I see it in blog entries all the time.  It has to be some sort of inside joke that everyone gets (or ignores) but which isnt obvious to the uninitiate.  I am uninitiate so could someone please clue me in?  

PS  Since I have to ask the question in at least 300 characters I am adding this sentence.  If this breaks some rule please bear with me.

What is now happening to the Republican party should be taken as a cautionary note to those who would have the Democratic party develop a single position on Iraq or anything else.  Having a unified party position and strict message discipline is fine when all is going well but it can come back to bite you with a vengeance when that position starts looking like a loser.  

The Republicans thought they had us when they all starting parroting "stay the course" and claiming we were the party of "cut and run". Now that their position looks like a loser they are ALL stuck with it and are sinking like stones because of it.

This is the latest in a running series of slogans/questions, etc. that point out the lunacy of the extreme pro-life position.  Other favorites include saving the petrie dish instead of the two year old and asking what penalty should be imposed on women who have an abortion.  In that spirit it only stands to reason that if blastocysts are people then they should be counted in the census so that House seats can be apportioned accordingly, Federal money can be spread around appropriately, etc.

There is a tendency among some people to think that the economic problem is to devalue the dollar enough to make our trade balance come back into equilibrium.  This is misguided.

The basic problem isnt that our exports are uncompetitive or that we cant match the quality of imports, but that we are SPENDING TOO MUCH compared to our income.

Reality check.

We havent had a terrorist attack on the US in MORE THAN THREE YEARS.

Terror fears dominate our political discourse not because "terrorists are on the march" but because the Republicans are hyping terror fears to stay in power.  

They would have a lot more credibility if they were actually doing everything possible in the area of homeland security (safeguarding ports, chemical factories, water and food supply, etc.) but they arent doing that.  And we havent had an attack anyway.

I am an economist and like many others have long said that Bush's tax cuts for the rich are fueling deficits which are causing the dollar to tank and raising the likelihood of an economic crash.

But what many havent noted is that it is highly likely that the tax cuts are themselves DIRECTLY FUNDING CAPITAL FLIGHT out of the US and that this is directly contributing to the problem to some degree.

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Masters Of War
by Bob Dylan

Many have noted that a 51% victory doesnt mean a broad mandate.  However, it is even more important to note that because Bush ran a campaign (and administration) based on lies and misrepresentations, he really has no mandate at all.  

At best, he has a mandate for his lies, not for what he is actually doing.  Indeed, surveys show that most Republicans BELIEVE the lies and misrepresentations, so that is in fact what they thought they were voting for.

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I cant think of a way to reach out to religious bigots that doesnt compromise everything I stand for and I want the Democratic party to stand for.  So where are we going to get the extra few percent we need to win elections?  To me the answer is clear:

1.  Write off the theocratic states of the south - They are too far out of reach and I dont want to compromise with them anyway

2.  Do everything we can to win Hispanics in the Southwest in the long run.  Ask Bill Richardson what to do and then do it.

These voters are naturals for a traditional democratic message - New immigrants care more about bread and butter economics than fat and happy southerners do, and they tend Democratic anyway.  Even better, the demographics are moving our way over the long term - Hispanics are the fastest growing population group we have.

As an economist, I have been saying for quite some time that Bush's policies of cutting taxes, increasing spending and borrowing the difference from foreigners cannot be sustained indefinitely.  Apparently, the first reaction of the foreign exchange markets supports this.  Check out what happened to the exchange rate of the dollar against the euro as soon as it became clear early Wed. morning that Bush would win:

The Basic Problem Isn't China's Exchange Rate Policy, It's Our Deficit

Much has been made recently of the Administrations fruitless attempts to get the Chinese to revalue their currency to help cure the $100 billion bilateral trade surplus they are running with us.  There are two main problems with this:

1. It reflects a complete misunderstanding of what really is the problem with our current account.

2. It won't work

            Why is it that we have a huge and growing current account deficit?  The popular press (and apparently the Bush White House)  seem to believe it is because particular countries engage in aggressive pricing by keeping their exchange rates too low.  They may be doing that but this entirely begs the question of WHY we have a huge deficit in our international payments.  Simply put, it is because we are spending more than we make.  As long as we do that we are going to need foreigners to lend us money to cover the difference.   The fact is that if we face increased prices for Chinese imports we may consume a little less of what they send us, but we will also consume a bit more of everything else.  The net result isn't going to cure our basic problem.

seems to be running for President of Iraq.  Bush seems more worried about whether Iraqis have a good leader than he does about whether people in the US are better off.

We need a leader who is focused on what's best for us instead of what's best for people in other countries (who dont even like us)

With the new ARG poll out there are questions about the relative importance of sampling error and model error.  Several commentators have mentioned that it is likely to be model error that is causing the wide disparity in results rather than sampling error.  This is almost certainly true, but many dont know what the difference between the two.  Here it is:

SAMPLING ERROR - usually reported as the "margin of error" tells you what confidence you have that the value computed from the sample you picked actually represents the true value in the population as a whole, ASSUMING THAT YOU HAVE THE CORRECT MODEL FOR HOW THE CHOICE IS MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE.  For example, if we look at coin tosses, the "correct model" is that there is a 50-50 chance of heads vs. tails.  If I toss the coin ten times I may or may not get this 50-50 split from my sample of tosses.  The more tosses, the more likely I am to get something close to 50-50 again ASSUMING THAT I AM RIGHT THAT THE CORRECT MODEL IS 50-50.

The usually reported "moe's" are correctly understood to mean the following:  If I repeated my sample 20 times on the same population, then 19 times out of 20 the "true" value for the number lies within the range given by my estimate plus or minus the moe.

MODEL ERROR - is far more important when we dont really know the true nature of the model and are only guessing at it.  The "true" parameter for Bush vs. Kerry is whatever percentage we would get if we could actually ask every single person who really is going to vote in November who they would vote for and they actually told us the truth and then actually did go vote that way.  Where could this go wrong in an actual poll?

Kerry should answer:

"Maybe so, but Osama would be dead"

I was first attracted to this blog by the left leaning commentary about current issues.  What it seems to be morphing into is a site for people obsessed with the arcane details of running campaigns and also raising money.  I am a political junkie myself but even I am getting overloaded with this sort of stuff on the blog.  

I know it's an  election year, but what I like about the blog is talk about WHY to support left causes.  The nuts and bolts stuff and the behind the scenes details are starting to get a lot more prominent than they used to be and personally I find it a lot less interesting to log onto Kos than I used to.

Imagine how a first-timer will feel when they find numerous posts asking for money or looking at the campaign details of sub-state level races where they dont live.  They might well not come back any time soon.  So, I guess this is a plea to remember your roots.  I can well imagine that it is very fun to be a player in the election, but dont forget what it was that made you a player in the first place.

I am wondering if anybody else has noticed the Bush/Pentagon response to the torture photos.  We have heard that they have known they were going to be made public for at least two weeks and that they have known about the problem since at least two months ago.  But what did they use the two weeks or two months to do?  To develop a list of talking points to use with the press.  They DIDNT EVEN GET THE TORTURERS OUT OF THE PRISON.  They dont care about the torture.  They only care what people will say about the torture.

No matter what you do, they cant fire you.  You can just keep on coming back.  

And now we have completely lost the war.  The only way giving a city (or two) to the former enemy makes any sense is as a first step toward a rather immediate and total withdrawal.  Anything else is now based on total fantasy.  The "insurgents" have defeated the US Marines, because for whatever reason, at the end of the day, it was the Marines who withdrew.  They wont forget it and they wont let anyone else either.  And they now have a city (or two) to use as a base for spreading their insurgency.  What kind of imperial power gives whole cities away to their opponents?  One that is on the way out.

in exactly the same way my dog has resolve and determination when she smells bacon.  No thought is involved.  No calculation of pros and cons.  No consideration of alternatives.  Just reptile-brain striving for the bacon.