US Politics Mega-thread - Page 397

On August 25 2013 07:11 WhiteDog wrote:
Well whatever you don't see my point. Also you are completly mistaking the difference between "under developped countries" and the few developing countries who benfitted from the mobility of capital. China didn't "win" because of investment, it had good results because of cheap labor.

It is not a high expected return, it is a high return on investment plain and simple.

And finance market is not efficient in capital allocation and pricing - it is "supposed" as such (strong form efficiency) but it is, in practice, not evolving the same way as a "normal" market (if any normal markets actually exist in the first place). Look at Eugene Fama hypothesis on market efficiency, and read Samuelson work (that Fama used to build his own theory), you will see that the idea of market efficiency is not about that : they talk about the impossibility to predict the future price of an action through the past price of the said action.
It is in this way that financial market are "efficient".

A wildfire that has spread into Yosemite National Park is now threatening the power grid that supplies San Francisco, prompting Gov. Jerry Brown to declare an emergency for the city.

The 200-square-mile Rim Fire also threatens thousands of homes and has forced the evacuations of hundreds.

Bob Hensley, reporting for NPR, says that in issuing the state of emergency for the city of San Francisco and San Francisco County late Friday, Brown indicated the wildfire has damaged the electrical infrastructure that provides power to the Bay Area 150 miles to the west.

Brown said Bay Area utility officials have had to shut down transmission lines and that so far, the city has been able to keep the power on, even though further disruptions could change that.

He said the city's water supply could also be affected by the fire.

The Associated Press says San Francisco gets 85 percent of its water from the Yosemite-area Hetch Hetchy reservoir that is about 4 miles from the fire.

Meanwhile, the fire has been spreading for nearly a week and only a small fraction of it has been contained.

David Cameron and Barack Obama moved the west closer to military intervention in Syria on Saturday as they agreed that last week's alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime had taken the crisis into a new phase that merited a "serious response".

In a phone call that lasted 40 minutes, the two leaders are understood to have concluded that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was almost certainly responsible for the assault that is believed to have killed as many as 1,400 people in Damascus in the middle of last week. Cameron was speaking from his holiday in Cornwall.

The prime minister and US president said time was running out for Assad to allow UN weapons inspectors into the areas where the attack took place. Government sources said the two leaders agreed that all options should be kept open, both to end the suffering of the Syrian people and to make clear that the west could not stand by as chemical weapons were used on innocent civilians.

On August 25 2013 06:02 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
P.S. is that a good book? If so, does it come in audio book format?

WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Republicans on Sunday that the strict voter identification laws they're pursuing around the country will damage the party's standing with growing blocs of voters.

"[H]ere's what I say to my Republican friends: The country is becoming more diverse," Powell told Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation." "You say you want to reach out, you say you want to have a new message. You say you want to see if you can bring some of these voters to the Republican side. This is not the way to do it."

"The way to do it is to make it easier for them to vote and then give them something to vote for that they can believe in," Powell added.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling that struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in states like North Carolina, Florida and Texas have sought voter restrictions that critics, including Powell, say will disproportionately hurt minorities at the polls. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed legislation earlier this month that requires voter identification, rolls back early voting hours and ends a state-supported voter registration drive. Powell condemned that particular law at an event in Raleigh last week.

Powell pointed out that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, the very premise of the identification statutes.

On August 26 2013 07:09 oneofthem wrote:
when the market's own behavior and belief becomes its own price signal

On August 26 2013 07:44 sam!zdat wrote:


that's why I say I think things need to be less mediated. the fewer layers of mediation there are, the less likely signifiers are to fly off into hyperreality and stop referring to things in the real world. it least it seems to me.

WASHINGTON — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 80, vowed in an interview to stay on the Supreme Court as long as her health and intellect remained strong, saying she was fully engaged in her work as the leader of the liberal opposition on what she called “one of the most activist courts in history.”

In wide-ranging remarks in her chambers on Friday that touched on affirmative action, abortion and same-sex marriage, Justice Ginsburg said she had made a mistake in joining a 2009 opinion that laid the groundwork for the court’s decision in June effectively striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The recent decision, she said, was “stunning in terms of activism.”

Unless they have a book to sell, Supreme Court justices rarely give interviews. Justice Ginsburg has given several this summer, perhaps in reaction to calls from some liberals that she step down in time for President Obama to name her successor.

On Friday, she said repeatedly that the identity of the president who would appoint her replacement did not figure in her retirement planning.

“There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president,” she said.

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose.

U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.

On August 26 2013 07:09 oneofthem wrote:
the essential feature of an economic crisis, a feedback loop of some sort, is a feature of human activity. so portraying the situation as a freak accident that nobody saw coming is at best incomplete and really misses the essential man-made nature of the whole affair. (given how goldman, for example, was quick to offload toxic liability onto others when the music was stopping, or the ratings agency's complicity as well as this being known to market players, the whole affair is even less "natural")

taleb's stuff about tail risk is not too illuminating tbh. i'd rather look at minsky's instability theory or simply look at the feedback loops that can magnify risk on a systematic level and indeed make systemic risk almost inevitable, when the market's own behavior and belief becomes its own price signal

The Senate's most prominent climate change skeptic, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), called in to Mike Huckabee's radio show on Monday to discuss conspiracy theories on global warming and the Obama administration's plans to deal with it.

In the segment, both Inhofe and Huckabee accuse the Obama administration and Organizing for Action -- the nonprofit created out of the Obama campaign to stump for the president's agenda -- of violating federal law in their push to combat climate change. Inhofe has called for an investigation into whether the administration is coordinating with OFA on political activities in violation of the Hatch Act. He claims that because the Environmental Protection Agency is working on climate rules and OFA is working to promote climate action, there must be some manner of illegal interaction.

Desert tortoises have been around for a million of years longer than the Mojave Desert that the species is native to.

They have adapted to its surrounding and survived the area's transition into a desert. Due to the cruel acts of humans over the past few decades, the resilient creature is listed as a threatened species.

Since then officials have spent a great amount of time, effort and funds to ensure the safety of these ancient animals. Wildlife officials set up a sprawling conservation reserve site just outside Las Vegas for these animals.

But now these pampered ancient creatures are facing a new threat, the government has decided to close the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center due to a paucity of funds and these tortoises will now be put to sleep.

The Desert Tortoise Conservation Center has been running out of federal funds due to which they plan to shut the site and euthanize hundreds of desert tortoise that were nurtured there since they were declared endangered in 1990.

The animal conservation area that spans across 200-acre decided to stop accepting new animals and those that arrived in the fall will be also be put down, source Associated Press.

On August 27 2013 06:10 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Unfucking believable:



Source

The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.

More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”

Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008.