From Digg.com"Reporting from Istanbul, Turkey, and Ankara, Turkey -- When President Obama declared Monday that the United States "is not, and will never be, at war with Islam," he was addressing Turkey's parliament. But his audience was the wider Muslim world.
The president's ringing affirmation of partnership with Turkey, which he described as a vital bridge between East and West, was interwoven with a highly personal appeal for a change in the tone of discourse between the United States and the world's Muslims."
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Early Star Trek Review: Best Movie Since Wrath Of Khan!
he new Star Trek movie is amazing- easily the best Trek movie since The Wrath of Khan, and a veritable feast of sight and sound: A captivating adventure that grabs you from the first and doesn't let go. The effects are amazing, finally what the stories have deserved so richly. There are enough huge fireballs, shattering explosions &exciting fights
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Paul Krugman is WRONG about The Obama TARP Plan - Once Again
On March 24th, I wrote a short post on Economist and NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman and created this video below.
Today, in the wake of Newsweeks' rather unfortunate April Fools Day article on the Princeton Professor (which presented him as a kind of edgy intellectual but lacked real substance in the discussion of why Krugman is wrong about Obama), I decided to offer this expanded blog post. The problem is that Krugman is really angry that the Obama administration is and has ignored him and this emotion has driven a sloppy intellectual approach, paced by the fact that he's not presented a plan for our troubled banks, all the while taking an aim at the President's plan that has the effectiveness of a drunken sailor at an arcade shooting gallery.
Who is Paul Krugman?
Professor Krugman is a decorated International Economist, who recently - in 2008 - won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his solid theory on two-country trade. Here Krugman attacked the standard idea of two-country trade by explaining with some heft that a country like the United States that makes a Cadillac sports sedan will see that car purchased to some degree in Germany, which just happens to produce the competitor BMW 5-series. In other words, rich countries trade like goods more often than poor country to rich country or vie versa. This idea was path-breaking in that the economies of scale were not included in traditional models of trade, so pretty much any country could trade with another one in this immmaginary World. Krugman's theory explained the real World.
Now, why do I have an interest in this? Because my background is in urban economics and I focused on it at both Texas-Arlingron and Cal-Berkeley, but fell in love with a kind of way of modeling relationships called System Dynamics which causes one to see the World as a set of feedback and control connections. And that's where I break with Krugman. As a traditional economist, he does not see beyond a set "straw-person example" and into the more complex World around him -- the political aspect of economics (the political economy as its called) is lost on him, which is why the Obama Administration does not embrace him.
The Obama plan for bank troubled assets, using Troubled Asset Relief Program money to finance non-recourse loans to encourage investors to buy the "junk" is one example (called the "Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets"). Krugman attacks this plan around the idea that we're giving taxpayer money away to create this market, then sets the idea that it will not work without emprically showing why it will not do so in detail or offering an alternative plan.
What Krugman missed is a read of the political landscape such that Obama's TARP plan is not only one the market asked for, and for months, but was needed to take the bad debts off the banks books. And that's what Krugman misses. He rants on about the plan's possible failure from within its own system, but says nothing -- zip -- about getting the assets off the banks books, which is the real success. Then Paul makes a real intellectual error by writing that the Obama administration sees the bank financial system as sound, which it does not, otherwise this plan would not exist.
He then writes as if the plan uses all of the TARP money, rather than the truth, which is that it uses a small portion of it, thus leaving enough left over for other plans.
As I have stated again and again, the plan lacks a payment to American taxpayers under $100,000 of $3,500 each -- or about $380 Billion -- to essentially help banks and to a degree stimulate spending. Why? The vast majority of Americans don't have massive debt problems asmany don't carry credit card debt and for those who do the average level of credit card debt is about $10,000, so this plan helps reduce that by one-third. But people aren't going to leave the money under a matress, they will put it in banks, thus helping both Wall Street and Main Street. Remember the unemployment program, designed for those who were laid off from large companies in the past, does not help the apprentice plumber who has a decade-long resume of customers that suddenly dried up.
See, my idea is a supplement that I introduced a while back in a talk with CNN's Ali Velshi, who agreed it could help. But it fits within the economic and political reality of what we need to do to fix America's economy in a way that Krugman's plan does not do.
Oh. I forgot. He doesn't have a plan.
In closing, I do not embrace crits of this post that are based on the "You're not an economist" view or juvenile name-calling, which is common online but not allowed here in my space, but I do like a good debate on rigor and detail. Bring it.
Follow me on Twitter!
Click here for SF Chronicle version.
Today, in the wake of Newsweeks' rather unfortunate April Fools Day article on the Princeton Professor (which presented him as a kind of edgy intellectual but lacked real substance in the discussion of why Krugman is wrong about Obama), I decided to offer this expanded blog post. The problem is that Krugman is really angry that the Obama administration is and has ignored him and this emotion has driven a sloppy intellectual approach, paced by the fact that he's not presented a plan for our troubled banks, all the while taking an aim at the President's plan that has the effectiveness of a drunken sailor at an arcade shooting gallery.
Who is Paul Krugman?
Professor Krugman is a decorated International Economist, who recently - in 2008 - won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his solid theory on two-country trade. Here Krugman attacked the standard idea of two-country trade by explaining with some heft that a country like the United States that makes a Cadillac sports sedan will see that car purchased to some degree in Germany, which just happens to produce the competitor BMW 5-series. In other words, rich countries trade like goods more often than poor country to rich country or vie versa. This idea was path-breaking in that the economies of scale were not included in traditional models of trade, so pretty much any country could trade with another one in this immmaginary World. Krugman's theory explained the real World.
Now, why do I have an interest in this? Because my background is in urban economics and I focused on it at both Texas-Arlingron and Cal-Berkeley, but fell in love with a kind of way of modeling relationships called System Dynamics which causes one to see the World as a set of feedback and control connections. And that's where I break with Krugman. As a traditional economist, he does not see beyond a set "straw-person example" and into the more complex World around him -- the political aspect of economics (the political economy as its called) is lost on him, which is why the Obama Administration does not embrace him.
The Obama plan for bank troubled assets, using Troubled Asset Relief Program money to finance non-recourse loans to encourage investors to buy the "junk" is one example (called the "Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets"). Krugman attacks this plan around the idea that we're giving taxpayer money away to create this market, then sets the idea that it will not work without emprically showing why it will not do so in detail or offering an alternative plan.
What Krugman missed is a read of the political landscape such that Obama's TARP plan is not only one the market asked for, and for months, but was needed to take the bad debts off the banks books. And that's what Krugman misses. He rants on about the plan's possible failure from within its own system, but says nothing -- zip -- about getting the assets off the banks books, which is the real success. Then Paul makes a real intellectual error by writing that the Obama administration sees the bank financial system as sound, which it does not, otherwise this plan would not exist.
He then writes as if the plan uses all of the TARP money, rather than the truth, which is that it uses a small portion of it, thus leaving enough left over for other plans.
As I have stated again and again, the plan lacks a payment to American taxpayers under $100,000 of $3,500 each -- or about $380 Billion -- to essentially help banks and to a degree stimulate spending. Why? The vast majority of Americans don't have massive debt problems asmany don't carry credit card debt and for those who do the average level of credit card debt is about $10,000, so this plan helps reduce that by one-third. But people aren't going to leave the money under a matress, they will put it in banks, thus helping both Wall Street and Main Street. Remember the unemployment program, designed for those who were laid off from large companies in the past, does not help the apprentice plumber who has a decade-long resume of customers that suddenly dried up.
See, my idea is a supplement that I introduced a while back in a talk with CNN's Ali Velshi, who agreed it could help. But it fits within the economic and political reality of what we need to do to fix America's economy in a way that Krugman's plan does not do.
Oh. I forgot. He doesn't have a plan.
In closing, I do not embrace crits of this post that are based on the "You're not an economist" view or juvenile name-calling, which is common online but not allowed here in my space, but I do like a good debate on rigor and detail. Bring it.
Follow me on Twitter!
Click here for SF Chronicle version.
Bottoms up? Not so fast...
From the article: "When IBM can be as proud of how they treat their workers every day as General Motors was during its glory years, when I see people going back to work at jobs with good salaries and benefits, then I'll be ready to believe the U.S. economy is back on its feet." Reality check as DOW creeps above 8000. I don't know who the pundits think is better off - it's not me, is it you?
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Monday, April 06, 2009
The Secrets Of Oakland, California - A Video For CNN's iReport
I created this video at the specific request of Tyson Chandler at CNN's iReport. The idea is to give viewers a look at the secret places in your town, so I made this one for Oakland:
Alex Shoumatoff's Vanity Fair Article On The Bohemian Club
MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Crackle, Sclipo, Viddler and Howcast
Bringing an end to a story that made my blogs famous, infamous Vanity Fair (VF) Contributing Editor Alex Shoumatoff finally published his work on the Bohemian Club’s timber management plan and how he got snared by police for tresspassing at its private retreat near the town of Monte Rio, Calif.
If you remember, Alex Shoumatoff set out last year to help his Harvard roommate Jock Hooper do a smear job on the Bohemian Club, which is a kind of resort home for many San Francisco luminaries, and not all of them male. Hooper was someone described as a "disgruntled former member" of the exclusive gentlemen’s club that has is favored by the business elite, former presidents, international leaders, and men who enjoy music, wine and song, and ok, I know at least two women who've recently been there (with their boyfriends). The club's lightened up a lot over the years.
Anyway, Hooper quit the club when it wouldn’t approve his forest management plan (read: major ego) and then became the leading critic of the club’s plans to preserve and protect old growth redwood trees on its property. He then got Alex and Vanity Fair to do some dirty work for him, or try to.
Now I write this with the full expectation of being invited to the 2010 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, rather than having to sneak into it. Hear me talking Graydon!
This story started last year when Shoumatoff managed to sneak in to the Bohemian Grove during the annual event the club holds in July. But his wandering, covered in detail in his story, only lasted 40 minutes before he was arrested by security guards and a part-time service employee at the famed Grove who quickly spotted that the kind of sloppy, preppy Topsider-wearing editor was not one of their own.
In VF, Alex writes that he was trying to fit in with that style of dress, but folks I talked to say he wasn’t hard to miss: he was dressed like a caddy wearing a Pebble Beach pullover and apparently asked off-beat questions that proved to be his downfall. Most of which he mentions in his article.
He was quickly captured cowering behind a bush, but his large body gave him away. He was then arrested by the Sonoma County Sherriff’s Department, spent the night in county jail, and forced to pay a fine for trespassing. His arrest was captured in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Gawker, Huffington Post, and, of course, here at zennie62.com and the San Francisco Sentinel .
Shoumatoff’s piece in Vanity Fair this month may be the first case of a hatchet job that turned into a hachet boomerang: Club members say Shoumatoff’s piece is so dramatized and so full of factual errors (that I will detail in a follow-up post), that it proves to be an embarrassment for him and well as Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. And they refered to being attacked by "right wing bloggers"!
I'm neither right of center, nor posessing wings like a bird, but I am a blogger. As an Oakland guy who hangs out in San Francisco a lot, has worked for and helped many local politicians both Democrat and Republican (but I'm a Dem), and gotten to personally know a number of "Grovers" as Alex calls them, I can tell you they're more than a little tired of people putting them into this "conservative White male" box, especially since this "liberal Black male" has been invited to visit and by members who are not all White, and aren't at all conservative.
I'm happy to come to their defense to be frank.
I'm glad Alex got caught because he could have just used the contacts he was developing to visit the club in a legitimate fashion. Instead, he bozoed his way in and looked like a clown in doing so.
And the club's forest plan? According to several sources, it's going through the review process well. But what I find so interesting even over the important consideration of the trees, is how one blue-blood institution, Vanity Fair, can muster the gall to call another blue-blood institution The Bohemian Club "elitist" when VF's not even invited me to its Oscar Party, and Graydon Carter will not take my calls.
This'll teach 'em!
Alex Shoumatoff's Vanity Fair Article On The Bohemian Club Reveals His Unfortunate Reporting Approach
MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Crackle, Sclipo, Viddler and Howcast
Bringing an end to a story that made my blogs famous, infamous Vanity Fair (VF) Contributing Editor Alex Shoumatoff finally published his work on the Bohemian Club’s timber management plan and how he got snared by police for tresspassing at its private retreat near the town of Monte Rio, Calif.
If you remember, Alex Shoumatoff set out last year to help his Harvard roommate Jock Hooper do a smear job on the Bohemian Club, which is a kind of resort home for many San Francisco luminaries, and not all of them male. Hooper was someone described as a "disgruntled former member" of the exclusive gentlemen’s club that has is favored by the business elite, former presidents, international leaders, and men who enjoy music, wine and song, and ok, I know at least two women who've recently been there (with their boyfriends). The club's lightened up a lot over the years.
Anyway, Hooper quit the club when it wouldn’t approve his forest management plan (read: major ego) and then became the leading critic of the club’s plans to preserve and protect old growth redwood trees on its property. He then got Alex and Vanity Fair to do some dirty work for him, or try to.
Now I write this with the full expectation of being invited to the 2010 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, rather than having to sneak into it. Hear me talking Graydon!
This story started last year when Shoumatoff managed to sneak in to the Bohemian Grove during the annual event the club holds in July. But his wandering, covered in detail in his story, only lasted 40 minutes before he was arrested by security guards and a part-time service employee at the famed Grove who quickly spotted that the kind of sloppy, preppy Topsider-wearing editor was not one of their own.
In VF, Alex writes that he was trying to fit in with that style of dress, but folks I talked to say he wasn’t hard to miss: he was dressed like a caddy wearing a Pebble Beach pullover and apparently asked off-beat questions that proved to be his downfall. Most of which he mentions in his article.
He was quickly captured cowering behind a bush, but his large body gave him away. He was then arrested by the Sonoma County Sherriff’s Department, spent the night in county jail, and forced to pay a fine for trespassing. His arrest was captured in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Gawker, Huffington Post, and, of course, here at zennie62.com and the San Francisco Sentinel .
Shoumatoff’s piece in Vanity Fair this month may be the first case of a hatchet job that turned into a hachet boomerang: Club members say Shoumatoff’s piece is so dramatized and so full of factual errors (that I will detail in a follow-up post), that it proves to be an embarrassment for him and well as Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. And they refered to being attacked by "right wing bloggers"!
I'm neither right of center, nor posessing wings like a bird, but I am a blogger. As an Oakland guy who hangs out in San Francisco a lot, has worked for and helped many local politicians both Democrat and Republican (but I'm a Dem), and gotten to personally know a number of "Grovers" as Alex calls them, I can tell you they're more than a little tired of people putting them into this "conservative White male" box, especially since this "liberal Black male" has been invited to visit and by members who are not all White, and aren't at all conservative.
I'm happy to come to their defense to be frank.
I'm glad Alex got caught because he could have just used the contacts he was developing to visit the club in a legitimate fashion. Instead, he bozoed his way in and looked like a clown in doing so.
And the club's forest plan? According to several sources, it's going through the review process well. But what I find so interesting even over the important consideration of the trees, is how one blue-blood institution, Vanity Fair, can muster the gall to call another blue-blood institution The Bohemian Club "elitist" when VF's not even invited me to its Oscar Party, and Graydon Carter will not take my calls.
This'll teach 'em!
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