How Federal Spending Lifts Economies

Check out the recent study done by the Washington Center For Equitable Growth. If the United States makes more of an investment increasing our students' science and math scores, the dividends would be enormous.

The important thing to note here is that the increase in GDP means an increase in government revenue which means the investment in such programs would more than pay off, based on their study.

This study clearly illustrates the power that federal spending has to lift economies. There simply aren't any other entities out there that have this kind of muscle. One would think that the anti-spending crowd would want to make more money, right?:)

And Cue Up Rush Limbaugh...

Almost as if on cue after Mark's post about the worst president ever, Rush Limbaugh said this:

The best president in my mind, the gentleman president of all time, is George W. Bush ... he conducted himself as professionally and proficiently as possible.

Let's just look at one aspect of the Bush presidency, the most expensive (coming in at over a trillion dollars) and the most destructive blunder (over five thousand American dead, and hundreds of thousands of American wounded vets): the war in Iraq.

Bush told us that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He got this information from a source named "Curveball," an Iraqi defector who wanted asylum in Germany. The German intelligence service told Bush that Curveball was lying.

Ahmed Chalabi provided the Bush administration with similar intelligence. He was a special guest of Laura Bush at the 2004 presidential inaugural. He was also an Iranian spy: he gave Iran information about codes that US intelligence had broken.

Yes, all the neocons in the Bush administration were fooled into invading Iraq based on lies from an agent of Iran, the country the same people are now telling us is a terrible threat to the entire world, and especially Israel.

Bush was either duped by Iranian spies or was lying about Iraqi WMDs.

Either the Bush administration knew these sources were lying, or they were duped by them. It's hard to believe the Bush administration was really that incredibly stupid, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were lying.

Before the Iraq invasion vice president Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld paraded before cable news cameras telling us it would be a cakewalk. The war would last just six days, or six weeks, or six months at the most. During that time I wrote many times about previous American invasions of other countries that had been successful: they all required us to stay there for 50 to 100 years: Japan, Germany, South Korea, the Philippines. When you invade a country, you basically have to stay there forever to make it stick -- it's the "You break it, you bought it" theory of invasion. You can't just go in, beat up the bad guys, take their oil, then leave and expect it to be stable, functioning democracy. But that was the lie that Bush sold us.

Bush never understood the "You break, you bought it" theory of invasion.

Bush told us the war would pay for itself: we would take Iraqi oil to pay for it. After more than 10 years, we have spent more than a trillion dollars on Iraq. Most of it was in fighting the war, but hundreds of billions went into building and rebuilding and re-rebuilding infrastructure that was bombed over and over again. Tens of billions went into cash that was flown into the country by the planeload as bribes to warlords to fight on our side. A lot of that cash never made it to the warlords, it went into the pockets of mercenaries ("security contractors" in Bush speak) who stole it. And it will continue to cost us billions every year, for decades, as we continue to pay the medical costs of the tens of thousands veterans who were mangled for life.

Bush installed a sectarian Shiite government in Iraq, which is essentially a puppet of Iran. The Shiites immediately began to persecute the minority Sunnis in retribution for the decades of persecution that Saddam had visited upon them. This opened the door for ISIS to invade the majority Sunni areas in Iraq near the Syrian border, threatening the very existence of the Iraqi government and raising the possibility of a terrorist takeover of the entire country.

All because George W. Bush had to overturn the applecart in Iraq, either because he had daddy issues or because his oil exec cronies wanted the Iraqi oil (which the Chinese got, by the way).

Now, the reason for going over all this ancient history is not just to cast aspersions on Bush, but to illustrate why Rush Limbaugh is wrong. One presumes that Limbaugh admires Bush because he made tough decisions and imposed the American stamp of power on the world.

But that was a failure: today Iraq is a total mess. Americans have no influence over the Iraqi government -- that was lost while Bush was still president. In 2008 Bush signed the status of forces agreement that pulled Americans out of Iraq in 2011 -- not Obama.

Worse, the aftermath of the Iraq War spilled over into Syria and destabilized that country. Most of the ISIS terrorists were radicalized and recruited in the prisons of Iraq during Bush's reign of terror (remember Abu Ghraib?).

The lesson of the war in Iraq is that you can't believe anything that anyone over there tells you: Curveball and Chalabi were liars with their own agendas. You can't trust that any of your "allies" in the region will help you: they won't, they're only using you for their own purposes.

Yet, even with this experience behind us, people like John McCain were instantly ready to back ISIS terrorists when the Syrian civil war started -- he even posed in pictures with them. And this isn't just me saying this, it's Rand Paul too.

Did McCain know these guys were ISIS terrorists? Of course not. He wouldn't willingly deal with these people. But that's the point. McCain was duped just like Bush was. We're damned lucky that he never became president. John McCain also wanted to fight in Libya. And Georgia. And Crimea. For a man who lived through a terrible war, this man has learned absolutely nothing about war.

Getting back to Limbaugh's statement, his characterization of Bush as "professional and proficient" is as laughable as it is ironic. Nothing about the Iraq War, Bush's singular "achievement," was professional or proficient. Everything about it, from conception to execution to termination was terribly bungled.

Bush started a war that couldn't be won and made America weaker.

Bellicose bumpkins like Rush Limbaugh think George Bush was a good president because Bush ran roughshod over foreigners and blustered about American power. But in the end those displays of naked aggression backfired. Bush started a war that couldn't be won and made America weaker. And much poorer. And killed a lot of good men and women.

There is simply no question that the United States is far better off after six years of Obama than after eight years of Bush, by any conceivable objective measure. More to the point: our worst problems came from Bush's conscious decisions to invade Iraq and let banks go crazy with mortgage derivatives.

And Obama's biggest mistake? Trying to get all Americans access to medical care.

Which for conservatives like Rush Limbaugh is beyond the pale!

A Very Busy and Informative CBO

So, the Congressional Budget Office has been busy of late. First up, we have this...

CBO: Deficit to shrink to lowest level of Obama presidency 

In a report released Monday, CBO says the deficit will be $468 billion for the budget year that ends in September. That's slightly less than last year's $483 billion deficit.

Of course, the Cult is still going to believe whatever is reported inside of their highly emotional and irrational bubble. Maybe a picture might help.

\

















(note: the above graphic does not include the revised and even lower figures just released by the CBO).

We also have this from the CBO...

Budget Office Lowers Its Estimate on Federal Spending for Health Care


With the latest revision, the budget office has now reduced its 10-year estimate for spending by Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs by $1.23 trillion starting in 2010, the year the health care law took effect. By 2039, the savings would amount to $250 billion a year today, or about 1.5 percent of the economy.

And the bubble continues to contract...:)

The Fizzle of Gunmageddon

Once Again, “Gunmageddon” Fizzles At Colorado Capitol - 

"After all the promises of vengeance against Democrats after the 2013 gun bill brouhaha, and the subsequent recall elections, it's obvious today that the gun issue did not result in the sweeping success for Republicans that Dudley Brown predicted. During a powerful Republican wave election that had everything to do with national political storylines and little to do with Colorado, Republicans took one chamber of the state legislature by a single seat–just like they did in the last Republican wave year. But they did not take full control of the legislature, and they did not elect a governor who will do their bidding. And for good measure, both Democratic seats lost in the 2013 recalls were retaken by wide margins–one of them by the former state director of the much-reviled Mayors Against Illegal Guns"

Yet another chest thumping prediction by the Gun Cult that didn't pan out...shocking...

The President's Long Game Works Again

Russia’s sovereign credit rating downgraded to junk

The 2016 Budget

President Obama released his 2016 budget yesterday and, in just about every way, it represents everything the Democrats stand for and everything the Republicans stand against. Here is a breakdown of some of the highlights. In my view, it's the best budget he has put out since he became president. This one jumped out at me right away...

-Provides Tuition-Free Community College for Responsible Students. The President's America's College Promise proposal creates new federal-state partnerships to provide two years of free community college to responsible students, while promoting key reforms to improve the quality of community college offerings to ensure that they are a gateway to a career or four-year degree. If all states participate, an estimated 9 million students could benefit from this proposal.

A big reason why our country was so successful after World War II is the GI Bill. This echoes that legislation and is a great example of middle class economics. An investment in these students now will pay dividends in our economy's future.


Other highlights...

—Spending of $4.0 trillion and receipts of $3.5 trillion would combine for a $474 trillion deficit. For the budget year that ended Sept. 30, the actual deficit was $483 billion. That was a marked improvement from the $1 trillion-plus deficits during Obama's first years in office, when the country was struggling to emerge from a deep recession. 

—A six-year, $478 billion public works program would pay for highway, bridge and transit upgrades. About $238 billion would come from a one-time, 14 percent mandatory tax on the up to $2 trillion in estimated U.S. corporate earnings that have accumulated overseas. That rate is significantly lower than the current top corporate rate of 35 percent. The top corporate rate for U.S. earnings would drop to 28 percent; foreign profits would be taxed at 19 percent, with companies getting a credit for foreign taxes paid. The remaining $240 billion would come from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is financed with a gasoline tax.

 —The capital gains rate on couples making more than $500,000 per year would increase from 24.2 percent to 28 percent. Obama wants to require estates to pay capital gains taxes on securities at the time they are inherited. He is trying to impose a 0.07 percent fee on the roughly 100 U.S. financial companies with assets of more than $50 billion. 

 —Obama would take the $320 billion that those tax increases would generate over 10 years and funnel them into low- and middle-class tax breaks. His ideas: a credit of up to $500 for two-income families, a boost in the child care tax credit to up to $3,000 for each of up to two children under age 5, and overhauling breaks that help pay for college. 

 —Painful, automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies would be eased, with a 7 percent increase in annual appropriations. For 2016, Obama wants a $38 billion increase for the Pentagon. All told, agency budgets would go up $362 billion over the next six years above caps mandated by automatic spending cuts. 
.
The one that jumps out at me here is the alteration in corporate tax code and foreign profits. Corporations that are keeping their profits abroad should be taxed more and given the incentive, through a lower overall rate, to come back home.

The president has finally gotten smarter on dealing with the GOP. Start with a proposal that is firmly on the left side of the field (at least by today's standards:)) and force the Republicans to compromise on a more moderate approach. Don't begin with a compromise that results in something in the middle on the right side of the field.

President Obama...Yesterday and Today

And the numbers have improved even more since September of 2014. One would think that people would be more grateful but when you are so immature that you can't take the success of an ideology that you despise, it follows naturally that adolescent behavior is the result.

Good Words

From a question on Quora...

This question sounds a bit like it was written by a teenage girl living in an upper-middle-class suburb who declares that she just had the Worst. Day. Ever. just because she didn't make the cheerleading squad and has a lot of homework that night.

An excellent summation of the maturity level of the president's critics.

Businesses Fighting Climate Change

The course to combat climate change has changed significantly in recent days. Polls show most Americans view at as both a threat and man made. This piece from today's New York Times shows just how serious the private sector is taking this issue.

Mr. Page is not a typical environmental activist. He says he doesn’t know — or particularly care — whether human activity causes climate change. He doesn’t give much serious thought to apocalyptic predictions of unbearably hot summers and endless storms. But over the last nine months, he has lobbied members of Congress and urged farmers to take climate change seriously. He says that over the next 50 years, if nothing is done, crop yields in many states will most likely fall, the costs of cooling chicken farms will rise and floods will more frequently swamp the railroads that transport food in the United States. He wants American agribusiness to be ready.

As I have stated many times previously, when companies like Cargill have their bottom line threatened, we will change our attitude about climate change.

Check out the link to their report. 

The Dangers of Straw Purchases

New information has come to light in the New Hope police shooting last Monday night. It turns out that Raymond Kmetz bought his guns online and then sent a straw buyer to the FFL to pick them up. 

A 42-year-old man from Golden Valley who was an acquaintance of Kmetz picked up the guns, Stanek said. A background check was done on him. Documentation for the gun transfer shows the names of both Kmetz and the alleged straw buyer. Troy Buchholz, owner of the gun shop, said in a phone interview Friday night that he questioned the buyer about why Kmetz’s name was on the K-Bid auction form. 

The buyer told him he had used that name to protect his privacy online. Buchholz ran a background check on the straw buyer, which came back with no problems. On the form, the buyer checked a box that said he was buying the guns for himself. He was alone, didn’t appear to have been coerced into buying the guns and paid for them, Buchholz said. Everything appeared legal.

This is the exact kind of bullshit that would have been prevented had Manchin-Toomey been made into law. A review of the bill shows that the new regulations of this bill put tighter controls on this type of transaction. Beginning on page 19 of the bill, the new law expands background checks to include gun shows and internet sales. Page 24, lines 4-22 would certainly have given Buchholz the regulation he would have needed to refuse the sale.

Of course, focusing on this one example for proving or disproving the effectiveness of new gun regulations misses a larger point. The questions that should be considered is this: would Manchin-Toomey (or some other set of new regulations on Americans who want guns) have prevented one or more of the deaths or injuries we have seen in the last year as a result of irresponsible Americans with guns?

If the answer is yes (and it obviously is), what exactly is the cost of the "sacrifice" that the Gun Cult claims will be the result? Is it human lives?

Evidence of Adolescence

Hey, check out the car parked next to me at the club today...

Obama emblem that says "Douche" instead of Obama...something about hand guns...a sticker that says "I'm not a racist, I hate Biden too"...and a little boy peeing on the word "Obama."

Was this person 12 years old?

He also had some sort of emblem that said something about the 2nd amendment being homeland security since 1789 next to an American flag on his bumper. Wow...

The Tide Has Turned On Climate Change

Check out this headline...

Most Republicans Say They Back Climate Action, Poll Finds

Oh snap. What are the members of the Church of the Climate Skeptic going to do now?

In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans said they were more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They were less likely to vote for candidates who questioned or denied the science that determined that humans caused global warming.  

Among Republicans, 48 percent say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called “the most powerful finding” in the poll. Many Republican candidates question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.

Holy shee-it! It's going to be most amusing to watch the GOP candidates in 2016 fall all over themselves in trying to address this. Here's my advice (and the real reason why this poll shows a shift). Focus on how much more money is going to be lost by corporations if climate change isn't addressed. Juxtapose this with how much money can be made in the emerging renewable energy market.

The almighty dollar always wins the day and that, my dear readers, is a good thing!

The Idiot’s Guide To Gun Storage

I'm not a huge fan of Wonkette, mostly because she reminds me too much of the right wing blogs that contain a lot of wacky, ideological nonsense. But her recent piece on just how irresponsible Americans are with guns is right on the mark.

In other words, you can literally misplace your 9mm pistol in the waistband of your one-year-old’s diaper (please don’t!), and most jurisdictions in this country won’t bring criminal child neglect or endangerment charges. Which is exactly what the founders intended. 

On this issue, we need to see more stuff like this. This is the only language the Gun Cult understands. Anything less is like bringing a knife to a gun fight (pun intended).

And, if you think the stories related in this piece are anectdata, think again. We have over 200 children under the age of 18 killed or injured and accidental shootings outnumbering defensive use by 54 incidents already in 2015 with next to nothing being done about it in terms of gun safety.

The responsibility for next to nothing being done lies solely at the feet of the gun lobby and the cult that believes everything they say. Shedding a light on this simple fact, as Wonkette does in her gun violence pieces, is completely supported by this site.

The Whole "if guns were cars" Argument=Torpedoed

Ever notice how a debate about gun laws usually elicits a guns to cars comparison?

It usually goes something like this. A completely rational and logical person asks a member of the Gun Cult why we shouldn't alter our existing gun laws. After wiping away the spittle and mouth foam from their shirts, this same rational and logical person is given a long  and very adolescent diatribe about the American Revolution, totalitarian governments, and tough history coming.

Mixed in with his wacky, ideological nonsense is the inevitable and childish comment about how there should be more car laws or changes to automobile technology because, after all, cars are death machines and kill far more people.

Well, guess what? We ARE doing that.

The chances of a driver dying in a crash in a late-model car or light truck fell by more than a third over three years, and nine car models had zero deaths per million registered vehicles, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Among the improvements credited for declining death rates is the widespread adoption of electronic stability control, which has dramatically lessened the risk of rollover crashes. SUVs had some of the highest rates a decade ago due to their propensity to roll over.

Side air bags and structural changes to vehicles are also helping. Automakers are engineering vehicles with stronger occupant compartments that hold up better in front, side and rollover crashes, allowing the seatbelts and air bags to do their jobs well, said Russ Rader, an institute spokesman. Improved technologies were responsible for saving 7,700 driver lives in 2012 when compared to how cars were made in 1985, the institute said.

So, how about some improvements to gun technology then, eh? Since we like to compare cars and guns, why not use the same method that has been effective here? I would think we could come up with all sorts of techno add ons that would prevent, say, yet another child picking up their parent's gun and shooting themselves or others with it.

What do you say, Gun Cult?

The Week In Politics

Since the State of the Union, the political scene sure has gotten interesting. As I have previously suggested, the president's approval ratings would rise if he started to appeal more to his liberal base. The fact that he was done in the low 40s was partly due to the left (and not exclusively the right) not approving of him because he was being too moderate. Well, they have come home, folks.

The president's tone in last Tuesday's speech shows that he's finally getting it right. You start off far left and then force Republicans to meet you in the middle. You don't start off at the 40 yard line on the left side of the field. Then you end up with a policy that is on the 30 yard line on the right side of the field. Now he's more or less forced the GOP to meet the reality of governing. Yes, that's right, conservatives. Now YOU GUYS have to deal with approval ratings running 30 percentage points behind the president.

Mitt Romney decided not to run for president today. That's too bad because I would have like to see him gum up and already gummed up field. I've heard a lot of talk about the deep bench on the side of the GOP but I see it more like this.

7 right-wing demagogues that will be shoved down our throats in 2016

In many ways, this is good news, though, because Reince Preibus's dream of being able to hide the batshit will not come to pass. These guys are going to be out there with their short wave radio lunacy and wacky, ideological nonsense, straw manning their way to their next appeal to fear to old, white men who can't seem to get over their problem with their parents...I mean, authority.

I say we let them have center stage for the next few months and then President Grandma can announce her candidacy sometime later in the year. What could possibly go wrong?:)

Simply Let Them Speak

From a letter to my local newspaper...

The Jan. 27 editorial “As the Midwest warms, economy will suffer” is the 2015 version of a sky-is-falling progressive scare. We have seen it all before. In the 1970s, it was the “population bomb,” then the coming of a new ice age — both wrong. The next iteration was Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” complete with a dramatic hockey-stick graph of temperature rise. Undaunted by being totally wrong, progressives revised the global-warming mantra using the meaningless term “climate change.” Since climate changes from day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year, this latest scare tactic to save Minnesota, the United States and the world is guaranteed to require more government with higher taxes to support a big new bureaucracy with big new programs. The inconvenient truth is that this is but another boondoggle in a long history of progressive, tax-and-spend, save-the-world ideas.

Wow....

A Very Active Gun Lobby

Two Cops Get Shot and Fox News Isn't Covering It

On Monday a man shot two cops outside a city council meeting in New Hope, Minn. The news has been all over the Twin Cities, but the national press has been almost completely silent about it. NPR and ABC have stories, but Fox News has nothing to say about it.

This seems curious, given the extreme attention that the national press has given such shootings since two cops were assassinated as they sat in their squad cars.

Why is the cop shooting in Minnesota being ignored? Maybe it's because the cops in New Hope survived with only relatively minor wounds.

Or maybe it's because the shooter was a crazy old white guy with a gun fetish.

The shooter, Raymond Kmetz, had a history of mental illness, terrorizing and attacking judges, police officers, lawyers, city council members, and so on. He had dozens of charges filed against him over the years, and his own attorneys filed restraining orders against him.

His son, Nathan, wrote long rambling diatribes on the Internet insisting that his father wasn't crazy, that they'd locked him up in a mental institution and ruined his life. But Kmetz's brother Marvin always feared his crazy brother would get someone killed.

Why did Kmetz go to the city council meeting with a gun?  This appears to be the motivation:

In 2008, he tried to sell the house on Nevada Avenue N. where he had lived for 40 years to the city of New Hope for nearly $1 million, though it was worth well below half that amount. He argued that it was in an industrial zone ripe for development. The council rejected the unsolicited offer. The property was last sold in 2013 for $140,000 and now is boarded up. 

In other words, he was in financial difficulties and wanted to get bailed out.

If Kmetz had been a schizophrenic young black Muslim angry that the city council had blocked the building of a mosque in his town, what do you think the reaction of Fox News and the national news media would have been?

But if a crazy old white man tries to shoot up a city council meeting? That's just another Monday in Minnesota.

Ecolab Going All Solar

Ecolab, a global company that is a seller of hygiene, energy and water technologies to businesses, is the first big Minnesota company to go all-in on solar. With this deal, Ecolab will acquire more solar output than now exists across the entire state.

“It’s groundbreaking in many ways,” Ken Johnson of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group, said of the Ecolab-SunEdison deal. “When people think of solar they tend to think of places like California, Arizona, Hawaii and Florida. They don’t traditionally think of the Midwest. This is going to open up a lot of eyes.”

It's been pretty amazing to drive around Minnesota and Iowa the last few years and see the renewable energy market exploding. Wind turbines have already dominated rural areas in southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa. Now we are going to see more solar panels and deeper buy in from private concerns like Ecolab with renewable energy.

In my view, this shift in the free market will render further discussion about climate change largely moot. If corporate America decides that's where the money is, climate deniers will end up about as relevant as the cassette tape.

Stunning...

I've appreciated Frank Scaeffer's mea culpas over the years but this one is, hands down, fucking awesome. Soak it in deeply, readers, and attempt to answer the following question...

How are Christian conservatives different from Islamic conservatives?

R.I.P., Political Career of Sarah Palin

With Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa, I think we can now safely say that her political career is over. Rambling, incoherent, and filled with a whole lot of wacky ideological nonsense, Palin's recent speech in Iowa was so bizarre even conservative Byron York was wondering WTF.

Of course, her speech (which can be seen in its entirely below) is honestly an excellent representation of what happens when you smoke too much right wing blog. I'm happy to report that even people inside of the bubble are starting to realize this.

 

Tea Party "Scam PACs" Are Screwing Over Conservatives

An article in Politico describes a problem that appears to be unique to Tea Party conservatives: PACs that pop up instantly, beg for money to defeat Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney, collect millions and then spend all that money on themselves:

A POLITICO analysis of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission covering the 2014 cycle found that 33 PACs that court small donors with tea party-oriented email and direct-mail appeals raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs. POLITICO’s list is not all-inclusive, and some conservatives fret that it’s almost impossible to identify all the groups that are out there, let alone to rein them in.

People who think they're supporting the Tea Party are just lining the pockets of con artists.

“These groups have the pulse of the crowd, and they recognize that they can make a profit off the angst of the conservative base voters who are looking for outsiders,” said the influential conservative pundit Erick Erickson, who has taken it upon himself to call out PAC operators and fundraisers he sees as scams. They are “completely a drain,” said Erickson, whose assessments of candidates and groups carry particular weight among tea party activists and the Republicans who court them. “The conservative activists feel like they’ve contributed to a cause greater than themselves, but the money goes to the consultants, and eventually the activists get burned out and stop giving money, including to the legitimate causes.”

The groups ripping off conservatives under the Tea Party banner are the same sort that the IRS was going after before House Republicans hammered them for doing their job.

These organizations lie about what they're doing and rip off people who think they're helping their political movement. They do just enough to lend an air of credibility to their organization, but they pocket most of the cash.

If only there was an organization that was dedicated to uncovering fraud and abuse of the tax laws and the campaign financing system.

But wait! There is! It's called the IRS. After Citizens United the IRS had a really tough job trying to figure out who the crooks were. They tried to stop Tea Party groups with fishy sounding names that were skirting campaign financing laws and committing perjury on official forms, groups that said they were social welfare groups when they were really just self-dealing fund raisers and political hucksters. And for their efforts to protect the American people from these rip-off artists the IRS was dragged before a House committee and blasted for "singling out" Tea Party groups that were stealing from conservative voters.

The crucifixion of the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission is coming back to bite Republicans. The Republican House has forced the IRS to back off and let these pirates running under the Tea Party banner rip off conservatives. Now Tea Party conservatives are reaping the oats they sowed.

A cynical person would say that all Tea Party organizations are like this. One of the first was formed by Clarence Thomas' wife, almost the instant after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. I can just imagine the dinner table conversations in the Thomas household about how they could cash in big time with their supremely conservative credentials.

Clearly, there need to be controls over these organizations. Word of mouth isn't good enough, because so much of this fund raising goes on over the Internet or cable TV and they all use similar sounding names to intentionally confuse people.

Is the Tea Party is real, or just another scam to rip off cranky old farts?

At this point you've really got to ask whether the Tea Party is real, or just another quick-buck scam like cheap Viagra, dietary supplements, or motorized scooters, designed solely to rip off cranky old farts.

And you can't count on "luminaries" like Karl Rove, or Erick Erickson, or Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh to tell you who the good guys are. Because they all have their own PACs and their own consulting firms that are competing for the dollars of conservatives.

We need the FEC and the IRS to do their jobs and watch these clowns so they don't rip us off.

Going Solar!

The cover piece for this week's Christian Science Monitor is truly splendid. Africa is experiencing a quiet solar revolution and brushing off the usual criticism of developing countries not being able to do renewables.

Now, however, a new solar energy movement is bringing kilowatts to previously unlit areas of Africa – and changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The idea behind the latest effort isn’t to tap the power of the sun to electrify every appliance in a household. Instead, it is to install a small solar panel not much bigger than an iPad to power a few lights, a cellphone charger, and other basic necessities that can still significantly alter people’s lives. 

Going smaller better fits the budgets of the rural poor. People use the money they normally would spend on kerosene to finance their solar systems, allowing them to pay in small, affordable installments and not rely on government help. The concept is called pay-as-you-go solar.

Check out the whole piece, folks. There are going to be big things happening with renewables in the next couple of years!

Gun Control: An Inconvenient Truth

Senate Admits Climate Change Is Real, Whining that It's Not Our Fault

Last week the Senate acknowledged in a 98-1 vote that climate change is real, but like some rich kid who wrecked the family car, Republicans whined that it's not our fault.

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Republican who has for years insisted that climate change is a hoax, voted in support of the measure, saying:

Climate is changing and climate has always changed and always will. There is archaeological evidence of that, there is biblical evidence of that, there is historical evidence of that, [but t]here are some people who are so arrogant to think they are so powerful they can change climate.

What's arrogant is that Inhofe thinks that 7 billion people pumping 35 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year for centuries will have no effect on the climate. We are burning thousands of billions of tons coal, oil and gas that it took nature billions of years to bury in the span of a few hundred years.

A few million people can change the climate of entire states just by burning gasoline, or by replacing vegetation with concrete and asphalt. A few thousand people can change the climate of Brazil by cutting down hundreds of millions of acres of rainforest over a period of a decade or two. Hundreds of coal plants in China belching out smoke and ash can not only foul the air and kill thousands of Chinese annually, but that much crap in the air alters air temperature by several degrees.

It took just a few tens of thousands of people to create a dust bowl in Inhofe's own Oklahoma in the 1930s. Over the decades farmers cut down millions of acres of oak savannahs and tore up the natural prairie grasses and replaced them with crops. Poor agricultural practices combined with drought caused terrible dust storms that forced tens of thousands of Texans, Oklahomans and Kansans to abandon their farms, exacerbating the effects of the Depression. It took decades to recover, economically and ecologically.

Removing vegetation -- forests and prairies -- and replacing it with crops, roads or buildings on a large scale changes the climate. Forests are one of the major the driving forces of climate. Trees put oxygen into the atmosphere and take carbon dioxide out. Remove them and you change the climate. Drastically.

Inhofe doesn't seem to understand how big a number 7 billion is, or the massive scale of what we do to the environment. He seems to think that humans are tiny and insignificant compared to the wide world.

The fact is, earth's atmosphere originally contained no oxygen. Earth has an oxygen atmosphere today only because tiny and insignificant cyanobacteria began to emit oxygen billions of years ago.

We are millions of times bigger than those tiny, insignificant bacteria and there are 7 billion of us. We humans now produce more CO2 than all the oceans, trees, plants and algae in the world can absorb. That's why CO2 is slowly building up in the atmosphere.

Since we're making more CO2 than plants are making oxygen, the undeniable conclusion is that we are altering the climate.

Of course, we'll run out of oil and coal long before we turn the planet into an inhospitable desert planet like Venus. But the economic and social costs of dealing with the mess we're creating will far exceed the costs of curbing our gluttonous appetite for carbon. And because the oil and coal will eventually run out, we'll have to make this change in any case.

Why not do it now, while we are still rich enough and aren't going to war with every other country for the last few barrels of oil beneath the arctic?

If These Were Deaths By Muslim Extremists...

....what do you suppose would be the reaction of the American people?

Republicans Raising Taxes

It appears that Republicans are finally getting the message: middle class economics works.

At least eight Republican governors have ventured into this once forbidden territory: There are proposals for raising the sales tax in Michigan, a tax on e-cigarettes in Utah, and gas taxes in South Carolina and South Dakota, to name a few. In Arizona, the new Republican governor has put off, in the face of a $1 billion budget shortfall, a campaign promise to eliminate the unpopular income tax there.

But why?

Still, the shift is striking, and it comes in the wake of problems that Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a Republican, suffered after pushing though sharp cuts in business and income taxes. Governor Brownback, who found himself in an unexpectedly tough race for re-election in part because of a budget deficit fueled by the tax cuts, recently called for raising cigarette and liquor taxes and slowing planned reductions in the income tax rate to help reduce the shortfall. 

By most accounts, the proposals emerging from state Republican lawmakers seem like acts of pragmatism rather than shifts in philosophy for the Republican Party. 

Pragmatism indeed.

Speaking of pragmatism, it looks like Scott Walker could sure use some. If only he had embrace the now proven to be enormously successful economic policies of Mark Dayton here in Minnesota. Perhaps Wisconsin would have then been named the best state in the country.

Again With The Rape

I'm please to report that Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina is at least owning the GOP's problem with women. Recognizing that you have a problem is a big step. Of course, this simple fact has seemed to have escaped Lindsey Graham.


What exactly is a "definitional problem" with rape? More importantly, why are they talking about rape AGAIN?

Mea Culpa, Fox News Style

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Ten)

The question of which political party is more racist was recently addressed on Quora. This answer was by far the best one given. Several key takeaways emerge from it. First, a summary timeline... 

-From 1828 to 1948, the Democratic Party was clearly the party favored by Southern whites who supported slavery and then Jim Crow & segregation. In 1948, Democratic President Harry S. Truman ordered the integration of the U.S. Armed Forces. Things start to get murky. 

-From 1948 to 1968, it was a period of great flux with regard to race in politics in America. This was the period of Strom Thurmond's presidential campaign, the Dixiecrats and George Wallace. Again in play was The American South. 

-From 1968 until 2005, the Republican Party had a clear pattern of exploiting racial resentments in the South over the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In what has become known as the "Southern Strategy," the Republican Party – first with Barry Goldwater and then more successfully with Richard Nixon – sought to exploit racial anxieties of Southern Whites. In 2005, then RNC Chair Ken Mehlman apologized for the Southern Strategy and repudiated it at the annual conference of the NAACP.

With the last segment, we see an admission from the highest ranking member of the GOP at the time that they employed the Southern Strategy to win the white conservative vote. Interestingly, his apology drew criticism that illustrates the point I have been making all along: the GOP has a problem with race, particularly black people.

But what about from 2005 to 2015? In his answer on Quora, Mr. McCullough offers a detailed look at the racial implications of voter ID laws followed by this:

Bottom line: whichever party appeals to and builds upon the voting bloc of Southern White Conservatives owns the legacy of slavery and institutionalized racism in the United States. These days, that party is the Republican Party. ...look away, look away, look away Dixieland.

I completely agree. "Owning" is not a word conservatives do really well at all. Their first reaction is to DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) and blame the liberal media. It will never cease to amaze me that the party that preaches responsibility completely fails to take any of it on a myriad of issues today.

But own it they must because Southern White Conservatives are a substantial part of their base.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Nine)

In looking at the index of all of the graphics I have put up thus far, it's quite clear that white Republicans tend to be more racist than white Democrats.

The good news is that the trend is downward for both parties. Still, it's far too high for 2015.

Part of what is driving all of this is "the old ways" of the South. Take a look at this.

The above graphic is from Humboldt University's Geography of Hate map and which tracks where the most tweets with the word "nigger" originate. The primary cluster of red globs are located around and below the Mason Dixon line.

Which party overwhelmingly dominates these states?

The Brick Wall

Mocking Conservative Appeal To Fear

John and Mike from Fox News - Eric et Quentin du 16/01

Great Words

From a recent comment thread on Quora...

Thanks Mark, I worked out pretty quickly that it was a waste of time...pedantic, semantic arguments seem to the weapon of choice ( pun intended ) for Kevin. I just find it odd, that there are people out there that see nothing wrong with innocent bystanders dying, so others can exercise their right to own and carry a gun.... Thanks again...

Pedantic, semantic arguments combined with wacky ideological nonsense pretty much sums up today's conservative. Of course, that's the result of a baseline of insecurity and inferiority hence the need to "win" all the time:)

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Eight)

Here is the last question culled by 538 from GSS data in our continuing series on racism and political parties.

I'm not terribly impressed by the question as the word "close" is pretty ambiguous although I am glad to see the numbers lower than some of the other questions. Note that there is still an uptick after the president was elected and that more Republicans rate themselves as not being close to black people.

The Populist President

My first reaction to the speech tonight was this...who won the election again last November? :)

Obviously, the president and the Democrats know that they stole the honeymoon from the Republicans and are sitting pretty right now. The president realizes that there is a missing story from last year's election and so they are going to shift left and pull the country with them. He's got the poll numbers now (and Congress sure as shit does not) to throw his weight around a little more and you could really tell from his body language tonight as well as his speech. Barack Obama is finally at a point where he has absolutely nothing to lose and, man oh man, did the Republicans look uptight and grumpy about it all night during the speech.

A few highlights...

America, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.

Yes it is..in a large part, thanks to him which is why conservatives hate him so much. He has been successful.

We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. And more Americans finish college than ever before.

So much for "Department of Our Collapsing Schools"

So the verdict is clear. Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work, as long as politics don't get in the way. We can't slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can't put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we've got a system to fix. And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, it will earn my veto.

Yes, the verdict is clear. Conservative economic ideology has failed. Time to leave it behind forever.

21st century businesses need 21st century infrastructure -- modern ports, stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest internet. Democrats and Republicans used to agree on this. So let's set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline. Let's pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan that could create more than thirty times as many jobs per year, and make this country stronger for decades to come.

I think the Keystone Pipeline is a great metaphor for Republican policies...rigid and out of step with a dynamic world.

I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what -- I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.

We should also not act like little insecure babies who don't like it when there are other people out there who are smarter and more accomplished than we are. Having more intelligence than someone shouldn't be a prerequisite for attacks from paranoid morons living in their parents basement.

Of course, the main takeaway from this speech is going to be the middle class tax cuts paid for by tax increases on the wealthy. Clearly, that's when GOP members in the audience lost a little in their shorts. How dare President Uppity try to take back the middle class white vote?

It's going to be a fun two years, folks!

Some First-Hand Experiences

I'd like to expand on Mark's post because I have direct personal experience with this kind of racism. I'll be the first to say that anecdotes, like way too many surveys, are meaningless, but since Fox News relies exclusively on anecdotes to buttress every "news" story they air, I figure it's my turn.

When my fourth sister announced that she was marrying a Latino Texan my father disowned her. Then he disowned my third sister for helping her put on the wedding. I had to walk my sister down the aisle because my father refused.

There was nothing wrong with this guy. They met in the Army Reserves. They've got two kids and have been married for 20 years now. He has a decent job locating fiber optic cables buried underground.

Whites seem to have a racial predisposition to getting diseases that put them on disability...

My father approved of my second sister for years. She married a fine, upstanding, right-wing racist just like my dad. She married this kind of guy three times. And now she's been divorced three times. Oddly, it turns out that intolerant white, gun-loving, right-wing conservatives make terrible husbands. They all turned out to be bums, with any number of excuses for why they can't be bothered to work, from "my head hurts," to alcoholism, to multiple sclerosis (not that guy's fault, of course, but whites have this racial predisposition to getting diseases that always seem to put them on disability...).

My third sister's husband was the same: another gun-loving conservative alcoholic who can't keep a job. Is it just my sisters' poor taste in men, or is something wrong with white guys?

But then my second sister got in the doghouse with my dad because her oldest daughter got pregnant and married a Latino guy.

Yes, you can find racists everywhere. Yes, there are blacks who -- after having been treated like animals for centuries by white slave owners, were then harassed for another century and a half by post-bellum Southerners who falsely imprisoned them, beat them, lynched them, prevented them from voting, made them sit at the back of the bus, didn't let them use rest rooms and drinking fountains, segregated them into poverty-stricken ghettos, sent them to terrible schools, and to this day send cops into their neighborhoods to single them out for harassment on minor traffic violations and shoot them for walking in the street -- bear resentment against whites. I can't figure out why.

And, yeah, many Chinese and Filipino and Japanese and English and Irish and Norwegian American parents are opposed to their children marrying outside their ethnic group. But this is not always racism: frequently, it's tribalism.

Is it racist to fear that your culture will die out because your children marry outside your ethnic group?

It's not surprising that some Chinese parents don't want their kids marrying Anglos because they're afraid they'll stop speaking Chinese, they'll abandon Chinese customs, and their grandkids won't look like them.

Children are the only real form of immortality there is. The people some commenters say are racist may just be people who think that if their grandkids don't look like them, it will be the end of their line. Their culture -- their "kind" -- will die out. Now, I'll grant it's a silly notion -- their DNA is still there, they can still wield cultural, social and moral influence over their grandkids (as long as they don't foolishly disown them).

In fact, the entire idea of race is false: there are blood types and tissue types, not racial types. Africans can donate blood and organs to Scandinavians, and all humans can cross-fertilize (to the chagrin of the racists). "Racial" differences are minute evolutionary changes that have crept in over the last few tens of thousands of years. Race is purely a function of geography, not biology.

But the fear of losing ethnic, cultural and linguistic connections with their descendants is understandable.

More to the point, this is exactly the same thing that the Republicans are talking about when they speak of "taking back America." Why is it racist for Filipino Americans to want to perpetuate their culture and ethnic appearance, but not racist for Republicans to want to "take back America?"

When Republicans say the United States is a Christian nation, they're saying that non-Christians are unwelcome.

When Republicans say the United States is a Christian nation, they're saying that non-Christians are unwelcome (although Republicans currently favor Jews for political reasons, this has not always been the case). And since religion and ethnicity are tightly linked, it's an inherently racist proposition.

And here is the core difference between the Democratic and the Republican Parties. The Republican Party welcomes the reactionaries and racists who want to maintain racial, religious and cultural purity. They adopt political platforms to move this agenda forward and actively devise electoral strategies to garner the support of and motivate racists.

Individual Democrats might have racial and tribal prejudices, but the party does not.

Republicans these days don't make their racism explicit. They couch it in terms like "take back America," "Christian nation," "states rights," "welfare queens," and low taxes. But everyone who knows the code knows what's really going on.

Now, Republicans will welcome blacks, Latinos and Asians into their party, just as long as they toe the line and give up everything that makes them different: speak English only, adopt one of two related monotheistic religions, abandon their parent's culture, abhor the "gay lifestyle," constantly mouth Old Testament paternalisms, adopt a vindictive, suspicious and fearful mindset, watch Fox News, badmouth Obama and Obamacare, drive the right kind of car (pickup truck, Hummer or anything that gets less than 15 mpg), constantly screech for the blood of Muslims, denounce climate change as a hoax, genuflect every time St. Ronald is mentioned, etc.

For a political party that prides itself on rugged individualism, the degree of rigid uniformity required to be a Republican is staggering.

The Republican Party is not a political party: it's a conservative Christian tribe. And you have to adopt all the trappings of the tribe or you're not welcome.

Republicans defend themselves against the racism charge by pointing at Herman Cain and Bobby Jindal. But seriously, if Jindal was still a Hindu, do you think he'd be the Republican governor of Louisiana today?

In the end, tribalism is just as evil and destructive as racism.  It encourages the same sorts of violence and hatred that skin color does. Just ask the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland, or the soccer hooligans in England.

Or Cardinals and 49ers fans.

The Maturity Level Of The Gun Cult

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Seven)

At a recent holiday gathering, my father in law, a lifelong Democrat and strong supporter of the president, said that he had nothing against black people. He just didn't want my daughter dating or marrying one.

This sort of attitude is illustrated in the graphic below.

Though the numbers are trending downward, they are still far too high for this day and age. No doubt, this is true for both parties. I think the flatline for the Democrats likely represents the age cohort in which my father in law belongs.

Yet it still is important to note that there still are more Republicans than Democrats who opposed interracial marriage. Again, I think this is due to older people simply being more conservative than liberal as well as more conservatives being from the South.

Good Words

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Strength to Love, 1963.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Six)

One of the great lies that has been spread over the years about black people is that they are less intelligent than white people. Or, in the case of this question, they are more unintelligent than intelligent.

White Republicans track pretty even since the early 90s with the GOP being slightly more of the belief that blacks are more unintelligent than intelligent. After the election of 2008, the GOP even sunk lower than the Democrats but rose above them again by 2012. The trend is still downward for the Democrats.

I find it pretty distressing that there are even this many people that think this. 15 percent of our white population? Really?

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Five)

Our series on racism in political parties takes a positive turn today with this question.

One caveat here is that GSS did not ask this question between 1998 and 2006, hence the smoothness during that time. Yet we still see a drop when the question gets asked again and that is very good news indeed.

Progress!

The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Use

Politico has a piece up about the myth of defensive gun ownership that is certain to cause many mouths to foam and bowels to be blown. Here are a few choice pulls...

What do these and so many other cases have in common? They are the byproduct of a tragic myth: that millions of gun owners successfully use their firearms to defend themselves and their families from criminals. Despite having nearly no academic support in public health literature, this myth is the single largest motivation behind gun ownership. It traces its origin to a two-decade-old series of surveys that, despite being thoroughly repudiated at the time, persists in influencing personal safety decisions and public policy throughout the United States. 

Check. My brother in law assures me that his children are much more safe in his house because there are many guns there. When I ask him who is more likely to have an accident with a gun, his kids or my kids (living in a house with zero guns), he says, with a straight face, my kids. You really have to love the Gun Cult:)

In 1992, Gary Kleck and Marc Getz, criminologists at Florida State University, conducted a random digit-dial survey to establish the annual number of defensive gun uses in the United States. They surveyed 5,000 individuals, asking them if they had used a firearm in self-defense in the past year and, if so, for what reason and to what effect. Sixty-six incidences of defensive gun use were reported from the sample. The researchers then extrapolated their findings to the entire U.S. population, resulting in an estimate of between 1 million and 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year.

Did they, now? Now I understand why the Right is so paranoid about data. They are simply projecting the fact that they manipulate data on to the rest of us. What a complete load of bullshit. Not everyone in American owns a gun so to extrapolate to the entire population is terribly flawed. Worse, the fact that the NRA humps this "fact" all the time without mentioning the amount of accidents that occur with those same gun owners honestly creates a make believe land where guns are always good, forever and ever, amen.

Brand new data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-partisan organization devoted to collecting gun violence data, further confirms Hemenway’s suspicion that Kleck and Getz’s findings are absurd. The archive found that for all of 2014 there were fewer than 1,600 verified defensive guns uses, meaning a police report was filed. This total includes all outcomes and types of defensive uses with a police report—a far cry from the millions that Kleck and Getz estimated.

I've never heard of the Gun Violence Archive but I can bet that the words "non-partisan" are nearly certain to elicit shrieks of disapproval and chest thumping from the Gun Cult. This is especially true when you see something like this.

So, really, it's far less than 2 million defensive uses a year. The Politico piece also notes that Kleck himself admitted that "defensive gun use" is a relative term. 36 to 64 percent of the defensive gun use was illegal? Wow. And when you compare it to the other statistics like accidental shootings, murders, and injuries, the necessity of defensive gun use is exposed to be one of the greatest lies ever believed by the American people. As the article concludes...

But the evidence clearly shows that our lax gun laws and increased gun ownership, spurred on by this myth, do not help “good guys with guns” defend themselves, their families or our society. Instead, they are aiding and abetting criminals by providing them with more guns, with 200,000 already stolen on an annual basis. And more guns means more homicides. More suicides. More dead men, women and children. Not fewer. 

Yep.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Four)

Next up in our series on racism within the GOP is this question.

An interesting question to say the least. It is indeed heartening to see the trend moving downward for both parties but note the uptick (again) right after the president gets elected. It's much sharper with Republicans. I'll be interested to see the data from the last two years.

The Pope Sides with Terrorists on Charlie Hebdo?

While en route to the Philippines the pope talked about the massacre in Paris. And he really screwed the pooch on this one:

The Pope also condemned the Paris violence. “One cannot offend, make war, kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God,” Francis said. “To kill in the name of God is an aberration.

He broke it down in everyday terms, something that is coming to be known as classic Francis teaching style. “If [a close friend] says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose,” he explained. “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.”

The pope is trying to have it both ways: first he condemns Islamic terrorists, and then he condones physical violence as retaliation for verbal insults. He believes that if someone says something sufficiently demeaning you have the right to retaliate physically.

This mindset is exactly why mass mayhem ruled Europe for centuries during the slaughters between Catholics and Protestants over disagreements on religious dogma -- nonsense like transubstantiation, for God's sake -- in what we would today call religious terrorism.

Is the pope really this oblivious? Violence begets more violence.

Is the pope really this oblivious to the ways of the world? When Joe calls Mike's mom a slut, and Mike punches Joe out, it doesn't end there. Joe punches Mike back. Then Mike picks up a bottle and smashes it over Joe's head. Then Joe hits Mike with a chair. Then Mike tackles Joe, throwing him to the floor and cracking his skull open. Then Mike goes to jail for killing Joe.

Violence begets more violence.Wasn't it Jesus who advocated turning the other cheek when someone smites you? Now the pope says it's okay to strike first?

Is the pope endorsing duels? Medieval trial by combat? The idea that might makes right? Or is he simply trying to understand and explain the reactions of unsophisticated brutes to insults, which is extremely insulting in and of itself?

In any case, what difference do insults make? If Mike's mom is a slut then it's a true statement and therefore not actionable. If she isn't, then Joe is a liar and scumbag and unworthy of response. Or, if the charges are public and sufficiently slanderous, Mike can take Joe to court.

The entire business of proselytizing religions such as Christianity and Islam is to demean other religions.

Now, on a larger scale, the entire business of proselytizing religions such as Christianity and Islam is to promote themselves, and to demonstrate their superiority over other religions. This inevitably means that other religions must be cast as inferior, and their basic tenets and practices must be derided as false and risible.

Christianity's official positions on Mohammed have ranged from him being a liar, a warlord, a polygamist, a false prophet and according to Luther, "a devil and first-born child of Satan." How much more insulting can you get?

Whenever another religion disagrees with yours on matters of theology, it is insulting your faith and demeaning your beliefs. It doesn't matter whether they use angry four-letter words or euphemisms couched in civility.

Because, truly, what's the difference between saying that A) Mary, the mother of the Church, was not a virgin her entire life, and B) Joseph and Mary fucked like minks? Why will A get a throat clearing, and B elicit a papal punch in the face?

Popes during the Reformation orchestrated religious wars and the deaths of thousands in Europe for centuries. They executed thousands of people simply for denying abstruse points of theology. In the Middle Ages popes demanded Christians go to the Holy Land and slaughter thousands of Muslims because their religious beliefs insulted the Lord.

And this nonsense isn't over. Some sects of Islam consider the very existence of other sects to be an affront to their religion. This is why the Sunni/Shia schism in Iraq is so bad -- the Saudi/Al Qaeda branch of Sunni Islam is determined to kill all Shiites, apparently by blowing up one mosque at a time.

So listen up, Francis. If you condone beating people up for calling your mom a slut, then you condone beating gays for insulting God's laws, then you condone the murder of doctors who disagree with Catholic dogma, then you condone terrorists that slaughter cartoonists who defame the image of the one true prophet of Allah.

You can't have it both ways. Once you condone physical violence as retribution for mere words, ideas or pictures, you endorse all-out war. Because physical violence always escalates. The bigger the insult, the more violent the retaliation.

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part Three)

Next up in our examination of racism within the Republican party is this.

These numbers are fairly shocking for both parties. The Democrats seem to have leveled off but that humber is still too high. And, as I have been saying right along, the Republicans have a serious problem with racism against black people. Combine this graphic with my previous two graphics and it's just plain awful. In addition, note the spike when President Obama took office.

Honestly, there's not really anything positive to take away from this question.

The Death of Email?

I just went through the arduous process of changing my email addresses. It took several hours to go through all the websites I use and test that everything still works. It was a lot more work for me than most people because I had to change both my personal email as well as several business emails, and change some software that uses them.

I had to do this because my old email addresses have become useless. I get hundreds of emails a day, and 99.9% of them are spam. Real email messages are then lost in that sea of crap.

Why did I have to do this? Hackers have attacked several major websites in recent months, stealing hundreds of millions of credit cards and email addresses. Spammers also scour web pages across the Internet, harvesting any email addresses they find.

Spam is the perfect example of a libertarian paradise where there are no government controls on business.

But changing my email address won't solve this problem for very long. It's only a matter of time before more websites get hacked, or the address books of the people I correspond with get ripped off. Or one of the websites I gave my email address to sells it to spammers. And then these new email addresses will become useless.

The act of creating new email addresses means I have to give them to other people, from whom spammers will ultimately take them, therefore defeating the entire purpose of creating the new emails in the first place.

Email is essentially a completely open and free market, without no central controls. If you want an idea of what life would be like in a libertarian paradise with no government controls on what business can do, spam is the perfect example.

The Tragedy of the Commons
The current state of email is the tragedy of the commons on steroids. This is an economic theory, first postulated by William Forster Lloyd and reiterated by Garret Hardin, which states that people acting independently and rationally in self-interest ultimately behave contrary to the best interests of the group.

Originally the "commons" was the actual common village green in an English village, which was shared among villagers. Everyone could pasture their cows and sheep there, which of course led to overgrazing that quickly turned the village green into a barren pit of mud.

The metaphor extends to all resources held in common, such as:

• The ocean, which is being overfished and polluted by dumping and toxic runoff.
• The atmosphere, which is used as a dumping ground for automobile exhaust, coal-burning power plants and industrial pollution.
• The freeway system, which gets overcrowded at rush hour, making it useless for everyone.
• The stock market, which can be manipulated by insider trading, high-frequency computer trading and hedge fund rumor-mongers for personal gain while trashing market value for everyone else.
• The financial system, which was nearly brought down in 2008 through bad lending practices by individuals increasing their personal gain at everyone else's loss.
• The telephone system, which is exploited by con men and phony charities, like those calls from Apogee Retail begging for used clothing in the name of real charities, to which they give nothing.

The percentage of spam in email has fluctuated over time. It has been estimated to be anywhere from 68% to 90% of all email in recent years. I can't find reliable current stats, but my personal experience is that there has been a significant uptick in spam in recent months after a significant drop last year.

Spam filters help, but are no panacea. Real emails get lost when they're falsely flagged as spam, or when mailboxes get filled. And spammers are getting better at making spam look like more like real email that gets past the filters.

Another way to deal with spam is to simply reject any email you get from an address you don't recognize. That might work for individuals, but it doesn't work for businesses that need to accept queries from customers. To avoid having to deal with spam, those businesses instead turn to web forms (which have those annoying captchas to prevent spammers from sending spam through web interfaces).

Then there are the economic costs: worldwide millions of man-hours are wasted each day simply by people having to spend time weeding out and deleting spam.

If 60-90% of email is spam, that means that 60-90% of the network capacity, the server horsepower, and the very electricity that powers all the Internet infrastructure devoted to handling email is being wasted.

That adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Which means people are just going to start giving up on email. And many of them already have: lots of people send texts, or use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or other texting apps on their smart phones in preference to email.

So, the Internet had better come up with a real solution for spam, or email is going to go the way of snail mail.