Inflation and purchasing power

Double Blind has a good post about inflation and it's relationship to purchasing power. It's written by a Canadian, so the references to dollars are about Canadian dollars.

But it's a topic American's need to be paying attention to. The American dollar is losing purchasing power at a very dangerous rate. You can thank government policies about lower taxes and higher spending for that and I don't see any indication that Clinton or McCain will do anything to change that direction in a meaningful way. Maybe Obama will save us. Maybe he won't.

Experience? Or just another version of Imperial Presidency?

The cable news channals are talking about the Hillary and Obama difference on the willingness to commit to meeting to rogue countries.

Obama says he would.

Not Hillary. She would not agree without first establishing pre-conditions.

Hillary says Obama is being niave and irresponsible. the idiot talking heads are claiming Hillary wins that part of the debate because it makes her come off as the more experienced of the two.

Huh?

To me she's just coming off as self-important.

Update:
Althouse gives the whole thing a much more detailed look. I agree that Obama hasn't handled it well, but I still think Hillary is just being self-important.

I'm not impressed by either one of them.

Update:
Psotd seems to agree with me.

Just ask the question

Andrea Mitchell is fielding questions from callers to MSNBC to ask various Presidential candidates.

One woman asked a question about the No Child Left Behind Program. She asked the candidate (I don't remember who it was) what he'd do as President instead of continueing with that failed program.

Rather than just let the guy answer the questionk Andrea rephrased it. She added the phrase, "While still maintianing accountabiity ...".

Whoa. The caller didn't say one word about maintaining accountability. Not even a hint of it. From the simple question asked it's not even possible to be clear that the caller thinks that local schools should be accountable to the Feds. In fact, some of us think that adding that requirement is what automatically makes any program a failure.

These pompous, self-absorbed TV news people are worse than the empty suit candidates most of the time. If you want to let callers ask a question, then let the caller ask the question. Don't re-frame the question. If that's what you're going to do then don't insult my intelligence by pretending you're taking questions from callers.

Elizabeth Edwards, just another political weasel

I'm on some email lists for mailings from some of the Presidential candidates. I usually don't even read them, just delete them unread. I signed up for them because I don't really mind getting a bunch of crap email on a regular basis.

Last night I got one from the Edward's campaign with the Subject line

Why I called Ann Coulter

and a From line of

"Elizabeth Edwards"

Right off the bat we have something less than complete candidness with attaching the name Elizabeth Edwards with that generic campaign email address.

But I can't help myself. I read it.

She didn't explain anything, she didn't give a reason for the call, she just related what happened and told us who the good guy is and who the bad buy is. Can you guess which is which?

Here's how the email letter starts

Last night I had an important talk with Ann Coulter and I want to tell you what happened.

I'm not inspired by this start. I watched that part of Hardball last night. I might call it a dramatic exchange, but it was not an important talk. There was nothing important about it and I don't think I'd characterize the exchange as a talk. Both were speaking to the audience, neither was talking to the other. Dramatic confrontation is probably the best label.

I guess the next sentence is supposed to pass an an explanation promised in the subject line. But, it's not an explanation.

Where I am from, when someone does something that displeases you, you politely ask them to stop. So when I heard Ann was going to be on "Hardball" last night, I decided to call in and ask her to engage on the issues and stop the personal attacks. I told her these kinds of personal attacks lower our political dialogue at precisely the time when we need to raise it, and set a bad example for our children.

It's not an explanation because it miss-characterizes both Southern Culture and what actually happened.

Where she comes from the idea of "politely ask them to stop" means do so privately. It really means that, the privacy part is a very important part of the polite idea. No confrontation, no public postering. A simple, private and personal request is what people "where she comes from" do when trying to stop unwanted personal attacks. Allowing the offending party an out that saves face is very important in a culture that gave us personal duels.

In Southern Culture a public confrontation is an invitation to fight, no matter what the words actually spoken are.

Elizabeth Edwards knows that full well and she's bullshitting us to pretend otherwise.

You can really just stop reading right there, she's given you all the information you need to figure out what kind crap is going on here. Besides, the rest of the email is just an appeal for money. Just for completeness, here it is.

How did she respond? Sadly, perhaps predictably, with more personal attacks.

John's campaign is about the issues—but pundits like Ann Coulter are trying to shout him down. If they will not stop, it is up to us cut through the noise. Help us fight back—please give what you can today.

www.johnedwards.com/rightwing

There are just over 3 days left to hit our $9 million goal for the end of the quarter. If we make it, we can directly reach voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and all over the country with our detailed plans on the issues that matter. Please give what you can right now to help raise the dialogue and show that Ann Coulter-style politics will never carry the day.

www.johnedwards.com/rightwing

Why do Ann Coulter and other right-wing pundits keep attacking John? Because John's bold, specific plans hit them where it hurts: solving global warming, ending the war, building a fair economy—John's agenda threatens everything these talking heads and their corporate cronies stand for.

And they know John can win—just last week a new poll showed that John is the only Democratic candidate who beats all the possible Republican challengers—by an average of 13 points. So they are trying to take John down early. Their strategy is to sling mud and manufacture scandals—about houses, haircuts and anything else they can think of—to discredit John and take down our movement for change.

The best way to beat them is also the right way—take our message of substance straight to the voters. And that is exactly what this campaign is all about.

But we need your help to hit our goal. Please give what you can today.

www.johnedwards.com/rightwing

And thank you for all that you do to support this cause.

Sincerely,

- Elizabeth Edwards
Wednesday June 27, 2007

There is nothing sincere about her at all if you can use this letter to make a judgment. I have no respect for Ann Coulter but Ann's right about one thing, both sides of the Ann/Elizabeth confrontation are simply creating political theater to entertain the masses for profit.

You can tell that Ann has no class by looking at the way she dresses. She just doesn't have enough sense of style to know what appropriate dress is. She wore on the Today show. Some "little black cocktail dress". Hardball is a political
commentary show -- it's not Entertainment Tonite. Business dress would be appropriate for that show. But to her it's much more important to appear provocative than to be socially appropriate. I just find that classless.

But Elizabeth is just as bad with her pretense of Southern Culture that's nothing of the sort. They deserve each other.

If Chris Matthews had any class he wouldn't have either one of them on his show.

They hate us for our freedoms

From Balkinization

Last fall, Majid Khan was at the center of an amazing piece of litigation: his lawyers filed a motion demanding that they be allowed to see him, and the government opposed it, claiming that the meeting might lead to the disclosure of classified methods of acquiring information. In other words, Majid Khan might tell his lawyers what his captors did to him.

Read the post.

In another post he points out that torture doesn't become something else just because we call it "red turtle" or whatever phrase the Republican candidates for President prefer.

The democrats two lead weasels

Ann Althouse is offended by Hilliary and Obama having voting against the unrestricted Iraq funding bill.

I'm offended by the way they behaved like weasels in not taking a public position until all the other votes were counted.

Ann doesn't appear to care about the character of our candidates, just about whether they vote they way she thinks they could. I think character matters a lot and both these candidates lack character.

Jerry Falwell

You can tell which of the Republican candidates are going to pander to the nutcase religious right by looking at their websites and see what they are saying about what a great American Jerry Falwell was.

It takes a lot of guts to ignore that dipshit, and the only two Republican candidates that aren't bothering to comment on his life are Rudy and Ron Paul. The only two with any guts. It's too bad Rudy is such a phony and Ron Paul is so unelectible.

The Republican position on torture

Ann Althouse comments on the Rudy/McCain differences in attitude about the use of torture by the US government.

My comment on her post is

There is only one reason to torture -- to appear tough.

Torture does not make anyone safe, it does not help you acquire usable information.

Rudy, like Tenet did recently in his book, seems to think that it's not really torture if you make up some mealy-mouthed term to use instead of the word torture.

He thinks that makes him a tough guy. I think it makes him a coward. If you want to torture people at least be straight up about it -- tell us that's what you want to do and let's talk about what value that kind of behavior is.

In the "ticking bomb" storyline that the Fox moderator took from a "24" plotline to use in his debate question, there's a presumption that using torture actually will provide you with usable information. The presumption is that so long as you are sure the victim of your torture has the information you seek that the torture will get it out of him.

That presumption is nothing but bullshit. People being tortured will never tell you the truth, they will always tell you want you want to hear. The only way you can be sure that they'll tell you the truth is if you already know the truth and they're aware of that. They will play to whatever they perceive your bias to be, whatever it takes to get you to stop.

Torture serves no purpose at all other than the creation of a facade of toughness, or to create terror in the minds of those who might be captured later. It's not an act of intelligence gathering, it's an act of terrorism.

Are the Republican candidates fighting a war against terror? Or is it a war of terror?

Comparing NYC and Alabama

I've been to Alabama and I've been to New York City. Rudy Giullani is insane.

Giuliani: Alabama on verge of major growth
MONTGOMERY -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the Alabama Legislature today that his city and the state of Alabama share “considerable common ground.”

Update:

He did even better.

But when asked about more mundane matters _ like the price of some basic staples _ Giuliani had trouble with a reporter's question.

"A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30," he said.

A check of the Web site for D'Agostino supermarket on Manhattan's Upper East Side showed a gallon of milk priced at $4.19 and a loaf of white bread at $2.99 to $3.39. In Montgomery, Ala., a gallon of milk goes for about $3.39 and bread is about $2.

Giuliani was closer to the mark on the price of a gallon of gasoline.

"Gas, I think, is $2.89," he said

He also says he didn't see any confederate flags while he was in Alabama.

UPDATE on the UPDATE

The MSNBC talking heads were excusing his cost estimates by saying that NY has higher prices than the rest of the country and that he might not have been far off for most Americans. They just don't pay attention before they go on the air. You know better, the prices above are from Montgomery Alabama.

Is it possible to ever have a competent president?

Right now reading the press about the run for the 2008 Presidency, all we're talking about is the money. Who's the best fund-raiser? That's how Clinton won the presidency. That's how Bush won. It looks like that's how the next President will win.

I don't know who's going to get the nomination from either party. But the best bet is that it's going to be the best fund-raiser, not the best qualified to serve.

You have to be a good fund-raiser to get a nomination. You have to be a good campaigner to get elected. Whether you actually have the qualifications to do the job once elected is just ignored. The best fund-raiser is the one who's best at making individual money people feel special when you're one on one with them. The best campaigner is the one who can talk to groups in a language that makes them feel like you care about their problems. That's it. Then we're done.