Sunday, November 7, 2010

Random thoughts rattling in my head

Just a couple of things on my mind while wondering how the very moral Republican Party has to spend billions on ads that spread lies in order to win elections:

1) Saw a great show last night by an all women sketch comedy group called Broad Comedy, which is led by Katie Goodman, the daughter of NY Times columnist Ellen Goodman. It was a fundraiser for the Boulder Women's Health Center that I was invited to by Kip's best friend. I was expecting an evening of man-bashing, but instead was treated to a clever evening of sketches and song parodies, much like the shows in which I performed in the early 90's (except for the all-woman part). If they come to your town, check them out.

2) John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have been acting all week like they have been elected King. McConnell is particularly hilarious in that he seems to think he now runs the Senate, which is still majority Dems. These assholes are going to do a lot of Obama's re-election campaign work for them, as they overplay their hands a la Newt in the 90's. Read the exit polls fellas! America doesn't like you either.

3) Want to hear an intelligent discussion of Economics by two guys who disagree in general about free markets, but do so in an intelligent respectful way? Probably not, otherwise Fox News wouldn't be so popular. But if you actually want to learn something, go to Econ Talk and listen to host Ross Roberts, a professor at George Mason and a student of the Chicago school of unfettered free markets, which history has pretty much discredited, interview Australian economist John Quiggan, who has written a book called "Zombie Economics", which attempts to point out how some economic policies have been proven wrong, yet still bumble around. Many of his "Zombies" are the ideas Roberts still holds dear. So, of course their discussion devolves into shouting and name-calling, right? No, it goes just the other way, as they rationally discuss their differences and each tries to understand the other.

4) One of the basic principles of economics is that people face trade-offs. So, last night when a woman was talking about her very sick dogs who had eaten an entire bag of cocoa, I had this thought. A dog can lick his own junk, but eating chocolate can kill him. Now THAT is a trade-off!

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