Do Not Be Alarmed

Do not check your screen. Yes, this is the same old Live From the WTC goodness, but wrapped in a gorgeous new package!

I've left the World Trade Center, so it seemed silly to keep calling my blog Live from The WTC. And I've been accepted into the Foreign Service, provisionally until I pass a background check (any friends who are reading this should start compiling a list of my good qualities now to give the nice FBI agents), so I am no longer allowed to post on anything regarding US policy. And I'm tired of waiting for Blogger. The upshot is, I've moved the site to Moveable Type, deleted any entries regarding US policy, and upgraded my look when I changed my name. I hope you'll continue to patronize me anyway.

Everything has come over, except, regrettably, my comments. If you need to access an old comment, shoot me an email, and I'll try to get you the text.

Otherwise, sit back, relax, and . . . why, enjoy the show.

Fed up with doomsayers predicting

Fed up with doomsayers predicting terrorist disaster or imminent theocratic assault by the Republicans? Try this one on for size: it looks like the earth's magnetic field is weakening in prelude to a reversal of polarity.

Ever tried to look up

Ever tried to look up the Yahoo Weblogs category? I did, just for giggles. The results are . . . ahem. . . somewhat incomplete.

Titter. Snort. Can someone start

Titter. Snort. Can someone start a fund to buy these guys some more tinfoil for their hats?

Tee-hee: Bottom 50 Urban Legends:

Tee-hee: Bottom 50 Urban Legends:

If you eat Pop Rocks, then drink a whole can of Coke, you'll start belching napalm!

American cheese is made from real Americans

This woman bought a dog in Mexico, and they told her it was a Chihuahua, but when she brought it home, she discovered that in reality it was a wire-haired fox terrier!

After the pet rock fad of the 1970s, thousands of New York mothers flushed the unwanted pets down the toilet and they made their way to the sewers and just kind of sat there, at the bottom, slowly eroding.

I bumped into the optometrist of the wife of an old neighbor of mine and he said that she said that she overheard her local deli owner talking about how people really shouldn't watch football this Sunday. I'm just saying better safe than sorry, right?

If there's an emergency on Death Row - like no electricity or something - some states have pits of hungry tigers as backup.

And best of all:

This buddy of mine who works in San Francisco - he knows this guy who worked for a DotCom company that wrote a business plan, broke even, cut costs, and is on the road to profitability!

If you want to write

If you want to write an article calling the President a liar, it behooves you to avoid weasel tricks like this:

George W. Bush does not lie about sex, I suppose--merely about war and peace. Most particularly he has consistently lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities as well as its missile-delivery capabilities. Take a look at Milbank's gingerly worded page-one October 22 Post story if you doubt me. To cite just two particularly egregious examples, Bush tried to frighten Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." Previously he insisted that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed the Iraqis to be "six months away from developing a weapon." Both of these statements are false, but they are working. Nearly three-quarters of Americans surveyed think that Saddam is currently helping Al Qaeda; 71 percent think it is likely he was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Premise:
Bush told Americans that Iraq was close to getting a nuclear weapon, and had a fleet of unmanned aircraft.

Conclusion:
Therefore, Americans believe that Saddaam is helping Al Qaeda and was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks

Assumption:
The American public are drooling idiots who have difficulty understanding the English language in oral or written form, which is why they draw a conclusion from Bush's statement that is, on its face, completely unrelated to the content of the statement

or

The readers of the Nation are drooling idiots who have difficulty understanding the English language in oral or written form, which is why they draw a conclusion from Bush's statement that is, on its face, completely unrelated to the content of the statement. . . which is also why they enjoy reading articles like this one.

Please note that I make no comment on what Bush said, or its veracity. Only Eric Alterman's, which is sadly lacking.

Ouch! The Japanese Financial Services

Ouch! The Japanese Financial Services Agency just reported that it believes Japan's bad loans are understate by $109 billion.

At the same time, the agency said that the banks have insufficient reserves to cover even the bad loans they're reporting.

On the up side, their mobile phones are much cooler than ours.

Question of the Day My

Question of the Day
My favorite thing about this site is that I get to ask my readers to answer questions for me that they know more about than I do.

So here's my question today, for the scientists and engineers out there: assume that we do, in fact, convert to renewable energy sources -- solar and wind.

Are the weather effects of sucking all that energy out of the climate system better or worse than the weather effects of burning fossil fuels?

Good article from the Boston

Good article from the Boston Herald on why the Democrats lost Massachusetts. I think it has wider application to the party across the nation.

The Democratic Party is indeed a big tent, so large it seems to include virtually every politician in the state. But what does it stand for? Outgoing Senate President Thomas Birmingham and House Speaker Thomas Finneran are almost opposites on a wide range of issues. Yet each calls himself a Democrat. Aside from a desire for power, is there any common bond?

Perhaps there is none. And perhaps that was the real flaw in O'Brien's campaign. She was standard-bearer for a party that is spread too thin, a party that too much defines itself as an amalgamation of interest groups rather than by some coherent political philosophy. Unlike, say, Jill Stein, O'Brien had no overarching cause with which to capture the public imagination.

And so, with nothing uniquely substantive to say, O'Brien ended up running a campaign based on style. On Election Day, as it turned out, she just wasn't in fashion.

Looks like we've got a

Looks like we've got a couple of cases of bubonic plague here in New York.

Eeek! The sky is falling! The terrorists are coming! Run for the hills!

No, the editorial board will not be retreating to the Secret Live From The WTC bunker. The editorial board is much more worried about the unexplained outbreak of Leptirosis in Riverside Park, which threatens The Official Live From The WTC Canine Companion.

The people with the bubonic plague are a couple. They're from New Mexico. Where bubonic plague is found in the local rodent population. So probably, they didn't get it here.

Also, while the plague did a nasty job on Europe in the Middle Ages, we lack the conditions that made it so deadly. Houses filled with straw and the rats that live on it. The hygeine of your typical college druggie frat. Medical treatment that centered around wearing garlic and accusing Jews of poisoning the wells. If it's caught early, bubonic plague is highly treatable. While I don't doubt that Al Qaeda would like to bioengineer some supergerm that would resist antibiotics and only spare the faithful, who would be protected by miraculous intervention from Allah, I doubt they have the resources in their caves.

Walk me through the logic

Walk me through the logic here: you just got routed in an election in which voters specifically expressed a desire to hand control of the Senate over to the other party. The main factor in your defeat seems to have been the opposing party's overwhelmingly popular president. So the problem, say Democratic pundits, is that the party didn't "stand up to the president", and need to either

a) Move to the left
b) Go negative on the president

I'm afraid I'm not following the logical leap from

1) The voters dissed us because they like the President

to

2) We must therefore vigorously oppose the President by any means necessary.

Can someone fill me in?

John Ellis has a roundup

John Ellis has a roundup of last night's events you should all read.

An issue to watch: Greg

An issue to watch:

Greg Ip on page one of the WSJ: "Total debt, excluding the federal government, now equals 158% of gross national product. The last time debt rose to that level was in the late 1920s. Indeed, both the 1920s and 1990s saw a surge in new forms of debt-financed consumption -- installment plans in the 1920s, 'cash out' mortgage refinancings in the 1990s. But the fact that consumer debt has doubled since the 1950s to 90% of personal income isn't of great concern to Fed officials. They attribute it to a more sophisticated financial industry that has made credit easier to get, and to the rise in home ownership which means many people have substituted mortgage payments for rent." Another factoid: "In the 1950s, car prices rose about 0.5 percentage points a year faster than inflation, says Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. Car makers' productivity was rising rapidly, and sales were advancing 3% to 4% a year. In today's dollars, manufacturers earned about $1,500 per vehicle. Today productivity is growing more slowly, the world is awash in idle auto factories and a strong dollar is holding down the price of imported vehicles. As a result, Mr. McAlinden says, new car prices have fallen 0.2% a year since 1996 and profits per vehicle are down to about $400."

(Via Henry Copeland)

I'm also hearing that the

I'm also hearing that the Democrat would have won if htey hadn't lost Wellstone. In one sense, I think that's true -- I think the rally cost them the Senate. But in the sense that they mean it, which is that Wellstone would have won, I think that's wishful thinking. Wellstone was the Democratic senator in the worst shape, and he was targeted accordingly. Republicans took every Senate seat, except SD, that was even remotely feasible. Wellstone's death helped, rather than hurt, the Dems, until that rally. So while I think they were in worse shape after the rally, this was not an act of God that cost them the race. It was the mean-spirited behavior at the rally.

One of the exciting things

One of the exciting things about this is that there is a -- slim -- chance that we'll get tax simplification.

Peace, my little pinko chickadees. I don't mean lowering taxes on the rich. I just mean getting rid of the 8 zillion deductions we all take, lowering rates a little to compensate for the loss of deductions, and thus hopefully goosing the economy.

Now, lots of people argue whether or not raising taxes hurts or helps growth. Though intuitively, it seems obvious that lower taxes would translate directly into higher growth, the empirical evidence for this is thin on the ground.

But almost all economists would agree that a simpler tax code is a great thing for the economy. We spend over $300 billion in this country on tax compliance -- the cost of accountants and tax lawyers making sure our taxes are in order. That doesn't count the budget for the IRS, the courts, and the economic losses we take when companies and individuals divert resources into tax-favored activities.

The problem is, of course, that if they try to do it, the lobbyists will descend on Washington like a plague of locusts. Of course, in theory, we're all in favor of a simpler tax code -- but not at the expense of my deduction. Every single one of them will be fighting tooth and nail to prevent any deduction, no matter how minor, distortionary, and overall useless, from being cut. Unfortunately, while they're talking about making the reform revenue neutral -- meaning that it will neither raise nor lower taxes -- and keeping the current progressive structure, that doesn't mean that everyone will be exactly as well off as they were before. People without deductions, like (full disclosure) me, will be better off. People who take a lot of deductions will lose out.

The only way we can fight for this is by getting energized about it. I know, I know -- it sounds kind of like trying to get energized about proposed changes in the labeling standards for marshmallow fluff. But this is important. In economic terms, it's free money for the country -- we get to grow the economy, without costing ourselves, as a nation, any tax revenue. Even if it means you pay a couple hundred more every year, in the long run you'll be better off. And you'll have sent a powerful message about politicians using the tax code to buy off favored consituencies. So write your congressman. Tell any lobbying groups to lay off. Let the process run.

Come on, guys -- let's do it for America!

Terry McCauliffe is not learning

Terry McCauliffe is not learning his lesson. He's just gone on TV to proclaim that this was all about the Bush family. I know his job is to raise money among the faithful, but the vendetta is not winning the party any points outside the party.

I'm watching Mondale's concession speech.

I'm watching Mondale's concession speech. It's dignified and sweet, and does him credit.

I think Mondale is doing a good thing -- closing off the possibility of lawsuits. The country doesn't need any more Floridas. I hope that we see like considerations in South Dakota.