Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the congressional oversight committee, was on the Daily Show. Here is part-2 of the interview:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2 | ||||
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The entire interview is excellent. Jon called the interview “financial chicken soup”. The people who will get us out of the mess are not the ones “you’d want to have beer with,” instead they are the “policy geeks.”
About a game of “what if” played by Christopher “God is Not Great” Hitchens, Skeptico writes:
Jesus’s dying on the cross wasn’t an act of generosity. On the contrary, it was totally self serving –- nothing but a piece of passive aggressive manipulative bullying. God had simply set himself up so he could play victim [(“Oh boo hoo, I died on the cross for you, the least you could do is love me and praise me your whole life.”)] for the rest of eternity. What a wimp.
And it’s actually worse than that. The reward god has for us if we believe in him and praise him our whole lives, is that he won’t send us to burn in the hell that he created for us. […] That would be like me setting up a torture chamber in my basement and expecting people to think I was generous for agreeing not to lock them up there and torture them for the rest of their lives (as long as they worship me). That wouldn’t be considered an act of kindness. I would rightly be considered a psychopath for even setting up the torture chamber in the first place.
So to recap on god’s generosity at Easter: to save us from an eternity of torture in hell that he (god) created and had decided to send us to, based on rules he (god) made up all by himself, he (god) suffered torture (that he planned) on the cross, so that now as long as you worship him, he won’t send you to the hell that he can freely choose not to send you to anyway. And this, we are expected to believe, is act of kindness.
(Emphasis in the original.)
Let me now don the cap of Obama fanboy and quote this Nate Silver piece on Bipartisanship:
Obama’s rhetoric about “bipartisanship” was […], on the one hand, a politically helpful extension of Obama’s 2004 DNC keynote speech, which was the only thing that most voters knew him by early in the primary campaign. On the other hand, it was a polite way to draw a contrast with Hillary Clinton, who’s core weakness may have been a perception that she would be a polarizing political actor.
[…] John McCain, who himself had a strong reputation for bipartisanship, became the Republican nominee. “Bipartisanship”, therefore, became less important as a differentiator for Obama[…]
[T]he economic collapse that accelerated throughout 2008 and particularly in September and October of last year. Once the economy fell apart, people weren’t so concerned about abstractions like bipartisanship — they simply wanted the problems solved.
More essentially, however, bipartisanship, as Obama intended the term, should not necessarily be confused for “compromise”. Rather, it implied behaving in good-faith — hearing out opinions from different sides of the aisle and identifying the best ideas regardless of their partisan origin. Bipartisanship, to Obama, was a process rather than an outcome. He could plausibly have been acting in a bipartisan manner, even if he hadn’t gotten many Republicans to go along with his agenda.
We are again reminded of the way crises are handled by India/Pakistan versus the US. Case in point: the rescue of a Captain by the American Navy.
Acting with President Obama’s authorization […] snipers on the fantail of the destroyer Bainbridge opened fire and picked off the three captors.
[…] It took only three remarkable shots — one each by snipers firing from a distance at dusk, using night-vision scopes, the officials said.
First, the remarkable nature of rescue: three shots, one each from the snipers, to get the three pirates. Second, the equipment that allowed snipers to hit bulls-eye during fading dusk-light. But most importantly, the nature in which the government handled the crisis. Yes, there was a lot of frothing and fuming in the media and by the media. All Obama did, however, was to issue the orders and let the navy seals do the rest. The orders were specific and clear: “[T]he president [permitted use of force to rescue Captain Phillips] if it appeared that the captain’s life was in imminent danger.”
Talking about frothing, fuming and extolling, here is a balanced take by John Cole on this issue:
Maybe I am alone, but I hardly view this as a test of the President. Unless I am mistaken, all he had to do was sign off on rules of engagement and stay out of the way, […] because our very entrenched military and national security apparatus can handle little things like this without flinching.
That isn’t to take anything away from what the guys on the scene did, as that appears to have been one helluva shot they took. They also deserve real credit for their prior restraint, and waiting until the right moment to make things happen. They really acted like, well, professionals. But heaping all sorts of praise on Team Obama seems to me to be just as silly as flaming them for this. They acted prudently and cautiously, as anyone who has watched the President for any period of time would have expected him to behave.
by renowned critic Roger Ebert (via Pharyngula). The end is just priceless:
That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!
In a well-reasoned post, Atanu writes:
The cry goes out, “Globalization has failed. The market system is bad. Capitalism is evil.”[…] Yes, the market system is not perfect. It does not always function well — but compared to what? […] The market system only appears to be bad when you compare its occasional failures relative to its long-run successes.
[…]
States that failed to recognize the power of markets and capitalism, stagnated and lost ground. The US, to take an example, rapidly developed in the 20th century and increased its per capita income seven-fold in a matter of a generation and a half. The US evokes envy among economies that made the wrong choices — but the fault lies not with the US but with the envious others.
What failed is not capitalism, but a system of checks and balances. People behaved irresponsibly not because people are greedy, but because the system rewarded specific irresponsible behaviours. The irresponsible behaviour was in fact fanned by flawed governmental policies as well (not just lack of oversight).
Now that I have established my credentials as Dhoni fanboy, I link to a Cricinfo blog where Samir Chopra takes Dhoni to task for not accounting for the weather (the test ended in a draw, with India just two wickets away from a win):
[F]or as long I’ve watched and followed cricket, the one thing Test captains have always done is planned around the weather [fifth day rain was forecast well in advance].
At tea-time on the third day of a Test, the world’s No. 3 Test team [India], had a lead [of 448 runs,] larger than any target successfully chased in the fourth innings. […]
Why did Dhoni need 600 plus runs on the board? To set attacking fields? Why were 500 runs not enough?[…]
If the idea was to get 600 runs on the board and go on all-out attack, then why was the Indian team’s demeanour in the post-tea session on the fourth day that of giggling schoolboys? They didn’t look like meanies that had put 600 runs on the board and were in your face thereafter. This slackness affected their catching as well; three catches went down on the fifth day itself.Dhoni wanted to save the match first. A win was a bonus. He didn’t get it and it didn’t matter to him. A series win was more important.
One of the things I liked about Dhoni is that he is non-conventional. He has taken bold decisions, which might look ugly from cricketing viewpoint (setting a defensive leg-side field and stem runs). But then, as Samir says:
[If Dhoni] is going to be a truly different Indian Test captain, he will need to snap out of a conservative mind-set[…] And part of the way to do it is to back yourself and your team to win in lots of different settings [and back] your bowlers to not get worried if someone does attack them a bit during their fourth-innings chase. Such expressions of confidence go beyond making your own team more secure; they also send out a message to your opponents. Doing it the first time might be hard but it can rapidly become a habit. Try it, MSD. I think you’ll like it. You have the team for it.