1) The vindication of the utter foolhardiness of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil by way of exquisitely weak, poorly argued, or flatly lunatic logic.
2) Poorly written theodicies, often excreted in the guise of rank popular “fiction.”
I’ve given up explaining who the Fonz is and just accepted this new reality.
The only question I want answered is: Moloids or the Silurians? I certainly don’t see any blue boxes around, but recent and troubling disturbances in Fonz-related awareness makes one wonder.
“I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce said. “I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay.”
Worth thinking about in the inexplicable hysteria over this tragedy: what would the reaction have been if this admittedly blown call occurred vs. the first batsman as opposed to the theoretical last? Please freak out accordingly. As in: not at all. Perfect games are extremely rare. Too bad that it played out in this way, but operator error is, was, and always will be a significant part of that rarity. Three in a month’s time is plainly a move against nature.
This is also why God caused the oil spill, by the way.
…belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges. It’s an agenda that basically offers two answers to every problem we face: more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer rules for corporations.
The last administration called this recycled idea “the Ownership Society.” But what it essentially means is that everyone is on their own. No matter how hard you work, if your paycheck isn’t enough to pay for college or health care or childcare, well, [go die in the streets]. If misfortune causes you to lose your job or your home, [go die in the streets]. And if you’re a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules, regardless of the consequences for everybody else [; anyone that gets in their way can kindly go die in the streets].
Excluding bear markets: the rite of the thought criminal. Nice year splits!
Asked and Answered department. From the same document:
The belief that bear markets favor active management is a myth. A majority of active funds in eight of the nine domestic equity style boxes were outperformed by indices in the negative markets of 2008. The bear market of 2000 to 2002 showed similar outcomes.
Reading: it’s fundamental.
As for index funds, your trained monkey hasn’t eaten in 10 years of net negative S&P 500-indexed returns. The monkey is dead. Just because we enjoyed 30 years of average 8-12% returns doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed by god or country. Active management of capital drives a capitalist society forward – index funds are merely dumb piles of loot for the theoretical man in the business suit to the far right to squeeze when necessary.
(via tart-tart)
Do you mean these ten years?
I’m sure the monkey actually gave his life trying to protect the bonuses. At all costs and whatever the outcome.
The key, of course, is “as low as.”
Claiming that capital gains are the same thing as income is, well, no. The cop’s salary is not at risk, and predicated on the performance of very specific sub-groups of investments. But the person who put this graphic together knew that and is a thought criminal, so…
If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that fund managers’ incomes are not at risk, no matter what the performance outcomes may be. The bonuses are sacrosanct! To suggest otherwise, or tie said bonuses to some arbitrary measure of performance would be un-American.
So, of course you lead your rebuttal with two incidents that do not substantiate your argument.
Hey pal, you’re the one that disputed the very existence of a focused and systematic deconstruction of the regulatory apparatus on the part of successive GOP administrations dating back to Reagan and “government is the problem.” Just providing you with a few of the more brazenly obvious examples of said “unheard of” activities that go beyond fostering a merely “cozy” relationship between regulators and industry. The regulations themselves have been weakened through a focused and Bush-administration-mandated lack of enforcement coupled with Congressional oversight turning a blind-eye to what amounts to ignoring a Constitutional mandate that the Executive branch see to the enforcement of the law as it exists, not the law they wish they had. See: Statements, Signing.
Proximate Cause: Cheney directly contributed to, and arguably caused this accident by determining that acoustic switches and more robust blowout preventers would be an “undue burden” on the industry
Cause: Blowout valve that was placed was insufficient to seal the bore in event of catastrophic accident
Effect: Essentially unstoppable flow of oil into gulf until some other solution is found
Yes, Dick Cheney was evil! Except no one knows why the blowout prevention system failed
The old “no one could have expected!” dodge. Uh, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we know exactly why it failed: Among other, more minor failings, even had everything worked perfectly the cutoff device was insufficiently robust to actually cut through the casing and seal the bore with the drilling and lining apparatus still in place.
The Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer had:
- A dead battery;
- Leaks in the hydraulic system that would activate the pistons in the [“unforeseeable”] event of an accident;
- By design, 260 different failures that could require the BOP’s removal and replacement;
- A useless test component installed, and;
- Cutting tools that were not strong enough to shear through 10% of the joints in the piping.
You might note that each of these is a case directly addressable by a robust regulator assigned to oversee this activity. Any of these cases is found to exist: the work on drilling stops until they are rectified. The permit to drill can be suspended or revoked. Fines can be levied. None of these listed failures represents some condition that was unknowable or some totally unexpected chain of individually minor failures that led to the disaster. The primary cutoff system was insufficient to cut the bore. It should never have been placed. The regulatory apparatus as directly conceived and constructed by Bush/Cheney was asleep at the switch, a switch which they had furthermore allowed the oil industry to design and install (seeing as the regulatory reports were being filled out in pencil by the industry and “inked” by the regulators. Wonderful; indeed a searing indictment of the very concept that regulation can work. I guess we should just throw up our hands and forget about regulating industry.
But lets get back to your argument:
How do you stop “cronyism?”
How’s about by stopping cronyism? Simply deny the administration authority to undertake widespread replacement of the traditionally non-political, “career” civil service jobs (yes, I know you are shocked, shocked to hear that such a thing took place under Bush). And yes, Congress (lately in the fetid claws of The Democrat) desperately needs to flex its oversight power here; as a rule no administration should be allowed to sweep out what have been historically apolitical, career jobs in favor of putting unqualified hacks in place (that were, in this case, specifically placed to create the auto-affirming appearance of a government of by and for political hacks that is incapable of the simplest services or regulatory oversight). Undermining confidence in the government is/was the stated aim of these moves. And guess what: it’s working.
How do regulatory agencies take responsibility for decision-making that they don’t have absolute power over? Do you believe in providing them with absolute power?
Give them absolute power. That’s the point of any well thought out regulation, to remove the potentially devastating outcome of precisely this kind of case-by-case, politically charged decision making (recall that BP received a personalized waiver on this project, one which was renewed on an apparently pro forma basis by the Obama administration) and in place of that patronage- and crony-based situation you build an impartial apparatus outside of the two/four/six year political cycle that impartially declares “we will allow BP to drill here, and these criteria will be met; these are the various levels of penalty for the different gradations of wrongdoing, be it accidental or willful. Here is how we will empirically determine compliance, stated in advance, such that BP can plan and act accordingly. In the event of accident, these are the guidelines…” Congress simply needs to find its institutional will to act, reengage its oversight function in a robust way (they are at least holding hearings again…), and ultimately force a broad reform that begins to cure a systemic ill.
Is that really so hard to understand?
Lemkin 