retro-man

..... I'm going to come off as predictably fruity (pun intended) here, but, the validity of any such study assumes that they know everything about how food and nutrients work, and that they tested everything of any consequence. I would guess that there may be nutrients and micronutrients that have not yet been discovered or measured, and that have effects on the body not yet known. I would guess that a complex natural environment, in which crops are rotated, fields are left fallow, vetch planted every 4th year, where fertilization and cross-pollination are done by natural means probably produces a richer and more complex plant than a monoculture factory farm, where the same crop is planted year after year, and the exhausted soil is replenished with the same narrow range of chemical fertilizers. Is it inconceivable to you that something might be missing from such food? There are audiophiles (again, I risk being labeled a kook) who swear that analogue vinyl sounds better than digital - one possible explanation being that there are subtleties in the "natural" sound that are "cropped" off the digital. In a digital recording the frequency range is arbitrarily cut off at 20 and 20,000 hertz, the reasoning being that humans can't hear beyond those frequencies. Yet we know that musical harmonies produce overtones well beyond the audible spectrum. We also know that sounds beyond the audible spectrum can interact with each other and produce audible artifacts LINK. My own opinion is that the sounds that are arbitrarily cut off in the digital medium lend a quality to analogue sound that digital cannot match. Indeed, I own my very favorite record of all time, Oregon's "Winter Light" on both vinyl and CD - and there is an air and space in the vinyl record (along with some pops and crackles) that the CD is missing. But I digress. I suspect that there are benefits to naturally farmed food that are simply not measurable, let alone in the confines of any particular study. Maybe the difference is not consequential. Maybe monoculture, pesticide, petro-fertilized, GMO food offers "adequate" nutrition. But I suspect it is lacking in ways not yet understood.

Actually - that spike in gas prices may have been just one more straw on the camel's back leading to the big crash in October '08 (though officially, the recession had already started in late '07). Perhaps the flattening of the Chinese economy will give some relief to energy and commodity prices - particularly things like steel - this year. It is already impacting my profession though: in 2011 China accounted for fully half of Architectural billings worldwide. That has dropped off quite a bit.

Gas was $4.25 / Gal. in April of '08. I bet that was Obama's fault too!

Not disagreeing with the goal of cutting spending. What POs me is the timing. The timing, taken together with the historical behavior of the party, makes it look like the sudden concern for the deficit is not so much newfound fiscal responsibility as it is a convenient political tool for denying Obama the means to accomplish his policy objectives - or even, for that matter, to fix the mess he inherited. The goal being of course to paint him as a failure so that they can regain power for themselves. Doesn't matter how much collateral damage is done.

I see quite a few of them out here that seem to be in private hands. It's a nice looking car up close. I see quite a few Nissan Leafs too. There was one involved in a fatality accident this evening. (The fatality was in the other car - a Mitsubishi Galant which had been driven across the center line by an apparently-intoxicated driver. The 4 occupants of the Leaf have non-life threatening injuries.) I'd like to see the Volt survive and evolve.

It was a colossal waste of the taxpayers time and money - especially considering what went down just a few years later, and the very real threats this country was (and is) facing in the world. Look, we may share some common ground on the whole PC thing - I don't like it either. We live in the real world - even you do. I have known several cases by now of people in the corner offices - both sexes by the way - having affairs with their subordinates, including all the way down to intern level. If you remain blissfully unaware that this goes on, and that - mostly, as long as it is consensual, discrete, and doesn't end badly in some way, they do not lose their jobs over it - then you have a happy life indeed. I, on the other hand, remain as mystified by the intricacies of pulling off such an affair in this world of flapping jaws, jealous rage, zealous divorce attorneys on the one hand, and PC-laden HR departments on the other as I was about sex in general when I was still in Jr. High School. I wouldn't have a clue how to go about it, even if I were so inclined. (Ok - even when I am so inclined.) Whenever there is a window - and there have been windows of opportunity, I only recognize it in hindsight. I'm a little slow on the draw that way. By the way, I had occasion recently to read the policy manual at a large company (not corrective or punitive I hasten to point out), and I noticed that some element of pragmatism seemed to be creeping its way back in. There was wording that suggested a tentative move away from the zero-tolerance of former times, and more toward individual (mutual) discretion. Interesting.

Here - let me expand the timeline for you, oh ye of selective memory: When Obama took office, we were losing 700,000 jobs per month. Now we are gaining. Not fast enough - nobody's arguing that - but gaining. McCain / Palin wouldn't have been doing any better by now - even given the fact that they, at least, would have had the benefit of an opposition in Congress that wasn't a pit of vipers.

Look - I have said - repeatedly - that spending seems to be about 5% of GDP too high, and revenues about 5% too low. But why shouldn't those who voted Obama into office - on "hope and change", on a platform that included doing - finally - something about healthcare that Presidents from FDR on have been trying to accomplish, but have been obstructed at every turn by the party of "no", who have not put together a cohesive (and realistic) plan of their own - ever - and when one of them finally does and Obama adopts it they shoot it down .... (take a breath).. why shouldn't we be pissed after watching the [disrespectful characterization deleted] who YOUR party foisted on the country in a hotly contested, suspicious, negative popular vote coup, WRECK the economy, wreck our reputation in the world (I know you don't get out much, so that doesn't mean anything to you), leave a big stinking mess - with not a peep from his own party (if there was, please post me some links) about deficit spending - indeed, Vice President Vader famously stated "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." - that was the whole schtick of your party. Then the people, by a margin that George the younger could only dream about elect Obama to take us away from what was an 8 year national nightmare for anyone with brains - but merely a vaguely unfortunate episode occasioning many mumbled disclaimers ("grumble grumble, er, uh, he was not a real conservative, grumble mumble") and disjointed rationales, but mostly just silence, from those who had had the astoundingly poor judgement to support him - as soon as we elect Obama, all of a sudden Oooooh, the deficits! Gotta worry about the deficits!!! (all of a sudden) Where was your sense of responsibility the previous 8 years? Wreck the country, then lock up the check book. Class act all the way. When the Bush administration was passing the Patriot act, stripping away your protections - when they were doing things to prisoners that we EXECUTED Japanese for doing the exact same thing 50 years before - when they were getting warrantless wiretaps, and extraordinary rendition, when they were lying to Congress to start a pre-planned war and all the rest, the big line around here I remember was "Well [sniff] there was this little thing called 911 that you may have forgotten about..". Now when we read you your own words and remind you of your own voting record on the debt ceiling, you're all "Well [sniff] this is the biggest economic collapse since The Great Depression you know." How convenient your timing is for you. Hypocrites.

Oh, I understand it well - and have said it many times myself. That's why I laugh at the nincompoops who act all shocked that Obama hasn't returned us to 1999 in his 42 months in office. He did affect a pretty good turnaround from where we were headed at the time he took office. Here is a graph showing number of jobs lost month-by-month. The graph bottoms out in January 2009, the month Obama took office. Currently (for the time being anyway), jobs are being created, not lost. We were plunging off a cliff. But I'm sure that's Franklin Raines' or somebody's fault.

Well, all right, they actually did say it. Read the parts I bolded. Here, I'll recap them for you: - The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips - It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. and - We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues. Those were S&P's own words about why they downgraded the US credit rating. Who made the debt ceiling into a political bargaining chip - after raising it repeatedly for previous Presidents without a whimper? Who caused "new revenues" to drop down on the menu of policy options? Who resisted any measures that would raise revenues? Failure to control spending can be blamed on both sides of the aisle - but those 3 are right on the Republicans.

Standard and Poor's all but said as much in their explanation of why they did the downgrade: and: Republicans want you to forget this. Just to cement the thought - I offer once again this timeless classic from Mitch McConnell:

They were grown, legal age women, who fell over themselves all aflutter with Clinton's power and virility (one and the same as far as sexual psychology is concerned). Women are attracted to power and wealth. Clinton had both. It made him good mating material - with ample ability to provide for the survival and prosperity of any potential offspring - and they happily mated. He wasn't "using sex to have power over someone" (I suspect that only someone whose own mindset revolves around the will to power - i.e. a Republican - would even interpret it this way). Quite the opposite: he was using his power to have sex with someone. It's simple: he was horny, and his position gave him opportunities. Your interpretation seems to suggest that he was sadistic and his penis gave him opportunities to dominate someone. Is that the way sex works for you? We may recognize the asymmetry of the relationship. We may recognize that those women - swept away by the man - were not thinking realistically about what they were doing. But to paint them as victims is to infantilize them - an atavistic affectation of Victorian attitudes toward "the weaker sex". They were not helpless infants. Flawed, naive, self-deceiving maybe, but not helpless infants. Go ahead and criticize the behavior - on either side, or both - but the attempts to make the man into a rapist ("sexual predation"....), as if his oval office hanky-panky somehow equated with his successor's feckless malfeasance, false wars, and economic nincompoopery (indeed - the ridiculous assertion of some here that Clinton's misdeeds are even worse), are just pathetic.

Well, when I picked up my '02 T-Bird in '02 the sticker was $38,500.00. It was basically $48,000.00 by the time I got out the back room. Of course that included a $4k "market adjustment" at the time. (You're welcome to flame me for that purchase - my wife always does. Still. To this day.) The thing about that car (and that price) is I never expected to buy another. Unfortunately, a.) its severely lemonistic tendencies, b.) The Great Recession, and c.) The fact that I'm an Architect not a Hedge Fund Manager - all conspired against my intentions to keep the car forever. The car attracted compliments on its appearance just about every day - I kid you not - for the entire time I owned it - there was no obsolescence built into its styling. Nor was I by any means tired of it - other than the constant and expensive repairs. Had I the means to maintain it, it probably could have lasted me indefinitely. The Taurus, on the other hand, is a commodity car: a consumable (as attested by Richard's mention of its fleet potential) - albeit on the higher end of that category. As such, I find its price - even starting at $35k - to be just a bit rich. If I were of such an income bracket that it wasn't too rich for me, I'd probably be looking at something else - maybe even (despite my history of "buy American" rhetoric) something German or Japanese. Granted, a new Audi or Lexus will probably be a couple of tens of grand more. The Taurus is stuck mid-market in a country that has decided it doesn't need a middle class anymore. That's a tough place to be. It shares that space with the 300, and other cars like the Buick LaCrosse. Actually, the discontinued Lucerne might be a better comparison. And it was discontinued.

And there you hit my main issue with the car: It costs $40,000.00 - at least by the time you get out the door. Re. the subsequent discussion reminding us that there was no Fusion at the time the original Taurus came out - well, there was certainly a Tempo, or a Contour, or something. If I had a choice between fewer car lines with greater flexibility of options within them, and more car lines with less choice within each line, I'm going to pick the former every time. The Taurus's styling to me is ok. It's attractive - but a bit fussy, there is nothing particularly remarkable in the quality or fit of the materials, and overall as a styling package it seems rather vulnerable to planned (or unplanned) obsolescence. Which is unforgivable at $40K. That seems to me the reason for the un-Taurus-like sales figures. (That, and The Great Recession.) The 2013 Fusion is a much more attractive proposition to me, and I would describe its styling as "beautiful".

Which is all to say that the system is going to be left in a degraded state. Perhaps the term "save" medicare is slightly misleading. http://www.hark.com/...ur-husbands-arm Re. competition and its ability to lower costs, medicine seems to operate under its own rules. I can travel to some foreign country (and have), with an evil, corrupt, and inefficient government-run system and pay far far less for a given medication than I do here - even with coverage here and none there. That is a fact. Contrary to the "Anti-trust" blurb in the FTC link, there is no longer any serious effort to prevent the formation of monopolies in this country, or to break them up once they form - nor has there been for years. Part of the problem in the case of medicine may be perverse effects of our intellectual property laws (which also long ago went over the top IMO). As long as exclusive patents hold, a drug company has a virtual monopoly. We had a situation lately where certain cancer drugs that were - I hate to trot out a cliche here - necessary to save childrens' lives had become unobtainable because they had gone out of production once the monopoly was lost. There were documented cases where treatment was deferred because of this. LINK Where was the much-vaunted "free market" in all of this? MIA, that's where. If it were your child that was sick, a command economy would be looking pretty good right about then.

Excellent article. Word.

See, that's the chicken-sh*t thing about it to me: Ultimately it destroys medicare by making it into a voucher system. It just puts it far enough into the future to mollify a large, and traditionally Republican constituency - seniors - for the moment. If it's such a great idea, why doesn't he implement it immediately? You know the answer to that, and so do I. Just as I remember far enough into the past to know who drove our economy off a cliff, I think far enough into the future to worry about my children and future grandchildren. First off, the vouchers will probably keep pace with costs and inflation about as well as Social Security has. Second, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that "competition" is going to result in lower costs - in fact, all current evidence points the opposite direction. So basically, he is advocating a Plutocrat's dream where people are given the choice of pumping up shareholder profits or dying, where the poor simply get what they can afford - which is relatively less and less each year, and where the amount available for these vouchers is subject to the vagaries of our political system. There is nothing brilliant about this plan to me.

Let me clarify for you here: I have often stated - and believe - that Ronald Reagan's economic policies: i.e. supply-side, trickle-down, voodoo economics (George H.W. Bush's term) are what started us on a 30 year downhill slide. That's the source of the "30 year" number that you remembered (thank you) hearing from me. As for "The Great Recession", it has been widely - in the media and by economists - termed as the greatest economic slump since The Great Depression - which started about 80 years earlier. That's where the "80 years" thing comes from. 2 different things. Reagan's policies (feeding money to the top, smashing the unions that enabled the great middle class to arise, and cultivating a basic distrust of the public sector - "government" in general - regulation, public works, public education, social safety net, everything but the military basically), working over a period of 30 years, culminated in the Great Recession. I acknowledge that it's a bit more complicated than that, and there were policies put in place at the end of WWII and earlier that also contributed, but Reagan - "the great communicator" (and also - ironically - a big deficit spender) more than any other created the political climate that contributed to the Great Recession - that undermined middle class wages while simultaneously boosting consumerism in the quest for more profits, and removing regulatory barriers to financial shenanigans. History will not be kind to him. He loosened the lug nuts and cut the brake lines, ...... then George Bush got behind the wheel...... Let me qualify my remarks: Is government spending too much? Yes. (I think public sector spending should account for about 1/3 of the total economy - no more. Currently it accounts for about 38%, with only 28% or so being collected in taxes at all levels - the difference being the deficit.) Is there waste? Yes. Do we need to live within our means? Certainly. No argument there.

I still hold the following to be true: - It takes more than 36 months to turn around a once-in-80 years economic catastrophe. - McCain / Palin would not have done any better - except perhaps that the opposition in Congress wouldn't have been quite as willing to sink the entire country for the sake of discrediting them as Obama's opposition has been. - As I have said before, I don't have a viscerally negative reaction to Romney - if elected, I will respect him and the office - but I don't see anything in his policy pronouncements that gives me any hope for any improvement. His adoption of Ryan as a running mate is playing to the extreme of the party, and will, if anything, alienate swing or undecided voters. Why did he feel it necessary to play to the far right base? They weren't going to vote for Obama anyway. As far as one party or the other self-destructing, probably wishful thinking in either case, but it is the Republican party that has transformed into a grotesque caricature of its former self - and I hear a lot more defectors from the Republican party who say so than from the Democratic party - two of the more recent disgruntled being David Stockman and Mike Lofgren. And don't forget Olympia Snow's words on deciding not to run for reelection this year. The Tea Party may have shown the way to insert itself into the political process, but the Republican Party is still suffering a huge case of indigestion from it. We'll see how it goes this November I guess.

I had a brief (year or so) flirtation with libertarian ideals - around my first or 2nd year of college. It's a nice theory. The interesting thing about Libertarianism is that it encompasses its own range of right to left within it.

No argument with the ones we owned (though the wife eventually made the switch to her Toyota 4Runner after a couple good snowstorms). They were great cars. "Well rounded" as you describe. Progressively less exciting over the years, but the first one (purchased new in '83) was very exciting - at least to us - for it's well balanced design and handling, amazing refinement compared to what we were used to, and 144,000 mile with a single $200.00 repair under warranty reliability.

I love the way everyone from soup to nuts is now flooding cyberspace with this statement - as if it is incontrovertible fact - that Obama's birth certificate has been tampered with. Period. End of story. Move on. We don't believe he's a secret Muslim, and we do believe that he was born in the US, but his birth certificate has been tampered with. (That's as much illegitimacy as we think we'll be able to win, so we're going to go with that.) Now just repeat it enough times (ref. Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda, black cake Uranium, and WMD's "around the area of Tikrit and Baghdad, and East, West, South, and North somewhat") and it will be accepted by enough people to at least have some effect.

I don't know about the Jetta - but re. throttle response, I notice the same thing with my "new" ('07) Versa - which otherwise is a sweet little engine. I drive in Seattle, and have long prided myself on not having to use any cheater maneuvers, like hand-braking, when starting out on a hill - no matter how steep. The Versa was making me start to doubt my abilities. I realized it is the throttle response. You jab the pedal, the signal goes down to central control, they fill out all the forms and submit them to the authorities, who see if everything is in order before stamping and forwarding them to the department of fuel injection, who gets the motor spooling up. During which time you've slid back a couple of feet, and need to really get into it to overcome backward momentum (assuming the car behind you hasn't done that for you), and end up chirping the tires as if you don't know how to do a smooth launch on a hill. My son's '65 Mustang reminded me what throttle response used to feel like when it was all mechanical linkage: instantaneous. #1,001 on the list of reasons why I'm a Luddite. (San Diego's Fireworks display this year had the honors for #1,000.)

You seem to lack an appreciation of what we have been through over the last 4 years, and are continuing to go through - perhaps because you have been relatively insulated from it, or perhaps because you are too young to remember other "serious recessions". I have been through recessions before. This is not a recession in the sense that word has been understood anytime in the last 3 generations. This is a watershed, transformational economic "event" - and we will not emerge the same on the other side. Such events do not happen as part of the normal business cycle: they happen as the cumulative result of decades of bad policy - policy that fails to recognize changing conditions and effectively adjust for them. The severity of this recession is sufficient proof of the wrong-headedness of our economic policy over the past 30 years, and the utter failure of our regulatory safeguards. To shrug it off as a "serious recession" as if it is part of the normal business cycle strains credulity.

Great article rn4. It points out what anybody on the ground can clearly see. The prescription it sets out for recovery doesn't necessarily agree with what I have often been a proponent of (a regime tending towards more national and local self-reliance - which I think is better socially and ecologically, though not necessarily in the net economically), but it is realistic about the effects of dropping manufacturing employment, and right on when it points out that the belief that the service sector can somehow make up the difference is delusional. It also makes - yet again - the well-founded point about how our lack of a health care system is a serious impediment to American competitiveness. The contrast between the education systems in the US and Germany was interesting too. Even though I was the first generation in my family to finish college, the thought never entered my mind that either of my sons wouldn't finish with a 4 year degree at least (and they both have by now). It may be time to rethink that. The problem with any policy and any kind of planning is the degree to which competitiveness depends on agility. If the dialogue now is that we need more trade schools, you can be sure that those skill sets will be rendered obsolete mid-career for many of those who attain them - as soon as someone figures out how to tilt the table the other direction. Change and progress are not the same thing. We seem to have much of the former, and less than zero of the latter.