America Is Owed An Explanation

I think America needs an explanation as to why it's so difficult to raise the minimum wage yet incredibly easy to raise the pay of CEOs. Take a look at this recent piece in the LA times about CEO pay.

The great management guru Peter Drucker advised companies to stick to a ratio of about 20 to 1 between the pay of the CEO and that of the average worker. That's "the limit beyond which they cannot go if they don't want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies," Drucker wrote, according to a comment on the CEO pay rule submitted to the SEC by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. Drucker's standard was in line with the ratios of the 1970s and early '80s, when he wrote those words. Today they seem positively quaint. 

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2012 was about 350 to 1. That's down somewhat from where it was before the 2008 recession, but it would have to come down a great deal more to return to the non-obscene range. It's plain that this ratio typically has little to do with an executive's performance. The CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio of the 250 largest companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index ranges from 1,795 to 1 (J.C. Penney's Ron Johnson) to 173 to 1 (Agilent Technologies' William Sullivan), according to Bloomberg, which ran the data for 2012. 

My wife used to work for Supervalu. They went through a few CEOs during her tenure there and it was always the same thing. Somebody would be brought in to "fix" the company. They would be paid millions of dollars. They would fail. And then they would leave with their millions, accomplishing nothing, with dozens (if not more) of average workers being laid off. The information in this link details how something similar happened with JC Penney. In so many ways, this is complete bullshit. If the CEO fails to do is or her job or makes it worse, they shouldn't get any amount of money. Take the money you are paying the CEOs and keep the average workers longer.

At least the SEC seems to be doing something about it.

I wholeheartedly support this new rule and think that the public (especially the investing public) needs to be aware of how these companies are doing business. Firms like Penney's don't seem to understand, as Drucker noted above, that the health of a company springs from its employees, not from the top. They aren't going to be successful unless they start paying better wages to everyone. Worse, the social cohesion in our society is fraying as a result. There are a lot of people hurting out there and seeing wealthy people bitch about poor people while they themselves are getting something for nothing is really FUBAR.

The Right likes to scream about "class warfare" but that's really code for desperately wanting to maintain aristocracy.

Obama Mental Meltdown Syndrome (And The Lying It Produces)

I didn't get a chance to catch the Bill O'Reilly interview with the president but apparently Dana Millbank did. 

O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.

Wow. Talk about playin' the hits for the hardcore fans. Does he actually think that most people give a shit about any of these issues?

Of course, this is their modus operandi. We now live in a society where you are not only entitled to your opinion but your own facts as well. Case in point...

Anti-Obamacare, facts be damned

“Sick kids denied specialty care due to #Obamacare,” his Twitter feed proclaimed on Saturday, linking to a conservative blog post based on a TV news report out of Seattle. His Facebook page weighed in on the same story, calling it “heartbreaking” and vowing that House Republicans “will continue working to scrap this broken law.” There’s just one problem: The shocking claim — that the President’s health reforms resulted in sick children being denied care — was flat-out false. Which Boehner’s staff must have known, assuming they actually read the material they were helping to spread across the Internet.

The anger and the hatred towards the president is so irrational that the Right is simply lying now and they don't really care.

Take The Citizenship Test!

Here is the test.

How did you do? 

How The Gun Laws Will Change

Last Friday, Bill Maher and his guests wondered on Real Time what it would take for our nation's gun laws to change to suit our current challenges. If Sandy Hook didn't change things, what possibly could? I kept waiting for them to say it and they didn't. Here is how it will happen.

There will be a mass shooting at some sort of gun event in which powerful people in the gun lobby will be affected personally and very deeply. They will lose family members and friends and will realize their own hubris played a part in causing this. And that's when the gun cult will completely fall apart.

Americans don't move to change until they are affected by things in an overwhelmingly personal way. Sandy Hook and the other shootings we've had in the last year haven't done that because they were incidents that occurred outside of the sphere of the gun lobby. Once they start happening within that sphere, things will change and very rapidly indeed. One need only look at the issue of gay marriage, for example, to see how it will happen. Republicans were very anti gay marriage until family members, friends and donors started coming out. The sphere was no longer closed. Cigarettes were nearly identical, as I have mentioned previously. When the pro smoking crowd started losing people to cancer and heart disease, it all fell apart. The same thing will happen with climate change.

So, we will see incremental changes, with people like Gabby Giffords and her husband making small gains, for what seems like a far too long of a time and poof! Suddenly, it will all change and we will wonder why we didn't have enough common sense in the first place. I realize this isn't much solace for the citizens of our country that have to endure the pain of losing someone to gun violence because a minority of people in this country are mentally unbalanced. People should take some heart, though, that we have made progress in identifying the underlying causes of mass shootings (in particular, school shootings) and talking about them more frequently. Check this recent article out.

Bill Bond, who was principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., in 1997 when a 14-year-old freshman fired on a prayer group, killing three female students and wounding five, sees few differences in today's shootings. The one consistency, he said, is that the shooters are males confronting hopelessness. "You see troubled young men who are desperate and they strike out and they don't see that they have any hope," Bond said. 

We can give the young men in our community hope right now. We don't need altered gun laws to do this. In addition, we can make sure that these troubled young men don't have access to firearms. If we can pursue this vigor and care, we will reduce the number of school and mass shootings in this country. This could be the beginning of a very necessary sea change in this country in which we wake up to the fact that American culture has some very deep flaws in terms of gun competency.

Robots Saved Steeltown

Politico has an absolutely fascinating piece in their magazine about how robotics literally saved the economy of Pittsburgh. In many ways, it's rebirth should be the model for how our economy should be transformed to fit the age of globalization.

Obamacare = More Freedom and Job Opportunities?

The Congressional Budget Office issued a report saying that up to two million Americans will quit their jobs because they can sign up for a policy under the healthcare exchanges.

Republicans have been quick to characterize this as "two millions jobs will be lost!" But the reality is that corporations are really losing two million employees. "Employees quitting" does not equal "jobs lost."

You could just as easily characterize this as two million jobs that pay well enough to provide health insurance are opening up for the unemployed.

When these people quit the companies that they were being forced to work for just to get health insurance, many of those companies will need to hire additional workers.

Some of the people quitting will move to part-time work. Some will retire early and leave the workforce completely. Some will open entrepreneurial small businesses because they're no longer shackled to the corporate/industrial health care complex.

This could also lead to higher productivity. People locked into jobs for fear of losing health care coverage are probably not the most motivated workers. If they quit, they'll make room for people who actually want to do that job.

The report says that some smaller companies may try to downsize in order to duck under the employee limit for businesses to provide health care. That might cause some short term pain, but in the long run that's what should happen overall.

Companies should not pay for their employees' health care, any more than they pay for food, clothing and housing. The health care mandate is a huge expense that companies in other countries don't have to pay, one that makes American businesses less competitive.

Eliminating the requirement for companies to pay for health insurance should be a goal that everyone can embrace, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It will make healthcare providers more responsive to their actual customers -- rather than their bosses -- put everyone in the country on equal footing when it comes to health care. And it would end the perverse motivation for costs in the health care industry to always go up.

The Imperial President?

The Christian Science Monitor had the following cover story last week.

Is Barack Obama an imperial president? 

As is usually the case with their reporting, it is very balanced and offers some very interesting critiques of the president. It's a lengthy piece but worth of a serious read as we, once again, debate the limits of presidential power.

My take on this issue is this. If Republican leaders in Congress are going to bitch about the limits of presidential power, then they should offer alternatives to what the president wants to do. It's easy to be a critic (which is essentially all the Right does these days...take a look at my comments section) but let's see some serious policy proposals to tackle the major issues of the day. Saying the government should just stay out of it isn't the answer either.

The president and the Democrats also need to bear in mind that Republicans are going to loathe to the core anyone who is the leader of this country and not a member of their tribe. They did it with Bill Clinton, they are doing it with Barack Obama, and they will do it with Hillary Clinton, if she runs and wins. They may bitch about government authority but when it's their guy, they love it and can't get enough of it. They want their Reagan-esque, father figure to tuck them in at night and say that it's all going to be OK.

So, whatever they do, the Right is going to irrational motivated by fear, anger, and hatred leading to bitching without any viable solutions of their own. They've essentially become like pop stars in which they sing the hits for their fans and then exit stage left. What they don't realize, though, is that most stars are famous for only 15 minutes. If they want to stay relevant, they are going to have to produce. That means that if the president produces (and this is mentioned at the end of the article), the debate about whether or not he is imperial will fade away. 

Delusions of Failure

Paul Krugman has a great piece up detailing how the Right lies about the Affordable Care Act. Some choice cuts.

But isn’t Obamacare in a “death spiral,” in which only the old and sick are signing up, so that premiums will soon soar? Not according to the people who should know — the insurance companies. True, one company, Humana, says that the risk pool is worse than it expected. But others, including WellPoint and Aetna, are optimistic (which isn’t a contradiction: different companies could be having different experiences). And the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has run the numbers, finds that even a bad risk pool would have only a minor effect on premiums.

Ah, so no boiling pit of sewage. Just the usual free market stuff.

Bette’s tale had policy wonks scratching their heads; it was hard to see, given what we know about premiums and how the health law works, how anyone could face that large a rate increase. Sure enough, when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website.” 

Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return.

Wouldn't go on that Obama website...I don't get the personal hatred toward the man. If it's not racist, what is it?

A History of Executive Orders

Huh. So much for Barack "The Imperial" President.

Walking on Water

We got cross-country skis in the 1990s, and haven't been able to use them since. After almost two decades of wimpy winters, during many of which we haven't gotten any snow until late December or January, we have finally have a normal winter for Minnesota, the coldest one in 30 years by one reckoning.

Some people are using this throwback weather to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. This is a normal winter for Minnesota; the south and east did get a bit of snow and set a few record low temperatures, but it's a different story in the rest of the world: Europe and Alaska have been very warm this winter. All the snow at the Sochi Oympics is being made by machines. Australia was burning up during the tennis tournament, and parts of the American West are experiencing severe drought. Fox News reports that water rationing may be in store for parts of California, Nevada and Arizona. Globally, we're still setting far more record high temperatures than record lows.

But we finally got some snow here in Minnesota, and riding the exercise bike gets a little old. We dug the skis out of the basement, only to discover that the plastic and rubber in the ski boots had disintegrated. I tried to put on my ice skates, but they're at least a size too small now.

Last fall the friends we bike with suggested snowshoeing. I pictured Canadian mounties with tennis rackets tied to their feet. But, what the hell: we got snowshoes. Mine have lightweight aluminum frames; other designs have all-plastic construction similar to a skateboard with bindings and teeth.

I don't know a thing about snowshoeing. But it seems self-evident how to use them: they have two ratchet bindings that go over the toe and arch of the foot, and a strap behind the heel. They pivot at the ball of the foot, so the toe of the shoe stays high when you lift your foot and doesn't get hung up in the snow. There are steel claws on the bottom for traction.

I expected snow shoes to be clumsy to walk in. But once you learn to pick up your feet up high enough to avoid kicking the binding, or tripping yourself up by catching the claws on the surface, you're extremely stable.

The claws keep you from slipping on ice and packed snow. The snowshoes keep the snow out of your boot tops. Going up hills is easy; my snowshoes came with poles, but they seem unnecessary unless you're on really rough terrain. Going downhill is a little trickier: angling your feet and side-stepping seems the easiest way.

A lot of people snow-shoe on trails in parks. We just followed the tracks of a cross-country skier through the woods at the end of our street. I was expecting a quiet snow-bound trek, but snowshoes make a fair amount of noise, between the crunching of the snow and the scraping of the shoes. It was ten degrees, but there was little wind, so we didn't really feel cold.

When we reached the lake beyond the woods, we blazed our own trail. We got four or five inches of fresh powder recently, on top of 12 to 18 inches of old snow. The lake was an untouched expanse of virgin cream. We set off straight across. The snowshoes usually punch through the snow and you sink in six to eight inches. But instead of getting stuck up to your knees and filling your socks with snow, the snowshoes keep you high and dry. Walking in fresh snow is also quieter .

If you do it just right, keeping your weight on both feet, you can walk on the top of the snow. It's like walking on water.

We crossed the lake and came to a sidewalk that had been half-heartedly plowed. We stayed on the icy part because you make a lot better time. Then we crossed a street that had been plowed to the pavement. Walking with steel claws on asphalt is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the snowshoes make a dreadful racket.

We normally take walks when we can't bike, but we've been walking a lot less because of the treacherous condition of the streets. Earlier this year my wife slipped on an icy spot while crossing a busy street with her arms full of groceries. Back in the nineties my volleyball team lost three setters in a single season to knees torn up from nasty spills in parking lots.

One of the major hassles when it finally gets around to snowing in Minnesota is shoveling sidewalks, parking lots and streets. Even if people do their duty, there are always little slippery spots that form from drifting and melting, creating booby traps.

Is all this energy-intensive technology like snowblowers and snowplows going at it the wrong way? Instead of spending all this time and effort trying to maintain that ever-elusive bare pavement, maybe we should just wear snowshoes.

Hating On Coke (A Voices In My Head Story)

Apparently, some conservatives got pretty pissed off about the Coke ad yesterday that was in multiple languages. Recall Chuck Schumer's words as they very much apply here.

The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it.

Here is the ad.

 

I suppose this all part of that liberal multi culti agenda they are trying to ram down our throats, right?

Fox News commentator Todd Starnes' tweets were completely ridiculous...talking about baiting the race baiters. The best mouthfoam was from Allen West.

If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing “American the Beautiful” in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition. This was a truly disturbing commercial for me, what say you? 

Cue the boiling pit of sewage!

More ironic, though, is why wouldn't conservatives want different cultures singing American the beautiful? Don't they want everyone to love America?

Saving $$$ With Obamacare?

Financial adviser Jay Larson has done quite well for himself in life so it makes sense that he would look to save money on his health care expenditures. Guess what he found out?

I am 63 and my wife is 61. Beginning on July 1, 2012, through Jan. 1, 2014, the cost of our MCHA premium was $1,788 per month for my wife and me. This was for a $1,000 deductible plan for both my wife and me, with a maximum lifetime benefit of $5 million. My wife and I have now enrolled in Obamacare via a large, well-known health insurance company with coverage that began Jan. 1, 2014. We are now paying $1,053.98 per month (compared with $1,788 per month in the previously mentioned pre-Obamacare plan) with a similar $1,000 deductible. This is a savings of $734 per month ­— $8,808 per year. A 41 percent cost savings. Wow!

Wow is right...even the wealthy are saving money now?

Conservatives Embrace Renewable Energy

Check out this recent piece in the Times.

One would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs. The utilities, backed by conservative business interests, argue that solar users who have lower power bills because of government subsidies are not paying their fair share to maintain the power grid. 

Mr. Goldwater and other advocates have struck back by calling the proposed fees a “solar tax,” and have pushed their message in ads on Fox News and the Drudge Report. Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”

Green Tea...love it! And it makes perfect sense when you think about it.

To Mr. Goldwater, the true conservative path lies elsewhere. “Utilities are working off of a business plan that’s 100 years old,” he said in an interview, “kind of like the typewriter and the bookstore.” On the website for his campaign, Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, Mr. Goldwater, a former congressman, says, “Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice.” He says conservatives are the original environmentalists, especially in the West. “They came out here and fell in love with the land,” he said, and added that his father used to tell him, “There’s more decency in one pine tree than you’ll find in most people.”

Yes, conservatives are the original environmentalists. Let's help them get back to their roots!

Meanwhile, how about yet another severe drought in California? Weren't we warned about this 10 years ago?

Jesse Ventura on Racism in the NFL

Something to mull over as we settle in for the game this evening...

Good Words

An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality. ----(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

Homosexuality Is Not A Sin According To These Christian Denominations

Here is a list of Christian denominations that do not consider homosexuality or transgenderism to be sins. Take a close look at the list and you may find some surprises. There are some very mainstream faiths that think that the Hebrew text and history that the word sodomy literally means "male temple prostitute", and not a translation for homosexual.

The Keystone Report

The State Department has released its report on the Keystone Pipeline. There is no recommendation one or another on whether the pipeline should be built. It noted that even with some sort of governmental blockage on the line, it would accomplish very little to slow the expansion of Canada's vast oil sands. The report offered some solace to climate activists who want to stem the rise of oil sands output. It reaffirmed the idea that Canada's heavy crude reserves require more energy to produce and process - and therefore result in higher greenhouse gas emissions - than conventional oil fields.

So where does that leave us? In my view, still undecided. I don't see any convincing evidence that Keystone is going to do massive environmental harm, as activists claim. Yet I also don't see a negligible impact on the environment either. I guess I'm wondering why we are having this debate in the first place. Arguing about oil is like having a debate over the viability of the cassette tape versus Mp3s. We should be spending our time on bringing down the cost of renewable energy and making it as cheap as coal and oil. The entire debate over Keystone reminds of past arguments over the NEA (a loser for both sides who just want something stupid to club each other over the head with).

So, John Kerry is going spend the next three months consulting with government agencies when he should be doing other things like...oh, I don't know...an actual peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Yay!

Who Was Ronald Reagan's Infamous Welfare Queen?

Remember when President Reagan used to go on about a woman who “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year?" It turns out that the woman was very much real after all.

Small problem, though. She wasn't a lazy black woman from the ghetto as the story morphed into over the years. She was Linda Taylor, master con artist and feared criminal. President Reagan left out that part about how she was a kidnapper, baby trafficker, and possible murderer. Apparently, she also once impersonated a heart surgeon. Read the entire piece and see that she was far more than the poster child for government abuse that Reagan made her out to be.

Essentially, it was like saying that government is bad because Al Capone was a tax dodge.

Economy Gearing Up

From the Wall Street Journal...

A potent mix of rising exports, consumer spending and business investment helped the U.S. economy end the year on solid footing. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services churned out by the economy, grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.2% in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said. That was less than the third quarter's 4.1% pace, but overall the final six months of the year delivered the strongest second half since 2003, when the economy was thriving.

Many economists see the U.S. economy moving into a higher gear. Federal Reserve officials, in further pulling back on a bond-buying program meant to spur growth, noted this week that the economy has shown "growing underlying strength." Consumer confidence is rising, and manufacturers are getting busier to meet increased demand. A big driver of growth in the fourth quarter was a rise in consumer spending, which grew 3.3%, the fastest pace in three years. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of economic activity.

Really great news.

Take a look at this graphical representation of the Obama years.  Note the downward trend of government investment (i.e. spending).

Considering this is the Wall Street Journal, will anyone believe the BS being peddled by the Right about how awful the president is for the economy and how he is a big government spender? 

Another 1 Percenter Comes Around

As I have previously predicted, the wealthy are starting to come around on inequality. Bill Gross, the most powerful bond manager of his generation and co-head of a $2 trillion investment management firm, has joined Nick Hanauer and other members of the 1 percent on the perils of this much inequality.

"We're not just experiencing a new Gilded Age, but a Bitcoin Age," says Mr. Gross, referring to the digital currency. "Artificial money, corporate K Street, and Wall Street interests are producing one world for the rich and an entirely different world for the working class," says the founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO in Newport Beach, Calif. "It can't go on like this, either from the standpoint of the health of the capitalist system itself or the health of individuals and the family," he adds.

Why not, Bill?

"For the past 10, 20, 30 years, capital has moved away from labor and towards corporations and investors," Gross says. "I'm not sure capitalism can thrive in a system in which ... [labor] has a declining interest, in terms of percentage of the pie. Then ultimately the pie itself can't grow, because consumption can't be supported."

Exactly right. Capitalism can't thrive, most lose their percentage of the pie and the pie itself can't grow. And to think someone as wealthy and knowledgeable about finance as Gross is saying the same things I am...what on EARTH is going on??!!??:)

So what do we need to do?

When Gross highlighted many of these trends and others in an investment outlook piece posted on his company's website in late October, he told his peers that maybe they should be willing to pay higher taxes. More provocatively, he challenged the orthodoxy on capital gains taxes, saying they should be taxed at rates as high as that for income.

Oh no he DI INT!!!

Based on some of the other testimonials in the article, it seems like we have finally turned a corner and that makes me very happy.

One other part of this piece I found interesting...

Just over two years ago, growing inequality was the rallying cry of the "Occupy" movement. Its "we are the 99 percent" slogan has since become part of the cultural lexicon, and many of its members have moved on to fast-food strikes and protests calling for a higher minimum wage.

Again, just as I have been saying..

Burning a Million Dollars a Day

Across the country there's been a lot of controversy over opening up new natural gas fields to fracking, as the technology makes it possible to extract gas from places not feasible till now. Drillers have been madly opening up new fields, often without regard to environmental consequences or if they can make a profit in a market flooded with cheap natural gas.

Meanwhile, in North Dakota oil drillers are flaring off a million dollars a day worth of natural gas:

"People are estimating it's about $1 million a day just being thrown into the air," says Marcus Stewart, an energy analyst with Bentek Energy. Stewart tracks the amount of gas burned off — or flared — in the state, and his latest figures show that drillers are burning about 27 percent of the gas they produce.

Natural gas is frequently associated with oil deposits (you see methane flares at oil drilling sites all the time), so this shouldn't have been a surprise. 

Part of the problem is the energy industry's focus. As drillers arrived to tap the riches of the Bakken shale formation under western North Dakota, they were looking for oil, not natural gas.

Now that they've found gas, it's taking time and money to build the pipelines and processing plants to use it. Meanwhile, infrastructure for the oil rush needs to be built, too, and oil prices are relatively high, while natural gas prices are really low. That means companies are investing in oil infrastructure first.

"Where would your emphasis be?" asks Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. "If you've got a barrel of oil that's worth $95 and you've got [1,000 cubic feet] of gas ... that's worth $4.25, which infrastructure would you build first?"

The oil companies are being sued by mineral rights owners who should be getting royalties from this natural gas. They could simply wait until they developed the necessary infrastructure to handle all the gas and oil. But instead they're pumping oil out as fast as they can, shipping it in completely inadequate rail cars that explode in giant fireballs.

In their haste to get that oil out right now, the oil companies don't care that they're screwing mineral rights owners out of millions of dollars in royalties. They don't care that they're pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the air, completely wasting natural gas at a time when utilities are advising customers to turn their thermostats down to 60 degrees and avoid using gas appliances. They don't care that people are dying and towns are burning because their oil can't be safely transported.

And these same oil companies are telling us that global warming isn't real, that climate scientists are promoting climate change theories in order to get research grants. Through their dark money channels conservative groups like the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobile are spending a billion dollars a year denying the facts of climate change. This completely dwarfs the research budgets of all climate researchers the world over.

But I guess they have the money to burn.

The Nazi Attack on the 1 Percent

I guess recent attacks on the wealthy are just like the Nazis. Look out!!

 "Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" he wrote, opening a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?" he concluded.

Yes, Tom, it is just like Kristallnacht. Just the other day I saw my wealthy friends being hauled off to the local internment camp for reprogramming, experimentation, and ultimately execution. Good grief, what a fucking moron...

A Dying Party

Half of Fox News' Viewers Are 68 and Older

Pay attention to Fox over the next few years and watch how their content shifts to favor younger viewers. They are in the ratings business after all and if they are losing younger viewers, they will change or lose advertisers.

How Many Conservative Responses Were There To The State Of The Union?

Three. 

I guess there was the official one from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Senator Mike Lee from Utah delivered the Tea Party response and then Rand Paul delivered the double awesome super duper Tea Party response.

Wow. They are really fucked, aren't they?

State of the Union A Go Go

As is usually the case, the president delivered an excellent speech in front of the nation calling for action in multiple areas of our society that would improve our nation a great deal. His main focus was inequality, citing multiple areas in which we could improve the disparity between the very wealthy in this country and everyone else. He spoke of his health care law, tech hubs, improving the tax code, immigration, and a whole host of other issues, ending with a very poignant and moving tribute to a wounded Afghan vet named Cory Remsburg.

But cynicism is the rule of the day presently in Washington and with good reason. We still have a Congress full of Republicans who will never allow the president to succeed on anything. Their maturity level (see: 12 year old boy) simply can't stand that someone they don't feel is befitting of the office of president will be viewed positively in any way. They are so insecure that even a small degree of success somehow translates into a boiling pit of sewage for them. The only possible movement we might see this year is on immigration and that's because GOP leaders know they are fucked in the election if they don't do something. The Latino vote has become far too important to disregard any longer. So, I suppose I should happy for at least that.

Yet I am not. We used to be a nation that got things done and strove for higher ground. We weren't held back by petty adolescents whose only conviction was their vanity. People who were..well...nuts didn't win elections. People like Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY).



Or people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who said after the SOTU speech last night that "The world is literally about to blow up." Boiling pit of sewage indeed.

Or people like Fox News analyst and retired Army general Paul Vallely who have called openly for a coup d'etat.

Seriously, what a fucking clown show. And there are millions of people that fall for this shit?

The political press and beyond have talked extensively over the last week or so about how important this speech was for the president if he hopes to tread water in the 2014 elections and not lose any ground. Given the jack wagons on the Right and their behavior, I'm wondering how long it will be before the dam bursts and we can finally be rid of the right wing blogger mentality that seems to overshadow the GOP these days.

Honestly, it can't come soon enough.

Scuhmer V The Cult

Senator Charles Schumer has a great piece up on the Tea Party which is a nice front loader to the SOTU tonight. Here are some of the highlights.

The tea party elites -- with little rebuttal -- have been able to make "government" the boogeyman. They have convinced too much of America that government is the explanation for their ills. Even though most Americans and even most tea party adherents like much of what the government does, the tea party elites proclaim that everything that is wrong, even non-economic and private sector problems, can be blamed on the government.

Yep, it's all the government. And don't you forget it, mister!! In fact, I think it's somehow the government's fault that conservatives have such poor relationships with their parents:)

So, how why are they really like this?

The first and most important force is a phenomenon that Democrats have recently begun to address: the decline in middle-class incomes. It's time we deal with the reality that, for the first time in American history, middle-class American incomes have declined for almost a generation. If middle-class incomes continue to decline, we will have a dramatically different America, a less optimistic, more sour America. 

The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it. We have entered "the second machine age," a transformation of work, leisure, and life that wouldn't have been recognizable when Reagan entered the White House. The distribution of power is changing to include more women, more African-Americans, and more Latinos.

Those two issues have created the atmosphere we have today. As Senator Schumer notes, we are doing something about the first point. Of course, the resistance to his first point speaks volumes. Take away this inequality and you take away what little raison d'etre the leaders of the conservative movement have. The second point is where the fear comes from. They just can't accept change of any kind and the new world is very, very frightening to them. Schumer draws a correlation to the shift from an agrarian society to a industrial one and I think he is right on the mark here.

Look for the president to hit inequality hard tonight in his speech, touching on the points that Senator Schumer mentions in this piece.

Sign O' The Times

A Better Solution to the Abortion Debate

It's good that Mark is searching for a compromise on abortion. However, his plan will not work. In the first place, the anti-abortion crowd will never accept anything except a total ban, with "life beginning at conception," because they've already set that stake in the ground. For reasons I'll go into below, we've probably already arrived at the compromise position on abortion, and there is likely very little wiggle room for more restrictive abortion bans than the viability test that the Supreme Court has blessed.

As a practical matter, your proposal of six weeks would essentially outlaw abortion. Many women do not have periods regularly enough to know they're pregnant at week six. I knew a girl who once went 98 days between periods (I'm not sure why she shared that with me since we never had sex; I guess it was a matter of pride).

Athletic women frequently suffer from amenorrhea, which means it's not unusual for them to go without periods for months. Unless they have some kind of other physical indication of pregnancy, such as morning sickness, they'll never have a clue they're pregnant until they have significant weight gain. Some women have even gone to term without realizing they're pregnant.

Rather than just picking numbers like six and ten out of a hat, we should base limits on abortion on something meaningful.  What difference does it make whether the heart is beating, or there is a brain? Earthworms have brains and beating hearts. The real question is whether the fetus is a person.

We have standards for determining whether someone is alive when they've suffered brain trauma. We call it brain death, but it's really a test of personhood. What it boils down to, is there enough brain function that something of that person still remains? Do they still have their memories and their personality? Can they breathe on their own? Can they recognize and communicate with loved ones? Can they still think?

Many religious people reject outright the notion of brain death. They want to keep brainless corpses on life support forever, in the vain hope they'll wake up some day. Certainly there are instances of people who are in a coma, or locked in silence, who are still in there. We should do everything we can to help them recover. But brain scans will reveal whether there is any chance of recovery. If there is no brain activity, you are dead. The recent case in Texas in which a hospital was keeping a brain-dead woman on life support because she was pregnant with a non-viable fetus is an example of how misguided these "pro-life" laws can be.

The anti-abortion crowd's stance that life begins at conception is demonstrably false. Life begins before conception. Egg and sperm cells are as alive as any fertilized ovum: sperm cells can swim! For centuries the Catholic Church held that every sperm was sacred; man was the source of the child, he planted the child in the woman. Her womb was just an incubator, and man was the creator of life, just like god.

It was only when we understood the science that they had to back down, admit the primacy of the woman's role in childbearing. Men produce sperm by the millions; almost all of them just die off in the epididymis if you're celibate, or elsewhere if you're not. The woman's egg and womb provide everything for the fetus; the sperm is tiny compared to the egg, providing just a squirt of DNA. The male of the species can be totally dispensable: some complex creatures can reproduce by parthenogenisis (virgin birth), including snails, some reptiles and sharks, and even a few turkeys.

If you look at a fetus at various stages of development, it's clear that a zygote is not a person. It's just a blob of stem cells. As it develops the fetus resembles various creatures: worm, tadpole, possum, salamander. At 44 days the fetus still has a sizable tail. It's not until 60 days that the human fetus actually looks like a human.

Pig, bull, rabbit and human fetuses

We have known that human fetuses are almost indistinguishable from animal fetuses for centuries. In the late 1800s Ernst Haeckel raised the ire of the Catholic Church with a series of drawings comparing fetuses at various stages of development, showing humans and animals to be indistinguishable to the layman.

Some of Haeckel's drawings were inaccurate, and claims that human and animal fetuses were "indistinguishable" were false: there are extremely subtle differences that more astute observers could discern. Haeckel used these comparisons as evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. Anatomical comparisons have also been used for the same purposes (humans and horses have pretty much all the same bones in their bodies, they're just rearranged.)

But the key point is that the brain in all these fetuses is tiny. Our immensely huge brains give us the capacity to be persons. Until the brain is sufficiently developed, a human fetus simply does not meet the criteria by which we judge someone to be a person.

Thus, the question is not "What is life?" but rather "What is a person?" The answer to that is a human with a functioning brain. (Though that question may become cloudy if we ever develop self-aware computers.)

The general test for whether an abortion should be legal has been whether the fetus is viable outside the womb. The chance for survival is zero percent at 21 weeks or less. It rises to about 50% at 24 weeks. The reason is clear: before that the fetus is not an independent organism; it has human DNA, but it is not a separate person in any meaningful way. It is totally dependent on the mother for providing oxygen, nutrition, antibodies and waste disposal through the umbilical. It is essentially another organ, an egg that has taken up residence outside the ovary.

Some day preemies may survive being born even earlier. That would require artificial wombs that provide sustenance through the umbilical, rather than the primitive incubators we have today. This technological development would require new legal definitions: it should be based on brain development. A fetus is a person when it has a brain that is sufficiently large enough to function as a person's brain.

This is the inverse of being brain-dead. A fetus has no memories, no personality, no emotional connection to other people. There is really nothing there to call a person. At some point, however, it will have a large enough brain to be capable to form memories and a personality, even though it may not have one yet. At that point I would call the fetus a person, and would accept an abortion ban at that stage.

I don't know what week of development this equates to; that requires research. Premature babies can suffer permanent brain damage (causing autism among other things) because brain development is interrupted. That may suggest that the 20-24 week period is the turning point in fetal brain development. Which means that the current viability deadline may just happen to coincide with brain development.

Some states have passed laws banning abortions at 20 weeks because fetuses can feel pain. This is a bogus argument. Animals feel pain, yet we slaughter them by the billions. Inmates on death row can feel pain, but many anti-abortionists have no problem killing them. The "innocence" of the fetus is also cited frequently. But many abortion opponents favor stand-your-ground laws, where you can get away with shooting anyone who you think might harm you, even if that person is completely innocent. They call killings of innocent victims by gun-toting fraidy cats "unfortunate accidents."

The motivation behind abortion bans has nothing to with the personhood of the fetus. The tone of Mark's post shows what's really going on: it's moral outrage against people perceived as promiscuous and lazy. People want to hold dagger at women's throats to force them to be more careful. They want women to pay for their mistakes. They want women to be more responsible.

But getting pregnant is not just a matter of being forgetful, lazy, licentious or irresponsible. The pill can fail. Condoms can tear. Diaphragms can slip. Vasectomies can fail and men can lie about having them. Men get women drunk and have sex with them while their judgment is seriously impaired or they're unconscious. Women are forcibly raped.

Responsible women can get pregnant through no fault of their own. Why do we want to force them to bear children they don't want?

In the final analysis, having an abortion when you're in no condition to raise a child is being responsible.

The Solution to the Abortion Issue

With the passing of another anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on Roe V Wade, it occurred to me that solution to the abortion issue is really not all that difficult. Unfortunately, the two deeply entrenched sides make it seemingly impossible move on the issue. As I have gotten older, this issue has crept up my priority list and I think our nation needs to change the law as it stands today. There are still far too many abortions that happen every year (mostly by single women in their 20s) and this sad fact illustrates that people are being horribly irresponsible with sex. So how do we shift the paradigm?

The first thing that needs to happen is we need to tackle the demand side of the equation. Why do so many women in their 20s get abortions? Do they not know about birth control? Are they stupid? Part of this may be that sex education programs two decades ago were not what they are today. Teenagers today are taught that sex should only happen in loving, committed relationships with serious attention paid to birth control and family planning. The falling teen pregnancy rate shows that kids are abstaining until they are older or using birth control effectively and that is a good thing. A young person's mind isn't fully developed until they are 25 anyway. Honestly, I don't think people are ready to be parents on just about every level until they are 30. Younger parents are part of the reason why we have the problems we do today (see: The Michael Jordan Generation). So, single women in their 20s need to be targeted with marketing, community support, and social pressure to practice healthy sexual habits. That would eliminate some of the demand.

We can also look at the supply side of abortion and curtail it more than we are doing right now. We shouldn't outlaw it completely as that would give rise to a criminal element that would raise more problems, cost more money, and essentially create a whole new series of headaches. A woman's womb should not be a ward of the state. An embryo does not have 14th amendment rights. Here is where the question of "what is life?" needs to be answered. Prenatal development shows us that the heart isn't even beating until week 6. There is no brain function until week 7. It really isn't even a fetus until week 10. Given these facts, I'd say all abortions should be completely illegal after week 10 at least. I'd go as far back as week 6 if it means gaining concessions from the pro life crowd (more on that in a bit). In sum, it's not a human being without a functioning heart and brain.

With abortion legal only up until week 6 period, most people would pay more attention to their sexual habits and be more careful. I realize that Democrats would be loathe to embrace this but if they are truly the party of making laws that prevent people from hurting themselves or others, they should fall in line with this. Of course, they won't be the only ones that should concede on the issue. If the Right truly wants to be pro life, they should put their money where their mouths are and raise Medicare taxes to include free coverage for every child under a certain age. If changes to the abortion law were implemented as I describe above, there would inevitably be more unwanted children. We already have too many now so steps would have to be taken that these kids were taken care of outside of the womb as well. Aid could be given out based on salaries via Medicaid if need be but women who would have had an abortion because they couldn't afford to care for their kid will need some kind of assistance...certainly more than we have now.

I think that if all these steps are taken, our country would see abortion rates fall dramitally. Perhaps we would eventually see demand drop to such a point that few places would even offer them anymore. Take away the demand, you take away the supply. People would be forced to think more seriously about their sexual choices. But if mistakes are made, if a woman is raped, has sex with a family member, or is in a life threatening situation, they should have some sort of an option that won't detrimentally alter their life (and the life their child) forever. There is a way we can ALL be pro life and I sincerely believe the path I have outlined here is the best option.

It's not completely foolproof and perfect but it's better than what we have now which is, quite simply, a tragedy being perpetuated by hubris filled ideologues.

Some Art To Warm You Up

Second from the left is my favorite.

Something to warm you up for another frigid day (and the 4th cancelled school day) in the North Woods.

Good Words

"There is no sin past, present, or future that has more power than the cross of Jesus Christ. No one alive has the ability to out-sin the grace of God. No one in this room celebrates that we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. That's not what we believe at a fundamental level."  (Matt Chandler, Pastor, The Village Church)

Another Big Boom Means Minnesotans Will Be Shivering Tonight

The mad rush to drill every cubic foot of natural gas in the ground has lead to rock-bottom prices for natural gas, making the entire industry a money-loser. But suddenly the price of natural gas is shooting up.

The price in the futures market soared to $5.18 per 1,000 cubic feet Friday, up 10 percent to the highest level in three and a half years. The price of natural gas is up 29 percent in two weeks, and is 50 percent higher than last year at this time.

Why?

Record amounts of natural gas are being burned for heat and electricity. Meanwhile, it's so cold that drillers are struggling to produce enough to keep up with the high demand. So much natural gas is coming out of storage that the Energy Department says supplies have fallen 20 percent below a year ago -- and that was before this latest cold spell.

To add to these troubles, there was a massive natural gas pipeline explosion in Canada yesterday. 

A fire is out after burning for more than 12 hours at the site of a natural gas pipeline explosion near Otterburne, Man., about 50 kilometres south of Winnipeg. But officials say there are now natural gas outages affecting as many as 4,000 people in nearby communities, where temperatures dipped to near -20 C overnight.

The explosion did not just affect local Manitobans. Xcel Energy is asking people in three states to curtail their natural gas consumption because of the explosion:

“As a precaution and to maintain system stability, we are asking all natural gas customers to turn their thermostats down as far as possible — unless doing so would pose a danger to their health or safety — and to avoid running natural gas appliances,” said Kent Larson, Xcel Energy’s senior vice president for operations, in a statement. “We expect to know more by midday Sunday.”

It suggested a temperature of 60 degrees for homes, and asked businesses to conserve, too.

Sixty degrees! Man, that is cold. And fossil fuels are supposed to be so reliable.

This shortage comes as debate rages about shipping North Dakota crude on trains in flimsy cars that are not designed to carry flammable liquids:

Far more toxic products are shipped on trains. But those products, like chlorine, are transported in pressurized vessels designed to survive an accident. Crude oil, on the other hand, is shipped in a type of tank car that entered service in 1964 and that has been traditionally used for nonflammable hazardous liquids like liquid fertilizers.

Safety officials have warned for more than two decades that these cars were unsuited to carry flammable cargo: their shell can puncture and tears up too easily in a crash.

People who live near railroads and pipelines are justifiably afraid:

Adrian Kieffer, the assistant fire chief [of Casselton, ND, where an oil train recently exploded], rushed to the accident and spent nearly 12 hours there, finishing at 3 a.m. “When I got home that night, my wife said let’s sell our home and move,” he said.

Keystone XL pipeline supporters use the railroad troubles to justify putting in a pipeline. But as the people in Manitoba and San Bruno can attest, pipelines have their own problems.

It's going to be 20 below in Minnesota tonight. So, just when we need natural gas the most, we're suffering from a catastrophic shortage.

That's the usual knock against renewable energy such as wind and solar: they won't provide electricity when you most need them. This is not strictly true: the highest demand for electricity in Arizona and Nevada is when it's hot and sunny -- perfect weather for solar. In Minnesota high winds often accompany weather systems that bring extreme cold and extreme heat -- perfect weather for wind turbines.

Fossil fuels suffer from exactly the same sorts of supply disruptions that big oil says renewable energy suffers from. Every time a major refinery shuts down for repairs or switches production from winter to summer grades of fuel, or political upheavals detonate in the Middle East, there are  shortages of gasoline or wild price swings.

Shipping highly explosive materials long distances can have deadly consequences. Sure, we can use our ingenuity to come up with safer modes of transport. But those cost a lot of money, money that railroads aren't willing to invest because the need for all that safety infrastructure is going to be relatively short-lived: after the oil in North Dakota peters out all those expensive bullet-proof rail cars the NTSB is recommending will languish in junk yards, rusting.

Doesn't it make more sense to invest more ingenuity and money in infrastructure for localized energy production that will never become obsolete?

Signs

My family recently watched the M. Night Shyamalan film, Signs. The film tells the story of an alien invasion and how one rural family copes with the incursion. Really, though, it's about one man's journey back to his faith after his wife is killed in a horrific car accident. It's about the signs that God gives us to show us that He exists and loves us.

I have seen the film many times and love it more with each viewing. I'm not a knee jerk M. Night hater like the Internet has decided must be the case if you are to be "cool" (whatever the fuck that means). This recent viewing made me think about my nearly 35 year friendship with John Waxey, the all too infrequent poster here at Markadelphia. I met John the first day of school in 7th grade and we have been best friends every since. We talk at least once a week and hang out at his cottage in Wisconsin with our families in the summer. We try to see at least two bands a year live either here or in Madison where he lives.

In addition to being the owner of a private manufacturing firm in Wisconsin, John is also an archaeologist so his views on God are somewhere between atheism and agnosticism. He does not believe in the Christian God nor does he believe that Jesus was the Son of God. He wonders if Jesus ever existed. Yet, he is morally more Christian than most Christians I know. He lives by Jesus' commandment to love one another, treating everyone with more kindness than I certainly have ever done. He is faithfully devoted to his wife of 20 years and their three children. He has never killed anyone, stolen anything or lied in his entire life.

Despite his secular approach to life, I believe God sent him to me for a reason. It was a sign of His love for the people of this earth. Our friendship of over three decades is proof positive that not only His existence but of Christ's core command that we love one another. He usually rolls his eyes when I relate this to him (and I do frequently) and replies by saying that he does try to follow the moral teachings of Jesus but just can't quite believe the spiritual side of it. I remind him that it's all connected and then we invariably have one of our long and most cherished conversations about the meaning of it all.

Isn't it ironic that a sign for me of God's love is an atheist? He does indeed work in mysterious ways!

Mitt Slow Jams With Jimmy

Pretty fucking hilarious...

From the Iowa GOP Facebook Page

Pretty much sums up their maturity level. And this.

I guess it was taken down rather quickly:)

Guess Whose Bedroom This Is?

It's Rush Limbaugh's.

Wow.

Really?

I thought it was Liberace's.

And he's taking the president to the mat for not letting his imaginary son play football?

How Will The GOP Shoot Itself In 2014?

Just like this.

"God is angry. We are provoking him with abortions and same-sex marriage and civil unions," she added, blaming natural disasters like tornadoes and diseases including autism and dementia on recent advances in the LGBT movement. "Same-sex activity is going to increase AIDS. If it's in our military it will weaken our military. We need to respect God."

This is why the Democrats should just give these folks a microphone and let them talk:)

The Beauty Of The Free Market

While the right wing blogsphere and its devout followers continue to deny the settled science of climate change, the free market is moving on. They don't really have a choice.

After a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force. “Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”

Threats, indeed. All the bloviating from the hubris brigade amounts to absolutely nothing in the face of the power of the free market. If industry decides that climate change is a clear and present danger, than it is. As the article notes, even the coal industry is being ignored and it's not just Coke.

Nike, which has more than 700 factories in 49 countries, many in Southeast Asia, is also speaking out because of extreme weather that is disrupting its supply chain. In 2008, floods temporarily shut down four Nike factories in Thailand, and the company remains concerned about rising droughts in regions that produce cotton, which the company uses in its athletic clothes. “That puts less cotton on the market, the price goes up, and you have market volatility,” said Hannah Jones, the company’s vice president for sustainability and innovation. Nike has already reported the impact of climate change on water supplies on its financial risk disclosure forms to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

What about a carbon tax?

Although many Republicans oppose the idea of a price or tax on carbon pollution, some conservative economists endorse the idea. Among them are Arthur B. Laffer, senior economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan; the Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, who was economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign; and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the head of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, and an economic adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican. “There’s no question that if we get substantial changes in atmospheric temperatures, as all the evidence suggests, that it’s going to contribute to sea-level rise,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. “There will be agriculture and economic effects — it’s inescapable.” He added, “I’d be shocked if people supported anything other than a carbon tax — that’s how economists think about it.”

Laffer? So it ain't so, Art...

Responsible Gun Owner?

Florida man mistakenly shoots himself during road rage incident

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the man said he had been driving toward Orlando on Interstate-4 when another driver allegedly flashed a weapon after the two had some type of altercation. To protect himself, the man brandished his own handgun, causing it to discharge into his leg.

I thought that good guys with guns saved the day and were very careful with their firearms.

Busted!

Dinesh D'Souza indicted for violating U.S. election law

Well, I guess "Obama's America" will be happening in a different way for Mr. D'Souza. Sorta reminds me of my assertion that conservatives are right...the END is coming but not in the way they think:)

I have to keep reminding myself that I need to be patient with jack wagons like this. Sooner or later, they get exactly what they deserve.

Legalizing Pot Won't Turn Everyone into a Dope Fiend

Since recreational pot use became legal in Colorado on Jan. 1, there's been a whole slew of people admitting to marijuana use in their youth, including columnists David Brooks and Ruth Marcus. Both are still opposed to legalization, mostly on the grounds that it will increase the number of users and affect teenagers whose brains are still developing.

The president then entered the fray, saying in a New Yorker interview that he thought marijuana wasn't any worse than alcohol, and that rich and middle-class white kids smoke dope all the time and get away with it (as Brooks and Marcus can hypocritically attest), but minority kids get arrested and jailed much more frequently for exactly the same offense.

Now Texas governor Rick Perry has chimed in, saying at a conference in Davos, Switzerland that he's for decriminalization of pot. Not legalization, but softening the punishment, eliminating jail time for minor possession offenses.

It's good to hear Perry is moving toward reason, but "decriminalization" doesn't solve the problem. Cops will still waste their time chasing down pot smokers, only to send them to pointless rehab sessions. The drug wars between dealers and the cops, and various multinational narco-trafficking gangs will continue unabated. Weed, cash and guns will continue to be smuggled both ways across the US-Mexico border. Our courts and prisons will continue to be flooded with tens of thousands of low-level dealers caught with relatively small quantities of weed, costing billions of dollars annually. The quality of the pot distributed illegally in this country will be highly variable, frequently adulterated, possibly toxic and potentially dangerous because of the illegal sources.

I don't smoke pot. I don't drink. Never have. Never will. Both vices are a waste of time and money. Drinking causes many health problems (brain cell destruction, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, cirrhosis, anemia). Pot appears to be less immediately destructive than alcohol, but may be linked to cognitive impairment and cancer for heavy smokers.

Yet I still advocate making marijuana legal. Legalization would eliminate the problems associated with outlawing a popular product that is no worse than alcohol. By any measure, pot prohibition has failed totally: the laws have been no deterrent against pot use.

But Perry's and Brooks' and Marcus' fears are unjustified: making marijuana legal won't make everyone go out and start smoking up a storm.

Cigarettes have always been legal. The surgeon general's 1964 report established the link between smoking and heart and lung disease; if we based our laws on the dangers to health, tobacco should be more illegal than pot because there's so much more hard data about its effects. But Americans have been listening: in the 50 years since that report, tobacco use in the United States has plunged by 50%. People used to smoke cigarettes anywhere and everywhere: in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in restaurants, in bars, even in movie theaters. By the 1980s separate smoking sections were established in restaurants. By the 1990s smoking was banned in workplaces in many states. By the 2000s smoking was totally banned in restaurants in many states.

Now, in the 2010s many states have banned smoking even in bars. Smokers have been chased outdoors to smoke, and many workplaces have even banned smoking outside their entrances. Many smokers voluntarily avoid smoking in their own homes and cars, particularly if they have children. It's a dirty, disgusting, expensive habit, and most smokers wish they could quit.

Legal marijuana should be subjected to the same restrictions as cigarette smoking, as it is in Colorado. Though there's some argument over it, smoking marijuana poses many of the same health risks as smoking tobacco (breathing any kind of smoke is just plain bad for you), and should have the same restrictions for the same reasons.

It's perfectly fine for Marcus and Brooks and Perry to express their moral outrage at pot smoking. I encourage them to let people know how utterly foolhardy it is to smoke: let the anti-pot opprobrium flow across the land; I hope it discourages broad use. But the American people have shown that they can listen to reason and wean themselves in large numbers from addictive substances like tobacco, so I trust they will do the same with pot.

We should wasting our tax dollars and law enforcement's and the courts' time to enforce moral indignation over drugs that are no worse than any number of substances that are already legal.

Mea Becka

I pretty much fell out of my chair when I saw this.



Couple this with his recent insistence that homophobes have no place in this country and I think it's safe to say that we have finally turned a corner. Ironic, considering the question I posed earlier this morning. Perhaps the Right is finally starting to get the message. They need to change and be more reflective like this or they are going to become extinct.

Five Big 2014 Questions

CNN has five big questions that face the political scene in the US this year. They pretty much echo the same ones I have discussed here. My answers, in order, are:

No, because the conservative caucus that is motivated are the ones that are moonbats.

Yes, because the Right is going to trot out more candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Murdock. They just can't help themselves:)

A huge effect. Even with GOP leaders trying to get something done, they still have a caucus of xenophobes to contend with and that will continue to be a problem. They will lose seats in the House that they should have won because of their obstinance.

Supporting the minimum wage. Republicans are going to alienate many voters who are poor with both of these issues.

The amount of money spent doesn't really matter. 2012 proved that once and for all. Republicans spent a billion dollars and they still couldn't beat the president or the Democrats. In the end, it's a simple recognition of reality and positivity that wins elections.

Who wants to vote for a party that is angry, hateful, irrationally afraid of nearly everything, spiteful, insecure, obsessive, and incredibly negative?

Onward, Christian Airmen

For years there have been reports of unwanted Christian proselytizing at the Air Force Academy.

In 2005 the Washington Post reported:

A military study of the religious climate at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs found several examples of religious intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing on the part of Air Force officers and cadets, but a report issued yesterday at the Pentagon concluded that the school is not overtly discriminatory and has made improvements in recent months.

How much improvement was made? In 2010 CBS reported that 41% of non-Christians were still being harassed with Christian proselytizing, and overall 19% were subjected to proselytizing. More than 2000 cadets (almost half) participated in the poll.

In 2013 some staff members at the Academy still think they have the right to proselytize to anyone they damn well wants to, even Jews who don't want to hear it.

So, what has the effect of Christian proselytizing been on the ethics and morals of the Air Force?


An Air Force general who oversaw three wings of ICBMs was recently fired for a drunken bender in Moscow. He was also "spending time" with two foreign women, a serious security breach.
 
Cheating is rampant in the Air Force Missile Corps. The men who control our nuclear arsenal give each other the answers to questions on tests that are supposed to make sure that these men don't make any mistakes. The officers complain that the standards are too high, and the penalties for failure are unreasonable.

It's sort of weird that these guys to whine about making little mistakes: they're working with nuclear missiles! The penalties for making those same mistakes with the real missiles could be instantly annihilating themselves with a nuclear detonation, starting a nuclear war with China and Russia,  destroying all of civilization, and maybe even killing off humanity.

Perhaps the real problem is that the nuclear mission is obsolete, according to Bruce Blair, of Princeton. The Cold War ended 20 years ago, and these nuclear weapons seem kind of pointless, making morale in the nuclear officer corps very low. Most of our nuclear weapons are pointed at Russia and China, and the chance that we will go to war with those two countries seems increasingly remote in this highly interconnected world economy.

The only countries that want nuclear weapons are nut jobs like North Korea, and countries that want to pump up their self-image and status like Pakistan and Iran.

The rest of us would just as soon be rid of the damned things.

Lynch Him!

Florida House candidate Joshua Black calls for hanging of President Obama

As Americans honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, a Republican candidate for Florida House District 68 said President Barack Obama should be hanged for war crimes. "I'm past impeachment," Joshua Black wrote on Twitter. "It's time to arrest and hang him high."

I suppose it was only a matter of time.