Despite the long history of abuse, and these current revelations, I'm no where near my limit..

Oops, sorry, thought this was the NFL thread

It's a huge indictment of our collective intelligence that so many worry about copperheads & rattlesnakes so much.

Who would Jesus torture?

I show my high school Government class "The Fog of War" and have them answer the question: Is it acceptable to do evil in order to achieve a greater good? Here are some of their answers over the years:

(Engaging in evil to achieve a good) is a simple matter of healthy selfishness.

Sometimes, to save the maximum amount of lives, you need to kill a lot of people

If we can justify (doing evil) as maximizing our efficiency, then we can also justify a terrorist suicide bomber sacrificing his life to kill more of the enemy, because there is essentially no difference in the rationality of the two.

The Girl Scouts can’t fight Communism with bake sales, so I simply don’t see any other way than to fight destruction with destruction.

It is more important for us to protect our citizens and our rights than to protect foreign civilians and their rights.

Killing one person is the same as killing a million since one life already means nothing.

i'm curious why you've saved these among the many responses you've received over the years. do you regard these as the most chilling, most misguided, most insightful, or some other superlative?

These represent many similar responses I get each time. I have a power point that I update each year and then show the students. By now there are only a couple original statements I need to add.

EDIT: This is not a complete list, there are lots of other, more mild amd pragmatic ones. I more or less wanted to show some extremes, in light of the current torture discussion.

Not sure how much it'll hurt us but Russia is in deep doo-doo. Fracking 1, Russia 0.

Russia heading for crash as ruble plummets - Dec. 15, 2014

Fracking is in trouble as well. It is Saudi Arabia that is keeping the price-per-barrel low. The low price is also making fracking unprofitable, and the stock prices of several fracking stocks have cratered recently.

Same with oil sands in Canada. Our low oil prices right now are a byproduct of trying to crush competition.

SI

The Economist explaination (it also says frackers are in trouble):

The Economist explains: Why the oil price is falling | The Economist

Didn't see this coming:

Awesome.

Looking forward to checking it out!!

My sister went when she was studying abroad in Ecuador. My business partner is going in like January on some MIT Alumni trip.

I know a bunch of Canadians who go all the time.

I am looking forward to that! Good news and it takes a lame duck prez and some courage to do this. Hopefully it gets done. I'm not condoning their overly socialist state, but its time to put a close on those old political rivalries.

...and best of all...Cuban cigars for everybody!

Bah. "General tourism still not allowed"

Baby steps.

I forget, why don't we trade with Cuba when we trade with former enemies such as Japan and dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia?

If you want to go to Cuba, now's probably the best time, before the inevitable opening up to U.S. tourism. It's a little tricky and carries some risk (financial risk, you won't be locked up or anything), but lots of Americans make unlicensed trips there through other countries.

Obama has now opened up meaningful talks with both Cuba and Iran. It'll be an interesting legacy, that's for sure.

From one good socialist to another, not a huge surprise that this p.o.s. would do something like that.

More hopeful news from the story however

Yeah, my sister did it through Mexico when she was in Ecuador.

Because Castro fucked us after we helped him get to power is the basic answer....and the free Cuban citizens in America hated him for it...much, much more personal than Saudi or Japan. Goes back to the geography related disasters discussions.

Obama's not a socialist in any halfway-reasonable definition of the word. I mean, seriously Jon, you do have an education. :rolleyes:

Fixed.

I just want local cigar shops to carry Cohibas.

It just shows that education means nothing when put in the hands of someone who thinks they are eternally right about everything.

December 17, 2014 1:14 PM
Cuba (the Energy Drink Company) Soars 140% on Cuba (the Country) News

Shares of Cuba Beverage, an energy-drink company with sales of $9,961 last quarter, are soaring Wednesday in what appears to be the latest example of a company’s stock being affected by news events that are completely unrelated to its business.

Because Florida is an important and contested state in presidential elections.

re: Cuba

About damned time.

There is nothing that spreads American (realpolitik) interests more than American led capitalism taking over an economy.

Yeah we needed to open up relations with Cuba ages ago - the whole embargo thing is a Cold War leftover that has basically zero real world necessity in this day and age. Of course it's still a nightmare politically.

It also makes things with Russia and Putin very interesting-whose economy and currency are just in a free-fall right now. I'm not an Obama fan at all, but I think this was a brilliant cheese move by him (maybe could of negotiated a little tougher, but I'll let it go).

The timing of this is a little interesting, however.


For all of their props over the cigars, does Cuba have a good rum culture?

Wonder what Fidel is thinking now?

Regardless, I'm glad Obama did this regardless of the political implications.

Several 'high-value' ISIS leaders killed in Iraq, Pentagon officials say | Fox News

ISIS leadership is getting worked over these last couple of weeks. It just doesn't pay to be a terrorist organization anymore. You get a couple of weeks or months of publicity and then blamo...you're dead.

Ever heard of Bacardi? That's where it is from.

It does seem that Obama's strategy in Iraq is working. Air plus Kurds seem to have stem the ISIS momentum. Long war ahead though for Iraqis and Kurds to reclaim all the territory

Yazidis get relief, reason to cheer as Kurds take town - CNN.com

Off topic, but still presidential. Pres. Bush visited a hospital as Santa to hand out gifts. Secret Service agents were dressed as elves.

Jason Cooper on Twitter: "George W. Bush showing up as Santa to visit a hospital. #MerryChristmas http://t.co/Tb9Fh0TC7b"

A little good news for Obama helped by his immigration and Cuba actions.

Some former US presidents may kick themselves and ask why didn't I do that.

Poll: Obama ends year on an upswing - CNN.com

Its worked out for me personally during the Obama years and the Great
Recession is over for me but know its more than stock market and nebulous GDP numbers. I'm optimistic about the future but there have been people hurt that may not recover fully.

The Psychological Damage of the Recession Is Not Going Away - Businessweek

"With changes in technology the middle class is being hollowed out..."?

I'm reading this as "Advancements in technology is a bad thing." Are you getting the same read?

I'm not sure its "technology is bad", but instead "technology can have a negative impact on certain parts of society that aren't prepared to deal with the change, and we haven't determined how exactly to address that yet."

It can be if it continually takes jobs away from people. Produce a bunch of product cheaper and faster sounds great until so many people don't have money to buy your product.

Yeah another noteworthy item from that article is the rate of self-employment thats been steadily dropping for a few decades. we seems to be hitting a point where there is a lot of consolidated markets (good for efficiency in ways), a lot of outsourced low-skill jobs (to robots or Asia), and a gigantic amount of people that aren't in any way ready for the pace of change thats swept right by them and not slowing down.

We are probably going to need to have some serious conversations in this country (and the world over) on what we do with the swarms of people who won't be capable of performing the (likely inadequate anyway) amount of jobs.

I have long been an advocate for some truly massive energy infrastructure initiatives. The amount of construction work associated to something like that would be an enormous boost to the construction industry which happens to have a lot of the displaced workers.

I agree with a bunch of you guys. Not to make it sound all dramatic, but we're in the middle of a paradigm shift. Advances in technology and efficiency mean there aren't going to be enough jobs to go around. This is a big, big change for societies, and they're going to need to figure out how to work with that.

In an economic sense, yes, that seems fair.

As I've said repeatedly, we have an employment age surplus not a job shortage.

People have said this in various epochs in history. It's basically a new form of Malthusian Economics. Technology usually tends to increase productivity, but also provides work. The greatest technological boom in history was the Industrial Revolution, and contrary to the protestations of the Luddites, things worked out ok for working people in the long run.

There may be short run slow downs of employment and retraining required, but to think its a long term trend of no work just ignores economic history completely.

That's fair. So, speculation time. What's the new work going to be?

The workers who lost their jobs when factories and automation came along tended not to get re-employed, but their children found jobs in offices (wild generalizations here). What's the next generation going to do?

This is not meant sarcastically. I'm actually interested in ideas.

My thoughts -

IoT - Internet of Things
Goldman Sachs | Macroeconomic Insights - The Internet of Things: The Next Mega-Trend

Energy - I'm not convinced about green/reusable/sustainable energy technologies but do think overall energy will be in the forefront for a while (e.g. fracking, electric cars)


Nice to have but wishful thinking as they are too narrow ...

Healthcare - from home healthcare services to high end drugs to treat seniors

Education - I think my kids are getting a good PS education and think they will get a good college education. I do think there is an opportunity to emphasize trade schools (e.g. they can't be outsourced) for those that do not choose college.

The arts. Or maybe blogging. We could always use more bloggers.