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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I miss WT too, I miss him because he made this blog what others could not. I miss him because he elevated the discourse, and made you question yourself. I miss him because there wasn't a mean bone in his body, and the dignity in which he spoke made the rest of us look as if we were part of something better than ourselves. I'm sad because longiloquent priggism has become the mainstay prevarication for those who replaced him. Now that the cool kids are gone, and the best hors d'ouevres have been eaten, the ones who ran him off, offer mere tidbits to satiate a hungry crowd.
For anyone who thinks it's funny how low GWB's approval ratings are (mid 20's according to pollingreport.com)...take a look at the Congress: mid teens...CBS says Bush 22% and Congress 15%...CNN says Bush 31% and Congress 22%.
The do nothing Congress, led by the DEMOCRATS have a worse approval rating...meaning that the country thinks they're doing a worse job then Bush. As we are supposed to elect a first-term Senator to be President and his 36-year veteran insider to be VP?
You've got to be kidding me....
You simply don't understand how real journalism works. That bill passed so having an economist on would be so passe.
What's really interesting is that a Democratic member of that maligned bicameral legislature is way ahead of the Republican one. That would suggest to me that the legislature is getting bad marks because the Democrats have not pursued the mandate for which they were elected (and now seem more likely to with the leadership of Obama) and well, you know, why the Republicans are unpopular. You can see it however you like, but you're still going to lose. The cat's out of the bag, and all of the propaganda and shouting of the past eight years wears thinner every day, only showing the complete philosophical and political bankruptcy of the Republican party.
-So is that why she has an approval rating of more than 80%?-
BZZZZT Wrong. No longer the case. Update your information or cite a credible link. She polls in the very low fifties in AK now.
I wonder how many people on UT are pro-choice and against capital punishment? These are in contradiction, just like being pro-death penalty and anti-abortion. The ethical principle that these issues share is the sanctity of life, but that principle is in conflict in the scenarios above.
I always enjoy your posts, ethics_professor, but I think that that particular framing of that ethical "principle" really assumes the anti-abortion, so-called "pro-life" position. Those on the Christian right have, I guess, been successful in framing the issue as "when does human life begin?" when a more accurate frame might be "when does a person begin?" (as George Daley of of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute put it in this broadcast of Science Friday here: http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Apr/hour2_042707.html). (I'm sure there's an even more exact way of framing the issue in terms of "some being having an cognizable claim on life" but it's not worth formulating for this post.)
As a way of elucidating the point, Daley refers (at about 43:00 in the broadcast above) to the elegant dilemma, as posed by Ronald Bailey: "A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have a choice: You can save a three-year-old child or a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos. Which do you choose to rescue?" (found here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/34948.html).
I understand and agree with your post as a general matter. I think that, with regard to capital punishment and abortion, there are ethical principles that more accurately reflect the pro-choice/anti-capital punishment position and that do not necessarily lead to conflict.
Ha!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/10/04/mid-day-open-thread-little-oreilly-goes-ballistic/
I cannot understand how someone can write intelligently about someone "winning" a debate that consists of posturing and lies. What you did strongly suggest is that the average voter is lazy, ignorant and emotional. "Winning" by 8% in a poll with no deviation from the mean or validity. How is subjectivity measured in a debate such as that? Percentile means NOTHING. Winning 8% more of a empty bag of popcorn means what? I personally think that anyone that gets excited about a political candidate is in DEEP denial!
Northwestwoods (October 4, 2008 10:30 PM):
Little O’Reilly Goes Ballistic
Ha!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/10/04/mid-day-open-thread-little-oreilly-goes-ballistic/
I didn't know there was such a thing as Little O'Reilly.
Wonderful lines and delivery.
Thanks for calling attention to him.
you will not be able to make an argument in the same way you deal with your subjects of torture or national security - You have to forget every bit of bias and every bit of ideology and even THEN you might not reach a conclusion
How is that? To what bias and ideology are you referring?
I do suggest you forget everything the German bankers are saying and look very carefully at the difference in seeing this crisis from Germany and seeing it from the United States, as a taxpayer.
Do you remember Masayoshi Ohira and exactly how he died? Because I remember it very clearly on the radio that night. They forced him into a vote of no confidence because they wanted to superheat the Japanese economy and play loose with debt. They knew, he knew, the whole country knew he had a health problem, and if he campaigned it would kill him. That was considered collateral damage to opening up the Japanese economy to superheated growth to make a few men very rich. Ohira tried to stop them, and he died doing it. Do you know how the Japanese financial downturn happened? Do you remember which country was playing the role, advice wise, of the German bankers then? I do. It was so much easier to be the U.S. then, giving the sage advice on cleaning up the bad debt. It isn't so easy now.
As a taxpayer, I have every right to evaluate a proposal, by the government, to spend a very large sum of money. I have every right to have them spell it out in front of me for my evaluation and my judgment, in detail. If I don't understand it, I'll say so. So far, I have understood what people have told me, I'm not that worried. Except for one thing: I don't understand at all when someone wants to spend my money, and believes they don't have to tell me what it will be spent on, why, to what effect, and what the alternatives would be.
In case you didn't notice, none of those things were coherently explained to anyone.
Every solution to the crisis, every single one, has a short term and a long term consequence. To evaluate which one is best, both must be put on the table and evaluated. Before you just take a poll of famous economists to decide what is right, what is the long term consequence of the bailout? One of them mentioned 1.5 years recession tops. Oh good. The same people who for the last year or so have been calling the end to the housing downturn every single quarter have predicted that with $700 Billion dollars there will be a recession for 1.5 years tops. Why do you believe them? What is the model? What if I don't buy that it's too complicated for me to understand? What then? Do they explain it to me, or just threaten me?
Put their plan, worked out to the end, against null, worked out to the end, against any other plan, worked out to the end. That still hasn't happened and we, collectively, are $840 Billion dollars poorer. That isn't ideology. I have nothing to put aside, I'm ready to hear the whole strategy, in specifics, the way they would ask me for it if I was asking them for cash for a venture, and they were deciding whether or not to give it to me. That isn't ideology, either. It's demanding they play fair. When Sarah Palin treats me like an idiot, that's politics, and bullshit. When Henry Paulson grabs hold of a trillion first, and then treats me like an idiot, that's criminal.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
