Tag Archives: riviera

This Time Is Different

by CallumH19ixiut Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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I was chatting with a friend about the relentless, one-sided hawkishness on display yesterday on the morning chat shows, and he responded:

The recurring “stay tuned for” loop are clips of McCain (“We never should have left”), Graham (“ISIS no longer JV”), Ryan (“What’s the president’s plan for eradicating ISIS?”). Over and over again. Nowhere are clips of people urging caution or restraint. War is great news, is action, is drama. Whether consciously or not, the media simply drives inevitably to pushing for a clash.

It’s really beyond belief. Israel invades Lebanon and gets Hezbollah out of the deal. We arm the mujahideen and get the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the deal. We depose Saddam Hussein and play kingmaker with Nouri al-Maliki, and we get ISIS out of the deal. But hey—this time is different. Really. This time we’ll be done once and for all if we just go in and spend a decade wiping the theocratic butchers of ISIS off the map. This time there won’t be any blowback. This time we’ll fix the Middle East once and for all. This time things can’t possibly get any worse. Right?

Of course, the hawks always have Munich, don’t they? Always Munich. And so we need to fight. We need troops. We need leadership. And no one with political aspirations really wants to argue the point. There’s no future in siding with the thugs, is there?

Besides, maybe this time really is different.

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This Time Is Different

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Friday Cat Blogging – 22 August 2014

by DominikWertz Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s Domino helping Marian with a bit of gardening in the front yard. The days may not be sunny and warm forever, so she’s taking advantage of whatever ones are left to her.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 22 August 2014

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Nothing Left to Steal?

by JohnnieR41 Posted on July 14, 2014

Mother Jones

Megan McArdle points out that cars are a lot harder to steal than they used to be:

Other forms of crime are also getting less lucrative. “Small-time marijuana dealer” is no longer a viable career option in several states. Robbery is also getting tougher. As credit card transactions have come to dominate cash, the potential return from mugging someone, or knocking over a gas station, has fallen dramatically. Even burglars are facing some challenges: Expensive televisions are now too big to carry unless you bring a dolly and a truck, home theater systems are often wired into the wall, and at least in my circles, women don’t wear as much fancy jewelry or mink as they used to. For a while, small electronics made up the cash gap for burglars, muggers, and purse snatchers, but cell phone manufacturers are putting in “kill switches” starting in 2015, which will torpedo that market.

Well, perhaps in years to come thieves will turn to technology to improve their productivity. I don’t know how, but then again, we rarely predict technological revolutions in advance, do we? Maybe new smartphone apps will allow thieves to target more lucrative mugging victims? Or geolocation apps will predict which homes are likely to contain the most easily fencible items? Or maybe sophisticated data mining operations will produce new and innovative opportunities for blackmail. Beats me. But somehow offense and defense always seem to keep up with each other, don’t they?

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Nothing Left to Steal?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 11 July 2014

by JIGAlyciajpbd Posted on July 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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For a variety of reasons, fresh catblogging just didn’t happen this week. So I’m going to do what everyone else does when they fail to meet an editorial deadline: run some old stuff and pretend it’s an extra-special feature. So here you are: rarely seen archival footage from January 14, 2007, Domino’s first day at home after we picked her up from the shelter. As you can see, she immediately made her way to a book about a magical cat who refrains from eating its shipmate. This was a good influence, I think.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 11 July 2014

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A Progress Report on "Reform Conservatism"

by CarltonBragg Posted on July 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Does the new generation of “reform conservatives” represent real change for the Republican Party? In policy terms, not really. They’ve offered up a few variations on popular conservative themes (reducing taxes via child tax credits instead of cuts in top marginal rates, for example), but for the most part they’ve just nibbled around the edges. David Frum, however, says this is still a good start:

What matters most about the reformers is not the things they say but the things they don’t. They don’t abuse the long-term unemployed. They don’t advocate tighter monetary policy in the midst of the worst slump since the 1930s. They don’t urge an immigration policy intended to drive wages even lower than they have already tumbled.

They don’t pooh-pooh the risks of a government default on its obligations, as many conservatives did when radicals in the GOP forced debt-ceiling confrontations in 2011 and 2013. They don’t blame budget deficits for the slow recovery from the crisis of 2009. They don’t shrug off the economic and social troubles of 80 percent of the American nation.

Fair enough. At the same time, there have always been successful conservatives who were tonally distinct from the tea party. Paul Ryan is the best-known example. He’s mild-mannered and speaks in the language of an accountant. He always seems reasonable and willing to engage. He doesn’t participate in tea party histrionics. In short, he doesn’t say any of the things Frum mentions above.

And yet, Ryan remains a tea party darling, and for good reason: his budget is a radically right-wing enterprise. Perhaps the most genuinely radical, genuinely right-wing enterprise in all of Washington.

So the question for the reform conservatives is: What’s next? Are they trying to build credibility with conservatives so they can later nudge them in a new direction? Or are they mostly just trying to put a friendly veneer on an essentially tea partyish agenda? We don’t know yet, because so far they haven’t been willing to take many risks. And with good reason. As a friend emailed just a few minutes ago, “The reformers are one bad suggestion away from being fully Frumanized out of the party.”

I wish the reformers luck. And I don’t really blame them for their timidity so far. Still, it’s far too early to tell how serious they are. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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A Progress Report on "Reform Conservatism"

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Does Financial Literacy Matter?

by Joellen54X Posted on July 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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We recently received the grim news that American schoolkids are behind their international peers when it comes to financial literacy. We can add this to the pile of grim news about American schoolkids being behind their international peers in math, science, reading, and every other subject imaginable.

Is this actually true? Well, it depends on which tests you rely on and which countries you compare to. And when you disaggregate by income and race you often end up with different results. Still, it’s a good horror story, and one we can’t seem to get enough of. The financial literacy debacle fits right in.

But forget for a moment whether American high school students really suck at financial literacy. The Economist raises an entirely different question: does it even matter?

Perhaps most important, courses in personal finance do not appear to have an impact on adult behaviour. As Buttonwood has pointed out, the knowledge that students acquire in school when they are in their teens does not necessary translate into action when they have to deal with mortgages and credit-card payments later in life. One study, for example, found that financial education has no impact on household saving behaviour. As a paper by Lewis Mandell and Linda Schmid Klein suggests, the long-term effectiveness of high-school classes in financial literacy is highly doubtful. It may simply be the case that the gap in time is too wide between when individuals acquire their financial knowledge, as high-school students, and when they’re in a position to apply what they have learned.

Now, I’ve long had my doubts whether any of the actual knowledge I learned in high school matters. Habits matter. Basic skills matter. The ability to figure out how to figure out stuff matters. Learning to sit still and concentrate for half an hour at a time matters. But trigonometry? Catcher in the Rye? The history of the Gilded Age? That’s not so clear. Maybe financial literacy falls into the same category.

Alternatively, it may be that education has little impact on our behavior in general. We all know that the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more, and yet that knowledge does us little good. Most of us overeat anyway. Likewise, even if we know that interest charges on credit card debt can eat us alive, we might just go ahead and buy that snazzy new big-screen TV anyway.

Who knows? Maybe education outside of (a) basic skills and (b) highly specific skills used in our professions really doesn’t matter much. If that turned out to be true, I can’t say it would surprise me an awful lot. Being a Renaissance Man may be overrated.

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Does Financial Literacy Matter?

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Quote of the Day: "This Isn’t Theater"

by DanutaBertie Posted on July 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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From President Obama, asked why he wasn’t making a visit to the border during his trip to Texas today:

This isn’t theater. This is a problem.

“I’m not interested in a photo-op,” he said. “I’m interested in solving a problem.” It would be nice if he weren’t the only one.

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Quote of the Day: "This Isn’t Theater"

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Will TSA Soon Have Bins Full of Dead Smartphones?

by TerryQnhtwe Posted on July 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Security screening at airports for certain flights to the United States is about to get even more annoying:

As the traveling public knows, all electronic devices are screened by security officers. During the security examination, officers may also ask that owners power up some devices, including cell phones. Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft. The traveler may also undergo additional screening.

Two comments. First: this is new? I remember being asked to turn on laptops and such before business flights in 2002-03. In fact, I distinctly remember one flight where some poor guy was running around in a panic asking everyone if they had a charger for an IBM Thinkpad because TSA wanted him to power it up. I happened to be using a Thinkpad in those days and came to his rescue. But I haven’t traveled on business for a long time, so maybe TSA gave up on this years ago.

Second: lots of us have had the experience of having to toss out a bottle of liquid or a pocket knife at a TSA checkpoint. But a cell phone? That’s a whole different animal. If TSA starts forcing people to toss their $500 smartphones into a bin, never to be seen again, there’s going to be some serious public outrage. Is that really going to start happening?

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Will TSA Soon Have Bins Full of Dead Smartphones?

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There’s a Pitched Battle Being Fought Over the Phrase “Added Sugars”

by HarrietCooke Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

What do the following organizations have in common?

American Bakers Association
American Beverage Association
American Frozen Foods Institute
Corn Refiners Association
National Confectioners Association
American Frozen Food Institute
Sugar Association
International Dairy Foods Association

Answer: they are all furiously opposed to an FDA proposal that would add a line to the standard nutrition facts label for “Added Sugars.” Big surprise, eh? Roberto Ferdman explains here why it’s probably a good idea anyway.

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There’s a Pitched Battle Being Fought Over the Phrase “Added Sugars”

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Does America Finally Have World Cup Fever?

by EddieStreeton Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

I’ve been reading a lot of articles about how this year’s World Cup is a lot more popular in America than any previous World Cup. I’ve also read several backlash pieces debunking the idea that we’re all about to go soccer mad. I’m not sure which to believe.

But there really does seem to be something different this year. I’ve personally watched all or most of the World Cup games so far, and I’m pretty sure that in past years I’ve hardly watched any. Why? Beats me. I’m not really any more interested in soccer than I’ve ever been.

Or am I? As kind of a joke, I started rooting for Manchester United back in 2008 because they were sponsored by AIG. After the US government basically took over AIG, I figured that meant Man U was America’s team. But joke though it may have been, over the last few years I have indeed found myself checking the Premier League standings periodically and even watching the odd match when it appears on American TV. Perhaps that’s primed me to look forward to the World Cup.

Or maybe it’s just time zones. This is the first World Cup since 1994 that Americans could watch live at a reasonable hour. And we all know that being able to watch live is critical to sports viewership.1 So maybe that’s all it is.

How about you? Have you been watching more World Cup than usual this year? Why? Is it because you care more about soccer than you used to? Or something else?

1Except for the Olympics, for some reason.

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Does America Finally Have World Cup Fever?

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