Paul M Peterson

Glenn Beck is one of America’s most popular talk show hosts. He has recently begun, on his program, to talk with dewy eyed sentimentalism about America after 9-11. He seems to have developed a fixation with the Apocalypse. In the video, this portly conservative, who I suspect is a scion taken from one of Rush Limbaugh’s ass hairs, studiously nods in agreement as one of his guests opines that America needs to have another 9/11. Doesn’t even provoke a blink of disbelief or a stunned “wha?”, thus earning Beck the title Douchebag Du Jour.

The Employee Freedom Action Committee Wants You…To Vote Against Card Check

Below is a video featuring George McGovern. In it, he speaks against HR 880-The Employee Free Choice Act by stating that it will take away an employees right to a secret ballot. This is, of course, wrong. Employers, under current labor law, can institute a card check vote if they want to.
The Employee Freedom Action Committee is an advocacy group run by Rick Berman. They claim to be pro-union, but anti-card check. They have run ads against Senator Al Franken in Minnesota. They seem to oppose mostly Democrats in state level elections. Their website also seems to highlight conflicts between and amongst unions.

Why is George McGovern in bed with this group? It seems strange that someone with such a rich progressive history would suddenly join forces with a right wing PR firm.

From onlybestjokes.com comes this hilarious parody of the famous “priceless” credit card ads. Have a good belly laugh on me.

George W. Bush, at his ranch, taking the PDB that he will skip reading

Reading Is Important!

Stay Informed!!

The Chinese government recently moved to censor and filter websites that contain “pornography” and politically “sensitive” content. Whether or not having the application installed would be mandatory or voluntary is not clear. Initially the plan was to make usage of the application mandatory. But thanks to a threatened internet boycott on July 1st, the Chinese government backed down from the hardline position to support a more “liberalized” less draconian policy. Nevertheless, it is a move toward internet censorship.

The software includes code pirated from open source developers. So there is the hypocrisy factor here.

More importantly, the software contains “security vulnerabilities”: Anyone who has it installed on their computer will find that the websites they visit now have the ability to control their hard drives. I think that this is the real point of the Green Dam: To allow the state control of your hard drive, if you are a Chinese citizen. Look for this spyware to be available in the “Land of the Free” real soon.

Soon this story, like most, will evaporate from the blogosphere. Two or three years down the road, a Silicon Valley will develop an American version and they will know how to market it. They will market it as a security app for parents.

Sources:

1. Asia Wanderer
2. New York Daily News
3. Huffington Post
4. The Register.uk

Why Health Care Reform Will Fail

Health Care reform in America will fail. It is good to see so many publicly supporting single payer health care, but efforts at reform will fail.

The reason is overhead and administrative costs. Most Americans think that private sector companies are leaner and more efficient because they are profit driven. Ninety percent of the time this is true.

The exception is when there is information assymetry favoring the buyer over the seller. In other words, if I go to the store to buy beef jerky, the seller knows more critical information about that transaction than I do. The seller knows where the jerky came from, how much it costs in terms of storage and shelf space and how popular the brand name is. He is therefore in a better bargaining position than I am.

If, on the other hand, I go across town to buy some car insurance, than I am in a better bargaining position than the seller. Why? Well, between the two of us, I am the only one who knows how I really drive. As a buyer, I have a clearer idea of the actual business cost of insuring me than the insurer does. I am, therefore, in a better bargaining position than the auto insurance seller.

Health care is the same way. Hospital administrators, on any given day, have no idea who is going to need their services or how those people live, whether they smoke, do drugs, exercise, etc. etc. The best that they can do is build up statistical models which are prone to failure.

Many industries are subject to the weakness called information assymmetry. Financial service companies, insurance companies, and banks all suffer from this disadvantage. They have armies of lawyers to lobby congress in the hopes of creating an artificial benefit for themselves. If they didn’t, they would lose money constantly. What this means for the rank and file worker is that there is a mountain of legal paperwork to be read and signed before, during and after any transaction. This is expensive, time-consuming liability control. All of this increases overhead.

Then there is the issued of the Doctor as Double Agent. Because the Doctor is an expert in a field not easily understood by lay people, we expect the Doctor to act as an agent in our best interest. But, in a profit driven system, the Doctor is also a business man in charge of a practice. He is therefore in a moral quandary that, on the one hand, inspires him to sell you unnecessary treatment (a.k.a Supplier Induced Demand) and, on the other hand, expects him to inform you of all of your options.

American health care will likely remain private sector and profit driven. Most Americans do not understand that, in this case, the private sector is actually substantially less efficient than its government counterpart.

O.K. that was a nifty little bit of World of Warcraft Machinima. Three neighs for the Galloping Goddess! Just in case you think Her Pinkness is a false religion, here is a link you can trot on over to: Check out the Virtual Temple of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Anonymous, as a phenomenon, was inevitable. The internet is little more the humankind’s digital subconscious, with a legion of monsters, angels, and demons to shimmer forth from it’s dreamscape. Anonymous is perhaps the internet’s id. They, whoever they are, betray the true motivations of Man. Welcome to the future of terrorism. Welcome to the future of Revolution.

Earlier today, as I was driving to work, I suddenly thought of a scene in Cheech And Chong’s Next Movie. In the scene (depicted below) Pee Wee Herman is a concierge for a hotel. He says to Cheech’s brother Duane “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”.

I have never understood this saying. What if someone speaks a foreign language? What if they are psychotic? Ignorance may not be an excuse, but comprehension is a prerequisite to compliance.

Lawyers make their bones creating reams of text that are intentionally oblique. Read the back of any credit card statement.

According to Wikipedia, this principle, Ignorantia Legis Non Excusat exists because if it did not, then a claim of willful ignorance would be applicable in every case. The law would then be unenforceable. Therefore awareness of the law by the citizens of a jurisdiction is presumed.

The claim has often been made by neo-conservatives that America had to invade Iraq to prevent the “smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud”, as Ari Fleischer put it. I have always maintained that that was a huge, stinking pile of bullshit. We can now add yet one more piece of evidence to that pile.

In an article dated October 28, 2004, Common Dreams.org quotes Bush ghost writer Mickey Herskowitz as saying

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999. It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade. If I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

History Commons also documents how, in 1998, Bush the Younger, commenting on the book titled A World Transformed said, according to Mickey Herskowitz,

“He thought of himself as a superior, more modern politican than his father and [the elder Bush’s close adviser and friend] Jim Baker. He told me, ‘[My father] could have done anything [during the Gulf War]. He could have invaded Switzerland. If I had that political capital, I would have taken Iraq.”

It may be claimed by conservatives that Mickey Herskowitz is a compromised source in all of this. He was fired by the Bush family. When copies of his planned Bush Biography A Charge To Keep were about to go to press, Bush campaign officials squelched it, fearing the candor of Mickey’s “as told to” bio. Nevertheless, there is also Craig Unger, David Nyahn and the Bush’s former Treasury Secretary. Each of these men claim to have heard Bush on at least one occasion, before 9-11, discuss the favorability of invading Iraq. I clearly remember it being brought up during the campaign at a speech in, I think, New Hampshire.

Finally, Keith Olberman, in the video below:

Sources:

1. Keith Olbmerman, at MSNBC
2. Kick!
3. Common Dreams.org
4. History Commons