The above title was suggested in a comment on YouTube to the video below.

The actual title on the New Economics Perspectives web site is Dr. Kelton’s Graduate Macro Students’ Video Project.  The Dr. Kelton of the title is Stephanie Kelton, Professor, Economics, and Chair of the Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City.

I think the video is something that everyone should see, but you know me. I always question everything. So I left a comment on the web site and on YouTube.

At 9:34 into the presentation – Sector Financial Balances as a % of GDP, 1952q1 to 2013q2

There was a little sleight of hand in part of the discussion around the government always needing to be in the red so that others can be in surplus. The truth of the matter is that the government may need to run in the red if the money supply needs to be increased. In a growing economy, the money supply almost always needs to increase, so it seems like the argument I am making is only a quibble.

However, when you skip over the truth to make your message less complicated, it always comes back to bite you. When your opponent points out the fallacy of your argument, you don’t want to have to backtrack, admit you weren’t being accurate, and only then make the correction I am suggesting.

Is the four added words in the proviso, “in a growing economy”, too much to expect in order to keep the argument completely above board?

If the Fed is now ineffectively shoving massive amounts of liquidity into the economy to try to stimulate it, might there come a time when the economy recovers that this excess liquidity must be slurped back out? I know the Fed says that they have a plan, so maybe it won’t require a few years of government surpluses to accomplish the task.

Adding this to the discussion might prove to the doubters that you aren’t completely blind to other possible events that could happen.

December 13, 30123

One of the New Economic Perspectives comments on this article suggested a Dilbert comic strip.

Scott Adams probably didn’t mean this as the start of a deep economic question, but this Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/2013-12-03/ (at least the first 2 frames) can provide a humorous segueway to answer the question of the origin of money — “The first money came (and continues to come) from the issuer!” Most people agree with frame one, but haven’t even thought to ask frame two and who that issuer might be.

The Real News Network has the interview Fmr. Israeli Intel. Chief Says Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Greater Risk than Nuclear Iran – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself pt2.  I covered the first part in the previous post From Zionist to Anti-Zionist Activist – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself pt1.

On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay, Phyllis Bennis examines the Israeli debate about Iran and Palestine, the role of AIPAC and the complex changes taking place in Middle East politics.

This segment was probably recorded before the news that the Obama administration is tightening sanctions on Iran as a reward for their good behavior. Say what? See my previous post White House Announces New Sanctions to Block Iran’s Trading Activities.

I hope that all the segments haven’t been prerecorded and are only being released at a rate of one a day. If that were true, it would preclude a discussion of this latest craziness by Obama in the following parts of the interview.

If all the segments have already been recorded, I am sure that Phyllis Bennis will be brought back and there will be other coverage on The Real News Network of this latest craziness.

USA Today carried the story Hawaiian Health Director Loretta Fuddy was killed in a small plane crash off Hawaii.

The Hawaiian health official who verified the authenticity of President Obama’s birth certificate died in a small plane crash.

This story almost writes its own rejoinders, why should I bother?

The New York Times has the story White House Announces New Sanctions to Block Iran’s Trading Activities.

Under pressure from Congress to demonstrate that it is not easing up on sanctions on Iran’s oil sector or on its nuclear and missile programs, the Obama administration on Thursday announced an expanded list of Iranian companies and individuals that it said it would target to block their trading activities around the world.

I have an idea.  Let’s see how big a sucker punch we can throw at Iran before they back out of the deal we negotiated with them.  If they stick to the deal, we can always punch them some more, until they quit.  Then we can say that they were never serious about the deal in the first place.

You just can’t trust those Iranians to stick to their word.  They ought to have the gumption to stand by their word even if we go back on ours.  What kind of morality do they have anyway?

I found the perfect image for this post on JaneS’ Facebook page.

The Young Turks has the story Elian Gonzalez Grown Up, Leaves Cuba, Speaks About ‘Uncle Fidel’.

“Fourteen years after he made headlines as the subject of a bitter international custody battle, Gonzalez spoke to CNN on Tuesday.

It’s his first trip abroad since the U.S. government removed him at gunpoint from his relatives’ home in Miami and, after a legal battle, sent him back to Cuba to live with his father.

Gonzalez, who turned 20 last week, was just 6 years old when he was found clinging to an inner tube after the tiny boat he was traveling in from Cuba sank on the way to the United States. Gonzalez’s mother and nine other people in the boat drowned.”* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian break it down, including Cenk’s dramatic confrontation with Elian Gonzalez protesters in Miami during the height of the story

The punchline of course comes at the very end. Semi-spoiler alert, it isn’t about Elian Gonzalez.

Thanks go to JoãoG for posting a link on his Facebook page to the Huffington Post article Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership May Undermine Public Health, Environment, Internet All At Once.

Opponents of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal reacted angrily Monday to disclosures that the Obama administration is backing proposals that would expand political powers for corporations, weaken financial regulations and increase the cost of prescription drugs.
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Memos obtained by The Huffington Post show the U.S. is having trouble gaining support for the agreement among the 11 other participating nations.

Ben Beachy, research director at Public Citizen, said the leaked documents show U.S. negotiators are isolated from other countries as well as from the U.S. Congress.

Trade, foolish deregulation, and corporate favoritism are the very reasons that I cannot support Hillary Clinton for President in 2016. Whoever is advising Obama to push through a treaty that the 11 other countries and many in the Congress do not like are probably the people who came from the Clinton administration set of advisers and will be advising Hillary.

If you want more of this corporate favoritism crap after 2016, then you know who your Democratic Presidential candidate should be. If you don’t want this, then why would you support this person unconditionally now and give up all your bargaining chips before your political negotiations even start. Isn’t this lack of negotiating skills exactly what has got Obama in so much trouble?

Unless she publicly disavows this behavior in ways that we can believe, it will be difficult to support her. For those who are supporters of Hillary, you would do her a huge favor by letting her know how much these policies are abhorred by people whose votes she is going to need.

My previous posts on TPP are Video: The Anti-TPP Take Over Of The US Trade Representative Building, Pivotal Trans-Pacific Partnership Section Revealed, and Bill Moyers: The Corporate Plot That Obama and Corporate Lobbyists Don’t Want You to Know About.

There are so many ironies to be discussed in this blog post, I am not sure I can count them all.

The email from Comedy Central was titled Selfies at Funerals.  Well, first of all, it was not a funeral.  It was a memorial celebration of Nelson Mandela’s life.  That’s why I gave this blog the title that I did.

The actual segment of  The Daily Show seems to be titled “Tuesdays with Mourning”.  I am not sure this is a better description of what the affair was all about.  Be that as it may, below is the video of the actual segment of the show.

The well written remarks by Jon Stewart were aimed at the silly media and political response that I predicted in my previous blog post Obama shakes hands with Cuba’s Raul Castro.

The final few seconds of video shows Jon Stewart having the same type of overblown, silly reaction to the “selfie”.

I suppose this segment was aired before the publication of the USA Today article Photographer: Mrs. Obama not upset over selfie.

The photographer who took the viral picture of President Obama’s “selfie” with two other world leaders says Michelle Obama’s expression has been distorted.

The AFP picture — shot Tuesday at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service — shows Obama posing with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt, and Mrs. Obama off to the side with a disapproving look.

But, as AFP’s Roberto Schmidt pointed out in a blog, “photos can lie.”

Writes Schmidt: “In reality, just a few seconds earlier the first lady was herself joking with those around her, Cameron and Schmidt included. Her stern look was captured by chance.”

Schmidt also discloses that Thorning Schmidt, the Danish prime minister, produced the smartphone in which the selfie is now presumably stored.

I can’t imagine any more twists to this story, but I won’t be entirely surprised if this story has more legs than a millipede.

The Real News Network is starting a new series in Reality Asserts Itself starting with the interview From Zionist to Anti-Zionist Activist – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself pt1.

On RAI with Paul Jay, Phyllis Bennis traces her development from active Zionist youth to whom Jewish identity meant support for Israel, to a leading American anti-Zionist writer and analyst

Bennis initially has a hard time recalling what changed her mind about the issue, but eventually gets to the heart of the transition.

For me the transition started to happen in earnest when I started working with and becoming friends with some Palestinians. When you realize that these are real people with many similarities in background to me and some with educations superior to mine, you start thinking differently from the stereotypes that you grew up with.

When I started to think about the indignities that my friends suffered because they were Palestinians, it became impossible to accept that this was right.

Even after many discussions with one of my friends, I still clung to my view about the history of the formation of Israel and he clung to his. It wasn’t until many years after we agreed to stop discussing the issue, that I started to come to the realization that he had been right about more things than I had realized at the time.

Before I go any farther, I will recall my words from a previous post Scholarship and Politics: The Case of Noam Chomsky.

As I said to Sharon after reading the chapter on propaganda in the book Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges, you really don’t know who to trust anymore.  I am not even sure I trust myself.

I read the book Peace Be Upon You, The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence by Zachary Karabell. Then as sort of an antidote I reread the book Exodus by Leon Uris.

Only after reading Exodus again did I recognize the racism in the attitudes of the Jews in Israel toward the Palestinians with whom they had grown up. As Phyllis Bennis said in her interview with Paul Jay, we had grown up thinking what a wonderful book and movie Exodus was. Now I can see how one-sided it was. Now I can see how one-sided are the positions of many of today’s Israeli leaders.

December 12, 2013

The second part in the series is covered in my subsequent post Fmr. Israeli Intel. Chief Says Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Greater Risk than Nuclear Iran – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself pt2.

December 13, 2013

The final two parts of the series are:

Syria’s Six Wars and Humanitarian Catastrophe – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself (3/4)

and

One State or Two, Solution Must be Based on Palestinian Rights – Phyllis Bennis on RAI (4/4)

USA Today has the story and video Obama shakes hands with Cuba’s Raul Castro.

Can you see the news stories spun around the “the brief moment captured in this photograph”? Imagine the Faux News headline “Obama bows to Castro”.

Of course, I don’t know what a guy over 6 feet tall is supposed to do when confronting a guy just over 5 feet tall when he wants to look him in the eye. You can bet that some people will see this as bowing.

I just thought I would take this opportunity to mention this before the media put there spin on it, but I am sure I am too late.

The New York Times has the article Scholarship and Politics: The Case of Noam Chomsky by Stanley Fish.

I was enchanted, even ravished, by these lectures, not because I agreed with the positions they staked out, but because of the spectacle they presented of an intelligence exercising itself on a set of significant philosophical questions. It was thought of the highest order performed by a thinker, now 85 years old, who by and large eschewed rhetorical flourishes (he has called his own speaking style “boring” and says he likes it that way) and just did it, where ‘it” was the patient exploration of deep issues that had been explored before him by a succession of predecessors, fully acknowledged, in a conversation that is forever being continued and forever being replenished.

After finishing the article, I thought of it as a beautifully written tribute to the pursuit of academic thought. Even as I read it, I was taken aback by the statement in the article:

“…since language is thought rather than an addition to or clothing of thought, the limits of language are the limits of what we can fruitfully think about.”

So my question is, “Do non-human animals think?”  If so, how do they think, since they have no language to express their thoughts?  Do human babies think before they have language?  How do they acquire language without thinking?

When you see videos of an octopus figuring out how to unscrew the lid of a bottle, do you suppose the octopus is thinking (without language)?

Have you ever watched a squirrel try to get seed out of a bird feeder.  They have some mighty creative ways of approaching the problem after many failed attempts.  What are they thinking as they try different approaches?

I see that some of the other comments on the article mirror some of my questions.

Now I think the article reminds me of how easy it is to be lulled into a state of hypnosis by beautifully crafted words.  Perhaps this is what has troubled me about Naom Chomsky over the years.  Sometimes, i just don’t want to believe what he is saying politically.  Lately, I have been thinking my distrust was unwarranted.  What he has been saying has proven to be right more often than I imagined possible.  Or is it that I am just being hypnotized?

As I said to Sharon after reading the chapter on propaganda in the book Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges, you really don’t know who to trust anymore.  I am not even sure I trust myself.