Paul Krugman notes that while France has a consistently higher unemployment rate than the US, its employment rate is virtually indistinguishable from that of the US.
The employment rate for men is used because it is not effected by the fairly large changes in female workforce participation over the past 20 years.
France measures unemployment differently, and IMNSHO a lot more accurately.
He knew that his advisers were discussing this, and he approved their activities:
“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
He needs to spend the rest of his life in jail
Stephen Hadley, Bush’s National Security Clown Advisor, repeatedly confused Nepal and Tibet on Stephanopoulos’s show when discussing the Olympics.
My guess is that this was an honest Freudian slip, Nepal, Nipple, and it just naturally falls to the lips…..Or maybe he’s just a completely incompetent ninny.
About three weeks ago, I expressed admiration for Pope Benedict XVI for bitch slapping Condi Rice by refusing an audience, and now he’s bitch slapping George W. Bush and ODL by refusing to attend a dinner in his honor at the White House.
I think that there are a number of things involved here:
I think that he’s much savvier in the ways of the world than his predecessor.
After 10 years, my daughter (the 10 year old), and the cat (age 15 more or less) how they have finally come to an appreciation of each other.
It might be more accurate to say that Natalie has finally come to understand, and acquiesce, to Lavi being a cat.
Natalie has always been Lavi’s person, just as Charlie has always been Tudza’s person. (I’m the mommy, they imprinted on me)
However, Natalie has only recently come to internalize the fact that Lavi is not a doll.
I don’t mean that she did things like dress Lavi up in dresses, but rather that unlike an inanimate toy, you have to reach an accommodation with a cat.
Natalie has never been comfortable with the cat sleeping on her, or with sharing her pillow with her, but finally, Natalie has created a space on her bed, right next to her own pillow, which is Lavi’s.
The surprising thing was that she could find space on her bed for this. There are about 80 gazillion stuffed animals on it (Only a slight exaggeration. This Weekend she said that she was at 357).
So now Lavi has her space, and Natalie has her space, and I don’t have complaints that, “Lavi is sleeping on me.”
Works for me.
It appears that US and Iraqi negotiators have yet to resolve significant issues involved an occupation enabling agreement, in which Bush and His Evil Minions™ have been attempting an end run on the constitutional requirement that treaties require Senate approval to create an “Iraq forever” framework.
The sticking points appear to be:
If you look at these, these are questions of basic sovereignty, and the US wants nothing to do with real power to an Iraqi governing body.
This setback is a very good thing for the US and for Iraq. Neither benefits from continuing occupation.
Tom Engelhardt makes a very convincing case that US air power is making terrorism worse, not better.
His thesis is that, “U.S. air power has, in the last six and a half years, been an effective force in a war for terror, not against it.”
When one considers the nature of the United States’ use of air power, particularly on a strategic level, it has largely proved a failure.
In WWII, when the entire 8th air force was focused on bombing the German aircraft industry during the “big week”, aircraft production increased.
In Viet Nam, bombing increased the support of the Viet Cong in the south, and of the general citizenry in the north, as the North Vietnamese civil defense authorities have attested to repeatedly.
While strategic bombing is more often a failure than not, and is currently failing in both Iraq and Afghanistan because it is the strongest recruiting tool of Jihadists, but the military, including the Army and, to a lesser extent, the Marines, continue to call air strikes in rather than clearing buildings.
It is a fundamental error in doctrine that permeates the US military establishment.
Abu Gonzales cannot find anyone willing to hire him. He’s too toxic.
Yes, the author of the Harry Potter series is suing a small publisher over their publishing a Harry Potter encyclopedia.
It appears that Rowling , “feels like her words were stolen”.
Tough. Copyright is not ownership, and it was never intended to be ownership. It is a limited time exclusive license, and people are allowed to do things like create encyclopedias.
In fact, this was the sort of activity that was specifically intended under copyright.
Under your view of copyright, Shakespeare’s folios, from which the plays were published, would have been suppressed, which would make all of us poorer in a most profound way.
She “loves” the Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, but had to “draw the line” at his publishing a book based on this material.
Frankly, you have no right to do this. Literally, unless the person has fully appropriated large blocks of your text.
Names, relationships, a plot chart of the story line (assuming that author Steven Vander Ark developed himself), they aren’t your property.
Copyright was created to promote the useful sciences and arts, at least in the USA, the fact that someone is diagramming the finer points of your tale is none of your damn business, though I’m sure you can probably bankrupt the publisher.
Real estate is still trending worse. We have the New York Times writing about how the troubles have gone global.*
We also are now seeing discounts up to 60% on the last sale price in bank auctions on properties in South Florida.
And it won’t get better soon, because when pollsters ask about buying a home, respondents reply, “What??? buy a house now??? Are you out of your bloody mind???“.
Energy prices are surging, with oil closing at a new all time high, $111.76/bbl.
Also, it looks like Wachovia is hemorrhaging, and so is cutting dividends and planning to offer stock for much needed capital.
*As an aside, I’m not surprised that Ireland is in this select group. The “Celtic Tiger” has always seemed to me to be closer to Thailand and Indonesia than the rest of the EU with its prosperity being almost completely driven by low wages and real estate, and Spain is a close second on this. This is not to say that they will become 3rd world countries, but that they both may end up far closer to EU members like Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia than they had previously imagined.†
†Mass flows of speculative capital always produce a nasty hangover.
The opposition is now calling for a general strike as a result.
Of note, there is also talk of a recount, which appears to be outright vote theft in an attempt to screw with the parliamentary results too.
For what it’s worth, if there is a villian in all of this outside of Mugabe and the ZANU-PF, it’s South African President Thabo Mbeki, who appears to be doing his level best to aid and abet the vote fraud in Zimbabwe.
I think that part of this is the sentiment among Mbeki and the ANC that as a “revolutionary” Mugabe is one of them, and part of this is being driven by electoral concerns: They are concerned that the principle of the democratic defeat of a revolutionary leader might at some later date be applied to the ANC.
As it stands now, it looks like the Maoists will have an absolute majority in Parliament.
My guess is that this was driven by an anti-monarchy sentiment, and I would not think that they have support for actually implementing a Maoist state, which their neighbors, particularly China, would be less than enthused about.
So says Harold Bloom, a professor of humanities and English at Yale, in response to an interview about the increasing number of grants from various titans of industry making grants requiring the study of, or chairs in, the studies of the works of Ayn Rand.
I would have to agree. I took an elective course in high school, Philosophy of Literature, and as a part of an extra credit assignment, I read, The Virtue of Selfishness, which I found to be less comprehensible, and more poorly written than Emmanuel Kant.
I’ve come to realize that in addition to piss-poor writing, it was incomprehensible because it was piss-poor thinking.
I recognized it as bullsh#@ as a 16 year old, and it was painful enough that I wanted nothing to do with her fiction.
Full disclosure, to the degree that I place myself in a philosophical school, and I try not to, I find it a waste of time, I consider myself to be a Jewish Existentialist Utilitarian with a rather Deist view of the universe.
As Daniel at Crooked Timber notes:
Although the Ayn Rand Institute is quoted as being basically approving of the trend, I think that a decent case can be made to the effect that the article is wrong to say that “While Rand, an advocate of free markets, would support a university’s getting paid to teach her works”. This is essentially a bribe to the university and as far as I can see, taking a bribe to compromise your own vision of an undergraduate reading list doesn’t fit in particularly well with Rand’s particular ethics of self-reliance and independent thought. I don’t even really think that having a university professorship endowed by a charitable foundation is particularly consistent Objectivism but there you go.
I’m a bit more cynical though.
She was a self parody in life, and now her philosophy is a self parody.
FWIW, the Chronicle of Higher Ed has some names and programs their report.
Well, we’ve had some shenanigans in delegate selection in California, where there are more candidates for Obama delegates than there were spaces.
Theoretically, the actual delegates are chosen at caucus, but the campaigns can, and do strike names from the list before the caucuses.
Originally, the Obama struck some 950 potential delegates off the list out about 1700 (about 55%), as opposed to about 40 out of about 1000 (4%) for the Clinton campaign, including Marcy Winograd, who sits on the Executive committee of the CA Dems, and contested the primary against hawk Jane Harman.
Apparently, their justification was that they were concerned about Clinton poaching their delegates (the Bitch made me do it defense), but of note is the fact that the people remaining were the bundlers and their girlfriends, so it was payback for the morally repugnant policy of bundling donations, one which the Obama campaign says that they do not need because of their massive small donor base.
It’s payback to the big donors.
Of note, once this all hit the fan, the Obama campaign backtracked, but it’s both stupid and sleazy.
Just another group of supporters to be thrown under the bus, as Obama is now signaling over “Don’t ask Don’t Tell”, where he’s nominally opposed, but won’t consider the position of candidates for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which means that we will see a military man lobbying against this, just like Colin Powell did, which sounds an awful lot like the dog whistle gay bashing that he did with Donnie McClurkin.
Oh, well, I guess that I’ll be holding my nose when I pull the lever (metaphorically speaking, it will be either Diebold or Optiscan in November) for him.
My expectations are now low enough that I don’t think that I will be disappointed.
The New York Times, reporting on new dynamics in airline piloting as a career, lower wages and higher costs to enter the field, notes that there are now shortages of pilots.
When you can reasonably be expected to leave flight school with upwards of $100,000 in debt, and where starting salaries can be as low as $21,000 a year, and where senior level salaries have been cut by as much as 1/3, is it any wonder that the pool of entrants is shrinking?
It does not help that once you join an airline, you are pretty much a slave, since a move entails throwing out all of one’s seniority.
Safety is suffering too, with flight hours required for an interview falling.
It appears that ISO is now working on “harmonizing” OOXML and ODF, and the Norwegian protest continues, though switching that vote would not be decisive.
However, there does appear to be an EU anti-trust investigation regarding their lobbying, (Note: the link is two months old, and so might be mooted by the vote).
My guess is that the fat lady has sung.
My other guess is that if OOXML were to become a real standard, Microsoft Office would not be certified as complying, if the experience of Internet Explorer is any guide.
The National Lawyers Guild is calling for Yoo’s firing by UC Berkeley and his disbarment.
Additionally, they call for him to be tried as a war criminal.
Christopher Edley, Jr., the Dean of the UC Law School, is saying that while he disagrees with Yoo’s positions, it would be an infringement on academic freedom to take action against him.
Christopher Edley, Jr. is an embarrassment to the profession of law, and to the entire academic world for taking this position, though I don’t think that Edley should be fired for this.
The difference between espousing torture and engaging in a criminal conspiracy to promulgate actual torture.
There is a difference between a lawyer who defends a mobster, and a Consigliere, who actively aids and abets law breaking. Mr. Yoo was clearly the latter.
I would also note that in some of the lesser known Nuremberg trials, judges and lawyers were tried and convicted for their roles which consisted of supplying legal advice and justifications, just like Yoo:
Indictment
- Participating in a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity;
- War crimes through the abuse of the judicial and penal process, resulting in mass murder, torture, plunder of private property.
- Crimes against humanity on the same grounds, including slave labor charges.
I would suggest that anyone on the UC fund raising or alumni list seriously consider their responses in the future.
Check out my earlier post on this matter merely referred to one of the General’s magnificent snarks, so you might want to look elsewhere for greater analysis.
Passover is coming, which means the spring cleaning from hell.
I’ll also be off line from sundown Friday May 18 through sundown Monday May 21 because of Shabbos being followed by the two Yom Tovim.
While it is normal for lawyers from both sides to talk with jurors following a mistrial, it is highly unusual, at least so far as I know, for the US Attorney to send FBI agents to interview the jurors.
Absent an allegation of something like juror tampering, it simply makes no sense. FBI agents are not trained as jury consultants or litigators, and as such are not the best choice for this task.
So now, at the end what was clearly a political show trial, one in which the prosecution could not meet the burden of proof, we are seeing a highly public harassment of those jurors at the direction of the US Attorney’s office.
When this is all over, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, and the rest of her bully boys, need to be fully investigated over their actions, which are a basic affront to the concepts of laws going back to perhaps the Magna Carta.
If wrongdoing is uncovered, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, with imprisonment and disbarment as the results.