Dr. X's Free Associations

Vintage Photos: 1938

Coal miner: the "lady's man" and "smart guy." Bertha Hill, West Virginia.

Photo by Marion Post Walcott, Farm Security Administration.

Road Shots

Tollway Oasis, Starbucks stop about 7:30am yesterday

What's Your Blues Name?

Via EZ:

Copyright Overreach?

Jonathan Turley thinks so:

[A]n English court has ruled in favor of UK souvenir maker Temple Island Collection Ltd against New English Teas for using a picture of a London bus. Not a picture taken by Temple Island, mind you: Taking its own picture of a London bus that the court deemed as too close to a picture of a London bus taken by Temple Island. continue

American Prisons

Adam Gopnik's New Yorker article on America's high rates of incarceration is a great read. Gopnik argues that mass incarceration is unjust, destructive and does not actually account for the steep decline in crime rates since the 1970s. Gopnik makes a compelling case that both liberals and conservatives are wrong about why crime rates have fallen and how to keep crime rates low without mass incarceration. This is far and away the best article I've read on America's incarceration policies in a long time.

IQ Research: liberal, conservative, black and white

Conservative IQ:

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Here is what I find interesting: many conservatives will huff and puff resentfully about these findings, which do not represent the first time lower IQ has been linked to conservativism. What's interesting, though, is that conservatives tend to embrace IQ comparisons when the lower IQ discussion addresses black people rather than conservatives. And more than a few liberals who reject the racial angle on IQ will probably gloat about findings that liberals have IQs that are, on average, 6-11 points higher than conservatives.

Clinton Won't Stay On If Obama Is Reelected

Hillary says she won't continue as Secretary of State if Obama is reelected. Hillary has no reason to make this announcement unless...

Out on a limb:

Hillary runs as Obama's VP candidate and Biden replaces her as Secretary of State. I'm not the first to say it, but I think this move would energize the party base and brings out the voters Obama needs to win later this year.

And Hillary gets one last shot at the presidency in 2016.

Vintage Photos: 1938

Marion Post-Walcott, Charleston, West Virginia.

Vintage Store Front: 1938

Photo by Marion Post-Walcott, Farm Security Administration.

Coal mining camp, Scotts Run, West Virginia

Newt, The Gas Bag

Elliot Abrams:

The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986. This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986. Here is Gingrich: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.” Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.” But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.” Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”

 

Local Snapshots

Yesterday, when sunlight interrupted 6 days of overcast skies.

Mitt Romney Thinks You're Extremely Stupid

The U.S. military is at risk of losing its "military superiority" because "our Navy is smaller than it's been since 1917. Our Air Force is smaller and older than any time since 1947-- Mitt Romney on Monday, January 16th, 2012 in a Republican presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

True, only if you count the number of craft, and ignore what would have been, in 1947, the unimaginable superiority of today's missile-armed gunships, the stealth and high-speed aircraft that can take out targets with pinpoint accuracy, and the unmanned drones that can assassinate a terrorist in Pakistan while being flown by a pilot at a video console in Florida. Kill Omar at 4:30pm and meet the hubby and kids for dinner at Applebee's an hour later.

As for the Navy, one modern US submarine armed with nuclear missiles could have ended World War II in an afternoon.

How dumb would a voter have to be to be taken in by Romney's nonsense? In every imaginable respect, the US military, on the ground, in the air and at sea, is vastly superior to the military of 1947. And 1917 might as well be the stone age in military terms.

Today's US military can, in short order, destroy anything it chooses to destroy. What the military can't do is magically transform cultures, turning them into modern democracies where people have a modernist sense of individual rights by blowing up everything that moves. Our military problems today are political problems and people problems, not weapons problems.

I expect politicians to shade the truth, but Mitt Romney makes Pinocchio look like Michael Jackson after his tenth nose job.

Via Ed Brayton

Vintage Houseboats: 1938

When I was a child in NY, my family lived a block from a canal where hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure craft and quite a few houseboats were docked. I loved to hang out there, fishing early in the morning with my friend Keith from Kentucky, and checking out the catch from the commercial fishing vessels as they unloaded at the markets. But most of all I was fascinated by the boats that people lived on and the people who lived on those boats. No families. Most were crusty, weather-beaten men who loved the ocean. These are among my most cherished childhood memories.

Many Families in Charleston Virginia lived on houseboats. Photos by Marion Post Walcott.

Wife, husband and son. Husband is a WPA worker.

More houseboats below the fold.

Why Wasn't I Briefed?

Andrew Sullivan was briefed on the SOTU, and then he was scolded for revealing that he was briefed. The administration didn't even bother to brief me. I've been getting mail from "Barack" at my blog email account when the administration has something they really want to push. They found me; I didn't contact them, but clearly I've been deemed a Level-2 or Level-3 or maybe it's a Level-10 influencer, not worthy of a Level-1 SOTU briefing. 

It's no big deal. I'm not even planning to watch the SOTU address. Never do. I prefer to wait for others to report on the meat, if there is any.

Eating The Rich ctd

So Romney's total effective federal tax rate was 13.9%

Not unexpected and perfectly legal, but it does underscore the utter silliness of Tea Party hyperventilating over taxes on the wealthy. Far from being plucked naked for cooking, the goose is healthy with barely a feather ruffled.

Taxes on the wealthy are explained in a repost below, though this doesn't get into Romney's carried interest income which is taxed at the same rate as capital gains.

---------------------------

Eat The Rich is the title of this post by Roger Simon. I guess the 15% capital gains on growth in the value of investments, which is only paid when and if the money is taken out, is just too much for decent people to stand. There's also a 15% tax rate for incentive stock options that make top execs rich. No payroll tax on any of it. Same situation for those those megabuck-earning hedge fund managers who take their compensation as investment income, rather than as managers who are providing a service, which is what they're really doing. So they all pay the long-term capital gains rate of 15%; no social security tax and no bracketed income taxes.