Sherri Votes

Paying for the New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:51:00 +0000

Over the past year or so, I've gotten in the habit of reading the New York Times. I started when I got an iPod Touch, and discovered I could read it on that device. I like reading the Times on the iTouch. I could have been reading the NYT for years on my laptop, but seldom did, only when following links from other things I was reading. I could read the NYT on my Kindle, but (1) I'd have to pay and (2) as much as I love my Kindle, it's not really a good device for reading a newspaper because it's not a good device for skimming. The iTouch, with its fingertip control, is a perfect device for skimming; I can hold it in one hand, and use my thumb to select and skim through an article.

Currently the NYT is free on my iTouch and on my laptop, but it looks like that may change next year, as they have announced a vague plan to move to a metering system, where some number of articles per month would be free and then you'd have to pay. My immediate reaction was, well, I'd find something else to read; like everyone, I'm used to having content on the Web free. But that's not completely true: I do pay for some content on the Web. I subscribe to Salon, even though it's easy enough to read articles at Salon without subscribing just by viewing an ad first. I've subscribed to a few niche publications over the years; currently I'm subscribed to a web site by one of my favorite basketball writers. So, obviously, I'm willing to pay for some content on the web. Why not the NYT?

My suspicion is that the NYT will price it higher than what I'm willing to pay. The cost on the Kindle is $14/month, which is $168/year. Nope, sorry, won't pay that. An online-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal is $103/year; I don't want the WSJ, so I wouldn't pay that, and I probably wouldn't pay that for the NYT. Maybe once upon a time, but the Old Grey Lady ain't what she used to be. My gut upper level limit, the price at which I'd grumble but probably decide that it was worth it, is $75/year, which works out to $6.25/month. Above that, there's a steep drop off in the probability that I'd be willing to pay for it at all.

They currently charge $6.95/month or $39.95/year for the crossword puzzle, and the archives are free. The announcement didn't say anything about whether either of these would be affected by the change. Really, the announcement was pretty vague: sometime next year, we're going to charge for articles, but we don't know how much, after you've read some number of articles in a month, but we don't know how many, and both of those might change depending on economic factors. And we're going to build our own technology from scratch, rather than one off the shelf - which means no one should hold their breath waiting for this to actually happen.

What I don't get

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:04:00 +0000

I don't understand why Big Business hasn't turned their lobbyists loose all over Congress to get them to pass something like Medicare for all. Don't they understand that insurance company profits are coming at their expense? That if they didn't have to provide health care insurance, at an ever more unpredictable and rising cost, their bottom lines would improve?

We're always hearing about how companies need to cut wages and offshore jobs and get tax breaks so they can be competitive; wouldn't you think that having government-provided health care insurance, like most other industrial nations, would be a competitive boost for them? I don't get it. This is money out of their pockets, and they normally guard those pockets zealously.

Health Care

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Faceless bureaucrat

Accountable to Wall Street

Not me. This is good?

"Free market" at work

Stocks up when care is denied.

Payouts cut profits.

This is worth keeping?

Costly insurance even

more if you need it.

Health Care Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:05:00 +0000

Republicans lie.

"Death panels?" I'm not stupid!

Dems, just pass the bill.

Oh, is that what they're calling it now?

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Gov. Sanford (R-SC) just continues to provide us with entertaining euphemisms for cheating on your wife:

"Hiking the Appalachian Trail"

"Driving the coastline of Argentina"

"Crossing lines" with other women.

What's next, Gov?

Vote!

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:32:00 +0000

I voted this morning about 10:15. The polling place was the elementary school my daughter used to attend, where about 8 precincts were voting. Usually when I go in to vote, it's pretty quiet; the poll workers are sitting around chatting. Today, they were all busy. I had to wait for one person ahead of me to sign in at my precinct and get my ballot, then I had to wait behind about 10 people for a booth to fill out my ballot. We use optical scan ballots (fill in the bubble), so if I wasn't concerned about secrecy and had had a pen on me, I could have just stood there and voted. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pen, and couldn't find a spare one, so I waited in line.

The whole process took me about 15 minutes. There were a lot more people than usual, even with about 2/3rds of King County voters using absentee ballots. King County (Seattle) and Pierce County (Tacoma) are the only counties in Washington not voting entirely by mail, and next year, King County will move to vote by mail. It is more convenient, but I'll miss going to my polling place and casting my vote on election day.

So, go vote: it's fun!

Irony is Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:09:00 +0000

From the NYTimes:

As Mr. McCain did in North Carolina, Ms. Palin repeatedly invoked Joe the Plumber.
“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo,” Ms. Palin said, “our opponent didn’t look real happy. Seems that the staged photo op there got ruined by a real person’s question.”
Ms. Palin, as has become her custom, did not take questions from the crowd or reporters.

The Real McCain

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:15:00 +0000

There's a strong perception that John McCain used to be better than his campaign has shown, that the Real John McCain used to be more moderate, less angry, wouldn't lie, etc.

I think everything we needed to know about the Real John McCain was demonstrated last night in the third debate when he used air quotes around the "health" of the mother.

No. Just No.

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:52:00 +0000

It's incredible to me, after watching the Katie Couric interviews of Sarah Palin, that anyone of any political persuasion could consider her even remotely qualified to be President. I don't understand how anyone could spend any time in politics, even local politics, be as ardently pro-life as she is, and not even realize that Roe v. Wade is completely dependent upon an inherent right to privacy in the constitution. I'm not even asking that she know that the right to privacy concept was actually laid out in Griswold v. Connecticut, or even what Griswold v. Connecticut is, but to claim that Roe v. Wade is a bad ruling while believing the constitution contains an inherent right to privacy is just strange.

Also strange is to say that you believe something ought to be left to the states, and call yourself a Federalist for believing that. Alexander Hamilton would certainly be surprised.

Maverick

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:49:00 +0000

Americans romanticize mavericks - the lone, rugged individual who does "the right thing", no matter the consequences. It's a nice myth in the movies, where the maverick always turns out to be right in the end and everybody is grateful to him for having saved the day.

In the real world, though, it's not so simple. I've worked with mavericks before, and you likely have, too. You know, the person who walks into the meeting after you've spent months working on a proposal and negotiating among the various parties to get a workable solution, and just blows the whole thing up. It's usually not because this hero has thought of an important angle you overlooked, but more like a three year old throwing a temper tantrum. He blows it up because he can, and that's how he gets attention.

John McCain has long had the reputation of a maverick, and he had fooled a lot of people into thinking he was the wise, brave, rugged individual who put the country first. After all, he was a POW, and that experience unquestionably required those attributes. But if you think about your experiences with mavericks, you'll realize that another word for maverick is 'asshole.' Being an asshole is probably a good thing when you're a POW, but as John McCain has displayed this week, in the regular world, mostly you end up pissing everybody off.

Emergency!

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:45:00 +0000

A bunch of Wall Street fat cats need help! John McCain feels their pain, and he wants to be there for them. So he's putting aside his own campaign to rush to Washington to make sure they get taken care of. He's bringing his own coterie of ~~lobbyists~~ campaign staffers to help out, too.

But, sadly, that means that as much as he wants to debate Barack Obama this Friday, he just can't until a deal is reached. So, he wants to postpone Friday's debate.

Hey, you know what, there's this other debate scheduled for next Thursday; he thinks he can make that date. Nobody really cared about a silly Vice Presidential debate, anyway.

What a joke. I was even thinking of lifting my long-standing rule of refusing to watch debates, just because I thought there was some probability that McCain would just totally melt down. Who knew it would happen before we even got to the debate?

Where's W?

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:26:00 +0000

Constitutionally, George W. Bush is still President of the United States, at least as far as I know. Where is he? Is he off with Cheney hiding in that undisclosed location? His Treasury Secretary just nationalized one of the biggest insurers in the country, and Bush is nowhere to be seen.

I have no idea whether Paulson's $85 billion bailout of AIG is a good idea or a bad idea; I suspect it's merely the least painful of several bad ideas. There are no easy or good solutions at this point; maybe something could have been done 4-5 years ago to mitigate this meltdown, but those things weren't going to happen under a Republican administration. They probably wouldn't have happened even under a Democratic administration, but at least it wouldn't have been going against holy writ.

But Bush has not stood in front of reporters or anyone else to discuss his administration's actions. Extraordinary.

More Things Palin Isn't Qualified To Do

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:29:00 +0000

Sure, Democrats have been claiming that Palin isn't qualified to be a heartbeat away, but it's more interesting to look at what her supporters say she isn't qualified to do or be. We've already mentioned that they don't think she should be the head of her family or her church, but now, former HP CEO and McCain/Palin supporter Carly Fiorina says that Palin isn't qualified to be head of HP. So, to sum up, according to Republicans:

Head of Family: NO

Head of Church: NO

Head of Hewlett Packard: NO

Head of State: Absolutely! You're a sexist to even question that!

Just a thought

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:51:00 +0000

With the current financial meltdown going on, with no bottom in sight yet, does anybody really want a member of the Keating 5 and a governor of a state fully funded by the oil companies to be in charge of the economy?

Always Entertaining

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:26:00 +0000

It's always entertaining and informative to see what happens when values conflict in a person. The Palin pick has delighted ultra-right wing Fundamentalists like James Dobson and company, but how to reconcile the pick with their belief that women should be submissive? How can they be okay with Palin as Commander in Chief, when they think she should submit to her husband, or shouldn't be head of a church?

Well, they say, that's different. Just because she can't lead a church or her own family, she can lead the country. Of course, these are the same people telling us that the US is a "Christian nation," and that separation of church and state is a myth.

Like John McCain, they'll say and do anything for power.

What to do about Palin

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:56:00 +0000

The Republicans are cackling with glee over their cleverness in naming Sarah Palin as the VP candidate. They believe she's energized the base and is impossible to attack. Anytime the Democrats say anything remotely negative about her, they just scream "sexism!"

So, don't attack her. Attacking her is treating her seriously as a candidate, and she's just not a serious candidate. Instead, make fun of her. No, not personally, but there's still plenty of opportunity to make fun of her without delving into the personal. She thinks that living next to Russia is foreign policy experience - hey, Obama grew up in Hawaii, so he must be an oceanography expert! Or, Palin is qualified to be Commander-in-chief? She must have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express!

Treat her like the joke she is. Sure, the Republican base won't like it and think you're being elitist and looking down your noses at her and them, but hey, they think that anyway, no matter what you do! Might as well channel your inner Molly Ivins and have some fun!

Palin?

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:15:00 +0000

McCain's choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin is the most breathtakingly cynical political pick since Bush I nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Fortunately for all of us, Senate confirmation isn't part of the process for electing Vice Presidents, so I'm hopeful that we won't see her sworn in next January.

Exxon Valdez

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:49:00 +0000

I've written here before about Exxon and its fight to get out of paying punitive damages in a class-action lawsuit resulting from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Just to reiterate, 19 years ago, a drunken captain steered a single-hulled Exxon oil tanker aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska, resulting in the largest oil spill in US history and severe environmental damage to a large fishing area. This class-action lawsuit was about economic damage to the fishers. In 1994, a court granted the class members $5 billion in punitive damages, on top of the economic damages. Exxon has paid the economic damages, but has been fighting the punitive damages since then.

An appeals court cut the punitive amount in half, to $2.5 billion, but Exxon took the case to the Supreme Court. There were two issues before the Court: should Exxon be liable, under maritime law, for punitive damages based on the misconduct of its employee, and how much should the punitive damages be.

The second question has drawn most of the attention, as the Court voted 5-3 to cut the punitive damages to $500 million, on the premise that punitive damages should not exceed actual damages. There were no laws to apply here, no caps on punitive damages; the Court was free to make up their own standard, so they did. I haven't seen much in the way of justification for the 1-1 standard, only for the concept of a cap in general: that companies ought to be able to predict what punitive damages will be.

This would seem to run counter to the purpose of punitive damages. The point of punitive damages is to say to a company "don't ever do that again." If punitive damages are predictable, then you just plug that number into your cost-benefit analysis, and decide whether the profit you'll make by ignoring safety, the environment, or whatever inconvenient common good is in your way, is worth it. It's also interesting to note that the original jury came up with the $5 billion amount based on the annual profit Exxon earned back then. Had the Supreme Court elected to apply that standard instead of a ratio to actual damages, the award would have been increased to $40 billion, Exxon's current annual profit.

So, ignoring safety and the environment continues to pay, thanks to the corporate-friendly composition of the Court. What's garnered less attention, though, is how close Exxon came to getting to Court to completely toss out the punitive damages. Remember that first question before the Court? The vote on that was 4-4. Unfortunately for Exxon, Justice Alito holds stock in Exxon, and had to recuse himself from the case. But for that stock holding, the vote on the first question likely would have been 5-4 that Exxon was not liable, and the punitive damages would have been completely thrown out.

Your Republican-dominated Supreme Court: making the world safe for corporations.

Economics

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:08:00 +0000

There's a lot I don't understand about economics. It's a complex subject, difficult to model, and easy to make simple, very wrong statements about it.

Are we in a recession? Are we headed for a recession? Can the Fed stave off a recession? The answers, as best I can figure are, probably not yet, very likely so, and unlikely. The Federal Reserve Bank only has one tool for affecting economic change: interest rates. With today's cut down to 3.5%, they're running out of room. Interest rates can't go negative.

The main purpose of interest rate cuts these days seems to be to prop up the stock market, as if the Dow Jones is the only important measure of our economy. Small things like employment, wages, the deficit, the cost of the war in Iraq: these all get reported in our media in terms of their impact on the market.

Meanwhile, we've had 7 years of Republican ultra laissez-faire regulation of said market, which has acted like risk is no longer operate, only gain.

So the Fed props up the market with another rate cut, and the President calls for a "stimulus" package. The package he wants would give tax rebates to taxpayers, who could then go shopping which would stimulate the economy. In other words, the government, which is running at a deficit, would give back money it doesn't have to citizens who are already consuming beyond their means, and ecourage them to spend it. Sounds like a great way to manage an economy.

Once upon a time, when the government wanted to stimulate the economy, it would create public works projects. These would create jobs, which create real income that people would spend, and have the added benefit of building the infrastructure that continued to support the growth of the economy. But the market isn't likely to be buoyed tomorrow by the kind of stimulus that takes years to have impact, and the market seems to be all that matters now.

I'm going to hold my breath until I get my way

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:55:00 +0000

Bush: No Attorney General if Not Mukasey

All Mukasey has to do to be confirmed is to say that waterboarding is torture, and hence illegal. Bush calls this a "standard that no one can meet."

Waterboarding is torture, is illegal, is not an effective way to gain usable intelligence, and is morally wrong. Doesn't seem that high a standard to meet to me. You'd think our President might have picked up a few ideas about how to treat other people in all that Bible study he's done. I must have missed the part after "turn the other cheek" when Jesus added, "and then waterboard 'em."

Clandestine Regime Change

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:02:00 +0000

In a recent interview in Foreign Policy, John Bolton is quoted as saying of the US:

Once upon a time, we knew how to do clandestine regime change. We need to reacquire that capability.

I have a book suggestion for Mr. Bolton: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner. Perhaps then he could tell us when this golden age of clandestine regime change was. I've made it up to about 1965, and so far, our clumsy attempts at regime change have not been all that clandestine or all that successful. Eastern Europe? We spent millions of dollars and untold lives trying to overthrow Communist governments there, with no success. Cuba? Castro's still there, despite failed coup attempts like the Bay of Pigs and numerous assassination plans. Vietnam? That one didn't turn out so well, either.

Bolton is saying this in the context of what to do about a nuclear Iran. We tried clandestine regime change there, too; that's how the Shah was put in place. I suppose that one could be classified as a successful clandestine regime change, in some sense; the Shah was in power for quite a while. Of course, that plays no small part in why Iran is so opposed to us and why they might think that acquiring nuclear capability is a good idea.

As Legacy of Ashes demonstrates, Bolton's attitude is not a new one; it's been a part of American foreign policy since WWII. I would hope that eventually we will learn not only that it doesn't work to disrupt other countries' governments, but that it is wrong.

The Inverse Body Count

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:51:00 +0000

In Vietnam, the military and the Presidents kept insisting we were winning, and the measure of choice was the body count. Hence, every dead body was a Viet Cong. We were piling up impressive body counts, but we weren't winning the war. Body counts may impact "winning" or "losing" a war, but they don't define it.

Now in Iraq, the new metric seems to be the inverse. Fewer Iraqis are dying! We're winning the war! Of course, now many of the dead bodies don't count, because if we counted them, then we wouldn't be winning the war. So if a Shi'ite Iraqi is killed by another Shi'ite, that doesn't count; same thing for intra-Sunni fighting. Because after all, a civil war can only have two sides, right? Oh wait, I forgot, it's not a civil war; oops! Sectarian violence, that's the new term, so obviously, dead Iraqis should only count if they're killed by somebody from the other sect.

And Iraqis killed by car bombs don't count, either, because how are you going to tell who set off that car bomb?! Iraqis killed by Americans don't count, either, because we're the good guys just trying to keep the peace. See how easy it is to figure out that we're winning! Just count some of the dead Iraqis, and then things must be getting better!

Bush's Future

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:34:00 +0000

Six years from now, you're not going to see me hanging out in the lobby of the U.N.

Thank God.

And we should believe them why?

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:19:00 +0000

To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave.

-Rep. John Porter (R-Nevada)

I don't know what will happen in Iraq when we leave, but I don't see any reason to believe any projections coming out of the current administration, which has been spectacularly wrong about just about everything. Or maybe the Iraqis just have a funny way of greeting us like liberators....

Postponing the Inevitable

noreply@blogger.com (Sherri Nichols) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:31:00 +0000

Does anyone doubt that when General Petraeus reports to Congress next month, we'll hear that the surge is working and we should stay the course? You don't make it to general by telling truth to power; you tell power what power wants to hear. And there's no doubt that the Bush administration only wants to hear that progess is being made, that we shouldn't pull our troops out of Iraq, and that victory is achievable if we have the will and don't let liberals and Democrats stab us in the back.

Of course, if progress were really being made, then there wouldn't be all these rumors about replacing Maliki as prime minister, and ex-Baathist Allawi wouldn't be hiring one of the premier Republican lobbying firms in DC to position himself for the job. So, the word will be that progress is being made, but not fast enough, and if we can just replace this puppet with this other puppet, then all the factions in Iraq will suddenly come to their senses and lay down their weapons and compromise and build a strong government that looks a little like a democracy if you squint just right, but not so much so that anyone hostile to US interests would ever gain power.

All those Republican congresspeople (and too many of their Democratic counterparts) will obligingly agree that we should give the Iraqis more time and not set any deadlines or withdraw any troops, but soon, those Iraqis should get their act together soon, or next time, for sure, we'll be tougher, though what that means will be distressingly vague.

Meanwhile, Iraqis will continue to die, our soldiers will continue to die, arms and money will continue to flow to whichever faction we happen to like today, nevermind that tomorrow, those arms are likely to be used against us. Someday, we will leave, just as we left Vietnam, and yes, people will die, not really because we left, but because we never should have gone there in the first place.