Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
So, Mr. Clarke, the question that begs an answer is, were you lying before or are you lying now? And since you are-were obviously lying, why would anyone apart from the Bush haters believe even "hello" and "goodbye" if it comes out of your mouth?

I clicked through. What. Ever.

If only some of y'all took the same expansive view of "lying" when it came to Bush administration officials before they left office.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Hank's movie made shit up to smear Clinton.

It funny how, although you don't claim to read KOS or DU, you broadcast their meme de jour on a daily basis.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
It funny how, although you don't claim to read KOS or DU, you broadcast their meme de jour on a daily basis.

if it were DU this guy would have had his account deleted:

• I know this is going to be a good movie because all the usual suspects are trying to discredit it. How would Richard Clarke know what U.S. forces were in Afghanistan and the location of Northern Alliance forces? He was not in charge of them and I don’t think his duties would grant him access to that information. I thought he was some computer/electronic security under secretary for State or was he also in charge of CIA operations? FYI they “compartmentalize” high level clearances so that if you decide to turn bad you can’t know EVERYTHING. IE if you work in the cafeteria at NSA you are not privy to codes being broken on the 7th floor. Also if you work in the computer security office you aren’t regularly given briefings on CIA operations and Northern Alliance Operations.
  
  Comment by Retired Republican Soldier — September 5, 2006 @ 10:45 am

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I sorta got the impression listening to the radio that this guy could have easily been those assholes from Columbine High School if they hadn't ended up shooting themselves. American al Qaeda (that I've heard of) seem different than the homegrown terrorist types in the UK. These guys seem like lost loners looking for a way to be shocking.

I think you nailed it. In a country of 300 million it is a statistical certainty that you will have a bunch of crack pots that will subscribe to every crazy idea.

I bet you those sheep on that sheep farm ran scared every time he left the house.

[SlaveNoMore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Fareed Zakaria:

• Washington has a long habit of painting its enemies 10 feet tall — and crazy. During the cold war, many hawks argued that the Soviet Union could not be deterred because the Kremlin was evil and irrational. The great debate in the 1970s was between the CIA's wimpy estimate of Soviet military power and the neoconservatives' more nightmarish scenario. The reality turned out to be that even the CIA's lowest estimates of Soviet power were a gross exaggeration. During the 1990s, influential commentators and politicians — most prominently the Cox Commission — doubled the estimates of China's military spending, using largely bogus calculations. And then there was the case of Saddam Hussein's capabilities. Saddam, we were assured in 2003, had nuclear weapons — and because he was a madman, he would use them.

Two responses from over on the Corner:

IRAN AND 1930s Europe
Mario Loyola

The difference between Iran and Nazi Germany is one of degree but not of kind — strategically speaking. Let's remember that nobody knew in 1938 (not even most Nazis) that the Holocaust was coming. And yet all that was horrifying about the Nazis was plainly visible during their opposition period in the late 1920s and early 1930s, during which time their propaganda message was not much more objectionable than that of Michael Moore — and not really all that different (By the way, I firmly believe that all the similarities between Farenheit 9/11 and Nazi propaganda of the opposition period are purely accidental — I can't believe he would have plagiarized the Nazis intentionally).

The key thing to understand is that, in the remilitarization of the Rhineland, in the violation of the Versailles troop limits, and in the elimination of Czechoslovakia (the key link between France and Poland, upon which the containment of Germany vitally depended) Germany captured a series of offensive strategic advantages. An attack was not imminent in any of those cases, but as Winston Churchill said after the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938: "We faced a choice between shame and war. We chose shame and will get war."

Churchill understood, as so many pseudo-pacifists did not, that allowing Germany to alter the status quo in a way that gave it a huge offensive advantage guaranteed that the Nazis would attack when they were ready. He understood that the last moment for effective self-defense was Munich in 1938—when there was no imminent attack. The choice was preemption or appeasement.

And likewise the choice Bush faces now. Waiting until an attack might be imminent is suicide. If Iran wants nuclear technology, they need to go about getting it in a way that the international community will consider safe. Otherwise, we must understand Iran's current violations of applicable Security Council resolutions as acts of aggression, which is what Germany's diplomacy was during the 1930s. And we should responsd accordingly.

Zakaria's conclusions, based on a comparison of mass between Germany and Iran, are infantile. We did not even know, in 1938, that there would ever be such things as nuclear weapons. Are we to understand that Zakaria thinks that because 10 Al Qaeda guys get their hands on a nuke, we shouldn't worry, because they have no million-man S.A.? What sense does that make?

Re: Iranian Huey Long
Stanley Kurtz

Interesting article by Zakaria, Ramesh, but I don't find it particularly reassuring. Zakaria says that, unlike Germany in 1938, Iran in 2006 is a weak and insignificant power. Hitler in 1938 controlled the world's second largest industrial base and its mightiest army, so why should we worry about a little punk country like Iran? Zakaria seems to me to be repeating the problem of our overconfidence in the matter of Iraq. We have the world's largest economy and its mightiest army. We can crush Saddam's army in a head-to-head fight, so why worry about occupying a little punk country like Iraq? Surely we can figure out a way to secure the place with relatively little bother. Isn't the very line of thought Zakaria is repeating what got us into trouble in Iraq.

Zakaria says 2006 is not 1938, but I think he misses the bigger difference. Technology has put terrorism and guerilla war (always tough for big powers to stop) in a position to do more damage than ever. September 11 took down many more civilians and did far more damage to America's mainland than anything that happened in WWII. That's an old point, but Zakaria seems to have forgotten it. Ahmadinejad may be a populist Huey Long, but a Huey Long with a bomb, living next to the Persian Gulf, has got to be taken seriously. If Iran was as powerless as Zakaria says, how has it managed to get as far as it already has in defying the world? Underestimating our foe has been our problem. Zakaria is doing it again.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Well now Ty, to be honest the chart being limited to the last 6 years is making a political point. I'm sure what the chart shows started 20, if not 30 years ago.

Airline unions are being forced to take pay cuts. Factory workers entering the jobs that do open are not being offered the prior juicy union wages. Even those people in $30 per hour union factory jobs are facing massive cuts. Delphi entered bankruptcy to be able to void its union contracts. Unskilled assembly line workers are being paid $30 per hour, and Delphi's competition is getting the same work for 3 or 4 bucks an hour in Mexico. It's not a matter of corporate greed, its survival.

In my mind it all started once American workers stopped "buying American." It started with cars- but once Claifornia electronics workers decided a Toyota was a good purchase it becomes inevitable that they will eventually be fucked themselves.

Here is the link to the Treasury's Statistics of Income Individual Time Series Income Tables. Go wild.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Here is the link to the Treasury's Statistics of Income Individual Time Series Income Tables. Go wild.

thanks Wonk. i've reviewed these tables, and I'm right.

Hank Chinaski
300-11

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I clicked through. What. Ever.

Okay, so we will take that lack of rebuttal as a tacit stipulation.

Hank, what is the revised score?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop


If only some of y'all took the same expansive view of "lying" when it came to Bush administration officials before they left office.

Cite please?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Actually Webster (which you cited) gave five definitions.

I didn't just cite it, I linked to it, and I told you there were multiple definitions and referred to you the second, which is clearly the one that makes sense in this context. This is basic statistics. If you honestly can't tell what those definitions mean or think that the term "median income" in this context is confusing, you are a moron and should return your G.E.D.

One of the definitions you didn't use is the following:

a value of a random variable for which all greater values make the cumulative distribution function greater than one half and all lesser values make it less than one half.

This definition reflects the problem with the basic definition you used when it comes to statistics.

No, it doesn't. This definition has nothing to do with what you say below.

You used the following definition:

a : a value in an ordered set of values below and above which there is an equal number of values or which is the arithmetic mean of the two middle values if there is no one middle number

This is the definition of Median used in basic mathematics. However in statistics this definition gets left behind because of many problem, three of which I will list for you:

[ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag]

(1) Believe it or not, economists routinely look at median income for large population groups such as here.

(2) It is true that medians don't give a full picture. Neither do means.

(3) It is well and truly beyond me why you think population fluctuations make medians useless in this context. You could say the same things about means.

The upshot to all this is when it comes to finding "medians" in statistical analysis, to adjust for all these problems with Medians, different methods are used to come up with a number that actually has some relevance. Some statisticians used tiered Medians. In other words, taking Medians of different groupings and then taking Medians of all the Medians. When Bell curves are relevant (which they would in this case) Medians can be determined by using two points on the curve (often using calculus to determine the points where the rate of change changes most significantly) and picking a point between them (using another complicated formula).

Relevance to what?

My experience is that unless clearly defined, the term Median is almost useless when it comes to income distribution.

Who's talking about "income distribution"? I was talking about median income.

I saw an analysis that Noam Chomskey used once when I was studying econometrics in graduate school where for the people that moved he only counted their numbers in the final tier. In addition, he only kept the people that moved up in tiers but didn't keep the people that moved down. The people that moved down just disappeared. Anyone that was moved up, was included in the stats for the tier they ended up in. So if someone moved up, the only result on the stats is that it would move the average income of the tier he moved into down (because when someone moves into a tier they are usually at the bottom of that tier), and it would not effect the tier they moved out of. In addition, if they moved to a lower tier (usally meaning they were at the top thereby to increase the average of that tier) their stat just disappeared so as to not increase the average income of the lower tier. Considering how much flux there is in America, the result was that all the tiers were skewed downward.

His excuse was that people that moved down were much more significant than people that moved up. Every downward movement was a tragedy that infinitely outweighed an upward movement and his statistics needed to reflect that "reality".

I'll let Chomsky know you disapprove at the next meeting of the Liberal Conspiracy.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
It funny how, although you don't claim to read KOS or DU, you broadcast their meme de jour on a daily basis.

I don't think that's particularly funny, but then I'm not equipped with the sort of conservative sense of humor that informs Day By Day.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
thanks Wonk. i've reviewed these tables, and I'm right.

Hank Chinaski
300-11

But of course. And I believe you. Especially having looked at the tables a number of times in the past.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Sorry. Spanky has that effect on me sometimes.

:violin:

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Two responses from over on the Corner:

Given that you were just insinuating that I subscribe to the lefty meme du jour, irony intended, I am amused that you responded to that Zakaria quotation with lengthy responses to parts of his column that I didn't quote. Glad to see you're getting your talking points so quickly.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Okay, so we will take that lack of rebuttal as a tacit stipulation.

I'm sorry -- when you posted that link, I assumed you were just throwing in the towel. It didn't occur to me that you took that guy seriously. Was there anything in particular about his column that struck you as convincing?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't think that's particularly funny, but then I'm not equipped with the sort of conservative sense of humor that informs Day By Day.

Lighten up....it was lol funny and the addition of the arabic term (whatever it means-I don't speak that lingua) made it rotflmao funny.