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Open thread

Bookworm on Aug 26 2009 at 12:09 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized

I’m sorry for the slow blogging, but a combination of work and personal matters is making serious blogging impossible. I’ll try to pick up here later today but, for now, I hope you find this open thread a good place to put down your thoughts.

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17 Responses to “Open thread”

on 26 Aug 2009 at 6:16 pm 1BrianE

And now for something completely different.
Obama worked for the CIA!

I found this link at a liberal contrarian website that ponders:

A few posts down, I once again discussed my pet theory that young Barack Obama had been recruited by the CIA, a theory which annoys some and intrigues others. (See, for example, the strange blog here.) One piece of evidence favoring this idea concerns Obama’s post-college gig at Business International Corporation, a New York firm never named or accurately described in his book, Dreams From My Father. A number of sources have pegged BIC as a company which has provided cover for CIA operatives.

This is the blog referenced:
http://operation-mockingbird.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-works-for-cia.html

His mother, who worked for USAID in Indonesia, and for two years in Paskistan is also fingered as a CIA operative.
on 26 Aug 2009 at 6:27 pm 2BrianE

Hmmmmmmm. An interesting take by a liberal.
The real reason why single-payer is unthinkable

I think I know the reason why Obama and the Democratic leadership keeps single-payer out of the discussion — and no, it isn’t just because the insurance industry fills ‘em up with campaign contributions.

Insurers usually make profits not from underwriting (selling policies) but from investing the money they get from people who pay their premiums. This investment is called “the float.” Thus, insurers own a lot of those wacky financial instruments based on crap mortgages. That’s why the industry is in iffy shape right now. (There’s even talk of a government bailout of the big insurers.)

What would happen to the economy if the health insurance industry largely disappeared? How would the rest of the insurance industry be affected? How would the banks be affected? How would the government be affected?

I honestly don’t know the answer to those questions. I’m trying to find out. If you have answers, please share. But before you answer…

Consider: The insurance industry owns roughly half of all U.S. corporate bonds. Corporate bonds are how companies get cash in order to grow — or, these days, just to stay afloat. Companies need those bond investors now more than ever.

Consider: The industry also owns a huge proportion of commercial real estate loans. A lot of people think that commercial real estate will be at the heart of the next financial crisis. How could we hope to avoid that crisis if the owners of that paper go under?

Consider: Right now, about $7 trillion worth of residential mortgages have been securitized, and the insurance industry owns a massive chunk of those securities. The insurers feel screwed: They bought a bunch of paper that turned out to be overpriced. (Of course, they should have known better.) What would happen to the financial services industry — to the “too big to fail” banks — if the owners of all that iffy paper suddenly vanished?

Don’t get me wrong: I still would prefer to see the entire health insurance industry gone, gone, gone. It serves no purpose. Even Joe Scarborough recently asked: What do the insurers bring to the process?

But we must also ask: If the health insurers go, what will happen to the rest of the insurance industry? If the entire industry totters, what will happen to the financial system as a whole?

Who will buy all of those corporate bonds? If nobody buys those suddenly-freed bonds, what will happen to American companies? To capitalism? To your job?

Like everyone else on the left, I’ve been laughing at the right-wing fruitcakes who keep calling Obama a bolshie. After all, he hired Larry Summers and Timmy Geithner, who ain’t exactly a couple of Reds. We’ve been telling people for a long time that meaningful health care reform doesn’t mean that the country is going to go socialist.

But what if it does? Inadvertently, indirectly, unwittingly. What if it does?

If reform causes Wall Street to crater, what happens next?

Even if you like the idea of socialism, don’t be so quick to embrace catastrophe. Think about it. If the entire system were to collapse suddenly, who would lead us out of the ruins — the ghost of Olaf Palme, or the ghost of Adolf Hitler?

Maybe this is why Paul Krugman keeps reminding us that it is possible to have universal health coverage without single-payer.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
on 26 Aug 2009 at 8:02 pm 3BrianE

In case you’re ever unsure what a woman means, this clip will put everything in perspective, delivered by a young Laurence Olivier. From The Divorce of Lady X.

Logan: We have ample opportunities in this court for learning what women mean, or what they mean they mean if in these days they mean anything at all.
There is one very simple explanation to this case. That Mrs. Johnson is a woman.
I don’t have to remind your lordship that women have a religion of their own…

To see the rest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xsaobu1rwo&feature=related

Very enjoyable movie.
on 26 Aug 2009 at 8:22 pm 4Bookworm

That’s a really interesting point, BrianE. We know insurance companies are important to the economy because they constitute such a large part of it. But I never thought of their wider effect on the economy, beyond the narrow parameters of health insurance itself.
on 26 Aug 2009 at 9:12 pm 5SADIE

Read the attached at IBD.
Alone, this article sends chills.
Now couple it with Eric Holder’s decision to re-open CIA interrogation techniques.
Back up a few months to Pelosi’s accusations.
Anyone,\… Bueller, Bueller, see the pattern.

ACLU: Spying For America’s Enemies

By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Savor the silence of America’s self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance — because it is the ACLU that committed the spying.

Last week, the Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers — “in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes” — were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

The ACLU undertook the so-called “John Adams Project” with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers — last seen crusading for convicted jihadi assistant Lynne Stewart.

She’s the far-left lawyer who helped sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing and N.Y. landmark bombing plot mastermind, smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client’s court-ordered isolation.

The ACLU’s team used lists and data from “human rights groups,” European researchers and news organizations that were involved in “tracking international CIA-chartered flights” and monitoring hotel phone records. Working from a witch-hunt list of 45 CIA employees, the ACLU team tailed and photographed agency employees or obtained other photos from public records.

And then they showed the images to suspected al-Qaida operatives implicated in murdering 3,000 innocent men, women and children on American soil.

Where is the concern for the safety of these American officers and their families? Where’s the outrage from all the indignant supporters of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose name was leaked by Bush State Department official Richard Armitage to the late Robert Novak?

Lefties swung their nooses for years over the disclosure, citing federal laws prohibiting the sharing of classified information and proscribing anyone from unauthorized exposure of undercover intelligence agents.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero refused to comment on Project CIA Paparazzi and instead whined some more about the evil Bush/CIA interrogators.

Left-wing commentators and distraction artists are dutifully up in arms about such “inhumane” tactics as blowing cigar smoke in the faces of Gitmo detainees. But it’s Romero blowing unconscionable smoke:

“We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients’ interests,” he told the Post. “Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings.”

Courage? What tools and fools these jihadi-enablers be. Civil liberties opportunism is literally a part of the al-Qaida handbook.

A terrorist manual seized in a Manchester, England, raid in 2005 advised operatives: “At the beginning of the trial . . . the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison.” Jihadi commanders rehearsed the lines with their foot soldiers “to ensure that they have assimilated it.”

Since 9/11, the selective champions of privacy have recklessly blabbed about counterterrorism operations, endangered the lives of military and intelligence officials at Gitmo, and undermined national security through endless litigation.

They accused Bush immigration officials of xenophobia for pursuing visa overstayers from jihadi-friendly countries. They accused local law enforcement, FBI and other homeland security officials of “racial profiling” for placing heightened scrutiny on mosques and jihadi-linked charities.

Now, caught red-handed blowing the cover of CIA operatives, they shrug their shoulders and dismiss it as “normal” research on behalf of “our clients.”

But don’t you dare question their love of country. Spying to stop the next 9/11 is treason, you see. Spying to stop enhanced interrogation of Gitmo detainees is patriotic.

And endangering America on behalf of international human rights is the ultimate form of leftist dissent.
on 26 Aug 2009 at 9:45 pm 6BrianE

BW,
It’s nice to know that at least one liberal isn’t so sure the collapse of American capitalism would produce a desired effect.
Life and property insurance would most likely buy longer term debt. I would assume health insurance companies are buying very short term debt.
It is an interesting question, and reinforces the reason we need to go slow.
The law of unintended consequences imposes hefty fines.

Speaking of unintended consequences:

While the Massachusetts health insurance law has led to about 440,000 newly insured state residents, the demand for primary care physicians has outpaced the supply, NPR’s “All Things Considered” reports. The law, passed in 2006, requires most state residents to be covered either through a state-subsidized plan, an employer-sponsored plan or an individual policy. Jacqueline Spain, medical director for Holyoke Health Center, said, “It’s entirely reasonable for somebody who’s now got insurance and maybe has a whole list of things that’s worried them and troubled them” to “expect that they should be able to go out in the market and get all of that care. There just aren’t enough [primary care physicians] to give it to them.” She said about 1,600 people currently are on the facility’s waiting list and patients must wait an average of four months to be seen.

The plan is also costing Massachusetts more, much more than forecast.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 5:57 am 7Ymarsakar

Maybe this is why Paul Krugman keeps reminding us that it is possible to have universal health coverage without single-payer.

People will embrace catastrophe because that is what they will be told to do. Don’t try to refuse the edicts of the new aristocracy, which Paul Krugman is apart of. There’s no point talking about the will of the people or about how avoiding catastrophe is in their interests, when the people have voted away their interests and put power into a new inherited hierarchy. There’s no point when you are for both, but think they can be compromised and mutually included in a package deal. Joe and Krug are just two sides of the same coin on this issue.

Half of the Left wants to create a catastrophe to remake America in their image. Another quarter wants gradual changes, while sustaining and enlarging their bank accounts, but is fundamentally and ideologically allied with the aforementioned group. The last quarter believes their wishes will be listened to, after they have voted for the aristocrats to take power and ignore the wishes of the plebes.

Every faction in the Left is fooling another faction in the Left. Except, perhaps, for the dupes, tools, and fools at the bottom.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 6:11 am 8Ymarsakar

The ACLU do not function under the same laws that we function under. Often people have said that they had the ‘right idea’. On that note, Sanger and Hitler had the right idea, they just went about it the wrong way.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 7:46 am 9BrianE

One of the nation’s largest and most troubled school districts finally got desperate enough to try something new to rescue its schools: private-sector competition. The Los Angeles Unified School District approved a plan to turn 250 of its schools to the private sector for management as charter schools, after winning a battle with the teachers union. Union officials threatened to take the school district to court, while Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa practically dared them to try…

Wow, temperature is dropping in hell!
I’ve often wondered why good teachers, who must be fed up with the PC, bureaucratic nightmare that are public schools haven’t embraced charter schools.
Charter schools are still public, but it would be an opportunity to bypass some of the worst of the teacher’s unions.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/26/la-unified-school-district-chooses-private-sector-competition/
on 27 Aug 2009 at 8:10 am 10SADIE

While Charter schools may bypass the worst of the teachers – what are we to do with the worst of the parents, who subscribe to the notion that it is the duty and responsibility of the teachers to raise and educate their children.

24 hours in a day x 7 = 168 hours
30 to 35 hour school week or about 20% of the time in a classroom of the 168 hours.
Bad odds unless parent/s are pulling their weight.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 12:21 pm 11Ymarsakar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiFFAcfkeOQ&feature=related

The British MEP tells some tales of the EU. Coming soon to an America near you.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 5:58 pm 12Charles Martel

A friend just e-mailed me this letter from a company presdient to his employees and I thought you’d all get a kick out of it.

Attention All Employees:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barack Obama is our president and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%.

Since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me, since I believe we are family here and I didn’t know how to choose who would have to go.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty Obama bumper stickers on our employees’ cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can’t think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change, I gave it to them.

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 7:10 pm 13SADIE

BRILLIANT CEO.

The 60 can drive to Mass. to look for work. I hear there’s a job opening there.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 8:08 pm 14Mike Devx

Charles M #12,

That’s a fun story, but I’m almost 100% positive it’s an internet/email myth…

And in addition, be careful what you ask for… because what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

I think back to the early Reagan years. 1980-1982. He wrung the economy out, but good. Those were dark economic years. Suppose a Democrat boss (is there such a thing, outside of lawyers and George-Soros like financial fat cats?) – but I digress. Suppose a Democrat boss toured his parking lot and fired all the people with Republican stickers in 2012?

Well, first, that would be stupid. Skimming off the cream and throwing it away, you know? But still, not a very good idea for either side to be approaching a layoff as a punitive measure.

I know it’s a fun idea, but that boss would be smarter to analyze work habits instead. A real conservative would do so.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 8:22 pm 15Ymarsakar

I saw the letter awhile ago.

Suppose a Democrat boss toured his parking lot and fired all the people with Republican stickers in 2012?

Democrats do that all the time in academia. People just don’t notice it cause Republicans don’t even get hired in the first place. The purge is already secured
on 27 Aug 2009 at 11:23 pm 16Charles Martel

Guys, I know the damned thing is almost certainly urban mythical. But it’s just the thing you wish somebody somewhere would send. And it’s certainly something you wish you could watch your ditz liberal friends read and then react to. Much hilarity.
on 27 Aug 2009 at 11:29 pm 17Ymarsakar

This is where the “If I am a Republican, you’d be fired” thing comes from. It’s connected to the fact that small business owners are predominantly conservative.