Musings …

Author: Ghoh

  • Psalm 73 – “Whom have I in heaven but thee?”

    I love Beethoven and Tchaikovsky!  And Buxtehude!

    Psalm 73: “Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab, BuxWV 38“

    25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. 26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
    Hallelujah

    Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab, so frag ich nichts nach Himmel und Erden, wenn mirgleich Leib und Seel‘ verschmacht. So bist du doch Gott allezeit meines Herzens Trost und mein Heil. Alleluja.

    English from “The Tanahk” – Jewish Publication Society, 1917

    Emma Kirkby, Soprano

  • What Do the Pharmaceutical Industry and the NRA Have in Common?

    Money Trumps Lives!

    While Governor Chris Christie was announcing that he would not address any expansion of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program, after a 24 hour seizure, a 15 month-old baby died.

    “I am done expanding the medical marijuana program.  Under any circumstances.”

    The Governor couldn’t know that Sabina was being taken off her respirator at the time, but as far as I know, nothing more has been done in New Jersey to ease the unnecessary pain that medical marijuana could help or to save the children’s lives that could be saved.

    “… the state has still not given the marijuana dispensaries permission to sell edibles.  And Sabina’s death has convinced other families to get edible marijuana for their children whatever ways they can.”

    “State legislators introduced another bill that would allow parents to bring edible marijuana from other states until edibles are sold in New Jersey.”

    “At a press conference in December, right after he was re-elected, [speaking while Sabina was dying] Christie said he wouldn’t consider it.”

    “The pressure from parents recently caused the governor to acknowledge there are flaws with the medical marijuana program. He blamed it on the dispensaries, saying the businesses are not offering edibles because there is no profit in it for them.”

    “But the state has [had] still not given the marijuana dispensaries permission to sell edibles.”

    How disingenuous can Christie be?

    This is insane!

    The weapons industry’s opposition to any restrictions is likewise insane!

    First of all, re the gun industry, in the face of their ludicrous position, I cannot credit any of the reasons they give on behalf of their position with any honour.

    Likewise, how can we explain why Governor Christie would take such a position and make such phony excuses?  Even if some of the reasons he gives may sound reasonable on the surface, they are similarly incredible (or lies).  There is no honour in them.  They are disingenuous at best.  BOUGHT?

    This incomprehensible response to the unnecessary,  criminally negligent and unconscionable death of a child, while taking no action to save the lives of others, boggles the mind!  The pharmaceutical industry’s opposition to and crippling of Obama Care, jeopardizing millions of lives, boggles the mind!  Can you come up with any answer other than money?  I can’t!

    All quotes from WNYC Report: “The Risks Parents Take to Get Their Kids Medical Marijuana,” Friday, April 18, 2014

  • Prayer in Schools: Chris Matthews’ Guest, Libertarian Matt Kibbe, Evades the Issue with Sophistry

    When asked if children should be subjected to religious views or practices not their own, Mr. Kibbe said that government should not be involved. Mr. Matthews anticipated incorrectly that Mr. Kibbe meant the Federal government, but Mr. Kibbe objected to State government involvement too. Mr. Matthews chuckled and left off.

    There is a crafty sophistic trick here. Presumably we could drill down to city, local and to even smaller units, to the smallest governments. We are expected to understand that whether or not there will be prayer in a school, or even in a particular classroom, will be decided at the school or classroom level. The usual unspoken subtext is that parents should be doing the deciding.

    But there is no difference of any meaningful kind between the functioning of a government over large jurisdictions or the very smallest. The principal or PTA of a school, or the parents of the children in individual classrooms all act like micro-governments. There is no way to avoid some people making decisions for, or have jurisdiction over others!

    The key for me is that some people deciding for others that they must have what they don’t want is plainly wrong; in a public environment, stopping people from having things at the expense of others is plainly right!

    So, to assure that as many people as possible are spared from subjection to the inconsiderate wants of others, the largest governmental authority should have jurisdiction. For us that would be the Federal Government. For the world there is no existing authority, but for the universe it would be God.

  • Two Subjects – Same Issue: Denying the Obvious Puts Us Opponents of Torture and the Death Penalty at a Severe Disadvantage

    Torture:  Torture works, i.e., gets useful information from the victim if the victim has useful information.

    Death Penalty:  Some crimes deserve death.

    I couldn’t help observing to myself that if information was wanted from me and I was threatened with being forced into a scalding hot shower I would tell whatever I knew.  If I was brave enough to let a finger in, I would immediately relent and talk.  It goes beyond my ability to conceive that others would resist.  This seems obvious.

    It also seems obvious that those who commit certain crimes are no longer entitled to their lives.

    The opponents of torture and the death penalty argue that torture doesn’t work, absurd, and that the state has no right to take lives.  They take these positions because they don’t realize that their key arguments are all they need.  The resulting problem is that the advocates of torture and the death penalty stand on firm ground on these points and can forever hold there advocacy hostage to them.

    Torture:  I cannot imagine that advocates of torture, or ordinary people who aren’t sure, question the ability of torture to get information, made up if the victim has no information, but true if the victim does.  We must argue this point on the evil of torture and the evil of the society that practices it.

    Death Penalty:  It is so much simpler to just grant that some have forfeited their right to live and then argue that society never, that is absolutely never, ever, has the right to take the life of an innocent person.  Society does not have the right to even take the chance that it may kill someone who is innocent.

    Only when the opponents of torture and the death penalty square up to the distractions of making invalid arguments and give them up, do we have a better chance to convince those who are undecided or maybe even some advocates!

     

  • Terrific New York Times Editorial Gets Critical Point Wrong!

    Today’s fine editorial, The White House on Spying, got a crucial assumption wrong. It cited,

    “the odd defense that the president didn’t know that American spies had tapped the German chancellor’s cellphone for 10 years.”

    Addressing the implications of this, it immediately went on to ask:

    Is it really better for us to think that things have gone so far with the post-9/11 idea that any spying that can be done should be done and that nobody thought to inform President Obama about tapping the phone of one of the most important American allies?  [my italics]

    It is not better to think that. But it is far worse and the implications far more dangerous to think that they thought to inform President Obama and then didn’t!

    I think the possibility is quite real that some, possibly many, “thought to inform the President,” but realized that informing him, that “they were tapping the cellphone of an ally chief of state,” would shut THEM down. Shut them down for this and for who knows how much more!

    I believe that they sense, and I hope, that President Obama would never tolerate such a thing.  He would have instantly ended this and simultaneously informed Angela Merkel so she would not have found out in the worst possible way. He would have immediately sent an apology to Germany on behalf of the United States of America.

    This aside, a must-read article!

  • Why the enemies of Obamacare oppose it!

    Today, my comment on Paul Krugman’s terrific Op-Ed, Lousy Medicaid Arguments, didn’t make it because the New York Times closed out comments just as I was ready to publish it.  I feel that this is one of my best!

    Krugman intentionally did not name any party, brilliantly realizing that naming a party drastically limits the field of Obamacare’s enemies.

    I feel it is crucial to understand why the enemies of Obamacare rabidly oppose it, and the reason is not primarily “Sheer spite — the desire to sabotage anything with President Obama’s name on it — …”

    The enemies cannot afford another Social Security or Medicare that, once used and appreciated, will elect Democrats, as Social Security and Medicare continue to do.

    The hatred and anger of the party electorate – tragically acquired by base appeals and disingenuous arguments exposed in this article – is used by the leadership, both sane and insane, to motivate the project to destroy Obamacare.

    At the core of it all is the life of a party and the advantages of those whose bread is buttered by that party!

  • The Tea Party and Conservative Wing of the Republican Party Want to Take Over the Party!

    “What’s all this “primarying” really all about?  It should be obvious.  The purpose of the Tea Party and the Conservative Right is to take over the Republican Party.  To take it over, not just by intimidating the saner members, but to own it by majority.

    Mostly about McConnell, those agin him, and his primary challenge, the article makes clear, especially McConnell’s remark at the end, that whenever a responsible Senator or Congressman is targeted for a primary challenge, the seat often goes to the Democrat!  This magnifies the terror by intimidation and automatically decreases the total Republican membership in the Senate, House, and State Legislatures.  Simple arithmetic reveals that right wing members will then hold a higher proportion of Republican seats.

    Conservatives don’t care so much if the party is in shambles when they finally get hold of it.  They irrationally hope that it won’t be, but they will have the control they want.

    The right has always been “used” by the Republicans to get elected, but always at the expense of what they wanted.  Hardly any satisfaction at all, EVER, explains their obvious anger at traditional Republicans, and their desire to take the party over from them.  They will then control the second of the two major parties by themselves. Imagine then, what damage they could do?

    Perhaps if they already had that control – if a few adults hadn’t saved us just in time – we would right now be in a perfect storm of disaster

  • Republicans Don’t Hate Obamacare as Much as its Threat to Their Survival!

    NY Times News Analysis: Losing a Lot to Get Little misses the reason for the rabid Republican opposition to Obamacare.

    The issue here is not “despising” the Affordable Care Act, but the very survival of the Republican Party.  It cannot afford another program, like Social Security and Medicare, that all Americans credit or blame the Democrats for.  All Republicans know this.  They are rightly afraid that when Obamacare is appreciated, President Obama, and worse than that even, the Democratic Party will be remembered for it and elected for it.

    The difference between the most conservative and Tea Party aligned Republicans, and traditional Republicans is that the traditional ones know suicide when they see it!

  • New York Times Op-Ed: Why the Debt Ceiling Matters

    My comment on Joe Nocera’s Op-Ed piece, Why the Debt Ceiling Matters, published October 7th may have had some resonance.  I said:

    All of the above predictions make sense, but they are made by specialists whose reasoning is not always clear to us. Nothing said here gives a sense of the immediate process, instantaneous, and easily understood by anyone, that makes clear why what they say will happen, will happen!.

    In a nutshell, any debt holders who intend to use their proceeds on maturity will not be able to pay their creditors, who likewise will not be able to pay theirs or use the funds as intended. This applies especially to large businesses who routinely control their cash flow as much as possible, but also to anyone else who find themselves without the cash they need immediately. This may seem obvious, perhaps taken for granted, but nowhere have I seen it plainly stated and spelled out.

    Since finance departments know how they will use their money on the same day that it arrives, this process will occur immediately. An instantaneous “domino” process of catastrophic proportions!

    I had never seen any comment like mine anywhere until yesterday in the New York Times article Government Standoff Shakes Trust in U.S. Debt by Nathaniel Popper on October 9th, but finally:

    “… said Clifford D. Corso, chief executive of the trading firm Cutwater Asset Management. “So much of the world relies on that certainty of date of payment.  That chain is a very large and dangerous one to monkey around with.”

    And also:

    In remarks prepared for a hearing on Thursday, the head of the industry group for mutual funds, Paul Schott Stevens, said that if a [i.e. even one] payment was delayed for as little as a few days, “investors will learn a lesson that cannot and will not be unlearned.” [Bold mine]

    Note that in the above quote the fallout will take a few days.  That is too long!

    Unfortunately, we really need the public to be frightened, even better, terrified, of the calamity coming if the US defaults.  What we need are not just accurate predictions of what will happen, but will not happen right away or affect us right away, but crystal clear understandings of the mechanisms of what will take us down!

    The collateral benefit will be that the debt ceiling will never be held hostage again, or for at least. hopefully, a very long time, but is this collateral benefit worth paying for with a catastrophe?

  • Debt Ceiling Cliff: Fabulous opportunity for John Boehner to take control! Just needs to think outside the box.

    • Step one: Identify his real enemy. DONE: His own party, especially the conservatives who are holding the rest of the party hostage.
    • Final Step:  Get them to beg him to release the House to vote through a clean bill.
    • How:  Delay releasing them while the number of declared moderates climbs up and up as the debt limit deadline gets closer and closer to the brink of Republican disaster until they all, conservatives included, realize he holds their lives in his hands! Make them all beg, especially the conservatives.  Make them guarantee his dominance going forward before agreeing to save their asses!  Terrify them more by delaying to the bitter end!