Why Doesn't President Obama Point To The Booming Economy of the 90s?

I am totally baffled by our President's political strategy regarding the debt and tax policy.  I don’t understand why the President is taking the “let’s work together” approach versus the “let’s do what works” approach.  He’s always talking about bi-partisan negotiations, compromise, working for the people, blah, blah, blah.

Why isn’t he reminding people of the balanced budgets, economic growth, and expanding middle class of the Clinton years?  Back when the upper tax bracket was 39% instead of 36%.  The sky didn’t fall.  Business was booming, jobs were a-plenty, the middle class was expanding.  He should be hammering this home day after day after day.  Remember the economic opportunity of the 90s?  You were employed, your family and friends were employed.  Let’s go back to those policies.  They worked!

Just hammer the Republicans on the irresponsibility of a tax cut during two wars- never in our nation’s history.  George W. Bush’s tax policy has failed.  Clinton’s tax policy was a success.  State it day after day after day.  Get the public on your side.  Get them thinking, “Yeah, what’s so important about tax cuts for oil companies and the rich?”

The Republicans smell weakness.  They’re not going to budge.  The President needs to get confrontational.  He needs to put his presidency on the line.  People respect that.  They don’t respect luke-warm.  Ugh.

     

An article by Erik No Comments

Poker Compared To The Wall Street Casino

Poker is the only casino game I’m interested in because you don’t play against the House.  You compete against other players and rent a seat (either a tournament fee, cash game fee per hour, or the House takes a percentage of each pot.)  All other casino games involve players competing against the House, where the odds always favor the House.

I think of poker as a math test + psychology.  A game that requires a combination of intellectual and social intelligence.  In other words, a game of skill.  A game of imperfect information (as opposed to the perfect information available in chess), but a game of skill nonetheless.

This study seems to back my opinion.

It’s an interesting question, considering the government recently sued the major poker websites.  The Department of Justice charged the sites with money laundering (of which they’re probably guilty- it’s illegal for banks to conduct transactions with poker websites so the poker websites misrepresented their business).  But the motivation for the banking restrictions is the opinion that poker is not a game of skill, it’s a game of chance, and is therefore subject to gambling laws.

The authors of the study concluded…

The differences [results of top poker professionals compared to amateurs] are “far larger in magnitude than those observed in financial markets, where fees charged by the money managers viewed as being most talented can run as high as 3 percent of assets under management and 30 percent of annual returns.”

The results of the top poker professionals are more consistently positive than the top financial advisors on Wall Street.  In other words, Wall Street is more of a casino than PokerStars.  And yet the DOJ is pursuing the online poker sites, not the guys on Wall Street who wrecked our economy.

I had some money in my PokerStars account when the DOJ seized the domain name.  I requested a cashout a week ago per an agreement between PokerStars and the DOJ.  The money was deposited in my checking account yesterday.  And when will Wall Street return our money?

This is not a rant so much as me expressing amusement at the alternate universe in which Wall Street resides.

     

An article by Erik No Comments

We All Say It Together

[A friend at work forwarded a report on one of Hugo Chavez's strange pronouncements.]

Clearly one of the greatest minds of this age.

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.

[My response.]

That’s great!  However, socialism is just religion.  And religion gets to say these strange things because it has beliefs but not tests.

I have a particularly religious friend who’s fascinated by all the crazy things Chavez says.  I find that funny because honestly I can’t see the difference between “Capitalism killed civilization on Mars.” and “Moses parted the Red Sea.”  I guess the difference is it’s OK to say crazy things as long as we all say it together.

[Final thoughts]

I know I'm an asshole, but I'm not amused by one insular group (the religious) laughing at the strange beliefs of another insular group (socialists).  See my earlier essay on Believing Many Things A Priori.

     

An article by Erik No Comments

Gun Control

Not making an effort to explore this complex issue, just sharing a comment I left on another blog.  The author wrote cogently about gun control.  A reader responded in a combative tone, complaining about the knee-jerk reaction of some to tighten gun control laws in the wake of a mass shooting.

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2011/01/just-little-ranting-about-gun-control.html

[My comment.  I respond to the anonymous post on Jan. 12 7:02 PM]

"You people don't like guns.....fine don't have a gun. It is your right to own one or not. Do not tell us that we don't have the right."

Why the combative tone?  Some of us have a different opinion about what armaments should be permitted and what should be restricted.  Handgun to nuclear bomb... draw the line somewhere to balance the competing interests of national security and individual liberty.  We the People will always discuss these laws and rights, as it's all negotiable.  Yes, our Constitution explicitly lists the rights of the People.  But it also details a process by which the People can amend those rights.

Please don't confuse a discussion over whether today's laws and rights are appropriate for today's problems with "tell[ing] us that we don't have the right."  Everything is negotiable and the Constitution lays out a framework for lawfully making changes through the democratic, legislative process.

[Update Jan 13:  My comment was deleted.  Coward.  I guess the far right prefers bombast over rational discourse.]

     

An article by Erik No Comments

Suppressing Sexual Impulse Has A Stultifying Impact On Creativity

[An e-mail exchange from July 2004 with my sisters and brother in law.]

Brother in law: You guys will love this.  And I know it's from the Weekly Standard.
 
I got into that most boring of "talks" today, gay marriage, in which I was told that Sweden is declining as a nation because of gay marriages.  I just started laughing, came back to my desk and searched Google for Sweden and marriage.  I found the influence for this statement.  This article is long, laughable and absurd – and scary.

The End of Marriage in Scandinavia

Me: Enforced androgyny that pushes women from the home? Rampant secularization? Sweden's position as the world leader in family dissolution? Norwegian energy minister Arnstad getting pregnant in office and declining to name the father. Gay marriage?

Wow! Thank God the real danger here has been made manifest. We're facing the decline of the West. Why have we been focusing so much attention lately on the instability of the Islamic world when the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians pose such a threat to our way of life?

This is so ridiculous. If I borrow the author's reasoning and state that the separation of marriage from parenthood is an incontestable evil, then I may easily argue that foster parenting and adoption also pose serious threats to the Western World. That such practices arise not from compassion but from moral subversion!

I would like to ask the author why he may so confidently ascribe sexual perversion to the state of being unmarried. Ahem, do heterosexual married couples exhibit exemplary behavior? Where should we start? John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Prince Charles, Henry "fat ass, savings and loan bailout, youthful indiscretions, our values" Hyde, J. Edgar "cross-dressing" Hoover, Jack "I want to have sex in public with my wife" Ryan, Strom "miscegenation" Thurmond, Newt "divorce my cancer-afflicted third wife" Gingrich. Give me a break.

I love when the author cites Italy as an example of a society that has resisted the decline into sexual liberalism, family dissolution, and general moral decadence. Yeah right, Italian men are so sexually restrained. Are we supposed to pretend that cheating on your spouse, then confining this secret sin to the Catholic confessional is preferable to openly recognizing the presence of philandering in adult society? Are we supposed to believe that fostering an edifying lie creates a healthier society than open discourse? Is it healthy to pretend we are something we are not? The attitude that favored edifying lies over uncomfortable frankness created an unsustainable society that eventually collapsed in the 1950s. For all the happy June and Ward Cleaver or Nancy and Ronald Reagan marriages one is likely to find an equal number of unhappy ones. A society cannot be both dishonest and progressive at the same time. For that's the historical judgment on the 1950s. Not all men or women are content to be dumb, staid, and satisfied.

Why is authority so often concerned with regulating sexuality? Because suppressing sexual impulse has a stultifying impact on creativity in general. To snuff out one is to snuff out the other. Many writers have connected sexual desire with creative desire (Freud and Dostoevsky to name two) and argued that these forces are entwined and not easily constrained by rational argument or religious moralizing. This truth may make some people uncomfortable, but that's how we're made. Certainly the sexual revolution of the 1960s confirmed this linkage. Compare popular music- as a barometer of prevailing social temperament- made before the 1960s with popular music made during that decade. It's night and day. Boring affirmations of social propriety contrasted with critical examinations of inherited social structures: the dispersion of political power, racial inequity, economic class warfare, religious superstition, xenophobia, and yes, sexual mores.

One of Dostoyevsky's favorite tactics as a writer was to contrast a person of low social standing who felt severe guilt over his moral failings with a man of high repute and high social standing who had long since dispensed with burdensome emotions, though not with proper religious facade. Dostoevsky would then arrange for a third character, known to both, to point a finger at the lowlife during a moment of high drama, and declare to the nobleman, "He is more of a believer than you!" That's the 1960s in a nutshell. That sentiment is so well expressed at the conclusion of one of my favorite films, The Graduate. Benjamin and Elaine by their actions pose the same challenge to the reigning social authority as does Dostoevsky's prostitute or drunkard: You value this world? Then go and live in it!

The social/sexual trends cited by the author are not an indicator of moral decadence. They are the result of societies becoming more open and honest about their humanity. The more liberty man gains, the more his true character shows. Conservatives cannot fathom this reality because it exposes the artificiality of their standards. It scares them because they are so ill-prepared to discuss and debate social mores with anyone but like-minded people. They have chosen the weaker Darwinian strategy (control others rather than control oneself and cope with difference, ambiguity, and nuance), and they fear that as traditional social institutions (the Church, male authority, Big Brother government) lose influence, they become less and less prepared to face the world they find. Conservatives may delude themselves into believing theirs is a passionate concern for the Rejuvenation of Man (and it's likely a majority really do believe this), but in my opinion this is a self-righteous pretext, and is quite far from the truth. Their real fear is a primal Darwinian one, and that is that they will become less and less able to compete in society.

To those who've sided with the conservative Darwinian strategy, unfettered creativity poses a serious threat to their social dominance because it inevitably begins to question the fictitious pillars upon which conservative rule is founded. Sexual mores are just one of the pillars.

     

An article by Erik No Comments