zFacts has a great article on the debt and who is really responsible for it. They also provide this excellent video.

I just saw on his show, Bill O’Reilly say that there are many things about President Obama that are “scary.” O’Reilly wants people to see him as a reasonable conservative. And indeed, in the current environment of conservatives, he does seem moderate. But calling the President “scary” is the same as calling him “the other.” I’m sure that he never called Bush “scary.” The use of that word is not a statement of policy differences. It is part of the conservative movement’s push to define Obama as an outsider—as someone who isn’t really American. That is what the birth certificate nonsense is all about. And that is what “scary” is all about.

According to UPI, “Protesters gathered outside President Obama’s fundraising lunch in San Francisco Tuesday, speaking out on a variety of issues.” Many of the protesters were organized by a cell phone company: CREDO Mobile. People talk a lot about companies being good corporate citizens[1], but I don’t see much of it. CREDO comes as close to this ideal as I’ve seen.

Earlier today, I was reading The Progressive and on the inside cover was the image you see above (click on it to see a high-resolution version). It looks like a social cause ad. It says, “Does your phone company want a Tea Party president?” Then it states that AT&T gave Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign $386,000 and Verizon Wireless gave another $35,500. That got my attention and made me glad that I don’t use either of these companies. But then I noticed: this was not a social cause ad; it was an ad for a competitor: CREDO Mobile.

The truth is that we can’t wait around for companies to behave as we would like. It is necessary for companies like CREDO to use their own good behavior and their competitors’ bad behavior to get business. You don’t have to go without a cell phone. You have an option. And as it turns out, a rather good option. According to Wikipedia, they (formerly known as Working Assets Wireless) have, “raised over $65 million for nonprofit organizations such as GreenPeace, Planned Parenthood, Democracy Now etc.”

If you have AT&T or Verizon or you are just looking for a cell phone company, consider CREDO Mobile.

[1] I don’t like the phrase “good corporate citizen” because it implies corporations are not only people but citizens. They are not. Perhaps at a later date, I will write more about this. I have much to say.

Paul Krugman has an excellent post about Ricardian equivalence. What is Ricardian equivalence? It is an economic model that claims that any money spent by the government will be offset by money not spent by the private sector. Basically, it goes like this: if the government spends $100, the private sector will know that at some point that $100 will have to be paid back in taxes, so they will set aside $100 that they would normally spend. Unfortunately for the model and the conservatives who believe in it, the model depends upon such untrue assumptions as “[C]onsumers have perfect foresight, live forever, have perfect access to capital markets.” Krugman shows that even if you do accept this highly questionable model, government stimulus can still be used to help the economy. But then one of his commenters—CES from California—responds:

Just so you understand: although it would be nice if the government spent money on useful things, it doesn’t matter. Remember how World War II got us out of the Great Depression? Wars are not a good way to spend money; they don’t build infrastructure. And yet, even though much that government spending was effectively thrown away, it still got us out of the Great Depression!

Any more foolish comments CES?

I just read Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence. It is an interesting and often enjoyable book. Fish writes beautifully and is very funny. Unfortunately, his whole philosophy is utterly contrary to my own untrained, intuitive approach. Yes, it is true that I love reading about writing and grammar—that’s why I picked up this book. But I don’t take anyone’s word for anything; if I can see that some advice will improve my writing, I accept it; if I can’t, I scratch my head and move on. Fish makes grammar conservatives look liberal. Here is the thing: he thinks all great (his opinion) sentences can be reduced to a number of forms and that as a writer, one should mimic those forms.

What’s wrong with that? Isn’t much of the technique of writing just imitation of those who write well? To a large extent, yes. But there is a big difference between trying to create a story as great as Irwin Shaw’s “The Eighty-Yard Run” and diagramming each sentence in the story. This distinction is at the heart of what is most bothersome about Fish’s book: his love of the isolated sentence. I love language on a small scale too. Take, for instance, the following poem fragment by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard:

That’s beautiful. It is also, as it happens, poetry. I think the point is made very well by Fish himself in discussing last sentences. He starts by mentioning four great last lines: “Well, nobody’s perfect” from the movie Some Like it Hot; “After all, tomorrow is another day” from the movie Gone With the Wind; “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” from the novel The Sun Also Rises; and “He loved Big Brother” from the novel 1984. I agree with him: these are all great last lines. However, Fish has something else on his mind:

He is right, of course: these are great lines because of what preceded them. But no one reads a novel or sees a movie for the experience of a really great sentence. And just as a reader cannot divorce a sentence from the work it is in, neither can a writer.

None of this would matter if Fish explained how to write a great sentence. He doesn’t. He explains how to write sentences like those that you admire. That’s not the same thing. That’s just copying. There is something to be said for that. Maybe his technique can teach writers to improve their sentences. But at what cost? The same goes for readers: are they to miss the glories of the story for those of the sentence? Appreciate the sentence—sure—but not outside its context.

Check out this great deal!

So let me get this straight, if I buy this book and sell it back to Amazon, it only costs $92.95? Otherwise, it will be $94.95!? That’s a hard deal to pass up. For Amazon.