Politics

The Boom and Bust Cycle

Sometimes, especially if you’re a long-dead economist, you have to climb down from your ivory tower and speak to the youth of today in a language that they can understand. In this music video, two giants of economics break down their differing views on how to fix what ails us when it comes to boom and bust.

Mike Celizic: CBS Wrong With Tebow Ad

Mike Celizic of NBCSports.com has an interesting post on CBS’s decision to accept anti-abortion advertising from conservative evangelical group Focus On The Family featuring University of Florida football star Tim Tebow. He’s dead on when he says that the only reason CBS is taking this ad is that the market is soft for advertising in general and for 30-second spots that cost two and a half million dollars in particular. Unfortunately, there’s really no downside for CBS – who’s not going to watch the Super Bowl because of one commercial? Still, I wish the Good Without God folks or the Atheist Bus Campaign could afford to pay for a rejoinder ad. Actually, what I really wish is that CBS could keep political and religious advertising off the air during an event that has nothing to do with either.

Blackwater Changes Its Name to “Xe”

In what can only be described as the first step towards ultimately changing their name to an unpronounceable symbol, notorious private security firm Blackwater USA announced they are changing their name to “Xe”, which is of course, pronounced the same as the letter “Z”. Unless you’re Canadian, in which case it isn’t. Why the name change? To protest their contract with Warner Brothers, of course. To escape the stench of getting kicked out of the country of Iraq and being fired by the State Department, of course. Xe will focus on providing training facilities, where trainees will presumably learn the same sort of target discrimination skills practiced so aptly by the Blackwater guards who were charged with manslaughter for gunning down 17 Iraqi civilians in a 2007 firefight in Baghdad.

h/t to TPM.

Blackwater Ordered Out Of Iraq

The Iraqi Government revoked the operating license of security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and as a result, the company’s personnel are being ordered out of the country. Blackwater provides private security contracting services for the US State Department and other US government agencies, and has come under fire because its employees have been accused of being somewhat trigger happy. Blackwater founder Erik Prince told Mike Baker of the Associated Press, “Our abrupt departure would far more hurt the reconstruction team and the diplomats trying to rebuild the country than it would hurt us as a business,” while Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told the AP, “They have to find a new security company.”

Which brings to mind a question. Whatever happened to the security company the State Department used to use? You know the one.

Saddlebacking: A New Word Enters The Lexicon

FAIR WARNING: If you’re easily offended, you should probably skip this post. If you aren’t, then take the jump.
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Completely Random Thought

The only reason to wish for a McCain victory in November is to see more of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.

Barack-rolling the RNC

Putting a blue screen behind McCain = FAIL

Politics in Bizzaro World

The Republicans were for Bristol Palin’s privacy before they were against it:

On Wednesday morning, a teenage boy from Alaska stood in a receiving line on an airport tarmac, being glad-handed by the potential next president of the United States — because he got his girlfriend pregnant.

The sheer gall of these people amazes me.

Hacking The Olympics

Stryde Hax, a new blog popped up yesterday claiming to show definitive proof that one of the gold-medal winning Chinese gymnasts is much younger than her officially claimed age of 16. Young enough that it’s actually against the rules for her to be competing in the Olympic Games. The blogger, known as “Stryde” searched Google for Excel documents on Chinese websites listing the name “He Kexin” and the date “January 1, 1994″. Google had a single hit, but the underlying document no longer existed on the Chinese government servers that Google had previously indexed it on, and the cache of the document had expired. However, Stryde hit pay dirt on the Chinese search engine Baidu, turning up two registration spreadsheets that listed He’s name with the 1/1/1994 birthdate.
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Living Life One Gallon At A Time

It’s easy to think about rising gas prices in the abstract – I know that when I fill up our family car, it costs about twice what it did when we bought it in early 2004, but seeing as I only stop at the gas station about once a week, I really don’t think about it that often. However, this evening I saw something that made me think about how the gas crunch is affecting people who are less fortunate than I am. I had to fill up the car tonight around 11:15PM, and while I was filling my tank, I happened to watch as someone pulled up to the pump next to me, ran inside to pay the cashier, and came back out to pump their gas. Then, before I even realized it, their car was pulling away. I looked over at the now-empty pump, and what I saw amazed me.
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