On the Offense

Obama has been good the past couple of days:

President Obama scolded critics of his economic plan on Friday, calling it “inexcusable and irresponsible” to delay the passage of the stimulus legislation in the Senate as he named a new White House economic board to help him respond to the recession...“This is not some abstract debate. It is an urgent and growing crisis that can only be fully understood through the unseen stories that lie underneath each and every one of those lost jobs,” Mr. Obama said. “Somewhere in America, a small business has shut its doors; a family has said goodbye to their home; a young parent has lost their livelihood, and doesn’t know what’s going to take its place.”

Krugman on the Stimulus

Here.

And here:

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A Kid Takes a Trip to the Dentist

This is so funny.

Oh K-Lo

This piece by Kathryn Jean Lopez on the inauguration contains a real doozy:

We’re a nation not just where you are free to believe or not to believe; we’re a nation founded for Him — so we could praise Him, so we could do His will. Warren began his prayer as a gentle reminder to those privileged with seats and every Joe sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial...

Um, no. That's about as fundamental a misunderstanding of America's founding as you could possibly have.

On another note, and leaving aside the controversy surrounding Warren's invitation to give the prayer (I'm happy to have a diversity of people and beliefs up there), did anybody else find Warren's delivery really weird? Among some evangelicals there is a particular way of talking that suggests the speaker doesn't really believe a word he's saying - an odd combination of fake enthusiasm and smugness. It certainly doesn't work for me.

About that CBO report...

On the bus-ride home last night I was listening to a news podcast (don't remember which one at the moment, but it might've been the Anderson Cooper video podcast) and someone mentioned that a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report had been released last Tuesday slamming the proposed stimulus bill as ineffective, but that it didn't get any coverage because it came out on inauguration day. This story has now been widely carried by all of the major networks and has become a right-wing talking point, the repeated point being that the CBO has supposedly criticized the stimulus plan on terms of not enacting spending soon enough. Well, guess what. There was no such report. These accusations were apparently based on a leaked portion of a simulation that had been done on one portion of an earlier stimulus draft. The full CBO report has now been released and reports that two-thirds of the proposed spending will happen in the next 18 months. What are the chances that the major networks will issue a correction? Any chance of some honestly among Republicans?

The State of Economics

Will Wilkinson makes some fair points:

What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. One implication of this is that it is wrong to extend to economists who advise policymakers, or become policymakes themselves, the respect we rightly extend to the practicioners of mature sciences. There is a reason extremely smart economists are out there playing reputation games instead of trying to settle the matter by doing better science. The reason is that, on the questions that are provoking intramural trashtalk, there is no science.

Macroeconomics, in its current form, seems basically inseparable from politics. You see this in the current debates on the stimulus package, with right-wing economists arguing against and left-wing economists arguing against. What little empirical evidence gets introduced can seem cherry-picked. Whenever you see people neatly dividing into two groups, it's got to be more ideology than science.

Gitmo Reoffenders

So, a few days before Obama took office, the Pentagon released some numbers about Guantanamo inmates returning to terrorist activities after being released. Obama had publicly pledged throughout the campaign that he would close Guantanamo, and so the release of these numbers seemed timed to make the closure a more difficult proposition for Obama. There are a number of weird things about this - namely, that Obama had nothing to do with the released prisoners, since they were released under the Bush administration, and anyway, Obama isn't simply planning to let everyone go. The plan is just to close Guantanamo, end torture, extradite where possible, and pursue any prosecution in an above-board manner.

But now it's sounding like the numbers in the Pentagon report may not even be valid. To give one example, they consider a released inmate to be "suspected of returning to terrorist activities" if the said person has made anti-American comments since release. That's pretty weak. And if we've got the Pentagon deliberately fudging numbers in order to sabotage Obama, that's a big deal.

Shut Up & Sing

I caught the tail-end of this Dixie Chicks documentary on TV, and it made for a pretty interesting reflection on the last 8 years under Bush. It's sobering to think that it was only a few years ago that someone could have their career jeopardized and life threatened because of not liking Bush. And yet by the end of his presidency you're hard-pressed to find anyone who'd express kind words about his leadership. What a surreal few years.

Protesting Prop-8

As many of you know, California last week passed a proposition outlawing same-sex marriage, overturning an earlier proposition that had allowed thousands to finally marry. Tomorrow (Saturday) there will be protests in many major cities as people stand together for gay rights and equality, and to stand against bigotry. It's not limited to American cities. There will be a rally in downtown Vancouver at 10:30 AM. Check the same site to find out what's happening in your area.

On a related note, the Mormon Church put up a huge amount of money to sponsor Prop 8, and they are now deservedly getting a lot of flak for it. If you can't attend a protest tomorrow, another great way to stand up for equality is to write a letter to your nearest LDS church, shaming them for their bigotry and hatred.

Google Flu

This is cool. Google has launched a tool for tracking flu outbreaks, based on search query trends. Because the searches tend to be related to emerging symptoms, Google claims that it can locate flu hotspots up to two weeks faster than using existing techniques.

Unfortunately, it only works for the US at the moment. And one quibble: why don't the color schemes of the two graphs match?

President-Elect Obama

What a night! Heather and I are toasting Obama. I'm tired right now, but it will be great to wake up in the morning and realize what happened.

And there's some great stuff on the down-ticket votes for Washington: Darcy Burner wins, Gregoire wins, death with dignity wins, Eyman loses. It looks like Prop 8 in California will lose, hopefully (the anti-gay proposition).

I'm so happy for the US. I feel so lucky to have been able to vote in this election and to see this outcome.

NBC's "live" coverage

A lot of people have complained about the fact that NBC isn't broadcasting a lot of the key Olympic events live. I'm really glad to have CBC coverage here. But what makes NBC's coverage even worse is that it always says "Live" in the upper right corner regardless of whether it's taped or not. So I'll see an event on CBC, then a couple of hours later see it broadcast on NBC "live." That's pretty bad.

Drilling in the ANWR

What with gas prices being high, the issue of drilling in ANWR has come back to prominence, particularly because McCain's lack of support for the idea has angered many Republicans. In particular, The Corner has been harping on this for a few days. There's one thing about the discussion that's particularly bizarre, and while I've been proscrastinating on posting about this, Ana Marie Cox noticed too:

One of the helpful myths that keeps that idea alive irks me to distraction: The idea that it's okay to drill in ANWR because it isn't pretty. (Jonah Goldberg is a real leader in this field, having mined this particular "mosquito-plagued tundra" since 2001.)

Bush was a big part of this too, arguing that ANWR is a "great white nothing." But the more recent discussion gets even weirder. The Cornerites have been falling overthemselves in contrasting ANWR and the Grand Canyon. This initially came up because McCain said he opposed drilling in ANWR for the same reasons he would oppose drilling in the Grand Canyon: because they should both be kept pristine. Fine, good answer. But then the Cornerites threw up a million posts discussing how many visitors ANWR gets compared with the Grand Canyon, etc. Are they stupid, or just disingenuous? Whether ANWR is a nice tourist attraction is not only not the point, the whole idea is that ANWR should be as free as possible from human intrusion and development.

The other thing that gets me is that even most supporters of drilling in ANWR now acknowledge that such a drilling scheme would only go a very small way towards shoring up America's oil supply, but they still think it should be done. Why? My guess is that they now see the whole ANWR controvery as a right-versus-left issue and that they simply want to win the argument.

Scientology and Free Speech

C4 had an interesting report on a disturbing trend in the UK. Police are cracking down on critics of Scientology. One man was prosecuted for using the word 'cult' in a placard, but he won the case. You still can't use the words 'evil' or 'brain-washed' without fear of arrest.



Via Ben Goldacre.

Cycling Route Planner

A cycling route planner for Greater Vancouver is now in beta-testing. Check it out. Other than a few bugs, it seems to do a good job. Has some nice adjustable parameters like maximum slope and speed, and inclusion or exclusion of major roads.

Obama channels Cuomo?

Yeah, Fox News isn't even trying anymore.

Via Sullivan.

Meet Thomas Sowell, Wanker

Every once in a while I hear someone refer to Thomas Sowell as one of the great political and economic thinkers of our time. Now, I'm no expert on Sowell, but this garbage tells you a lot about him:

At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure — at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.

Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.

On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.

Obama aids and abets people who hate America? What a disgusting, idiotic wanker Sowell is.

Anatomy of a Slander

Meet Larry Johnson, wanker.

Words for Lieberman

Good for Obama.

Obama's Nomination Victory Speech

Worth watching if you have a few minutes.