Disqus - Latest Comments for 07wsf

Re: Senate Arts Report Card - Russ Feingold | Americans for the Arts Action Fund

W.Spike.Friedman — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:01:30 -0000

Russ Feingold is a consistent advocate for the expansion of First Amendment rights, and has taken deeply unpopular stances in order to preserve the rights of artists throughout his tenure in the Senate. Now that he is facing the toughest challenge of his Senatorial career, where are the people he fought for? Giving him an F for casting a protest vote.

This is the sort of advocacy that our current electoral climate does not afford us. As an artist I can say with full conviction that I am lucky to live in a nation where Russ Feingold serves in the highest legislative body, and that were he to fail in his reelection bid I would be worse off for it.

Re: http://thenotes.tumblr.com/post/482118266

W.Spike.Friedman — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:56:33 -0000

To be fair, my most recent show was an edit away itself from actually being fully production worthy.

To be unfair, RANDOM RANDOM BO BANDOM.

Re: In Which I Am Perhaps Too Open About The Mission Of This Web Site

W.Spike.Friedman — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:36:28 -0000

I don't buy a word of this

Re: 10 Most Overrated Films of the Decade

W.Spike.Friedman — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:42:52 -0000

Oh... and Hunger... maybe the best movie of the decade.

Re: 10 Most Overrated Films of the Decade

W.Spike.Friedman — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:04:05 -0000

Really Well Received, Still Underrated:
Honorable Mentions: Traffic, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Zodiac, 25th Hour, In The Bedroom

Runner Up: Michael Clayton
Winner: Wonder Boys

Big Budget Doesn't Mean Not Underrated:
Honorable Mention: Bad Boys II
Runner Up: Master and Commander
Winner: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Best of the Trilogy... gets its due just about never)

Movies by Werner Herzog are Always Rated Wrong:
Honorable Mentions: Wild Blue Yonder, Grizzly Man,
Runner Up: Rescue Dawn
Winner: Encounters at the End of the World

Really Underrated:
Honorable Mentions: Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Spun, Junebug, The Proposition, Keeping The Faith, Heath Ledger's performance in Lords of Dogtown (best performance of the decade, and I will fight anyone on this), Owning Mahoney
Runner Up: Narc
Most Underrated Film of the Decade: The Lookout

Re: the notes - folkinz: #20 the unicorns, who will cut our hair...

W.Spike.Friedman — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:23:36 -0000

Don't sleep on Clues either... god I wish the Unicorns got back together

Re: the notes - Vampire Weekend /// “Horchata” Did I expect the...

W.Spike.Friedman — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:27:24 -0000

It's a good day to be a Horchata salesman.

Re: the notes - The Big Pink /// “Dominos” /// Dominos 7” So I...

W.Spike.Friedman — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:48:10 -0000

Has anyone in the world listened to this song more than you have?

Re: the notes - Japandroids /// “Wet Hair” /// Post-Nothing ...

W.Spike.Friedman — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:58:22 -0000

Wet Hair might be better drunken subway music... maybe...

Re: the notes - Discovery (Vampire Weekend/Ra Ra Riot) — “I Want...

W.Spike.Friedman — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:57:37 -0000

This album is crap, the sort you sell back with a half-proud smirk. Klee ahead of the backlash again.

Re: LiberalEmpiricist - This has been a week of crazy. Just insanity. ...

W.Spike.Friedman — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:28:57 -0000

I agree wholly with your final paragraph Trey. Also, thanks for posting that chart. What's scary in this case is the degree to which we have not seemed to approach an inflection point in our current recession. Hence the sense of impending... doom is too strong a word... but yeah, thanks.

That said... The Republicans, did not just vote against the stimulus as currently constructed. They voted 37-4 for a plan that would amount to 6 trillion dollars in tax cuts over the next ten years. That is economic suicide right now. Sure, they knew it couldn't possibly pass, but that is disingenuous... something I hadn't even accused them of being up top.

And yeah, tax cuts are fiscal stimulus. But it is clear that the marginal return on tax cuts decreases after a certain threshold, to the point where proposing what the republicans did is something akin to promoting anarchy. Or something. Seriously, that bill was lunatic.

How can the stimulus actually be successful? The first step is saving jobs that are not yet lost. This is where the compromises have been particularly ridiculous. Don't make people who should be working lose their jobs... especially when giving the states money to prevent that job loss is a relatively simple matter.

But also, a successful bill has to invest in infrastructure that will lead to job growth in the long run. Looking at the Japanese model, the money spent on new bridges and roads was essentially flushed down the toilet, whereas money spent on schools and aquariums (shouldn't it be aquaria?) was well spent in so far as it employed the citizenry long run. That's why hearing about amendments that gut the NEA are so infuriating. Pay for a theater space and you can employ a number of people for a long time. Build a school and you can employ teachers and increase the potential of the next generation of employees.

Clearly, this is all a gamble. At the end of the day though, there is reason to believe that government intervention to close the output gap is a worthwhile goal, especially given the worthlessness of monetary policy, and the accompanying deflationary pressures on our economy right now.

Sweet jesus though, Centrism does look really bad right now.

Re: Wha Happened - Where Is My Nuclear Power?

W.Spike.Friedman — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:31:54 -0000

Daniel Nocera on his thoughts now that he's essentially allowed humans to perform photosynthesis: "Now I can look at the leaves on the tree outside of my window and say 'I own you, motherfuckers."

Re: Wha Happened - Where Is My Nuclear Power?

W.Spike.Friedman — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:27:02 -0000

Yes! I mean, we do a lot of dumb things with our transport of nuclear waste (dumping it in Mexico? Really?) but like, apocalypse. Read the article on Daniel Nocera though... kinda inspiring. If we can get there in 5 years we might be alright.

Re: Trey Kollmer - "On Intellectual Dishonesty"

W.Spike.Friedman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:37:17 -0000

I think it is intellectually dishonest of Trey to have not installed Disqus on his tumblr.

Re: Congratulations Mr. President

W.Spike.Friedman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:27:05 -0000

I think a few things:

1) Many Americans watched the inauguration streaming at work... enough to the point that CNN and NYT both had server crashes (hulu, my favorite video streaming service didn't). So basic ratings numbers don't necessarily cover this issue.

2) Further, the internet guarantees the ability for people to watch the speech at a later time. I would imagine that the total number of Americans who have viewed the speech is very large. Again, no real evidence for this point, just a feeling.

3) The turnout issue is interesting. One could argue that a depression in voter turnouts among evangelicals who have for various reasons been instrumental in the higher turnout elections of the past 40 years was instrumental. Youth turnout was up, but not by enough (where's Y-Vote when you need it?!?!). I don't know.

4) The media is the media. There is no story right now... not until Obama starts doing things, so they are going to sensationalize what they can. Beyond that, it will be interesting to see where their biases lay when he is granting diminished pool reporter access, serves a relatively anti-corporate agenda, and turns out to be relatively scandal free. None of those factors will help him in the long run (Jimmy Carter much?) That said, as long as Obama is popular, and newspapers believe that people want to read articles that support him, well, they'll keep writing articles that support him. I like the Ezra Klein line, Newspapers are in the selling ads business, when they let good journalism get in the way they become inherently inefficient. If pro-Obama sells, then pro-Obama is what will be reported in print.
Thankfully, the blogosphere is less dominated by these biases (though frequently tainted by others... sensationalism, ideology, etc.) so hopefully we will get some untainted coverage out of all of this.

Also... HEY HARRY! How are you???

Re: Congratulations Mr. President

W.Spike.Friedman — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:14:17 -0000

LOVE THE FUCK YOU TO GDP!

Re: Congratulations Mr. President

W.Spike.Friedman — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:08:01 -0000

LOVE THE SHOUT OUT TO DATA AND STATISTICS

Re: Pardon Me, Good Sir

W.Spike.Friedman — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:14:41 -0000

And he's done! Just two commutations for some border guards who shot an unarmed Mexican man. Your play, Barack

Re: The Only Ten-I-See

W.Spike.Friedman — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:28:10 -0000

From the Knoxville News Sentinel:

Many rank-and-file Democrats did not learn of the plan until Tuesday morning. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville said some balked at the idea of backing a Republican until convinced during a closed-door meeting during an early afternoon recess.

Republicans tried to block the recess, but lost on a 50-49 vote. Apparently by mistake, freshman Rep. Terry Lynn Weaver, R-Lancaster, voted with Democrats on that occasion.

Hilarious!!!

Re: LiberalEmpiricist - More Proof That Pirates Are Not Terrorists

W.Spike.Friedman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:42:16 -0000

Yeah, in the long run it's all just crime. Short run it's a different play.

Re: Michael Broukhim

W.Spike.Friedman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:23:55 -0000

She also frequently remarked on your humility.

Re: William Spike Friedman chimes in on Light Rail

W.Spike.Friedman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:15:09 -0000

I do blog! liberalempiricist.tumblr.com

Re: Michael Broukhim

W.Spike.Friedman — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:12:24 -0000

Doing a full accounting on public transportation is very difficult.

Politically, it's easy to see the problem. Just think it through from the beginning: if you invest 5 billion dollars in buses, you instantly have more buses on the roads, more bus drivers employed, and less traffic congestion. If you commit 5 billion dollars to rail investment you have a decade of construction, NIMBY battles, unforeseeable issues, and construction. Day to day life gets disrupted with no gain, which jeopardizes political careers.

But looking farther down the road, rail creates serious societal benefits. These include density, reduced pollution, connected communities (which leads to reduced crime, NOT a system wide dispersal of crime as those opposed to a subway to the sea in LA like to argue), reduced commute times, etc. Middle and upper-middle class people are more likely to ride rail than buses due to the social stigma associated with buses as well as the lack of reliability associated with any transportation source that has to deal with traffic.

You live in New York, Mike. How many millionaires take the train in from Greenwich (tons). How many then hop on a bus from Grand Central down to Wall Street (few). So, with rail you have a much larger swath of society as a potential market for public transportation. But how do you put a number on that benefit?

That's critical, because any federally funded public transportation project has to show how it can be self-sustainable over a relatively short time period in order to receive federal funding. Something that is not true for highway administration. If you aren't taking into account downstream benefits, rail projects will never pass muster while highways that face no such barriers will keep getting federal money.

The bigger issue for inclusion in the Obama stimulus plan is that he wants any plan to employ people within 24 months. It is nearly impossible to accelerate rail programs to meet this timeline with all the legal and logistical hurdles that accompany them. Not to say that lawyers and engineers won't be employed in that time (I work for a law firm that does condemnation work for Sound Transit which manages the new light rail program in Seattle... it would be a fucking boon to us if they were to be forced to accelerate their eminent domain proceedings). But if your goal is 4 million government created jobs, increasing the amount of litigation going on in the states is not going to make a dent.

The article you link to is spot on. Further, two of those cities, Seattle and LA have plans in place and ready to go for rail. The Seattle plan was approved by voters in November... but the time line currently stretches out to 2032. If Obama really wants to invest in the future he will divert funds to these projects (Sound Transit applied for stimulus funds) and accelerate those time lines. But if he simply wants us to pull out of this recession so that private enterprise has another shot... well.. he'll put people to work repaving highways or something. And that will be a mistake. An understandable mistake, sure, but a mistake nonetheless.

This is another example of short run costs being seen as untenable even if long term gains will be made, the ultimate hallmark of US policy for the past thirty years. There is no depreciation constant that can account for what America has done to itself since the Carter administration.

Re: Pirates and Porn

W.Spike.Friedman — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:21:41 -0000

Good point, Captain Hook.

Re: Pirates and Porn

W.Spike.Friedman — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:47:17 -0000

I'm going to assume that's a flash video distribution service, and not check my assumption at work... The question is are you watching videos with an active copyright? Or are you watching promotional clips and non copyrighted materials? It's definitely a grayer area compared to accessing off-shore servers hosting stolen materials, but I think you can tell when you're stealing. So, all I have to say is, STOP STEALING PORN, ALEX!