Ask and Ye Shall Receive

A few days ago I wrote about democracy and the Catholic Church. Lo and behold, my prayers were answered: they're going to poll their congregations about social issues. They're not exactly taking a vote, but it shows the Vatican might be paying attention to reality:

[...] Pope Francis, who has already shaken up the Vatican, is asking the world’s one billion Catholics for their opinions on a questionnaire covering social issues like same-sex marriage, cohabitation by unwed couples, contraception, and the place of divorced and remarried people in the church.

That last part is interesting. Under canon law, you cannot receive communion if you remarry without receiving a Decree of Nullity. But, like birth control, millions of remarried Catholics regularly ignore Church dogma and receive communion.

The usual argument against gay marriage is that it goes against "natural law." What most people don't know is that the Catholic catechism teaches that divorce is wrong because it goes against "the natural law":

2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery:

If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself.

This entire argument boils down to "no backsies." If two people freely consenting to enter a contract is acceptable under natural law, why isn't freely consenting to cancel that same contract acceptable under natural law? Clearly, most Protestant churches think it's fine, and clearly, so does the Catholic Church because they have an entirely unnatural process to dance around it: they just want the Church to call all the shots when they issue a Decree of Nullity.

The natural law argument against gay marriage can somewhat reasonably be made because of reproductive biology (but see below). You can also argue that polygamy is not natural because males and females are born in equal numbers. Allowing one man to have many wives would inevitably cause inbreeding when his closely related descendants unwittingly married. There are serious issues of child support involved with polygamy. And what do poor men do when rich men hog all the women?

Although lifelong commitment to a single mate may be a Christian ideal, it is not the natural order of things: nothing about humans is permanent or universal. Lifelong monogamy is certainly not the case in the Bible: the Old Testament is riddled with men who had dozens and even hundreds of wives and concubines, and stories of men who steal other men's wives. It's certainly not the case in nature, in which many species are polygynous, polyandrous or promiscuous. Lifelong monogamy is merely a social practice in certain human cultures. It is common, but by no means universal. It can't be classified it as "natural" in the same sense that heterosexuality is natural, because it is required at some level for reproduction. (A weak case for lifelong monogamy can be made under natural law on the grounds that it reduces the chances of inbreeding.)

And then there's the question of "natural life expectancy." Is it reasonable to expect people to stay married for 50 or 60 years, considering that is double or triple the life expectancy when these dogmas were cast in stone? Life expectancy has ranged from 20 in the Neolithic to almost 80 in some countries today, though historically if you survived to marry your life expectancy would be 45 or 50. Unless, of course, you were a woman, in which case death in childbirth was appallingly common.

The real problem with the natural law argument is that it cuts both ways: it could eventually be used to justify gay marriage. There's a great deal of evidence that links biology to sexual orientation, the "born that way" hypothesis. If your brain structure makes you gay, and promiscuity is bad, isn't gay marriage inevitable under natural law?

That future Vatican III Council composed of a majority of gay bishops could well take everything we know about nature into account when they make their decisions, rather than limit their understanding of nature and science to beliefs held by theologians born millennia before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

WTF?

Running a blog is weird sometimes. This week a post from 2011 is getting beaucoup traffic. I wonder why? The photo? It was nice to revisit it, though:)

Getting Better

The National Center For Education Statistics released its 2013 report card and much to the dismay of right wing bloggers everywhere, it shows improved reading and math scores for both 4th and 8th graders. Granted, the improvement is small and there still is an obvious achievement gap issue (which, in the bubble, means "Who gives a fuck? They are all lazy") but it clearly shows that we are geed in the right direction.

For those of you who have trouble with the English language, that means not collapsing:)

Energy News A Go Go

There is quite a bit to talk about in energy news so let's get to it!

 First up is a call for nuclear power that I have been waiting for a long time. Check out the source!

Four scientists who have played a key role in alerting the public to the dangers of climate change sent letters Sunday to leading environmental groups and politicians around the world. The letter, an advance copy of which was given to The Associated Press, urges a crucial discussion on the role of nuclear power in fighting climate change. 

Environmentalists have the same problem with emotions and instransigence as the Right does in terms of their views on...well...just about everything:) Nuclear power is clean and much safer than the worry warts will have you believe. The letter signers are James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist; Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution; Kerry Emanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tom Wigley, of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Speaking of climate change, a report on the effect of climate change on world food supplies has been leaked and the news is not good.

The warning on the food supply is the sharpest in tone the panel has issued. Its previous report, in 2007, was more hopeful. While it did warn of risks and potential losses in output, particularly in the tropics, that report found that gains in production at higher latitudes would most likely offset the losses and ensure an adequate global supply. 

The new tone reflects a large body of research in recent years that has shown how sensitive crops appear to be to heat waves. The recent work also challenges previous assumptions about how much food production could increase in coming decades because of higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The gas, though it is the main reason for global warming, also acts as a kind of fertilizer for plants.

For a closer look at this problem and all the data, click here. 

Will this be enough to convince people? I think when you start messing around with the food that Americans eat, they tend to react!

Finally, for the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd, it looks like we have a way around the northern section of Keystone.

Since July, plans have been announced for three large loading terminals in western Canada with the combined capacity of 350,000 barrels a day — equivalent to roughly 40 percent of the capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that is designed to bring oil from western Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Over all, Canada is poised to quadruple its rail-loading capacity over the next few years to as much as 900,000 barrels a day, up from 180,000 today. 

Rail..uh oh! Republicans hate choo choos! Speaking of oil, why is the price of it so low right now? Because the dollar is stronger. How can that be? I thought we were heading for apocalypse! Also...

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said it expects demand for its crude oil to fall to 29.2 million barrels a day in 2018 from 30.3 million barrels a year this year. OPEC said rising supplies from other sources, such as Canadian oil sands, crude from Latin America and the increased use of biofuels would contribute to the fall in demand for its own output. 

Demand has fallen? Wait...I thought demand had nothing to do with price. And increased biofuels? What pinko nonsense!!

Good (?) Words

I put up a link to the Guns and Ammo story  on my FB page and got some very interesting responses. One of my friends posted the following comment.

I own a gun as well, and I can discuss the merits of a shotgun versus a handgun for home defense all day because It is a subject that interests me. I also play my share of FPS video games, and consider Splinter Cell to be the greatest video game series to date. However, I consider myself a gun owner and that's about it.

People like the ones I was referring to are zealots who refuse to even consider ways we can modify our pervasive gun culture and put a dent in the annual culling of over 11,000 of our fellow citizens. It is a mentality that makes no sense to me at all, from a logic standpoint. Their behavior these days looks less and less like people working to protect a Constitutionally guaranteed freedom and more like religious fervor and proselytizing.

Culling...religious fervor...proselytizing...check, check, and check.

When I told him of my prediction (a shooting at a gun show or some other place frequented by the gun community), he didn't agree and was surprisingly cynical.

They'll do what every one else does whenever a horrible crime makes the news: they'll ignore how their culture has contributed to the crime, then write it off as the 'actions of a sick individual', and go on about their lives, blinders intact. Some will even defend and apologize for, the individual in question. If so-called "responsible" adults can do this with crimes like rape, they can do it with spree shootings.

Sadly, he might be right.

Business Wins

Tuesday's election saw GOP establishment candidate Bradley Byrne beat Tea Party fave Dean Young in Alabama's 1st Congressional District. In what clearly is a sign for the ugly war that will be waged over the next year in the GOP, the business community has clearly had enough of the psychosis and adolescent behavior of the Tea Party and like minded people.

CNN has another story on this as does Politico. This would be why I'm not too worried about the mistakes made by the president and the Democrats in terms of the ACA. We don't have to beat the conservatives. They are beating themselves.

Yep

From Paul Krugman

As some of us have tried to explain, debt, while it can pose problems, doesn’t make the nation poorer, because it’s money we owe to ourselves. Anyone who talks about how we’re borrowing from our children just hasn’t done the math. 

True, debt can indirectly make us poorer if deficits drive up interest rates and thereby discourage productive investment. But that hasn’t been happening. Instead, investment is low because of the economy’s weakness. And one of the main things keeping the economy weak is the depressing effect of cutbacks in public spending — especially, by the way, cuts in public investment — all justified in the name of protecting the future from the wildly exaggerated threat of excessive debt. 

If only those "debt scolds" could leave their emotions and pride out of the equation, we'd have a better economy. My only disagreement with Krugman here is that he, like the people he criticizes, are far too pessimistic. Despite the idiocy of austerity, our economy is doing better as I noted earlier today. 

Mea Culpa Is Just Fine

The president apologized yesterday for his mistake in saying, "If you like your insurance, you get to keep it," several times during his campaign to pass the ACA. This is quite illustrative of the type of man he is: someone willing to admit mistakes and work to fix them. And that's just what he is going to do. Notice as well that he is taking the high ground and not blaming the insurance companies which he would be well within his purview to do as it is the truth.

This is quite a bit more than his opponents would do. They never admit error (see: Apocalypse), always blame others, and are actively working to destroy the structures of this country because they are essentially babies who can't accept defeat and any sort of authority in their lives. At election time next year, the problems with the ACA will be fixed (the real ones and not the fake ones made up in bubbleland) and the benefits are going to vastly outweigh the costs.

More importantly, we have seen an improving economy this week. GDP was 2.8 percent for the 3rd quarter and hiring in October exceeded expectations, clocking in over 200k jobs. Revisions were made for August and September, adding in an extra 60K jobs. Imagine how much stronger these numbers would have been had there not been a shutdown. The economy is what really matters to voters in elections and it's pretty clear which party is working to improve it and which one is rooting for it to fail.

Intellectually Bankrupt Indeed

I can't think of a better example of just how intellectually bankrupt and adolescent Ayn Rand followers (see: right wing blogsphere) are than the recent admission of plagiarism from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. The words "Rand" and "plagiarize" do seem to fit together in some sort of perfect way, don't they? Being a Randian isn't really all that deep nor intelligent (obviously, if they cut and paste from Wikipedia) and essentially can be summed up in one sentence.

It's OK to be a douchebag.

Update: Apparently, it's OK to plagiarize as well. Breitbart.com has just hired Rand Paul. 

Here We Go Again

I guess we have to be reminded every few years just how fucking psycho the gun community is in this country. Good Lord...

There will be no wavering!! There will be only vigilance!!! Any sort of thinking or wavering that is against our vill...sorry...will calls for immediate retribution. Anyone who writes this...

I don’t think requiring 16 hours of training to qualify for a concealed carry permit is infringement But that’s just me.

Or this...

The fact is, all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.

Or this...

I’ve seen too many examples of unsafe behavior on too many shooting ranges to believe otherwise. And we’ve all read too many accounts of legally armed individuals dealing with the consequences of not being properly trained or prepared when confronted with a bad situation.

is a fucking pinko commie faggot who needs to be liquidated. Robert Farago summed it up best.

Anyone who says ‘I believe in the Second Amendment but—’ does not believe in the Second Amendment. They are not friends, they are not frenemies, they are enemies of The People of the Gun.

The People of the Gun, huh? Yeah, I''m quaking in my boots (see: there will be no revolution as long as men have titties) Here's Wonkette's take.

Translation: You fuckers scare even us, but we still want your money, so fuck “a healthy exchange of ideas”: Metcalf is history. Please keep buying our magazine, please? Not that the fondlers are satisfied — now many are calling for Bequette to resign for having allowed the piece to run in the first place. 

Update: And as of this afternoon, Guns & Ammo editor Jim Bequette has resigned as well. Business Insider reports that while the magazine had been due to get a new editor January 1, Bequette “announced he would expedite the process and resign immediately.” Because of an editorial suggesting the utterly unthinkable, tyranny-promoting notion that people who own guns should be trained to use them safely. Welcome to America in 2013.

I don't share her fear of the gun people. Honestly, they are a bunch of cowards. The first people to squirt in their pants and hand over their guns to some sort of authority will be them. The reason why they bitch so much about authority is because they themselves are authoritarians who want a return to the aristocracy of the Antebellum South and are obviously self-loathing.

As I have said many times, when an incident occurs that will affect them personally due to their complete ignorance of how irresponsible people are in this country, then they will change. In the meantime, I do find it heartening that they continue to alienate more and more people who are on their side.

Democracy and the Catholic Church

The Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has been having its own sex scandal, in which various priests were caught soliciting boys in bookstores, storing child porn on their computers, having sex with underage parishioners, and so on, with the church hierarchy keeping it all covered up and paying off the perpetrators with extra cash. Several church officials have now resigned.

This was all revealed when a canon lawyer, a brave woman named Jennifer Haselberger, told Minnesota Public Radio when she found evidence of a priest who apparently possessed child porn and internal memos discussing whether police should be notified. Archbishop John Nienstedt explained in a memo to the Vatican why he decided not to tell the cops: he was afraid of getting sued and going to jail.

It is unclear whether civil criminal action remains a possibility. The independent investigator hired to look into this matter concluded that 'many of the homosexual pornographic images viewed by this investigator and the computer analyst could be considered borderline illegal, because of the youthful looking images', but the decision of my predecessor was not to report the discovery of the images or the images themselves to law enforcement. My staff has expressed concern that the fact the CD-ROMs containing the images remain in the cleric's personnel file could expose the Archdiocese, as well as myself, to criminal prosecution. These factors also suggest that a penal trial, conducted in this Archdiocese or elsewhere in the United States, is to be avoided.

This doesn't sound like a shepherd ministering to the souls in his congregation. It sounds like the CEO of an oil company shifting blame to his predecessor and staging a coverup after a massive oil spill. Many Minnesota Catholics are justifiably upset and have called for Nienstedt's resignation.

Now some wealthy donors are going to hit the archdiocese where it really hurts: the pocketbook. The archdiocese is launching a $160 million capital campaign, and some wealthy Catholic donors have said they will not contribute unless Nienstedt resigns. One quote in particular from a Nienstedt defender caught my attention:

To those calling for Nienstedt to be tossed out, Derus warned: “The Catholic Church is not a democracy. We don’t get to vote on this or that.”

It's true that the Catholic Church is not a democracy. But lay Catholics do get a vote: they vote with their dollars. And with their feet.

And Catholics have been voting with the feet for centuries. That's how the Protestant Churches, and the Anglican Church, the Orthodox Churches, and all the other sects of the Christian Church were formed. It's called schism, and it often happens because of basic disagreements on doctrine and accusations of heresy. But it happens for political and social reasons as well.

Many Catholics are unhappy with the Church hierarchy. They view the bishops as arrogant and disconnected from the realities of everyday life, more concerned with covering up scandals than preventing them in the first place. The bishops yap dogmatically about birth control and abortion when they have no idea how hard it is to raise a family.

The ranks of the priesthood are being decimated, in large part because of the ban on married priests. Celibacy is not a scriptural requirement; priests could marry for a thousand years, and even today married Anglican priests joining the Catholic Church remain married. Celibacy is an antiquated relic of the Middle Ages enacted to prevent clergy from using Church money to create their own hereditary fiefdoms. Though the most public church sex scandals involve children, removing the marriage ban would also prevent many smaller-scale scandals involving priests who've simply fallen in love with consenting adult women.

Priests are also voting with their feet, and leaving their priesthood to marry. The priest who officiated at my wedding had to quit when he married a nun. A local political activist in my city did the same.

Why, many wonder, should priests be banned from the Church's most basic holy sacrament, the union of a man and a woman? In their arguments against gay marriage the archbishops claim that union to be the bedrock of society, yet they have no personal knowledge of it.

Women are tired of the way nuns are treated, and many resent the fact that women are not allowed to be priests. Many Christian churches allow women pastors these days, in particular the Anglican Church, which split off because of a political tiff when the Vatican was slow to grant Henry VIII an annulment from Catherine of Aragon. Catherine was too old to give him the son he desperately desired. Ironically, the son he strove so hard for died at age 15, and Henry was ultimately succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth, who ruled for more than 40 years: she and Queen Victoria were arguably the two best monarchs to rule England. The fact that Pope Benedict cleared the way for married Anglican priests to join the Church shows how close the two Churches really are.

Many straight Catholics are unhappy with the way the Church treats gays: Nienstedt spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of Church money to amend the Minnesota constitution to ban gay marriage, an attempt that failed in 2012. Considering how many priests are gay (estimates run as high as 60%), and how the marriage ban discourages straight priests, it is evident that the Church's dogmas are seriously out of balance with reality.

Francis, the new pope, has said many things that give people hope (he even had a girlfriend before he entered the priesthood). The Church often takes decades and even centuries to change, but just one ex cathedra pronouncement could completely alter the Church's trajectory. The ban on women priests is a dogma, but the marriage ban is a regulation and therefore subject to papal decree.

If straight Catholics opt out of the priesthood in large numbers, gays may quietly assume control of archdioceses around the world. Is it only a matter of time before the majority of the Roman curia is gay?

A Third Vatican Council composed of a majority of gay bishops could decide pretty much anything: the Catholic Church isn't a democracy, after all.

Mailbag!

I haven't done a mailbag in a while so here a few emails I had recently

Candace from Missouri writes

What happened to all those world news stories you promised? I would like to see more of them. As a long time reader of your site, I miss the days when the majority of your posts talked about international politics.

Point taken. It has been too long since I talked about other countries. I will endeavor to do so more often!

Bryan from Idaho writes

I'd like to comment but don't want to go through the trouble or give up my privacy to register a name under google or open id. Is there anyone I can still comment openly? The people you have commenting now are real dicks and need to be taken down a notch.

Sorry, Bryan, but I got spammed too much and set up the requirement to register to comment. I'm not going to change that even though it means I have lost some liberal commenters as a result. And you are wasting your time with the individuals of whom you speak. They thrive on attention, adolescent insults and "battle" in comments sections. I allow open comments which means I have picked up some trolls. Oh well. You should take comfort in the fact that their writings do a great job of illustrating my points for me:) Speaking of my commenters...

Izzie from Illinois writes...

I don't want to engage him in comments as my mother told me to never talk to crazy people but do you suppose Not My Name is sitting in some facility somewhere? I think he uses his free time on the computer to post here.

Actually, Izzie, I think NMN is two people. One is an ultra religious fellow and the other is Unix Jedi from TSM which is why he might seem like he has a split personality. Even if that's not true, you have to remember that any mental problems he might have are likely a result of childhood problems and possibly bullying in school so try to have a little sympathy. People who are abused often abuse others because that's what they know. Their desire for constant attention (through adolescent taunts) is pretty apparent.

In fact, I think that's a great explanation for the behavior of many on the Right as I have said previously. They clearly have had trouble with their parents in their lives and were likely ostracized in school. Years of emotional abuse invariably ends in social disabilities and comments sections of blogs.

Geoff from Kansas writes...

Nikto is a better writer than you and I enjoy his posts more than yours.

No doubt, Nikto is a great writer but better? Maybe. I will say that his posts get more hits than mine and his piece on sleep and football was the most popular one in October.

That's it for this mailbag. Keep those emails coming, folks!!

Randian Family Values

Mark's quote from Elementary about Ayn Rand seemed apropos after I stumbled across an article from a couple of years back about how Objectivism ruined one woman's childhood. In it Alyssa Bereznak describes how Ayn Rand turned her father into a heartless monster.

Discussion of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism always centers around titans of industry and brilliant self-made composers and scientists. But it completely ignores the realities of everyday life; in particular, marriage and children.

If altruism is fundamentally fatal and unutterably evil, marriage is out of the question. First, the vows: love someone as you love yourself? Impossible. A betrayal of logic and reason and the basic principles of Objectivism.

From the other point of view, who would marry someone whose only goal in life is to satisfy themselves? Who would marry a person who views you only as a means for their own pleasure, a maid and employee? Answer: only another objectivist who had something to gain from the association, or a drooling fool blinded by your brilliance and willing to become your slave. Really, only a person beneath contempt, who had no real initiative of their own, would be content to merely bask in the glory of a great objectivist demigod, instead of striking out on their own path to greatness.

Since there can be no love -- I mean, foolish romantic sentimentality -- why get married at all? Just form a corporation and avoid the inevitable legal morass of divorce when the spouse can no longer one's sexual needs. (This sexual satire from about Rand the New Yorker is hilarious.)

And children? What fool would ever have children? Rand once dismissed a classmate as meaningless because the girl thought her mother was the important thing in her life (which is undeniably true for most children).

Children are a terribly inefficient investment: it takes a decade a two before you can get any useful work out of them. And then there's no guarantee they'll ever actually do anything for you after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their upbringing: if they've been paying attention to your objectivist rants, their only goal in life should be to get you to kick off as soon as possible so they can inherit your vast industrial empire so they can use it to springboard to an even vaster industrial empire. That means there's the very tangible risk of them hurrying you along to your grave...

Rand understood the worthlessness of children and the mortal danger of allowing someone to be your heir -- she had no kids. But mysteriously she remained married to the same man for fifty years, until his death. Of course, she went after for him only for his looks, though she apparently came to love him in her fashion (they had an open marriage). She had a long-standing extramarital affair with Nathaniel Branden, who with his wife operated an institute to promote Objectivism.

Realistically, this kind of amoral and licentious behavior is the only rational outcome of the Objectivist philosophy. Love and loyalty are useless, self-destructive sentiments. Yet this woman is  practically deified by the likes of Paul Ryan and Rand Paul.

The most disgusting part of Bereznak's story was when her father asked Alyssa -- then a sophomore in high school -- to petition to be emancipated so that he could stop paying child support. He would then hire her at his law office and charge her rent.

Great family values.

The Real Gateway Drugs

Rob Ford, the conservative mayor of Toronto, has been making news for months now as reports of a video showing him smoking crack have circulated. Now he has admitted it's true.

“You asked me a question back in May and you can repeat that question,” Mr. Ford told a crush of journalists, photographers and camera operators. “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But no, do I, am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.”

What's astonishing is how casually this man -- who echoes conservative American talking points as he rails against the government gravy train, AIDS prevention and bike lanes -- admits to "drunken stupors." This is par for the course in North American society, where we have draconian laws against cocaine and heroin, but think nothing of how millions of Americans and Canadians drink enough on a daily basis to cause brain damage.

People use "I was drunk" as an excuse for everything, as a sort of badge of honor. Getting totally trashed by drinking 21 shots on your 21st birthday is a rite of passage. But that's often enough alcohol to kill you. There are 900 cases of alcohol poisoning in the US each week, mostly in the college-age population. And they're still coming up with newer, faster ways to get drunk, from stylish vaportinis to disgusting butt-chugging.

But being drunk is not a mitigating factor. You're responsible for anything you do while drunk if you voluntarily drank yourself stupid. And stupid is the right word.

Two-thirds of violent crimes against intimates are under the influence of alcohol, and 40% of all violent crimes are committed under the influence. Fifty percent of acquaintance rapes involve alcohol. Millions of families are destroyed by alcohol abuse. In 2005, 75,000 people died from alcohol, mostly from car accidents and diseases like cirrhosis and cancer. According to the CDC, alcohol use costs America $223.5 billion a year.

I don't drink, and I've never done drugs. I think alcohol and recreational drugs are a scourge on society, along with gambling, football, NASCAR and pro wrestling. In my less charitable moments I dismiss people who use booze and drugs as mopes and dopes. But I also think the war on drugs is a total waste of money: prohibition failed in the 1930s, and today's illicit drug prohibition is an abject failure. The swillers of scotch and chuggers of beer who keep fighting to keep marijuana illegal are complete hypocrites.

The knock against marijuana is that it's the "gateway drug" that leads to cocaine, heroin and certain death. But as Rob Ford's case shows, alcohol is the real gateway drug: it's easily accessible and its consumption is widely and wildly encouraged -- it's a $400 billion industry. And it's not the only gateway drug: we have dozens now.

Parents are feeding mind-altering drugs like ritalin to their kids under the guise of helping them with attention deficit disorder, but often they just don't like dealing with rambunctious kids. Ritalin is chemically similar to cocaine (it's been considered as "methadone for cocaine addiction"), and in sufficiently high doses is just as addictive. People are becoming addicted to opioid painkillers like oxycodone by the millions, and when doctors cut them off many turn to heroin. Rush Limbaugh circumvented banking regulations to get cash to pay for his oxycodone addiction, which may have cost him his hearing.

Some states have legalized marijuana, but the federal government is still wasting billions of dollars fighting a war against a drug that for all practical purposes is impossible to overdose on. One college kid died from drinking 24 shots in two hours: but Amanda Bynes reportedly smoked 10 joints an hour (surely not a world record) before getting tossed in jail after she tossed a bong out her window. But that's nowhere near the toxicity of alcohol: a deadly dose of THC requires smoking 15,000 joints in 20 minutes. Nicotine is far more toxic: Igor Stravinsky almost died of nicotine poisoning while working on Petrushka; the nicotine in two cigarettes could kill an adult if directly absorbed.

I'm not saying we should hand out drugs like candy. Cocaine should be controlled because of the risks of heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure. Heroin is extremely addictive (and causes constipation!), but it's an opioid just like Vicodin and Oxycontin which are legal and handed out liberally by doctors for the most minor complaints. Most of the problems with heroin abuse (hepatitis and HIV from needle sharing, poisoning from street drugs cut with crap, etc.) are due to the unsanitary practices of broke and strung-out addicts and its illegality. Crystal meth is bad news all around, but because it's so easy to make and it's illegal, it means quick cash and a top TV series. If better drugs were available, no one would risk using meth and getting meth mouth.

But there's still resistance to decriminalization and legalization because politicians are afraid of looking soft on drugs. House Republicans, always fond of the drug war because it funnels so much money into the pockets of for-profit prison corporations who contribute millions to Republican candidates, are desperate to balance the budget. (They also apparently like to drink on the House floor.)

To show their budgetary desperation and determination House Republicans voted to cut $40 billion in food stamps over the next 10 years. But the federal government spends $15 billion every year on the war on drugs, much of that to stop marijuana. States spend an additional $25 billion. We spend hundreds of billions on prisons, which are mostly filled with minor drug offenders.

If we legalized marijuana and decriminalized drug use, we could save tens of billions of dollars in enforcement efforts annually, clear out our prisons, and reduce the number of burglaries and  muggings committed by addicts desperate for the cash to buy their next fix. We could cut the legs off the drug cartels in Latin America, which would eliminate the thousands of murderous criminals Joe Arpaio says are bringing drugs north and taking guns south across the border every day.

People use illicit drugs for all kinds of reasons, but the underlying factor is that drugs fill some void in their brain chemistry. We have tacitly acknowledged this biological fact with our wholesale adoption of drugs like ritalin, Cymbalta, Abilify, Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, and so on, to treat the tiniest symptoms of inattention, depression and social anxiety. And we have alcohol ever-present to give us the liquid courage to beat our wives and rape our dates.

In a country where giant pharmaceutical companies push dope during the nightly news and beer companies glorify drunken behavior during football games, it is preposterous that the DEA is still raiding legal medical marijuana dispensaries for cancer patients.

My solution? Most drugs and alcohol should be legal, though discouraged -- glamorous advertising should be banned. They should be treated like the dirty little industry they are. They should be taxed according to how much their damage costs society. That should be enough to discourage casual use but not enough to encourage criminal activity to circumvent those taxes. Distribution of drugs that cause direct mental or physical damage (incapacitatingly addictive, very high toxicity, damaging to DNA, etc.) should remain illegal, but usage should not be criminal: the users are the victims, not the perpetrators.


So, let us take the first of twelve steps. Repeat after me:

My name is America and I am an alcoholic. And a drug addict. And denying reality.

In The Black

Perhaps I was too hasty in poo-pooing comparisons of our nation's economy to an individual's economy. Certainly, there are plenty of differences that are largely ignored by the Right but there are some similarities that were illustrated quite well over at The Pragmatic Capitalist. The first piece, "The US Government is not $16 Trillion dollars in the hole," points out the obvious.

The IER estimates that total fossil fuel resources owned by the Federal government are valued at over $150 trillion alone. These assets alone are FIFTY FIVE times the amount stated in the CNBC report. But that only scratches the surface. I haven’t even looked into the huge amount of federally owned land and buildings that would surely amount into the hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars. There’s also the gold resources. And there’s the trillions of dollars in its own liabilities that it owns via the Fed and Social Security funds.

Just like an ordinary person who owns land, oil, a profitable business and other assets like gold, the US government also has a gigantic pile of assets that make us far into the black. And that's with all the future Social Security and Medicare liabilities (around $60-7$0 trillion). As PragCap show us, we are not going bankrupt and the people who claim this are simply lying because of their pathological hatred of the US government and their inability to admit fault. Their obsession with spending is essentially holding us back from economic growth and one was to wonder if this is the whole point. They want our country to fail so they can win the argument.

Of course there are still differences which the second link illustrates quite well.

The constraint for the government is different from that of a household or business who can really “run out of money”. The US government’s constraint is not that it will run out of funds, but that it could supply too much liquidity to the private sector thereby causing inflation. So the US government’s real constraint is inflation and not solvency. This is a vastly different issue than the one the US media usually harps on with regards to the budget deficit and the US government’s ability to “afford” its spending. 

The USA has an institutional arrangement in which it is a contingent currency issuer. That is, while the Treasury is an operational currency user (meaning it must always have funds in its account at the Fed before it can spend those funds) it has the extraordinary power to tax and issue risk free bonds that the public will always desire to hold so long as inflation is not extraordinarily high. In addition, even in a worst case scenario, the US Treasury can always rely on the Federal Reserve to supply the funds necessary to fund its spending. Therefore, the US government can be thought of as a contingent currency issuer who can issue the funds to spend. This makes it very different from a household. 

The US Treasury is a currency user, but the government as a whole can be seen as a contingent currency issuer by institutional design because of this implicit funding guarantee. So the key here is that there’s no solvency constraint as in, “running out of money”. Greece doesn’t have this arrangement. In fact, since the ECB is essentially a foreign central bank there is a real solvency constraint. So banks and private investors have become hesitant to buy Greek bonds because of this flawed institutional arrangement and the lack of an implicit guarantee. It’s apples and oranges compared to the USA.

Once again, not like Greece. Not going bankrupt. Not overspending. Not running out of money. Plenty of assets.

IN THE BLACK. 

Other Shoe=Dropped

I was wondering when the other shoe would drop in terms of the hysteria over "If you like your insurance, you get to keep it." It looks like it has.

"If you're an insurance company, you're trying to hang onto the consumers you have at the highest price you can get them," Laura Etherton, a health policy analyst at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, told TPM. "You can take advantage of the confusion about what people get to have now. It's a new world. It's disappointing that insurance companies are sending confusing letters to consumers to take advantage of that confusion. The reality is that this could do real harm."

It never ceases to amaze me how folks like Mika Brzezenski get sucked in to the faux outrage. Why are they so insecure? Ah well, I used to be like that so maybe she will learn and become like Juan Williams over at Fox someday.

You should be blaming your insurance company because they have not been providing you with coverage that meets the minimum basic standards for health care. Let me put it more bluntly: your insurance companies have been taking advantage of you and the Affordable Care Act puts in place consumer protection and tells them to stop abusing people. The government did not “force” insurance companies to cancel their own substandard policies.The insurance companies chose to do that rather than do what is right and bring the policies up to code. This would be like saying the government “forces” chemical companies to dispose of toxic waste safely rather than dumping it in the river.

People should be angry that their insurance companies were not paying for these humane, common sense benefits all along. It baffles me that people are directing their anger at the ACA which rights these terrible wrongs.

There's nothing baffling about it. Our country is filled with adolescents who have problem with authority figures and would never think to blame insurance companies because they are filled with wealthy people who, by their very nature, are perfect and should be worshiped. Just blame the government...it's easy!!

So, what does happen to those people whose policies are "cancelled?"

Yeah, you'll have to excuse me if I don't fall for their bullshit again.

Good Words

“I said this to the RNC last summer. I’m in this to win, because if you don’t win, you can’t govern. If you can’t govern, you can’t move the country, the state, the city — whatever you’re running for — in the direction it needs to be moved in. I think we’ve had too many people [in the Republican Party] who’ve become less interested in winning an election and more interested in winning an argument.”---Governor Chris Christie, November 4, 2013

Does Governor Christie read my blog?:)

Congratulations, Governor, on your victory tonight. And congrats to Governor Elect Terry McAuliffe as well.

Election Day

I've had a few emails with requests to talk about today's election. I had planned on putting something anyway to encourage people to vote in off years like this so that's up first.

GO VOTE.

Turnout is so low in the odd years but these elections are where local issues (see: things that really affect your life) are of paramount importance. School Boards, City Council, Mayoral races...all of these matter so your vote counts and more so than usual because of the low turnout.

As far as Virginia and New Jersey goes, it looks like Terry McAuliffe will beat Ken Cuccinelli and Chris Christie will beat Barbara Buono so no surprises really in either of those states. If McAullife does win, the GOP can say goodbye to Virginia which pretty much puts national elections out of reach. Unless, of course, they nominate Christie which would make 2016 more competitive. What to do...what to do...pick a guy who can win a national election (and who would be good president, in my view) but isn't "pure" or pick someone like Cruz, who fulfills their porn fantasies and will win exactly five states and maybe not even his home state if Hilary runs.

Decisions decisions...

Hmm..

Yesterday on "Morning Joe," Zeke Emmanuel said that anyone who had an insurance policy in place before March 23rd, 2010 and has since not had any alterations to that plan, got to keep it. Is this true?

Good Words

"Philosopher-in-Chief for the intellectually bankrupt." ---Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes on the CBS drama, "Elementary" (Season 2, Episode 3, "We Are Everyone.") on the subject of Ayn Rand.

Show Him This

There are many myths about our nation's debt and most our being pushed by the Right. "We can't keep spending like this!" they whine incessantly or "sooner or later, the money will run out!!" Strange, really, because they act as though we don't control our own money supply nor have any revenue. The simple fact is we have both. We have collect just under 6 trillion dollars in revenue and enjoy a 17 trillion dollar economy.

But talking about the economy in a simplistic way is what the Right does, not the rest of us who understand the complexities of monetary policy. The truth is, as Lawrence Summers puts it, the debt isn't that big of a deal.

More fundamental is this: Current and future budget deficits are now a second-order problem relative to other, more pressing issues facing the U.S. economy. Projections that there is a major deficit problem are highly uncertain. And policies that indirectly address deficit issues by focusing on growth are sounder in economic terms and more plausible in political terms than the long-term budget deals much of the policy community is obsessed with.

The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projection is that the federal deficit will fall to 2 percent of GDP by 2015 and that a decade from now the debt-to-GDP ratio will be below its current level of 75 percent. While the CBO projects that under current law the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise over the longer term, the rise is not large relative to the scale of the U.S. economy. It would be offset by an increase in revenue or a decrease in spending of 0.8 percent of GDP for the next 25 years and 1.7 percent of GDP for the next 75 years.

Here is our budget deficit over the last five years.

There is no doubt we are heading in the right direction. And, as I have explained many times, we have been in debt pretty much since we have started as a country. Take a look below.

Certainly, we have been in far worse spots and predictions of 100 percent debt to GDP in the last few years have not materialized. Right now we stand at just over 70 percent debt to GDP which is entirely manageable. In fact, there are perils in the philosophy of austerity as Eduardo Porter pointed out recently that illustrate the cost-benefit analysis of taking on some more debt and getting paid off in the long run with more growth and thus, less debt.

A recent analysis by the research firm Macroeconomic Advisers estimated that cuts to discretionary government spending — roughly everything the government spends money on except for Social Security and Medicare — trimmed growth by seven-tenths of a percentage point a year since 2010, and cost some 1.2 million jobs. The costs are mounting across the Atlantic, too, despite the contentment in London and Berlin. 

A study by an economist from the European Commission published this month concluded that spending cuts put in place by governments from Greece to Germany since 2011 had stalled the economic turnaround of the entire euro area. A host of economic analyses over the last three years by researchers from different corners of the world — including Roberto Perotti at Milan’s Bocconi University, Alan Taylor and Òscar Jordá at the University of California, Davis and researchers at the I.M.F. — have concluded almost invariably that budget cutting in a depressed economy is counterproductive. 

By cutting teachers or raising taxes, reducing government transfers or trimming public purchases of goods and services, austerity shrinks the economy in the short term, often more than it shrinks the burden of public debt.

Exactly right. This is why we have the anemic growth that we have right now. I suspect that many in the business wing of the GOP know this and they just want Obama to fail so they bloviate about cutting taxes and bring guys like Arthur Laffer back into the mix.

I think that Simon Wren-Lewis, a professor of economics at Oxford University, has it right. Arguing that the tiny amount of economic growth Britain has recently achieved after a years-long downturn proved austerity to be the right policy is tantamount to saying that global warming skeptics had “won the climate change argument because of recent heavy snow.” Of course, they argue that as well!

So, when your weird uncle, who, at the age of 40-60 something, still has a problem with authority, starts spouting off at the upcoming holiday gatherings about the deficit, the debt, and how it's "math," show him the information in this post and have him explain his understanding of these facts. And then read him this.

If even half the energy that has been devoted over the past five years to “budget deals” were devoted instead to “growth strategies,” we could enjoy sounder government finances and a restoration of the power of the American example. At a time when the majority of the United States thinks that it is moving in the wrong direction, and family incomes have been stagnant, a reduction in political fighting is not enough. We have to start focusing on the issues that actually are most important.

Drop me an email or put up a comment and let me know what he says:)

Ten Corporations Control Almost Everything We Buy

All Too Familiar

From a story on the LAX shooter, Paul Ciancia...

In a part of the letter, addressing T.S.A. employees, he wrote that he wanted to “instill fear in your traitorous minds.”

“It was very hard for them,” said Amanda Lawson, 21, a waitress in the Broadway Diner in Pennsville, who graduated from Pennsville Memorial High School in 2010 with Mr. Ciancia’s brother. She described both brothers as “awkward.” “They had some depression issues, and they both got obsessive,” she said on Saturday.

But he had apparently turned against the government, and it seemed clear that Mr. Ciancia knew he was putting himself in a suicidal situation by marching with an assault weapon and 100 rounds of ammunition into the third-busiest airport in the country, officials said. He also sent a text message to his brother that left the family alarmed. He seemed to have a specific grudge against the T.S.A.; his handwritten note singled out the agency as a symbol of what was wrong with the government, mentioning by name the former head of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, according to a federal official. Bystanders said the gunman had appeared to be targeting T.S.A. agents in particular.

Obsessive, depression and turning against the government...sounds like TSM commenters to me! Ah well, at least his second amendment rights were protected.

Opening Minds

Reverend Jim directed me to this truly magnificent piece over at christianitytoday.com. 

Yet in many ways, a version of that conversation is taking place today in the West. There are those who side with Paley against Darwin: Life is designed, and therefore did not evolve. There are those who side with Darwin against Paley: Life evolved, and therefore is not designed. There are some for whom Darwin rules out Milton: Animals and humans have always died, so there was no Eden, no Adam, no Eve, and no fall. Then there are those for whom Milton rules out Darwin: Yes, there was, so no, they haven't. 

Still others agree with Darwin and Paley, but not Milton: Evolution is designed by God, but a literal fall never happened. Some even agree with Darwin and Milton but not Paley: Evolution happened, and a literal fall happened, but the design argument is just a God-of-the-gaps thing, and we shouldn't use it. And many proponents of each view get rather angry with people who hold a different one. It's all very confusing. 

To make a complicated situation worse, there is a tiny minority of oddballs who think all three of them were essentially right, and who believe in the fall of Adam and Eve, the argument from design, and Darwinian evolution. Oddballs like me.

Is this an indication that some minds are opening? I hope so!

Great Words

"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" - Jesus Christ (Luke 17:21).

What does that mean to you?

Good Words

"I simply cannot stand with a Party where its most extreme element promote hate and division amongst people. Nothing about my platform has, nor will it change. The government shutdown was simply the straw that broke the camels back. I guess being an American just isn’t good enough anymore… I refuse to be part of an extremist movement in the GOP that only appears to thrive on fear and hate mongering of anyone and everyone who doesn’t walk their line.” (Jason Thigpen, Congressional Candidate for North Carolina's 3rd District). 

According to Charlie Cook, this is an R+10 district so he will likely not defeat Walter B. Jones Jr. Nevertheless, he will pull moderate voters his way if he ends up being the nominee for the Democrats. We do have to start somewhere in that state and what better place in a deep red district. And it flies in the face of conservative "logic," right? I thought everyone was running away from the president and the Democrats. What happened?!!?

Yawn

I'm with Joan Walsh on the latest "hyperventilating," as she puts it, about how incompetent the president is at doing his job. The people that are attempting to stoke this are the same ones that hate him anyway so for me it's a giant snoozefest. Remember how wrong they were about Benghazi and the IRS? Yeah, I think I'll resist my liberal urge to try to be sympathetic to them and reflective and simple ignore it. In a few weeks, they'll be on to something else.

But what I will do is point out a few interesting pieces on the subject of the ACA. The first one is by Jason Linkins over at HuffPO which really puts a fine tooth comb to the "If you like your health insurance, you get to keep it" line that has elicited so much adolescent bloviation that it's hard for me to keep track of it all.

The other part of the sentence that's sitting there trying to be all razzle-dazzle instead of attaching itself to its simple meaning is the word "like." A lot of people like their health insurance plans for different reasons, but one primary reason so many people "like" their plan is that they like the low, low price of the premium. Of course, as they say, "You get what you pay for," and the insurance market is no different. There are many insurance plans with eminently likeable costs that are not so likeable once you start using the plan. Some cheap plans offer only high-deductible catastrophic coverage. Other cheap plans have lifetime caps on coverage -- which means that if you suffer a major injury or illness that requires long-term or very costly medical care, your insurance company is eventually going to hit the cap and leave you holding the bag and facing the prospect of disastrous debt. 

One of the biggest mistakes the Obama administration made was to not educate the public on just how crappy their plans were. Take note of the Jonathan Chait link in the piece as well and read it. Both Linkins and Chait summarize my thoughts quite on this latest "outrage."

Of course, the problem here is really the individual market and that's explained quite well in this graphic from the Times. As I have stated previously, most of the country isn't going to care about this because it doesn't affect them. By the time the dust settles from these recent issues, everyone is going to be much better off. Here's a look at three people's experiences with the health care changes coming out of the individual market which I think is a fair and accurate assessment.

All of this has made me think again of a common misconception that has been perpetuated by the Right. They quite erroneously believe  that the people that support the president view him as the perfect savior. We don't. They do this because when he makes mistakes they can gleefully exclaim, "Gotcha!" and then assert that EVERYTHING is then flawed about the president and his policies. This mindset isn't really all that surprising as that's how they actually are with their ideology. They are never wrong and to admit error means they have completely lost (also completely ridiculous). In addition, they can't stand the fact that he has succeeded at anything (they did the same thing with Bill Clinton) because they have nothing other than bloviation to offer.

So, again, we're back to where we always end up: adolescent behavior. The health care market is incredibly complex and the first guy through the wall that tries to fix our problems (President Obama) is going to get bloody through his own mistakes, those of others, and the unbelievably high level of out and out lying by his opponents. Give him credit for at least being bold enough to tackle this very difficult issue and help solve a long running problem. Rather than pile on as the Right is doing right now, they could be helpful.

As they continue with their n'yah n'ayhs, keep that in mind:)

All Is Well!

23-year-old Paul Ciancia walked into the LA Airport this afternoon with his assault rifle and started shooting TSA agents before he himself was shot and taken into custody. Clearly mentally ill, Ciancia didn't stop to think that there are plenty of armed personnel all over the airport.

Weird. That's not what the right wing bloggers tell me. In fact, they post moonbat shit like this. Ah well, as long as nobody infringed on Ciancia's 2nd Amendment rights, all is well!

On Stiglitz: Part Ten

In the final chapter of his magnificent work, The Price of Inequality, Joseph Stiglitz details the steps we must take as a nation if we are to fix our economic problems. Before I get to some of those, though, it's very important to note that he sees two possibilities as potential catalysts for change. He defines these avenues after asking the question, "Is There Hope?"

The first possibility is that most Americans come to realize that they are being duped by the wealthy in this country. The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are the wealthy, not "lazy" poor people. Stiglitz has demonstrated this unequivocally throughout his book. Many wealthy and powerful people in this country have essentially brainwashed Americans into thinking that any sort of talk about inequality leads to communism, internment camps, and loss of freedom. Stiglitz hopes (and so do I) that people are going to wake up to this fact and call them on their bullshit. In many ways, they are the ones that are lazy and have become a drag on our society. Addressing inequality leads to a more efficient system of capitalism and, quite frankly, fairness. Americans are realizing this more and more every day that our system simply isn't fair and it needs to change. Sooner or later, they are going to demand it and we will have a sea change in Washington.

The second catalyst, and the one I see more likely in the near term, is that wealthy people themselves will come to realize that they can't enjoy their lifestyles if there is too great a degree of inequality. They also may act out of simple fear of the natives becoming too restless. Indeed, we see people like Nick Hanauer, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg expressing the need for change because it is in the wealthy's best interest. Stigliz sums up why this is so important.

Alex de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief elements of the peculiar genius of American society, something he called "self interest properly understood." The last two words were key. Everyone possesses self interest in a narrow sense: I want what's good for me right now! Self-interest "properly understood" is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else's self interest-in other, to the common welfare-is in fact a precondition for one's ultimate well being (Adam Smith understood as much. See his The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). See also Emma Rothschild and Amartya Sen, "Adam Smith's Economics," The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith pp. 319-65, in particular p.347). 

Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook. Rather, he was suggesting the opposite: it was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn't just good for the soul; it's good for business.

Again, we are talking about economic efficiency here, not just fairness. Past business leaders in our nation truly understood this. Henry Ford, for example, paid his employees more money so they could afford to buy his cars. Our economy works at top speed when the engine that fuels it (the middle class) has more money. This is exactly why we need government policy that helps them to this end.

So what changes need to be made? Here are few of the many action items Stiglitz lists.

Rent seeking needs to end immediately through curbing the financial sector of our economy. The revenue we gain from this will be able to fund many programs that can help the poor and the middle class. We need to make the banks more transparent and much smaller than they are now. No more "too big or too interconnected to fail." No more predatory lending, excessive bonuses that encourage risk taking, and offshore banking centers that essentially promote tax evasion. Speaking of taxes, the entire code needs to be reformed to a more progressive system with few loopholes for corporations. I have no problem lowering the statutory rate if we lose the loopholes and far too many breaks our nation's corporations get.

In tandem with this, we have to help out the rest, as Stiglitz puts it. We have to improve access to education so we can be more competitive in the age of globalization. We should ordinary Americans save money by creating government incentive and matching programs, for example. Continuing our efforts to have health care for all will go a long way to helping people save money. Changes to government programs like Social Security need to also be made in order to strengthen efforts that have already proven to be successful in reducing poverty.

We need a monetary policy that focuses on employment and growth as well as inflation. Our trade imbalances need to be corrected further than they already are. Our goal should be full employment. Labor needs to be thought of in a completely different way than it is today. With the reality of cheap labor markets around the world, our nation's workers need to be re-educated and put on different career paths. Our growth agenda should be centered on public investment which has shown to yield fantastic returns in our nation's history (the GI Bill, research, public works).

As of right now, we are being held back by myths and ideological intransigence fueled by adolescent hubris. Those who choose to champion these lies (and there really is no other way to put it nicely) are essentially rooting for our country to fail just so they won't be proved wrong. The 1% of this nation, and in particular the financial sector, are using these people to maintain their lifestyles. Reading through my previous entries on Stigilitz, the task is very simple.

It is now time to stop them.

Demons in St. Louis

It's hard to believe that my point of origin in this country had one of the most famous exorcisms in history. Apparently, people are still talking about it.

One man described living near the suburban St. Louis home where the 13-year-old boy arrived in the winter of 1949 (his Lutheran mother was a St. Louis native who married a Catholic). Another said she was a distant cousin of Father William Bowdern, who led the exorcism ritual after consulting with the archbishop of St. Louis but remained publicly silent about his experiences — though he did tell Allen it was "the real thing.

I've heard the stories myself. My grandparents were in their 30s with two little girls in West County when it all happened. Everyone was talking about it and everyone believed it. Father William Bowdern, who performed the exorcism, was viewed as a savior to the community for many years.

He drove the devil out of the Gateway to the West!

Explaining the Zombie Apocalypse

It's Halloween and that means it's Zombie Apocalypse Time, and AMC's The Walking Dead is once again wildly popular. I stumbled upon an article that says that zombies are nothing to fear because bacteria, insects and animals would eat them alive. So to speak. David Mizejewski writes:

The thought of being eaten alive is a natural fear, and when it's your own species doing the eating, it's even more terrifying.

Relax. Next time you're lying in bed, unable to fall asleep thanks to the vague anxiety of half-rotten corpses munching on you in the dark, remember this: if there was ever a zombie uprising, wildlife would kick its ass.

I think Mizejewski has it all wrong way: bacteria, insects, and wildlife aren't chowing down on zombies because the infection has a superior design. It elegantly solves the two biggest problems faced by micro-organisms: competition and propagation.

(Note: very minor spoilers ahead if you've never watched The Walking Dead.)

Competition
There are many types of bacteria that produce highly toxic poisons: botulinum, tetanus, staph, salmonella, and so on. The Walking Dead infection could conceivably produce a toxin that renders zombie flesh repellent to all common bacteria. Animals chomping on them would immediately spit out the distasteful flesh.

That would give the zombie infection a huge competitive advantage: they would have human corpses all to themselves.

Propagation
Viruses and bacteria propagate through the air, through food or by exchange of fluids. We know everyone in The Walking Dead is infected, but we don't know exactly how the infection spreads. We know a bite is required to turn a person directly (perhaps by delivering a lethal dose of the toxin). We know amputation can save a bite victim. We know everyone has either been drenched in zombie blood or has been in physical contact with someone who has. So it seems the infection is passed through fluid exchange.

The initial infection could have been through almost any means: toilet seats, unwashed lettuce, blood transfusion, super-soldier or immortality serum gone awry, a form of kuru transmitted by cannibalism, and so on. Anyone coming in contact with a carrier could be infected but would show no symptoms. Only when a carrier died would there be any clue that something was going on. The zombie plague could be worldwide before anyone had a clue.

One hurdle virulent blood-borne micro-organisms face is that when they kill their hosts they stop propagating. That's why ebola hasn't killed us all.

Not the zombie bug. Its carriers get up after they die and continue to spread the infection. It's an ingenious solution to the propagation problem. But how do zombies get up and walk around?

First, what's the energy source for the zombie? There's no blood circulation or respiration (zombies work just fine riddled with bullets), so there's no way to transport oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. That implies that the zombie bug is consuming the body of the zombie to provide energy.

Second, how does the zombie know what to do? How does it coordinate a broken body well enough to walk on two legs?

The zombie bug itself must provide the energy to infected tissue, perhaps some form of adenosine-triphosphate that's toxic to bacteria, allowing the corpse's most basic functions to proceed without heart or lung function.

Given that energy source the corpse's reptilian brain, eyes, ears and muscles could still function to allow the zombie to ambulate and seek food. Higher-level cognition is absent because the zombie bug feasts on the gray matter of the brain to provide that energy (naturally).

A Reprieve?
As the infection consumes its hosts, eventually the zombie hordes will wither to motionless husks. At which point the zombie problem becomes manageable.

But as the the series has shown, the biggest problem isn't the zombies, but other survivors. If they continue to behave like backwoods survivalists and shoot anything that moves, they're all doomed to chaos and solitary death.

Though The Walking Dead is fiction, it shows how important collaboration and compromise are essential for survival in dire situations, regardless of whatever differences we have.

I just wish the zombies in the Tea Party could understand this...

Trouble in Paradise

I am continually assured by my friends on the right that everything is just fine with their party and if they continue to run ultra conservative candidates, they are going to win. Yet two recent AP stories (here and here) suggest otherwise.

From the first piece...

A slice of corporate America thinks tea partyers have overstayed their welcome in Washington and should be shown the door in next year's congressional elections. In what could be a sign of challenges to come across the country, two U.S. House races in Michigan mark a turnabout from several years of widely heralded contests in which right-flank candidates have tried — sometimes successfully — to unseat Republican incumbents they perceive as not being conservative enough. 

In the Michigan races, longtime Republican businessmen are taking on two House incumbents — hardline conservative Reps. Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio — in GOP primaries. The 16-day partial government shutdown and the threatened national default are bringing to a head a lot of pent-up frustration over GOP insurgents roughing up the business community's agenda. 

So now the primariers are going to be primaried? Hee hee hee...

It actually makes sense when you think about it. Once the money goes away from the Tea Party (because it's not really a grass roots movement), that will pretty much be it for them.

From the second piece...

A year after losing a presidential race many Republicans thought was winnable, the party arguably is in worse shape than before. The GOP is struggling to control tensions between its tea party and establishment wings and watching approval ratings sink to record lows. It's almost quaint to recall that soon after Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee recommended only one policy change: endorsing an immigration overhaul, in hopes of attracting Hispanic voters.

That immigration bill is now struggling for life and attention in the Republican-run House. The bigger worry for many party leaders is the growing rift between business-oriented Republicans and the GOP's more ideological wing. Each accuses the other of bungling the debt ceiling and government shutdown dramas, widely seen as a major Republican embarrassment.

This would be why the mistakes made by the Obama administration in regards to the ACA will largely be ignored. The American people have come to realize in the last month that the Republicans are not helping out anyone and are, in fact, causing most of the problems we have as well as actively preventing our country from solving them.

And when you lose the National Review, well, then you really up shit crick...

The Race is on...

Members of the House have been grilling administration officials over the healthcare.gov website's problems, demanding apologies and complaining about the site's problems. This is completely hypocritical, considering that country has been mired in the sequester for more than a year, because Congress has been unable to pass a real budget.

By most accounts the negotiations of the House-Senate budget committee will not result in any grand plan, which means we could be struggling with threats of shutdowns and defaults well into the next year.

The committee has a deadline of Dec. 13. What are the odds that the health care website will be up and running smoothly before the same people complaining about it can get their act together and pass a budget?

Greenspan: Corporations Can't Be Trusted

The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, has released a new book about how wrong he was about the crash in 2008, The Map and the Territory. In an interview on The Daily Show, he says that he always assumed that people in the markets would behave rationally, and that they wouldn't take risks that would destroy their own companies. He now understands how completely wrong he was.

What's interesting about his analysis of the crash is that he squarely places the blame for the crazy risk-taking on the fact that the brokerages were corporations and not partnerships (starting at about 3:20):

The Daily Show
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Greenspan: When we began to see what was going on, you couldn't believe that there would be people  that would be that disregarding of their own companies. How could you run, as you say, 30 times...

Stewart: Right. Thirty times on the leverage. Isn't it because they don't pay the penalty.

Greenspan: Yes.

Stewart: Isn't it the rewards that they were getting... the system was incentivized for these crazy short-term bursts of rewards.

Greenspan: Back in 1970, the New York Stock Exchange said that broker-dealers -- which is who all these people are -- could incorporate. Prior to then, they were all partnerships. And let me tell you something about a partnership: your partners don't let you take any risks that can affect them. And I remember they wouldn't lend you a nickel overnight.

And the system worked. You did not get anybody failing because the equity was protected. As soon as they started to go to corporations, they took risks for exactly the reason you suggest.

Here we have one of the foremost proponents of capitalism telling us that corporations cannot be trusted to do the right thing, because the people who make the decisions have no skin in the game.

The entire purpose of a corporation is to shield officers from any economic responsibility for the decisions they make. And it's even worse than that: officers of major corporations have contracts with golden parachutes that guarantee them a huge payoff no matter how much harm they cause the company. They have no incentives to do the right thing, and there are no consequences for incompetence and malfeasance.

When conservatives talk about personal responsibility it's always in the context of keeping poor people off welfare and denying abortions to women. But when BP is fined for ecological catastrophes in the Gulf, or JPMorgan Chase is fined for its economic calamities, conservatives characterize these slaps on the hand as revenge and shakedowns.

When are we going to hold CEOs to the same standards as welfare moms?

Did They Like It?

Lisa Myers current story about the ACA, the president and health insurance is sure to elicit many adolescent "n'yah n'yah's" from the right wing blogsphere. Yet all the hubbub over this is missing an answer to a key question: Did people like their health insurance?

Before we dive into answering that questions, let's remember a few key facts. First, the people in question who are "losing" their insurance are those in the individual market, not the majority of Americans (85-90%) who get their health insurance through their employers. For me, this translates into most Americans not really caring about "Gotcha #538 of Infinity" because it doesn't affect them. If they liked the president before this still will. If they didn't, they won't and will accuse him of being Richard Nixon. Oh well.

Second, people aren't actually having their policies cancelled as they did in the past. They are being brought up to a certain standard so if they do have have health issues at some point in the future, they aren't going to soak the rest of us. This is a correction to a massive flaw that was in the old system of insurance. That leads us to the third point and back to the question I posed at the start of this post. The market for individual coverage sucks. Premiums rise at the whim of the insurance company, people are kicked off plans or not allowed on for preexisting conditions, rates fluctuate wildly resulting 50 percent of the people in this market are churned through it every year.

So, when the president said, if you like your insurance, you get to keep it, I have to wonder, did people actually like their insurance coverage? Of those that did, how many watch Fox News and read right wing blogs? More importantly, did these people know what was in their policies and was it in their best interest to continue with such policy? I realize that bringing up the words "best interests" is sure to cause an explosive adolescent stomp down the hallway but people who make poor choices in terms of health care affect my life, with or without the ACA, so I welcome the regulation.

If the people in the individual market do not like their insurance or have issues with their current policies, that effectively means the president is not a liar. Did they really like it?

No Revolution

I poked my head into Kevin Baker's site, The Smallest Minority, for the first time since I was voted off and found this. Aside from the usual warped and psychotic rightwingblogspeak, I'm trying to figure out what he meant by this...

I'm reminded once again of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, his magnum opus. I recommend you read (if you haven't) my überpost on it from January, 2010. 

This will not end well.

Obviously it could be the usual bloviating anger and irrational fear  backed up with absolutely nothing (why do they continue to think that posting on blogs makes you powerful and scary?) but I think perhaps that Kevin truly believes that he and his fellow cult members might need to "take back the country." To that, I say this..

There will be no revolution as long as men have titties. 

A Tale of Two Web Sites

Great piece on Bloomberg discussing how the state run sites are faring much better than those in the states who refused to set up their own exchanges.

Don’t tell Elisabeth Benjamin it’s tough to sign up for Obamacare. For two weeks, she has been enrolling uninsured people from her New York City office through an online marketplace created by the law.

Most recently, she helped a Bronx home-health worker in her 30s get health coverage for $70 a month. “By week two, the system was pretty smooth,” said Benjamin, who’s certified to assist people signing up for health insurance.

It does help if you live in a state that isn't actively trying to sabotage the ACA's efforts. Kentucky, the only southern state to set up their own exchange, is doing just fine.

Elizabeth Watts of Kentucky, which runs an independent exchange, had her application accepted at 12:04 a.m. on Oct. 1, making her one of the first to start the enrollment process. Because of a rare disorder, she has already had a heart attack and a stent put in place. She makes $220 a week working at a Shell service station. Previously, the only insurance she could find was for $300 a month, which was too much for her to afford. Using the exchange site, Watts learned she was eligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor that was expanded under the law and will cover most of her costs. “It’s been such a relief,” said Watts, 31. The last time she saw her heart doctor, “it took 15 minutes and cost $160.”

Ms. Watts is a fantastic example of why the Right are shitting themselves right now. They know that once people like her in other deep red states start to sign up, they lose votes.

And then, they lose power.