Category: Uncategorized

Krugman for OMB

In which I wholeheartedly support Simon Johnson’s call for Obama to nominate Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman to the Office of Management and Budget:

The president should nominate Paul Krugman to replace Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget. We have previously reviewed Krugman’s outstanding qualifications for this (or any other top level) job (link to details). The main reason Krugman himself has been reluctant in the past relates to a potentially difficult Senate confirmation hearing – for example, if Krugman had been put forward to replace Ben Bernanke.

But for the OMB position, the dynamic of a hearing would be terrific for the president’s specific agenda and broader messages. Krugman, of course, is the leading advocate for continued (or increased) fiscal stimulus. This is exactly President Obama’s message to the G20 this weekend.

Plus, when Republicans push back against Krugman on this issue, he will let them have it full blast on fiscal policy during the Bush administration. Krugman has, again and again, been an outspoken critic of the Bush era fiscal policy. He has precise chapter and verse on where the Bush team went off the deep fiscal edge.

I think this is a fantastic proposal for three reasons. Consider the benefits: 1) Krugman gets the chance to prove once and for all that Neo-Keynesian economics does not work even when its foremost champion is in a position of power. 2) He will no longer be writing ridiculous opinion columns. 3) Within 18 months, the rest of the world will be forced to acknowledge that Krugman is a maleducated ignoramus who knows virtually nothing about relevant economic theory. 4) Mainstream economics can finally move on from an outdated and destructive economic theory.

And there’s no downside. It’s not as if Obama is going to appoint anyone who understands the first thing about the present contractionary crisis, after all. Krugman can’t possibly make things any worse than whatever clueless hack ends up getting appointed; for all Krugman’s willful theoretical incompetence, he’s actually less cretinous than the average mainstream economist.

The Twilight of the Damned

I am entirely confident that had vampire porn been around in the first century, Twilight bed sheets would have been included along with adultery as legitimate Biblical grounds for divorce.

I am an enthusiastic fan of the Twilight Saga and have recently purchased an Edward Cullen pillowcase and blanket. Here is the problem – I am married and my husband has taken great offense to having these items on our “marital bed”! I have argued that he is a fictional character and that these are just objects…and if he wanted to put Pam Anderson on a pillowcase he could gladly do so. He thinks I am not in touch with reality (which I find offensive) and am not being a considerate wife. I want to make my husband happy but does that mean that I have to compromise my happiness in order to achieve this?

Attention deltas and gammas. Remember this email the next time you find yourself tempted to take anything a woman says seriously or to place her on a pedestal. This is not a joke, it is an actual example of the way that a living, breathing, adult married woman thinks. Now, steel yourself and try to imagine what must be going through the head of the average woman who doesn’t regard herself as being sufficiently grown-up for marriage!

The mind reels.

There is so much wrong here that it might seem hard to know where to start, but in fact it is entirely clear. The bedsheets go and the wife can either decide to grow up or she can go too. Her immature, self-centered lack of respect for her husband is total and it is hilarious how she “finds offensive” his statement of the completely freaking obvious given her equation of happiness with teenybopper bedsheets.

The advice given by the fat little complacent gamma was totally predictable of course. As soon as I saw his picture, I knew his advice would be to ignore the fact that the wife is a complete lunatic and tell the husband to let her have her way. After all, doing exactly what a woman tells you to do is the way that you may occasionally be permitted to have sex with her, right? This is the point at which the observer is forced to note that as many as four of the advice columnist’s seven children might actually be his.

Sure enough: I’ve read those Twilight books, they are pretty romantic. So let your wife enjoy her dreamy fantasy of fangs and foreplay and she may just turn out to be the most considerate wife you could imagine – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Did I call that one or what? Romance novels and romance TV are nothing more or less than female porn. Most women will furiously deny it, but their very vehemence underlines the reality. Women get the same buzz off romance porn that men get from Victoria’s Nasty Secret Vol. 37 and the fact that the female variant happens to be more acceptable in public in the West is no more meaningful than the fact that tentacle monsters penetrating spread-eagled teen girls in tattered school uniforms is equally acceptable in public elsewhere. I’ll never forget being puzzled by the sight of a middle-aged sarariman openly reading a comic book on the train next to me and glancing over his shoulder to see what sort of childish superhero cartoon it was. Such was my eye-opening introduction to the significant difference between shōnen and seijin manga.

The point is that while a man should tolerate a woman’s moderate porn habit, if it’s gotten to the point that she’s doing the female equivalent of bringing a Jenna Jameson blow-up doll to bed, she’s out of control and requires reining in. But this woman is so far gone that there may be no hope for her. Forget the sexual and sanity implications, I’d leave the poor freakshow solely on the basis of aesthetics.

Mailvox: exiting Omega

DG wonders how to apply Game in his situation:

I need some help. I’m very new to Game. I got started on my little adventure into this after a disaster of nuclear proportions with the last girl I was seeing. A conversation about masculinity, femininity and the roles men and women play in relationships set me on the journey.

Quick bit on me – in 2008 I took the “red pill” on the world (not women yet) and started questioning everything. While we may agree or disagree on points, we share similar outlooks in that much of what is conventional is likely a lie perpetrated for someone’s advantage. I am a Christian currently, former atheist for 16 years and then agnostic in 2009. I mention this because my faith and adherence to it affects what I can and cannot do.

I was a beta in HS, became a lesser alpha in college when my body finally decided to step it up (I was a late bloomer, I dropped 20 pounds of fat, put on about 15 pounds of muscle and grew 4 inches in my freshman year). Suddenly I was looking attractive and compared to the men at my university, I was golden. But then when I converted, I decided to be “nice.” Stupid me! I should have realized you can be an alpha and not be a douche, but my whole game was asshole game and never realized it until now. I have two major questions/requests. I’ll try to keep them short and to the point.

1) Where do you suggest that someone start if they are a complete newb and need to reverse their beta-tude? No matter what you are shooting for: STR, LTR, marriage, casual dating/sex, whatever, you need to know Game.

2) I mentioned the disaster that was the last woman. As Roissy described in an old post about what to do to win and ex back, everything he said not to do, I did. Oh yes, and then some. I went from alpha to omega in this girl’s eyes for sure. While I have no intentions of winning this girl back (it would take a miracle from God, and I’m not counting on getting one on this issue) or being her friend (I don’t keep female friends anymore, utterly useless), I can’t cut her out entirely from my life. I still need to deal with her and encounter her…at my church of all places. How do I deal with her when we are in the same room and when I do actually need to speak with her or work with her? I may not be able to recover my omega status in her eyes, but I certainly do not wish to feed it.

I think the best way to work one’s way out of beta-tude, or as I would refer to it, gammatude, is to stop judging yourself on the basis of what women think. Here’s how. Take a good look at the men around you, the men you know well. Consider what you think of them, of their strengths and weaknesses. Then compare your opinion to what women think of them. Are the results similar in any way, shape or form? I tend to doubt it.

The main reason that I could not care less what the female collective happen to think about pretty much everything is the result of the extreme dichotomy between what I thought of the men in my social circle at the time and what women thought of them. With a few notable exceptions, the men that were most highly regarded and sought after by women were the weak and insecure ones, the shallow, treacherous and useless ones. Once I could no longer take seriously what they thought about other men, it became impossible to care what they thought about me as well because I no longer considered them capable of judging me in a reasonable manner, whether they thought well of me or not. “In a way, I actually judge her for not breaking up with me sooner.” I have far more confidence in the average dog’s ability to distinguish between a good man and a bad man than the average woman’s and I don’t lose any sleep over what the average dog happens to think of my actions.

Given DG’s familiarity with Game, he can probably guess what developed as a result. At the superficial and social level, women respond to genuine contempt like catnip, probably because it is one of the more powerful forms of DHV. Note that I’m not talking about dislike or hate here, only the same sort of well-merited contempt for a ludicrously irrelevant opinion that The Special One would demonstrate for a soccer journalist.

As for Disaster Girl, the right thing to do also happens to be the polite thing to do. Don’t live in fear of her and don’t give her a moment’s thought when she’s not around you. Treat her in an entirely polite and civil manner, keep your conversations short and to the point, and make it very clear that what’s done is done and you have no interest in revisiting the past. Don’t give her any information about your life, if she asks how you are doing, just reply “very well, thank you,” and change the subject if she gets curious and starts probing. That will probably get her rationalization hamster spinning on its wheel; there is nothing that piques a girl’s curiosity like a former flame who has inexplicably stopped showing interest in her.

Then be sure to expect the probable test and don’t fail it by promptly dissolving into desperate gamma mode when she pulls a 180 on you and starts telling you how confused she is and how she thinks she might have made a mistake and so forth. Just remain perfectly polite, decline to pursue every dangling olive branch she offers, and tell her that you’re ever so pleased that after everything that has happened between the two of you, she’s still such a good friend. Be a Crimson Artist and flip the script on her.

Of course, if you really want to get out of the Omega box for good, show up at one -and only one- church event with a very pretty and somewhat inappropriately dressed girl with stripper hair. Don’t act like she’s your girlfriend or behave obnoxiously, just behave normally and let all the little gossips assume whatever they want to assume. And when asked about her later, just say “well, it’s kind of complicated” and leave it at that.

The fact is that Christianity inhibits Game for the obvious reason that Man is fallen. That’s just a reality that the Christian man has to accept and remind himself that pleasing the world and its women is not his mission on Earth. But the Bible demands male dominance and female submission too, just in a different form. Jesus Christ was seldom nice and he did not come to assuage anyone’s feelings but rather to make them feel so abysmally bad that they were willing to repent of their sins. The need to abandon asshole game should never be confused with the duty to assume gamma. Jesus is, after all the ultimate ALPHA as well as the Omega.

Fire McChrystal

Then bring the troops home. Does this report give you any reason to believe that the US military is on the verge of achieving victory?

But the bigger problem with McChrystal’s leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary deaths of American and coalition forces. We have had many, many accounts of the rules endangering Americans, and the Rolling Stone article provides more evidence. In the story, a soldier at Combat Outpost JFM who had earlier met with McChrystal was killed in a house that American officers had asked permission to destroy.

McChrystal’s devotion to restrictive rules of engagement isn’t totally ridiculous; the Coalition is an army of occupation, not conquest, after all. But, the fact is that Afghanistan isn’t going to be pacified by the mere presence of 100,000 troops over a period of ten years; the incompetence of the US strategy is exhibited by the fact that America’s military leaders had to already know that going in.

If McChrystal wasn’t, like most of the US military’s general class, a politician at heart, he would have resigned, not whined about his Commander-in-Chief to a magazine. Obama does not personally merit respect, but no soldier who fails to respect the chain of command should be permitted to retain his command unless he has some very, very good reasons for not doing so.

UPDATE – Looks like Gen. McChrystal did the honorable thing.

According to an unnamed source ‘Gen. McChrystal has submitted his resignation’ – Joe Klein on Rick Sanchez, CNN…

And yet you doubt

More technofascismo from Apple:

Apple Inc. is now collecting the “precise,” “real-time geographic location” of its users’ iPhones, iPads and computers. In an updated version of its privacy policy, the company added a paragraph noting that once users agree, Apple and unspecified “partners and licensees” may collect and store user location data.

When users attempt to download apps or media from the iTunes store, they are prompted to agree to the new terms and conditions. Until they agree, they cannot download anything through the store.

I now await with no little interest hearing the Macintossers explain how all of this is wonderful and to the great benefit of Apple’s cool, creative and totally unique customers. Seriously, what does Apple have to do to convince you that they’re every bit as evil as Microsoft and more, start making batteries from the blood of aborted Chinese girls? Batteries that you can’t replace!

Oh, wait, they already did that.

A good reason to change churches

The Blogger Blaster provides an excellent metric to determine whether your church is one worth attending or not:

Lets start by looking at Mothers Day. Now… Sermons on both days have formulas that are almost always followed… but in each case… are slightly different. On mothers day… women will be celebrated and praised to the point of near worship. Mary will be mentioned over and over again. Then… in the sermon… the minister will take some particular positive attribute of mothers… and use it as a lesson… and hold it up as something for everyone to aspire to.

Then Fathers Day comes along. its a whole different story. It often starts with a mens breakfast… where an old man will stand up and read a list of fatherly attributes… and its assumed of course that you don’t meet them… then you are chastised for not meeting them… and challenged to meet them in the future. Then the service rolls around… and everyone will lament the failures in society and blame them on who? Right. Dads. And then the formulaic sermon… of course there will be no mention of Joseph… no… instead the minister takes a negative attribute of males… this morning at my church it was pride… and complains about how it affects the family of fathers… and uses it as a negative example to show people something to avoid.

Let me be perfectly clear. I will never, ever, attend a church that makes a habit of putting women on a pedestal and celebrating female traits while repeatedly demonizing men and castigating male traits. That is the hallmark of a church which has abandoned the worship of God the Father in favor of elevating current societal norms to sacred writ.

Because men have their flaws and engage in sin, it is correct for a pastor to exhort them and hold them accountable. But if your pastor is not capable of holding both men and women to account for their behavior, he should be your ex-pastor.

WND column

The Bank Failure Recovery

“Regulators on Friday shut down a Nevada bank, raising to 83 the number of U.S. bank failures this year. The 83 closures so far this year is more than double the pace set in all of 2009, which was itself a brisk year for shutdowns. By this time last year, regulators had closed 40 banks. The pace has accelerated as banks’ losses mount on loans made for commercial property and development.”
– June 19, 2010, the Associated Press

According to the many expert economists who completely failed to see the financial crisis of 2008 or the subsequent economic contraction coming, the American economy is no longer in a recession but is nearly a year into a recovery. However, it is worth noting that the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is the government committee charged with delineating the official beginnings and ends of recessions, has refused thus far to state that the economic contraction that began in 2008 is, in fact, over.

While the GDP figures are positive, other statistics such as the unemployment rate, the velocity of the money supply and the ongoing reduction of debt in the financial and household sectors strongly indicate that the supposed recovery is nothing more than a statistical artifact that is the direct result of a 57 percent increase in outstanding federal debt since the second quarter of 2008. Since government spending is a primary component of the GDP equation, the G in C+I+G+(X-M), literally all of the reported growth in GDP is the result of the increase in outstanding federal debt from $5.2 trillion on June 30, 2008, to $8.3 trillion on March 31, 2010.

Addendum: Here is another piece of evidence that the so-called recovery is nothing more than an artifact of the massive increase in federal borrowing and spending.  Notice how far below the average historical 2% increase the three private sectors have fallen and remember that the Finance sector alone is twice as large as the Federal sector.

For the children

The looming bankruptcy of many state and local governments has made the public leeches desperate. Now that the politicians are more afraid of their bondholders than the unions, the unions are attempting take their mindless “brains more brains” message straight to the electorate with all the subtlety and sophistication that you’d expect.

“The Sacramento County, Calif., sheriff’s deputies union is using mobile billboards, mailers and radio and newspaper ads with vivid images and messages in a bid to avert more layoffs. The campaign includes a photo of a child with an adult’s hand over its mouth and the words, “Your child could be at risk!” Another shows a masked man breaking through a door and asks, “Do you feel safe?””

The irony, of course, is that the masked man most likely to break through a citizen of Sacramento County’s door at night is a member of a SWAT team.

Adios Anelka

I could not figure out what in the name of the 18th Fructidor French manager Raymond Domenech was doing naming Nicolas Anelka to Les Blues, let alone STARTING him. Anelka isn’t quite as bad as Emile Heskey, (word out of the England camp is that Fabio Capelli has finally given up on starting him), but he’s only scored 14 goals in 64 games for one of Europe’s elite teams. Contrast that with Andriy Shevchenko’s 45 goals in 94 games for Ukraine, Gabriel Batistuta’s 56 goals in 78 games for Argentina, or more importantly, Thierry Henry’s 51 goals in 122 games for France.

Given that record of poor performance, one can’t doubt the wisdom of the French Football Federation to kick Anelka off the team and send him home given his behavior during the French loss to Mexico.

“It’s shocking, because if anyone has protected Anelka, it’s Domenech. Domenech has played Anelka throughout the past two years” — vice president of the French Football Federation, Noel le Graet, after taking the decision to send Nicolas Anelka home immediately.

“Go f–k yourself, you dirty son of a b—h” — what Anelka said to Raymond Domenech (shortly after the coach told him to stop moving out of position, and shortly before being subbed off against Mexico) to get himself into hot water.

For some reason, many soccer managers cannot seem to distinguish between African athletes and African strikers. The only thing that real strikers like Eto’o, Drogba, and Henry have in common with athletes who happen to be assigned an attacking position like Heskey and Anelka is that they are of African descent. If a striker cannot maintain at least a 25% scoring rate per game, he should not be starting and probably shouldn’t even be on the team barring the possession of a particular support skill.

I was a little surprised to see Cameroon lose to Denmark, who was amazingly careless in back. The Dutch had some trouble with the Japanese discipline, but did enough to win and go through with a game to spare, and Australia would do well to hire a new manager who is capable of explaining the rules of the game to the Socceroos. Kewell’s handball in the box wasn’t the worst I’ve seen, or the most inexplicable, but it clearly merited the whistle given the tight way this tournament is being called.