Muttroxia

McCain has been roundly criticized over his belief that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. With a real threat of the Great Depression here, can anyone believe that? I can. The criticism is a bad one, McCain is more or less correct.

There are (at least) three levels of economics and finance to think about.

Financial: All the trouble we have right now is at the financial level. All the troubles are on paper. No houses have been destroyed, no buildings have been razed, etc. Financial issues are Wall Street issues. If an issue is mainly associated with Wall Street, it’s a financial issue. If you can’t understand it, it’s probably a financial issue. The current (phase of the) crisis is a Wall Street problem that has infected the economy as a whole.

Fiscal: Fiscal is just government spending. Our national debt is huge and getting bigger, we have enormous unfunded obligations coming due in Medicare/Medicaid (and Social Security to a lesser extent), and we aren’t addressing these issues. We’re making it worse with all these bailouts, nearly one trillion dollars added to the bad side of the ledger. But remember that this crisis is a long and ongoing. bailouts aside, which are a response to financial problems, nothing much has changed in the last couple years. (Except the fall of the dollar, which is directly connected to our debt level.)

Fundamentals: The GNP of the United States is enormous. Not only are we the biggest economy in the world, we are the biggest by a huge margin. We are over three times the size of the next country (Japan). We are far and away the most productive nation. We lead the world in just about every conceivable indicator of economic strength. Our political and cultural institutions are without peer. We are still the big dog.

These are roughly in reverse order of importance. It is most important to have strong fundamentals, which we do. It is next most important to be strong fiscally, where we are so-so. It is next most important to be strong financially, where we currently are awful. McCain should not be criticized for saying the fundamentals of our economy are strong, they are.

I found a better chart. This is about Medicare particularly, and what is driving the costs. It’s not people living longer.

The literal version of “Take on Me”

Political sign

Yep, that’s racism

Shia LaBeouf. No.

15 gravity defying houses

George Costanza’s top 10 ladies

It’s worth the extra $3.

Facial attractiveness scale (composites from Hot or Not). If nothing else, this demonstrates the power of good lighting and eyeliner.

The highest-earning dead celebrities

Terry Pratchett (author of the Discworld books) talks about his Alzheimer’s.

Ouch. Just… ouch.

Song for Sarah Palin (made by friend of a friend)

The candidates as trains

How McCain lost his brand. “…delivering to McCain innumerable victories in the battle for the daily—and even hourly—news cycle. But presidential campaigns are perverse, quicksilvery things, and it appears that the very tactics that for a while gave McCain the faint hope of victory are now the main obstacle to any hope of a late-stage revival. The new McCain may have won some news cycles, but he is losing the contest of the meta-narrative—and with it, perhaps, the election.”

The hidden cost of war, a short video

Today was Yom Kippur. I took the day off of work. However, there was one meeting I wanted to be in. I went in for an hour in the afternoon. I was already quite hungry. I was already very thirsty (no, you aren’t allowed to drink either). The meeting was a presentation. To keep the audience involved, you won little prizes for answering questions along the way. Since it was trivia (“What do Apple, Google, and Hewlett & Packard have in common?”), I did just fine. The prizes were Pez dispensers and candy. 20 minutes into the meeting I realized I had a bunch of Pez in my mouth and was idly chewing on them. The fast had been unconciously broken. Muttrox goes to hell. Dang!

(Answer: They were all started in garages.)

As I expected, the earmark that McCain dinged Obama for, the $3 million “overhead projector” is in fact the central projector within the planetarium itself. These are sophisticated technical devices. The Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles’ projector cost over $3 million. I’m pretty impressed that’s the worst he could lay at Obama feet. Not very bad at all.

I’ve been trying to find this graph for months.

Take a look at that graph, and tell me the scariest part. That’s right, Medicare. Social Security is not the problem, Medicare is the problem. Whenever you hear someone mention “Entitlements” or “Unfunded Liabilities”, think of this graph. (I’m going to edit it into old posts on this topic also.)

It started raining last night. It has been raining steadily for 20 hours and it’s still going strong. At work, there are two groups of people. One group is gloomy and miserable because of the weather. The other group has aerated and seeded their lawns in the last two weeks. A solid day of rain means that even with our perreniel drought, the new grass has a chance to take and grow. Happy happy rainy day!

Matt Yglesias had a smart post about Palin as the metacandidate, always talking about how she’s going to say things or who she’s saying them to instead of you know, saying them.

I noticed this last night with McCain also.

And, again, I know those situations. I’ve been in them all my life.

And I’ve been supporting those and I know how to fix this economy, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and stop sending $700 billion a year overseas.

But the point is that I know how to handle these crises. And Senator Obama, by saying that he would attack Pakistan, look at the context of his words. I’ll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I’ll get him. I know how to get him.

I’ll get him no matter what and I know how to do it.

I’m sure I could find more examples from the transcript if I spent more time.

While Obama is laying out plans and ideas, McCain is telling us how he has plans and ideas. He’s telling us that knows how to make a plan and execute a plan and that’s all fine and well but what is the plan? If I ever tried to fake my way through a presentation at work by talking about what a good presenter I am and reminding people of all the other presentations I’ve done and how my next presentation will be amazing but I can’t tell you know because it’s a secret — let’s just say it would not be pretty.

I think that’s part of why voters don’t respond to many of McCain’s answers. Even when he’s right (ferinstance he does have a history of reaching across the aisle) it sounds like petulant whining to simply say how much you know about issues without ever sharing that knowledge.

Update: As always, Matt says it better.

If McCain knows how to get Osama, I can understand his reluctance to describe the details of the plan to a globally televised audience. But couldn’t he have taken the opportunity sometime over the past seven years to tell George W. Bush?

Points against McCain:

BROKAW: Health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?

MCCAIN: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom.

Way to duck the question John! This is an interesting response from the man who is unable to deal with voting on the bailout bill without suspending his campaign. At that time Obama said, the next president needs to “deal with more than one thing at once.” I guess McCain came around. (Obama did obliquely say his priorities were in the order of Energy, health care, entitlements.)

Points against both of them:Entitlements is clearly third on the list. Entitlements is composed of two parts, Social Security and Medicare. I won’t rant about Social Security here, but search this blog for links on it, it is not in trouble. The much larger problem is Medicare. And this is a problem that is solved to a large degree by reforming health care.

Why do we want universal health care anyhow? There are two very different reasons. One is the medical/societal/fairness plank – government should ensure that all of it’s citizens lead long fulfilling lives wherever it can. This is the liberal normative critique, that we should do this because that’s the kind of world we aspire to live in. The other is economic. The current health-care system is a drain on our resources. Currently, we spend more money for less value. Universal health care solves both problems to a large degree. It obviously makes the country a more better, more fair, more secure place to live. But a good universal health care system also saves huge amounts of money. The GOP scuttled attempts to allow the government to negotiate drug prices, this is an area where we could save huge amounts, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Universal health care will dramatically decrease the needed funding for Medicare/Medicaid, reducing the entitlement problem. I wish either candidate had spoken to this.

Points against Obama: Only one part really bugged me, a tactical error. After the answers on McCain, Obama said he wanted to break the format to rebut McCain. He said:

OBAMA:…Look, I — I want to be very clear about what I said. Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan. Senator McCain continues to repeat this.

What I said was the same thing that the audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should.

Now, that I think has to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.

This was a fantastic answer. It calls McCain a liar, gives the accurate facts about his beliefs quickly and concisely. But then he kept gong with the Bomb, Bomb, Iran quote and rambled on about some other stuff and distracted from the core message. He should have stopped after those twenty seconds. His continuation allowed McCain a couple minutes to rebut instead of only having twenty seconds against an extremely powerful message. Obama turned a home run into a single.

Points against Castellanos: (This only make sense if you watched on CNN) Calm down Alex! We don’t need a final analyst score of 172-86-32-6721. It’s simply not necessary to award that many points. Why don’t you take a five minute break?

Some time ago, Mrs. Muttrox and I splurged on a high-end hotel for a night. We went to a $500/night hotel, and it was interesting to compare it to our usual hotel experiences. (By the way, Hotwire is amazing. We’ve consistently gotten incredible deals.)

Business people vs. Personal Rich: The Muttrox family is doing just fine, but we are not in the “rich” category. (Yet!) Our people-watching found two obvious clusters of people. There are people who are rich, have been rich for a while, and damn well know it. They are, to put it bluntly, jerks. They are rude to everyone in sight and expect the things they want to materialize out of nowhere instantly. Their teenage daughters are fun to look at, but are clearly Paris Hilton worshiping bitches. The other group was the business people. They are fun. Some feller in town for the state industrial paper products meeting is having a great time. Everything is new, he’s enjoying living the good life and has more in common with the staff than the other guests. I like these people.

Included Price vs a la carte: At most hotels the amenities are included. You get your continental breakfast, access the gym, etc. At upscale hotels, it is just the opposite. Every little thing costs extra. Parking? Extra. Internet? Extra. Food? Extra. When the base price is so high, you would think these things are included. It’s the exact opposite of what I would expect. I would think a discount hotel would lure people in with low prices, then hit them for every cheap thing. High class hotels want to deliver an “experience”, and when you are being nickel and dimed for every little thing it’s hard to believe in the experience.

Scale on the light side: There was a bathroom scale. I firmly believe that they calibrated it a few pounds under the truth. I was in a good mood during our stay, I thought my exercise regimen was going well. It was not. But I was in a good mood while I was at the hotel!

Judgment and Experience

I am not surprised these folks are McCain supporters

Biden training for the debate: How not to make girls cry

One gutsy air conditioner installer

Sometimes the headlines write themselves.

Heart attack in a can

Just too funny. Beware the orbs!

Presidents before & after: The physical toll of being president

The Chinese Gymnasts are cleared. I don’t believe it.

Real-life Superman catches bullet in teeth, spits it back at shooter

A very entertaining video on good luck, the opposite of Murphy’s Law

Five great science books to expand your mind

Don’t die on me, stay with me!

The best robber ever. This will probably end up in Die Hard 5, he gulled a bunch of Craigslisters into unwittingly serving as decoys after his bank robbery.

Fantasy Football

SF Authors and their blogs

Steven Colbert to work with Spiderman.

They did it! Private company makes it into space.

Gilligan’s Island: This interpretation is ridiculous, but funny.

Video of drunk Mythbuster on treadmill.

Random thought on rhetorical styles

Palin has no facts. She spews out rhetoric that meanders around a point but is never centered on anything, because she doesn’t know anything. When there is a nugget of information buried in there it’s often confusing or irrelevant. Example: She claimed Obama votes with his party 96% of the time. I had to think about that one, what does it mean? Does that mean he votes the same as Harry Reid? As a majority of Democratic Senators? Against the GOP position? Against Bush? What does that mean?* This was 90 seconds into her two minutes. The rest of her answer was empty phrases bumping up against each other in the hopes of randomly forming a sentence.

The other extreme is exemplified in the persona of Michael Dukakis. He knew his facts and could pull them out, but couldn’t weave them into a larger picture. Too technocratic.

Biden tends towards Dukakis. He knows a lot and always has a fact ready. When he is on his game it adds up to a bigger picture, when he is not he sounds like a blowhard professor. In the VP debate the first part was not so good, but the second half brought it together.

The master is Bill Clinton. No matter what the topic, whether speechifying or responding to questions, he always had relevant facts at hand. And he could easily show you why his facts where the most relevant ones, how they destroyed any other vision, and wrap it all up in a larger theme. He’ll quote you the minimum wage factsheet, but also convince you that it speaks to the fundamental unfairness of the his opponent and is a disgrace the founding fathers vision of a better world where all citizens rich and poor etc… That’s rhetoric. If you give Bill Clinton and Joe Biden the same facts, they’ll both be convincing, but Clinton will have you drinking the water waiting for more.

* It seems to mean “how often [he voted] with [the Democrats] on bills where the parties split.”