Birthers fail another one. They cite a 2004 "AP" story as evidence that Obama was born in Kenya. Turns out that the Associated Press did not, in fact, mention that Obama was from Kenya. Seems the "Kenyan-born" reference was added by an author who didn't bother to fact-check his sources.

His birth certificate has been released. Hawaiian state officials have verified that it's real. Hawaiian newspapers at the time of his birth had his birth notice. The courts have routinely tossed cases about this because there's no credible evidence he was born in Kenya. The "Kenyan" birth certificate which was released turned out to be a poorly made forgery. Several respected conservative magazines have investigated this and determined that Obama was born in Hawaii. Would you people who insist upon "knowing the truth about where Obama was born" knock it off? We already know the answer and there are far more important things to pay attention to.

In the Trinity College study American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population (PDF), we find that the Republican Party has troubling times ahead. The "nones" are those described as "no religion" in the American Religious Identification Survey 2008. The "American Nones" study has this to say about "nones":

Nones are easily misunderstood. On the one hand, only a small minority are atheists. On the other hand, it is also not correct to describe them as “unchurched” or “unaffiliated” on the assumption that they are mainly theists and religious searchers who are temporarily between congregations. Yet another incorrect assumption is that large proportions of Nones are anti-rationalist proponents of New Age and supernatural ideas. As we will show, they are more likely to be rational skeptics.

Amongst some of the highlights of the survey, it found that in 1990, 6% of Democrats were nones and 6% of Republicans were nones. Today it's 16% Democrats and 8% Republicans. Nones are currently 15% of the population, but that number is expected to rise to about one fourth of the population in 20 years. Further, fewer than 10% of nones under the age of 30 are Republicans. If the present trends continue, the Republicans are going to find it harder and harder to sway voters.

In short: the Republicans are actively chasing away one the largest and fastest growing demographic groups in the US. I wonder, perhaps, if they're actually responsible for this group's growth.

Frankly, I'm quite horrified by the UK Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorism Campaign.



Click on the image to go to my original.

We're in trouble. Serious trouble. The Bank of England is going to try to print money to ease the economic crisis. Anyone with even a marginal background in economics knows why this is a disaster. What astonishes me is that I don't see the press howling over this one.

The problem is simple. When the government starts printing money and injecting that into the economy, people have more money. Unfortunately, that means they spend more money. Suppliers raise their prices. Why? They have higher demand and can do that. Even if you think they're being greedy, their suppliers will raise their prices. Lots of people are going to raise their prices and inflation sets in. The more money the UK government prints, the worse the inflation will be.

• So can't the government freeze prices?
  
  So what happens when the price of your goods is frozen and the supplies for those goods cost more? You go out of business.
• So can't the government turn around and freeze those prices?
  
  Not if you have an international economy where many goods and services are supplied outside of your country.
• Ah, but the price of those goods and services aren't affected by our printing money, so they'll stay cheap.
  
  No, you've just trashed your currency and undercut its value internationally. You can't afford those goods and services at the exchange rate for your money. (See Zimbabwe for a delightful example)
• But the Euro means no exchange rate with other EEA nations who've adopted the Euro!
  
  Ah, but we haven't adopted the Euro, have we? And if we did, we'd be taking other EEA countries down with us. This national disaster would turn into an international crisis.

What's worse is that I suspect the Brown government won't stop this ludicrous idea.

The UK has officially gone nuts. No economist would seriously suggest this. As an act of desperation, it ranks up their with going to a loan shark to help paying off your bills. Everyone's going to be screwed. Prices are going to go up much faster than wages and people will struggle even harder to make ends meet.

I am trying to hang on here. I have almost two and a half years before I can apply for citizenship but I'm scared that this government is going to make the intervening time a living hell for me. I just can't believe this idiocy.

You know how to deal with this economic crisis? I'll give you a hint. Somewhere there's a farmer in Tibet saying "there's a global economic crisis"? He raises his own food and keeps to himself. I am not arguing that countries should be isolationist, but they should be more self-sufficient (there's a big difference, but I'll be Rush Limbaugh types won't be able to figure it out). By focusing more on local economies, we can have some level of protection when another economy collapses.

But why won't this happen? Because there's no incentive to. Global financial systems ofter huge rewards and the people who play them have little risk. If they lose a few billion dollars, it's not their money they're losing. And why do politicians allow this? Because there's no downside for them, either. If they play along and let these institutions assume too much risk with other people's money, they leave office for a nice, fat, private sector jobs. And if the economy gets hurt by this? They leave office for nice, fat, private sector jobs. The revolving door of government ensures that they'll do what the business tell them to do.

So the UK government needs to focus on local, sustainable economies and let the economic crisis run its course. There's no way that the UK government is going to come out of this as a island of wealth and stability in a search of financial turbulence. The best we can do is mitigate the damage, work with other countries to repair the damage and admit that they can't print money to get out of this mess.

Is the UK economy going to collapse completely before I can get citizenship? If the BBC were to lay me off (not likely, but you never know), it's not going to be easy to get another job right now. I'm really, really worried about this. On the bright side, I can apply for permanent residency in June 2010, so if things hold together that long, I should be OK.

Hmm ... time to look for a wife (with EEA citizenship, of course :)

So Michael Phelps, US Olympic hero, got caught smoking pot. So what? Well, I've seen quite a few people get apoplectic about this -- though I expect the reaction would have been much worse if he were a black athlete. The most disturbing part, though, is that apparently many people believe "illegal" is a synonym for "wrong". It's not. Get that out of your system. Remember how it used to be illegal in the USA for interracial couples to marry? We still have plenty of laws on the books which will eventually be overturned because they're forbidding behavior which isn't wrong. The trick is to identify them, not to blindly label everything as "wrong" merely because it's illegal.

Of course, it's true that illegal behavior is usually "wrong" behavior, but for a journalist to assert that illegal behavior is automatically wrong behavior is like a mathematician pointing out that vaginal and anal sex are topologically equivalent: it's true if you start with the right set of assumptions, but that doesn't mean those are the assumptions which matter.

Update: seems that the analogy might be stronger than I thought. As has been pointed out to me, anal and vaginal sex are not topologically equivalent since one is a dimple and the other is the topological equivalent of the hole in the torus. Therefore, even if you think "illegal" means "wrong", a quick internet posting to will catch you out. :)

I didn't realize quite how badly I had sprained my right ankle until I took off my socks, looked at them and thought "one of these things is not like the other". Ow.

Fortunately, unlike almost 1 in 6 Americans, I can go to the doctor if I want. And while we're on the subject of health care, why do I never hear any pro-lifers address the the abysmal infant mortality rate in the US? The US health care system sucks. If you're curious about the UK view of the US system, you can watch What Now, Mr. President?, a Panorama episode about the US health care system. For those of you outside of the UK, Youtube (currently) has it in part 1, part 2 and part 3. It's pretty sad and it would be an absolute scandal if the UK system were that bad.

And on a completely unrelated note, at the opening and end of that Panorama show, Jeremy Vine is standing in front of a building. The revolving doors you see are the doors I go through every day to get to work. I often see that setup as I'm leaving. (For those of you outside the UK, you'll only see the building with Jeremy Vine at the very tail end of part 3, right as it cuts off)

So if you read articles about the US economy, you might seem them reporting a 7.2% unemployment rate. Now this sounds bad, but it's not as bad as it could be. After all, unemployment during the Great Depression was close to 25%. So we're nowhere near to being in a depression.

Or are we?

First, take a look at this table of unemployment rates for the Great Depression:

Year	Unemployment rate
1923-29	3.3%
1930	8.9%
1931	15.9%
1932	23.6%
1933	24.9%
1934	21.7%
1935	20.1%
1936	17.0%
1937	14.3%
1938	19.0%
1939	17.2%
1940	14.6%
1941	9.9%
1942	4.7%

As you can see, we didn't start pushing 25% until 1933. The stock market crash of October 29, 1929 is when many people view the Great Depression as starting. Then, our unemployment was just over 3%, but soared to almost 9% the following year and almost 16% the year after that. With out unemployment at 7.2%, we're don't seem to be doing too bad, but unfortunately your government is lying to you.

Take a look at the official unemployment rates for the US for the last four months of 2008. Without going into too much detail about all of the different types (explanations on the page linked to), "U-3" is what the newspapers tell you. "U-6" is the actual unemployment rate and it's much closer to how it was calculated during the Great Depression.

Type	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.
U-1	2.4%	2.7%	2.6%	2.9%
U-2	3.5%	3.8%	4.0%	4.2%
U-3	6.2%	6.6%	6.8%	7.2%
U-4	6.5%	6.9%	7.1%	7.6%
U-5	7.2%	7.6%	7.9%	8.3%
U-6	11.2%	12.0%	12.6%	13.5%

So while the newspapers are telling you we have 7.2% unemployment, it's actually closer to twice that. Why? There are some categories of unemployed which aren't counted. For example, have you given up looking for work because you can't find any? Congratulations! You're no longer unemployed. Have you lost your high-paying job and are delivering newspapers? Congratulations! You're now fully employed and the government can pretend that you're doing fine.

Apparently, determining which unemployed people are unemployed is a serious business and in 1995, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published a comprehensive redefinition of unemployment (PDF). Apparently, their original U-1 through U-7 classifications were too confusing to the public, but U-1 through U-6 are just right.

So are we screwed? Are we heading into another Depression? Maybe not. Back in the 1930s, the idea of government assistance for the economy was unheard of and it was believed that it would sort itself out. It was the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, elected in 1933 (after Herbert Hoover was kicked out on his ass for pretending that the market will solve all) which aggressively sought to provide direct economic assistance from the government. Curiously, it was after this assistance was offered that the Great Depression started easing, though it was almost a decade before things were really sorted out (and then we had WW II. God has a sense of humor, eh?).

Regrettably, I'm hearing many Republicans today claim that the New Deal didn't have any benefits for the economy, a stance that most economists laugh at. Only time will tell what Obama's policies will do, but by aggressively intervening early, we may rack up a lot of debt but buy ourselves some time to pay it off. However, if we wait to long, our 13.5% unemployment rate may well top 20% and grow worse. I expect the fighting in Washington is going to hurt us all.

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see someone rich (obviously not me) offer a substantial amount of money to various people who claim that the US government's "harsh" interrogation techniques are not torture. The catch? The person claiming the prize has to withstand said interrogation techniques for a week or so, on film they agree in advance will be broadcast live. At all times during the "interrogation", they will be free to end it if they simply renounce the money.

Heck. While I'm not a fan of reality shows and this one would be more grisly than most, it would attract a high viewership and networks could afford to pony up this cash. No matter how much torture supporters label this a "cheap stunt", it will get its point across.

Obviously, there are serious issues here. Lots of lawyers with lots of legal documents because you are, at its heart, agreeing to hurt people. Of course, the sort of people who you would target are the sort of people who are claiming this isn't torture, so theoretically they would not have a problem with this. But most, I suspect, would be cowards. Even with lots of money dangled in front of them. I suspect it would be like that recent incident in Mexico where lawmakers applauded the idea to test themselves for drugs but stampeded to the door when they found out it was for real.

Does Rush Limbaugh really think these are akin to "college fraternity pranks", an assessment he agrees with? There are many other commentators who dismissed these issues as "not being torture" (see first link above). Let's let 'em put up or shut up. I'm guessing you'll have hear more excuses for getting out of this than they did for getting out of Vietnam.

There are some factual errors here, but this 1947 speech by King Abdullah of Jordan really sums up Arab attitudes towards Israel. Now some might be bothered by my linking to it, but I think it's very important. If we do not understand the Arab point of view, how can we even begin to understand the root causes to the problems in the Middle East? It's like the awful 9/11 Commission report. Hundreds of pages describing intelligence failures, millions of pages of documentation consulted, hundreds of interviews given, millions of dollars spent, and only one tiny paragraph hinting as to motivation.

This is not to justify any murder or atrocity -- the people who participated in 9/11 were murderers and Hamas undeniably bears some responsibility for the current Israeli assault on Gaza, but blindly favoring one side over the other with little understanding of root issues is zealotry and merely serves to continue this awful situation.

A key paragraph in this speech, given to an American audience, sums up the issue:

What would your answer be if some outside agency told you that you must accept in America many millions of utter strangers in your midst—enough to dominate your country—merely because they insisted on going to America, and because their forefathers had once lived there some 2,000 years ago?

You might disagree with some or all of that speech, but you have to understand that this is the viewpoint of many Arabs. Israelis deserve to live in peace, but Palestinians deserve to have a home again.

I sometimes write about the economics of software development because it's an important thing for software developers to understand, but due to a recent post here, I've decided to write about the reverse. No, I'm not talking about economics software, but rather, the lessons that software development can bring to economics.

( You can take your dogma and ... )

Absolutely sick of wrapping Christmas presents. Thank god Christmas only happens once a year.

Poll #1319308 Foreign Presidents?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

Should there be an amendment to the US Constitution to allow foreign-born US citizens to be President?

My political party of preference is ...

I'm sure that by now, you're aware of the conspiracy theorists claiming that Obama's birth certificate is fake and that he's actually a Kenyan citizen. Of course, some are confused because John McCain was born in Panama and they thought he was not eligible for the job of presidency. Of course, Arnie wants to be President, but the US Constitution says "no".

According to the Constitution, to be eligible for President you must be:

1. 35 years of age
2. Be a resident of the US for 14 years
3. Be a natural-born citizen

So let's say, through some horror, we found out that there was a terrible (and for the sake of argument, honest) mistake about Obama's citizenship. Would you want him to step down?

I guess when you get down to it, not allowing people to vote for the person they want to vote for seems, well, undemocratic. Imagine a 50 year old, extremely qualified, talented candidate who was born in London and moved to and lived in the US since he was a month old. Why should we care about an accident of birth?

As you might recall, Chinese firms have tainted infant formula with melamine because it throws off tests checking for protein content. Thousands of infants have grown ill and several have died. Given the spate of tainted products coming from China in the past few years, it might seem reasonable to stick with domestic products.

Enter the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is the administration responsible for ensuring that US businesses get their food and drug products to market as fast is possible while still maintaining a fiction of oversight. I suspect, though, that the FDA would describe their role slightly differently.

The FDA has found melamine in US infant formula, but they won't tell us which one. Salon has a much better -- and vaguely more reassuring -- article about this scandal, but why the hell won't the FDA tell us? Still, you can have fun reading the opening paragraph:

Traces of the industrial chemical melamine have been detected in samples of top-selling U.S. infant formula, but federal regulators insist the products are safe. The Food and Drug Administration said last month it was unable to identify any melamine exposure level as safe for infants, but a top official said it would be a "dangerous overreaction" for parents to stop feeding infant formula to babies who depend on it.

Um, hello? Breast feeding? There's mountains of evidence that breast feeding provides significant benefits to babies. It's not like mothers would stop using infant formula and let their children starve to death. While I assume there are some women who cannot breastfeed, I suspect that most use formula out of convenience, not out of necessity. But for cryin' out loud, it's your baby. Won't anyone think of the ... (I'll stop now).

You might not find feeding your children melamine a big deal, but I find it disquieting that FDA scientists are revolting against illegal activity at their agency (PDF) -- activity which does little but benefit business interests.

This is what eight years of Bush rule has left us with: business first, people second maybe. Ignoring science (ignorant Americans who trash science are just as culpable!) because you find it "inconvenient" or at odds with your ideology always bites you in the end.

There's no questions that Palestinians have done some terrible things to the Israeli people. No one who's been paying the slightest bit of attention denies that. There's also no question that the Israelis (both the government and individuals) have returned the favor in spades. In fact, there's a certain dark irony in the ghetto the Israel has created in Gaza, strangely reminiscent of past horrors Jews suffered in Warsaw and other places.

Given this, and given that the solution to the Palestinian issue is one of the three big stumbling blocks to peace in the Middle East¹, why is the US so firmly backing Israel rather than backing the peace process? I've been doing a huge amount of research on this issue and frankly, I'm quite mystified by this.

1. The other two issues are US military bases in the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia and continued Western violation of sovereignty of Middle Eastern states.

So we know how it works with politicians. Promise the moon when you're getting elected, forget your promises when once you're elected. Fortunately, Obama won't do that to us.

Except for one curious thing that AfterDowningStreet.org has pointed out. Obama's campaign has deleted all of his promised changes and replaced them with the following empty statement:

President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden have developed innovative approaches to challenge the status quo in Washington and to bring about the kind of change America needs.

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies. The principal priorities of the Obama Administration include: a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.

That's rather disturbing. You can read what Obama was promising. It lacked implementation detail, but it did contain many specific goals. What happened? If there was simply a statement on the change.gov site explaining why this was done, I'd feel better, but given that Obama moved sharply towards the center after he secured the Democratic nomination, I find this a bit unsettling.

Update: OK, the details are back and even stronger than before. They were down for over a week and that was disturbing, but I'm happy to see this change.

With all of this outcry that Obama is socialist, I confess to being a little confused. I hear so many journalists and "pundits" throw around that term, but none of them really explaining it. Perhaps more importantly, I want to hear them explain two things: how "socialist" applies to Obama's policies and how "socialist" doesn't apply to the US.

But first, we interrupt this rant with an excerpt from "Pulp Media Fiction".

               INT. LIBERAL MEDIA BLACK-OPS HEADQUARTERS


            SARAH PALIN sits back in a chair, staring in horror at JULES 
            WINNFIELD.  He has a microphone held tightly in front of him.


                                     JULES
                                 Can you name me a single 
                            mother-fuckin' Republican who 
                            attacked Obama's "protect domestic
                            jobs" position?

                                     SARAH
                         What?

                                     JULES
                                 I *said* 'Can you name me a 
                            single mother-fuckin' Republican 
                            who attacked Obama's "protect 
                            domestic jobs" position?'

                                     SARAH
                         What?

            Jules presses the microphone hard against Sarah's mouth.

                                     JULES
                         
                                C'mon, pretend this is a 
                            Katie Couric interview again!  
                            I dare ya, I double dare ya
                            motherfucker, say "What" one 
                            more goddamn time!

( And now, back to our regularly scheduled rant )

For those who thought that Sean Hannity couldn't sink any lower, you were wrong. This is a complete sleezefest. From the lastest poll on his Web site:

With ACORN fraud, military ballots missing, and people voting more than once do you believe that Obama would have won this election without all those situations?

A tip of the keyboard to this Bob Geiger post on the subject. How incredibly revolting.

The headline reads Obama's Friends Appear Poised to Hold Clout in Washington. As soon as I saw that phrasing on Google News, I knew it was a right-wing rag trying to plant in people's minds the suggestion that there's something unsavoury about this. Yup. It's Fox News. The phrasing is a dead give away. Just read their opening:

Barack Obama owes a lot of favors.

His successful bid to be America's 44th president was aided by unprecedented fundraising, and he gained the early support of mutinous Democrats who rebelled against the better known and more experienced candidates in the primaries.

That's one hell of a subtle yet juicy opener. You could have a lot of fun dissecting those sentences, the heavily negative words and the tone, but I'd be preaching to the choir here.

Never mind that this is what every single president does. And you know what? It's not even wrong. If they're you're friends, it's because you trust them. You surely aren't going to appoint your enemies to important positions (appointing someone you disagree with, of course, is an entirely different kettle of fish and something that I doubt most Fox News affianados would understand).

And people still defend Fox News? The problem is that when Fox News comes out swinging like this, you could easily read this as newsworthy and "fair and balanced" because it really does read like news, but their continued, subtle digging of Obama (and much of their less subtle tactics) suggest that as far as they're concerned, it's business as usual.

Well, by now you know that Obama won. Symptomatic of the entire election was John McCain's concession speech. He was decent. He was a gentleman. He was honorable. The crowd booed him and shouted obscenities. Until those extremists are marginalized -- and I'm pretty sure McCain is horrified by them -- we have a lot of work to do. Still, for the first time in quite a while, I want to be back in the US, celebrating with Americans. And for the first time in an even longer time, I'm am very proud of my country. I'm not used to that.

I really want to be able to celebrate this victory right now, but I'm at work and there's a leaving do tonight. Perhaps this weekend.

So far it looks like Obama is pulling it off. It's 1:15 AM over here and I'm still up, waiting for the news. I'm quietly hopeful. Maybe our national nightmare is finally over.

And I've just heard that Elizabeth Dole has lost :)

Tom Harris, a Scottish MP, doesn't recognize the Orwellian tendencies of the UK. I was so furious at his "oh, wake up" blog entry that I posted the following as a comment. It's awaiting moderation. I'll be very impressed if it's published (particularly since I was so harsh).

---

Just as 1984 can be thought of as a warning and not a blueprint, so too should it be thought of as an illustration and not a documentary. Just because the exact manifestation of the Orwellian tendencies in the UK aren't what we see in Orwell's book does not mean that these things aren't happening.

Everyone knows about the CCTV, not many people know that you're now teaching the cameras to listen to us as well. (http://is.gd/6k88) Or how about the fact that Jack Straw wants to let anonymous people testify against you? (http://is.gd/6k8P) Your police want the DNA of children who might be pose dangers in the future. (http://is.gd/2cW) You're talking about tracking all of our calls and email (http://is.gd/1Pfo).

So you photograph us, keep our DNA, are listening in on our conversations and all in the name of "terrorism". Frankly, many people are more afraid of the government than terrorists.

And just getting back to the CCTV problem, not only do the police admit it doesn't work (http://is.gd/1b1a), but the Home Office admits it, too (http://is.gd/6k9O). So how can you stand there and tell me with a straight face that you support the blatant rape of our civil liberties? You should be ashamed of yourself, but then, I think you've just made it clear that you don't give a damn about us.

(I could have listed plenty of other links besides the ones above, but I felt that was a good start)