Obama Outperforms Reagan

Well, this will most certainly lead to conservative heads exploding, the predictable 8 year old boy tempter tantrum and the overly emotional belief that people are entitled to their own facts.

Obama Outperforms Reagan On Jobs, Growth And Investing

Holy shee-it! Forbes, a bastion of conservative thought, went and done did it. They sacrileged Saint Gip and completely torpedoed the irrational belief that President Obama's policies were bad for the economy. My message to conservatives today.

Stop playing make believe and thank the president. 

It's because of him (and the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) that you still have money.

Big History

A recent piece in the New York Times led me David Christian's Big History project and I have to admit I am completely fascinated by it. Professor Christian divides history-ALL history-into sections he calls Thresholds and shows how all scholastic subjects relate to the history of the world. Here is an example..



It's a different way to teach history and Bill Gates has gotten the class in several schools. It also adheres to the Common Core standards which will remove some hassles if teachers want to get it in their schools.

I think it's way past time that we change the way we teach history in our schools. Big History is an excellent first step!

Cartoon Beatitudes!

The Architects of Supply Side Economics Recant

I came across both of these videos recently and thought it would be nice of have one post of both of the chief architects of Reaganecomics not only admitting they were completely wrong but also accurately assessing conservatives today and how completely batshit they are.

Mr. Stockman, Mr Bartlett...you have the floor...

The Enemy of My Enemy of My Enemy....

R.I.P-Brave Sir Marxy

Without a doubt, the most hilarious thing that conservatives do is accuse liberals of doing the very thing that they, in fact, are doing. This is more commonly known as 'The Rove," named after Karl Rove who consistently used the tactic of attacking an enemy with what was most clearly the attackers greatest weakness.

They say liberals aren't logical yet their entire ideology is based on appeal to fear and misleading vividness. They say liberals are too emotional yet they behave like adolescents given to fits of irrational outbursts. They say liberals are weak on national security yet they allowed the worst attack on US soil in history and failed to capture or kill the person behind it. They say everything they believe in is based in facts yet they believe they are entitled to their own facts (Benghazi, climate change, racism, evolution etc). The list goes on and on.

In short, they excel at Projection/Flipping. This simple truth becomes crystal clear when one is engaged in the comments section of web site or blog. My interactions with conservatives here, on The Smallest Minority and now on Quora illustrate that they project/flip consistently and it really cracks me up. They are just that fucking insecure.

My favorite project/flip of all time has to be the accusation that I was a coward, running away from discussions when they didn't go my way. They called me, in all too typical adolescent bully-ese, "Brave Sir Marxy" (after Brave Sir Robin from Monty Python's Holy Grail). It was truly a classic because I wasn't so much running away as calling them on their bullshit way of framing questions to "win." Man, did that really piss them off!

Even with all of their childish whining about it, the forum at The Smallest Minority still voted me off their island. This happened right around the time I made Unix Jedi my son in a very long economics discussion. It was also after I invited any takers to debate me in an open and unbiased forum. No one has, as of today, accepted my challenge.

My regular commenters on this site (a few TSM holdovers) have also not accepted the same challenge. In fact, they have not come forward to reveal who they are on Quora although I do have my suspicions. They prefer to throw snipes at me here, where the readership is far less than Quora, and where their comments go unchallenged from those pesky facts (largely because the same seven people read comments...me, Nikto and the five of them).

And just last week, the head cheerleader of the "Brave Sir Robin" crowd, Kevin Baker, blocked me on Quora. Someone who prides himself on being a courageous, critical thinker, completely unable to handle the reality that is slowly shrinking his bubble...stunning. I've had about a half a dozen people block me on Quora and they are all the same personality...conservative, childish, insecure, clear inferiority complex, angry, filled with hate, and afraid. Not surprisingly as well, Kevin and these others that have blocked me don't really offer much on their own on Quora. It's upvotes and a few comments but never any questions and rarely answers.

I don't block anyone there. People can comment as freely as they like on my questions, answers, and comments. With such high traffic at Quora, it's a much more interesting forum with all of the diversity of thought. I've got over 100 followers now and have posted around the same number of questions and answers. I've also been asked, via message, some changes I'd like to see to the site. Pretty cool!

So, with Kevin blocking me and Guard Duck, juris, Larry, and 6Kings completely failing to come forward on Quora, the "brave Sir Marxy" meme is officially torpedoed and the true cowards are revealed for who they are. Of course, this could change if anyone decides they want to see how they fair on Quora or any other larger forum.

The challenge is always extended and I hope that someday it's accepted.

Nothing Is The Matter With Kansas

The withdrawal of Kansas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Chad Taylor spells big trouble for the GOP's chances to take back the upper chamber in November. Independent candidate Greg Orman is polling much higher than Pat Roberts and is running a very effective campaign that appeals to both Democratic and Republican voters. When asked who he would caucus with if he was elected, Orman replied that he would work with whatever party wanted to fix the problems our nation faces.

Hmm...I wonder which party that is?

Imagine if it's 50-49, GOP, on the morning after election day. Greg Orman will be the most popular man in the country!

Meanwhile the last two polls from Georgia show Michelle Nunn ahead of David Perdue. The Republicans can't lose either of these states if they hope to take back the Senate. They already have to sweep Iowa, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Real Clear Politics has them doing that with razor thin leads but much of that polling is old, summer numbers. It's going to be interesting to see what polls we see in the next few weeks.

One thing we can definitely glean from all of these tight numbers is that it's very unlikely to be a wave election. Politico's LARRY J. SABATO, KYLE KONDIK and GEOFFREY SKELLEY all agree.

So where’s the wave? This is President Obama’s sixth-year-itch election. The map of states with contested Senate seats could hardly be better from the Republicans’ vantage point. And the breaks this year—strong candidates, avoidance of damaging gaffes, issues such as Obamacare and immigration that stir the party base—have mainly gone the GOP’s way, very unlike 2012. 

Nonetheless, the midterms are far from over. In every single one of the Crystal Ball’s toss-up states, (Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina), the Republican Senate candidate has not yet opened up a real polling lead in any of them. Democratic nominees have been running hard and staying slightly ahead, or close to, their Republican foes.

The reason is quite simple. The voting public dislikes the Republicans more than the president.

So, now we starting to see stories like this one.

Why Democrats will keep the Senate: A contrarian analysis of the 2014 midterms

Or this one.

How Democrats Can Hold Their Senate Majority

Here's another cool site for all you statistics and polling nerd.

We're in the home stretch, kiddos. Buckle up for a crazy ride!!

Back To School Round Up

With a new school year under way, I thought I would clear out my "Education" folder of saved links in one post. The first story comes from my favorite news source, The Christian Science Monitor (daily news feed located on the right side of this site). They have a great piece up about Common Core and why both the left and the right hate it. Why do the Republicans hate it?

Most people agree that for Republicans, the seeds of the backlash were planted when President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan got behind the standards, encouraging states that wanted to apply for federal Race to the Top funds to either adopt the standards or adopt comparable ones deemed “college- and career-ready.” What had been sold as a state-led effort, supported by the National Governors Association, suddenly became associated with Mr. Obama, and rumors circulated quickly of a national curriculum (the standards don’t actually prescribe curriculum) and a federal takeover of education.

So the usual adolescent rebellion. I'd also add in that Common Core critics from the right have religious objections to what is considered basic standards (evolution, climate change, etc) as well as any sort of history being taught that paints the US in a negative light (unless it's criticism of liberals). Of course, this sort of thing goes on all the time.

The letter takes the framework to task for its "negative" approach to U.S. history. As an example, it attacks the framework for portraying U.S. colonists as "oppressors and exploiters while ignoring the dreamers and innovators who built our country." The signatories also say that at 98 pages, the framework essentially replaces the five-page topic outline with a full-blown curriculum, and one that conflicts with many states' social studies standards.

Essentially, they want to be entitled to their own facts:)

What about the left's criticism of Common Core?

There has also been vocal opposition from blue states – some around the standards themselves, particularly for younger grades, but much of it around implementation, as well as the tests and high-stakes consequences tied to the new standards.

Here we see the usual reluctance to be accountable for student learning. Part of this I get because the real problem in education today is the parents. Students also have different learning styles so the assessment mechanism should be altered. But this still doesn't excuse the fact that teachers should be held accountable and high stakes testing should be implemented for ALL subjects including basic civics. There is a reason why states have standards and there needs to be more serious consequences for instructors that don't follow them.

Interestingly, it's a Reagan era report that is driving Common Core.

The report’s five proposed solutions – improving content, raising standards, overhauling the teaching profession, adding time to the school day and year, and improving leadership and fiscal support – are clear in current reform. They can be seen in the spread of the Common Core standards, a set of streamlined but intense new standards introduced in 2009 that, though controversial, are still in use in more than 40 states; in new teacher ratings based partly on standardized test scores; and in the invention and rise of charter schools with longer school days and no union contracts. 

Initially embraced by a coalition of conservatives and liberals, the solutions offered in “A Nation at Risk” stoked a backlash among many on the left who argued that its criticisms of public education were over the top and that its solutions ignored poverty and inequity in the system. But the Republican-driven revolution is being driven home, as never before, by a Democratic president. The Obama administration admits there’s a connection. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said the report was “influential” in the administration’s education reform strategy.

Huh. I thought President Obama was presiding over a mass indoctrination program turning our nation's children into communists. Instead, he's embracing Reagan?

Well, guess what. So am I. I fully support Common Core because there needs to be some sort of umbrella for our nation's 100,000 schools and 13, 000 school districts. Everyone complains about how we seem to be falling behind the world in education but no one does anything about it. Well, Secretary Duncan (Best SecEd ever in my view) and the president have done something and it's about fucking time.

Criticism from the left is beginning to take its toll on the unions as we see in this piece from Politico.

Responding to all these challenges has proved difficult, analysts say, because both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are divided internally. There’s a faction urging conciliation and compromise. Another faction pushes confrontation. There’s even a militant splinter group, the Badass Teachers Association.

In many ways, they are starting to sound more and more like the Republican Party:) Ah well, I've been persona non grata with the union since I questioned tenure. I have the same advice for them that I do for the GOP...change or become irrelevant. 

Speaking of conservatives, one of their big pet peeves has always been zero tolerance laws so they should be happy about this story from NPR.

Saying that "zero tolerance" discipline policies at U.S. schools are unfairly applied "all too often," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is urging officials to rethink that approach. The Obama administration issued voluntary guidelines today that call for more training for teachers and more clarity in defining security problems. The move by the Education and Justice departments comes after years of complaints from civil rights groups and others who say the policies are ineffective and take an unfair toll on minorities. The zero tolerance approach has been blamed for boosting the number of suspensions and expulsions and for equating minor infractions with criminal acts.

Agreed. Although it's not as big of a problem as the right wing bubble will have you think (misleading vividness and all), it is something that needs to change.

Turning to the world of the wacky, we have this...

10 RIDICULOUS THINGS THAT HAPPEN AT SMALL TOWN HIGH SCHOOLS

My favorite?

5. “The woods” is a perfectly normal location for a party. Want to get drunk and shoot guns and make out? So does everyone else! Meet us in the forest half a mile off the highway–take a left at the big rock.

Party, dudes!

Finally, we have this amazing piece from Sarah Blaine called "The Teachers."

We need to stop thinking that we know anything about teaching merely by virtue of having once been students. We don’t know. I spent a little over a year earning a master of arts in teaching degree. Then I spent two years teaching English Language Arts in a rural public high school. And I learned that my 13 years as a public school student, my 4 years as a college student at a highly selective college, and even a great deal of my year as a masters degree student in the education school of a flagship public university hadn’t taught me how to manage a classroom, how to reach students, how to inspire a love of learning, how to teach. 

Eighteen years as a student (and a year of preschool before that), and I didn’t know shit about teaching. Only years of practicing my skills and honing my skills would have rendered me a true professional. An expert. Someone who knows about the business of inspiring children. Of reaching students. Of making a difference. Of teaching.

Amen.

He Who Dies With the Most Toys in His Cold, Dead Hands Wins

The death of an instructor at a Nevada shooting range at the hands of a nine-year-old girl is the perfect example of what the Gun Cult is all about.

It's not about protecting our Second Amendment rights, or defending ourselves from a tyrannical government. It's about the toys.

When Barack Obama was elected president the Gun Cult ran around shrilly screaming that Obama was going to take their guns away from them, like nine-year-old girls afraid their parents were taking away their Barbies.

Guns are weapons. Tools of particular trades: hunting, policing, national defense. It is sheer folly that this poor girl's parents, the instructor, the shooting range owner and the state legislature allows and encourages children to play with fully automatic weapons as if they were toys.

It's clear that many in the Gun Cult think of guns as toys from the way they leave them lying around their houses where children can get them. Or the way they think it's perfectly safe to take them into public places, where they can fall out of their purses and pockets and shoot themselves and others. Or the way they show them off to each other at parties where everyone is drinking.

Would these parents have placed a jackhammer in this girl's hands? Would they let her use an electric drill that was too heavy for her to properly control? Or operate a table saw? Or light birthday candles with a propane torch? Maybe. But probably not, because those tools aren't fun.

In a culture where hunting is common, you can argue that responsible children should be taught how to properly handle weapons at an early age to instill the proper respect and care for weapons. To that end my dad gave my 11-year-old nephew my grandfather's ancient bolt-action .22 caliber rifle. It's a long weapon with minimal recoil.

If the nine-year-old girl in Nevada had been using such a rifle, that instructor would almost certainly be alive today. Even if she couldn't handle the weapon's kick, she couldn't accidentally get a second shot off.

But her parents wanted their spindly nine-year-old to fire a fully automatic Uzi because it's fun!

The Gun Cult rejects reasonable gun laws not because they're protecting their rights, but because the Government is a bunch of big meanies who want to take away their fun.

Needed: An Airline Passenger Bill of Rights

It's official: flying on airplanes is now even worse than riding a bus. Human beings packed into the flying crates that pass for airliners may even be more uncomfortable than cattle packed into semitrailers on their way to the slaughterhouse.

In the last nine days three flights have had to make emergency landings because passengers are fighting over reclining seats. You might blame hot-headed passengers who are stuck in unbearable conditions. You might blame airline execs who cram more and more seats into less and less space to make an extra buck in an industry in which every airline is perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. You might blame the federal government for allowing consolidation in an industry in which a few major airlines have a monopoly on major routes, or the FAA for allowing airlines to get away with collusion in ticket pricing, which they accomplish through temporary ticket price changes that other airlines watch for.

In one incident air marshals blew their covers to subdue and handcuff an unruly passenger.

But the real problem is the deregulation of the airline industry that occurred in 1978. This has led to numerous problems besides the wretched state of affairs in the coach cabin, including massive consolidation in the airline industry creating de facto monopoly routes; airlines bailing on their pension commitments and letting American taxpayers pick up the tab; rural areas that have lost service; airlines going to the Supreme Court to argue that lying about ticket prices is free speech.

Passengers are being squeezed in every direction: going through the airport security checks is a nightmare, and sitting in coach is like being stuck between two puling brats on a cross-country road trip.

The state of affairs in the air has become dangerous. Not because terrorists are going to take over the plane, but because the guy sitting behind you might haul off and slug you because you reclined your seat -- because the guy in front of you reclined his seat.

Of course, nothing will be done about this because the decision makers and the 1% are completely unaffected by the chaos in the skies: they are literally wined and dined in business class and first class. They get to skip airport security, board first, and miss out on all the indignities the plebes are made to suffer.

And the thing is, the airlines are intentionally inflicting misery on their passengers in order to squeeze more dollars from them. They claim they're just making everyone pay for the services they use, but this is nonsense. Charging for carry-on baggage should be classified as a crime against humanity. And they intentionally use the slowest boarding method possible, just to rub it in.

And the stupidest thing is, all these shenanigans have not made the airline industry any more profitable: they're always on the brink of bankruptcy.

The experiment in airline deregulation is clearly a failure. Exactly how much latitude they should be given is not clear, but a good first step would be a passenger bill of rights that specifies minimum services and personal space for all passengers, regardless of what class they're flying in.

It's either that, or withing 10 years we'll be reading about riots aboard airplanes, air marshals whose guns have been taken away and shootings at 30,000 feet.

Good (and a very many) words.

From a question on Quora wondering what the future is of the Republican party. I am reprinting the entire answer because I couldn't pick a favorite part, although I will highlight:)

It's starting to become a monotonous preamble, but I identify as a Jeffersonian Republican with a dash of Teddy Roosevelt. At this point, I'm not sure the party has a future, because the party is no longer Republican. 

Ensuring that government is funded adequately to meet what we charge it to do? As Dick Cheney said, "Deficits don't matter." Enshrining fundamental rights? The Bush administration brought us indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, and torture, and tossed aside habeus corpus. Responsible, considered foreign policy? Nope. Civil rights? Nope. Conservative ethics? Utterly gone. Pursuing scientific advancement? Not so much. Right to live your life as you like? Gone as well. Valuing education? Don't be silly. Separation of church and state? *&@# that, we don't need religious freedom! Value the Republic? No need for that, right? 

In the end, the party has become something of a self-parody, steeped in hypocrisy and weirdness, and I'm sorry to say that most of it can be traced to the absorption of the Southern Democrats (who were pissed off at JFK's and LBJ's acceptance of the civil-rights baton from the Republicans who had been carrying it all those years) during the Nixon administration during the period of his "Southern Strategy." Certainly, the false piousness, the surge in racism, and the hysterical xenophobia started around that time, and has now virtually taken over the party—and I don't see it changing. 

I'm not saying that the Republican party has always done well in this regard, either. Historically, we've had brilliant moments, and we've had appalling ones. Actual conservatives would admit to this, but those are scarce in the GOP now as well. McCarthyism was a black stain on the Republican Party's reputation that we will never be able to erase, but at this rate, we'll never overcome it, either. 

The modern-day GOP cannot convince any person who puts rationale and logic before hysteria and panic, and so it has devolved into playing election shenanigans through voter intimidation, lies, and laws designed to block people from voting. This isn't a new tactic, but it used to be the Southern Democrats who did it a lot. Thanks, Nixon. 

These aren't conservatives—they're theocratic, hypocritical, dystopic radicals who cannot compromise, think, or be productive. They have spent four years blocking this president's policies, so that they can point in his direction now and claim that his policies don't work. They lie, insult, smear and distort; they are full of bile and feces, and fling it indiscriminately. 

There will always be people who delight in this sort of behavior, and so there may always be what this party has become. But if enough thoughtful people who know what Republicanism was meant to be, who understand the constitutional principles at stake, who would dare to shout down the hysterics and the liars, who would dare to be honest, who would dare to shame those who would sacrifice the Republic on the basis of some of the most bizarrely inaccurate interpretations of the Bible and the Constitution ever rendered in this country, finally come together with one voice, the party might be restored. 

I wish I could see that happening. The GOP has become a threat to the Republic, and will be so until it comes to its senses. Perhaps another party will come along to replace it. Something will eventually happen, but I dread some of the forms that could take.

And all of this was written 2 years ago and it's still fucking happening!!

Great Question!

Here is a great question from Quora with a whole pile of great answers! I can't pick my favorite because they are all that fucking good:)

Where Would They Cut?

So, conservatives whine about cutting the budget. Alright, where would they cut? And what would the ramifications for our economy be? I've also included total spending by all governments (state, local etc) in the second graphic.

Whose Bull Market Is It?

So, who exactly is benefiting from our amazing bull market? Christian Science Monitor has the answer and it's exactly who you would expect.

As the stock market rise enters its sixth year – now becoming one of the longest bull markets in US history – it is benefiting Americans unevenly. Coming as the rest of the economy has stagnated, the boom has bolstered the fortunes of wealthy investors like Kalayjian while many other people, like Collins, have garnered no rewards at all.

It's a great piece that details exactly what our economy is like these days.

Oh, and take a look at this graphic.

Where exactly is Obama's destruction of the stock market occurring?

Good Words

From a recent comment thread on Quora regarding certain characteristics of conservative commenters...

Don't waste your time on THIS Charles. He is nothing but a mess of diversions, misdirections, equivocations, and outright denial. All of these points have been made before, but make absolutely no difference upon his ability to consider the impact of usage, intentions, or anything else that doesn't fit his narrative. I expect to see a "I know you are, but what am I?" Or "I'm rubber, you're glue..." response to this from him.

Sounds most familiar:)

Not Such A Budget Buster

It looks like the predictions of impending doom and economic disaster for Medicare were blown all out of proportion.

The changes are big. The difference between the current estimate for Medicare’s 2019 budget and the estimate for the 2019 budget four years ago is about $95 billion. That sum is greater than the government is expected to spend that year on unemployment insurance, welfare and Amtrak — combined. It’s equal to about one-fifth of the expected Pentagon budget in 2019. Widely discussed policy changes, like raising the estate tax, would generate just a tiny fraction of the budget savings relative to the recent changes in Medicare’s spending estimates.

Check out the graph they provide. Pretty cool.

So, why did this happen?

Even as more people are getting access to health insurance, the costs of caring for individual patients is growing at a super-slow rate. That means that health care, which has eaten into salary gains for years and driven up debt and bankruptcies, may be starting to stabilize as a share of national spending.

Also...

..some are because of cuts in health care spending passed by Congress. The Affordable Care Act, in particular, made significant reductions to Medicare’s spending on hospitals and private Medicare plans, to help subsidize insurance coverage for low- and middle-income Americans. The Budget Control Act, which Congress passed in 2011, also made some across-the-board cuts to Medicare spending.

Further...

...much of the recent reductions come from changes in behavior among doctors, nurses, hospitals and patients. Medicare beneficiaries are using fewer high-cost health care services than in the past — taking fewer brand-name drugs, for example, or spending less time in the hospital. The C.B.O.'s economists call these changes “technical changes,” and they dominate the downward revisions since 2010.

Well, there goes that talking point:)

Meat

Can't Resist Being Greedy Around Election time

Looks like Mitch McConnell had some fun at a recent Koch Brothers retreat.



They just tend to get so greedy, don't they?

Statistics that Lie and Statistics that Don't

The Washington Post is running an opinion piece by Joel Shults, a retired university police chief, who tries to minimize the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson with "facts." Here's an example of one of his "facts:"

No gun doesn’t mean no threat. FBI murder statistics consistently show that more people are beaten to death with hands and feet each year than are killed by assault rifles. In Missouri, nearly a third of the 386 murders that occurred in 2011 were committed without firearms. A person’s size doesn’t mean that they are aggressive, but one’s stature is clearly a factor in a fight.

The highlighted sentence is a carefully crafted statistical lie, intended to make you think that beatings kill more people than guns. This is a common tactic with gun people: cite some number and imply that it applies to all guns. If you go to the very page of murder statistics that he references, you get the following numbers (removing all years but 2012 for brevity and computing percentages; other years have similar percentages):

The percentage of homicide victims by all types of gunshot in 2012 by firearms was 69%. The percentage of victims killed by all beatings (include pushing) was 5.3%. That is, firearms killed 13 times more people than beatings.

Why obscure these facts by claiming that more people died from beatings than assault rifles? Assault rifles aren't even called out as a category in the statistics, so the numbers cited don't even support Shults's claim (13.76% of the firearms used had no type stated, and could have been assault weapons, for example).

But there are other statistics that are more relevant to this story that Shults does not mention. 

Ferguson has more than double the number of police warrants issued per capita than the next closest city in Missouri, more than 1,500 per 1,000 people in the town. That's more than five to 10 times the rate in most of Missouri. That means that the cops stop every resident in Ferguson one and a half times a year. Except we all know it isn't every resident, it's the young black male ones.

The mess in Ferguson started because this cop was hassling two black kids walking in the street. This constant harassment is what black men and boys have to put up with every day of their lives.

CNN has a side-by-side comparison of both sides' version of the events that led to Michael Brown's death. In the kids' version, the cop swore at them for walking in the street, almost ran them down with his car, slammed his car door into them, pulled his gun on them, then shot Michael Brown.

In the cop's version, Brown punched him, so the cop pulled his gun, then Brown tried to take the gun, so the cop shot him to prevent Brown getting the gun.

I think both sides are lying about what precipitated the shooting. The cop was needlessly hassling the kids, and the kids were stupidly sassy. It looks like the cop caused the whole thing by being a dick about two kids who didn't get out of his way fast enough. But we'll never find out for sure.

In any case, Shults's point about beating deaths is completely irrelevant in this context: the cop wasn't afraid of a beating. He claims he was afraid that Brown would take his gun. The very weapon that is supposed to "protect" him was the thing he was most afraid would kill him.

The warrant statistics make it clear that Ferguson's cops are targeting the black community with intimidation and force. The cop in question, Darren Wilson, started out on the police force of Jennings, a nearby town, which also had a majority white police force with very similar history of conflict with the majority black population:

Yet Officer Wilson’s formative experiences in policing came in a department that wrestled historically with issues of racial tension, mismanagement and turmoil. During Officer Wilson’s brief tenure, another officer was fired for a wrongful shooting, and a lieutenant was accused of stealing federal funds. In 2011, in the wake of federal and state investigations into the misuse of grant money, the department closed, and the city entered into a contract to be policed by the county. The department was found to have used grant money to pay overtime for D.W.I. checkpoints that never took place. 

That is, Wilson learned the ropes from a bunch of corrupt and racist cops who all got fired when the department got shut down by the city council.

Across the country police departments justify the sort of harassment the cops in Ferguson practice by saying that it keeps crime down: "broken windows" policing targets economically deprived neighborhoods, where the slightest infraction gets you arrested and thrown in jail. In cities like New York stop-and-frisk policies explicitly target black and Hispanic youth for drugs searches, even though whites use drugs at almost the same rate (blacks were 11% and whites were 9% in 2013).

But even that small 2% difference could easily be explained by other statistics: people with college educations use drugs at half the rate as high-school dropouts. Blacks in general are poorer, have less education, partly because they live in bad neighborhoods with crummier schools and have a much higher drop-out rate.

What the crowds in Ferguson are protesting is incessant police harassment of blacks that masquerades as "broken windows policing." The cops respond by saying they're just going where the crime is.

But if you buy that argument, then you should also buy the argument that the IRS should only audit rich white people who contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns because that's who's committing all the tax evasion and influence peddling.

The Batshit Ideology Claims Another Victim

I woke up this morning to this story and to say that I am outraged and thoroughly disgusted would be the understatement of the fucking millennium.

A 9-year-old girl at a shooting range outside Las Vegas accidentally killed an instructor on Monday morning when she lost control of the Uzi he was showing her how to use.

Here is the video...



A NINE YEAR OLD? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!??

What was Charles Vacca thinking? What were her parents thinking? Well, they were thinking this...



The image above is from Mr. Vacca's Facebook page. Juxtaposing this with the Chris Kyle shooting, can we now recognize that these people are a danger to themselves and others?

Because of this FUCKING BATSHIT ideology, this little girl is going to have to live the rest of her life with this horror on her conscience. The responsibility for this incident lies completely with the Gun Cult. Fuck you, assholes!!! Your adolescent fever dreams are presently causing the dystopic future you are worried about.

Do you know what would be really great? Just leave. Get the fuck out of our country and go live in Somalia where there are plenty of guns and no government.

Because that's exactly where you fucking belong.

For All Of You Comcast Fans...

The 242 Dilemma

A recent question on Quora echoed what I have been writing about here for quite some time. How exactly do Republicans overcome the "242" dilemma? The solid blue states add up to 242 which means the Democrats are always 28 EVs away from winning the presidential election. What that means for 2016 is that even without a Hillary Clinton campaign, all the Democrats have to do is set up camp in Florida and Ohio and win ONE of them. They could send surrogates to Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico. and New Hampshire and erode the numbers for the GOP further.

For the past six presidential elections, the Democrats have won 370, 379, 266, 251, 365, and 332 votes. That's an average of 327 EVs. The Republicans have won 168, 159, 271, 286, 173, 206. That's an average of 210 electoral votes for the GOP. What lesson should conservatives learn from this math?

Time to change. You are a dying party.

Good Words

Quite a few to choose from Jonathan Kay's recent piece

There is a fine line between responsible gun-rights advocacy and America’s GOP-enabled Yosemite Sam gun-cult carnival — and I feel comfortable drawing that line around the diaper section of my local big-box store.

...for these Canadians, guns are tools, not objects of psycho-sexual religious veneration. There is no Canadian equivalent of Charlton Heston, who declared at the NRA’s 2000 annual meeting that “Sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blue steel, something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms … When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument, that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty.” 

To a Canadian shooter, a gun is something used to kill gophers. To his American equivalent of the Heston school, it’s a sort of giant wand for killing Voldemort.

No shit.

Hey Criminals! Here's a Gun!!

Kill someone in Georgia lately? Molest a child there as well? Well, rest easy, friend. You can get your right back to own a gun! 

William Alvin Bishop paid for his crime – aggravated child molestation – with nine years in prison. But when he got out, he still wasn’t free. Because he is on Georgia’s sex offender registry, Bishop must notify his local sheriff of any change of address, which then is posted online with his photograph. He cannot live or work within 1,000 feet of a school, a church, a day-care center – any place where, in the expansive language of the state’s sex offender law, “minors congregate.”

He may, however, own a gun. 

Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles restored Bishop’s constitutional right to bear arms in 2012 despite the serious nature of his crime and his documented threat of additional violence. He is among a growing number of violent offenders who have received pardons that restore gun rights in recent years – and one of the seven from the sex offender registry.

Ground stood!

Thank goodness that Bishop's right to own a gun was preserved because you never know when he might need it against the federal government.

One Of Our Parties Is Insane

The American Right

Good Words

I think it is far past time I put some quotes up here from conservatives...

"Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose." - George Will 

"A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'." - William F. Buckley, Jr.

"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy." - Benjamin Disraeli 

"Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future." - Benjamin Disraeli

Blogging Comes Back To Haunt HIm

Check this out.

Ah, the sweet sound of a butterfly emerging from his bubble...I mean cocoon...sorry...

It's not like MN-01 was really in play anyway but I found this story amusing on a number of levels. First, there was this...

“On behalf of all red-blooded American men: THANK YOU SENATOR McCAIN, SARAH’S HOT!” he wrote.

How old is Jim Hagedorn? Because he sounds like he's (ahem) an adolescent.

There's also this...

In a 2002 “masterpiece analysis,”...

In a 2008 “masterpiece analysis,”...

Gee, this sounds awfully familiar. The egos on these people..I suppose that's what comes with massive insecurity and the stereotypical inferiority complex.

And I'm SURE that his remarks on gays, women, and American Indians were COMPLETELY satirical...

The American Taliban

Angry Old White People!

A Cold-Hearted Bastard

The press has been having a field day with the president golfing after delivering remarks on the execution of journalist James Foley by the ISIL. Doesn't he have any feelings!!???!! I suppose if I were advising the president I would have suggested some quiet time with his family...perhaps reading a book.

Yet his golfing and laughing with friends, not giving in to their demands for cash as EU nations do, and continuing to bomb the crap out of ISIL positions in northern Iraq completely decimates the idea that he is weak. In fact, he looks pretty much like he is a cold-hearted bastard.

What sort of a message does that send to ISIL?

Is Russia's Takeover of Ukraine About to Fail?

If there was ever any doubt that the people behind the insurgency in Ukraine were Russians who took their marching orders from Vladimir Putin, those doubts have now been put to rest.

The New York Times reports that as the rebellion in the Donetsk "People's Republic" has been slowly collapsing, Putin has pulled the Russians who were leading the insurgency out of the country. These leaders weren't Ukrainians of Russian descent, or Ukrainians who spoke Russian as their first language, but actual Russian citizens and members of the Russian military and FSB (the successor to the KGB).

Why yank the Russians commanders? Perhaps to lend more credibility to the "Ukrainianness" of the insurrection. But more to the point, if the Ukrainian government were to capture the Russian commanders when the insurgency is defeated, they might have some very embarrassing things to tell the world about Mr. Putin's and the Russian government's involvement in the war. This may be a hopeful sign: it may mean that Russia is abandoning the rebels.

They have replaced these Russians with Ukrainians who have less-than-stellar qualifications, including the new deputy defense minister, Fyodor Berezin, who before the rebellion was a science fiction author and purchaser of janitorial supplies for a university.

The Russians who have stepped down include Igor Strelkov (actually, Igor Girkin, the man who initially claimed credit for downing the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine), a Russian citizen and FSB colonel who was behind the takeover of Crimea; Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen, who resigned as the Donetsk prime minister; Valery Bolotov, a Russian citizen, who resigned as the Luhansk prime minister; and Igor Bezler, a citizen of Crimea who was a member of the Russian army. The lone remaining Russian in the command structure is Vladimir Antyufeyev, a reputed spy who was apparently left behind to keep an eye on the Ukrainians.

And they need close watching:

Separatist fighters have taken to carousing drunkenly at night and wearing civilian clothes. This month, three of them crashed a car into the curb outside the Ramada hotel. On Saturday, two separatists again crashed at the same spot, rolling their vehicle and scattering broken glass and bullets on the street. On Tuesday, a drunken rebel, improbably, again crashed at that location, severely injuring four civilians.

As bystanders watched horrified, the drunken gunman, who was not wounded, drew a pistol and proceeded to kick one of the injured civilians, berating him for causing the accident.

As for Mr. Berezin, he seems to think he's living in a science fiction novel:

“Reality became scarier than science fiction,” he said in an interview over iced tea at the Havana Banana bar, a favorite rebel haunt. “I live in my books now. I fell right into the middle of my books.”

This brought to mind another man who thinks we're living in a science fiction novel written by a Russian: Paul Ryan.

In 2009, in a multi-part video series posted to Facebook, Paul Ryan said that “what’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand [who emigrated from the Soviet Union and worked as a Hollywood screen writer] did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”

Incredibly, Ryan said this right after the financial meltdown in which immoral and unethical Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers nearly destroyed the world economy. But in a world where finance laws were crafted by Ayn Rand sycophants, most of the worst offenders have escaped prosecution.

I don't know which vision of the future is more depressing: Berezin's Parallel Cataclysm, in which the Soviet Union took over the world in an alternate dimension, or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in which unbridled selfishness and greed are portrayed as the apotheosis of human achievement.

I just wish these guys could actually go to these alternate dimensions, and stop trying to screw up this one with their crazy notions.

Modern Offices

Modern Office with Christina Hendricks from Funny Or Die

Killing Four Birds with One Stone?

Algae Systems' Pilot Plant

A Nevada company thinks that it may be able to reduce the country's carbon footprint, create a new source of fertilizer that doesn't rely on fossil fuels, purify waste water from municipal sewer systems and make the United States a moral and economic leader in the fight against climate change:

[Algae Systems] has a pilot plant in Alabama that, it says, can turn a profit making diesel fuel from algae by simultaneously performing three other tasks: making clean water from municipal sewage (which it uses to fertilize the algae), using the carbon-heavy residue as fertilizer and generating valuable credits for advanced biofuels.

How does it work?

At its heart is a “hydrothermal liquefaction” system that heats the algae and other solids in the sewage to more than 550 degrees Fahrenheit, at 3,000 pounds per square inch, turning out a liquid that resembles crude oil from a well.

There's nothing magical or new about this: this is exactly how the crude oil and natural gas were formed that we're drilling out of the ground. Scientists have been piloting processes like this for years.

But there is a sticking point. The energy required to form crude oil naturally was "free:" it came from the sun and geological processes over millions of years. Whether Algae System's process can fulfill its promise depends on where they get the energy to raise the temperature and pressure.

If the process uses power generated by wind and solar, the liquid fuel produced would be carbon neutral. It could not only run vehicles, but also electrical generators that can feed electricity into the grid during the night and when the wind isn't blowing. Burning this oil wouldn't contribute to climate change, unlike the oil and natural gas drilled from the ground whose carbon was sequestered millions of years ago.

Photovoltaic power is getting cheap really fast, and there are many opportunities for installations. The rooftop of one Ikea store in Bloomington, Minnesota, generates a megawatt of electricity. There are thousands of Ikeas, Walmarts, Targets, Kohls and other stores that have big flat roofs that soak up lots of sun, all in cities that use lots of electricity. Cheap solar panels have the potential to generate a lot of electricity during peak times: the hottest part of the day, when everyone cranks up the AC.

If this pans out, wherever we have cities on large bodies of water we can generate crude oil. That's good all the way around: the majority of Americans live near some coast. Shipping oil long distances on rails or in pipelines is energy intensive and dangerous.

Geology has made states like Texas, Alaska, Oklahoma, Louisiana and North Dakota economic winners by happenstance of oil deposits. With this algae technology geography may have a similar influence: all the states on the ocean or the Great Lakes -- remember the toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie that poisoned Toledo's water this summer -- have the potential to become energy independent.

Better yet, if American companies develop and license this technology to other countries we can not only improve our balance of trade, we can undercut regimes like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, whose vast oil wealth exerts a corrupting influence on their own internal politics as well as the rest of the world.

Complex and Unique

With the recent passing of new guns laws in the state of Massachusetts, I find myself in a reflective mood. The first question that comes to mind is would these laws be applicable to the rest of the country? Let's take a look.

The new law stiffens penalties for some gun-based crimes, creates a Web-based portal within the state Executive Office of Public Safety to allow for real-time background checks in private gun sales and calls for the creation of a firearms trafficking unit within the state police.

It also gives local police chiefs the right to go to court to try to deny firearms identification cards needed to buy rifles or shotguns to people they feel are unsuitable to have access to the weapons.

Another part of the law mandates Massachusetts join the National Instant Background Check System, which requires the state to transmit information about substance abuse or mental health commitments to a federal database that police can use to review firearms applications.

Certainly these are all good refinements and will likely prevent some gun violence. But Massachusetts ranks 33rd out of 50 states (and the District of Columbia) in gun murders per rate of 100,000 people according to the US Census taken in 2010 (1.8). In looking at the list, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Missouri, Maryland, and South Carolina have far worse murder rates and are clearly in need of a change.

Of course, the nature of that change and what it should entail is where the debates always begin. The problems in those states can likely be linked to the urban centers of each of them and not the rural areas. I know for a fact that the town in which I was born (Columbia, MO) has really gone down hill in terms of crime in the last decade. St Louis is pretty awful as well.

Thinking about all of this has led me to a conclusion on how we can best address the issue of gun violence in our country. Obviously, there are some basic things that can be done at a federal level and I have discussed them before. Real time background checks for private gun sales via a Web based portal is a great idea. The federal government should pick up the tab for this and offer it for free to each state.

Yet, the majority of the changes should happen at the state level. Is it really fair to ask Vermont or North Dakota to adhere to any new federal regulations when their gun violence rate is so low? More importantly, what are they doing that their rate is so low? Just a lack of people? If that's the case, why is Oregon, Minnesota and Iowa so low? My home state has more people than South Carolina. Why is Vermont so low and neighboring Delaware so high?

Local crime varies from state to state and must be taken into account. That's why it has always frustrated me when gun rights people point to Illinois and shriek, "See? They have tough gun laws but still have a high rate of violence." The violence in Chicago has no correlation with gun legislation. It has to do with the complexities of the area.

What these numbers show is that there is no easy or quick fix. Each state has to be examined for its own, unique complexity. Any new changes to existing gun laws have to speak to this uniqueness and complexity.

Symbiotic Violence

The violence in Israel and Gaza seems senseless, but there is a cruel logic to it. For years the right wing leaders of Israel have put the screws to Gaza, instituting a blockade that has turned the city of nearly two million into a ghetto that almost resembles a concentration camp.

Israel's leaders claim this is necessary to prevent Hamas from smuggling in missiles and materiel that they use to attack Israel. Yet Hamas smuggled in thousands of missiles anyway. This harsh punishment of the general population for the actions of a small number of Hamas terrorists increases support for Hamas among Palestinians, because they feel that at least Hamas is doing something to fight Israeli oppression.

Hamas's missile barrages against Israel in turn increase support for the right-wing leaders who put the blockade on Gaza that incited the missile attacks in the first place.

Hamas and the Israeli right wing are thus locked in a symbiotic embrace of violence. The two sides gain power by egging each other on and hurting the innocent people in the middle. Every time moderate Palestinians make a conciliatory gesture, the right-wing Israeli housing minister annexes more land in the West Bank or clamps down on Gaza. Every time Israel makes some overture to peace, Hamas lobs more missiles at civilians in Tel Aviv or kidnaps an Israeli teenager or soldier.

Every Hamas attack requires some form of Israeli retribution, which begets another Hamas revenge attack, which incites more Israeli vengeance. Because the Palestinians and Israelis immediately allow violence to derail the peace process, there is no peace process: any kook can sabotage with a single act of terrorism or oppression.

And now we're seeing this same sort of mindset in the United States. In Ferguson, Missouri, the police force is 6% black while the town is 63% black. Eighty-six percent of traffic stops are made on blacks, and 92% of arrests are made on blacks. Similar statistics hold throughout the country, especially arrests for possession of marijuana and other trivial crimes.

Statistics like this make many blacks in the United States feel like they are prisoners in their own cities, ruled by white police forces that regularly use intimidation, brutality and guns to keep blacks in line.

I believe, though, that most white cops try mightily to prevent racism from coloring their judgment. And I know that most blacks in Ferguson are peaceful -- though righteously angry at the treatment blacks regularly receive at the hands of law enforcement.

But a few bad cops and a few black rabble rousers play off each other to make the situation in Ferguson deteriorate into the same sort of mess. It's starting to look a whole lot like Israel and Gaza.

Ferguson, MO

Many police departments now have serious military equipment, including ATVs, ballistic armor, machine guns; they employ military tactics, including SWAT teams that burst into homes and apartments without knocking, as if they were assaulting Osama bin Laden's compound. The streets of Ferguson are almost indistinguishable from the streets of Gaza.

Gaza

Now Governor Jay Nixon has called out the National Guard in Ferguson. The same National Guard that has been deployed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is this country coming to?

Because we have the National Guard, there is no need to militarize our police forces.  Turning cops into soldiers is a grave error: as a matter of policy, the military can shoot first and ask questions later. Police forces that adopt that mindset are simply murderers.

This is the legacy of our national overreaction to 9/11. Americans have been hamstrung by fear, allowing themselves to abandon all dignity in airports, letting the NSA to run roughshod over our privacy, wasting hundreds billions of dollars on security and weapons that only increase our sense of fear and allow police to visit indignity and violence on the less fortunate in society.

We can't forget what happened on 9/11, but we have to break that horrible day's grasp on our souls. We can't keep saying "9/11" every time someone wants to take another one of our freedoms away.

Good Words

From a question on Quora...

I worked in public schools for many years and am a graduate of public schools in the most conservative region of the country. I have yet to observe anything like indoctrination of any kind. 

I'm really not sure how these urban legends or political mythologies start. I don't know any teachers who have time to brainwash children. Most appear to be very busy managing classes, teaching lessons and doing required paperwork. 

Anybody who went into the classroom thinking there are all these young minds into which ideologies can simply be poured would find out very quickly that kids have the ability to think for themselves and come to the school with the cultural values they learn at home.

Yep.

Benghazi Update

The only sound I have heard lately on Benghazi has been crickets and now we see why.  The House Select Committee on Intelligence has concluded the following:

-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened." 

 -- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack." 

 -- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind." 

 -- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."

This was a committee made up of 12 Republicans and 9 Democrats.

So where does this leave Rep. Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Select Committee? Apparently not open to the public, according to its chairperson.

But when it became clear that he intended to lead the inquiry behind closed doors, far from the spotlight, the requests soon fell silent. “If you want to get on the news, then go rob a bank,” Gowdy, R-S.C., said, recounting his message to several Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill, dashing their hopes of being featured in what they assumed would be high-profile televised hearings. “It’s going to be a professional investigation, despite folks who may want to see it be something else,” Gowdy told ABC News. “They’re going to be disappointed.”

Disappointed is putting it mildly. The clean up on bowels blown has already begun, hence the silence of late on Benghazi.

My prediction is that they will end up at the same conclusion as the Intelligence committee. What a waste of taxpayer dollars...so much for caring about frivolous, government spending.

Enron All Over Again?

Remember Enron, the company that went bankrupt after gaming the electricity distribution system in California, screwing rate payers out of billions of dollars? Enron, the company that invented illegal strategies for shuttling electrical power in and out of California to take advantage of the state's deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to make things "more efficient?" Enron, the company whose traders gave those illegal schemes names like Fat Boy, Death Star and Get Shorty?

Enron, the company whose chief strategy officer, J. Clifford Baxter, was found dead, shot in the head, in his Mercedes-Benz in the middle of the road in suburban Houston, with a revolver and a suicide note? Baxter had complained to a whistleblower about Enron's bookkeeping tactics, and had resigned "to spend more time with his family." Baxter was potentially the star witness against other Enron execs. And then he wound up dead in the middle of the road with a bullet in his head.

Enron, the company whose traders were recorded saying things like:

Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?

Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.

Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a—for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour."

and

"Just cut 'em off. They're so f----d. They should just bring back f-----g horses and carriages, f-----g lamps, f-----g kerosene lamps."

Enron, the company that got Arnold Schwarzenegger elected governor by getting Californians so mad at Governor Gray Davis's inability to control Enron's rapacious behavior they tossed him out on his ear in a recall election?

Enron is dead and gone, as is its CEO and chairman, Ken Lay, who died in 2006 on vacation while still appealing his conviction for fraud, trying mightily to squirm out of a 45-year prison sentence.

But Enron's spiritual successors are alive and kicking. Companies like DC Energy are making a fortune on the electricity market by buying up contracts that pay off big during times of high demand. But DC Energy does not own any power plants, or power lines, or have anything at all to do with generating and distributing electricity. It's just an investment firm, buying and selling contracts. How is this possible?

Several years the electrical grid was deregulated to eliminate old monopolies and make more competitive markets. This was supposed to spur investment in better infrastructure and help companies balance loads. Instead, investment companies like DC Energy and Louis Dreyfus Energy got into the act, buying up contracts that were originally intended for companies that actually generate electricity be able to hedge their bets to avoid rate spikes and brownouts.

These contracts are creating perverse incentives in the electricity market: when there's congestion, they get rich. Really rich. Louis Dreyfus was caught doing manipulating electricity prices in 2009, and paid $7.4 million to settle these allegations. But no one went to jail, or even admitted fault.

When investment companies like DC Energy buy these contracts -- rather than companies who could use profits from those contracts to invest in more electrical generation and distribution capacity to reduce congestion -- all that money, paid by you and Grandma Millie, goes into the black hole of Wall Street.

These companies hire "quants," scientists and engineers versed in physics and math, who analyze demand and the grid to determine where congestion is most likely to occur. Then they buy the contracts for those times and places and make a killing at the expense of the local businesses and families that buy high-priced electricity from distant power plants.

DC Energy doesn't use that information to make the grid work more efficiently and prevent brownouts and huge rate spikes, which was the whole point of deregulation: they do it to cash in on other people's misery.

If you think you've heard the term "quant" before, you probably have. Quants engineered the 2008 financial meltdown, by applying their mathematical models to the toxic mortgage derivatives in another get-rich-quick scheme.

These scam artists will dress their scheme as somehow making the market more efficient. That might be true if power companies were taking the profit and using it balance their losses and improve capacity. But DC Energy is just a middle-man taking advantage of a shortage, gambling that they'll be able to buy electricity somewhere else more cheaply than what they promised to sell it for. They're taking the profits that real power companies would use to invest in eliminating physical bottlenecks and increasing efficiency in the real world of power generation. Not some obscure "marketplace efficiency" that exists only in economics text books.

By hijacking these profits, leeches like DC Energy are actively preventing improvements in the grid, and guaranteeing that our electrical distribution system will never be fixed.

The quants' previous scams resulted in the meltdown of our entire financial system. If we aren't careful, they'll melt down our entire electrical grid this time around.

Pissing Red White and Blue

Cooler Heads In Missouri

It seems like cooler heads are prevailing in Ferguson, Missouri as police and elected officials are finally having the right response.

The image to the left is State Trooper Captain Ron Johnson who is now in charge of maintaining law and order in Ferguson. Why this didn't happen sooner illustrates what a complete failure there was on the part of St Louis county police and the state government. Governor Nixon should have done this immediately after the looting had ceased.

I've also been most heartened to see people across the political spectrum questioning the militarization of the police department. Going all "Fallujah shock troops" as the county police did was ridiculous. It may have been needed for the looting and rioting but not for the peaceful protests. Check out this photo...

This is Tyson Manker, a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, greeting another protester in Ferguson, Mo., yesterday.

"I have a problem with weapons of war now being used at home on peaceful protesters," said Manker.

Amen and Semper Fi!

The Other Shoe Drops

The right wing has been flooding the media with vitriol after the suicide of Robin Williams: Rush Limbaugh blamed his leftist world view, Fox News host Shepard Smith called Williams a liberal coward, and so on. Of course, they jumped on this immediately without waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Now that shoe has dropped: Williams' wife, Susan Schneider, revealed that Williams was in the early stages of Parkinson's disease. If you're not familiar with Parkinson's (my father-in-law, my aunt's father and our neighbor all had it), it is an incurable disease that involves the loss of motor control neurons in the brain, which causes constant tremors that affect manual dexterity, speech, and walking. Sometimes dementia results, as it did with our neighbor.

Other celebrities have had Parkinson's: Michael J. Fox is the most well-known, but Linda Ronstadt's singing career was ended by the disease. Yes, many people have gone on to lead fulfilling lives after getting a diagnosis of some terrible neurological disorder: Stephen Hawking had a career as one of the leading physicists of the age after contracting ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease.

But Robin Williams' forte was not physics, mathematics and cosmology; it was comedy, comedy that was based on the quick delivery of flights of fancy and spot-on imitation and mimicry. Something that a Parkinson's sufferer simply cannot manage.

And it's not like liberal comics have cornered the market on tragic suicide. Suicide is common in the conservative world. Take, for example, the son of Oral Roberts, Ronald, who committed suicide in 1982 by shooting himself in the heart six months after coming out as gay. Or Matthew Warren, the son of Rick Warren, reverend of the Saddleback Valley Community Church, who committed suicide some years after telling his father, "Dad, I know I’m going to heaven. Why can’t I just die and end this pain?" There were unconfirmed rumors Matthew was gay. Or Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil, committed suicide in 2010, and again there were rumors he was gay (he was a student at a fashion institute). Or Isaac Hunter, a reverend at a megachurch in Florida, who committed suicide after admitting an affair.

Or Jesse Ryan Loskarn, former chief of staff for Lamarr Alexander, who committed suicide this year after being arrested for watching child porn. In his suicide note he said he was drawn to videos that repeated the abuse he suffered at the hands of family members as a child.

Or Mark Mayfield, the attorney and Tea Party operative who committed suicide a month ago after being charged with conspiring to film Thad Cochran's bedridden wife in a nursing home: his Tea-Party hijinks led directly to his death by his own hand. After Mayfield's death the press was filled with paeans to his wonderfulness; did any conservatives call him cowardly for giving up the fight for what he believed in?

It's impossible to count the number of gay teenagers who have committed suicide. Many of them are depressed because they are different and felt alienated, constantly taunted by other kids who are egged on by the incessant drumbeat from conservatives who say that gays are going to hell and will burn in torment forever. Do gay teens commit suicide because they are depressed, or are they depressed because of the intolerance and hatred conservatives constantly spew?

It's clear that neither the right nor the left has a monopoly on suicide. Many people who survive their first suicide attempt never try again. Sure, if you really want to kill yourself, you'll eventually succeed. But there's a caveat: suicides by gunshot are easy, relatively clean (for the victim), and are more successful than other methods. The easy availability of guns among the right makes it more likely that they'll succeed the first time: liberals have to rely on less reliable methods such as sleeping pills and hanging.

If Tea Party darling Mark Mayfield hadn't had a gun at hand in his moment of despair, might he still be alive today?

Two-thirds of all firearms deaths are by suicide. More importantly, you are far more likely to commit suicide with your gun than you are to kill someone else in self-defense: in 2010 there were 230 justifiable homicides and 19,392 suicides committed with firearms. That means you -- or someone in your family -- are 84 times more likely to intentionally kill yourselves with your gun than an assailant.

Now, are you sure you want that gun in your nightstand where your depressed child knows you keep it?