Okay, so there are surely lots of reasons why we haven’t been blogging lately (laziness, other work, drugs, etc.). Yet, is it also because we’ve been too busy following the elections and worshipping Obama to write on our blog about real politics?  I say “real” politics, because of course we could write about the election contest itself, but that seems so manufactured, what with all the tens of millions of dollars the candidates spend on PR.  I’m hypothesizing that we’ve been suckered into this world of manufactured politics.  Personally, I think that what hooked me is all the numbers (the delegate counts, the polls, the campaign contributions, etc.), because my obsession with these numbers is just like how I used to follow sports stats everyday, but with an additional veneer of legitimacy attained from the supposedly “democratic” character of representative government.     Well, I’ve had enough of this horseshit.  As I’d say stop watching basketball and go outside to play it with your friends, so I’ll now say it with politics: reject the spectator sport version, and instead go out into your community, participate in direct democracy, and create a better world yourself (and do it now, not waiting a year for our holy savior Obama).  BTW, I was inspired to write this post from reading James Herod’s Getting Free.

The economy is faltering. Look out, because our leaders see it as another excuse to cut taxes for the rich. They did it in the 80s and they will do it again. The Milton Friedman conventional wisdom is that economic troubles are cause by insufficiently pure implementations of a pure free-market economy. So when times get tough they will reach for the low taxes switch. But unfortunately they won’t cut spending, they will just increase the debt. That’s because huge amounts of the budget are for defense, and for some reason cutting the defense budget is never on the table.

When I read third tier right wing blogs I have a lot of trouble figuring out what they are talking about. I was reading this guy’s feeling that the US Navy should have sunk a few speed boats in the straight of Hormuz so we don’t look like pussies when I stumbled across this graphic, which outlines the evil plan of the left to revive socialism:

In Gaza, the Israeli governmentl is violating this human right (among many others).  See this NYT story.

Why is sewage treatment a human right? B/c it is intimately connected with the Human Right to Water, which has been recognized by the UN and many international policies and conferences.  One of the most important policy statements is General Comment No. 15 of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Reality: no, actually they didn’t. This morning CNBC’s chyron read: “housing prices rebound” along with gleeful depictions of housing stocks climbing, the noted that KB Home was up on the news. Up 1.25% today in fact, after losing half its value in the last year. Further, year on year housing sales are down 23%. Worse, the margin of error is ±10.3%, so the actual, statistically significant change is zero.

This actually follows a trend I have noticed on CNBC. They are sort of a business oriented Fox News (I am sure Fox business is worse), they hype every gain, truth be damned. I wonder if business news has a vested intrested in promoting the wonderfulness of the economy, or if their “metrics” just shows that bullishness keeps viewers watching.

Also for sale

“The Republican vision is for a world in which the sick and dying get to deduct some of the cost of health insurance that they don’t have — and can’t get — on their taxes.”

-Ezra Klein via Krugman

Islamo-fascism awareness week.

Hello friends. Now, as this is my only soapbox, I want to vent a little. I love that our friends are getting married left and right. This is lovely for all involved and I am happy to be part of it. HOWEVER, could you guys spread this out a little or something? I mean, in two weeks we are heading off to our forth wedding in ten weeks. A little less than month later we are heading off to our fifth, and final wedding for 2007. (we had to miss the sixth we were invited to) Only one of the five weddings was local.

The cost in plane tickets alone is about to break three thousand dollars, once I buy the next set. So, those of you that are currently unmarried. (not counting hotels, food, taxis, rental cars &c) Can you please, if you intend to get married, wait until the first quarter of 2009? We already have two booked for summer ‘08, and I think that is about the maximum I can deal with. The next wedding is in Denver, and due to a profound liquidity crisis caused by the above mentioned weddings (and Elise’s new scooter, to be fair) I am considering walking there.

Anti-libertarian FAQ