The whole "climate policy" debate thing is like a farce to me. NOW this is all the rage, when it is too late. Pretty soon we will all be carbon neutral, because there won't be enough affordable carbon left to burn. I'd say 2020, but perhaps it will be 2030. In any case, this debate should have been 30 years ago to have any meaning.

My native Norway has promised to be carbon neutral by 2050. Now, leaving aside that the current crop of politicians will be retired by then, some even dead from old age, there is the small fact that it is after peak oil, peak gas and peak coal. Unless we cut down our forests and burn them faster than they can grow back, we'll not have much choice about being carbon neutral then.

Why do people believe that tomorrow will be just like today, when we set the house on fire today?

I think the US government would have become more popular in the short run if it made the economy (and mainly employment) its only priority until it was, like, fixed. Not that they would not have to make various decisions about other things that come up - things always come up. But not pushing anything else, not starting to talk about anything else unless someone asks, things like that. Because this was, as far as I could hear from a distance, what they were elected for. I have a pretty good memory and I don't think the independents who voted Obama did so because he promised tax-funded abortions or some such. It was the economy, stupid.

And most people don't perceive the economy as fixed just because some stocks go up. When they get a new job, they will say it is fixed. Then you can start reaping the political capital from it. Then you can start pushing your agenda.

There is of course the small question of whether the Democrats CAN fix the economy. Opinions on this will obviously vary. I'd say that the whole stimulus thing would be a defensible answer to a normal recession. But if the problem is that the American model is Just Plain Wrong (that is, if you can't outsource production but keep consumption at home), then the large stimulus package will actually make things worse faster. But we shall have to wait and see about that.

In the case that this fails, in the case that the counter-bubble burst just in time for the next election, people will say: "These jackasses promised to fix the economy, but once in power they broke their promises and spent four year driving through their commie agenda", and Palin will return in glory while Riflejugend patrol the neighborhoods. OK, probably not, but it could get mildly unplesant to be openly Democratic for a while in some districts.

9.8% unemployment in September (DailyMail blogs)
The biting sarcasm at the beginning is just the blogger's personal opinion (I got the link from a very conservative friend) but most of the text and all of the numbers seem to be right. The labor market is behaving opposite of what the White House predicted when preparing the stimulus plan.

( It's all downhill from here... )

I have noticed that people who are politically active are almost always driven by discontent in some form. And yet a leader needs to be someone who can say: "Follow me." But who in their right mind would follow an unhappy person? Only other even more unhappy people.

I suppose someone whose life and family are very happy could go into politics to help the rest of society become happy too, but I don't think that would work. You cannot force people to be happy. Since you can only help those who want to be helped, it should be enough to just tell them how to achieve happiness. Or write 500 books about it or something. I am not even sure most people would like to be happy, if there was an option to have drama instead.

We're having a general election one of these days here in Norway. As usual, I don't vote. I might do so to save the country from a complete disaster, such as a Nazi government. But the political parties here in Norway are trivially similar. (Well, those who have any chance of representation.) Yet each of them depicts their opponents as a threat to all we hold dear. In a very real sense these people commit demon summoning: They labor hard to summon hate and fear into the hearts of their fellow men and women. How could I possibly associate with something like that?

Iceland applies to join European Union (CNN)
This is not a final decision. After negotiating the practicalities of membership, a referendum will no doubt be held. Since the political elite generally is more pro-EU than the people (as in all European countries) and even the politicians were almost evenly divided, chances are there will be no membership unless the EU offers virtually full local control of the important fisheries. This is unthinkable because Spain in particular has been drooling over these resources for decades. So barring a miracle, this will end in acrimony. My native Norway has twice applied for membership in the EU, only to reject the proposed treaty. And rightly so, I may add.

Iceland would have been better served by a closer cooperation with Norway. The island was colonized almost entirely from western Norway, and the Norwegian language is largely a simplified version of Icelandic, which is old Norse with a different pronunciation. The whole population of Iceland is similar to a large Norwegian city, but next to nothing compared to the over 300 million people in the European Union.

Obama says stimulus plan to kick in later this year (Reuters)

No shit. I know Republicans are honor-bound to disagree with everything the Great Prince of the Dark says, but... seriously, you guys. Of course you can't expect this to have much effect in four months. You can't just open the window and yell "Hey you guys come and fix up this derelict schoolhouse". There are bidding rounds that must be held, contracts that must be signed, detailed plans that must be made. Don't even get me started on actually building something new, like a road or a dam. It will take YEARS - at which time the recession could be over, although I hope not. I hope this recession never ends, but instead turns into a permanent adaptation to reality. But enough about that.

The only thing that works right away is food stamps and such. All else takes more or less time.

The real problem with the huge stimulus pack, as I see it, is that you basically send the bill to your kids. Shouldn't the generation that had the party also clean up?

Public Takes Conservative Turn on Gun Control, Abortion (Pew Research)
The ever curious Pew Research has polled Americans and found that in two of the conservative's favorite topics, opinion has swung hard to the Right over the last year. Most notably, support for abortion is now under 50%, which it wasn't before.

This supports the theory that the election of Barack Obama as President was more an expression of rage toward the incompetent outgoing administration, coupled with racial issues, rather than a lurch toward the left in American values. This has profound implications for the future... if the Republican party can somehow refrain from political suicide for long enough.

The benevolent government of the Workers' Paradise of Norway has generously given millions of someone's money for the purpose of offering broadband to everyone in Norway, no matter where. (You still have to pay for the broadband, but not for stretching cables all the way to your remote valley.) The initiative is partly to encourage people to live outside the cities, thus ensuring a higher quality of life both for them and for those who remain in the cities. In parti it is to ensure jobs for workers in the IT infrastructure, which are hit hard by the financial crisis. (IT is one of our most open sectors toward the parts of the world that are unfortunate enough to not be Workers' Paradises.)
Article in Norwegian

If experts a hundred years ago had tried to cope with the environmental issues of 2009, they would have taxed horses, to avoid the cities drowning in manure.

Drawing politicians as monkeys or apes is not problematic. Bush Jr was depicted that way regularly - it was more or less the gold standard for Bush caricatures.

Drawing politicians as shot dead is problematic.

Background

Binge and purge (The Economist)
This story expands on my earlier comments about Norway's double attitude toward the environment. As one of the world's leading exporters of oil and gas, it is "responsible" for much of the global warming. On the other hand, local stardards are extremely strict, with taxes on cars and fuel that make the hairs stand up on foreign visitors, and with massive investments in green technologies.

As other countries become more advanced, they too will face many of the same things. America under Obama will presumably be looking in this direction, for instance. Other Nordic countries and the Netherlands are already doing much of the same.

Deploying environmental measures in developing countries looks like a great idea at first glance. The scope for improvement is enormous there, but pitifully small at home. And developing countries need the money and the transfer of technology. I agree - but the number of countries available is less than it seems.

The reason poor countries remain poor long after the end of overt colonialism is largely that they have retained a culture of deceit and betrayal, or are engaged in various level of ethnic war. Investing in such places is worse than nothing, certain to either line the money of corrupt officials or finance the military of one or the other warring faction.

After watching a small, peaceful gathering in support of Israel's right to self-defense, a crowd of local socialists lost whatever sanity they had at the start, and rampaged through the capital's main street, shattering windows, setting things on fire and attacking police and suspected conservatives. Firework rockets and homemade firebombs were used, indicating that the rampage was at least to some degree planned. Five policemen were wounded in the attack.
The far-left organization Blitz (German word for Flash or Lightning) has praised the violence and says it hopes for more, but has so far not officially claimed responsibility.

One of the local articles, translated by Google.

-although my reasons are probably dramatically different from his.

Obama seeks new 'foundation' for economic growth (New York Times)
With the near future virtually guaranteeing high unemployment and massive free capacity - particularly in construction - this is the perfect time for government to do all its infrastructure spending. It will be far cheaper than competing with private business for scarce capacity. Also, it will not force up prices for what there still is of private and corporate investment, to a painfully high level. For users, it would obviously be best if a fixed sum was spent each year on repairing and renewing infrastructure, such as school buildings or bridges. But this would cause price spikes during a boom. The government was right to let buildings go unpainted during the fever years of the economy. And it is right to pump out huge orders now, using that excess capacity. Just be sure to keep all projects divided into closable parts, and don't commit to investments that may happen after the economy picks back up. (Although if we are lucky, it will never again be as crazy as it was. A lot of the investment over the past years was motivated by raw greed rather than fulfilling genuine human needs.)

Obama goes for pragmatists, not ideologues (International Herald Tribune)
I'll have to keep an eye on the news stream to see if these things get verified.

..as long as the change gives more power to the wise and less to the fools. This applies both to my workplace, my country, and the world.
Who then is the wise leader, and who is the foolish? That is easy to answer.
The wise rules by authority, the fool rules by force.
The wise seeks counsel, the fool seeks praise.
The wise repairs the fundament, the fool decorates the roof.
The wise lifts up the project, the project lifts up the fool.
Leadership is a heavy burden on the wise, but wings on the fool.
Perhaps Laozi (Lao-Tzu) said it best:
"When the wise has completed the great work, the people say: We did it all by ourselves!"

Unfortunately, that is the worst possible things they could get right now. Americans have had waaaay too much hope for the last decade or two. This is irrefutably proved by the fact that they have been steadily spending more compared to their earnings, and the difference has kept growing. Only the insane could do so without a very strong hope and faith in the future. (The fairly rapid population growth, for a rich country, points in the same direction.)

Americans are irredeemable optimists. That's their great strength and their weakness. In their heart, they cannot really doubt that they will reach their goals - even when they are marching in the opposite direction, as they have for some years now.

As America slides ever so slowly toward a new civil war, it becomes painfully obvious that conservatives and modern liberals live in very different worlds. (That is to say, different consensus realities.) Each of them perceive the other as living in a fantasy world. That's actually pretty correct, in each case. It is not just the myths that have been replaced, but also some of the fact base. In the conservative reality, the climate has grown colder for a decade now, whereas on the planet of liberals, the Arctic ice is almost completely gone.

( Read more... )

Now with added pork!
There is no dearth of money when you can pork your constituency for the future election. Imagine that.

Obviously, this is a great day for those who bought up shares at the bottom. Not that they won't hit bottom again, but in the meantime the rich will have grown that much richer by selling them on top of the relief jubilation.

I have to say, the timing could not have been much better for Obama if God had been a Democrat. The uncontrolled meltdown happens while people still perceive the Republicans as being in power (never mind that Congress is thoroughly Democrat and traders are already adjusting to the near-certainty of a Democrat president as well). At the same time, the meltdown comes so late that Obama has had time to make huge, unrealistic promises he won't have to keep. Once the election is over, he can break them all because of the special circumstances. When there is no money, no one can hold it against him.