected by the fact that the election is now over.

Alan Keyes is a very passionate proponent of the traditional Catholic position on abortion, and from that view point nothing he said was really untoward, although some of his facts are still in question on the birth certificate issue and his “fire and brimstone” delivery will strike many people as either over the top, hilarious, or both.  I also do think the word “abomination” was inflammatory and unnecessary. “Abomination” coming from an arch-conservative and statist carries Biblical overtones and will resonate with people who read Revelations (of John of Patmos, at the end of the Gospel) literally. Many of them will think of the “abomination of desolation” and  the “false messiah” (Obama is incessantly dubbed a  ‘messiah’ both by admirers and detractors) who precedes the Anti-Christ.

On second thoughts, though, I’m not sure  critics have a right to question the language on this tape, since it was the Obama camp itself that went out of its way to play up the ‘messiah’ angle. They probably figured that if religious rhetoric worked for Bush, why not lure away some of Bush’s religious following by cloaking their establishment front man, Obama, in dressed-up “preacher talk.”

A lot of Obama’s rhetoric is simply PR, as my post “Wake Up and Smell the PR” (over the weekend), alleges, and so what can I say? Live by PR, die by PR……

And, what if Keyes prevails? Then we get President Biden:

20th Amendment, Clause 3:“3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.”

Here’s more on Obama’s birth certificate and some of the facts surrounding his Kenyan father’s citizenship (Kenya was part of the British empire at the time). Obama Jr.’s Kenyan citizenship would have expired in 1982, in the absence of any renunciation of US citizenship on his part. More from the same website on some of the groups behind the promotion of the citizenship issue. I’m not sure that the website actually gives any evidence that’s incontrovertible, though, beyond a replication of a photocopy of the birth certificate (?).

Most of the debunking seems to be of the order – ‘he says it’s a dirty tactic, so it’s not true’.…or, ‘look who’s behind the issue.’

He says, she says is not evidence.  Its doesn’t go to the substance of the charges.

Other thoughts:

1. Wouldn’t a birth certificate be a minimum requirement for a candidate and wouldn’t intelligence have checked that out long before anyone was even under serious consideration for presidency? It would be incredible if it weren’t  so, given that even rather lowly jobs these days require quite a bit of a background check.

2. Why is the certificate number blacked out?

3. Are the type and seal authentic?

4. What about the categorization of the child father as African?

5. Why not just release the original and put an end to the issue?

More:

*Philip Berg (no relation to Nicholas Berg who was beheaded in Iraq), a 9-11 truther (not sure which of the many 9-11 groups that is), is one of the people who’d earlier filed suit. Berg also filed a RICO suit against Bush et. al. over 9-11.

*The eligibility issues was previously raised for Mitt Romney’s father George, who ran for president in 1968. The ruling was that he was eligible since his parents were US citizens, even though he (George Romney) was born in Mexico where they were missionaries. In 1964 another challenge was defeated when it was decided that Barry Goldwater, who was born in Arizona before it was a state, was eligible.

The Monopoly of Money and the Money of Monopolies

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The Fed’s monopoly of money has meant not only monopoly (i.e “play” money that lacks fixed value, in contrast to gold), but also actual monopolies in every industry across the board. The reason is that bigger organizations can and do borrow more, paying back only in “cheapened” money. That lets them outlast their smaller competitors and lets them grow bigger and bigger….

The Fed’s monopoly of money also makes possible the rise of “pirate” states which can shift the tax inherent in rapidly cheapening money onto others:

1) internally, onto the backs of its savers

2) externally, onto the backs of other countries which have to use the monopoly currency. (e.g. emerging markets have to use the US$).

Here’s an excellent comment on that:

“Anyway, the appalling truth, which explains what’s happened in our own era, is that when Roosevelt managed to make the dollar the world’s currency, and the Federal Reserve began to be able to tax the rest of the world simply by expanding the money supply, what happened is that the whole American economy quietly started to shift from production-and-taxation mode, into “pirate” mode, “without anyone noticing!”

The global consequences have been enormous. It’s enabled American power (and the amount of military spending possible) to expand enormously, beyond what was sensible in the long term. It’s made foreign war seem cost-free to the American public, which in turn has caused a whole string of foreign lobbyists to try to buy American support and intervention in every corner of the world. It’s also made the American economic and political system very unstable in the long term, I suspect, because it’s now “addicted” to getting things cheap. Pirate economies (unlike the old boring taxation ones) tend to collapse, when they can no longer expand, or at least can no longer tap the outside world any more. It’s also gutted American industry and production, because once you could pay for things in paper dollars, it became cheaper to outsource everything possible and buy things from the third world. It’s had a very oligarchic effect on government and big business, since their access to easy credit enabled big organisations to buy up smaller ones on an unprecedented scale; and, finally, it’s been very corrupting, to get something for nothing in this way, for so long. It’s the true background reason for the predicament you’re in today.

And as I said, it’s created a world were “everything” is rigged against traditional conservatism. Currencies that are purely creations of government not only give unprecedented power “to” governments to interfere in all of our lives, but their inherently inflationary nature has created a world that rewards borrowers at the expense of savers. That is historically unprecedented, and an extraordinary thing to build a civilisation on. Should one be surprised that the culture associated with this civilisation should be one of personal self-indulgence, rather than one of self-restraint? That is the world that Roosevelt (and, later, Nixon) gave us…”

Comment by ‘Alexander’ on Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Con

Propaganda Nation: Obama As Marketer-in-Chief

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 Every so often, plain-speaking slips through…. even on the pages of the New York Times. Here’s a quote on the Geithner plan:

“As a whole then, the plan takes important steps in the right direction, but it is unclear in critical aspects. We do not know whether this is because the Treasury cannot afford to be too clear, or whether it is because the Treasury still has little idea about what to do. The coming days will tell.

Finally, the plan will need public and political support to be credible. This means that bankers and existing investors should not be seen as benefiting at the expense of the taxpayer, and that all the government investment should start paying off in the not-too-distant future. While the Treasury has resisted the urge to ceremonially sacrifice the bankers, this makes it even more imperative that President Obama’s political skills be used to sell the plan.”

Diamond, Kashyap and Rajan on the Geithner Plan, Freakonomics blog, NY Times, February 12, 2009

(The emphasis at the end of the excerpt is mine. The blog on which this post appeared is run by Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the best-selling, Freakonomics;  the economists who are guest posting are University of Chicago Professors, Douglas Diamond and Anil Kashyap, and IMF economist, Raghuram Rajan)

Gold Double Top?

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“When gold hit $1000 for the first time ever on Friday March 14th 2008, silver hit a high of $20.88 but now it can only muster about $14.50 when gold breached $1000 again. Why the dismal performance? The answer is because silver is a more recession sensitive metal compared to gold and decrease in industrial demand is acting as a dampener on the silver price. As said before, when the unemployment figures peak then and only then does silver become a multi-year buy. What is going on just now is a trader’s market.”

Joel Stein – Media Monopoly

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“I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe “the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews,” down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.

How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah.

The person they were yelling at in that ad was SAG President Alan Rosenberg (take a guess). The scathing rebuttal to the ad was written by entertainment super-agent Ari Emanuel (Jew with Israeli parents) on the Huffington Post, which is owned by Arianna Huffington (not Jewish and has never worked in Hollywood.)

The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.

As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you’d be flipping between “The 700 Club” and “Davey and Goliath” on TV all day.

So I’ve taken it upon myself to re-convince America that Jews run Hollywood by launching a public relations campaign, because that’s what we do best. I’m weighing several slogans, including: “Hollywood: More Jewish than ever!”; “Hollywood: From the people who brought you the Bible”; and “Hollywood: If you enjoy TV and movies, then you probably like Jews after all.”

I called ADL Chairman Abe Foxman, who was in Santiago, Chile, where, he told me to my dismay, he was not hunting Nazis. He dismissed my whole proposition, saying that the number of people who think Jews run Hollywood is still too high. The ADL poll, he pointed out, showed that 59% of Americans think Hollywood execs “do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans,” and 43% think the entertainment industry is waging an organized campaign to “weaken the influence of religious values in this country.”

That’s a sinister canard, Foxman said. “It means they think Jews meet at Canter’s Deli on Friday mornings to decide what’s best for the Jews.” Foxman’s argument made me rethink: I have to eat at Canter’s more often.

“That’s a very dangerous phrase, ‘Jews control Hollywood.’ What is true is that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood,” he said. Instead of “control,” Foxman would prefer people say that many executives in the industry “happen to be Jewish,” as in “all eight major film studios are run by men who happen to be Jewish.”

But Foxman said he is proud of the accomplishments of American Jews. “I think Jews are disproportionately represented in the creative industry. They’re disproportionate as lawyers and probably medicine here as well,” he said. He argues that this does not mean that Jews make pro-Jewish movies any more than they do pro-Jewish surgery. Though other countries, I’ve noticed, aren’t so big on circumcision.

I appreciate Foxman’s concerns. And maybe my life spent in a New Jersey-New York/Bay Area-L.A. pro-Semitic cocoon has left me naive. But I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.”

— Joel Stein in the Los Angeles Times

Comment:

Joel Stein manages to do more for race relations in this clever-and-wise, self-deprecatory put-down of the strident Abe Foxman (of the Anti-Defamation League), than any number of pronouncements from the President or Attorney General.

A  little humor, a little self-deprecation  goes much farther than righteous wrath in these things….

Meanwhile, showing how out of hand race/religion talk can get, here’s Juan Cole’s Informed Consent on a brouhaha over what some Palestinians and Israelis think is a secular/Jewish attack on  Christianity,apparently in retaliation (preemptive?) for holocaust denial.