Insiders dominate Cuomo's transition team

Hmm, now when did we last see anything like this? How is it possible to overhaul a system (or bring "change") when you're relying on the same old crowd? Nobody is suggesting hiring idiots without experience (OK, except maybe Palin) but this transition team represents everything that is wrong with the system these days. Political leaders all rely too much on the same old insiders and special interests who mucked up the system in the first place. NY Times:

When Andrew M. Cuomo named members to his transition committees this month, he described them as experienced leaders with broad experience in the public and the private sectors, selected to help him recruit the best and brightest New Yorkers to his new administration.

But another group is also heavily represented: Campaign contributors to Mr. Cuomo, lobbyists and others likely to seek access to the new administration as the next governor grapples with an enormous state budget gap and issues that include natural gas drilling in the Catskills and overhauling the state Medicaid system.

Of the more than 170 people named to one of Mr. Cuomo’s 7 transition committees or his new council of economic advisers, 84 are registered lobbyists or work for businesses, trade associations or labor unions that lobbied state government last year, according to a review of state lobbying records.

Read the rest of this post...

Teenager arrested in attempted town Christmas tree lighting, car bomb

That's it. Bring in the TSA to search every last Christmas tree in America, including the trees already set up inside and in your yard. Porno-scanners need to be installed on every last block, in front of every tree and in front of every car. People must be ready for full pat-downs before buying a tree or starting their car. We really don't have any other choice. If we don't the bad guys will have won. Obviously it's critical that as a nation, we overreact and implement plans that fight the last incident. The Independent:

A Somali-born teenager was arrested yesterday for attempting to detonate what he thought was a car bomb at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Oregon, US authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in connection with an alleged plot to bomb the annual event in downtown Portland, the FBI said in a statement late yesterday.

The bomb was a fake and had been provided to Mohamud as part of a long-term sting by the FBI. It also said Mohamud had been in contact with an unnamed individual overseas believed to be involved in terrorist activities.

Just a guess, but maybe actual intelligence operations like this are more helpful than the security theater that's generally favored in Washington. Read the rest of this post...

TSA's own guidelines allow photographs to be taken

In practice, this has not always been the case. It really wouldn't be the TSA though if they decided that they can do pretty much whatever they want to do, regulations be damned. (It's hard to imagine private security who operate at some airports would be much different. Even worse, they're even less accountable.) If the country is going to be subjected to this silly security theater, people should at least have the right to photograph these ridiculous actions. After all, if the TSA guidelines say it's OK, then it should be OK. Maybe it's time the full guidelines are printed and clearly posted at every TSA site, just in case there's another debate. An available hotline that is available on the spot isn't such a bad idea either. Forbes:

My wife and I arrived at the airport for our annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage Tuesday evening, and like millions of others, came face-to-face with the TSA’s upgraded security measures. I breezed through; My wife, who apparently looks far more dangerous than I do, was pulled aside for a pat-down.

Her frisker was very polite and the procedure was barely invasive, if a bit more aggressive than in the past. But while she was being systematically searched from head to toe, I pulled out my BlackBerry to take some pictures and record a souvenir of the Great Gropefest of 2010. Within seconds I was being shouted at sternly by another TSA agent, who told me that “either you stop taking pictures, or I take your camera.” When I asked him why I couldn’t take photos of my wife in a public place, he said that it was “against the rules.”

The right to photography at TSA checkpoints matters: I was mostly hoping to show my wife her ridiculous facial expressions as she received “love pats” from a stranger. Others might hope to document real TSA abuses, or point out dangerous vulnerabilities in its security measures.

Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: The instability of political moderation

Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have reflective posts about the state of economics and the U.S. economy. Both pieces are thoughtful and attempt the long view. Here I'll highlight the Krugman post.

In a piece entitled "The Instability of Moderation", Krugman tries to determine why the economic-political consensus, which has ruled the policy world for the last 75 years, has failed. (I'm counting roughly since 1935.)

In the same way that our modern "managed markets" were not supposed to fail, and hadn't since the New Deal era, modern market management policy, enacted by political and economic elites working together, was not supposed to fail.

Yet both did fail. In 2008 the market itself came close to completely apart. Krugman notes that the cause was that the policy consensus, the tool by which markets were corrected, had already come apart. He wonders why that occurred.

But watching the failure of policy over the past three years, I find myself believing, more and more, that this failure has deep roots – that we were in some sense doomed to go through this. Specifically, I now suspect that the kind of moderate economic policy regime Brad and I both support – a regime that by and large lets markets work, but in which the government is ready both to rein in excesses and fight slumps – is inherently unstable. It’s something that can last for a generation or so, but not much longer.

By “unstable” I don’t just mean Minsky-type financial instability, although that’s part of it. Equally crucial are the regime’s intellectual and political instability.

The Professor then goes on to detail the reasons for the intellectual instability and the political instability. The "intellectual instability" he refers to is the inability of the economics profession (by which he means, without saying it, actual humans, the "professionals") to hold the differing assumptions of macroeconomics and microeconomics in their heads at the same time over a period of two generations. The result:

The result was what I’ve called the Dark Age of macroeconomics, in which large numbers of economists literally knew nothing of the hard-won insights of the 30s and 40s – and, of course, went into spasms of rage when their ignorance was pointed out.

I think he's too kind (see below). About the political instability, he discusses the moderating effect, through this intellectual Dark Age, of the independent central bank:

If we’re living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics, central banks have been its monasteries, hoarding and studying the ancient texts [i.e., macroeconomic wisdom] lost to the rest of the world. Even as the real business cycle people took over the professional journals, to the point where it became very hard to publish models in which monetary policy, let alone fiscal policy, matters, the research departments of the Fed system continued to study counter-cyclical policy in a relatively realistic way. [But] sooner or later the barbarians were going to go after the monasteries too; and as the current furor over quantitative easing shows, the invading hordes have arrived.

The whole thing came apart when a "too big to fail" crisis, a Minsky Moment, required that policy ignorance cooperate with central-bank wisdom. Oops; policy ignorance prevailed:

In the end, then, the era of the Samuelsonian synthesis was, I fear, doomed to come to a nasty end. And the result is the wreckage we see all around us.

Why am I presenting this? First, because it really represents an attempt at a clear-eyed, intellectually honest looking back, something others are starting to do as well. That discussion is worth following.

And second, because Krugman is wrong, I think, in one important respect. He fails to see that his revered colleagues — the "actual humans" he obliquely calls his "profession" — can't be presumed to be intellectually honest. If your money, for example, comes from the AEI — a known political operation from its founding — you dance to the tune you have to, or your paycheck (and upward career path) simply goes away.

In short, many of Krugman's colleagues are not intellectually honest; many have fallen into the role of Movement soldier-for-pay in citizen's clothing. And Krugman sees only the disguise. Until he looks past that, looks beyond his self-imposed mask of collegiality, his analysis will (alas) remain flawed.

One more piece and you're there, sir; just one more piece.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Family Research Council now officially a 'hate group'

They say they're not. Let's let the Family Research Council's own words speak for themselves (I did the research for this page I'm linking to, and all the links were live at one time - they're for real):

Gays will recognize pedophiles as prophets

"...one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the 'prophets' of a new sexual order." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

Gays are pedophiles, and want to promote youth promiscuity

"There is a strong undercurrent of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. Homosexual activists want to promote the flouting of traditional sexual prohibitions at the earliest possible age....they want to encourage a promiscuous society - and the best place to start is with a young and credulous captive audience in the public schools." - Robert Knight, Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/insight/is93f1hs.html

Columbine killers might be gay/bisexual

"What Are The Media Hiding?....the media have been slow to give a full profile of the killers -avoiding any mention of their alleged bisexuality as reported by several students....Matt Drudge describes them in his report as 'gay, jock-hating, confederate flag-wearing, goth rock & Marilyn Manson loving, white supremacist, fingernail polish wearing, Hitler birthday celebrating outcasts'....One student shortly after the attack said they were militant 'gays' who were retaliating against jocks. Another student said on NBC's Today Show that the trench coat kids bragged about being bisexual... No American news outlet has reported that bi-sexuality could have played a part in the tragedy." - FRC's "CultureFacts", April 21, 1999, http://www.frc.org/culture/cu99d3.html

Matt Shepard, and gays generally, will not inherit the kingdom of God

"homosexuals are included in a list of sinners, who, if unrepentant, will not inherit the kingdom of God." - Family Research Council press release about Matt Shepard's funeral, on the day of the funeral, October 16, 1998, http://www.frc.org/press/101698.html. The release implied that a gay person who had not yet become, or tried to become, an "ex-gay" was "unrepentant."

Matt Shepard compared to a drunk

" 'They create a climate and environment of intolerance and give license to those who seek to vent their rage or frustration on an entire community,' Human Rights Campaign executive director Elizabeth Birch said Wednesday, addressing a Washington rally attended by the likes of actress Ellen DeGeneres and Alan Simpson, a Republican former senator from Wyoming. Ms. Farish vehemently rejects such allegations. 'Don't blame AA because a drunk was beat up,' she said." - Heather Farish of the Family Research Council, quoted in the Dallas Morning News article, "Why now? Other gays have been victims of brutal attacks, but the slaying of a Wyoming student has caused a national outcry," by Brooks Egerton, October 17, 1998.

Gays are deviants

"Homosexuals have never been forced to sit in the back of the bus. They are as privileged a group as any. To compare their attempts to affirm deviant sexual conduct to the legitimate discrimination claims of true minorities is a sham," said FRC Director of Cultural Studies Robert H.
Knight - FRC's CultureFacts, July 28, 1999, http://www.frc.org/culture/cu99g4.html

Gays hate God

"[Homosexuality] is the opposite of love for God. It is a rebellion against God and God's natural order, and embodies a deep-seated hatred against true religion." - THE ASSAULT ON CHRISTIANS BY THE MILITANT HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT, by Steven A. Schwalm, Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/podium/pd98j2hs.html

Gays oppose Christianity

"Militant homosexuality is fundamentally opposed to religion, family, and anything that presupposes a natural moral order, a transcendent God, or something else higher than ourselves. The activist homosexual agenda and worldview are fundamentally incompatible with Christianity or any form of true religion, because homosexuality is ultimately narcissism" - THE ASSAULT ON CHRISTIANS BY THE MILITANT HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT, by Steven A. Schwalm, Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/podium/pd98j2hs.html

Comparing gay Christians to Satan worshippers

"Religious Right groups went on the attack against President Clinton after Rev. Troy Perry, a gay minister, was included among the 120 religious leaders taking part in an ecumenical breakfast at the White House. Family Research Council's Robert Knight said, 'We are witnessing the Administration's moral meltdown. What's next? A memorial to Church of Satan founder Anton LeVay?' " - People for the American Way Web site, http://www.pfaw.org/news/press//show.cgi?article=903565285

Homosexuality can kill you

Gary Bauer: "involvement in homosexuality can kill you. It can kill you emotionally, it can kill you physically, and it can certainly kill you spiritually." - Oct 16, 96 - Family Research Council Web site, http://www.frc.org/net/st96j3.html

Gays spit on Jesus

"Homosexual activists who once asked for tolerance now show no tolerance or sympathy for Christians whose sacred symbols they defile. They are totalitarians who accuse everyone that disagrees with them of "hatred." Even as they masquerade under the banner of tolerance, they spit on the most sacred Person revered and worshipped by millions. They mock our religious symbols, deride our beliefs, and even desecrate our churches and sacraments. " - - THE ASSAULT ON CHRISTIANS BY THE MILITANT HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT, by Steven A. Schwalm, Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/podium/pd98j2hs.html

Lesbians hate men

"hatred for men, which is very typical of a lesbian experience" - Kristi Hamrick, FRC, Oct 16, 96, Family Research Council Web site, http://www.frc.org/net/st96j3.html

Gays think they're exempt from God's rules

Robert Knight: "one of the bigger lies that is told about the lifestyle is that somehow homosexuals are different from the rest of us, that they have an exemption from the responsibility to live by the rules of nature and nature's God that the rest of us have."- Oct 16, 96 - Family Research Council Web site, http://www.frc.org/net/st96j3.html

Homosexuality is a "life destroyer" - destroys families, shatters hope

Robert Knight: "The sexual revolution, of which homosexual activism is a key part, has laid waste to countless lives, destroyed families, and shattered hope for people who have been cast adrift into a deadly carnival of excess. It's time to reaffirm the permanent things of marriage and family and sexual sanity. It's time to throw people a life preserver instead of a life destroyer, which the homosexual subculture surely is."- December 1997 Address at Harvard, http://www.frc.org/podium/pd97l1hs.html

Gays are diseased, die early, and are less productive than heterosexuals

"homosexual behavior is extremely unhealthy, contributing to the spread of AIDS, hepatitis A, B and C and other sexually transmitted diseases….A study of more than 6,400 obituaries in homosexual publications reveals that homosexuals typically have far shorter life spans than the general population. Other reports indicate that homosexuals are more likely to have drug and alcohol abuse problems. It is unfair to force businesses to pay the extra insurance expense and lost productivity that inevitably results from homosexual behavior." [Editors note: the source for this "research" is the discredited Dr. Paul Cameron - see below for extensive information about his extreme beliefs]
- Robert Knight, Family Research Council, testifying at ENDA Hearings, July 29, 1994 - committee on Labor and Human Resources, US Senate.

This is a "war" against "destructive" homosexuals

"...wage the war against the homosexual agenda." - From the Web site of Bauer's Family Research Council, which calls homosexuality "destructive", source: Time magazine, Oct 26, 1998.

Gays hurt people, families and communities

"homosexual behavior hurts people, families, and communities."- Robert Knight, March 1997 speech, http://www.frc.org/podium/pd97clhs.html

Gays are security risks

"homosexuals are a security risk" - http://www.frc.org/insight/is95d1hm.html

Gays embrace culture of death, risk well-being of all society

"Those who practice homosexuality embrace a culture of death. They risk their lives as well as their mental and spiritual well-being....a band of radical activists, many of them highly placed, put the well being of all society at risk to satisfy their craving for approval." - People for the American Way, "Hostile Climate," 1998, p. 9.

Gays are after children

"Homosexual activists have made such strides in gaining acceptance that now they feel the final frontier is the children. That's been the goal all along: get the next generation." People for the American Way, "Hostile Climate, 1988, p.9.

More on gays are after children

"Homosexuals say they don't want the children, but boy they put a lot of energy into going after them." - Robert Knight of FRC writing in a Focus on the Family newsletter, quoted by People for the American Way, "Hostile Climate," 1997, p.15.

Lesbians drink, do drugs, or are hateful

When asked "Do you think most lesbians, when they first get involved in lesbianism, think it’s wrong?", Yvette Cantu of the Family Research Council responded: "Yeah, you know it’s wrong. And then you either drink or do drugs to get past those feelings of knowing it’s wrong, or you blame it on society and become aggressive and hateful. Those are your options." - AFTAH Web site interview, http://www.americansfortruth.org/ycc_interview.html

Lesbians are dysfunctional

"What people commonly call “dysfunction” is everywhere in the lesbian community. Once I went to this party at someone’s house, and none of the women there drank because they were all alcoholics. So it ends up that this is a dry, AA lesbian poker party. I thought, “What am I doing here? This is crazy. Why do I want to go to a dry poker party?” I don’t even know how to play poker. This is weird." - AFTAH Web site interview with FRC's Yvette Cantu, http://www.americansfortruth.org/ycc_interview.htm

Gays don't like children

"To me, thinking that a gay [male] couple would even want to adopt a child is bizarre [because] I can’t imagine them wanting that kind of responsibility. The homosexuals I knew who had been married before had already dumped their kids on their ex-wives, and were perfectly happy to see them two weeks out of the year! If they had children, what would happen when they were too busy having their sex parties?" - AFTAH Web site interview with FRC's Yvette Cantu, http://www.americansfortruth.org/ycc_interview.htm

Gays don't support monogamy, child-rearing, family values

When asked about gay Americans who support monogamy, child-rearing and family values, FRC's Yvette Cantu responded: "I want to know who’s saying this, besides HRC [the Human Rights Campaign, the largest homosexual lobby group] … Is it the men in the gay bars and bathhouses taking a look at their lives and saying, 'We need to settle down, pull together a family and live normally?' No, the only people who are saying this are the activists who are trying to gain special rights for homosexuals. They’re saying, 'Look, if we play it right we can get the special rights we want. Stop making us look bad.' But the people who are 'making homosexuals look bad' are pretty much the entire male homosexual subculture."- AFTAH Web site interview with FRC's Yvette Cantu, http://www.americansfortruth.org/ycc_interview.htm

Lesbianism akin to eating off the floor

"You don’t have to eat the stale crumbs off the dirty floor, which is basically what lesbianism is."- AFTAH Web site interview with FRC's Yvette Cantu, http://www.americansfortruth.org/ycc_interview.htm

Gays are after children

"Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

Gays only pretend to oppose pedophilia

"In the United States, homosexual activists are more circumspect about their efforts to gain access to children...homosexual activists publicly disassociate themselves from pedophiles as part of a public relations strategy"- "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

Gays are 33% of child molesters

"they constitute about a third of child molesters." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

Gays commit 80% of child molestations

"it is estimated that approximately 80% of pedophilic victims are boys who have been molested by adult males." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

More on gays only pretend to oppose pedophilia

"The homosexual rights movement has tried to distance itself from pedophilia, but only for public relations purposes." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

Gay relationships are unpure, perversion of God

"Hanes said what has struck him most about married life is its purity -- a quality, he said, that is always lacking in homosexual relationships. 'It wasn't until my marriage that I understood what a gift from God this really is, and what a perversion of God's ideal homosexuality is.' " - FRC's CultureFacts, June 23, 1999, http://www.frc.org/culture/cu99f4.html

Gays may destroy American family

"Legally destroying the exclusive territory of marriage to achieve a political end will not provide the real benefits of marriage to homosexuals, but it may be the blow that the shattered American family does not survive." - Kristi Hamrick http://www.frc.org/net/st96d2.html

Gays are like a gun to the head of America

"That's what we're talking about whenever you're talking about gay rights. You're talking about giving somebody a gun to put at the head of anybody who disagrees with them, whether it's the Boy Scouts, whether it's a local dry-cleaning establishment or a giant corporation like Shell Oil." - Robert Knight, http://www.frc.org/net/st96d2.html

Gay parents lead to prison, voyeurism

"I know a guy who has just entered jail, tragically, because he grew up in a lesbian household. He still loves his mother and doesn't really blame her, but he said, 'You know, as a boy in a lesbian environment where it was intensely anti-male' -- that's all he heard, this bitterness toward men -- he said that he felt totally disenfranchised, began having sexual problems. He eventually became a voyeur, and he is in on a peeping Tom charge. He was so curious about how normal people have sex. We have other people that are cases like this." - Robert Knight, http://www.frc.org/net/st96d2.html

Homosexuals in the bedroom

"Homosexuals do not do what mom and dad do in the bedroom. They don't provide children the role models that mom and dad do" - Robert Knight, http://www.frc.org/net/st96d2.html

Gays against home, family

"Homosexual and lesbian activists have made it clear in recent days that they are in this fight to change the world -- from one that values and cherishes home, family, and heterosexual marriage as the cornerstone of society to one that says anything goes." - Kristi Hamrick, http://www.frc.org/net/st95l1.html

Gays are about promiscuity, violence

"Homosexuality is not merely about a harmless personal preference. It is about a lifestyle that involves having sex with another person of the same gender. More often than anyone would like to admit, it's about promiscuity — and even violence. It is about unnatural, unsafe, and unhealthy behavior." - http://www.frc.org/ie/ie98j.html - Laurel L. Cornell

Gays are tragic misuse of sexuality

"Homosexual behavior is a misuse of sexuality that has tragic consequences for individuals, families and communities." - Robert Knight, http://www.frc.org/podium/pd97l1hs.html

Read the rest of this post...

US in Afghanistan longer than Soviets

Stick a fork in it and move on.

The Soviet Union couldn't win in Afghanistan, and now the United States is about to have something in common with that futile campaign: nine years, 50 days.

On Friday, the U.S.-led coalition will have been fighting in this South Asian country for as long as the Soviets did in their humbling attempt to build up a socialist state. The two invasions had different goals — and dramatically different body counts — but whether they have significantly different outcomes remains to be seen.

What started out as a quick war on Oct. 7, 2001, by the U.S. and its allies to wipe out al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has instead turned into a long and slogging campaign. Now about 100,000 NATO troops are fighting a burgeoning insurgency while trying to support and cultivate a nascent democracy.

Read the rest of this post...

The distracting boss

The boss reminds me of Wall Street. "Oh look, the Dow at 11,000!" As if that somehow makes up for the previous losses.

So the UK has been getting hit with unseasonably cold weather and it's coming through here too. Scotland has been getting snow and we had snow flurries yesterday. I left for a long bike ride yesterday morning and it was just below freezing. I really dislike the cold but the really bad stuff (it's all relative) won't arrive until January. As long as it's not as bad as last winter.

Last night we met a French guy who cycles all over the world. This year he cycled for a month in Morocco and in a previous ride, he landed at Shanghai and then followed a small road along the Yangtze River. His bike is 22 kilos and the gear, an additional 40 kilos. Looking at the routes, I asked him how his legs managed but he said it's more of a lung issue. Either way, sounds pretty tough, but interesting. Read the rest of this post...

Report: Gen. McChrystal approved talks with fake Taliban leader

And again, why are we still in Afghanistan?

Sources close to the contacts said the impostor, who claimed to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the Taliban's deputy leader, was originally introduced by an insurgent commander in Kandahar to the then Afghan interior minister, Hanif Atmar.

This Taliban commander, Muhammad Aminullah, is close to the movement's overall leader, Mullah Omar, and has led some of the fiercest Taliban fighting in the Zhari and Panjwai districts of Kandahar province. When he was picked up and held in a Nato raid in January this year, the Afghan government complained that he was a longstanding channel of Atmar's to the Taliban, and asked for him to be freed. In return, Aminullah offered contacts with Mansour, suggesting he might be open to political talks. The deal was approved by McChrystal, then the commander of Nato and US forces in Afghanistan, and a supporter of reconciliation efforts.

McChrystal asked MI6 to develop the contacts, rather than go to the CIA, which was not empowered by the necessary White House directive to enter into direct talks with Taliban officials. The absence of such a "presidential finding" is seen by many diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic as an obstacle to progress towards a political settlement.

Read the rest of this post...