The Sweater Thread (Tim Noah & Jim Pinkerton)

[Bloggingheads]

After about 10 minutes, Jim Pinkerton's audio undergoes a strange transformation. Our apologies for the distortion.

-Bloggingheads staff

[Mannish Boy]

One of the main arguments in favour of New START is that it cements improving US-Russian relations, which is absolutely key if the international community can deal with Iran and North Korea. If the Russian regime was so disposed, the UN sanctions on Iran would never have passed and they would have got the missiles Russia had promised to sell them.

[Baltimoron]

Originally Posted by Mannish Boy

One of the main arguments in favour of New START is that it cements improving US-Russian relations, which is absolutely key if the international community can deal with Iran and North Korea. If the Russian regime was so disposed, the UN sanctions on Iran would never have passed and they would have got the missiles Russia had promised to sell them.

That, and the self-serving argument that weaker states need to be able to threaten the Nuclear-5 with a first strike even if they will never have second-strike capability.

Again, too, I enjoyed how Pinkerton tries to be the last interpreter of the Reagan legacy. Everything I've read argues that President Reagan, notably at the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev, was sincere about his dream to eliminate nukes.

On SDI, I think it's hypocritical to allow unlimited attempts at technology that has never worked using taxpayer cash AND argue for smaller government. SDI is the first part of slashing military spending, to reduce the budget deficit. Who's paying Pinkerton for his lobbying efforts?

[dieter]

Originally Posted by Bloggingheads

After about 10 minutes, Jim Pinkerton's audio undergoes a strange transformation. Our apologies for the distortion.

I suspect that sci-fi fanatic Pinkerton deliberately uses the distortion to sound more futuristic.

[dieter]

In this installment of BHTV I was informed that my usage of 100€ bills was clearly an indication of sociopathy and criminality. Americans can't figure this out. Why would anybody need cash? Just charge it on your credit card. And pressure those rogue Europeans into giving up on cash as well, so that more money can sit in the banks and be lent to irresponsible American consumers.

Good luck with pressuring Europeans into dropping large bills. Those bills have always been popular in the former hard currency nations. Germany in particular.

(Pseudo)Anonymous electronic cash cards have already been limited to 2500€ per year of cumulative spending by the EU commissars, supposedly to fight money laundering, thus rendering them virtually useless. Imagine a wallet that can only hold a certain amount of money per year. So don't trust the benign managerial society improvers to keep their government hands of your electronic cash, once they have purged the planet of coins and bills. The EU commissars couldn't even wait for their crackdown an e-cash until after luring us away from regular cash at first.

None of this seems to have had any measurable impact on money laundering. When anonymous savings accounts were banned in Austria, the Russian mobsters moved on to other forms of wealth storage.

Muslim terrorists in particular can simply rely on the informal, trust based banking systems that are prevalent in Muslim communities due to the disapproval of regular banking in Islam.

We live in a time and age of increasing scarcity of precious metals. Thieves are stealing copper wires and manhole covers. The effort to keep criminals from storing and transporting wealth in compact form is thus utterly futile.

[cragger]

Mr. Noah's case for getting rid of $100 bills seems a little ... bizzare. If he wants to push for elimination of all cash so that the government can monitor and control every financial transaction then he should make that argument. Claiming that $100 is such a large amount of money these days that there is no legitimate reason for such a denomination to exist indicates a disconnect from the real world. People regularly pay half that much or more to fill their gas tanks. Are two fifties really OK if a C-note is bad? Should we go to only ones, and bring a wheelbarrow full to the store to buy groceries as in the worst days of the Wiemar Republic? Maybe it's just me, but the prospect doesn't make me think I would sleep any better at night.

[Simon Willard]

Originally Posted by cragger

Mr. Noah's case for getting rid of $100 bills seems a little ... bizzare. If he wants to push for elimination of all cash so that the government can monitor and control every financial transaction then he should make that argument. Claiming that $100 is such a large amount of money these days that there is no legitimate reason for such a denomination to exist indicates a disconnect from the real world. People regularly pay half that much or more to fill their gas tanks. Are two fifties really OK if a C-note is bad? Should we go to only ones, and bring a wheelbarrow full to the store to buy groceries as in the worst days of the Wiemar Republic? Maybe it's just me, but the prospect doesn't make me think I would sleep any better at night.

"I'll bet you dollars to donuts" used to be an effective phrase because of the large disparity between the value of an donut and a dollar. This is no longer the case. The last time I was in a Dunkin' Donuts store, you needed 89 cents to buy a single donut. This has the sad effect of destroying the meaning of a nice idiom of the English language. And the more important point is that currency deflates in value as the years go by. The huge deficit we are running up now almost mandates significant inflation in the future. You may NEED C-notes to take the family out for donuts and coffee in a few years.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by Simon Willard

You may NEED C-notes to take the family out for donuts and coffee in a few years.

Donuts and coffee may be considered a suicidal gesture in a few years.

[Simon Willard]

Earth to Noah:

Every note in circulation has a unique serial number. Gold coins do not. Notes can, at least in principle, be electronically scanned and the numbers can be recorded. We don't know what the government does with such data, but I have always assumed it is a potent tool in the arsenal of techniques for tracking illegal activity.

It's not clear how forcing the bad guys to deal in gold coins or Euros would help US law enforcement. If the illegal activity is going to happen anyway, let's tempt them to do it with traceable pieces of paper.

[chamblee54]

Like maybe in the United States, from our own government.
chamblee54

[Starwatcher162536]

Just substitute "Environmental issues" with near everything Pinkerton says.

My previous post many a moon ago

Reminds me of his comment about there being no booms in the gulf. I think this diavlog has given me insight into Mr. Pinkerton's strategy when discussing environmental issues; Offer up enough stupidity to get people to stop bothering to correct him, so later on newcomers will see that no one is contradicting him and then conclude he must have a point.

[eeeeeeeli]

Originally Posted by Starwatcher162536

Just substitute "Environmental issues" with near everything Pinkerton says.

My previous post many a moon ago
Reminds me of his comment about there being no booms in the gulf. I think this diavlog has given me insight into Mr. Pinkerton's strategy when discussing environmental issues; Offer up enough stupidity to get people to stop bothering to correct him, so later on newcomers will see that no one is contradicting him and then conclude he must have a point.

I think a similar tactic brought the Birchers to the Tea Party revolution. It may have taken decades, but the long game worked.

[osmium]

The Edge is actually the guitar player.

Also, re: OSHA, this diavlog has a bit of a break with reality. I used to work in a paper mill (high school job), where every couple decades someone would get sucked into the paper machine and die violently. Falling from a tether is nothing compared to your typical industrial accident.

BTW, I've crossed the rat in New York to go to work before. They were trying to unionize the graduate students at Columbia University. Whether or not you believe in unions, that's pretty dumb.

[Don Zeko]

It takes Jim less than two minutes, including opening non-political banter, to come up with an egregious Lambchop's Law violation.

[rubbernecking]

These are two interesting fellows. But with respect, Tim, you MUST STOP MUMBLING. It ruins it. It nearly makes it not worth watching.

[Unit]

Oh good, the govt has now declared food safe, yippie! That's a relief.

[conncarroll]

Los Angeles liberal Timothy Noah is completely unaware of the suffering his environmental policies are creating for people just a few hours north of him. Wish I was surprised. Here are some non-Victor Davis Hanson articles on how the enviro left is destroying entire towns in the Central Valley:
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/08/23/d...-the-vine.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062802961.html
http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/12/26/...re-summer.html

[Starwatcher162536]

I only read the middle link which seems somewhat slanted to me. I've been told, but haven't bothered to verify, that these fish are an important source of feed for the tuna that supports a hundred million dollor fishing industry. I also am rather ambivalent to farmers that are growing water hungry cash crops in semi-arid areas once I consider issues of water scarcity. Overall, I just think there are better frames to view this issue over then "Hippies vs. Real Working Americans".

Come on Conn, tell me why I'm wrong. Give me a good example of why I shouldn't immediatly dismiss anything the anyone from the Heritage foundation says on the enviorement. I don't have an opinion on most economic or foreighn policy positions, think big and complex is beautiful, and generally find hippies irritating. So come on, I'm a potential consevative convert here Conn!

P.S
Good spelling is for the weak!

[eeeeeeeli]

As a So Cal resident, I actually wrote my congressman on this issue and had a letter printed in the local paper (it's now behind a paywall!)

But I think I remember the gist of it being that California wastes an enormous amount of water. We could provide vital irrigation to farmers and save precious natural resources by simply regulating water use. A balance always needs to be struck between industry and nature, and it seems in this case the farmers are being pitted against the environmentalists when we should all be making a sacrifice for the common good.

This gets into tragedy of the commons stuff and where I think things like cap and trade are goods ways to keep from externalizing cost.