The Mormons are lying too, if you were curious.
I thought the law was that churches couldn't endorse political candidates. Let's get the IRS in the thread and see!
Oh, I think that's actually what my impression ought to have been had it been formed correctly. Why there should be a distinction between candidates and measures in areas where measures are put to the people I don't know. Anyway don't churches regularly endorse candidates?
3: no. In fact there's an ongoing attempt to get the IRS rules changed, which involved a number of pastors endorsing McCain from the pulpit in order to trigger lawsuits against them, allowing them to challenge the law in court.
The line between allowable advocacy and banned candidate-endorsing is not very clear, and there was a prosecution of a (liberal) church in Pasadena for doing things that seemed to a lot of people much less politically motivated than a lot of things right-wing churches do. But you know how the government is.
Gay Mormon groups are annoying. Look you wanks, the doctrine is pretty clear. The "prophet" talks to God for the church, not you. Quit trying to engage church leaders like it's something you can have put to a vote.
Heterosexual marriage is good because heterosexual people are good. Other people can go somewhere else if they want rights.
So in Utah society the Homos talk only to Prophets, and the Prophets talk only to God?
It would be beside the point to point out that in terms of the public health argument, even *if* you discount the health of gay people, straight women in traditional marriage aren't healthier than their single peers?
5: oh yeah, well what if they start a splinter church, the GLDS?
I wish Krakauer's book on Mormons was all about gay mormon groups instead of polygamists; then he could have called it Under The Boner Of Heaven.
Or rather, I mean, don't live longer.
well what if they start a splinter church, the GLDS?
I bet the garments would be a lot more stylish.
Apparently, this Choban guy is part of a Slavic evangelical bloc that took over the Student Association at American River College. Defeating teh gay seems to be his mission in life.
Anti-gay activists are among the people I respect least in this world. In terms of moral courage they're on a level with those who say we have to act bravely and decisively to defend the human race by sterilizing the less intelligent.
A certain percentage of people are not capable of reason.
Ever.
Then you've got the fertile valley between about the ages of 14 to 28 or so when many humans are so hopped up on the testosterone and estrogen they can't really reason very well either.
Authoritarians and hormone junkies. Judgmental bigoted cowards afraid of everything and hormone junkies with minds stuck in middle school.
Aside from those two groups of people everyone else is not that bad really.
Is there any way we can isolate those people? I dunno, but I really don't want them making laws or running my country.
When the last measure in CA against gay marriage came up, some ten years ago now, LDS bishops across the state spoke about it in church. Shortly thereafter, a nice young man in my cousin's church committed suicide. Poor guy had been a virgin, hoping someday to be able to have sex within the covenant of gay marriage.
Huh. I was going to link to Teen Girl President but looks like the site is down.
This is sort of in the right area, for posterity.
This is sort of in the right area, for posterior.
I get the feeling that the "say " comes from an African-American tradition, like Rev. Wright's "turn to your neighbor and say 'different is not deficient'."
I'm currently trying to talk my dad out of voting yes on 8. Ye gods.
The LDS church was instrumental in defeating the ERA, btw. Some historians point to that campaign as the beginning of hard-right turn in LDS politics, and also a move toward political involvement.
I do think this sort of thing is unseemly to preach from the pulpit, although it's more because I disagree with it than because I think it violates the separation of church and state. Of course, being exempt from normal taxes is more of a privilege than a right...
I found the IRS layman's guide for churches (warning: medium-sized PDF). Basic principles are that:
they must not devote a substantial part of their activities to attempting to influence legislation, [and]
they must not participate in, or intervene in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.
There's discussion of issue advocacy on page 8. Basically it seems to be OK as long as they don't bring candidates into it directly or indirectly.
Maybe "layman's guide" was the wrong choice of words there.
23: So attempting to influence referendums doesn't count as attempting to influence legislation?
Hmm. Referenda. Pudenda. (Etymology: New Latin, singular of Latin pudenda, from neuter plural of pudendus, gerundive of pudēre to be ashamed.) "Hide your shame."
This stream of consciousness brought to you tonight by Ford Motors.
As soon as I saw "Christian skateboarder", I knew that Hosoi had to have some kind of tie to my BFF Stephen Baldwin and lo: I was right.
I have often thought that people who advocate against gay marriage should be sent to the gulag. Today, after reading a blog called "The Corner," I learned that this is a distinct possibility should Obama be elected. I was delighted.
Well, it wasn't so much "after" reading it as "while" reading it. Or by means of. Or simply the participle itself, unadorned by a preposition -- that'd probably be best.
It would be beside the point to point out that in terms of the public health argument, even *if* you discount the health of gay people, straight women in traditional marriage aren't healthier than their single peers?
On average, marriage is associated with a positive effect on well-being for everyone, men, women, and children. Being married reduces womens' mortality rates just like men's -- the effect is smaller for women than men (perhaps because women are less likely to die at any given age, period), but it's still very large in an absolute sense.
31: Weird. There was a widely reported study a few years ago that claimed that marriage lowered women's life expectancies.
Gay marriage is one of my favorite issues too, just because it's interesting to see people oppose it without making one argument in good faith.
Plus, have you ever seen an unattractive Mormon missionary? Those motherfuckers are just wasteful
Mormons think married couples should rise up and overthrow the government if gay people can get married. (At least, Orson Scott Card thinks this. But he may be crazy.)
25: The definition of "legislation" is broad, and it specifically includes referenda. But such activism would still need to pass the "substantial part of overall activities" test before it's jeopardizing - for which guidelines seem to be holistic and hard to pin down.
i slept 12hrs form yesterday
i read first thing in the morning, that NYC columnist Paul Krugman won Nobel in economics, a very familiar name i thought, thanks to unfogged citations though i don't remember exactly was he praised or opposed here
so i hope JE and BMcM as frequent citators are very glad and will be friends again
||
Krugman won the Nobel.
>
max
['Helpful!']
read,
Krugman is neither insane nor corrupt, which makes him a welcome voice in economics. McManus & Emerson will probably emphasize that he is a centrist, rather than a leftist. (Emerson will also emphasize that this is not a real Nobel) But he's a really smart guy, and this is probably the most welcome fake Nobel in econ since Sen won.
More on Hosoi. His two children are named Rhythm and Classic.
44 ah, so
i always thought i'm pretty asocial, but i miss people kinda pretty easily, very funny coz the people are not even real people
for example i missed where Napi has gone until i realized he's CC
one thing i welcome about if Obama wins is that ogged would probably show up here to congratulate all
All that has changed. With today's award to Paul Krugman, the Nobel as gone to an economist who died a decade ago. The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey. And even as a public intellectual, the prize is inappropriate, because never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent. Krugman's New York Times column drawing on economics is the equivalent of 2006's Nobelists in Physics, astromers Mather and Smoot, doing a column on astrology -- and then, in that column, telling lies about astronomy.
Obviously there are things worse than economists.
That Luskin calls his website poorandstupid.com is near perfect irony. Mortgage rates are lower than they were, so there is no crisis (hint: no good the rates being lower if no-one is writing any new business)? Will Krugman volunteer to pay higher taxes (hint: he'll likely vote for them, so yes)? "Astromers"? It's poor. It's piss poor. And, damn, it's stupid.
Luskin seems to have been so enraged that he didn't use his spellcheck. (Or maybe he used the Sausagely Spelchek). Calling Krugman a "mere public intellectual" is hilarious.
Luskin is about as much of an economist as I am. One year of college. He's made some money in finance, but he's lost some too:
Wiki: In August 1999, during the tech bubble, Luskin and partner Dave Nadig (himself subject of a book by James Morton: Investing with the Young Guns) started the MetaMarkets Open Fund, the first mutual fund to publish trades and list its holdings in real-time via its website. This "transparency" and "openness," Luskin and Nadig said, was a step forward in the financial world, equivalent to the political revolutions and international democratic transformations of the 1990s, because it leveled the playing field for the average investor and overthrew "financial elites."[5] MetaMarkets.com, the venture-backed company that Luskin and Nadig founded to operate OpenFund, was hailed by Fortune magazine as one of the "coolest companies" in America in 2000. Their model was dismissed by some analysts as being a "gimmick," having nothing to do with investing per se: "They brought chat boards to life in a mutual fund."[6] At its peak, OpenFund received $45 million in investments, and the fund's biggest positions included companies like JDS Uniphase and Extreme Networks. At the end of 1999, OpenFund was among a handful of the best-performing mutual funds in America. After the market top in March 2000, the valuations of technology companies collapsed and many OpenFund investors redeemed their shares.[7] The fund was shut down in the summer of 2001.[8]
Everyone in the academy periodically gets students who ask accusingly "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" People in most disciplines say things like "I have priorities other than making money."
People in business and econ are far more likely to say "I am rich."
The Bee does not seem to have needed to have inquired of Choban whether or not he's a raging idiot.
I started to make a comment about how it enrages me to see people make a successful career out of talking shit about me and my boyfriend but honestly, it's Monday morning and I just don't think I need to burst a blood vessel this early in the day. I'm sure they feel very good about themselves when they're checking their bank balances on their phone while waiting for someone to enter the stall next to them in an airport bathroom.
The Luskin Wiki k=makes no mention of Luskin's errors and gives a favorable account of Luskin's attacks on Krugman.
Correction. Krugman won the Sveriges Riksbank prize in pwnership.
This Krugman business is beautiful, but the contributions of others should not go unrecognized. Thus, I am pleased to announce the award of the Foolish Mortal Prize in Shutting the Fuck Up in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Mr. Daniel Davies. Mr. Squared's pioneering work in the field of "STFU on the Internet" and his meditations thereon, build upon a rich intellectual tradition that, before Mr. Squared's work, had been confined to more conventional fora, such as "STFU at Meetings" and "STFU at the Movies". He has our congratulations.
Best headline since "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative": "No New Economic Proposal Expected From McCain".
On Sunday, on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a confidant of Mr. McCain, confirmed a report on Politico.com that Mr. McCain was weighing proposals to cut taxes on investors' capital gains and dividends. "It will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy," Mr. Graham said, "by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes."
But McCain advisers later said they did not know why Mr. Graham said that.
Meanwhile, Douglas Holtz-Eakin is channeling Sgt. Schultz:
Mr. McCain's policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said, "I have no comment on anything, to anybody."
About 10% of the missionaries in my Mormon mission seem to have turned out gay, including one I had a bit of a crush on. I was way too clueless and devout at the time to capitalize on the possibilities.
It's annoying to hear that Prop 8 is winning in the polls. I'm a bit surprised to discover that the Mormon church's pro-8 activities have the capacity to really piss me off. I thought I was over that shit.
I was proselytized by a young hot Jehovah Witness woman at a busstop once. I politely turned her down, and when she turned away she showed a bit of lacy slip under her nicely-fitting skirt. There was another woman driving a getaway car. Did she/they have improper intentions? I report, you decide.
Of course, congratulations to Krugman. It is a real Nobel AFAIAC.
1) My first thought was that the committee was attempting to keep the Overton Window from moving too far left during this crisis. A temporary abandonment of neo-classicism for neo-liberalism, hoping to return in a few years, and to keep the Post-Keynesians et al at bay.
2) I consider PK to be to the left of BDL, MT and the other Neo-Keynesians, but a little to the right of James Galbraith and other P-K's. I can't clearly remember Krugman promoting tax cuts and transfer payments over full employment and social Keynesian policies, but this could be ignorance. Somehow my perception is that Krugman is a little orthogonal to that debate, with his international perspective. (I shouldn't be spouting like this, but the Rossers don't comment here).
3) "Intellectually insecure" my bleedin ass. If amateurs pick up Neruda or Pynchon or study cosmology or whatever it's because it's fun. Economics is probably attractive to the intelligent dilettante for the same reasons philosophy is a common hobby for intellectuals:the evidence and arguments are pervasive, apparent, and applicable in the world in ways physics and chemistry can't approach.
I consider PK to be to the left of BDL
Also, his mom won't cut his hair and dresses him like a hippie.
Krugman has moved left, though he has long defended Keynesianism against the depredations of the right (who, via rational expectations, found a new way to declare that the government can't do anything about recessions so we just need to to suck it up).
59.3: Economics is complicated and boring. Pynchon is complicated and fun. The day someone publishes "The General Theory of Running Around in Pig Suits" I'll take it back. And he's not taking about amateurs studying actual economics, he's talking about amateurs using ideology as a substitute for doing so.
Krugman was talking about liquidity traps in the late 90s, when the rest of the econ profession was unofficially taking the attitude that macro problems were an old curiousity from before the age of Greenspan. He's no radical prophet, but he's just consistently been an aggressively sensible guy. That is so, so, rare.
Re: Krugman as monetary Keynesian:
Here's Menzie Chinn on the budget deficit.
In total, we expect net issuance to rise to $3.3 tn over the fiscal year.
A commenter at Calculated Risk has been watching the currency swaps by the CB's. Add another trillion. And then there is another Congressional "fiscal stimulus" and the usual budgetary problems, including a massive decrease revenues.
I have this cognitive dissonance about the "liberal" economists saving the world, and I am sure they will argue most strenuously for big progressive tax increases down the line. But if the taxes don't pass, or aren't all that progessive, I'm sure they will claim to have done their best, just not in control of the politics. But their economics was correct.
A social Keynesian, where the 3 trillion was sent to the streets instead of the banks, might have failed. Thus the dissonance.
Newberry expects a big VAT, regressive as hell.
Fiscal Policy as a Counter-Cyclical Tool ...IMF, linked by Menzie Chinn in above Econbrowser post.
Long & hardcore! Better than Pynchon pigsuits!
Weird. There was a widely reported study a few years ago that claimed that marriage lowered women's life expectancies.
Yeah, that study contradicts a ton of other evidence that marriage has strong benefits for everybody (although longevity effects are smaller for women). Certainly just in the raw data married people, both men and women, report being much happier than others.
Not sure why it got reported as definitive when there are many other studies showing something different. Maybe Switzerland (where the data came from) is just weird. The paper is not web-accessible, so it's hard to tell exactly what they did. It's possible some of the differences relate to whether you are looking at mortality in a fixed age window vs. looking at all deaths. Women are much more likely to be widowed toward the end of life than men (because they live longer), perhaps that counterbalances positive effects when married.
Get yourself married, you little jerk.
I went through the pain of childbirth for this? I should have raised alpacas instead. Some good might have come of that.
at least on the assumption that it's not the causal properties of vaginal fluids or any other female pudenda per se that make heterosexual marriage so beneficial to the men in them.
Let's not be too quick to rule out that possibility, OK? I still see significant scope for additional research along these lines. Just as long as I don't have to be in the control group. Or the placebo group.
I married Thomas Pynchon. It was okay.
What's the placebo recipe?
I do think that it's the stability and respectability of marriage that have the good effects, not the poontang. My guess is that unmarried sex addicts do not live longer than other married men, much less married men.
Unemployment, poverty, mental illness, and bad health are factors that tend to lead to singleness and/or premature death, and if it's both, singleness comes before premature death.
Sorry, Knecht. Fleur already volunteered you for the control group.
70 - presumably the placebo is transgendered women.
71: people try to deal with that objection, although there's no perfect way. Basically, even when you adjust for observable indicators of health, employment and so forth prior to marriage, there is still an improvement in health and happiness when you marry (though you lose it all and possibly more when you divorce). A lot of the longevity impact for men seems to come from their wives nagging them to stop smoking, drinking, and partying.
Re separating the effect of sex and marriage, or what some have referred to here as the "vaginal fluids effect" (so clinical -- what happened to pussy juice?). In a simple cross-sectional analysis (no correction for selection or attempt to establish causation) Blanchflower and Oswald find that A) married people do have a lot more sex, but B) there is an independent correlation between marriage and happiness even after controlling for the sex. Interestingly, infrequent sex is correlated with a more negative effect on happiness for women than it is for men, although high standard errors render this conclusion somewhat uncertain.
Sex has a disproportionately large effect on the happiness of highly educated people, especially highly educated females. Male homosexuals and bisexuals have the most sexual partners, however there is some evidence (not statistically significant) that they are less happy than straight males. Bisexual females appear to be the happiest of all, although once again small sample sizes mean that this finding is not statistically significant.
whoops, should have referred to 70 in 73. There is no academic reference available for the effect of the Fleur/Knecht marriage on spousal happiness, or sexual frequency for that matter.
Also, all the Blanchflower/Oswald results are based on self-reported happiness, rendering them near meaningless yet still strangely enjoyable to read about.
Why is self-reported happiness meaningless? Isn't that the most important measure of happiness there is?
It was confidently asserted to me by an economist once that the problems with self-reported happiness were overblown, since self-reported happiness is highly correlated with objective measures, like suicide rates.
True happiness is measured in net personal wealth, Mr. Moccasin. This is why anyone in the United States who thinks he's "unhappy" or "unfortunate" should try comparing himself to the average Equatoguinean or Rio de Janeiroan, and then realize that complaining does nobody any good.
Sex has a disproportionately large effect on the happiness of highly educated people, especially highly educated females.
Someone's supposed to say "ROWR!" now.
Why is self-reported happiness meaningless?
My guess it's because of people's different ways of reporting. For some, unhappiness is failure, and for some, reporting unhappiness is whining.
since self-reported happiness is highly correlated with objective measures, like suicide rates.
It's not true! I'm very happy! It's just that no one ever asks.
self-reported happiness is highly correlated with objective measures, like suicide rates.
I hope you mean anticorrelated.
Bisexual females appear to be the happiest of all
"People... Who can screw all people... Are the hhaaappppiiieesssttt people!"
I think I heard that what correlates to 'happiness' most is good relationships with other people.
So that leaves marriage out. Ba dum dum!
But seriously, I think in general marriage expands one's circle of friends. Also, in my experience, marriage prevents one from getting too 'out there.' By that I mean extremes of bad behavior are more likely to get noticed early by one's intimate partner. I see no reason why this benefit wouldn't be true for same-sex partners in a long term stable relationship.
I think personal wealth produces diminishing returns, and the feeling of wealth is relative. Also I think job security matters as well, so someone with extremes in income such as a movie star may not end up too happy overall.
I've heard that some of the more enlightened countries are thinking of starting a survey of their citizens regarding 'happiness' instead of assuming happiness correlates to GDP.
83 accords with my sense of things. The social science research is as usual inconclusive, but it is very clear that marriage reduces "bad behavior" among men (everything from smoking to suicide), and also that having strong social ties with others improves health and well-being for everybody. Marriage helps tip people away from being lonely, isolated, self-destructive types who spend all their time commenting on internet blogs.
I see no reason why this benefit wouldn't be true for same-sex partners in a long term stable relationship.
Maybe for women but us dudes, well, we basically just spend fifty years daring each other to do stupid shit.
I've heard that some of the more enlightened countries are thinking of starting a survey of their citizens regarding 'happiness' instead of assuming happiness correlates to GDP.
You are thinking of Bhutan
Maybe for women but us dudes, well, we basically just spend fifty years daring each other to do stupid shit.
You misunderstood. When I said a stable relationship I meant wearing a bridal, eating whole grains, and sleeping is separate stalls standing up.
87 - bridle. Wearing a bridal is something else.
we basically just spend fifty years daring each other to do stupid shit.
Famous last words: "Hey watch this!"
Son, you seem to understand this so well. So why are you doing this? Do you hate me?
Some girl can easily be found to put up with you and give me grandchildren.
Sorry, Knecht. Fleur already volunteered you for the control group.
That explains so much. At least now I know it's all for the good of science.
47: merely a public intellectual
I remember when people thought it was good to have public intellectuals. Well, not remember it exactly, but remember reading that it was so many years ago, just like all the other Good Stuff I Missed (a serious left, a strong labor movement, pillbox hats, etc.).
I'm Canadian. Gay marriage has been legal here for over 3 years. The other day my 7 year old daughter and 5 year old son were discussing the farm they hope to run together someday. She told him, "I and my husband or wife, and you and your wife or husband, can all live there together and be happy!"
Tolerance and love. Something to fear, for sure.
You can still rock a pillbox, SK. I believe in you.