JayB

How'd he plan to vote on the free trade deal with Columbia?

I suspect you are correct. As with Bear Sterns is the short (or perhaps not so short) term pain be worth maintaining the long term balance? I think the two scenarios are different enough to warrant different approaches. It seems likely that the government assisted liquidation of Bear Stearns may have made things better, and it seems possible that an attempt to legislate the transfer the losses from homeowners to other parties could actually make things worse. Housing prices will come down to their equilibrium level one way or another, and that level will likely be at prices where the tax adjusted costs of renting and owning are much closer to one another than they are now.* This will happen irrespective of the actions the government takes to modify the loans of individual mortgage holders. Even if the government forces the lenders to take a big enough haircut on the principal to put the home-owner in the black, and gives them a subsidized loan - the value of the home will revert to its equilibrium level. The only action that they could take that would conceivably maintain the rent-own delta at its current levels would be to crank up the subsidies to the point where the tax-adjusted costs of owning and renting are roughly equalized. The gap between current home values and this equilibrium point is probably somewhere in the 1-2 trillion range, and the only question is who is going to eat the losses. If you force feed a disproportionate share of the losses to lenders or mortgage bondholders, there's a real risk that credit will contract even more severely than it would have as a result of the losses that lenders had to eat because of the idiotic lending decisions that they made. This could ultimately drive home values even lower than they would have gone if the government had done nothing - which would drive the costs associated with any bailout still higher. There's the separate question of a housing driven recession, but I think that's also inevitable, and any policy changes that exacerbate the already staggering capital misallocation into real-estate will ultimately have greater economic costs than the said recession. Since it looks like there will be a bailout of some kind, I'd like to see tight limits on who gets the money (which would exclude the examples given above, and far more), and enact conditions that would transfer the upside)(up to the amount of the aid) to the government in the event of a recovery. *There will probably be a lingering tax-adjusted premium that people are willing to pay to own in many places, but that will be substantially less than at the height of the bubble.

One of the most loathesome and wholly unnecessary elements of the current bailout provision to surface thus far has been the extension of the "loss-back" provision for the big home-builders. If it passes, they'll be able to book the losses on the excess land that they purchased at the height of the bubble, the spec McMansions they threw up on the said land, etc - count the losses that they realize on these transactions against profits that they made up to four years ago - and have Uncle Same send them checks equal to the tax differential between their pre and post loss-back profits.

If you inserted language into the bailout legislation that stipulated that the bailee had to transfer any appreciation up to the amount of money the government extended to keep them in their home a pre-condition for assistance, that'd make for an interesting experiment. Judging by the results of the fed-study, I suspect that there'd be a substantial percentage who'd sooner accept foreclosure than make the sacrifices necessary to make an infinite succession of mortgage payments if there was no financial upside, or someone else got first crack at the majority of it.

I've been camped at the cusp of the Morraine during a warm-up in April and watched every-single-aspect on Dragontail and the surrounding peaks release mutiple times, starting about an hour of sunhit. Quite a show. Nothing cut loose on the Colchuck glacier or on the Colcjuck couloirs that weekend, since they seemed to be in the shade in the afternoon, but YMMV. This was in late April, and there'd been a few inches of new snow a few days before, but I suspect the slopes had already cut loose a few times during previous melt-freeze cycles. If this is the first major thaw, then I suspect that the ampitheather will sound like O'Hare on the day before Thanksgiving.

We already bailed out the banks because they fucked up loaning to these people, why shouldn't we bail out the others? Avalanches are statistical phenomena as well. Some people knowingly take risks and suceed, some people are stupid and suceed, some people knowingly take risks and fail, some people are stupid and fail. Calling all participants stupid shows you are the stupid one Where would you draw the line for inclusion in the bailout, btw? Second home purchases and other "investment" properties? All cash out refis, even those conducted in the absence of documentable hardship? Incomes over 100K? Any exclusions for fraudulent applications?

We already bailed out the banks because they fucked up loaning to these people, why shouldn't we bail out the others? Avalanches are statistical phenomena as well. Some people knowingly take risks and suceed, some people are stupid and suceed, some people knowingly take risks and fail, some people are stupid and fail. Calling all participants stupid shows you are the stupid one http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2007/wp0715.pdf

Sounds like you should fund your next gear acquisition binge by borrowing money directly from Carl...

The soy lobby effectively suppressed the detailed polling data that the government has amassed during every census cycle. It's currently being held under lock and key at Ted Haggard's compound in Colorado Springs. Don't be surprised if you see him knocking on doors in your neighborhood, attempting to validate the data..

Didn't offer that article up to dispute the original article's content, just to suggest a hitherto unacknowledged strategic alternative - promote soy consumption amongst the Iranian elite....

More from the World Net Daily, source of the above article: "Soy is making kids 'gay' There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food. The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore. (Column continues below) I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens. Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally. In fetal development, the default is being female. All humans (even in old age) tend toward femininity. The main thing that keeps men from diverging into the female pattern is testosterone, and testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen. If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal. Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them. Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it's a classic example of a cure that's worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it's far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal. Research in 2000 showed that a soy-based diet at any age can lead to a weak thyroid, which commonly produces heart problems and excess fat. Could this explain the dramatic increase in obesity today? Recent research on rats shows testicular atrophy, infertility and uterus hypertrophy (enlargement). This helps explain the infertility epidemic and the sudden growth in fertility clinics. But alas, by the time a soy-damaged infant has grown to adulthood and wants to marry, it's too late to get fixed by a fertility clinic. Worse, there's now scientific evidence that estrogen ingredients in soy products may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children. In the latest year we have numbers for, new cases in the U.S. jumped 27 percent. In one year! There's also a serious connection between soy and cancer in adults – especially breast cancer. That's why the governments of Israel, the UK, France and New Zealand are already cracking down hard on soy. In sad contrast, 60 percent of the refined foods in U.S. supermarkets now contain soy. Worse, soy use may double in the next few years because (last I heard) the out-of-touch medicrats in the FDA hierarchy are considering allowing manufacturers of cereal, energy bars, fake milk, fake yogurt, etc., to claim that "soy prevents cancer." It doesn't. P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu." http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327

does he come complete with promises of young nubiles and many goats and maybe a mercedes or two? Only then will I defend Him! Perhaps he comes with promises of love and compassion? Will I defend him then? Just who is this Leegnar you speak of? The Moses of his time and place, if you will... "I have to say that while I'm not terribly impressed by Moses, I'm not a huge fan Leegnar, the warrior priest who channeled the divine wisdom of Rixtnosophlib, the vengeful goat-man-python god at the heart of the Quixtanthor people who fluorished briefly in a remote corner of what is now French Guiana 1500 years ago, before being wiped out by a catastrophic mudslide." Ask of Rixtnosophlib - a deity with objective evidence to support his existence that's every bit as compelling as the deity(ies) at the center of many such discussions - and ye shall receive. Just as a precaution, stay away from steep, waterlogged slopes when doing so. Folks who constructed their homes on the steep slopes in the greater Seattle area would do well to contemplate the fate of the Quixtanthor people, and engage in the appropriate supplications prior to the next Pineapple Express rolls into town...

Without KK's extension, it seems like an injunction against rendering any moral judgments about anything. If Nihilism was your religion, then the unextended aphorism would be a good match for the creed.

This has to be one of the most pathetic and profoundly wrongheaded moral injunctions of all time, don't you think? and misquoted (or incompletely quoted): judge not lest thee be judged BY THE SAME MEASURE Definitely an improvement there.

Is the lightning hazard in the Sierra's in the summer anything like the lightning hazard in the Colorado Rockies? Can't remember a single alpine route that I climbed when I wasn't looking over my shoulder and wondering when the bolts would start raining down - even when the sky was clear...

This has to be one of the most pathetic and profoundly wrongheaded moral injunctions of all time, don't you think?

From Hitchens: "Implicit in this ancient chestnut of an argument is the further -- and equally disagreeable -- self-satisfaction that simply assumes, whether or not religion is metaphysically "true," that at least it stands for morality. Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship also reject many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times included the slaughter of other "tribes," the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the condemnation of sexual "deviants" and the eating of certain foods, the opposition to innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of predestination, the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of "deicide," the absurdity of "Limbo," the horror of suicide-bombing and jihad, and the ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice. Of course Gerson will -- and must -- cherry-pick this list (which is by no means exhaustive) and patter on about how one mustn't be too literal. But in doing this, he makes a huge concession to the ethical humanism to which he so loftily condescends. The game is given away by his own use of G.K. Chesterton's invocation of Thor. We laugh at this dead god, but were not Norse children told that without Valhalla there would be no courage and no moral example? Isn't it true that Louis Farrakhan's crackpot racist group gets young people off drugs? Doesn't Hamas claim to provide social services to the downtrodden? If you credit any one religion with motivating good deeds, how (without declaring yourself to be sectarian) can you avoid crediting them all? And is not endless warfare between the faiths to be added to the list of horrors I just mentioned? Just look at how the "faith-based" are behaving in today's Iraq. Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first -- I have been asking it for some time -- awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain. Essentially conceding that philosophy and secularism do not condemn their adherents to lives of unbridled selfishness, and that (say) the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay, and also that we could not have evolved unless human solidarity was in some way innate, Gerson ends weakly by posing what is a rather moving problem. "In a world without God," he writes, "this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution but designed for disappointment." Again, he substitutes the wish for the thought. We very probably are, as he admits, not the designed objects of the Big Bang or of the process of natural selection. But this sober conclusion, objective as it is, is surely preferable to the delusion that we have been created diseased, by a capricious despot, and then abruptly commanded to be whole and well, on pain of terror and torture. That sick joke is one that we can cease to find impressive, that belongs in the infancy of our species, and gives a false picture of reality that we would do well to outgrow."

Will no one stand up and defend the honor of the Prophet Leegnar, apostle of the Man/Goat/Snake God?

jeez man, you crack me up! the peaceful rarely grab the headlines.... check out an enlightened christian: thomas merton. there are many, but he springs to mind. Shelby Spong... "Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these: 1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found. 2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. 3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. 4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible. 5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. 6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. 7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history. 8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age. 9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time. 10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. 11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior. 12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. So I set these theses today before the Christian world and I stand ready to debate each of them as we prepare to enter the third millennium." http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/reform.html

Yea - pretty much runs the gamut of the factors that coalesced into modernity. Renaissance, Enlightenment, constitutional government, separation of powers, scientific method and all of the fruits thereof, art, literature, philosophy, etc, etc, etc. The extent to which economic processes which established powerful interests that were independent of the church and the crown shouldn't be underestimated either. Ingersoll hinted at the idea that most of what moderated the stridency of religious certitude originated from sources outside the established religion back in the nineteenth century. I can't recall a passage where he states this explicitly, but there's a passage that gets close that I can recall. From, "The Devil,": "Many of the clergy are now ashamed to say that they believe in devils. The belief has become ignorant and vulgar. They are ashamed of the lake of fire and brimstone. It is too savage. At the same time they do not wish to give up the inspiration of the Bible. They give new meanings to the inspired words. Now they say that devils were only personifications of evil. If the devils were only personifications of evil what were the angels? Was the angel who told Joseph who the father of Christ was, a personification? Was the Holy Ghost only the personification of a father? Was the angel who told Joseph that Herod was dead a personification of news? Were the angels who rolled away the stone and sat clothed in shining garments in the empty sepulcher of Christ a couple of personifications? Were all the angels described in the Old Testament imaginary shadows -- bodiless personifications? If the angels of the Bible are real angels, the devils are real devils. Let us be honest with ourselves and each other and give to the Bible its natural, obvious meaning. Let us admit that the writers believed what they wrote. If we believe that they were mistaken, let us have the honesty and courage to say so. Certainly we have no right to change or avoid their meaning, or to dishonestly correct their mistakes. Timid preachers sully their own souls when they change what the writers of the Bible believed to be facts to allegories, parables, poems and myths. It is impossible for any man who believes in the inspiration of the Bible to explain away the Devil. If the Bible is true the Devil exists. There is no escape from this. If the Devil does not exist the Bible is not true. There is no escape from this." http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/devil.html Worth reading all of it, and following the link to the many other essays. Worth noting that he was a prominent figure in the Republican party at the time...

The essential point is that the forces that have moderated religious fanaticism have generally had their origin and their strongest reservoirs of support outside of religion itself.

If you are describing his argument correctly, Richard Dawkins clearly does not understand a key aspect of Christianity: Christians are not bound by the old testament law. Christians really only have one law: love thy neighbour. If Dawkins doesn't understand this, it brings the whole bookinto question. Private religion? I have to say that while I'm not terribly impressed by Moses, I'm not a huge fan Leegnar, the warrior priest who channeled the divine wisdom of Rixtnosophlib, the vengeful goat-man-python god at the heart of the Quixtanthor people who fluorished briefly in a remote corner of what is now French Guiana 1500 years ago, before being wiped out by a catastrophic mudslide. I hope I haven't offended anyone.

This was one of the more interesting tidbits in that article: "Two years later, in the tax-reform act of 1986, Congress ended the deductibility of interest on credit-card and other consumer loans; it left the mortgage deduction in place."

Bullshit. Certain individuals here are doing far more than avoiding a religious taboo. Saying "fuck Moses" is far beyond merely refusing to abide by some taboo, it's intentionally maximizing offensiveness and contempt. In such a case just about any response - including those images - can hardly be faulted as "over the bounds". The bounds have already been overshot. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. What distinguishes your position here from the Muslims upset about cartoon images of Mohammed in Danish newspapers? I'm not suggesting that they're completely identitical, but what, in your opinion, distinguishes your arguments from theirs on this point? Those muslims have every right to be offended. They can boycott companies that publish or broadcast the images, they can send letters to the editor, they can have peaceful protests. They can even tell all of us who laugh at the images and mock them to go fuck ourselves. They can NOT make death threats, set off bombs, call for jihad, etc. It's pretty fucking clear, no? I agree - they are free to do all of those things, but it seems like the entire spectrum of actions that we've seen from them have their genesis in the same sense of outrage at others mocking some particular aspect of their faith that they deem sacred. I'm not sure how much of what we know about Jesus the historical figure is accurate, but how well does the outrage and anger that you feel square with the picture that believers have constructed over many centuries? Would Jesus - as you understand him - be overcome with anger if he saw someone taking a leak on his image or mocking some element of his faith?

You may have heard the expression: "is nothing sacred"? The answer is, yes, some things are to many people, and very deeply so(including at least six million people who were murdered for their religious beliefs or associated ethnicity.) In a free society, you can piss all over Christianity, Judaism, or whatever, but again, don't expect that you won't be called out on it. You should be. Some of us don't believe in sitting around and watching it treated like some big joke. By responding, at least the awareness is being spread that some people really care about this stuff and maybe you'll reconsider the nature of your ugly comments next time. I doubt it, but maybe. Outside of the settings I mentioned previously - particular religious ceremonies that you are attending as a guest, when you are a guest in a religious persons home - etc, what moral case can be made for a state of affairs in which those outside of a particular religion have to treat a particular belief or figure associated with that religion as sacred? I've run across people who believe that refusing to provide the appropriate medical care that their children need to live is as sacred and inviolable as your fondness for Moses. Is this, and the many other occasions in which a particular set of religious convictions intrude on public life or on matters of public concern also off limits?