Disqus - Latest Comments for alchemytoday

Re: Michael Steele Doesn’t Race-Bait, Except When He Does

alchemytoday — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:37:19 -0000

I'd think it more offensive to assume Steele descended from slaves because he's African American. As far as I know he was adopted and hasn't shared anything about his biological family if he knows anything about them.

As far as partisanship goes, I don't think Democrats, in general, benefit from doing anything to hurt Steele's reputation and make it more likely that he'll lose his job of running his party into the ground. Also, I thought Blunt's monkey joke a few weeks ago was tone deaf (and, worse, not funny) but didn't see the point in hanging him out to dry for it.

What if someone had praised Steele's slavish dedication to bringing integrity back to the GOP?

I agree that it was stupid for Hoyer to say something he had to apologize for; I just regret that we live in a world where he had to apologize for properly employing a word that's never conjured up images of American slavery.

Re: Michael Steele Doesn’t Race-Bait, Except When He Does

brendanm — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:28:35 -0000

I'm sure he was. I don't like Rep. Hoyer and think he is a bad Democrat, largely due to his support of Bush policies like the invasion of Iraq, but I don't think he is racist or that he would use race-baiting. But labeling a descendant of slaves as "slavish" is offensive and dumb regardless of intent. Perception and providing openings to your opponents to accuse you of race-baiting are important factors to consider.

We're talking about Micheal Steele, for fuck's sake; it shouldn't be difficult to understand that speaking indelicately (or dumbly, or buffoonishly, or incomprehensibly, or absurdly dishonestly or hypocritically, or insanely, as the case often is) can be damaging to yourself and your cause. Of course, Steele's response was worse than the offense, but how about a little less partisanship and a little more intellectual honesty?

Re: Michael Steele Doesn’t Race-Bait, Except When He Does

alchemytoday — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:22:10 -0000

It's stupid only in that people listening to him are stupid. Slavish is an apropos adjective for Republican candidates who uncritically toe the party line or risk being labeled RINOs. Steele had spent the past decade chairing the county and state GOP before being Lieutenant Governor and was running a campaign stressing his nonexistent independence. Hoyer's pointing out his history of devotion to the party, not that he let the party exploited his race.

Re: Michael Steele Doesn’t Race-Bait, Except When He Does

brendanm — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:41:06 -0000

Considering his record, Hoyer probably didn't mean anything by it (as opposed to neo-Confederate, anti-Voting Rights Act Southern Republican congressmen calling Obama "uppity"), but it was still an incredibly stupid choice of words.

Re: Michael Steele Doesn’t Race-Bait, Except When He Does

nibblybits — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:18:03 -0000

Be careful using the word "renege" too. (From Larry Wilmore, senior black correspondent of The Daily Show.)

Re: Michael Steele Doesn’t Race-Bait, Except When He Does

alchemytoday — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:14:38 -0000

Hoyer seriously apologized for that? That's almost as bad as having to apologize for using the word "niggardly." Crazy that Democrats' generally larger vocabulary is a political liability.

Re: Really now…

alchemytoday — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:57:19 -0000

testing

Re: Really now…

alchemytoday — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:28:05 -0000

It means ACORN has hired idiots. Like I said, anyone who's stupid enough to think those are actual Baltimore criminals is not bright enough to aid in tax fraud. Alternatively, they could've just been fooling around in which case they were acting stupidly. Either way they should be, and were, fired. Both of these possibilities seem far more likely than the existence of an organization that demands no money in exchange for help in organizing front companies from criminal enterprises seeking to evade taxes. Have you not seen the Wire? That's what we have sleazy lawyers for.

Re: Really now…

scooby509 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:22:04 -0000

It's four offices now. I don't see how you can dismiss them as stupid: their advice was very sensible and they clearly had a solid grasp of the tax code. The issue isn't one of intelligence or "behavior," it's one of an environment in which there is a complete disregard for any kind of law or morality.

How is it that no one in those offices noticed that their coworkers are completely lawless and amoral?

"Either way, it doesn't reflect poorly on the larger organization assuming they are fired..."

Clearly the Census Bureau disagrees with you.

Re: Really now…

alchemytoday — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:40:56 -0000

It doesn't surprise me at all that anyone in Baltimore who would be tricked into thinking that those two were who they said they were would also be stupid enough to think that it's legitimate to give tax advice for brothels. There are really two possibilities here:
1. These two people in Baltimore are actually that stupid
2. They were playing along with an obvious joke and the tape was edited to make them look stupid

Either way, they should be fired. Either way, it doesn't reflect poorly on the larger organization assuming they are fired and this behavior and/or stupidity isn't tolerated.

Re: How Many People?

alchemytoday — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:08:59 -0000

The timelapse of the rally shows Penn Av filled from Freedom Plaza to the Capitol. That's 60,000 square meters. Crowd density wasn't more than 1 person per square meter judging by videos and pictures of the march. Obviously my employment of the metric system betrays my liberal bias, but anyone who's been a big metro marathon or similar race where the starting gates are about as large as that area and way more packed will tell you that was under 100,000 people.

Re: Bill Kristol: “I’m not sure the VA… has the best health care.”

alchemytoday — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:23:02 -0000

People actually know what the VA does better. My "VA for everyone" solution isn't really necessary if the reforms adopted by the VA were widely adopted. Namely, electronic medical records and electronic verification of procedures (decreases costs and increases quality) and the fact that patients are with the VA forever creates an incentive to prevent problems earlier. Anyway, the VA instituted a slew of reforms, most in the late 90s, that are real and in theory not difficult to emulate. Check out Phil Longman's article "The Best Care Anywhere" - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/... - or the book that he wrote from the same material.

I generally agree that a little reform is better than none (subsidize care, reform regulations, etc). Ditto on hiding the costs of care by tying them to employment. There's definitely a lot of stuff to change besides socializing the whole thing, but where we have totally socialized health care it's worked better than where we haven't. It's certainly not a good choice for Bill Kristol to pick on... it was 20 years ago, but it's not today.

Re: Bill Kristol: “I’m not sure the VA… has the best health care.”

scooby509 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:39:34 -0000

Well, I've already wasted 15 minutes screwing with their stupid shopping cart, so I'll have to pass on reading that article.

So if VA gets people who are unhealthier than the general population, I'd like to know how that happens. Maybe only the poorest veterans with the fewest options are going to them, fine, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the VA.

My point was that your comparison is weak and I'm still not convinced that it holds. One more fundamental mistake I think you're making is in believing that there's some special sauce that the VA has that makes them somehow better managed than private insurance. You're in good company: look at any job site and you'll see hundreds of consultants claiming that they've got some magical secret to running a business. If we just modeled a huge government system after the VA and gave them all this special sauce, we'd solve health care!

There is no sauce. Most businesses don't know how they work. A big corporation might carefully analyze how they run their core business (McDonalds, for example, does know how to make a burger), but that means that they understand maybe one out of thousands of departments. So the businesses around aren't the best, they're just good enough not to go out of business. The ones that are truly terrible are regulated, in effect by the market.

The trouble with government is that the only thing to regulate the government is the political process. Sure, certain small units within the government, e.g. police and military, have people who are routinely risking life and limb and they're highly motivated. And I'm sure that doctors and nurses under a government program, who actually have to see people in pain, are similarly motivated. But when you get one level removed you find the typical apathy and mediocrity.

And when you have laws like the WWII era vestiges of wage controls that tie health benefits to employment, you can insulate certain businesses from market forces. Insurance companies provide bad service because the huge cost of switching jobs protects them from the consequences.

We could achieve most of what people want by removing the tax break for health benefits and providing a subsidy for non-emergency care. And if the Dems genuinely wanted reform, they'd start with obvious reforms like that and build on it.

Re: Bill Kristol: “I’m not sure the VA… has the best health care.”

alchemytoday — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:52:13 -0000

"In addition to being older than the general US population (eg, 35.6% VHA users are age 65 or older versus 17% of general US population), VHA users as a group have a markedly higher chronic disease burden, are less well educated, and are more likely to be unemployed and otherwise more socioeconomically disadvantaged than are veterans overall or the general population."

This is from a 1997 article in the Annals of Emergency Medicine - The “New VA”: Delivering Health Care Value Through Integrated Service Networks

Also, "Unlike the Medicare and Medicaid programs, VA health care is not an entitlement; it is funded by a discretionary appropriation, which currently exceeds $17 billion. Access to care is limited by the amount of appropriated funding and is guided by a Congressionally mandated priority order. Accordingly, of the 25.9 million American veterans alive today, only about 9 million are actually eligible to use the system."

VHA patients would be more expensive, on average, to treat than the average private health care patient. Previous life in the military involves a lot of what ends up being preventative care, but also leads to a lot of chronic problems.

Re: Give Holder Some Time on Torture Prosecutions

alchemytoday — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:22:14 -0000

Opposing Holder on this front is really silly. Anyone charged for stepping over the Bybee/Yoo line will undoubtedly formulate a defense that claims that the line was utterly arbitrary and unfounded in law. They'll argue that they're being selectively prosecuted and, in the process, go through the whole chain of command as part of their defense. One obvious tactic would be to discuss torture that occurred before the 8/1/2002 memos; sleep deprivation and forced nudity were used on Abu Zubaydah (and probably others) without even facetious legal clearance. In discovery, defendants will request everything that Obama's facing political difficulty releasing (and practical difficulties within the CIA, apparently) and whatever's not secret will be heard in open court. This will build a public case for prosecuting folks higher up the chain of command.

Re: John Yoo’s Defense of Himself Is as Persuasive as Most of His Legal Opinions

alchemytoday — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:25:07 -0000

It was so clearly absurd to restrict the President's wartime authority in any way that Yoo was called in to make an end-around about every other person in Justice. Obviously absurd.

Re: Is the devil in the digits?

alchemytoday — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:21:55 -0000

What 'cause' do you think I'm taking up? I can reproduce their numbers as well (except for one error which they've recognized).

The two probabilities are entirely independent in the case where the last two digits are random. In the definition used here, any last digit has 7 out of 10 unique, non-adjacent digits (everything that's not a repeated digit or an adjacent digit, with 0 being adjacent to both 9 and 1). No matter what the last digit, a random second-to-last digit will have a 70% chance of being non-adjacent. Beber and Scacco agree with this in the annotated version of their article.

Re: One last thing on bowgate

alchemytoday — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:18:13 -0000

"Didn’t anyone tell President Obama that Americans don’t bow down to anyone?"

And besides, it's ridiculous. Bush did the same thing. Obama just did the same thing again on his Middle East trip, I believe. Adams' decision to carry out the three reverences was a decision to submit himself to the ceremony of a monarch that he'd engaged in bloody rebellion against (with a lot of internal conflict), and Presidents since then have engaged in the meaningless ceremony that satisfies monarchs since the beginning, cf participation in military parades (memorably, sword dances in Bush's case) that only serve to appease a monarch with a display of power.

As for the Japan example, people huffed and puffed when Clinton bowed to the Emperor of Japan. Don't kid yourself that the response would've been any different had Obama bowed to the monarch of a country in which bowing is a common gesture.

It's incredibly petty to imagine that bowing to someone objectively takes away any real leverage we might have with them.

Re: Iran’s Election Results: “The Devil Is in the Digits”

alchemytoday — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:25:33 -0000

Honestly I doubt they would. If you look at their earlier work, they applied a different statistical test to elections in Nigeria - there they looked for an overabundance of the numbers 1, 2, and 3 and an a lack of higher numbers in the last digit. They also looked for fewer than expected repeated digits in the last an penultimate digits. They didn't find any problem with nonadjacent digits in Nigeria.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with statistical tests (which generously describes my knowledge) knows that you can't change your test to fit the data. The fact that they used a different test in this work than in their previous work is solid evidence that they saw lots of sevens and few nines in the last digit and then set about calculating the probability of that occurring. That doesn't fly.

Re: Iran’s Election Results: “The Devil Is in the Digits”

alchemytoday — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:11:37 -0000

The article is definitely interesting, but the statistics are bogus unless there's some specific reason to expect one high-frequency number and one low-frequency number in the last digit in a fraudulent election. Thousand-to-one "patterns" appear in any similar set of 116 random numbers. Go check out the 2008 election results that the authors use here as an example of the expected result in a non-fraudulent election. Look at the second-to-last digit in the election Wikipedia entry for Obama and McCain; 20% of these 102 numbers are 7s and only 5% of them are 8s. This is less likely than the pattern identified in this article (1.5% chance) but that doesn't mean that there's a 1.5% chance that the election was stolen.

Re: Obama’s Bow Is Bush’s Bow?

alchemytoday — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:38:48 -0000

They aren't precisely the same. One was a greeting and the other was part of a ceremony in which the awardee stand rigidly, hands at his sides, before bending forward to accept an award (implicitly recognizing the judgment of the person giving the award and showing gratitude in accepting it), and adoringly shaking hands and kissing the king. Kissing not as a greeting, but as a display of fealty that's part of the ceremony. Despite that, unless Bush whispered in King Abdullah's ear that we're going to arm Saudi Arabia w/ nuclear weapons at the same time, I really don't give a damn. Both Obama's bow (and of course he bowed) and Bush's ceremony mean precisely zero; I suppose they both help firm up King Abdullah's reputation in Saudi Arabia to some extent, but that effect is marginal.

As far as not acknowledging the facts goes, I guess the folks I saw do this over the past two weeks are liberals: say that lowering taxes raises revenues (always), that Sarah Palin and George W. Bush are intelligent (and that Glenn Beck makes some good points), that people will choose to pay higher taxes given two options, that there are two sides to the evolution "debate", that even if global warming is as bad as predicted, the consequences that will last over millennia are lower than the cost of reducing emissions over the next century, that the stock market inevitably declines when it appears that the Democrats will get their way, that Banquo's Ghosts is a real page-turner, that it's remotely possible that a federal anti-gay-marriage amendment could ever be ratified, that Obama will likely abolish the dollar in lieu of a global currency, and that he will also create reeducation camps for our youth, that Norm Coleman has any possible recourse in either the MN or US Supreme Courts, that ACORN is something to fear, that George Soros singlehandedly brought down the economy for his own benefit, that a secretive liberal cabal utilizes and e-mail list to set the national liberal agenda... these are all positions taken by mainstream Republicans in Congress, on broadcast television and radio, and in the pages of the journals of the conservative intelligentsia.

But yes, you're right that it's a bit of denial to claim that Obama didn't bow, or that Bush did precisely the same as Obama. However, I said "bowing to Abdullah as he's given a medal," which is entirely accurate.

Re: Obama’s Bow Is Bush’s Bow?

Steve — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:34:41 -0000

Yes! Because bowing your head to accept a medal is COMPLETELY different from an almost horizontal, bent at the waist bow! That you see the two as the same really shows your flawed thinking and perceptions. But that's the problem with all liberals: they refuse to acknowledge the facts before them and instead resort to subterfuge, name-calling, fabrication, and many other tactics that are, quite frankly, embarrassing to witness.

Re: One last thing on bowgate

alchemytoday — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:33:59 -0000

CNN probably took down the video when they saw people checking it out... was part of a stock video ordering site that they have that I figured out how to directly link to.

Edit: Link still works for me, but wouldn't be surprised if it goes down.

Re: One last thing on bowgate

alchemytoday — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:48:16 -0000

Um, I was responding to, "Didn’t anyone tell President Obama that Americans don’t bow down to anyone?"

Now, if you're complaining that Obama breached diplomatic protocol. That's fine. It's somewhat different to think that, as many have, Obama is somehow hinting at future deference to a major figure in Islam (particularly, many have said this is more evidence that he's a secret Muslim).

I don't think that bowing is part of an Ambassador's job, by the way. He's not a subject, and, beyond that, it's not required to subject yourself to *all* local customs.

@Ben I agree that the reset button thing was one of the stupidest bits of diplomacy ever conceived. It blows my mind that someone employed by Clinton/Obama came up with that idea, and that it was given the green light at several other points without someone saying something about the obvious reference there.

Re: One last thing on bowgate

alchemytoday — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:09:35 -0000

First, Obama didn't "present himself as a subject" of anybody. Second, look at the post I was responding to -- "Americans don't bow to anybody" -- there's nothing specious about my example. Adams wasn't a subject of Britain, either. Perhaps Obama violated some State Dept protocol; who cares? He's not sacrificing American sovereignty, though, and the newly discovered concern for American attitudes towards the Saudis are hilarious. I don't recall much of a peep in January 2008 when Bush promised billions in weapons to Saudi Arabia in exchange for vague assurances of looking the other way if we attacked Iran, and an opportunity to beg for increased oil exports. Somewhat more substantive than bowing.