OBAMA WANTS TO LOSE VOTE ON SYRIA

i have been reading about Obama trying to ask permission and get congressional support to attack Syria for its nerve gas attack on its own people. it looks like he is not going to get the House to approve. and it got me to thinking. boy he sure looks weak. and maybe he is. but then i had a really cynical thought.

i think he feels he made a big mistake when he declared the use of nerve gas as a "red line" cause the line got crossed and he sure didnt want to do anything about it. well this last time it was too large to ignore. but he still doesnt want to act. so what do you do? you ask congress. they say no. you can say you are a man of your word but they didnt give me permission

leadership

RED LINE REDUX; RUSE IN IRAN

so after bill Clinton called him a wuss, Obama claimed the red line on chemical weapons had been crossed and he would now "arm" some of the syrian opposition. of course he was talking light arms when the other buy has tanks and planes. as Brzezinski called it; "propaganda. 90,000 odd people have died in syria to date and know that 150 have died from chemical weapons, he sends hand guns. thats leadership. it sort of too late. there was a huge opportunity to break up the iran, syria, hezbollah axis two years ago. now there are iranians, hezbollah, russian arms, sectarian violence, al queda. a mess. moving right along. Iran just elected at "moderate"; huzzahs! now does anybody believe that the iranian people elected a moderate? really? the place is run by the clerics. and this was a brilliant tactical move. because the Israelis don't fuck around and they would have attacked eventually. now the US and Europe will force them to stand down while this moderate smiles at us and the centrifuges whirl away. have a nice day

WHEN IS A RED LINE NOT RED; MAYBE PINK

president Obama has said that the use of chemical weapons by Assad was a red line. now if you actually listen to every word he said he is actually evasive. he uses the phrase red line. yet he doesn't actually say what he would do if it was crossed. he implies action without actually committing to such. now most of us have come to believe that the term red line means something. it means if someone crosses it, you will act. and acting is not writing a mean letter. it means act now the Israeli's have very publicly and from a senior source, a general, said that Assad has used chemical weapons. i am sure this pissed off the white house. for a bunch of reasons. they thought they had delivered a message to Assad and he had heard and agreed. well that didn't work out. then they were pissed at the Israeli's for outing that Assad had done so. our initial reaction was to place doubt on the Israeli assessment. that doesn't seem to be working out too well either. lets see, foaming at the mouth? maybe they have rabies? or too much ecstasy? this leading from behind is not such a good idea. many people think it worked in Libya, but only kinda sorta. we got lucky. but leading from behind means you have less influence. and maybe that led to the death of our ambassador? the next red line is Iran. now if a country's red line should be a function of when it is in mortal danger, the red line for the US is different from Israel. Iran cant strike the US with a nuclear bomb. they will soon be able to strike Israel. if you have ever been to Israel you realize how small it is and close it is. so Israel has a decision to make. depend on the US to defend it at the last minute; or act. would you trust the US. if your life depended on it? i wouldn't

THE NYTIMES; THE GIFT THAT KEEPS GIVING

today's nytimes has three headlines on page one that scream out for comment. 1) DIOCESE PAPERS DETAIL DECADES OF ABUSE CASES. here we go again. this time LA and the once revered cardinal mahoney; just another scum bag. as a matter of policy there should be zero tolerance of child sexual abuse, there should be mandatory reporting to law enforcement, etc. hopefully this isnt controversial. but lets go to a militating factor here, the requirement for abstinence and the rules against marriage for clergy. the fact of the matter is that humans are sexual beings. thank god. pun intended. priests should be allowed to have sexual lives, heterosexual or homosexual or whatever, with consenting adults. they should be allowed to marry and woman should be allowed to be priests. this would reduce the amount of child sexual abuse and lead to a healthier clergy. 2) COMPROMISE IDEA FOR THE INSURING OF BIRTH CONTROL. the federal government, in its new obmamacare legislation has mandated that contraception needs to be covered, without limit or by type, including sterilization. churches and other religious entities and their affiliates, like hospitals and schools have objected and asked to opt out, at least to the extent of not having to pay directly. the administration is providing ever growing carve outs. they are saying that the insurance companies still have to provide these services and that the insurance companies have to pay for these people where their employer opts out. and they cant charge the employer indirectly thru other fees. so who is going to pay? its vague. the government is saying that they will reduce the fees that the insurance companies are apparently going to pay to cover their right to provide insurance thru the new "exchanges" but at the end of the day, we all pay. the people that don't work for these religiously exempted employers, you and me, will have to pay for the cost of contraception for the employees of say catholic schools. now i am in favor of broad availability of contraceptive products and services for all citizens. it just that this doesn't feel right and fair that i have to pay for someone else because of where they work vs where i work. 3) AS GROWTH LAGS, SOME PRESS FED TO DO STILL MORE. we had QE 1, QE 2, QE 3, Operation Twist. god knows what we are on now. and yet the economy lags. we actually had negative growth in the 4th quarter of 2012. i think the definition of a recession is two quarters so we probably wont trip that. but we are basically creating enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate steady, maybe come down very slowly. in the face of the failure of monetary policy to create 3-4% growth and declining unemployment, people are reacting in different ways. the Keynesians are saying, well the reason its not working is we are not doing it enough, we need more. i think the theory is by artificially lowering rates people will borrow more money and the cost of borrowing it will be lower so this greater and cheaper borrowing will motivate people to buy things and spend money and stimulate the economy. under this way of thinking lower is better. so we have lower rates to near zero at the short end of the curve. what seems to be happening is the very credit worthy are borrowing long and cheap and locking in long cheap financing. this is smart corporate financial management. the government is financing short, this is risky financial management. the people who are buying these bonds are going to get clobbered when rates eventually rise; its just math. the government is going to get clobbered when they have to refinance their short bonds at higher rates; which means deficits will go up. but the economy is not getting stimulated that much. yes they have pumped up housing prices. but that's because the government is buying all the mortgages that wells fargo is originating. the banks are not lending much to SME's who actually want to borrow. and everyone is afraid to borrow or hire or invest because of all of the uncertainty from the bozo's who are our government. but back to monetary policy. if lower is better, how about zero. if lower is better, how about negative interest rates. we actually may have negative real interest rates, ie, the nominal interest rate minus inflation might be negative. but that's for pointy headed nerds. how about negative nominal interest rates. you go to a bank and deposit money and instead of the bank paying you, you pay the bank! now that will undoubtedly boost the economy! oh, all the retired people who depend on income from their savings have no income anymore, too bad, we are stimulating the economy. when will people come to grips that we have come to and gone beyond the limits of monetary policy. we need fiscal policy solutions. structural tax reform, budget reform. maybe sequestration is not such a bad idea. people are running around like chicken littles saying, oh my god, we much avoid the fiscal cliff! but maybe not. the theory is that sequestration is a meat axe, it cuts everything by 10% or whatever. we need a more nuanced surgical approach. well giving the corrupt idiots in DC a scalpel probably wont lead to a better outcome than it did with jack the ripper. what would be so bad about across the board cuts. instead of 30 joint strike fighters, we would buy only 27. the same for ALL programs. that will teach me to read the newspaper.

THE RIGHT TO BEAR CARS

with the seemingly weekly tragedies involving often deranged people using guns to commit violence, there is an increase in calls for more gun regulation. guns rights folks roll out the Second Amendment. "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to bear arms, shall not be infringed." it is a long time since i took constitutional law in college. it seems in a plain, common sense reading to mean to me that this right to bear arms is connected to needing a well regulated militia. and it says, "well regulated". anyhow the gun rights folks ( and by the way, i own two shot guns that i use occasionally to hunt birds or shoot trap ) stand on the last clause as inviolate. i am not enough of a law scholar to go much further with a legal analysis but lets try an analogy most Americans own a car. or it seem so in LA. when we buy the car our identity is checked, our having a valid drivers license is checked, our having insurance is required. the car has a unique VIN. we have to register it with the DMV; every year. we have to take a test both written and driving to get a license. its pretty damn regulated! now if LA had a constitution it would no doubt have in it the right to bear cars. are guns more dangerous than cars? in LA its a toss up. but given what we put up to own and drive a car, is it too much to have something similar for guns? now a lot of these shootings are by crazy people. look up crazy in the DSM. we have a mental health problem in this country; not just a gun problem. the number of psychiatric beds in the US has declined from 558,922 in 1955 to 43,318 in 2010. this is a big problem. the subject of another blog.

SEARCH AND CURATION

we currently live in a world of too much information. there is just too much stuff. too much books, movies, music, restaurants, photos. we dont live long enough to intelligently take even the best part of it in. and it is only going to get worse. the amount of information created and stored is now measured in exabytes and zettabytes. in such a situation the only answers lie in search and curation. search needs to get alot better. word, image, spoken, phrases etc, need to be integrated and get much better. today when we make a google word search we get a million answers and never leave the first page. we are not getting the best, unbiased, unbought nor personalized answers. search needs to and will become amazing. and Curation. letting trusted experts recommend stuff to us. at the end of each year, hundreds of entities, people, periodicals etc come out with their best of lists and even just relying on such, there is too much stuff.somehow or other i managed to see about 5 of the LA Times "best" movies of 2012. i know the latimes is not the apogee and i will try to see Amour and Zero Dark 30, but i stray. curation is critical. we need more of it and we need better curation. maybe the answer is to figure out how to increase the rewards for excellent curation that's it. in a world of too much information, we need to rely on search and curation.

EVERYTHING IS MOBILE; THE MAGINOT LINE FAILED

everything and everyone is mobile. this is a problem for nation states and states. the french built the Maginot Line to block a German invasion after WW I. they used static analysis. it failed. the Germans merely went around it in a flanking maneuver and took France in 6 weeks many years ago i flew from New York to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, business class, non-smoking. the only problem was that what separated non-smoking from smoking was just an aisle. the smoke didn't know it wasn't supposed to go across the aisle and ruin my flight. the UK recently increased the tax rate on "millionaires" from 40% to 50%. this was to increase tax receipts. what happened was that the number of millionaires in the UK declined from around 16,000 to around 6,000 and the total amount of taxes and the % of taxes from this group actually declined significantly. they left. and they probably took their money California recently raised a bunch of their taxes to balance their budget; which is out of balance because expenditures are up by 60%. what do you think will happen? some people will leave. people who have national businesses will focus their growth outside of California. if you had the choice between trying to grow in California or actually growing in Texas; which would you choose? Texas. labor is mobile it will follow the jobs, though there is some friction entrepreneurs are mobile capital is mobile all these elements will tend to flow towards policy that encourages economic growth and value creation, which includes wealth creation and away from those places like california and france that dont. the UK just lowered the rate down from 50% to 45% to lure some of those bad millionaires back we will see