Yet more reasons to leave Afghanistan

First, Nicholas Kristof notes we’re continuing to inflame the country’s Pashtuns, whether they are actually that supportive of the Taliban or not.

Yet, that’s not his conclusion; Kristof says we should stay, but with a lighter military footprint. What? Fewer troops with less power projection? That means more potshotting at them.

Meanwhile, Mr. Flatliner, Tom Friedman, admits he feels “regulating top financiers’ pay” ambivalence about the idea of doubling down. But, also wants to stay.

That’s close to Einstein’s “insanity” comments.
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Krugman – why many of my peers are idiots

Especially in lambasting the discredited, absolutist Chicago School (which largely still refuses to accept its self-immolation), Paul Krugman has a great in-depth explainer on just how wrong supply-side economics is.

Not just wrong, but WILLFULLY wrong, perversely, sickeningly wrong:

Chicago’s Casey Mulligan suggests that unemployment is so high because many workers are choosing not to take jobs: “Employees face financial incentives that encourage them not to work . . . decreased employment is explained more by reductions in the supply of labor (the willingness of people to work) and less by the demand for labor (the number of workers that employers need to hire).” Mulligan has suggested, in particular, that workers are choosing to remain unemployed because that improves their odds of receiving mortgage relief. And Cochrane declares that high unemployment is actually good: “We should have a recession. People who spend their lives pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.”

Yep, my newspaper company closed two months ago because we all wanted to take time off for nothing, wanted government handouts, and wanted to do something different.

This isn’t even “voodoo economics.”

Rather, it’s “voodoo political science,” or “voodoo sociology,” disguised as “voodoo economics.”

That said, Krugman hasn’t read the Iranian philosopher Idries Shah, with his famous observation about there never being just two sides to an issue.

The third side here, beyond (neo)-Keynesianism and neo-classicism, is behavioral economics, which actually has a foothold at Chicago, of all places. Krugman does mention behavioral economics on the last page of the story, but only to try to subsume it into a Keynesian world.

Rather, behavioral economics trumps BOTH the other sides by being scientific in a way neither of them are, mainly through gathering scientific, empirical data through sociological research, on the one hand, and incorporating the findings of cognitive science and neuroscience, on the other.
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Obama will suck up to GOP again Wed

Reportedly, President Barack Obama will once again try to sing the Kumbaya chorus on national healthcare in his prime-time address this Wednesday.

I soooo cannot wait to avoid the rush and vote Green again in 2012.

Meanwhile, Politico still drinks some Obama Kool-Aid:

The high-stake speech makes sense because Obama is such a gifted orator.

Really? Since when?

That said, Prez Kumbaya is, supposedly, going to actually stake himself to some specific positions. Only a few months too late, but hey …
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The latest Wall Street slickness

Even as the government talks about changes in calculating poverty that would show many more poor seniors, Wall Street is preying on them in new ways.

And, this all as G20 nations still can’t agree on regulating top financiers’ pay.

Perry aide pressured Tech regent to resign

Mark Griffin, appointed a Texas Tech regent by Rick Perry in 2005, said then-Perry general counsel Brian Newby pressured him to resign last month after he introduced Kay Bailey Hutchison at a rally. Griffin made clear he thought Newby was not acting on his own.

DeSoto TX white elephant finally "dies"

Five years ago, the DeSoto Economic Development Corporation built a "spec" building. Other area EDC heads said this was a BIG no-no. And, so it was for five years, when, late last month, it was finally sold -- to a church, not a high ranker on economic development.

The healthcare speech Obama should give

Michael Lind, like I, says Obama needs to be a populist, stealing pages from FDR, Truman and LBJ.

It ain’t just men who are serial monogamists

In the latest blow, of many, to Pop Evolutionary Psychology, it turns out that some women marry multiple husbands serially. That’s in societies with fairly equitable power distribution.