• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

I really should read my own blog.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

In my day, never was longer.

No one could have predicted…

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Nothing worth doing is easy.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Nattering Nabobs

Nattering Nabobs

by John Cole|  July 29, 200312:38 pm| 14 Comments

This post is in: Democratic Stupidity

FacebookTweetEmail

So, the Pentagon thinks outside the box for a change, and attempts to install a futures market to help with the prediction of terrorist activity. How do Democrats react:

Two Democratic senators slammed the move.

“The idea of a federal betting parlour on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it’s grotesque,” said Senator Ron Wyden D-Ore.

Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan described the market as “unbelievably stupid”.

“Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlour so that people could go in … and bet on the assassination of an American political figure or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?” he said.

The Dems got their way:

The Pentagon has abandoned plans to set up a ‘terror stock market’ in which investors could bag cash by successfully predicting terrorist attacks.

US defence chiefs had hoped the market would have been a valuable tool in second guessing when terror strikes would occur.

Instapundit has a whole host of links about the futures market- I am waiting for the left flank of the blogosphere to beat up on the Democrats for blocking this. Again, I will be waiting for a while.

*** Update ***

Yglesias is skeptical, but thinks the Pentagon deserves credit for thinking outside the box. They got beat up for it Matt, not praised- I await your condemnation of Dorgan and Wyden.

*** Update #2 ***

I am not defending this idea because I think it will be the end-all, be-all for fighting terrorism. I am not sure the damned thing will even work. What I am angry about is that no idea for fighting terrorism should be simply laughed away or dismissed for partisan political gain. That is what ires me- this might have had some utility, certainly would have been inexpensive- and it got nuked without even a chance.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Friends- Everybody Needs One
Next Post: The Misery Continues »

Reader Interactions

14Comments

  1. 1.

    Kevin Drum

    July 29, 2003 at 12:46 pm

    Even if it works, this is a bad idea. As conservatives keep telling us, there are things that might work but that should be avoided anyway for moral reasons or because they send the wrong message. This is such a thing.

    Somebody at DARPA should have had the brains to figure out that a government sponsored market that gives people an incentive to actively root for terrorist attacks would not be well accepted by the population at large.

  2. 2.

    Dean

    July 29, 2003 at 1:00 pm

    John:

    I’m waiting for any anti-terrorist move that doesn’t involve jettisoning Israel, “considering root causes,” or otherwise engaging in multilateralism that actually gets support from the left side of the blogosphere.

    Tougher inspections at airports? Inconvenient and profiling.
    Arming pilots? Hah!
    Preemptive attacks? 16 words.

    Kevin:

    Well, short of asking folks out of the goodness of their hearts to report in tips and collating said information (oops, didn’t that come under TIPS and get canned?), how would YOU collect information from non-traditional sources, e.g., stock traders, businessmen, insurance companies, shipping firms, etc.?

    Better yet, given the reach of modern corporations and even many non-corporations (e.g., NGOs like the Red Cross), how would you exploit the information that they inevitably collect or come in contact w/? How would you access that, and hopefully even have some priorities assigned to their credibility and importance?

  3. 3.

    Gary Farber

    July 29, 2003 at 1:36 pm

    I’m sorry, John, but I already blogged on this, and predicted that it would (unjustifiably) go down, last night.

    Therefore one can obviously conclude that “conservatives” are slow on the uptake and insufficient in their ability to defend thinking outside the box. Gosh, conservatives are “stupid.”

    Or, you know, maybe not.

  4. 4.

    John Cole

    July 29, 2003 at 1:42 pm

    I have long contended that Republicans and this administration spend too much time defending themselves to their critics. Ignore the Democrats, move forwrd with your ideas, and quit giving the Dems a sense of momentum.

    I have seen no ideas from the Democrats- just ignore them and let them get more shrill and more hysterical.

  5. 5.

    Joshua Martin

    July 29, 2003 at 2:08 pm

    When I first saw this story, I thought “it’s about time.” The Bush administration actually came up with a novel idea that allows difuse information that can’t possible be actively monitored and analyzed by the gov’t to be collected and distilled.
    My next thought was that the idea was doomed, as Democrats couldn’t pass up the chance to attack Bush for allowing “gambling on terrorism.” And what do you know, I was right.
    Personally, I don’t care that this idea would cause people to “actively root for terrorist attacks” because 1) there’s no evidence that people would doing just that, and 2) the (hypothetical) harm that such “rooting” might cause is (or would have been) entirely trumped by the possibility that the program would have predicted (or helped predict) a terrorist attack.
    Moreover, the notion that the program wouldn’t be “well accepted by the population at large” matters naught. This isn’t the type of program whose existance should depend on whether or not Joe Public likes it. The efficacy of the program should have been the only consideration.
    Is it too much to ask that the Demoractic Party judge these efforts fairly, rather than using them as a vehicle to bash GW?

  6. 6.

    Gary Farber

    July 29, 2003 at 2:58 pm

    “Is it too much to ask that the Demoractic Party judge these efforts fairly, rather than using them as a vehicle to bash GW?”

    It’s not too much to ask. It’s precisely as much to ask as it was and is to ask that actions of the Clinton Administration not be used as a vehicle to bash Democrats or Bill and Hillary Clinton.

    If one wishes to decry partisanship — and there’s an awful lot of partisanship that deserves decrying — one can only fairly decry it in more than one direction.

    Otherwise, you know, it isn’t partisanship that is being decried. Just “Those Bad Guys On The Other Side Who Are The Only Partisan Ones.”

  7. 7.

    DANEgerus

    July 29, 2003 at 4:30 pm

    “Even if it works, this is a bad idea”… because people should die?

    So the better way is for the blogosphere to speculate until we reach a consensus… or gaming theory, a decades old concept, could be applied to arrive at a prompt informed consensus…

    But f— no… it might offend somebody… so let’s just wait until there are enough dead bodies to appease everybody’s sense of propriety.

  8. 8.

    Kevin Drum

    July 29, 2003 at 6:53 pm

    Just out of curiosity, suppose this proposal went through and, say, a terrorist killed Dick Cheney. And then suppose a couple of days later there was a photo of some guy in the NY Times grinning because the government had just sent him a check for $10,000 because he had bet correctly on this probability.

    Do you start to see the problem?

  9. 9.

    M. Scott Eiland

    July 29, 2003 at 7:45 pm

    “Just out of curiosity, suppose this proposal went through and, say, a terrorist killed Dick Cheney. And then suppose a couple of days later there was a photo of some guy in the NY Times grinning because the government had just sent him a check for $10,000 because he had bet correctly on this probability.

    Do you start to see the problem?”

    Another problem that might occur is if a scenario that would obviously negatively (or positively, if a company has a countermeasure to the scenario) impact the fortunes of a particular company or industry becomes “hot” on the virtual market, it could have a substantial impact on the real stock markets–this might allow for indirect manipulation of the stock market. Not good.

  10. 10.

    John Cole

    July 29, 2003 at 10:07 pm

    I do not think they were going to be paying out massive awards- and on balance, I like the idea.

  11. 11.

    Nathan Zachary

    July 30, 2003 at 7:09 am

    I’m no democrat, But I still think it’s a bad idea.

    The very nature of man compels him to make a profit, so you would see bet hedging. Would it be so funny when people get killed over this?

  12. 12.

    Moe Lane

    July 30, 2003 at 8:21 am

    Shoot, John, what makes you think that this concept’s going away? Within the month somebody’ll be running something similar from his website that’ll do 60-65%* of the concept for essentially free… and there’ll be a steady stream of anonymous hits from plausibly-deniable locations.

    All of this reminds me of that disinformation agency that was ‘set up’ a while back, only to be immediately ‘closed down’: That one too had a lot of hoopla – and the fact that the primary idea was to simply get the meme into the infosphere was neatly obscured there, too.

    Moe

    *These statistics brought to you by the WAG Group.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Matthew Yglesias says:
    July 30, 2003 at 8:33 am

    Dorgan and Wyden

    John Cole is right to suggest that there was something very inappropriate about the outpourings of public scorn (I’m looking at you Senator Dorgan) that were heaped on the short-lived terrorism futures market yesterday. If you read anything about the…

  2. Matthew Yglesias says:
    July 30, 2003 at 8:34 am

    Dorgan and Wyden

    John Cole is right to suggest that there was something very inappropriate about the outpourings of public scorn (I’m looking at you Senator Dorgan) that were heaped on the short-lived terrorism futures market yesterday. If you read anything about the…

Primary Sidebar

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

2023 Pet Calendars

Pet Calendar Preview: A
Pet Calendar Preview: B

*Calendars can not be ordered until Cafe Press gets their calendar paper in.

Recent Comments

  • eclare on Florida Man No More (Jan 30, 2023 @ 12:01am)
  • satby on Florida Man No More (Jan 30, 2023 @ 12:01am)
  • Honus on Medium Cool – Give Us A Song and Tell Us Your Story (Jan 30, 2023 @ 12:01am)
  • Mike in NC on Florida Man No More (Jan 29, 2023 @ 11:59pm)
  • piratedan on Medium Cool – Give Us A Song and Tell Us Your Story (Jan 29, 2023 @ 11:57pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Favorite Dogs & Cats
Classified Documents: A Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup

Front-pager Twitter

John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
ActualCitizensUnited

Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice   

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!