:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Saturday, January 10, 2004 ::

I got reviewed
The Weblog Review | weblog and blog reviews

‘blame the extended gestation.…’ seemed a rather curious title for a blog, and not one that gave any real clue to the content that was to greet me. As a reviewer one is tempted to groan when a blogspot url leads to yet another genetic blogger template, we just see so many of the same repeatedly. That said I moved on in search of an about me section, there wasn’t one. These aren’t essential to any blog, but they help to give a reader a little background information on the person behind the words. I then headed off in search of that crucial first post hoping that there might be so interesting background information there, again there was none to speak of.

The interesting thing for me was that on first observation of the site I didn’t think it would attract me the way it did. But some people manage to make the dullest things sound interesting, and more often than not Jim manages this here. His posts are often short, to the point and with no word wasted. But this is a definite advantage bearing in mind the subject matters he tends to cover - you can learn a lot about this author with just a few postings, especially his political affiliations and so on. The content in summary is a lot like the title - short and quirky!

There isn’t a great deal I can say about the site design, it is in fact a generic blogger template, which are frequently seen and not very individual. I’m not a great fan of light text color on dark backgrounds, but this one is clear enough and easy to read, so no harm done. All the links work, even the archives thankfully (it is quite often the case with blogspot that archives are neglected leaving broken links).

Amazon advertisements in the left hand column show what the author is currently reading or listening to, and some interesting links to other sites can be found further down.

I was pleasantly surprised by some of the content here, which certainly managed to exceed my earlier expectations. I’m not sure that it would be a blog I would visit on a regular basis, but it would manage to be an interesting diversion every once in a while. Not bad at all - 3

Well its a start! I need to figure out how to draw in those regular readers! I know I should write more. But thats what everyone says. Its true though, I should write more. Nobody ever seems to like my layout... but I don't know a thing about layout so its gonna have to do for now.

:: Jim Nichols 1/10/2004 07:16:00 PM [+] ::
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JobWatch:

"Year ends with Bush projections falling far short of actual job growth

While campaigning for last year's tax bill, which had large long-term revenue losses favoring the wealthy, President Bush regularly claimed that the tax cuts would remedy the biggest problem facing the country: two years of job losses. Today's job numbers for December 2003 provide a benchmark for evaluating these promises.

The president specifically promised that the tax bill would generate an additional 510,000 jobs by the end of 2003, growth above and beyond the jobs that an economy in recovery would naturally generate. In fact, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) projected that, with no change in policy, the resilient U.S. economy would generate a baseline of 4.1 million jobs by the end of 2004, even without the tax cut. (That baseline 3% gain in jobs was modest compared to earlier recovery periods without tax cuts: job growth was 4% over a comparable period of time following the early 1990s recession.) The CEA explained that, on top of that baseline job growth, the tax bill would add 510,000 jobs by the end of 2003 and a total of 1.4 million more jobs by the end of 2004. All told, the Bush Administration projected growth of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004 if its tax cuts were adopted, or an average growth rate of 306,000 jobs a month from July 2003 to December 2004.

The December 2003 job gain of 1,000 is a staggering 305,000 jobs below the promised monthly increase. In fact, job growth has never reached even a third of the promised rate of 306,000 jobs a month since the tax cut was implemented in July 2003."

So much for all those jobs we were gonna get...

:: Jim Nichols 1/10/2004 07:12:00 PM [+] ::
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MSNBC - Bush strategy on global warming ineffective:

"Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews. "

:: Jim Nichols 1/10/2004 07:10:00 PM [+] ::
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Toyota.com : Vehicles : Prius

The car I want... did I mention it got...

Motor Trend 2004 Car of the Year Winner: "The all-new 2004 Prius, however, is an altogether more compelling car. Not only is it the first hybrid that an enthusiast can truly enjoy, it provides a tantalizing preview of a future where extreme fuel-efficiency, ultra-low emissions, and stirring performance will happily coexist in one package."

:: Jim Nichols 1/10/2004 07:10:00 PM [+] ::
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California Insider - A $1 billion hole:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's first budget, I'm told, is likely to be $1 billion out of whack on the day it's proposed. That's because it includes reductions in payments to Medi-Cal providers that have been struck down by a federal judge. In addition to the 5 percent cut approved by the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis last summer, Schwarzenegger was looking to cut another 10 percent from rates paid doctors, hospitals and other providers in the coming year. But federal Judge David Levi ruled those cuts invalid in a Christmas Eve order. By then, the budget document Schwarzenegger will propose Friday had already been put to bed. So the cuts -- and the potential savings to the state -- will show up as part of the plan even though it is extremely unlikely that they can be implemented any time soon, if ever."

:: Jim Nichols 1/10/2004 12:23:00 AM [+] ::
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RICARDO'S DIFFICULT IDEA by Paul Krugman:

"My objective in this essay is to try to explain why intellectuals who are interested in economic issues so consistently balk at the concept of comparative advantage. Why do journalists who have a reputation as deep thinkers about world affairs begin squirming in their seats if you try to explain how trade can lead to mutually beneficial specialization? Why is it virtually impossible to get a discussion of comparative advantage, not only onto newspaper op-ed pages, but even into magazines that cheerfully publish long discussions of the work of Jacques Derrida? Why do policy wonks who will happily watch hundreds of hours of talking heads droning on about the global economy refuse to sit still for the ten minutes or so it takes to explain Ricardo? "

I'm reading this right now... so I thought I'd drop it off

:: Jim Nichols 1/09/2004 09:12:00 PM [+] ::
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Marginal Revolution: SUV safety debate:

"A theme in writings about SUV's (see here for a recent New Yorker article) is that consumers tend to overestimate SUV safety and grossly misunderstand the factors behind auto safety. The basic point is that safety comes from avoiding risky situations and quickly responding to danger. It turns out SUV's tend to lull drivers into a false sense of safety and they respond more slowly to danger (e.g., SUV's come to a complete stop much more slowly than many other popular types of cars). Because SUV's are cosmetically altered trucks, they don't have many basic safety features now standard in small cars or minivans, so you are more likely to die in an SUV accident than in another car (an anti-SUV site collects some Insurance industry reports). Consumer Reports has for many years argued that SUV's are quite likely to tip over.

One response I've seen is to avidly defend consumer choice (see here for Car and Driver's Brock Yate's defense, or here for Peter Klein's comment), or to minimize the SUV's dangerous design. I think this misses a basic point. When events are infrequent (like fatal auto crashes), or when cause and effect are hard to link, people can opt to believe anything they want. All economics tells us is that markets are extremely good at responding to possibly erroneous consumer beliefs."

:: Jim Nichols 1/09/2004 09:06:00 PM [+] ::
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Factoid by way of Doug Henwood

In the last three months of 2003, Canada created 173,000 new jobs;
the U.S., with a workforce eight times as large, created just
144,000. If we had done as well as our northern neighbor last month,
we'd have added 443,000 jobs (instead of 1,000).

:: Jim Nichols 1/09/2004 05:46:00 PM [+] ::
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Yahoo! News - Group Slams U.S. 'Disinformation' Against Venezuela:

" A group of African-American activists including actor Danny Glover on Thursday criticized what they called a U.S. government and media 'disinformation' campaign against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's leftist government. "

:: Jim Nichols 1/09/2004 05:04:00 PM [+] ::
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Definition of 'Jew' confronts Israel | csmonitor.com:

"Zighaya, who in addition to his father has dozens of other relatives waiting in Ethiopia, says the problem is that Ethiopian Israelis have no political power. 'The politicians do whatever they want to us,' he says. 'This is not about money, this is about racism.'"

This is the problem with religion--it boils down to money and politics.

:: Jim Nichols 1/09/2004 04:15:00 PM [+] ::
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In war on poverty, early gains and a long stalemate | csmonitor.com:

"Big-screen TVs are blowing out the doors of retailers, but 34 million Americans still live below the poverty line. The US GDP is roaring ahead, but the nation still has the worst child-poverty rate in the industrialized world. "

A warning in regards to the "war" on terror--we move on and forget.

:: Jim Nichols 1/09/2004 04:09:00 PM [+] ::
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Governor uses the 'B' word:

"If a chief executive officer warned that his company might go bankrupt, its stock price would plummet. But California bond prices were unaffected by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's repeated warnings Tuesday night that California could go bankrupt in June if voters don't approve a $15 billion bond measure in March.

One reason: States cannot file for bankruptcy. "

:: Jim Nichols 1/08/2004 03:35:00 PM [+] ::
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Conversation with Noam Chomsky, cover page: "Welcome to a Conversation with History. I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies. Our guest today is Noam Chomsky."

:: Jim Nichols 1/07/2004 06:33:00 PM [+] ::
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Reflections on Economic Reporting:

"It really is true that we cannot have a meaningful democracy without a well-informed public. The public must take responsibility for devoting the time needed to become informed on the issues that concern it. "

I have been reading ERR reports for a few years now, it consists of some of the best economic reporting around. Check out this piece, it does a good job of opening up the field of economic reporting to a more comprehensible level so that most people can approach economic reporting with a better grasp of the bigger picture.

:: Jim Nichols 1/07/2004 01:40:00 PM [+] ::
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When doing the right thing leads to arrest | csmonitor.com:

"Danny Sigui saw a murder unfold. He called 911 and testified as the key witness during the trial. In the process, he unwittingly alerted officials to his immigration status, and days later was arrested and jailed. "

Vile...

:: Jim Nichols 1/07/2004 10:15:00 AM [+] ::
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"The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger." -W. Somerset Maugham

:: Jim Nichols 1/07/2004 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
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News:

"What do the war in Iraq and the economic recovery in the United States have in common? More than one might expect, to judge from the last couple of rounds of US growth figures.

The war has been a large part of the justification for the Bush administration to run ever-widening budget deficits, and those deficits, predicated largely on military spending, have in turn pumped money into the economy and provided the stimulus that low interest rates and tax cuts, on their own, could never achieve.

The result, according to economists, is a variant on Keynesianism that has particular appeal for Republicans. Instead of growing the government in general - pumping resources into public works, health care and education, say, which would have an immediate knock-on effect on sorely needed job creation - the policy focuses on those areas that represent obvious conservative and business-friendly constituencies. Which is to say, the military and, even more specifically, the military contractors that tend to be big contributors to Republican Party funds."

:: Jim Nichols 1/06/2004 10:27:00 PM [+] ::
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Rest of world gets sick of propping up Bush's deficit:

"US interest rates are now further below the American GDP growth rate than at any time since the 1970s. The 'output gap' that measures the difference between the economy's production and potential has probably already closed.

By the end of next year, Kalirai predicts the effects of a falling US dollar on US import prices, rising prices transmitted through Chinese and Japanese exports, and a tight US labour market (despite rising unemployment) will translate into a US inflation reading above 3 per cent.

'The Fed's goal is not to avoid deflation but to create inflation' says Kalirai."

:: Jim Nichols 1/06/2004 10:20:00 PM [+] ::
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BW Online | January 12, 2004 | Dean Starts Testing The Tightrope:

"Is Dean a peacenik, free-spending, Big Government liberal, as Republicans and some New Democratic critics contend? Or is he a fiscally responsible Democrat simply seeking to protect the health, safety, and 401(k)s of American families by making renegade corporations play by the rules?"

:: Jim Nichols 1/06/2004 10:04:00 PM [+] ::
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Brilliant
Crooked Timber: Illocutionary Vegas Act:

"If Britney Spears were gay, I suppose this would be an excellent example of the kind of thing that’s ruining the institution of marriage."

:: Jim Nichols 1/06/2004 05:14:00 PM [+] ::
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Coup for Dean

Yahoo! News - Dean to Pick Up Endorsement of Ex-Sen. Bradley:

"Former Sen. Bill Bradley (news - web sites) of New Jersey, who lost his 2000 presidential bid to Al Gore (news - web sites), is expected to endorse Democratic front-runner Howard Dean (news - web sites) in New Hampshire on Tuesday, political sources said. "

The two major candidates of 2000 are giving Dean the nod. Here's my take... i'm gonna eat my words but... Dean gets the nomination and takes on either Clark (who has denied he will accept the nomination) or Hillary as VP to mend the partys current strife.

:: Jim Nichols 1/05/2004 09:40:00 AM [+] ::
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A Sight Which Can Never Be Forgotten: Introduction:

"Battlefield sites are considered noble places in the landscape of American history. Gettysburg, Bunker Hill, and Normandy stand as monuments honoring the people who fought and died there. Massacre sites, no less a part of our history, are often hidden. Vaguely worded road signs might give some indication of the tragedy, but visitors are not greeted by museums as they are at battlefield sites, and there are no official cemeteries in which the victims lie. Because they are shameful episodes in our past, massacres are not commemorated and the innocent dead are not honored. The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, and Tulsa Race Riot do not usually come up in history class, but over 500 people were brutally killed in these events. Although they took place long ago, they exemplify the impact--emotional, legal, and political--that the past can have on our own society today."

:: Jim Nichols 1/05/2004 09:26:00 AM [+] ::
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Aljazeera.Net - Israeli MP proposes 'ethnic cleansing':

"A member of the Israeli parliament has proposed “massive ethnic cleansing” of non-Jews in Palestine-Israel as a “final solution” of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

:: Jim Nichols 1/05/2004 08:26:00 AM [+] ::
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Economists for Dean: The Hypocrisy of the Opportunity Society:

"Its time for the media to pounce on Bush's fake rhetoric on 'opportunity' and reveal it for what it is. I won't hold my breath."

:: Jim Nichols 1/05/2004 08:15:00 AM [+] ::
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Brought to you by the people who helped train Bin Ladin

Telegraph | News | CIA plans new secret police to fight Iraq terrorism:

"Nine months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime and his feared mukhabarat (intelligence) operatives, Iraq is to get a secret police force again - courtesy of Washington."

Do we really need more secret police running around Arab countries, is that how we're gonna "win the hearts and minds" of them?

:: Jim Nichols 1/04/2004 02:40:00 PM [+] ::
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AlterNet: West Africa's Cash Crop:

"Marijuana grown in Ghana is of good quality, plentiful and relatively inexpensive. Twenty neatly rolled sticks of pot, or about half an ounce, sell for about $3.

That's right, good pot sells for $6 an ounce in Ghana. Here is the highest stage of capitalism – the free market – in action. "

Five bucks says theres all kinds of action in making Ghana a hospitable environment to Advertisements for cig's and booze...

:: Jim Nichols 1/04/2004 01:55:00 PM [+] ::
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Just go ahead and cancel the election....

Sun-Sentinel: South Florida news (by way of: Apostropher):

"Pat Robertson said Friday that God told him President Bush will be re-elected in a landslide."

I always knew God hated us...

:: Jim Nichols 1/04/2004 01:31:00 PM [+] ::
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This goes in the "gotta suck" file

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event:

"An unlucky patient went into surgery bearing the words 'I love women' tattooed on his leg but when he came out it read 'I love men'."

:: Jim Nichols 1/04/2004 01:25:00 PM [+] ::
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Moral scapegoats, escapades, and fraudulent bystanders...

Dean's religious accent By Cal Thomas:

"Bill Clinton and Al Gore, with their Southern Baptist backgrounds, were fluent in the language of religion, though not always in its personal application."

You know what really bugs me? These people that go on and on about needing moral leadership. Its used all the time when looking at leaders. For one I could careless about people in the public eyes sex life and/or morality; I care about their policy. And not to mention the fact that it says a lot about the people who need moral leaders. If you can't come up with some form of ethical morality on your own and can't uphold it because of the actions of people in the public eye--or just down the street; then you really have some issues that need to be addressed.

:: Jim Nichols 1/04/2004 12:44:00 PM [+] ::
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