Laffy loves his chair 

A few unconnected trains of thought

I posted earlier about the London bombings. I think that I should post my various threads of thought in case someone can make sense of it.

1. The Madrid and London style attacks are inherently more frightening, yet less dangerous than the 9/11 attacks. The London and Madrid attacks hit at infrastructure that nearly everyone uses and that we all expect to work. In addition, I would anticipate that the truly dangerous attacks would actively use suicide bombers.
2. Western Islam, which tends to be financed by the Saudi government and endorses the Wahabbi sect, is generally more radical than is Islam in other parts of the world. In addition, Islam seems to be picking up adherents among disaffected youth and, unlike in the 1960s, these disaffected youth are receiving a hateful ideology that devalues the lives of others.
3. If al-Qaeda becomes a global insurgency then it will become much more difficult to combat with military actions and will, instead, be fought at home using many of the same methods that police forces used to undermine pro-Soviet groups during the Cold War.

Looking forward to any thoughts on these points

Al-Qaeda and London

I've spent the past few days thinking about the London bombings and how al-Qaeda appears to have changed over the past four years (ever since 9/11). Looking at the list of attacks that al-Qaeda has committed, it occurs to me that there might be a pattern. Al-Qaeda itself has generally focused on targets that offered the opportunity for very large numbers of casualties, or directly targeted U.S. interests, or had the potential to wreak havoc on the world economy. For example, al-Qaeda itself ran the operations against the U.S. Navy and the oil industry off the coast of Yemen (these directly impacted U.S. interests and the economy), but it was not al-Qaeda that conducted the Madrid bombings, but rather an "al-Qaeda inspired group." I think this pattern is born out in other attacks as well.

I'm still trying to figure out what that means, but I will get back to that later.

I'm back

Sorry for the long period of silence. I've been struggling with some internal stuff that I am debating dribbling out to readers here. Problem is that I don't want to put it out there and find out that no one cares. So I'm struggling. Hopefully I'll post something explaining this cryptic post in a few days.

Jeezus

I am watching "Bowling for Columbine" again and just realized that 34 minutes into the movie, a reporter talks about how Kliebold's diary apparently included references to hijacking a plane and crashing it into New York City.

Media storm... for L.G. and f'ing over the theocons

I commented over at Bitch Ph.D. on the stupidity of pro-life policy... here is my rant

Can't we all get on the phone when ever the call-in shows are talking about this and ask that Randall Terry guarantee a good family and adequate education (pre-funded, of course) if this child is forced to have a child? Doesn't that last sentence really say it all? A child having a child... seems a bit ludicrous to me.

Every once in a while, I think that us Lefties need to learn how to exploit the media to our benefit rather than ceding the media to the theocons. I hate saying it, but let's take as much advantage of this situation as the Republicans are and ask them if they really think it is reasonable for a 13 year old girl to be forced to give birth? Ask them if they truly believe that poor single mothers cause crime, then why do they refuse to do anything to prevent the creation of more poor single mothers? Ask them why, if they are so pro-life, they cease caring about the newborn baby after birth? Ask them why they are forcing this poor girl to give birth to a baby who won't be able to get any milk becuase they just cut the FUCKING FOOD STAMPS!!! We can, we should, we must push Republicans to explain how their beliefs work. LG should not be forced to walk into some church and beg the parishioners for money. If you're with me, put a comment on my blog, I'll post something for y'all to respond to.

ABC f-ing hypocrites

Following reading this, this and this I decided to write a very polite letter to ABC News at netaudr@abc.com:

To Whom it may Concern,

I am writing following news reports that your network
intends to air advertisements for Focus on the
Family's child-rearing website during your show
"Supernanny." I was wondering if you could explain
why you would approve and run the ad from Focus on the
Family when your network refused to air the United
Church of Christ's ad promoting tolerance on your main
ABC network. It seems that the two organizations are
on either side of the ideological spectrum and, if
anything, the UCC is more mainstream than is Focus on
the Family. In addition, when you refused to air the
UCC ad you told CNN that "we do not generally accept
paid advertising that espouses a particular religious
doctrine," how is this case different?

I look forward to your explanation.

Accounting nuances and IOUs

I've been thinking over the past couple of days about the Social Security trust fund. A lot of conservatives and Republicans have been arguing that the trust fund doesn't exist because, in accounting terms, the assets of the trust fund (treasury bonds) are netted against the liabilities of the overall government. This is a nice, nifty argument, but a simple review of corporate accounting standards shows that to be false. In corporate accounting, if a subsidiary owes some liabilities to a third party then you can not always consolidate the subsidiary. In this case, the government should not properly be consolidating the trust fund by netting the treasury bond balances against each other because: (1) the government shouldn't consolidate in this manner since the majority of the risk is borne by the beneficiaries (this is a de facto, not de jure distinction) and (2) the Federal government has not guaranteed the liabilities of the Social Security system, therefore assets and liabilities should be separate from the overall government balance sheet.

Please explain...

So, if I am understanding some of the current economic issues correctly, wouldn't reducing the federal deficit reduce the available supply of low-risk, dollar-denominated assets for foreign central banks to invest in? If that is the case, then won't those banks have to make one of three choices?

1. Cease their currency intervention as there is no place to invest the dollars they would bring in, which would allow exchange rates to resume fluctuating causing the dollar to decline further against Asian currencies but also causing the Chinese renmibi to appreciate relative to other Asian currencies
2. Continue intervening in the currency markets, but bid up the cost of treasury and agency securities, putting downward pressure on interest rates (incidentally, if they purchased short-term bonds, wouldn't the Fed then need to sell bonds from their portfolio which would reduce the monetary supply and, according to Milton Friedman, leading to a recession?)
3. Continue intervening in the currency markets and invest the proceeds in the corporate debt and equity markets (so, finally getting into the realm of productive investments)

Bush press conference

Is Bush even looking up before calling on the next reporter? I.e. does he already know whose hands are up (or is someone whispering in his ear?)?

Lafayette is hding out in the doghouse cathouse

Poor guy

I had some spare time this evening and ended up reading Christian Westermann's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff when I found this gem of a comment:

Mr. Foldi: I understand, but the question is, when
you submit the request, do you also submit the INR comments?
Mr. Westermann: We can, yes.
Mr. Foldi: You can, but do you?
Mr. Westermann: Yes we do.
Mr. Foldi: Routinely, often, once in a while,
periodically.
Mr. Westermann: You see, sometimes we submit
comments immediately or sometimes we wait for the demarche co-
ordinator to send a response out to the whole community. And
so in this case, I submitted our comments right away.
Mr. Blinken: Why would you do that as opposed to
waiting for it to come back from clearance?
Mr. Westermann: Because Fred had given me the
impression that they wanted this to move fairly quickly. So
instead of
-- I thought I was adding value to the process at the time. [Emphasis added]