Until the lamb is king of the beasts.

Fun facts about Memorial Day

2011-05-30T13:38:00.001-07:00

Subtitled: Why I Hate the South, Part 37

1. The first Memorial Day was a gathering of liberated slaves in South Carolina who thought it cruel that the locals had dumped a bunch of bodies of Union soldiers in an unmarked grave in Charleston. On May 1, 1865, they gathered near the mass grave, disinterred the bodies and gave them all, individually, a more proper burial. Literally THOUSANDS of people showed up for this, pretty much all of them black.

2. The organization of the Grand Army of the Republic, which had become a relief organization for distressed Union veterans, started "Decoration Day" celebrations on May 30, 1868--a day chosen because there was no major battle held on May 30.

3. As Reconstruction ended, Confederate states, not to be outdone, established their own versions of the holiday. Each state initially picked a different day, making a fine point of NOT picking May 30. Eventually, as the mythology of the Lost Cause spread, the Southern states settled on June 3, which JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE Jefferson Davis' birthday.

(Actually, they had a separate Memorial Day, too, but it was Jefferson Davis' birthday that was the state holiday, not Decoration Day. Should clearly illustrate the priorities of Southerners.)

4. A few Southern communities, such as Columbus, MS, mourned ALL the war dead, not just the Confederate soldiers, but this is notable only because it was rare.

5. World War I horrified everyone enough to stop making it about rehashing the Civil War, and eventually the entire nation standardized on May 30. The name gradually changed from "Decoration Day" to "Memorial Day", not officially becoming known as such until 1971, also the first year it was celebrated on the last Monday of May. This year, it just so happens to be May 30.

6. Lest you accuse me of politicizing Memorial Day, that's EXACTLY what people did in the early years of it, both in the North and South, and they kept doing it until, once again, World War I temporarily shocked them out of their idiocy.

7. So, today, take a few minutes to think of a soldier who died in agony on a lonely battlefield for someone else's pride. Because if you did that every day, you'd go mad with grief and rage.

h/t for this to Michael Moore, of all the fucking people

I'm gonna Keynes ALL OVER YOUR FACE

2011-03-12T19:47:00.000-08:00

"Too big to fail" is an unfortunate colloquialism for a very real problem called "systemic risk." We faced systemic risk in late 2008. I'll give you some examples of how our entire financial system nearly came to a screeching halt, which would have resulted in failure of dozens of major corporations, the loss of tens of millions of jobs, and a deep deflationary depression that would last for a generation.

The first thing that was happening is that people were buying so many T-bills that the yield was actually negative. For instance, they were paying $10,001 to the government for a guarantee that they would get $10,000 90 days later. This is more than just a quirk--negative bond yields indicate that people with large sums of money no longer trusted the banking system at all. They were stashing their money in the only place they thought was safe--the US government.

The problem with this move is that in times like this, investors see the negative yields on T-bills and freak out and flee corporate bonds as investments. This was a serious problem for a company like GE, which had several bonds due, but the bond market was in a condition called "ask only", which meant that NO ONE was bidding on bonds. This was very, very bad, as it meant they would probably default on the old bonds. Further, defaults on those bonds would cause any corporations holding those bonds to default on THEIR bonds, and on and on and on.

When people running business start seeing THIS happen, they start to hoard cash. Oh, wait, they're doing that anyway. This is, in fact, the cause of our protracted high unemployment. With businesses hoarding cash, they're not investing in new business and hiring people.

Anyway, you can see how this can rapidly get out of control. This is why the government had to intervene. It did so very poorly, which means if we face systemic risk again, we're probably fucked.

By the way, this phenomenon makes inflation and deficit fears 100% WRONG, and trying to reduce the deficit in the current financial environment is going to take us back in the direction of systemic risk, but a slower, grinding form that develops over months and years, rather than the imminent world of shit that we faced in 2008.

The reason it is wrong is that for deficits to be a problem, there has to be investment in the private sector that is "crowded out" by deficit spending. But there is nothing to crowd out right now. The MARKET HAS SPOKEN and it says that THE GOVERNMENT is the most attractive investment at this time, yet the leaders of our government are terrified of spending money on anything actually useful (that would be--GASP--SOCIALISM!) and giving their investors a good return.

The result will be deflation, economic stagnation, chronic unemployment, and increasing misery and rage and a risk of a fascist uprising.

This is Keynes 101, BTW. 19-fucking-33 all over again.

Why car-sharing services rule, and why taxing them at 20% is lame.

2010-09-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

Zipcar: Main site.

Since I moved to Pioneer Square in Seattle, I knew that trying to own a car would be stupid. I can walk to nearly everything I need, which is great exercise, and I can ride the bus to work. 90% of the time I do not need a car.

However, I do have friends in South King County. I do have situations where I need to reach several transit-poor locations in succession. Or maybe I want to group a bunch of errands together and run them all over town. So what do I do without a car?

Car-sharing is the answer, and without it, living in city would be a lot less practical. Zipcar is the dominant provider of this service. You simply reserve a car online when you need it and pick it up, using it for any interval the car is available, from one hour to four days. You then return it to the same spot at the end of your reservation. There are a few rules you need to follow, but once you get used to them, it becomes second nature.

Zipcar provides many benefits both to users and non-users. Here are the benefits to users:

* You get a new or close-to-new car without a car payment. This means you're unlikely to suffer a breakdown.
* You can drive a wide variety of cars tailor-made to your purpose. Want to just run some errands? Get a Prius. Want to carpool to a party? Get a minivan. Need to run to IKEA? Get a pickup. Want to impress a client or date? Get a BMW. Want a pleasure drive? Get a MINI Cooper. Etc, etc.
* For a small damage waiver, you don't have to worry about damage or insurance. Though it's smart to carry a non-car-owner's liability and uninsured motorist policy anyway (inexpensive), you're covered for minor insults via Zipcar's master policy.
* Gas is included in your rental fee, so you know how much you're paying for driving at all times. It becomes a known, budgetable item. The only surprise fees you may encounter is if you break a rule, like not returning on time or forgetting to leave 1/4 tank in the car, and such fees are clearly enumerated.
* If you live in city, Zipcars are now everywhere. Sometimes it's hard to find one on a nice Saturday afternoon, but I have NEVER been unable to find a car within a mile of my house (and I don't mind walknig a mile). The convenience is compelling.
* Unless you have young children, not having a car enables you to afford to live in areas previously considered out of reach financially.

I drive Zipcar a lot and I typically pay around $500/month. $100 of this would pay for gas anyway, so imagine trying to buy/insure/pay taxes on/park NEW cars for $400/month. You just can't do it. And if you don't have to go all the obscure places I do, you can probably get by on much less.

Here are the benefits for everyone else:

* Downtown apartment/condo vacancy rates are reaching sky-high levels, and one of the things that helps reverse this is car-sharing. People not having to need cars all the time makes living downtown more attractive, especially for singles.
* Increased density makes things better for local economies...people walking by a shop are FAR more likely to stop in on a whim and spend money than people driving by, and the money saved by not having a car allows people to spend it.
* Massively reduced environmental impact. One car now serves an average of 10-15 people or more. Rather than each of us buying a car that sits unused in a lot somewhere, we each pool together and use ONE car, together.
* However, it doesn't measurably hurt car companies. Zipcar steadily acquires new cars in fleets from both manufacturers and other places, which is cheaper for automakers to deal with, and helps keep people employed. Further, it's better to sell 1/15th of a car to someone every few years than it is to not sell new cars to city dwellers at ALL.
* Having to reserve a car makes you THINK about whether you need a car. This helps you rearrange your life to use cars as little as possible, and walk or bike more. This takes cars off of freeways and out of parking lots, freeing up more space for other people.
* Car-sharing encourages people to live closer to city centers, reducing commute times, increasing leisure time, and clearing the freeways for people who want/need to live farther out.

It's compelling: Car-sharing is one step towards a more sustainable culture.

So, my only complaint about all this is the following: After all this, why do Zipcar users get saddled with up to 20% in taxes? Not only do we have to pay full "use taxes" (equivalent to sales taxes), but we are often hit with rental car taxes as well.

WHY? We still pay taxes on gas, and Zipcar pays taxes on buying the cars and registering them. Zipcar MIGHT even be paying business & occupation taxes on rental fees. Why, then, do we have to pay additional taxes when we are doing our communities a huge favor by abandoning cars and living a more sustainable lifestyle? This is INSANE.

I had a politician argue with me that asking for tax relief on car sharing in a time of fiscal crisis is not good politically, but really, how much is Washington State collecting from Zipcar? I don't think they're going to miss the money. But 20% might make the difference between someone being able to afford car sharing or not!

Thus, today, I'm starting the Twitter tag #NoTaxesOnCarSharing to see if we can start a social movement against this unfair practice by government.

Please help by spreading the word.

Why I want to win, and win the right way.

2010-09-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

I got into a tweet fight with @toddeherman about this on Sunday. Todd is a long-time colleague of mine, and he is also currently the director of social media for the Republican National Committee. Though I would like to consider him a friend, obviously that friendship is going to be strained by our fundamentally incompatible political goals, and we're certainly going to get into it from time to time, and Sunday was no exception.

I'm not interested in repeating the thread here, though if I get bored later, I might try to reconstruct it. Basically, what was at issue was my anarchist leanings. Todd expressed skepticism that I could be an anarchist if I backed Obama-care, the welfare state, unions, etc.

What Todd says is true under ordinary circumstances. A "pure" anarchist quivers in rage at any sort of government no matter what it tries to do. However, such anarchists aren't very effective, because they have no place to put a stake in the ground and work for change. They are immediately isolated and neutralized as threats, probably by the criminal justice system, and thus they have no hope of having any impact.

Because I understand this, I have to be more crafty in my approach to anarchism. It comes down to this: I resent terribly being forced to support the system of global capitalism as a matter of personal survival. Just about no matter what I do, I have to participate in the destruction of people, species, ecosystems, and possibly the planet's future ability to sustain any form of significant multicellular life. Sure, it SICKENS me.

But if all I do is run around blowing stuff up like my anarchist ancestors did, what good will it do? I'll end up in jail and/or dead, and the system will go on. I can't fight this system by targeting people with violence and making THEM miserable in revenge. That doesn't get me anywhere. First, I'll alienate the very people I'm trying to help. Second, I'll be neutralized. I guess on that score I'm not a very good anarchist.

Or maybe I'm the best anarchist ever. Because I have no effective choice, I no longer have to feel bad about participating. Maybe I can use the rewards of the capitalist system to work towards its destruction. Maybe I can put my financial resources and creative talents working towards its destruction from the inside. Maybe I can get others to join me.

Look at it this way. America, as it is today, is doomed. More generally, capitalism. More generally, our civilization itself. All are based on endless expansion, endless exploitation, endless violence, and endless environmental destruction. Well, not endless. Eventually you expand to the edges of the earth. Eventually you run out of new resources and people to exploit. Eventually you kill everyone you can get away with killing. Eventually you wreck the planet so much you can no longer survive. Sooner or later, the system WILL collapse. And in that way, I will win.

Unfortunately, if I win that way, I'll be dead and so will everyone else. So will most of the life on the planet, and it will be millions of years, if ever, before the ecosystems recover.

So, what to do? Well, we have to replace our civilization with one NOT based on endless expansion, exploitation, violence, and environmental destruction. Given that few civilizations have ever survived without these principles, I am not realistically expecting to succeed. But it's our only chance, and I get a thrill towards striving towards low-probability high-reward outcomes.

Thus, today I am a progressive. I fight for unions. I fight for the welfare state. I fight for universal single-payer healthcare. Development of sustainable agriculture, cities, and energy. And I'm going to get more and more insistent we implement these things. And if it undermines the "efficiencies" of capitalism, GOOD, because we need to undermine its "efficiencies" before those efficiencies kill all of us.

Tomorrow, I'll take it to the next level and fight for internationalism. It wasn't communism and fascism that killed a billion people in the last two centuries. It was NATIONALISM, and nationalism is a central feature of the mental disease that is Western Civilization. And we must get rid of it. We must learn how to find a way to relate to other people without regard to lines on a map.

I don't know what happens after that. If we are still here, though, I'm sure the path will be obvious. And I hope to see you there to walk down that path with me.

Oh, and I'm not even going to be sneaky about it. I'm going to do this right under your nose. If I do end up dead or in jail, you'll know that it was because someone is lying about what America stands for. Which, sure, most of the "America first" people do anyway, but that's besides the point.

The state of things, seven weeks before the election.

2010-09-14T00:23:00.000-07:00

It's pretty obvious that the political right has royally screwed this country in terms of foreign relations and domestic policies. They have no answers going forward, they KNOW they have no answers going forward, and allowing their opponents to discover and implement any answers would freeze them out of politics for another generation (just as it did in the 30s), so they are inventing as many non-issues as possible so they can maximize chaos in case some plan becomes apparent.

Everything that has transpired this year in the political arena has done so according to this design. Inexplicably, the Democrats have let them get away with it, which makes me fear that the Democrats either have no answers either, or are too afraid to implement them (my money's on the latter).

Glenn beck attaches the dogwhistle to a megaphone.

2010-08-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Bertram Wyatt-Brown: Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South

I am a native of the border South. My entire family is from Arkansas, most of whom descended from poor subsistence farmers from Tennessee who fought for the Confederate Army, and the rest descended from Cherokee refugees. Because of classism, Southerners from the deeper South distrust the "Southernness" of white Arkansas, but trust me--the South still lives in rural Arkansas.

Glenn Beck is throwing around a phrase: "Restoring Honor." This sounds like a good thing, but in the context of this anniversary of a certain speech, it is, in fact, a horrible thing.

In his awesome book referenced above, Bertram Wyatt-Brown teaches us that "honor" is actually a form of tight social control. And now when Southerners speak of honor, they refer to the memory of something lost: white privilege to dominate slaves and even freed blacks, clearly defined subservient roles for women, and a strict system of economic stratification, all of it enforced by a firm belief in the concept of "honor". The oral history of my family agrees with this notion 100%. Honor was so powerful that it caused my ancestors to fight for the South pretty much against their own interests. The notion that the Civil War was fought merely over slavery is too simplistic. The way Wyatt-Brown put it was that slavery loaded the gun, but "honor" pulled the trigger.

Thus, "honor" is what we now call a dogwhistle--it's a way for racists, sexists, and people who believe the wealthy have the right to dominate us all to quickly identify each other.

Thirty-seven years ago today, a preacher from Montgomery, Alabama stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and gave us a passionate vision of a world without this destructive concept. It was his dream. It is the dream of all oppressed people who were oppressed in the South, all people similarly oppressed worldwide, and all people who hate this kind of oppression.

MLK SPOKE AGAINST HONOR.

When the raving lunatic Glenn Beck holds his stupid rally today, remember what he is restoring. "Honor." Not the honor that you and I think is good, but the honor that ruled the South. This is what Beck stands for, and it's what the Tea Party stands for.

THEY ARE KILLING MLK'S DREAM. And they must be stopped. Before they succeed.

Five very simple yet politically impossible ways to lower unemployment NOW.

2010-08-25T11:23:00.001-07:00

1. MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPENDING. With treasury rates being at near all-time record lows, the government should be spending money like it was about to become illegal. Not mere tens of billions, but TRILLIONS. Spend until the 10-year Treasury note reaches 6%, which was considered tolerable during the Bush Administration.

Right now it's 2.5%, and the 30-year is even more ridiculous at 3.5%. If people were afraid of inflation, you wouldn't be seeing rates like this.

2. MAKE IT HARD TO HOARD CASH. Tax the fuck out of corporate profits unless a percentage is invested into R&D.

3. MAKE IT EASIER TO GET CREDIT. The government should engage in arbitrage of Treasuries to loosen up business credit slightly to companies with good (AA or better) ratings.

4. INCENTIVIZE HIRING BY MAKING IT SO CHEAP TO HIRE THAT IT'S DUMB NOT TO. Abolish FICA and fold it into regular income tax (but at first don't bother, just run a deficit, see point 1). Continue to pretend FICA exists to compute Social Security benefits eligibility. And, duh, single-payer health insurance. Both would cut the overhead of hiring someone nearly in half.

5. EXPAND THE SCOPE OF FLSA AND SHORTEN THE WORKWEEK TO 35 HOURS. Companies are working 1 person 80 hours a week instead of hiring 2 people working 40 hours a week each. This could be fixed by tightening up the requirements for considering someone salaried and also reducing the nonsalaried workweek to 35 hours.

Wrong About Everything! ii., Cordoba House.

2010-08-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

Any of the following can be learned in about 15 seconds with Google.

1. Cordoba House is not even the name of the project. The name of the property is Park51 and the project is officially called "The Community Center at Park51". "Cordoba House" is just one part of this development.

2. It is doubtful that Cordoba House is actually a mosque. The Arabic term for such a building is a masjid, and it is not at all clear that Cordoba House will impose the same restrictions on non-Muslims that a typical masjid would. Reading through the literature of the Cordoba Initiative especially, non-Muslims would be perfectly welcome to attend, say, salat (one of the five daily prayers) so long as they were not disruptive. Further, it does appear likely that non-Muslim services would be permitted.

"Ecumenical worship center" is likely more accurate than "mosque." Sure, it will primarily cater to Muslims. That's like so bad or something in the eyes of teabaggers, but whatever.

3. It doesn't represent radical Islam. It is being developed by two extremely ecumenical organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (which sounds scary but is in fact moderate-to-liberal) and The Cordoba Initiative (which is an ecumenical body similiar to Christianity-centric interfaith councils).

4. It isn't at "Ground Zero." The nearest point of Park51 to the nearest point of the World Trade Center complex is 2 blocks. That does not seem like a very long way to most people, but in lower Manhattan there is a lot of stuff crammed in a two block area.

5. Inconsistent much? News Corporation's second-largest shareholder is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed. News Corporation is the parent company of Fox, including the Fox News Channel. Teabaggers: If Muslims are involved in a global conspiracy to fuck up America, why are you spending all your time watching a news channel partially owned by one--especially a member of the Saudi royal family whose own dedication to the moderate tenets of Islam is in doubt.

Wrong About Everything! i. Bond Vigilantes Are on the Run

2010-08-16T11:30:00.001-07:00

First in the "Wrong About Everything!" series, showing that the GOP and associated Tea Party idiots haven't just become unmoored from reality, but they've lost sight of its shore.

Paul Krugman: Holy Bond Yield, Batman

So the long bond has plummeted to 2.57%. This is extraordinarily low, and it shows that bond traders have absolutely no fear of the impact of deficits. Quite the contrary, it shows they fear pervasive deflation.

To put this in perspective, when the Bush Administration ran the credit card hot to fight a pointless war in Iraq, the rate was typically around 4.5%. And in the late 90s, when the deficit was nonexistent due to higher taxes AND healthy economic growth (yeah, don't get me started), it ran nearly 6%.

At these rates, the government could refinance quite a bit of its existing debt and save enough in interest payments alone to pay for ten of the weak-ass stimulus bills that the GOP is going nuts about.

If 6% was nothing to worry about in the greatest period of economic expansion in recent memory, why are we freaking out about 2.5% now? We should be running the printing press nonstop until rates climb at least that high. And I submit that running it up to 10% to prevent a deflationary nightmare is probably not unreasonable.

Conservatism isn't just unmoored, it has lost site of reality's shore.

2010-08-10T00:12:00.000-07:00

Small business owner Michael Fleischer in WSJ: "Why I'm not Hiring"

Edited to add: Apparently this is Ari Fleischer's brother. Thanks for disclosing that, WSJ. Oh, wait, you didn't.

This is why modern conservatism is stupefying.

On the one hand, we can't have single-payer, because that's like socialism or something. On the other, small businesses can't hire because it's too expensive to create jobs because of the excessive costs of providing health insurance.

Which is it?

One the one hand, conservatives argue only the top 1% are actually paying any taxes. On the other, a working class employee is paying a quarter of her putative salary in taxes.

Which is it?

On the one hand, it's bad to impose sharply progressive taxes on the wealthy. On the other, the government is turning small businesses into tax collectors so they can nickel and dime the working class to death.

Which is it?

Old-school conservatives knew they either had to pick one or the other or at least hide the fact that they were engaging in contradiction. But modern conservatives?

Eh, reality is for liberal schmucks. WHO NEEDS IT?

You know what's wrong with this country? SOCCER.

2010-06-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Amanda Marcotte, "Pandagon" : The wingnut anti-soccer lie machine, or how teabaggers determined England is in South America.

Conservatives have been spouting off about how the rise of soccer is indicative of the downfall of America, most notably G. Gordon Liddy.

I bet you didn't know that the rise of soccer's popularity runs parallel to the rise of illegal immigration. Or that soccer was developed by South American cannibals who kicked the head of their fallen foes around after eating the body.

Amanda already covered the race-baiting particulars of this idiocy. Let's look at how hilariously bad-crazy-wrong all this rhetoric is on its own merit.

A little of my own personal history--I grew up in Tulsa, OK. In the late 70s, Tulsa was hardly a bastion of illegal immigration. My working class East Tulsa neighborhood was about as racially diverse as a neighborhood ever has been in Tulsa, consisting of about 1/4 blacks, American Indians (primarily Cherokee and Creek), Asians, and--yes--Mexican-Americans (such as College Hall of Fame and Dallas Cowboy defensive end Tony Casillas, who grew up 3 blocks from me.) After a few years of pickup games of football, baseball, and, yes, soccer in the backyard, my parents enrolled me in a recreation soccer league under the auspices of the Green Country Soccer Association, at the time one of the largest such organizations in the country.

Yes, that's right--right in the center of the redneck, Southern Baptist Bible Belt soccer was A BIG FREAKING DEAL.

Oh yeah, about all the kids in the East Tulsa league--despite the racially diverse (for Tulsa) neighborhood. THEY WERE ALL WHITE. Most of the nonwhite kids did Pop Warner football instead. The Mexican kids? THEY WERE ALL PLAYING BASEBALL AND FOOTBALL.

(Hey, you fucking right-wing knobs--what the fuck do you think a "soccer mom" is anyway? Yes, that's right, MY MOTHER, in 1979, a redneck conservative Christian.)

There's more to this story than just the fact that soccer has been the #1 adult participation team sport in this country for more than a generation (finally supplanting bowling in the 80s). Idiots like Liddy seem to forget that MLS is the second attempt at a professional soccer league in this country. The first was called the "North American Soccer League", which was really the "American Soccer League", but added the "North" out of respect to the two Canadian teams.

Oh, yeah, Tulsa. Tulsa never had a premier-level professional team before 1978. Oh sure, we had the short-lived USFL Oklahoma Outlaws, but our first real, genuine pro team was the Tulsa Roughnecks, our NASL franchise. The Roughnecks played at the University of Tulsa's Skelly Stadium, which was a concrete slab covered in Astroturf. I can't imagine playing soccer on something like that, but legends such as Georgio Chinalia and even Pelé endured the risks to bring the glory of professional soccer to eager American fans. Especially kids like me, who wated superstars to look up to in much the same way my football-playing buddies looked up to Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach.

Hell, I still remember names like Billy Caskey, Victor Moreland, Gene "Dr. Du" DuChateau, and Barry Wallace. By the way, three out of four of these guys (as well as half the team, usually) were from fucking ENGLAND, which is where soccer REALLY COMES FROM, you history-challenged MORONS.

NASL games never had much trouble selling tickets. The trouble is that the league couldn't make money because soccer is fundamentally incompatible with the American media model for generating ad revenue from sports. Other mainstream American sports have natural breaks for ads. Footaball games pause 1 minute and 50 seconds on EVERY change of possession and EVERY timeout called before 5:00 left in the half. Basketball games have MANDATORY stoppages every 4 minutes of clock time. Hockey has similar provisions. Baseball, of course, has side changes and pitching chages. Other sports were edited in advance as montages.

Soccer, however, was a problem. What national TV network in the early 80s would tolerate 45 minutes of continuous action? There were other issues, too--soccer had its own conventions such as the referee keeping the official time and making his own adjustments for stoppages. Earlier generations of artificial surfaces were awful. Stadiums built for football before 1980 did not have soccer in mind, and the pitches were ridiculously narrow (this is still occasionally a problem in MLS, by the way). NASL experimented with rule changes to make the game more America-friendly, which annoyed both the fans and FIFA.

In short, NASL was ahead of its time, and died an ugly death in 1984. But it wasn't because people didn't enjoy it. It's because the corporate media oligarchs couldn't figure out how to make money from it. MLS fares better, because of smart marketing. For instance, creating artificial scarcity by limiting ticket sales to the lower sections of multipurpose venues. Also, technology allows for electronic ad boards along the pitch, generating ad revenue that can be shared with broadcasters. The end result is that you have more trouble getting MLS tickets in more cities than, say, NBA tickets.

Oh, sure, many teams have a large Latino contingent for fans. But only in those areas with lots of Latino people to begin with. Go to a Sounders FC game some time, Liddy--it's a sea of white faces. Not to mention that its chief owner is a white dude who grew up playing soccer on fucking MERCER ISLAND. Oh yeah, and we all know about the club's more famous backer--that great Latino comic and The Price is Right host Drew Carey. Oh, wait, I guess he isn't Latino. Oops.

Finally, sure, we did have to learn a little Spanish to enjoy the World Cup. Everyone on my soccer team, anyway, was pleased to learn that Tulsa Cable (now part of Comcast) was adding SIN (now called Univision) to its lineup in time for the 1982 World Cup. People weren't really all that worried about illegal immigration in 1982, but it was true that the Spanish-speaking communities of our country were crazy about the World Cup (by the way, SIN's primary audience in those days were Cubanos in Miami and Puerto Ricans in New York--NOT Mexicans, though sure a lot of Mexicans watched it from the LA area, an area that has had Mexicans for, gee, I don't know, 500 years.) That inspired me to take five years of Spanish in junior high and high school. I've follwed every World Cup since. And now I don't even have to understand Spanish to follow the action (a development that didn't occur until FUCKING 2006, by the way.)

I suppose the teabagger contingent doesn't even bother with the truth--if they make things up ABOUT FUCKING SOCCER OF ALL THINGS in order to incite racial hatred....well, I guess the Crazy Train hasn't just left the station, but it's nearing its destination. If it weren't so serious, it would be laughable.

ED. xix. LOL, census fail.

2010-04-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

Rick Ungar: Bachmann census conspiracy theory may cost GOP big-time.

I never thought of it that way. But now have figured out why the White House didn't exactly encourage Bachmann to shut up. They probably went "LOL, hee hee, go ahead and boycott the census conservative douchebags."

It even took Karl Rove--the Elephant King of Douchebaggery himself--until JUST LAST WEEK to notice how mindlessly stupid it is for Congresspeople like Bachmann and Ron Paul to lobby against participation in the Census. It's sort of like a bizarre form of infanticide, where you don't do too much to wreck your life, but you completely ruin things for the next generation of Republicans. Can't say I'm shedding many tears.

Nineteenth in a series on Elephantine Douchebaggery, a catalog of the most hilariously obnoxious right-wing asshattery.

Sorry, that dog doesn't hunt.

2010-03-31T07:38:00.001-07:00

Ross Douthat in the New York Times: A Time for Contrition.

Now that the Holy Father himself is ass-deep in the Catholic child-rape coverup nonsense, you'd expect the sackcloth and ashes to come out from the conservatives.

Nope. They're getting even more obnoxious in their buck passing.

Look, Douthat, you fucking asshat: Liberal attitudes on ADULT sexuality do not correspond to taking advantage of children. It's bad enough that the most recent evidence moves the bubble on the Magisterium's ethical level from "ethically incompetent" to "actually evil", but the fact that apologists like you don't see that removes the last shred of credibility you had as social critics.

And if you think this problem is NEW in the Church, THINK AGAIN. It's just now that no one is afraid of the Church's social power anymore, people are coming forward. Finally. And that's the crux of the problem here, isn't it? People like you are upset that the Church has little social power here in AD 2010, and that makes you WAY more sad than kids getting raped by people they're taught from birth to trust implicitly.

Any hope I had that this development would finally discredit the conservative Catholic apologists is destroyed. It's actually emboldened them to become more obnoxious. The madness inflicted upon the world in AD 324* will continue unabated, I guess.

Just remember what's in the Good Book, you morons:

Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Matthew xxv., 41-46 (NRSV)

And if Jesus is going to send you to hell for failing to stand up for those who have been lawfully imprisoned, what do you think he will do to you if you fail to stop priests from raping children, oh dear "Blessed One?"

[For those of you who don't speak Catholic, that's what Benedictus (Latin for "Benedict") means in English. I think we should change his name to Maledictus, myself.]

*And lest you think that I am a Catholic-basher, what I mean by this is that Constantine I's ascension marks the end of the transformation of the Church from an organic, socially conscious, life-affirming body to an imperalist, oppressive, life-destroying nightmare. And though I like the way Catholics do liturgy, I will never be able to stomach Catholicism until this changes. Looks like that will happen no time soon.

And trust me, Protestants are just as bad. Worse, really, because they tend to be better at making weapons.

[By the way, H/T to Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. I wanted to say my own piece about it, but I also agree with all of her remarks, so go read that, too.]

Pretending to be a teabagger.

2010-03-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is a Marxist fascist socialist Muslim Stalinist communist Nazi Jew.

How did I do?

[New York Times: Next Year in the White House: A Seder Tradition ]

[H/T: Dave]

Five reasons why it is awesome that Steve Jobs told Adobe to suck his balls.

2010-03-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

Five reasons why it is great the iPhone OS (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad) doesn't support Flash:

(1) Flash is evil and needs to die right now. It is a massive security hole and is not accessible. Moving away from Flash will probably get rid of half the viruses out there. It was the worst proprietary adoption since the <BLINK> tag.

(2) The most obnoxious ads use Flash. No Flash support = no obnoxious ads. Ever. Until they port them to HTML5, anyway.

(3) I couldn't care less about stupid Facebook games.

(4) Media companies are already trying to support HTML 5 video, which works seamlessly on the next version of the iPhone OS.

(5) The ONLY things that ever crash on my Mac are Flash and Microsoft Entourage--and Flash crashing on the iPhone OS would probably crash the whole device.

Yeah, sure, Steve Jobs is a dick. But he's a dick that runs a company that makes good stuff. If you have to put up with a dick, make sure he's at least good at what he does. Adobe, on the other hand, is evil and their stuff is awful. Fortunately, Flash is a walking corpse.

Prefer deferring the solvable problems over the unsolvable ones.

2010-03-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

In the news:

Financial Times: IPCC's AR4 actually understates effects of climate change.
China Daily: Oxygen levels declining.

While those in right-wing land are busy excoriating British climate scientists for perceived sins of 15 years ago that are completely irrelevant to modern issues of climate change and biosphere destruction, those of us in the reality-based community are presented with a building mountain of highly disturbing realizations.

Stories like this explain why I'm not terribly concerned about intergenerational fiscal and political threats. A balanced budget and strict adherence to the Constitution aren't of much use when you're suffocating or can't find food because most of the edible plant and animal species are now extinct.

I feel like humans can solve human-scale problems such as deficits or political chaos given enough time. But creating a runaway feedback loop in the climate or destroying the systems that create oxygen for us to breathe will be a far bigger and maybe even unsolvable problem.

Therefore, I'm thinking that you might as well universalize health care and target tons of government dollars developing sustainable forms of energy, even if you have to do it by running the printing presses nonstop. Yeah, sure, you might destroy the currency, but if you succeed, you will have a wealth basis to reboot the system and also have the luxury of debating what that replacement system might look like.

I don't think my grandchildren (or more to the point, the grandchildren of those I love, since I will never have biological children of my own) will be very fond of us if we give them a balanced budget but no breathable oxygen. And, conversely, if we wrecked the economy making sure they had air to breathe and food to eat and medicine to heal them, they might forgive us for our fiscal and constitutional sins.

Blog Restart: Saving the Cato Institute a lot of money. . . .

2010-02-26T12:54:00.001-08:00

Cato Institute: Is There a Place for Gay People in Conservatism and Conservative Politics?

No.

They should've just asked me. I could've saved them a lot of money.

Oh wait, you're talking about the UK. The answer is more like "probably" in that case.

At least they're smart enough to know the answer is "No" as far as the US is concerned. Fuck the Cato Institute in the ear, anyway.

Here's what Jason Kuznicki, a gay Cato employee (WTF?) asked of Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, though:

I got to ask Maggie Gallagher the question I've always wanted to ask her: What do you think that am I supposed to do with my life?

Suppose I found myself in agreement with her. Suppose I concluded that same-sex marriage was corrosive to society. Do I leave my husband? Do I send my adopted daughter back to the state? Enter ex-gay therapy, which isn't likely to work? Tell my whole family that I'm single now, and that Scott shouldn't be welcome at family events? Live my whole life alone, and loveless? Hide? Where is the life I'm supposed to live?

I probably wasn't so articulate at the Cato event, but I do recall Gallagher's very simple answer: "I don't know."

She certainly doesn't, and that's the whole problem with gay conservatism -- there's hardly a life to be lived within it. There's no breathing room. Until social conservatives offer us a better answer than "I don't know," until they offer us a way to be gay, and conservative, and respectable in their eyes, they're not going to find many gay conservatives.

Serious pwnage, but I'm not sure who just got pwned there.

H/T: Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Fucksticks. Fucksticks all.

2010-02-04T11:04:00.001-08:00

I'm sorry, but Wall Street? You are a bunch of fucksticks.

First, you run stocks up on temporarily improved earnings. But you KNOW how those companies improved their bottom lines, right? By laying off as many people as they could.

Now, you're upset that unemployment continues to increase?! Well, you fucking morons, HIRE PEOPLE. Oh wait, that would hurt the bottom line.

The world is stupid. Burn it all down.

Exhibit A. An idea that could've worked, but....

2010-01-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman: Jobs Not Created

I got an idea--instead of passing tax breaks helping the rich get richer, let's instead make an offer to those who hire people. If you increase your payrolls, we'll give you a break on payroll taxes. The CBO analysis just showed that it has the most bang for the buck of any similar proposal, and it's not even close.

But why wasn't this tried? BECAUSE OBAMA HAS NO FUCKING BALLS, THAT'S WHY.

Fuck it.

2010-01-21T10:24:00.000-08:00

Yes, indeed: fuck it.

The election of Scott Brown shows us only one thing--the American people are self-destructive. They do not want hope. They do not want change. They want to watch America go down in flames and then fight each other for the scraps.

Well, fine. If you can't beat them, join them.

The Democrats, led by Barack Obama and Howard Dean, are certainly not up to the task in reversing the disastrous course this nation is on. We needed to see, immediately, the following occur to have any hope of saving our cushy American existence:

1. Massive investment in research and development of non-carbon sources of energy, and most especially, energy storage. Have we seen any progress? No. Will we see any? No. Progress: Zero. Long term prognosis: Hopeless.

2. Sweeping reforms in access to healthcare and reprioritizing treatment and diagnostics to seek patient wellbeing rather than choosing what stuffs the health care industry's pocket? Progress: Zero. Long term prognosis: Hopeless.

3. Massive incentives away from people joining the parasitic MBA class and more towards learning how to create things of actual value--art, new technology, new scientific breakthroughs, and so forth. Progress: Zero. Long term prognosis: Hopeless.

4. Any sort of creative idea to prevent the utter destruction of the middle class. Progress: It's getting worse. Long term prognosis: Hopeless

To be honest, I didn't have much hope in Obama's election actually changing anything, but I went along, thinking that if we had any hope at all we had to elect him. Well, we've elected him, and absolutely nothing has changed. We're sort of limping along, but limping along isn't good enough.

We face very serious crises in climate, energy, food production, health, and economic sustainability within the next generation unless serious action is taken now. And the Democrats are unable to muster the sheer force of will and personality to get these things done. Obama is a fucking joke--a half-wit who can't do shit unless he's in front of a teleprompter. He is even less impressive than John F. Kennedy, a man who was so ill he would qualify for Social Security Disability if the 1960 version of him were alive today. That's an amazing accomplishment for a man who we placed so much hope in.

Seriously, fuck it. Let's just burn the whole thing down. The best way to fan the flames is to vote Republican. I think I'm going to start voting Republican in every election, just to accelerate the collapse. We might as well get it over with.

WTFF. xiii. This post should be shoved up the noses of those who think that "discovery" based math instruction is great.

2010-01-13T15:34:00.001-08:00

Cliff Mass: How Good Are UW Students At Math?

Consider these embarrassing statistics from the exam:

The overall grade was 58%

43% did not know the formula for the area of a circle
86% could not do a simple algebra problem (problem 4b)
75% could not do a simple scientific notation problem (1e)
52% could not deal with a negative exponent (2 to the -2)
43% could not do simple long division problem with no remainder!
47% did not know what a cosine was.

These are kids taking an introductory course in Earth and Space Sciences. Ostensibly, that is not something required of all students, so I think I can safely assume that these kids are basically interested in science. So it's fucking criminal that these kids do not come to college with the tools needed to learn what they are interested in.

This isn't just an appalling indictment of pedagogical theories of the last twenty years. This isn't just a regional embarrassment. This is an existential crisis. Economic recovery will never occur without major advances in biomedical and energy technology, and without the next generation having a solid foundation in mathematics, the situation is utterly hopeless.

Makes me want to become a math tutor, like yesterday. I could come up to speed on the crap I can't remember off the top of my head in a long weekend, and kids I taught would run laps around the typical UW freshman within weeks.

Read it all. It should make you very angry.

The dark side of the anti-vax movement.

2010-01-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

USA Today: Missed vaccines weaken 'herd immunity' in children

Vaccines do not protect everyone. Some people need to not be exposed to certain illnesses to begin with, because immune defects have devastating consequences when they are exposed to those diseases. This is called "herd immunity," and is a very important component to the public health aspect of immunity.

People are starting to buy into the anti-vaccination nonsense (and yes, it is total nonsense), and this sort of thing is the consequence. Read it all, it's heartbreaking.

How to be elephantine without being a douchebag.

2010-01-13T13:55:00.000-08:00

Ted Olson op-ed in Newsweek: The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage

I didn't realize very many conservatives like this still existed, and the ones that do have remained utterly silent lately, probably afraid of being called RINOs or worse. But Ted Olson steps up and punches the douchebag contingent of the Republican Party in the face.

On the other hand, the last thing I really want is Republicans starting to sound reasonable again, because that means they'll start winning elections. Democrats are floundering on their divided loyalties to the financial elite and the dispossessed (probably a 90-10 balance, which is why things like health-care reform are going so badly.) However, I do like a challenge, and more like this from the right will be a game-changer.

But it's not likely. What I suspect will really happen is Ted will be torn limb-from-limb from the Palin-Malkin dominant wing of the party. That will be sad, but hang in there, Ted.

Christopher Hitchens: Intellectual complexity and atavistic Islam.

2010-01-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

Michael J. Totten: An Interview with Christopher Hitchens, Part I

I've had complicated feelings about Christopher Hitchens. I first encountered him back in 2002 via the film version of The Trial of Henry Kissinger. When I read the book, I was blown away by the quality of Hitchens' writing and thinking. He's definitely a heavy-duty intellectual for our times--comparable to, say, George Orwell. I also thought of him as an atheist version of C. S. Lewis because of his vivid moral clarity.

Unfortunately, I got rather disillusioned with him after that. Because he generally went all-in in support of George Dubya Bush's crass military adventurism in the name of "fighting terror," or whatever the fuck it was supposed to be. As annoyed as Hitchens was with theists in general, he seemed really afraid of atavistic Muslims--the kind who support things like 9/11, burqas, and other obnoxious extremities of Arab and Islamic culture. He got so obnoxious about it that he proclaimed that waterboarding wasn't torture.

I mean, that was puzzling! Why would he write such a damning treatment of Kissinger, but then turn around and support the same obnoxious bullshit 4 years later?

But he's had some encouraging rethought about some of these positions. The first thing is that he said, "you know, maybe I'll try waterboarding." Afterwards he said, "if that isn't torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

This interview also suggests he has a more clear idea of the sorts of things he's afraid of. The interview is worth reading, because it will restore your confidence in Hitchens if you are left-leaning. On the other hand, i worry a little that he is not critical enough of the civilization he defends--he freaks out about toxic ideas in Muslim culture, but he appears insensitive to similar ideas in our own culture.

Along these lines, I've been promising a critique of Hitchens' ideas and those of the other "Four Horsemen of Atheism" (Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett) for some time, ever since I've read Harris' pathetic offering, The End of Faith. I'm still working on it, though.

Fun stuff: How to totally confuse your friends with archaic Latin phrases and abbreviations.

2010-01-05T11:01:00.001-08:00

Most people know "etc." It's short for et cetera, which means "and so on," used to denote a list that continues into irrelevancies.

But why stop there? Why use plain language when you can use highfaluting abbreviations? Impress or confuse your friends with these, inter alia (among others).

et al., short for et alii, "and others". Used like etc., but when mentioning proper names of things.

i. e., id est, "that is". Use it when you would otherwise say, "in other words".

e. g., exempli gratia, idiomatically meaning "for the sake of example."

viz., videlicet, "namely."

cf., confer, "compare to" or "consult with."

q. v., quod vide, "which [you should go and] see." Used to denote a cross-reference with something else in the same work. For multiple items, you should use qq. v.

idem, "the same". In a list of things, if you're too pretentious to use "ditto," use that. If you really want to confuse people, use i. q., short for idem quod, "the same as."

ibid., ibidem, "in the same place." An archaic way of citing consecutive uses of the exact same source in a bibliographic citation. But if you really want to hose someone, use it in another context.

op cit., opere citato, "in that which was cited." Similar to the previous, but perhaps of a different section of the work.

Q. E. D., quo erat demonstrandum, "which was to be demonstrated." When making an argument where you are proving something, you say this after you prove it. A highbrow way of saying, "so there!"

ergo, "therefore."

quære, "you might ask." If David Byrne was Roman, the verses of "Once in a Lifetime" would be a lot shorter. Used to anticipate criticism of a rhetorical position. You also get bonus points if you use the "æ" ligature so your writing causes encoding drama.

ceteris paribus, "other things being equal." An assumption that controlled variables are actually controlled. A lot of economists use this, especially stupid ones.

And, of course, when accusing someone of logical fallacy, a good command of Latin phrase will give you that extra bit of authoritative mojo:

non sequitur, "it does not follow." When the conclusion of someone's argument doesn't seem related to the premises at all, or the relationship is misleading because of inappropriate context.

ad hominem, "at the person." When you call someone names or attack their character instead of addressing their argument. The "instead of" is key. Insulting your opponent in addition to tearing their bad logic apart is simply a breach of decorum, not fallacious. Of course, sometimes ad hominem is good, clean fun, especially on your own blog.

And my favorite, post hoc ergo propter hoc, "afterwards, therefore, caused by." A fallacy of correlation vs. causation. Two temporally related events may, in fact, have different causes, so you need additional evidence to establish causality.

If you have favorites of your own, let me know.

Happy New Year (late though I am).

2010-01-05T01:38:00.000-08:00

My friends, I have not abandoned you. But I am doing some private journaling right now to get my thoughts together. I promise there will be much more. Hang in there. ;)

HCR. xi. A shit sandwich is still a sandwich.

2009-12-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

I toyed with the idea of joining the progressive backlash against the serious disappointment that is the health care reform legislation. However, the dead left center's reasoning prevails in my mind.

Though a shit sandwich, it's still a sandwich. We need to deliver a sandwich, or we lose all political momentum. Later, we can clear out the shit and put real meat in it. It's way easier to do that than to provide a sandwich from scratch later. That is the nature of politics.

Which is the true face of the police?

2009-12-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

OC Weekly: Illegally Park-ed.

So if you live in Washington State, you've probably had the names of Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold, Greg Richards, and Timothy Brenton etched in your mind. Well, if not, these are the names of five policemen recently assassinated in the Seattle area. The first four were gunned down in a coffee shop in Lakewood, WA on November 29 by a felon who decided he wanted to go out in a blaze of...something. The fifth was executed by a deranged former security guard with delusions of persecution.

I've had a hard time with the media saturation of these two events. Yes, sure, we are shocked by any murder in the Seattle area, as we have a low murder rate. Losing a parent, spouse, and friend so suddenly is, of course, awful when it happens to anyone. But, really, why is a death of a cop any more traumatic than the death of anyone else? I am sure these five were good cops and decent people--at least, if the truth were different, we'd never discover it now.

But given the generally poor behavior of police these days, it amazes me more that before Timothy Brenton, it had been thirty years since a cop was assassinated in this state. For example, take the case of this douchebag in Irvine, CA--David Park. He got caught stalking strippers and exchanging sexual favors in exchange for not citing them for speeding.

Given the cop's inevitable acquittal (because we are conditioned to adore cops and loathe strippers, apparently), I'm given to believe that this is far, far more commonplace than you hear about. Because what stripper is going to press charges against a cop and draw the rage of all of his buddies in blue if this is the kind of shit that happens?

What I want to know--and will never be allowed to find out: what is the ratio between the five cops murdered (ostensibly) and cops like David Park?

Also, young women, take note: This is yet another reason why it's not a very good idea to go into sex work. Cops pretty much have free reign to abuse you.

ED. xviii./WTFF. xii. The true, true facts about Chuck Norris--

2009-12-17T22:04:00.000-08:00

--he is fucking insane.

Chuck Norris: What if Mother Mary Had Obamacare?

Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington's wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

Seriously, what the fucking fucking fuck?

The woman who reacted to news of her unbelievable pregnancy with "My soul doth magnify the Lord" probably isn't going to follow up with "by the way, where's the nearest abortion clinic."

Your fists may violate the laws of physics, Chuck: But you're still an Elephantine Douchebag.

Can't cut the minimum wage.

2009-12-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman: Would cutting the minimum wage raise employment?

Krugman ably demonstrates the strange calculus that governs large, complex economies. The basic argument goes like this:

1. If you cut minimum wage, the cost of offering goods and services will decrease, and prices will go down.

2. Employers will use the cost savings to hire more workers, lowering unemployment.

(This will happen even in above-minimum wage jobs, as many jobs are indexed to minimum wage in some fashion.)

Seems sensible, but the problem is:

1. Employers, being in a bad mood and scared, will probably not hire anyone anyway.

2. Because so many people are in debt, falling wages will make their debt burdens more painful.

3. Because most of their income will go to debt service, people will actually spend LESS.

4. It will increase the amount of labor available, reducing in even further depression of wages, leading to 1-3.

5. The local decline in prices will strengthen the dollar. This seems like a good thing because it will reduce energy prices, but it's actually bad as it makes debt burdens heavier.

Nope, apparently what you need to do instead is....RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE.

Economics is hard. But that's only because it is the study of a large group of people, each with their own contradictory desires.

Understanding what wealth, money, debt, and property really are, and why Austrian economists end up being nearly entirely wrong about everything.

2009-12-12T12:46:00.001-08:00

Economics is difficult to understand because it's simply another area of human behavior. And human behavior is almost entirely impossible to understand, both in the individual and in the group. Patterns emerge, of course, but the patterns can lead you to horrifically wrong conclusions, both about what is really going wrong and what to do about it.

So, to the point:

What is wealth?
What is money?
What is debt?
What is property?

It turns out that all four are instances of the same type of thing: Social contracts. They are all social contracts. There is no "objective" standard for any of these things--they all depend on mutual understanding of social conventions. They do not, in fact, exist in the "real world". They exist only in the minds of people.

You might object, "but when I own a house, the house exists." And this is true--the house, as an object, exists. But your ownership exists only in your mind and the minds of others. It's a contract between you and other people. It's not really just one contract--it comprises a group of hundreds of other contracts, written and unwritten, some of them actually contradictory.

There is no first principle that looks at any model of social contract and proves "this is always right" and "this is always wrong", because the proof itself depends on yet more social contracts. The first principles of Austrian economics (or any Enlightenment discipline, in fact) are not first principles at all, but observations built upon other social contracts that people don't dare recognize as equivalent in type to all the others.

So now that I unloaded that on you, here is what I might suggest: What if what you learned about the nature of the these four expressions of social contracts is, in fact, a lie? What if the rules you had to live by concerning these things were different than they were for a chosen elite?

Wouldn't you be more than a little pissed off? Of course you would. And why do you think you can solve these things by saving and buying gold?

Paul Volcker agrees: Financial sector gigantic parasite.

2009-12-09T16:54:00.001-08:00

This is not just me talking out of my muck-raking ass. Paul freaking Volcker agrees.

An interesting trend.

2009-12-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia: National debt by US Presidential terms.

When you hear the rightsphere complaining about Obama's "spend our way out" proposals, remember this chart.

When Republicans are President:

Debt levels (relative to GDP) INCREASE.
Income earned by the bottom 20% (relative to inflation) STAYS FLAT OR DECREASES.
Income earned by the top 1% MASSIVELY INCREASES.
Social spending DECREASES.

When Democrats are President:

Debt levels (relative to GDP) DECREASE.
Income earned by the bottom 20% generally INCREASES.
Income earned by the top 1% INCREASES to a lesser extent.
Social spending INCREASES.

The ONLY President to buck this trend is Eisenhower, who would probably be far too liberal to run as a Republican these days.

Obama will probably buck this trend because he was set up badly by his predecessor, but I guarantee that things will come close to matching if he is elected for a second term.

Invite your Republican acquaintances to explain this trend. If they can't, invite them to shut the fuck up and get out of the way.

GateGate. ii. Fox News: Fair. Balanced. Innumerate.

2009-12-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

ThinkProgress caught Fox News claiming that 120% of people think scientists are lying about global warming.

Talk about irony.

Fuck yeah: Bankers' bonuses hit with gigantic tax surcharge in Great Britain.

2009-12-09T14:38:00.001-08:00

Guardian: Bankers' bonuses hit with 50% super-tax in PBR

This post is going to make my friends who work in the financial sector sad, but I agree with Paul Krugman: The financial sector has proven to be nothing but a life-draining economic parasite.

Time to set tax policy accordingly. Of course, since even the Democratic Party is in the pocket of the bankers, this will never, ever happen in the USA. But, way to go Right Honourable Alistair Darling!

ED. xvii. This is the rightsphere.

2009-12-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

Little Green Footballs: Hot Air Comments of the Day

Even though millions read his blog and almost no one reads mine, I feel kind of a kinship with Charles Johnson. It's getting silly--the last few days I've just been reblogging a lot of his stuff.

I wanted to cut down on that, but this is just too good to pass up.

Hot Air is a project started primarily by hate blogger Michelle Malkin, who is most infamous for her suggestions that the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War was just peachy. She's also lately said that people who can't find jobs in the worst job market in 25 years are just lazy and looking for "government cheese." Given her campaigning against anything that looks like health-care reform, she also probably thinks the same thing of the sick.

In other words, she is a paragon of Elephantine Douchebaggery and currently the reigning Queen of the Rightsphere.

Both on her site and on her project Hot Air, the comments left by her fans are just fucking ridiculous, and Charles catalogs them in the previously referenced post. Read it.

WTFF. xi. Who are going to buy these, exactly?

2009-12-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

Apparently Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson has come up with the good idea of selling war bonds to finance our misadventures in southwest Asia.

Everything old is new again, it seems.

Or something.

What the fucking fuck?

ED. xvi. OH TODD PETRUNA NO.

2009-12-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

Sixteenth in the "Elephantine Douchebaggery" series that explores the rightsphere* at its most pathetic and obnoxious.

Talking Points Memo: My God, I Love This Story

Where to start?

Some NASA employee must've read too much John Ringo and then claimed to the rightsphere* that he single-handedly stopped a Muslim hijacking. I mean, this is multiple lolwut per minute hijinx here. Of course, the rightsphere ate this up with a spoon.

Only one problem--the airline he flew on (AirTran) denies that the event took place. In fact, they can prove that Petruna wasn't even on the fucking plane. So, of course, the rightsphere now is wailing about the MASSIVE CONSPIRACY to cover up Petruna's "heroic" deeds.

You just can't make this stuff up. I'm sure the Democrats will find some way to lose seats in 2010, but stuff like this is generally encouraging.

---

*rightsphere = Neologism I just coined to capture the wingnut blogs, talk radio shows, RNC figureheads, and other collected morans.

GateGate. i. Peter Sinclair speaks out about the latest non-scandal scandal.

2009-12-07T12:21:00.001-08:00

First in a series called "GateGate," an exploration of the non-scandal scandals stirred up by the right wing concerning things they don't like.

Here's Peter Sinclair breaking down the unbelievably stupid ClimateGate non-scandal scandal.

Hat tip: LGF

ED. xv. Their biggest friend turns his back.

2009-12-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

Little Green Footballs: Why I Left the Right, Exhibit A

Charles Foster Johnson is the proprietor of Little Green Footballs, a site that was primarily a "rah-rah" blog for the War on Terror pretty much since September 12, 2001. Not being one of the "rah-rah" types myself, I followed the blog anyway because it was one of the better such warblogs, and I thought it would be interesting to see if any of the warbloggers could come up with something even resembling a decent argument. None of them did, of course, but if any of them came close, it was Johnson.

Of course, when he was in full rah-rah mode, the right wing loved him to death. He was frequently a guest of the right-wing talk set, and he was the 800-pound gorilla when it came to journalistic integrity concerning the War on Terror. Most famously, he uncovered the "Memogate" scandal that ruined the career of Dan Rather.

Since Obama got elected, and since he realized that nobody really likes "rah-rah" on the War on Terror anymore, he's gotten his head pretty much completely out of his ass. As a result, the right has totally turned on him. And he's returned the favor.

You should read most of what he's written lately. It's pretty reasonable. Of course, he can be occasionally obnoxious. Well, so can I.

However, whatever you do, don't read the comments. They will just piss you off.

Decoding my politics.

2009-12-07T11:45:00.001-08:00

If you want to know what my politics really are without me saying words that scare you, here's a handy guide.

If it makes a member of the elite sad, I'm for it. A member of the elite could be a prominent businessman. Or a church leader. Or a powerful politician. A military contractor. Or a general. Entertainment celebrity. Professional sportsman. Investment banker. Doesn't matter--if it makes a member of this class of people upset, it's probably a great idea.

If it makes someone who is not part of the elite feel a little better, and the elite bear most of the cost, then I'm for it. These are things like universal health insurance, workers' rights, gay marriage, legalizing marijuana, approving stem-cell research, and junk like that.

Anything that undermines the ability of the "global economy" to stick it to the rest of us (that is, the non-elites) is awesome. Developments to make offshoring jobs untenable are great. Making it too expensive to set up sweatshops in the third world is great. Carbon taxes are awesome. And so forth.

And, of course, for completeness: anything that runs counter to the above sucks.

So, really, if you wonder where I'm coming from on these issues, this guide should help.

And, by the way, this is why I never vote for a Republican. This doesn't make me a Democrat--Democrats also run counter to these ideals more often than not. But Republicans run counter to them nearly 100% of the time (or even when they accidentally support one plank they obnoxiously undermine the other two). This is why I focus on them at this time. It's just a matter of damage control, really.

These are "palliative" ideas--that is, these guidelines are meant to contain the damage caused by our toxic culture. The "transformative" ideas I have are far too scary, so let's stick to these for now.

ED: xiv. Maurice Clemmons, Huckabee's Willie Horton

2009-12-01T07:18:00.001-08:00

The Background

A deranged ex-con named Maurice Clemmons (aka Clemens or Clements) walked into a Lakewood, WA coffee shop one fine Sunday morning and shot four cops to death. During the assassination, one of the cops got off a shot and hit him in the chest.

Clemmons' friends and family helped him evade the cops for nearly two days and tried to tend to his wound. While it was clear Clemmons was facing imminent death from his wound, the cops finally tracked him down to the corner of Kenyon Street and 44th Avenue in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood. When dealing with cop-killers, the policy is generally shoot-first and ask questions later, and that's exactly what happened.

Clemmons is dead, and about eight of his closest friends are going before The Man to answer for their aid of him.

The Twist

Clemmons is not from here, but from the land of my ancestors: Arkansas. He was a very bad man, committing several violent felonies and eventually finding himself in prison facing what effectively was a 108-year sentence.

Enter theocrat and douchebag-supreme Mike Huckabee, who was governor at the time. For some inexplicable reason, Huckabee went through the dregs of the criminal justice system and cut their sentences down dramatically. In the case of Clemmons, Huckabee reduced his sentence to approximately 46 years. Huckabee cited the fact that Clemmons was only 17 when he was sentenced and decided to give him one more chance. Since Clemmons had served 10 years at that point, he was eligible for what used to be called "parole," but is now called "community supervision."

Clemmons got his CS case transferred to Washington, and he moved to Tacoma a few years ago. He was supposed to be on CS until 2015. However, he kept screwing up, and eventually he was arrested on other charges. They offered him bail pending his revocation hearing, which he posted. Then he went out and shot four cops.

The Scurry

Huckabee, knowing he'd probably be held to account for his strange choice of clemency, fired a pre-emptive shot. He blames it on everyone he can blame it on--Arkansas prosecutors, Arkansas courts, Washington prosecutors and law-enforcement, Washington DOC, etc., etc. Everyone but himself.

One little problem--Larry Jegley, the Pulaski County, AR prosecutor who saw Clemmons locked up in the first place--was constantly on record objecting to Huckabee's decision. Oops.

Second little problem--Pierce County, WA sheriffs had done due diligence in locking him up.

Third little problem--DOC had, in fact, followed their due diligence in requesting a revocation hearing. The rules that applied to Clemmons (because of the date of his original crime) guaranteed him bail pending this hearing.

So, sorry Mike, the fingers all point back at you. He dug deeper anyway, releasing this little tantrum.

Not willing to give up the shovel, last night he went on Fox News to whine some more.

Nixon's Law

I call this little problem "Nixon's Law", which is:

Coverups and buck-passing always cost far more than apologies.

This is a reference to Watergate, of course. Had Nixon said, "Whoops, that was bad, and I've punished/fired the men responsible," he probably would've served two terms. Or at least finished his first one. But the heel-dragging and coverups and blame-passing ruined his Presidency.

So goes Huckabee's Presidential aspirations, we can hope.

Willie Horton

In case you don't know who Willie Horton is and why he was significant: Wikipedia.

We must not let Huckabee get out from under this. These four slayings should dog him for the rest of his political career and drown out his voice.

Gosh, that sounds kind of tacky. Unfortunately, this is what full-contact politics lead to. I didn't ask for this world, but if that's the way the right wants to play ball, then that's what they're going to get from me--a gigantic shit sandwich.

ED: xiii. And yet more...

2009-11-28T11:32:00.001-08:00

Take a look, Glenn Beck tells soldiers not to reënlist because the government might label them "baby killers."

So, apparently, "support our troops" is only necessary when your guy is in power.

Do we really have to take the right seriously anymore? And show them the respect that one would show the "loyal opposition?" I say no. I say jump on the right while it is down and rhetorically pummel it to death.

As most people my age learned from the classic video game Mortal Kombat:

FINISH THEM!!!

Hat tip: Charles at Little Green Footballs. I'm utterly amazed at how useful his blog is these days.

Apropos of the last.

2009-11-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

In a Facebook comment concerning the last post, my friend Thomas points out that certain stolen emails from places like BP or Exxon ought to be extremely enlightening.....

I mean, seriously, do Republicans even think anymore?

ED: xii. The Republican Party: For entertainment purposes only.

2009-11-28T00:27:00.000-08:00

Twelfth in a series on "Elephantine Douchebaggery," an ongoing investigation into the most obnoxious of right-wing obnoxiousness. And, boy, it's getting weird.

OH NOZ WE FOUND AN EMAIL AND NOW WE SUEZ U.

Climategate is such bullshit I don't even know where to begin. But, seriously, I welcome it. As long as the right is stuck on this kind of shit, they have no chance to increase their influence.

No chance.

The skies will soon be unsafe.

2009-11-06T23:33:00.000-08:00

Background: Boeing just announced that they are building their second 787 production line in North Charleston, South Carolina instead of Everett, Washington.

Now, watch this video.

And you thought the people in Everett were backwards. Think about this when you board a plane to Europe or Asia 10 years from now....

Victory! R-71 wins, I-1033 loses.

2009-11-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

Also known as: Ken Hutcherson: Go fuck yourself
or: Tim Eyman: Go fuck yourself
or: Eastern Washington: Go fuck yourself

This is pretty self-explanatory, but one thing bears further examination. Look at this map. Right-wingers will whine about the tyranny of the coastal population, but I will say yet again: Go fuck yourselves.

While we're on this subject, let's take a look the typical Eastern Washington county budget, say Douglas County. Here is an admittedly highly simplified view of the situation:

When you can pay the cost of running your own county, you can begin complaining about the tyranny of the coast. As long as we're helping you pay your bills, though, shut the fuck up.

Republican spin on election results: Hilarious

2009-11-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

Jake Sherman @ Politico: Steele declares 'Republican renaissance'

OMG, this is too funny. Oh, sure, they picked up a couple of seats, but the fact that they torpedoed moderate Dede Scozzafava for ideological purity and lost a sure Republican seat shows that nothing but disaster is looming for the GOP in the future.

Steele is a zombie captain--the inmates are surely running the GOP asylum.

It would be like Charlie Manuel saying that the World Series was an amazing success for the Phillies because they won 2 games!

Jon Stewart sends up Glen Beck

2009-11-06T20:51:00.001-08:00

No, really, Glenn Beck really is this absurd.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The 11/3 Project

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Hat tip: Paul

OK, one more on R-71.

2009-11-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Don't Ask Don't Tell

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Religion

Hat tip: Wendy

Final thoughts on Initiative 1033

2009-11-02T12:27:00.001-08:00

Seriously, do I even have to talk about this anymore? I have two things to say:

1.Tim Eyman is so 1999. Your 15 minutes of fame are way, way overdue, Timmy baby. It's time for you to fuck off now. That should be a good enough reason to reject 1033.

2.Eyman is a disciple of Grover Norquist. This is Norquist's mantra: “I want to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.” Well, Eyman has been busy with the first part of this mission, and he has been mostly successful. His initiatives have created a structural deficit in this state so obnoxious that the only escape is massive budget cuts in a time of growing need for government services.

So, what's left? Well, it's time to drown it, of course. If you pass 1033, you will help Eyman fill the bathtub.

That's pretty much all you need to know. The merits of 1033 are irrelevant. If you think the government has any role at all for anything, regardless of what, you should reject it. It's pretty much that simple.

Approve Referendum 71, or you suck.

2009-11-02T08:58:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow the election is over. I just want to make one final statement on this issue for this cycle.

The people who put R-71 on the ballot to begin with are wrong. The people who want you to reject it are wrong. Their arguments are specious, their fears are misplaced and irrelevant, and yes, they are bad people.

That is a simple fact. I'm tired of being nice about this. People have the right to band together for survival. They do not have to do this in a way conforming to the desire of religious fundamentalists. Yes, fundamentalists. Being polite and conciliatory to our opponents gets us nowhere. It's time for us to stop fucking around and call them out for what they are.

R-71 hurts no one. The fiscal nightmare cited by the “reject” camp is utterly specious. In ten years this so-called impact might add up to 20 million. This is a drop in the bucket in the state budget. In fact, balloting on this goddamned initiative will likely cost the state more money than the first year's implementation of SB 8053. I mean, seriously, people.

R-71 does not undermine marriage. People who want traditional marriages will still be able to have them. They will not lose any benefits. They won't even have to share the term for their relationship pattern with anyone else.

I mean, seriously, the arguments for rejecting R-71 are so thin they deserve nothing but contempt and little serious consideration for rebuttal. Frankly, it comes down to one issue: If you hate gay people or anyone else who wants to take responsibility for their chosen families, go ahead and reject it. But we're going to call you out for what you are. I'm tired of “reasonable people will disagree.” All that type of thinking does is get us punched in the nose.

One more time: If you reject this measure, you are a small, jealous, evil person.

Everyone else? Well, vote to approve it already, and get that ballot in the mail!

Whew.

2009-10-30T19:15:00.001-07:00

Been kinda busy, but I have a new laptop, so hopefully I'll find more time to update. I have a huge backlog, and so there will be a flurry of activity soon.

Torture is ubiquitous.

2009-10-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

Atul Gawande in the New Yorker: Hellhole.

While some still argue over whether waterboarding is torture, I serendipitously found this article concerning long-term solitary confinement. It's bad enough that we treated POWs that way, but we are torturing thousands of American citizens every hour of every day, as we speak.

Now throw prison rape into the mix along with the morans who say "tee hee wait until J. Random Sex Offender shares a cell with 'Bubba'", and I think you have to conclude that our culture is celebrating torture instead of rejecting it.

So, then, why are we especially shocked and outraged when our enemies torture and kill American citizens in especially obnoxious ways? Because we assign nearly infinite value to some lives and nearly zero to others. That's why.

ED. xi. Great article on The Family.

2009-10-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

Dave Burns and Jeff Sharlet: Behind the closed doors on C Street

The Family is a dominionist political organization combining what is most obnoxious and destructive about Christian fundamentalism and conservative politics into one big special ball of fail. Jeff Sharlet is a disaffected member of this group and wrote a tell-all called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Here's an example of the grotesque nature of this group:

I was invited into The Family by a man who had dropped everything and moved to Washington to work with them. While he was there, his fiancee was raped. He wanted to jump on the next airplane to be with her, and his brothers in Christ decided to exercise their veto power. They said, “What was your fiancee doing in a bar without you? Perhaps this was God’s way of telling you that you are not supposed to be with this woman.”

They called her a Jezebel. They told him, “You are not to go and see your fiancee.”

Thank God this man did not listen, broke with The Family and went to his fiancee.

But wait, there's way more.

Absolutely. Everyone is entitled to the freedom of religion. I am a fanatic about freedom of religion. Ensign is free to believe these things, but if he’s going to this place for spiritual authority, he is turning to a group that regularly invokes as leadership models Hitler, Stalin and Mao, whom Doug Coe said are three men who understood the New Testament best in the 20th century.

He means that they are evil men, but what they understood is that the New Testament is not about love, mercy, justice, forgiveness. It’s about power.

I’m saying this not just to the voters of Nevada, but to all the Christian conservatives in Nevada who voted for Ensign because he presented himself as a Christian. Perhaps they would like to know what he means by Christian.

Does he read the New Testament and think it is only about power, and then does he apply that in the world?

I recommend reading all of it.

Hat tip: Paul, my "godfather"

HCR x.: Public option whipping.

2009-10-22T13:02:00.001-07:00

First of all, let me give props to my own Congressman, Adam Smith, for getting on board with the public option when it matters. I know he's got a difficult district to represent, so this courage is difficult and it's important to me that he goes along.

Open Left shows that we have 210 of the 218 needed on board for the public option. If we can get this through the house, this would be a huge help.

ED: x. "Send a message" about R-71? WTF?

2009-10-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Tenth in a series called "Elephantine Douchebaggery," an exploration of the most harmful obnoxiousness of the right wing. This post concerns Washington Referendum 71, an attempt to repeal a bill passed by the legislature granting expansive domestic partnership rights to same-sex couples.

So, I have heard an ad on the radio repeatedly by some organization opposed to same-sex partnership rights. The ad is something like, "Let's send a message to the Legislature that there are more important problems than this by rejecting R-71."

I'm flabbergasted. It doesn't make any goddamned sense whatsoever. The legislature has already acted. It's done. What is distracting us from the necessary business of taking care of our state is YOU DOUCHEBAGS PUTTING THIS GODDAMNED REFERENDUM ON THE BALLOT.

WSJ op-ed page: Smug is all we have left.

2009-10-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal: A Perfect Nobel Pick

This is why I haven't taken the WSJ editorial page seriously since...well...ever. Of course, going all-in on obnoxious militarism is out of vogue now, so the pro-eternal-war folks are now reduced to this smug, passive-aggressive sniping. (While we're talking about stereotypes of Scandinavians, being passive-aggressive is another one, Mr. Stephens.)

Hilarious. Nope, pretty much still can't take the WSJ editorial board seriously. The deserve it less now more than ever, in fact.

Hat tip: My friend Gregg. Sorry, man. I hope our diverging political views don't jeopardize our friendship. I tried to be gentle on your Facebook page, at least.

ED: ix. Why we can't ignore Michelle Malkin.

2009-10-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ninth in a series called "Elephantine Douchebaggery," dedicated to pointing out the most outrageous of right-wing outrages.

Charles Johnson: Anatomy of an Outrageous Outrage

If Michelle Malkin weren't reliably the #1 right-wing blogger, I would just simply ignore her. But we can't. Just about everything she does is massively harmful, and therefore we have to take the time to call her out on it. Every single time.

And this right here might be the most outrageously outrageous outrage ever, er, outraged.

DNC pulls alongside RNC and delivers a broadside with full cannon.

2009-10-09T22:48:00.001-07:00

Greg Sargent: DNC: Steele And GOP Have Thrown In Their Lot With The Terrorists By Criticizing Obama’s Nobel

The most fucking awesome thing I've ever seen the DNC write:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.

The DNC doesn't need to say anything at all, really, because it's obvious. But I'm glad they're finally going for the kill on stuff like this.

R-71: What's at stake.

2009-10-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

If you are planning vote to reject Referendum 71, you are denying the partners of gay people the following:

* Victims' rights, including the right to receive notifications and benefits allowances.
* Business succession rights.
* Legal process rights, such as the ability to sign certain documents, the requirement to join in certain petitions, rights to cause of action, and ability to transfer licenses without charge.
* The right to use sick leave to care for a partner.
* The right to wages and benefits when a partner is injured, and to unpaid wages upon death of spouse.
* The right to unemployment and disability insurance benefits issued to a partner.
* Workers' compensation coverage.

(Taken from a post on Strange Bedfellows, the P-I political blog.)

If you are going to deny people these things because your obnoxious, inhumane, life-destroying religious preferences are offended, well FUCK YOU. You are what we call a "bad human being" if you oppose R-71 or even if you signed anything to put that shit on the ballot to begin with.

I'm tired of falling back on the thought-terminating cliche of "reasonable people can disagree." That is true when discussing whether the Angels will sweep the Red Sox. It is NOT TRUE on issues like this.

Seriously, fuck you, and get the hell out of my state. Move to some place where the culture supports fucking over gay people, like Utah or Oklahoma. And take Ken Hutcherson, Mark Driscoll, Tim Eyman, and Susan Hutchinson with you.

ED. viii. So that's what Ken has been doing.

2009-10-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

Opponents of Referendum 71 (expanded domestic partnership rights) have offered up an ad already. And it's a doozy:

I would, you know, address the issues raised by this nonsense, but shit like this is beneath contempt and beneath the dignity of a response.

I think I hear Ken Hutcherson's voice in the background, too. Fucking douchebag.

Steve and Jeff: Suck my balls.

2009-10-08T06:01:00.000-07:00

I am going to laugh in the FACE of any IT exec (such as Steve Ballmer or Jeff Bezos) who complains about the labor market conditions for senior software developers. First they created the market condition that drove potential geeks out of the field, then they complain that nobody is graduating in this country with computer science degrees. Now they want even more H1-Bs to compensate, threatening to move yet more jobs to India if they don't get their way.

Yeah, seriously, tell me how that's working for you!

I mean, assume you are a bright young 18-year-old geek in 2001 or 2002. You look around and hear about coding jobs being either sent offshore or given to non-immigrant guest workers. Now, what degree are you going to get? Are you going to get a BS in computer science and be the guy who gets laid off all the time? Or are you going to get a BBA in MIS and an MBA and be the stuffed-shirt asshole who decides to send everything offshore?

I mean, this choice is obvious, right?

Except now we have too many MBAs and we still can't find enough people to write code.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Morons. I DARE YOU TO COMPLAIN ABOUT IT.

Mankiw: Sack up and just say it.

2009-10-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Greg Mankiw: (1) Unemployment Update (2) Accountability?

The question I have for douchenozzles like Mankiw is "what is your freaking point?" The financial crisis we faced last year is pretty much the worst thing that we faced since World War II. Trying to figure out what the fallout from that would be was not really possible.

He's trying to place the Obama Administration in a double bind: Either the stimulus "made things worse" or "you are constantly moving the goalposts to avoid accountability."

I now suggest the most likely scenario: Douchenozzles like Mankiw and the people they serve deliberately obfuscate things in order to make any government intervention hazardous. On the one hand, they say 'oh, it CAN'T POSSIBLY' get that bad. And then when it does, they can say, 'see your programs MADE IT WORSE.' This way they can discredit any government attempt to alleviate suffering, so they can stuff their pockets full of loot while the average American faces financial ruin.

Yes, I think that sounds about right.

Krugman answers all your questions.

2009-10-07T11:18:00.001-07:00

Krugman: Answering Your Questions on the Economy

I don't agree with all of it, but it's good stuff, and I suggest reading it. It might also fuel some posts of my own.

"The End" of Faith

2009-10-06T11:20:00.001-07:00

I just now got around to reading The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris.

I will post a more complete critique and rebuttal later (though I will not be rebutting the things you think I'm rebutting). However, a few thoughts:

1. Harris is not anything close to a critical thinker. He is a reflexive rationalist--he has patterns of thought that he recognizes as rational, and anything deviating from those patterns is "irrational" and therefore bad.

2. Like most modernist materialist atheist positivists, he is still way too wrapped up in "correct" or "incorrect", thereby replacing one harmful orthodoxy with another.

3. He does not understand the main criticism of rationalism and secularism with respect to the horrors of Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism. Yes, it is indeed true that Christianity played its roles in the first two. However, he doesn't even come close to understanding why his materialist philosophy was absolutely necessary to perpetuate these horrors and perpetuates them even now. He claims the problem is that those regimes "abandoned reason", but his lack of critical approach to the process of reason makes his arguments completely incoherent.

4. He rightfully criticizes the violent history of Islam but doesn't stop to think about why someone in Saudi Arabia or Egypt would be motivated to attack Americans without the constant humiliation of Arabs by the American government and corporate elite. He simply declares that jihad against America was an inevitability, even though the expansion of Islam through violent conquest had not been of serious concern to the West for hundreds of years.

5. He totally overlooks the very real and pervasive lack of ethics by his fellow "co-religionists": scientists. He utterly fails to see that even "rationalism", materialism, atheism, and positivism cannot protect one from utter irrationality and even horrid abuse.

Anyway, that's a start. In a later post we'll look at specific examples from the text. All I can say now, though, is that if you think for a minute he totally obliterated the notions of religion, faith, and theism with that piece of shit, you are sorely mistaken.

Hi, Dave. Hint: Don't poop where you eat.

2009-10-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

New York Times: Letterman Reveals Extortion Attempt

I didn't think Dave had it in him to make that sort of thing work, but I guess he likes to get it on with the ladies. Who work for him. Not the smartest idea you ever had, Dave.

Rats, one fewer red herring to keep Republicans occupied

2009-10-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

New York Times: Chicago Loses Bid for 2016 Olympic Games

Well, looks like Michelle Malkin will have to find something else to write about. This is bad--she might stumble on a substantive issue.

Nah.

ED: vii. Glenn Beck, paragon douchebag.

2009-10-02T02:09:00.000-07:00

Alexander Zaitchik at Salon: The Making of Glenn Beck

Yeah, that is awesome. This guy got his start by pulling stunts like calling a crosstown rival and taunting him about his wife's miscarriage. Great guy, this Glenn Beck. He represents the kind of decency and humanity that Republicans are well-known for, so good luck with your partnership, there, guys.

(There's three parts to this damned thing, and I think you should read them all, so you get an idea of what this guy is about.)

ED. vi. Grayson, schmayson.

2009-10-01T18:26:00.000-07:00

Yahoo News: Is Alan Grayson the Democrats' Joe Wilson?

Shortest answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: Are you out of your fucking mind?

Yes, Alan Grayson is dangerously insane. So what? HE IS AWESOME ANYWAY.

Listen up, douchebags: He didn't compare it to "The Holocaust". He called it "a holocaust." Yes, he intentionally used the h-word to drive up the rhetorical stakes. So what? Republicans do that sort of shit all the time.

And, furthermore, what do you call 44,000 eminently preventable deaths every year other than a "thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life" as Webster's second definition suggests?

Republicans didn't appreciate being called out on this very real statement of the Republican attitude towards health care for people who can't afford it. Let's review:

1. Don't get sick.

2. And if you do...

3. Die quickly.

This very accurately captures the Republican attitude, and this is what you morans out there are upset about. The "holocaust" hoo hah is just a douchebaggy tantrum in reaction to a very accurate and hard-hitting criticism of the Republican platform.

Yeah, boo hoo, Grayson told it like it is. DEAL WITH IT. The more you do this shit, the dumber you look.

By the way, REPRESENTATIVE SMITH OF THE WASHINGTON 9TH DISTRICT, this is what HAVING BALLS looks like. (Or if you hate the sexist overtones of such a statement, we can simply use the word guts.)

ELCA's position on same-sex marriage.

2009-10-01T15:18:00.000-07:00

A friend, Heidi, who is a Lutheran in an ELCA church, asked me to write about the recent policy document passed by the ECLA membership on same-sex relationships. The short version: Life-long, monogamous same-sex relationships are compatible with Christian sexual ethics, but we should probably call them something other than marriages.

Of course, a lot of people are freaking out about this. Heidi asked me to address this. How can we justify this policy decision from a standpoint of Christian tradition and scriptural justification and all that good stuff?

Short answer: Well, we can't.

That's not going to make anyone very happy, least of all Heidi. But hear me out. Well, it's a really long argument, but I hope it makes sense.

ELCA stands for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The "Lutheran" church is the American name for the "Evangelische Kirche," or "evangelical church", a Christian tradition started by Martin Luther in the early 16th Century. Martin Luther was a monk who was upset about a lot of practices in the Catholic Church, but the main thing he was upset about is that the Church was strongarming people to cough up money they didn't have to purchase something called indulgences. Receiving an indulgence was a way of reducing one's time in Purgatory being cleansed of one's sins. Usually you got them by performing some impressive act of piety, but the Church was short on cash and had taken to selling them. Of course, the entire doctrine of Purgatory also got on Luther's nerves, because it seemed to him like it was a thought experiment gone awry.

Sound familiar? Of course, to a Christian, it sounds quite a bit like the situation Jesus addressed in the story of the money-changers. Here we have representatives of the church encouraging people to starve their families so they can receive something they shouldn't have to pay for. We all know what Jesus did in response to nonsense like this--he flipped all the tables upside down and started beating the money-changers.

Luther knew that using that tactic would probably get him killed, so instead he wrote a document called The Ninety-five Theses, which he published in 1517. He wanted to engage his superiors in the church and ask them certain questions about their practices, and he encouraged others to do the same.

The Church didn't take too kindly to this, and tried instead to have Luther murdered. Fortunately for Luther, the ruler of his principality (Frederick III) agreed with Luther and had already forbidden the sale of indulgences in his lands and was annoyed that his subjects were traveling to other realms to buy indulgences. Frederick and his allies shielded Luther, and the next thing you know we have the Reformation and Protestantism and bloody wars and all kinds of nonsense.

I give you this seemingly irrelevant lecture in history to get you to think of what Luther did in these terms: Luther saw something he thought was unfair, wrong, and oppressive and challenged it. He asked questions. Of course, he only asked a few questions and didn't ask others. He definitely convinced a lot of people that the Magesterium didn't have the final say on everything. He established a tradition of asking questions. This was a great development in Christianity, in fact.

Unfortuantely, Luther messed it all up. He did realize that if everything was up for grabs, the essence of Christianity might be lost. So, he established new boundaries for the asking of questions--Scripture. You could ask all the questions you wanted and could argue however you wanted, but you'd better make sure your arguments lined up with what was in Scripture, or you were out of line. In so doing, he created a new line of boundaries for people to be oppressive with. But no one noticed the danger of this in 1517, and despite the occasional bloody war sweeping all of Europe, many Protestant traditions arose in this framework.

Except, of course, that this mixed with colonialism and the technology of violence in superlatively ugly ways and led to either the annihilation or enslavement of indigenous people throughout the world. But, hey, that's OK, the Bible tells us it's OK for us to do this, so you can't ask any questions of us. But, no, you can't have this kind of sex, because the Bible tells us that such a thing is condemnable.

I mean, does anyone but me notice how absurd this is? Well, of course it's absurd. And, no, I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Lots of people throughout the Enlightenment, Modernist, and Postmodernist eras thought the whole thing was profoundly absurd. Unfortunately, their solutions were just as absurd and just as easily twisted as Scripture-locked Christianity was, so did that stop the ruin to the world caused by Christian-influenced peoples? Not in the slightest. In many ways, it made it worse.

So, what do we do now? Well, a few of us recognize there is value and beauty to Christianity, and we also don't know how to relate to any other sort of religious tradition. Yet, reactive atheism appalls us in other ways (which are irrelevant to this post, but I can go into it at a future date). So, we try to look at ways to make Christianity at least less harmful. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to make it good.

So, now, I pose this to the ELCA people who are freaking out: You call yourself Lutherans. You follow in the tradition of a man who saw the Church hurting people and spoke out on their behalf. He challenged the traditions of his day, risking everything he had--even his life--in a very real way.

Look around. Your tradition is harming people. And it's not really helping people from the harm our civilization causes them, either. Are you going to sit there like a coward in your nice little suburban church and hide behind the Bible? Or are you going to be bold, like your founder Martin Luther, and start asking questions again?

Here's some questions for you to think about:

* The Bible says a lot of harmful things. Yes, there is no doubt that they are harmful. If you disagree, then I cannot reach you no matter what I say. But those of who you nod that embarrassed nod of the typical liberal Protestant, I challenge you to ask this question: Are we going to persist in declaring it sacrosanct--something that cannot be questioned?

* Martin Luther became the father of Protestantism for standing up for people he saw being abused by the Church. But he also said some harmful things. For instance, about Jews. Let's not get too deeply into that, but all Lutherans (all Christians, actually) bear some of the shame for the Holocaust, because if it were not for the antisemitism strongly laid down by Luther, Hitler would not have so-easily convinced Germans to kill all the Jews they could find. So, in light of this, are you going to declare what Martin Luther said sacrosanct--something that cannot be questioned?

* We let women be pastors, something Scripture specifically prohibits (1 Timothy 2:12, among others). Why was it OK for us to question the Bible here and not on other issues?

* What does sexual ethics mean to someone living in 2009 that someone in 1517 (or AD 35) had no way to imagine?

* Why was Paul so adamant about sexual purity? What was his motivation?

Answer these questions honestly. Decide after you answer them whether you can even be a Christian anymore. If you decide that you can, then write your own theses. Maybe you should actually nail them to the door of your church. Convince your brothers and sisters to change doctrine to reflect the answers to these questions.

Remember, as Paul himself wrote:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. --1 Corinthians 13:11-13 (New English Translation)

Time to set aside the childish ways and react to the issue of same-sex marriage like an adult.

And, BY THE WAY, this is not just aimed at the ELCA, but at my own denomination, the Episcopal Church USA, and the Anglican Communion, and pretty much anyone else who calls themselves a Christian.

Polanski, ii.

2009-10-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

If you want to see what kind of man Polanski really is, don't watch The Pianist. Don't listen to these douchebags circulating petitions. Read Samantha Gailey's grand jury testimony, to which Polanski was willing to accede in order to receive a grotesquely reduced charge.

ED. v./WTFF x. John Derbyshire is the new Great White Hope for the right-wing? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

2009-10-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

I couldn't figure out whether this belonged more in the "Elephantine Douchebaggery" series or the "What the Fucking Fuck" series, so eventually I just said, "why decide?"

This is so hilarious. The only thing that bothers me is that I wonder how many people agree with Derbyshire. Hopefully few enough so they can be contemptuously marginalized.

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

But that's not the best part of it. The best part of it is that this comes from Derbyshire's new book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. The best part: The glowing reviews of this book. It's an all-star right-wing fuckwit cast!

Where will a more intelligent, hence pessimistic, yet sprightly conservatism come from? You are holding in your hands part of the answer. --George Will

George Will?! He's supposed to be one of the moderate voices on the right. Someone to whom Dick Cheney might say, "Gosh, Will, grow a pair, already." And he's in love with Derbyshire.

This is fucking awesome. This is fucking scary. It's probably both: scary awesome.

Yes, John, "we" are doomed. But the "we" is variable. If people agree with me that you and your right-wing ilk have descended into irretrievable madness and should be permanently shunned, then I do agree--you are doomed. But if you actually convince people of your madness, then I would have to agree with it in the sense that we all are doomed.

And since, you are a subset of we all, you are fucked either way, buddy.

Hat tip: Wendy

So, so, so, so awesome.

2009-09-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Robert T. Balder at Partially Clips: Faceless Suit

See, I'm tired of being nice. We need to start using analogies for these things in the most outrageous terms possible, because that's what you have to do to get people's attention these days.

Hat tip: Joe

Polanski

2009-09-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Christian Toto at Big Hollywood: HuffPo Goes All In to Defend Polanski, Readers Revolt

Yep, suck it up elite glitterati types: Your hero Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl and then fled justice. You condoned this at the time and defended him in the name of art, probably because you couldn't care less about American girls being raped by European directors. Now that the chips are down and Polanski might get his ass dragged back here, you are panicking, because you realize people will again start wondering about your defense of the indefensible.

However, lamentably, they are accidentally right. I am furious about this, by the way. But let's examine the reasons why.

In 1977, Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year-old girl named Samantha Gailey (who has since gotten married and changed her last name to Geimer). The fact he did this is not disputable--he signed a confession in order to accept a plea deal. The deal (hat tip to my friend Kat for pointing this out) was that he pled to a reduced charge and check himself in to the psychiatric facility in Chino, and then the judge determines the sentence based upon the recommendations of the medical staff there.

Unfortunately for him (and for the aims of justice), the judge said "fuck you, I'm not taking the plea deal", and in response, Polanski fled the country, where he has been on the lam ever since. So, while the root cause of this issue is Polanski raping a young girl, a judge's attempt to railroad him caused him to flee. And furthermore, the most he ever could've gotten under the statute at the time was 2 years in prison, anyway. That's it.

So, that's the first problem. The legal system has only itself to blame for this mess.

The second thing is that the only reason the LA prosecutors are suddenly getting motivated is that Polanski embarrassed them in a court filing. They've had 30 years to nab this guy, and they're just now interested because his lawyers insulted them?

No wonder Samantha Geimer has started saying things like this:

I think he's sorry, I think he knows it was wrong. I don't think he's a danger to society. I don't think he needs to be locked up forever and no one has ever come out ever — besides me — and accused him of anything. It was 30 years ago now. It's an unpleasant memory ... (but) I can live with it.

This is from the Wikipedia article on Polanski, by the way, but I'm reasonably sure it's legit.

So, we have two choices:

1. Spend millions of dollars trying to "bring Polanski to justice."

2. Let him get away with it.

As with everything, I think we should ask, "what is the benefit and who is harmed?"

Behind door #1 we have two very real harms. The first is that Geimer just wants to get on with her life. This has now gone on for 30 years, and she's just sick of it. Who can blame her? The window for justice has closed.

The second is that this is likely to cost the taxpayers of California millions of dollars. This is not in itself a problem--the most annoying thing about rich people who break the law is that their ability to hire not one but dozens of lawyers makes prosecuting them hideously expensive. Fortunately there aren't many rich people, and rich people often get a free pass on things anyway, so this isn't usually a problem.

But now, California is dead-ass broke. Prosecuting Polanski is now a zero-sum game. The money that goes for this will have to come from somewhere else. I don't know if I want to risk taking that money from a schoolteacher's salary or the prosecution of 100 other rapists.

What's the benefit? Well, Polanski goes to jail. I'm not sure for how long--the "man" is 76 years old and it's unlikely he'd live more than a few years in prison. Also, if he were locked up, he couldn't do it to anyone else. But, I also don't think that's a serious risk at this point. It's hard to say.

And we help the LA prosecutors out with their careers. Yay, or something.

An acquaintance of mine thinks that option #2 is horrid because it, in his words, "directly condones the culture of rape." Well, I can't argue with that. But is that seriously worse than the harms given above? I can't see how it is.

If what happened on Huffington Post was any indication, though, people will be fucking pissed. But I think this outrage is actually good, and maybe it would lead to more good than locking up Polanski.

For example, it's giving the Huffington Post a major black eye.

But get this through your thick skulls, you Eurotrash assholes: Yes, Polanski is a great director. So, what? Hitler built the Autobahn. What Polanski did to Samantha Gailey destroys human dignity just as much as Hitler's attempt to murder Polanski and everyone else who is Jewish.

I am not above burning everything Polanski has ever done and never mentioning his name again. Or, at minimum, the rightsholders to his works should recredit them to "Alan Smithee" and erase Polanski's name from history. Because we have to remember Hitler's name.

But Polanski? Fuck him, we can do without his memory.

Well, despite being a Democrat, Greg Nickels is a douchebag, too.

2009-09-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Sabra Gertsch @ KOMO: Upset homeless set up camp outside Nickels' home

Argue about the homeless all you want--seriously, if you are behind the policy of making it difficult for them to get to shelters, you are a douchebag. No, you are fucking douchebag. No, you are a fucking waste of air.

How hard is it for Nickels to pick up the goddamn phone and ask Metro to give these guys $50k worth of bus tickets? Account for it any way you have to. I mean, the King County government is so full of corruption and graft as it is, who the hell is going to notice $50k missing for humanitarian purposes?

Yeah, yeah, I know, what seems obvious and humane to me seems outrageous and career-threatening to you and other pseudo-liberals like Adam Smith. Well...oh...yeah...you just got voted out of office because you're an idiot when it comes to campaign strategy. Well, never mind, then.

This is also why I'm sad that the Very Rev. Robert Taylor (former dean at St. Mark's Cathedral and a local mega-advocate for the homeless) screwed up the Cathedral and lost the basis for his ability to be a useful activist. Robert was the kind of guy who could've picked up the phone and made a couple of calls and taken care of this, and you wouldn't have to bother with politicians who couldn't care less, because Robert had them all in his pocket. I mean, seriously, despite the horrid mistake he made by firing two of the clergy on Holy Week without asking too many people about it, losing him is a greater loss than most people can imagine.

The other other blog: Party like it's 1999.

2009-09-29T03:02:00.000-07:00

What do I do for a living? Well, this summer, I hadn't been doing much of anything. But I've recently gotten a job as a software engineer, and I go back to work next Monday.

I'd like to blog about my geekery, but I'd like to do it in a politically-neutral realm so I could maybe use it in a professional context without upsetting people with my combative and divisive political stances. I mean, sometimes I like upsetting people, but it's not a good idea to upset the people you work with.

So, I announce: Party Like It's 1999!

I started this blog last year when I began work for a Web 2.0 startup, but my blogging career didn't get anywhere. Neither did the startup, unfortunately.

ED. iv. The HORROR of kids getting involved to bring...the Olympics...to...America...wait.

2009-09-29T02:12:00.000-07:00

Part four in a series called "Elephantine Douchebaggery", and the second of such posts showing that although the term "douchebag" is almost never applied to women (as many people seem to prefer even more degrading and dehumanizing terms in such cases, and I'll let you guess [it starts with a "c"]), this does not mean women in the service of the most obnoxious forms of conservatism cannot engage in douchebaggery.

Michelle Malkin: Obamas using schoolkids as junior lobbyists for Olympics

Warning: The Michelle Malkin site is NSFAWASOD (Not Safe For Anyone With a Shred of Dignity).

But could any of you lacking in said dignity take a peek and take a guess at just what the hell the good Ms. Malkin is trying to do here? Because I can't figure it out. Honestly, I can't. But I'm sure douchebaggery is involved, because it's Michelle Fucking Malkin.

(Elephantine Douchebaggery is really just a subset of "What the Fucking Fuck?!")

EDIT: Malkin's priorities are pretty clearly evident in the post "Once in 70 Days".

Let's review:

1. Bringing a century-old symbol of international harmony (the Olympics) into the United States is corrupt because it happens to benefit the President's hometown (Chicago).

2. This is even worse because Obama is spending all of his time to bring us the Olympics instead of working with the Managers of the Global Beatdown Machine (my term for "military commanders.")

Yes, you are pretty goddamn awesome, Michelle. In much the same way that Josef Stalin was awesome.

WTFF. ix. You had it comin', babykillers. And more is comin'.

2009-09-29T01:57:00.001-07:00

Judy Thomas in the Kansas City Star: Letter criticizes church for allowing George Tiller to serve as an usher

A Virginia anti-abortion activist has sent a scathing letter to the church of slain Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, telling pastors they “brought damnation” onto themselves for failing to rebuke the “babykilling.”

[...]

“If Reformation Lutheran Church had done its job and brought George Tiller to repentance, he would be alive and the babies he killed would be alive,” Spitz said in a phone interview. “But George Tiller received his just reward, and Reformation Lutheran Church is to blame for his blood, and the blood of the children he murdered is on their hands.”

[...]

The Rev. Lowell Michelson, senior pastor at Reformation Lutheran Church, confirmed receiving the letter. He said he didn’t intend to respond.

Rev. Michelson is smart. As Gavin de Becker tells us in The Gift of Fear, responding to crazy people who write you letters is a good way to get killed.

Let's just hope that someone in the government informs "Rev." Spitz that if something happens to anyone else in that church, it's his ass as well.

Or maybe even someone not in the government, nodeuhmean?

Hat Tip: Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, of all people, who has finally totally lost the favor of the idiotic right and has now started returning to his roots as a Democrat. Well done, man. If we could ever convince you that killing people in the name of globalism is a bad idea, I'd consider you an important ally. But, then again, the enemy of my enemy is often my friend, too.

ED: iii. Not so fast, Liz Cheney

2009-09-28T15:15:00.001-07:00

Adam Serwer at TAPPED (American Prospect): The Irony of Liz Cheney.

Gosh, I wish I had stood up more firmly against our use of torture. I feel quite embarrassed about it. Oh well, at least I can say I never defended the indefensible. I think.

Anyway, the choicest bits:

For the GOP, torture is no longer a "necessary evil." It is a rally cry, a "values" issue like same-sex marriage or abortion. They don't "grudgingly" support torture, they applaud it. They celebrate it. Liz Cheney's unequivocal support for torture methods gleaned from communist China has people begging her to run for office.
[...]
Over the past couple of months, events have conspired to prove the Cheneys wrong. The recently released documents Dick Cheney said would unequivocally prove that torture saved American lives did not. While professional interrogators and military leaders have argued against torture, the apologists have had to rely on anonymous pleadings filtered through the same people who brought us Saddam Hussein's connection to al-Qaeda. A scientific survey recently proved that torture is counterproductive. Despite the fact that Cheney and his daughter have been claiming the Obama administration's abandonment of torture has made America less safe, the past month or so has seen the U.S. eliminate al-Qaeda leader Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia and Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in Afghanistan. In the past week alone, the FBI foiled three bombings, one of which appears to have been a very serious threat.

Wow. Do read the whole thing, of course.

While I agree with Adam that having the support of torture proposed as awesome by a major political party is not such a great development, this gives those of us who are not Republican douchebags a great opportunity to constantly call them out on it. Though, I think we might think strategically as well and wait until the election season next year to spring it on them so it does the most political damage.

It's nice to have choices. On the other hand, if too many Americans agree that torturing people is an awesome idea, we are just simply totally fucked.

[Hat tip: Atrios]

WTFF. viii. Christian nation?

2009-09-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Goldy at HorsesAss: God Bless Our Anti-Christian First Amendment

Gosh, Goldy hits one out of the park again. Just read it.

My take: If sticking guns into the faces of other people so you can grab their resources isn’t a violation of the 10th Commandment, I don’t know what is! Where is that violated? Oh, I don’t know, maybe throughout the entire history of Europeans in the Americas?

WTFF. vii. FED! Or, Is That You, Aldo?

2009-09-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

Goldy at HorsesAss: Better Dead than Fed?

I mostly agree with Goldy on most things, including this. This incident is, of course, horrifying. What the Fucking Fuck-level horrifying. However, there's an angle he hasn't considered. I don't want to go into it in too much detail, lest I be misunderstood and attract the wrong kind of scrutiny, but I gently suggest that Goldy and the rest of you reread about Prohibition and Appalachia, more especially the origin of the term "Revuhnoor" (Revenuer, as the responsibility for enforcing Prohibition was placed in the hands of the Treasury Department.)

I think that might be the dynamic at play here rather than anti-Obama racism or typical right-wing anti-government sentiment. That's all I'm saying.

For a quick fix, see the movie Inglourious Basterds. You can probably imagine that Aldo and/or his family had strung up a few Revuhnoors over the years as a necessity of the nature of their family business--that is, smuggling "moonshine," illegal homemade liquor, and the Revuhnoors didn't leave the moonshine boys alone even after the repeal of Prohibition. The only reason Aldo is in France to begin with is that he probably had to choose between the Army and prison. He chose the Army because he decided the Nazis pissed him off even more than the Revuhnoors.

But how did you think Aldo got so goddamned ferocious to begin with? Hm?

JUST SAYIN'.

Robert Reich sticks his finger in the eye of the supply-siders.

2009-09-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich in Huffington Post: Why the Dow is Hitting 10,000 While Everyone Else Is Cutting Back.

I basically agree, I'll add a couple of things later. For now, just go freaking read it, because it's good.

HCR. ix. Letter to Adam Smith

2009-09-23T06:41:00.001-07:00

I sent the following letter to Representative Adam Smith, who is my Congressman.

Dear Representative Smith--

I'm a little bit behind, but I did find out that you appeared on the show of a local talk-radio host named Dori Monson (noon-3pm, KIRO-FM). I wasn't able to find out exactly what you said on the show, but I have heard a few disturbing things about it.

First, going on Monson's show and being "buddy buddy" is the Wrong Thing to begin with, as Monson is kind of an idiot who uncritically parrots Republican lies. So, unless you are into that sort of thing, you might want to give some more thought about appearing on shows like that.

Secondly, it appears that you are really upset about ACORN. Maybe ACORN is corrupt and maybe it isn't, but given the actual depredation upon this country and the entire planet by nearly every company in the Fortune 500, this shows a disturbing skew of priorities. I'd hate to think you were doing this just to appear "moderate."

Finally, you seem uncomfortable with the idea that we should do something about the 18,000 people who die in this country every year solely because they have no access to health care. That's a 9/11 attack every 2 months, by the way, every single year. To date, 48 times as many people have died from this problem as 9/11, if you don't count the death caused by our *response* to 9/11, of course.

Rep. Smith, you're going to have to decide whose interests you are going to serve. Are you going to decide to serve the interests of the health care industry executives? I mean, I understand, that's the safe choice. They certainly can help you keep your seat safe against relentless assault from Republicans, especially those who live in that area between Puyallup and Olympia. Our district has a difficult demographic to serve, and I can appreciate some of the positions you find yourself in.

On the other hand, you could think about what is right. People in your district and all over the country are dying from treatable diseases because they can't afford the treatment. So, you might consider at least *thinking* about their interests a bit before you do something stupid like appear on Monson's show again.

Regards,

[me]

HCR. viii. Those poor health insurance executives!

2009-09-23T06:15:00.001-07:00

This video is an example of why the Republicans are basically screwed in general right now. People have figured how which interests they gleefully serve. It is so bad it has quite literally become a joke.

Democrats serve these interests, too, but at least most of them have the good sense to feel bad about it. Well, sometimes. Unless he's my representative, Adam Smith, who went on the show of the biggest douchebag in local talk radio and bashed on Obama's "outrageous" idea that everyone should have health care coverage. And on Obama in general. But anyway, watch this.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Hat tip: Like, everyone, especially State Rep. Dave Upthegrove (via Facebook).

The rural brain drain.

2009-09-22T04:32:00.000-07:00

Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas in the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Rural Brain Drain

An interesting article showing that the problems of the cities are nothing compared to the problems of rural America--many small towns across the heartland are quickly becoming ghost towns, because their brightest residents are moving to the cities. There is nothing new about this, but it has gotten so out of hand that rural America itself is becoming a new kind of ghetto of poverty and despair.

And that's not good, because that's where all our freaking food comes from right now.

(Hat tip: Cheryl)

A sub-blog: Now We See The Violence Inherent in the System.

2009-09-22T01:45:00.000-07:00

Even though I'm having a lot of fun with this blog discussing current events, I think there are a lot of deeper problems with the world that demand discussion. I have been preparing my...er...mojo to this end over the last few weeks, and I think I now am ready to begin sharing these thoughts with the world.

However, I rebroadcast this blog into my Facebook feed, and the things I post here are combative and controversial enough as they are. I certainly don't want to throw around words like "anarchism" and "global collapse" in my blog, especially if they're going to be retransmitted to something bearing my real name.

So, therefore, I will just give you a pointer to it from here, and you can decide whether or not you can stomach it. You will be disturbed by it, but I promise that it will not be used to actually advocate anything actually illegal.

The blog is: Now We See the Violence Inherent in the System.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Yankee pwnination.

2009-09-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

Friday, I was in downtown Seattle running errands, and because I no longer like driving my beat up piece-of-crap car, I was using transit as much as possible. I was boarding Central Link to head back to the South End. It was a sunny day, so I was wearing my Mariners cap to avoid sunburn.

I boarded the train at Westlake, the northern terminus, and walked by a guy in a Yankees T-shirt who sorta stared at me and nodded and said "good luck, buddy." Not realize he was actually trying to be a dick, I smiled back and said, "Yeah, and also to you. Must be nice to back a winning team, right?" The Yankees were apparently in town last weekend, and we have a few Yankees fans in town (I grew up as one), so I thought he was being friendly.

No, he was just being a prick and frankly admitted that he was just trying to get a rise from me. I attempted to engage him in friendly conversation anyway, since I was bored. He said dismissive things about how much the Mariners suck, and I was saying things like, "Oh, sure, we're disappointed that they were not good enough to make the playoffs, but you have to admit a team that has a winning record is much better than a team that lost 100 games." And, "Jeez, we were thinking 88 wins was going to be enough to take the division, and who the hell expected the Angels to be this good?" And stuff like that.

He was so irritated with my friendly ground-standing that he jumped off the train at University Street, one stop from Westlake. AWESOME.

And EVEN MORE AWESOME: The Mariners went on to take two out of three from the Yankees, the team with the best record in baseball.

SWEET. Take that, you Yankee prick!

WTFF: iv. v. vi. Give me trains or give me death, Obama is Hitler, and I <3 Goldy

2009-09-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Parts four, five, and six in a series titled "What the fucking fuck?!"

Not much on my mind lately, but I did pile up some things from last week, so let's clear the backlog:

iv. Back to the "million mullet march" or whatever it was on the 12th, there were apparently lots of people a little upset that the trains were running behind:

WSJ blog: Tea Party Protesters Protest D.C. Metro Service

OK, seriously, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? You are going to a protest that is fundamentally ANTI-GOVERNMENT in nature, and you are complaining that the GOVERNMENT-RUN trains are not getting to your protest on time.

Um. Uh. Argh. What?

v. Lots of people are trying to say that Obama is a communist, socialist, fascist, and Nazi at the same time. Someone pointed out that especially with this last, you manage to be an antisemite and racist at the same time, good job.

Seattle Times: Hitler poster provokes Edmonds incident

So, anyway, there's this dude named Henry Gasparian who survived the Holocaust and saw some "Obama = Hitler" signs (a pretty disturbingly stupid idea in its own right), freaked out a little that Hitler was being invoked so casually, and started beating the faces against some of the LaRouche douchebags handing out the flyers. OK, maybe he didn't beat face, but it wouldn't bother me if he did. Read the story for more.

(Hat tip: Cheryl)

vi. I <3 Goldy. Just read this. Seriously.

A post about RFID.

2009-09-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

I have slowed down a bit--life has intruded. I have an impressive backlog of things to discuss, though, and I intend to follow through. Until then, though, here is what I posted to an online discussion forum concerning RFID technology. I will follow up later with a more thorough explanation.

My post is part of a discussion concerning the growing trend of governments proposing the placement of RFID transponders in things like inspection stickers and license plates, ostensibly to measure travel down to the mile and tax people on their movement. That's annoying, to be sure, but it doesn't take much imagination to think of even more nefarious uses of these devices.

Well, there's a way to fight back--figure out where the chips are and shield
them so they can't be read. Fairly easy to do, FOR NOW. But we shouldn't even
have to fight back--people should be asking our consent and explaining what the
benefit is *to us*.

FOr instance, I *consent* to having an Enhanced Drivers License so I can go to
Canada with a minimum of hassle. (Of course, few bother to ask why I need
permission to cross a boundary that exists only in people's minds and not in
reality, but asking those sorts of questions is clearly too much for most
people.)

I *consent* to having an ORCA pass, because using one allows me to use transit
in order to save money (more unasked questions there, too, but you're tired of
hearing them by now).

I *consent* to having a RFID-readable debit card, because I am both too lazy to
demand a debit card not containing a chip, and I can also see how it might
occasionally save me 30 seconds, which might be important in some cases (don't
even get me started about the questions concerning this).

But I only *consent* to having my chips read *when I want them read*, and at
*no* other time. This is why I want an RFID-shielding wallet so badly (and
hopefully I'll have one soon, it's supposedly en route).

Here's one more unasked question, though: I am educated concerning these
issues, but SO FEW other people are. Walk into a Nordstrom and ask someone if
they sell RFID-shielding wallets. Most of them will be like, "wat?" The
people who make these devices fucking *know* this, too, so what do you think
they're going to do with the pervasive availability of this technology?

Not to mention the increasing frequency in which these devices are foisted
on us against our will. We have very limited ways of fighting back, too, but
there are ways, and I suggest we avail ourselves of them and tell as many
people as possible.

ED: ii. I'm taking your "thinker" card away, fella.

2009-09-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Second in the series called "Elephantine Douchebaggery".

American Thinker: 9/12 demonstration a record DC turnout: National Park Service

You forgot to mention that Dan Bana was talking about Barack Obama's inaguration. I don't think that was the point you were trying to make, there, dude.

I have to give a hat tip to another Charles, the one who runs Little Green Footballs. For obvious reasons, he is not really an ally of mine, but he knows EPIC FAIL when he sees it.

If you want to see the acres of fail that is this misattribution, try this query. Holy failgasm, Batman!

Or, for posterity--

By the way, you might applaud the teabaggers for packing out their litter, but their success is more evidence that THERE JUST WASN'T THAT MANY OF THEM.

Put that tea bag away before you hurt someone.

2009-09-15T05:11:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald @ Salon: Who are the undeserving "others" benefiting from government actions?

(That is, if you can handle all the freaking pop-up ads jumping all over your browser. Salon has gotten rather sad. Anyway.)

When you worry about the redistributive aspect of government spending, you might think more carefully about who usually benefits from such spending (4 words of hint: douchewaffle. Wall Street. suit.) And, therefore, pipe down a bit when substantially less money goes to people who, on balance, need your help.

And, then, when that tea bag calls your name again, think this: Are you really willing to throw overboard the people who genuinely need help in the name of not being "taken advantage of" by those who cheat the system?

Hat tip: Cheryl

HCR: vii. Here's what opponents of health-care reform are defending.

2009-09-15T05:02:00.001-07:00

I got yer "death panels" right here:

When you fight against a sane, compassionate governmental response, this is what you are defending. Good luck sleeping at night, douchebags.

Hat tip: Goldy at HorsesAss.

The end of 9/11: iii. Oh, yeah, the conclusion.

2009-09-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to conclude this Friday, but I never got around to it.

This is not going to be very long like the other two were. This concerns our reaction to 9/11 over the last eight years. I could go on and on about how our reaction did nothing to protect us and in fact made the situation even worse, but instead I'll just leave you with the following.

I read in a book once (forgot which book) that in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, we spent something like $1 billion per day bombing the crud out of the country. If you divided up the $1 billion equally amongst the Afghans whose country we demolished, you'd have the tidy sum of $40--every man, woman, and child, $40. Doesn't sound like a lot, but in Afghanistan, $40 buys roughly what $1800 buys here.

Now, imagine if one fine sunny day, you heard the vague noise of aircraft overhead, and then suddenly your entire neighborhood started blowing up around you. You somehow managed to shelter yourself from the explosions, but you look across the street and see the children of your neighbor destroyed by overpressure waves, their little bodies turned into pink pulp in the blink of an eye. More explosions. You hide.

When you are convinced the bombing has stopped, you emerge from the rubble that used to be your house and look around at the burning ruins of your neighborhood. You hear people screaming--not sure whether they're begging for help, but they're definitely screaming. With what little strength you have, you clench your fists into balls and your face turns purple with rage. Rage at those idiots in the planes that just turned your neighborhood into a smoldering ruin. You don't really care why they did it, only that they did it, and now most of your family, friends and neighbors are dead or dying.

Imagine that, instead of bombs, you see flyers fall to the ground. You pick one up, and it tells you that a foreign power wants to give you a helping hand. Starting tomorrow, they will send you and everyone you know a check for $1800. Every day. For the forseeable future. Spend it however you want--but remember who sent it to you, and think about helping them root out the people responsible for the recent violent attacks on their country.

Sure enough, the next day a plane flies overhead, and a pouch falls to the ground in front of your house. You open the pouch, and inside are hundreds of neat little envelopes, each containing a check for $1800. There's one for you and everyone else in the entire neighborhood. You're like, "Holy shit, no way." You help spread the checks around the neighborhood and take yours to the bank and deposit it right away to see if it actually clears. It does, and now you have $1800 more. But in the meantime, 6 more checks have dropped from the sky. You remember what the flyer said, and come to think of it, you do remember some dude three blocks over talking about how he was training with some strangely dressed men speaking Arabic. . . .

I'm not terribly certain the second scenario is perfect by any means, but at least you can see the madness that is our response to 9/11 and how different it could've been had the money been spent on helping the people of Afghanistan rather than destroying their country. The amount of money spent on humanitarian concerns in Afghanistan the first year amounted to less money than was spent on the first three hours of bombing it.

9/11 was just an excuse to ramp up the beatdown machine, not to think about how the beatdown machine makes people angry enough to destroy our buildings and kill our citizens. I wonder what else is going to blow up in the next 20 years, as the orphans of the war in Afghanistan grow to adulthood and agree that violent jihad against the people of the United States is the best outlet for their rage.

And this is just the war in Afghanistan, the war that nearly everyone in the country feels was justified. The war our new President feels that we should continue--even expand into neighboring Pakistan. Do I really have to say a single word about the madness that was the war in Iraq? No, of course I don't.

(I do have to admit that I never once spoke up about how wrong the war in Iraq was. Not once. Might've even backhandedly justified it on occasion. I guess I'll bear the shame of that for quite some time, but I guess waking up eventually is better than never waking up.)

This is the last I will ever say about 9/11. But do you think I'm going to stop asking the sorts of questions I asked in this post? No, my friends, I'm just getting started.

Random silly thought: i. Technology and poorly-designed coasters.

2009-09-15T03:59:00.000-07:00

Here I am at not quite 4AM, not able to sleep. I get up and pour myself a glass of cold beverage and sit at the kitchen table in the dark seeing if there is anything interesting going on or anyone interesting to talk to (there isn't--it's 4AM after all).

I have these stupid but cool looking coasters like so:

The point of a coaster is to keep from leaving ugly wooden rings on your table that eventually damage the finish. However, the problem with these coasters is that the surface is not quite level. Thus, stumbling about in the poorly lit table for my beverage, I fumbled it and knocked it over, causing a gigantic flood over the rest of the table that damaged two books, ruined a bill, and nearly got whatever-the-beverage-was on my other laptop.

I am reminded about technology in general--ostensibly, it makes our lives easier in some ways, but what it really does is cause a flood of fail all over the world. I wonder if there's anything we can do about it.

The alternative to Jesus causing a riot in the temple?

2009-09-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to my friend Sally.

Some days I wake up, thinking the thing I need to do is to go into every gathering of people I can find, flip everything that isn't nailed down upside down, and berate all of them about how they're all already walking around half-dead, and if they don't start thinking and questioning the world around them, they're going to be all the way dead. And soon.

I know you view this with a bit of horror. And I do, too. Obviously, I'm not going to do any of this. This blog is about the only vehicle I have to do something similar. And since no one reads it yet, it isn't going to do much.

I'm reminded of a man who did similar things. You can find this story in any Bible. My favorite is the telling in the Gospel of John (2:12-25), but the story is told in all four Gospels. Apparently the religious leaders in Jerusalem didn't want to accept Roman money, so the faithful had to convert their money into shekels so they could donate to the temple. The money changers, therefore, set up shop right there in the outskirts of the temple. And, of course, they made a tidy profit off of the money that was supposed to be going to glorify God.

This understandably incensed Jesus (being God himself, as you usually believe when you are a Christian), so he flipped everything not-nailed-down upside down and beat as many moneychangers as he could halfway to death. Then he said something like "Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a shopping mall!"* The Jews responded, something like, "WTF? Who the hell do you think you are?" Jesus said instead, "Tear down this Temple and in three days I'll put it back together."*

Imagine what would've happened if Jesus had tried to do that today. There would be a standoff as one of the moneychangers dialed 911. Next thing you know, there's 15 guys in SWAT gear outside the temple. If Jesus survives long enough, the next thing you know they send in a negotiator. Jesus probably rants at him the way he is known to rant. The negotiator nods to himself, satisfied that Jesus is certifiably insane. A tranqulizer dart emerges from nowhere and pierces Jesus in the throat.

Jesus awakes in the acute psychiatric ward of the county hospital, struggling to understand where he is in a thorazine-induced haze. Eventually he figures out that to get out of where he is he has to cooperate with his captors. He "levels up"** until he is in the standard ward, where he meets with a social worker and a court-appointed lawyer. He learns that he made quite a showing on the 11 o' clock news and the blogosphere, but in the weeks since he was captured everyone seems to have forgotten about it.

His social worker and lawyer inform him that he could be charged with all kinds of stuff, but if he submits to the wishes of the doctors and takes the drugs they prescribe as ordered, he will merely have to endure "community supervision" indefinitely. He would also have to submit to electronic monitoring, random drug testing, and all sorts of other court proceedings. Finally, he had to stay away from that group of 12 troublemakers he has been recently associated with. If he failed to comply, he would be charged with several counts of felony assault and malicious mischief and face a few years in prison.

Jesus considers, thinking as best he can that if he could stay out of prison, maybe he could find a way to circumvent these orders. But because of the heavy doses of atypical antipsychotics they placed him on (Jesus remembers the word "Zyprexa"), he can't for the life of him remember what he was originally trying to do.

We now see Jesus six months later. He has gained 100 pounds from taking the Zyprexa. He has become diabetic, so he now has to take Metformin and some other drug he doesn't remember. He's sitting on a friend's couch in an increasingly ill-fitting robe, watching "The Rachel Maddow Show" or some damn thing. He's not really sure what she's going on about, but the noises and flashing images from the box soothe him strangely. A tear slowly rolls down his cheek, as he remembers vaguely that he was trying to save the world.

"Oh well," he half-sadly thinks to himself, "this world probably doesn't deserved to be saved."

He might be right. In any case, God coming to us in the form of a man isn't going to work this time. He might have tried to do that again--if so, he's probably stumbling around with antipsychotic-induced Parkinsonism somewhere among us.

No, we laughed him off the first time, and his tactic of becoming one of us and suffering and dying obviously didn't take very well. We spat on his gift and turned it into death. It's going to take something different this time.

*These quotes are from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible called The Message.

**To explain this, most inpatient psychiatric hospitals use something called the "level system" to control patient behavior and offer incentives for participating in group therapy. You usually start at level 1, where you cannot leave the ward. If you are in an acute ward, it might mean that you must be restrained and cannot leave your room. As you comply, you gain levels giving you more privileges. If you step out of line, you lose levels.

The Bush II era accidentally the middle class. Is this awesome?

2009-09-13T17:44:00.000-07:00

NY Times: As Jobs Are Lost, So Is the Middle Class.

Yep, we sure did paint ourselves into a corner this time.

ETA:

ED: i. Obama's speech to the kids.

2009-09-12T19:44:00.000-07:00

The first of probably zillions of installments in the series: "Elephantine Douchbaggery". The purpose of this series is to point out the most obnoxious lies of Republicans and their allies.

Factcheck: Obama's speech to schools.

Two big whoppers being spread around by nearly everyone on hate radio:

1. The President wanting to make a special speech to schoolchildren is a novel, outrageous idea.

2. In reaction to the outrage on the first point, Obama altered his speech to be less overtly political.

Sorry, Republican douchebags. The avatar of your True God, Ronald Reagan, gave such a speech in 1988. Not only that, it was intensely more partisan and political than Obama's speech (or, to his credit, the first George Bush's similar speech).

And, no, Obama doesn't adapt ANYTHING to your criticisms, because you are totally irrelevant. At times, I am not sure he fully realizes this. But I do. I am not sure he fulI'm not even sure why I bother to start blogging about your irrelevant nonsense, except that it amuses me in some way.

Oh, I remember now: Because your lies sometimes confuse people who desperately want to do what is right but are too afraid to embrace certain ideas. For example, realizing that being afraid of a man talking to their kids because he happens to be black. Although they seem to be willing to allow it if he is, say, an obnoxious evangelical minister. (And if Ken Hutcherson is talking to your kids, you SHOULD be concerned.)

Like I said, confused.

Hat tip: Cheryl

HCR: vi. Intercalary thought.

2009-09-11T14:22:00.001-07:00

USA Today from 2002: 18,000 deaths blamed on lack of insurance.

In avenging the 3,000 people who died on this day eight years ago, we spent...how much?

This report says $941 billion. $941 billion. Approximately $313 million per victim of 911. Every year, about $35 million for each person dying that day.

This is merely the direct fiscal cost--in terms of fighting the war and the health care costs (meager though their benefits are) for the maimed veterans of the war TO THIS POINT, not in the future. It doesn't count the other costs imposed upon our economy, which are easily tenfold. Easily. It also doesn't take into account the thousands of our soldiers killed, nor does it take into account the tens of thousands who are horribly maimed and will need physical and psychological care for the remainder of their lives. Or the knock-on effects of those psychological problems. NOT TO MENTION the thousands and thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians we have zorched and the economic damage we have done to THEIR countries!! But, you know, fuck that, right?

We are assured by the pro-war crowd that it's worth the cost. It's worth it! No more attacks after all, right? We've toppled Saddam! (Don't ask us to remind you what he had to do with 9/11--we've forgotten.) We're mopping up Afghanistan! (Yeah, just ask the family of LCpl...oh, never mind, that's just crass.)

Do you feel like it's been worth the cost?

But now we're told that spending money on ensuring that everyone has access to health care is, what, too expensive?

Look, assholes, EIGHTEEN THOUSAND people die every year because they can't afford health care coverage. That's SIX 9/11s every fucking year. That's 11/11, 1/11, 3/11, 5/11, 7/11 as well. And then ANOTHER 9/11 every 9/11. If we spent merely $100 billion per year as a nation on this problem, it would go a long way towards alleviating the pain.

But if 3,000 lives are worth $941 billion, what are 162,000 lives worth? Hm?

The jig is up, Republican douchebags. It's clear you don't care about the people who died on 9/11. You just like making your buddies rich with the global beatdown machine. You LIKE making people die, because it makes you powerful. That is your primary motivation. So, why would you be motivated to save these 18,000 people? Probably lazy, shiftless assholes anyway, right? Fuck them, let them die--DEATH IS GREAT!

In his book, Crunch!, Jared Bernstein's very accessible argumentation made me more clearly aware of the absurdity of this sort of moranity. It was almost an aside in that book, however.

But you Republican assholes are on notice, now--I'm cramming this down your throat every day I talk about health care reform! And if you moderates get in my way, I'm cramming it down your throats, too! Liberals? You too!

GET. IT. THE. FUCK. DONE.

We now interrupt our 9/11 angst for an important announcement to all Republican douchebag politicians from South Carolina...

2009-09-11T14:06:00.003-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled victim fetishism.

Hat tip: April