pro-life?

Doesn't seem like it me

Back to the whole Carlin reference, "these people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors." And I still might agree the most ardent pro-life people are more like anti-woman people, though in this instance they only targeted the male doctor who performed their abortions and not bombed the clinic where he did so. "They" did however vandalize it repeatedly causing thousands of dollars of damages. Going back to my little diatribe on abortion debates, it looks perfectly well like we aren't prepared to have any sort of actual debate still.

So long as people are so virulently opposed to one another that some are prepared to kill their debate opponents we can continue shouting at each other and nothing will happen that advances the policies on this issue of this country in any direction whatsoever.

the ability to waste hours of time is insignificant next to...

the power of the internet

So yeah, I discovered that reading other people's blogs and newsworthy event coverage (at least, of the sort I'm accustomed to, not the sort that passes for news for most people) is not nearly taking up enough time in the day. Taking a series of tests on various types of bodies of water on the globe, African cities and capitals, and baseball records managed to soak up plenty of time.

I determined that I absolutely crush almost all people on basic quizzes of the pointless factual data involving Africa (large cities, capitals, rivers, GDP). And baseball records of course.

yup, this is our country

huh?

Yes, razor companies are apparently desperate to sell more razors. I understand the economics of stuff like this completely. They've always been good at selling the disposables as a continuous investment that people overspend on. Looking at the actual ad campaigns (Gillette has one too) they advise the use of a "fresh blade". Never mind that a "fresh blade" isn't actually the best to use for shaving any region of the body, simply because it must be "broken in" to remove the sort of coating that razor companies put over the blade. And never mind that it's made of metal and body hair would have to be lined with sand to make a significant dent in its cutting power to change a "fresh blade" into a blade one throws away as useless. It's the water and soap that kill the things, not the art of shaving. Anywhere.

But I don't buy the wackiness that surrounds it. If you're going to trim off hair to make a penis look larger how small was it to begin with (or conversely that seems like it would take a awful lot of hair to cause size disparities)? There's probably more convincing reasons to do this.

and yes, we're still stuck on stupid with drugs

They probably started off with milk and then went to beer

I love the beat down issued to the gateway theory on drugs and the zero fatality reference on pot. At least some sanity is being issued regarding the stupid and indefensible theories thrown up by parental advocacy and the present wasteful drug war policies that espouses.

Tennessee (Cohen's home state) has a rather odd conglomeration of drug policies regarding pot itself. For example, they charge a fine on top of any possession penalty for failing to register use or distribution of pot with the state licensing bureau even though it is illegal to distribute or use.

more madness

Having survived the Memorial Day marathon of old war movies ; TCM had better ones than AMC, other than Patton and Longest Day the usual AMC rotation of war movies is pretty bleh, River Kwai on the other hand as the excellent ending with "Madness!". Upon which I provide the amusing and ever accelerating departure of "conservatives" from political theater with this line:

"As for appealing to people, if I say I have a very large following in broadcast and print media, the likely response would be, “well, what does that have to do with the substance of my criticism.”"

Uh. Yes, what does that have to do with the substance? Who cares how many people listen dutifully to what you are saying, the question is still "does what you say mean anything outside the echo chamber in which you exist?" or "is what you are saying based on anything other than the fact that you have a microphone in your face and people are listening to you?". You know like reason and facts?

Sotomayor

SCOTUS appointee announced

First a couple of ground game arguments. Every time there's an appointment to be made at the highest levels, there often comes up these arguments that "we should appoint a (insert historically oppressed minority/female)". These arguments are dismissible in the point of finding "the most qualified candidate". And that's fine. The problem has been that there has rarely been a determined search to find "the most qualified candidates" and that this results in people picking familiar faces. The second problem is that to all political appointments, there is a political dynamic. And therefore the question of whether to appoint a woman or a Hispanic (and in this case, both, and one who grew up from a poor section of the Bronx as a child of immigrants to boot) to any post is potentially politically useful. That has to be accepted just as the argument that any candidate should be "the most qualified" available. Whatever that means. And picking someone from two more divided political voting blocs (poor immigrants and women) while letting the GOP try to figure out ways to attack her record without looking like a collection of racist misogynists is a political move of some worthy consideration.

Second major problem: the average person's political involvement in the Supreme Court only surfaces at the time of some appointments. Even this is tenuous at best. Most people are dramatically unfamiliar with court rulings and the value of them as a Constitutional force, for good or ill. The Court itself seems to have cultivated a sense of removal and cloak of mystery around it (though this is hardly true to people who follow it with some scrutiny). The people who are picked to serve on the highest bench are often unknown quantities to most Americans, their decisions only rarely significantly known and studied, and their ideologies always measured in a left-right dynamic that leaves much to be desired (particularly with regard to use of state authority and civil rights). Students of law or followers of the legal realm even are often only vaguely associated with each prospective candidate. The general public's exposure to judicial philosophy and the scrutiny of a few selected speeches or written decisions through Congressional hearings is either cherry-picked at best or a woefully inadequate understanding of the underlying theories at worst. With so much disinterest and misinformation, it is understandable that only a few core issues would emerge as worth pointing toward for each prospective judge for the general public. In this matter, we will find very little to interest opponents of say, legalized abortion, simply because it would be unreasonable to suggest that a "liberal" be replaced with an opposing ideological balance by a "liberal" administration. So a protracted grilling over some sort of "litmus test" on abortion is unlikely to resonate or be an effective strategy.

Of particular note to most casual observers is the decision on the New Haven firefighter case (essentially involving Affirmative Action). But so far as I can tell, she didn't actually add much to discuss over that particular case, merely agreeing with a previously adjudicated position from a lower court. It was sort of like punting on third down. The case itself came up in the Supreme Court case load this past session, mostly as a result of there being a rather basic going over in these lower courts. As a result, it would be useful to see what her basic judicial philosophy would be on things like civil rights and affirmative action, simply because the most recent and famous case she handled on those issues she really didn't say anything.

We can imagine that she has a particular viewpoint on labour rights, from the baseball strike (it is unfortunate however that baseball keeps dragging itself in government focus). And that this viewpoint is somewhat at odds with many conservative commentators (and economists). But this seems like the only significant point of contention that we might enter into this process with a level of certainty over. There's the insignificant but politically hazardous: "Court of Appeals makes the law" quote to get exercised over, but this is sort of like atheists tweaking the noses of religious fundamentalists. Court figures do in a way determine the law by deciding whether a law is functional, applicable, and operates fairly and within the boundaries that our legal system requires. That isn't "judicial activism", certainly not of the sort that the phrase "judicial empathy" espouses to most conservatives. So I don't see what the problem here would be.

538 already looked her over for the previous Congressional confirmations for her Appeals seats and found that a couple prominent GOP members already voted for her in the past (Hatch in particular since he sits on the Senate Judiciary committee). It will be interesting to see if they do so now, or why they might change their minds. But it doesn't seem like they'll be able to throw up enough roadblocks to stop a successful nomination campaign anyway. They may be better off politically not running with their accepted party line of "no" and trying to figure out a way to support this woman, or at least, not be seen as directly opposing her.

Instead of flailing about with my own marginally improved data set of conclusions, I'll simply refer any interested party to a couple people who seem more interested in following legal decisions with vigorous tenacity and who seem to be roughly in my ballpark on ideological perspectives.
Volokh

Bazelon

another interesting idea that'll never happen

Hong Kong is everywhere now

So it might be neat to see say Nairobi work as an invested city-state with relative independence. The trick as I see it isn't getting the developing nations on board (some of them already see the potential here), it's getting the developed nations on board to do it or developing a means of apportioning who gets what city-state governance. The developing world gets the advantage of a less corrupt city-state around which to model it's economic development and toward which investment would flow more easily (rather than "aid"), and the developed world gets to profit for a little while, say 100 years, and then gets a respectable trading partner that grew out of it. And that means the trick is determining who gets to call the shots where and then the question becomes how the Canadian or Finnish economic zones would grow.

sooooo..what does this mean?

REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.

QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …

REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

I don't follow how they'd have to be "released" in order to put them into prison. I presume they could mean by following due process of law and having a trial, but it would be a simple matter of denying bail owing to the charges involved.

Democrats, upon reflection, are really lucky to have Obama around. Because Reid and Pelosi are looking increasingly dumb (and Biden's not much help either).

Let me know when someone is actually proposing releasing these terrorists on American soil. That would be a fun argument. This is mere stupidity of the highest order.

Mississippi is like Bosnia

And Arkansas is like Russia

And Cuba is better off than both of them. Human development index is a more expansive measure than pure economic activity (like GDP). You're also looking at education and literacy, basic health. Iceland and other Scandinavian countries typically top the list. But when you break states off independently, we can see there's a core, mostly of the NE but also some other big states spread throughout the country, that fare just about as well as any nation in the world. The problem is that there's this core of Southern states that fare just about as badly as developing nations that drags the total national average down. Basically if you live in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, West Virginia, or Mississippi, you're living in a third world country. Presumably we could isolate further down and look at individual counties within these states and find that some of the cities might be doing fairly well within them, but others not so much.

What would be the cause of this disparity? Well educational systems in New England and portions of the Midwest are far superior when one breaks out individual state scores on international educational rankings. And the vast majority of the least healthy states are in that list as well. Now within the comments people are quibbling because there's Wal-Marts all over the place to make goods and services cheap and affordable. Likewise, the vast expense of buying arable or inhabitable land in California or NYC may inflate the GDP figures there. There may be a reason to adjust for cost of living within a nominal GDP calculation. But it would seem obvious that general lack of economic activity given within a cheap retail environment and a basically rural area with an undereducated and unhealthy population isn't a recipe for future growth either.

One other interesting part is the political disparity that this creates: the lower states also tended to go vote for "conservatives". In reference to the general anti-intellectual basis that "conservatives" have come to represent, this isn't terribly surprising that the least educated or developed states would somehow come to demand less progressive policies.

More interesting still is this map. Take a look at the Eastern economic development zones versus the rest of the country... You can clearly see Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou/Hong Kong. And then there's Tibet.

credit companies get tightened

credit crunching the numbers

I only see one provision that will have some long-term unintended consequences: restricting issuing credit cards to people under 21. That's a good trick to quickly build up your credit if you're under 21, but this is balanced by the tendency of such people to 1) have no income and 2) rack up debts. It will have the effect of slowing the ability of people getting access to credit, and thus make mortgage rates potentially higher in the long run for many (or boost the re-fi markets).

The rest of these provisions seem reasonable and account for a number of bad faith practices.
1) Statements to be mailed out faster. This was a trick being used for people who still used snail mail for their payments (most people). The statement arrives with only a few days left to pay on it. Similarly if a payment was processed slowly, say by intentionally putting the due date on a weekend when it wouldn't have gone through anyway, there shouldn't be a fee assessed. Credit companies have used both of these tricks against their customers for a while.

2) 45 days instead of 15 to change rates. This gives people an extra month to make extra payments at a lower interest rate. Fine with that. There's also an added grace period of an extra month to account for the possibility of someone goofing up once or twice and making a single payment late (or not at all) rather than providing a record of being chronically late and/or missing payments entirely. Gotcha rates, the promotional introductory rate that gets advertised on the envelope rather than the actual long term interest rate that comes sort of prominently in the mice type legalese, would have to last longer and rates generally would be frozen for the first year. I do foresee this may impact the ability of people with poorer credit getting access to credit, but since this sort of method has been used to jack up interest rates on people and cycle them into debt spirals rather than help them build up credit (predatory lending of a sort), I'm not all that worried about it. If poor people cannot get access to credit cards, they have one less source of poverty on one point but one less way out if they're smart about them. This is rare.

3) Rates reduce back to a previously agreed level after a payment on-time period is demonstrated. I have not quite understood why credit companies haven't done this in the past. Or why they've arbitrarily raised rates without a late payment (though there are some goofy reasons, such as a reduced credit score for this).

Now if they can get some rules to apply to bank debit cards with a credit logo on them we're doing good.

Of course, the Senate version has a nice rider attached that has something to do with gun restrictions in national parks. I can see what that has to do with credit cards...