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Monica Smith
Number of posts: 144
Email address: email
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Posts by Monica Smith:
Instructions From the Top
Heritage Inaction
For some reason, a letter from the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation was characterized as having been received by NBC News, as if it were some sort of privileged communication. In fact, the thing was a press release and rather obviously designed to change the conversation about the Heritage Foundation from trying to defend the indefensible “study” of Hispanic intellectual insufficiency to food stamps, a real two-fer issue.
Shadow Economy
Labor Force Participation
Yes, labor force participation is back to what it was when the contributions of most women to the economy weren’t counted. That people aren’t getting paid doesn’t mean they aren’t contributing. Sometimes it’s just a counting problem — an accounting problem.
Actually, there are many accounting problems. One has been discovered and and is now being addressed and will result in a revision to the GDP. That is, the Gross Domestic Product is going to take into account what dollars people invest in creative endeavors that don’t manifest in material products –
Fore
Lord of Little Rock to Host Western Amateur Championship
The Lord of Little Rock, Arkansas is, of course, Warren Amerine Stephens, the head of Stephens, Inc, the premier private equity firm not located on Wall Street. That he’s hosting the Western Amateur Championship (July 29 – Aug 4) at the Alotian Golf Club in Roland, Arkansas should not come as a surprise. One suspects that Stephens is proud of being an amateur himself, someone who does what he does out of love. At least that’s what I get when I peruse this interview he gave to inARkansas.com last year.
Flower to the People
Patent #6630507
We, the people of the United States of America, as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services, have been issued a patent for Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. According to the abstract:
Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases…
PeopleFAIL
GunFAIL
I’m stealing this title and part of the post from David Waldman at DailyKos because it is just too perfect. Guns fail — never the people in whose hands they end up. Can we say “false attribution of agency”?
This week’s summary:
Among this weeks GunFAILers, we have three who shot themselves removing their guns from their cars, which I suppose lends support to the guns = cars crowd.
Big Fat Juicy Ones
Think I’ll go eat worms
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
I think I’ll go eat worms!
Big fat juicy ones,
Eensie weensy squeensy ones,
See how they wiggle and squirm!
That nursery rhyme is about as good as any to explain how the Sequester, with which we are now wrestling, came about. The Congressional leadership had a hissy fit and the Sequester is the result.
Endemic Incompetence
Don’t ask. Don’t task. Don’t tax.
Perhaps that’s the problem. The Cons, people stuck in an antagonistic stance, can’t differentiate between words that sound so much alike. Or, they don’t want to be asked, tasked or taxed because they can’t respond. Poor Boehner. His “no, you can’t” rant really was more of a plaint, an expression of his own frustration, discovered in the other because the self is unknown.
No wonder “Yes, we can” was such a frightening anthem. It hit the nail on the head of the Cons’ problem — endemic incompetence.
