Give Us Your Tired, Poor, and Hungry (unless they are brown women and children in which case...FUCK OFF!)

Happy Birthday, America. Sorry you still have to deal with people like this...

When the three busloads of immigrant mothers and children rolled into town for processing at a Border Patrol station this week, they were met by protesters carrying American flags and signs proclaiming “return to sender” as they screamed “go home” and chanted “U.S.A.” Fearing for the safety of the migrants and federal officers, immigration officials decided to reroute the buses to San Diego, an hour south.

After a Border Patrol official explained that more buses would probably arrive in Murrieta in the coming weeks as part of an attempt to relieve processing centers near the Texas border, one man took to the microphone and demanded to know: “Why do we have to put them on a bus to Murrieta? Why can’t we just transport them on a bus to Tijuana?” 

The crowd responded with thunderous applause.

I'm feeling pretty ashamed of some of my fellow Americans today. These are children who fleeing violence in Honduras and other Central American nations and this is what they get? Anger and hate?  What would Jesus Christ think of this? Christian nation my ass.

The one thing that gives me hope, though, is Steve Schmidt's prediction contained in the video below. It starts at the 4 minute mark.



Take note, Republicans. Keep up the hate and intolerance and you will end up like the California Republican party.

A regional party with zero fucking power.

How We'll Adapt to Climate Change

For years many conservatives have been denying climate change even exists, and when they finally break down and admit it does, they say it'll cost too much to do anything about it and, as Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil (and Putin buddy) says, we'll find some way to adapt.

What form will adaptation take? Let's look at an example. The American Southwest has been hammered by drought for years, a condition that has been worsened by higher temperatures due to climate change. We're already beginning to see the fallout across the country:

[Minnesota-based] Dakota Premium Foods said Wednesday that it will temporarily cease production at its South St. Paul beef processing plant due to “extremely short cattle supply.”

The shutdown is effective immediately and will idle 300 workers. Dakota Premium said it does not know how long the plant will remain closed.

The U.S. beef processing industry has wrestled for the past two years with a shortage of cattle, due primarily to drought conditions in the Southwest. As drought burned out pasture lands, ranchers greatly cut back on their herds.

“We regret that the current limited cattle supplies, the smallest numbers since the early 1950s, [have] forced us to make this very difficult decision,” Dan Mehesan, president of Dakota parent ­American Foods Group’s fresh meat division, said in a statement.

A recent report on climate change (Risky Business) from businessmen and former Secretaries of the Treasury, both Republicans and Democrats, outlined many of the economic woes climate change will wreak.

It won't be long before cattle production will become impossible in many parts of the Southwest because the rivers are drying up (due to lack of snowpack in the Rockies) and the aquifers are running dry (due to excessive pumping to irrigate crops, water golf courses in Phoenix and Tucson and run the fountains in Las Vegas). A single beef animal requires 2,000-7,000 gallons of water a year (more the hotter it gets). Putting them in expensive air-conditioned barns won't help; hay shortages have plagued ranchers for years now.

How will we adapt? Ranchers will declare bankruptcy. The price of beef will go up. Meat packers will go out of business. Americans will eat fewer hamburgers. Some cattle ranching will move to areas that are currently productive farmland, but which will become more arid and become fit only for pastureland. The communities in the stricken areas will become ghost towns. Agricultural production and American exports will decline.

So, even if cattle production is eventually relocated elsewhere, the economic disruption and dislocation will figure in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the human misery caused is incalculable.

But it's not just cattle ranching that will be affected. California's Central Valley has been stricken by the same drought. That's an even greater problem:

[California's] $45bn (£26bn) farming industry produces almost half the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in the US, and to do that it uses 80 per cent of California’s water. Almonds alone account for 10 per cent of the state’s water use – not surprising, given that California produces 80 per cent of the world’s almonds.

And it isn't just California. The plains states are also suffering from a years-long drought. In other words, the United States is losing the most productive farmland in the world.

Adapting to climate change will mean millions of people will lose their jobs and millions of acres of land will become unproductive deserts. The people affected will have to look for work in other states, mainly the north, because the South and Southwest will become unbearably and dangerously hot in the summer.
The "adaptation" that wealthy oil executives and their conservative apologists speak so blithely about will leave millions Americans out of work, forced to abandon their homes for other states, falling into bankruptcy and poverty.

Wouldn't it make more sense for us to adapt by having Mr. Tillerson's company help pay for the damage that his company's product is causing?

And that's why we need a carbon tax and/or a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. It's a far more efficient way for us to adapt than throwing every other sector of the economy out of whack and rendering our most productive farmlands infertile.

Kindly Do Not Bring Your Guns

Target Corporation has kindly asked the Gun Cult to leave their guns outside their stores.

Target's interim CEO, John Mulligan, in a memo posted on the chain's website Wednesday, said: "This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create."

It's not a ban but they are asking nicely which makes Mulligan a very brilliant man. Not only is he saying no open carry but he's also asking even concealed carry to keep their guns out of the store. So, if gun humpers still do it, how will that make them look?

As I have stated previously, the biggest threat to the Gun Cult is themselves. They seem to be undoing their years of progress by acting like sex starved adolescents with their firearms. All gun safety folks need to do right now is sit back and let them self destruct:)

Unemployment Rate Drops

U.S. employment growth jumped in June and the jobless rate closed in on a six-year low, decisive evidence the economy was moving forward at a brisk clip after a surprisingly big slump at the start of the year. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 288,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent, its lowest level since September 2008, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Data for April and May were revised to show a total of 29,000 more jobs created than previously reported.

This marks the 5th straight month of 200K+ job growth which is great news for the US Economy. Of course, this is not so great for the Republicans who have now officially lost the economy as a campaign issue in the fall. If the economy is the #1 issue in the fall election and it's going in the right direction, why would they want to vote an incumbent out of office?

Still Loving Quora

After just over two months on Quora, I have to report that I am really having a blast! If you haven't gotten on yet, I urge you to do so. There is such a great variety of people with different views on Quora that I honestly feel right at home. I've struck up some great online friendships.

And I can't believe the traffic. Take a look at how many people read and upvoted one of my answers. Wow! It's also kind of funny to note how sometimes a quick answer (like this one or this one ) generates a lot of views and upvotes. I wish that I could get some more traffic here but I think people tend to flock where there is more population and that's just not here in my little online, small town newspaper. Although, Nikto's last few posts have gotten double what we normally get on daily pieces so that's pretty cool.

And I've more or less confirmed what I thought about TSM commenters out in the real world...they are pretty much cowards. They never ask questions of their own, rarely answer and seem to only upvote or offer a comment here or there. It makes sense because they know how batshit their ideology is outside of the bubble and their insecurity simply won't allow any sort of negativity. Oh well, at least they are mildly self aware:)

Even the downvotes and negative reactions to some of my questions haven't really bothered me. There is just such a nice balance there that is more representative of reality. What comes next promised to be most exciting!

Why All the Red-State Pill Popping?

Opioid painkiller abuse is a serious problem in this country. High profile cases include actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died of a heroin overdose earlier this year after getting hooked on prescription painkillers, and Rush Limbaugh, whose hearing loss may have been caused by oxycontin abuse.

A study of prescription rates across the country is interesting: doctors in Minnesota (where I live) issue fewer than half as many prescriptions for opioids than Alabama:

[T]he rates were much higher in some southern states. In Alabama, which led the country, there were 143 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 people in 2012. There were 11 other states where each adult, on average, got a least one painkiller prescription that year, including Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky.

CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters that officials don't think the high rates of prescribing in some states are because people living there have more pain. "This is an epidemic that was largely caused by improper prescribing practices," he said during a media briefing.

These excessively high prescription rates contribute directly to higher death rates by overdose in those states. Florida changed their regulations to combat an epidemic of oxycodone overdoses with great success:

Between 2010 and 2012, annual overdose deaths in Florida dropped 16.7 percent, from 3,201 to 2,666. And deaths from oxycodone, the generic name of the ingredient in many brand-name opioid painkillers, fell by more than half, according to an analysis published in MMWR.

Why are the conservative states so ready to pop addictive painkillers? There's some research that finds conservatives to be driven more by fear, something that seems to be borne out by the attitudes so many conservatives espouse when they insist they have to carry guns everywhere they go. Does all that fear also make conservatives more afraid of pain?

Are southern doctors letting drug companies use them to bilk insurance and Medicaid out of billions of dollars to hook patients on addictive drugs? Are patients just getting prescriptions so they can turn around and sell the pills on the black market?

I don't know. All I can say for sure is that if the numbers were reversed, conservatives would be telling us how liberals are wimpy nancy-boys, how blue-state welfare policies encourage prescription drug abuse and Obamacare is leading to moral decline by giving them heroin-light instead of making them tough it out.

What I do know from personal experience is that these drugs are extremely dangerous. Some years ago I contracted pneumonia, though I didn't know it because I had no problems breathing: the main symptom was an incredibly bad headache that prevented me from sleeping.

When they finally prescribed the right antibiotic, they also gave me a prescription for Percocet (oxycodone and acetaminophen) so that I could sleep. I took one tablet. But as soon as I would start to fall asleep I would stop breathing. I had to force myself to stay awake and breathe until the drug wore off.

I cannot understand why people put this crap into their systems just for the hell of it...

Quite A Contradiction

Corporations Take Control of Women's Reproductive Health

Supreme Court Okays Corporate Interference in Personal Lives

The Supreme Court decided in favor of Hobby Lobby's claim that paying for birth control violated "the company's" freedom of religion.

This is wrong on two counts.

First, corporations are not human beings and cannot have religions. Corporations do not attend church. They cannot be excommunicated. They cannot be married. They cannot partake of holy sacraments or receive communion. They cannot be baptized. They cannot vote. They cannot go to prison.

Corporations are legal entities created by government. They exist to prevent the owners from being held personally liable for corporate debts and actions. If Hobby Lobby goes bankrupt, the company's creditors cannot go after the owners' personal assets to recoup debts. The CEO is not culpable for crimes committed by other employees.

That means that the owners of Hobby Lobby are not personally responsible for actions that corporation takes that are required by law.  The owners and officers of the company are not the company, unless they are a sole proprietorship that is is not protected by the liability limitations that Hobby Lobby's incorporation provides.

Thus, if Hobby Lobby wants to force their religious beliefs on their employees, they can't hide behind the shield of corporate law that the government provides them. The Supreme Court should have  allowed this only if they dissolved the corporate entity the Hobby Lobby owners hide behind.

Second, the company's argument against providing coverage was this:

The companies objected to some of the methods, saying they are tantamount to abortion because they can prevent embryos from implanting in the womb. Providing insurance coverage for those forms of contraception would, the companies said, make them complicit in the practice.

They're saying that their religion prevents them from giving money to person A, who will give that money to person B to provide contraception to person C.

Then why is is acceptable for them to money directly to person C who will spend it on contraception?

What happens when Hobby Lobby finds out that one of their employees is spending that money on forbidden contraceptives? Or when they find out that an employee has had an abortion? Based on their victory in the Supreme Court today, won't they feel emboldened to fire that employee, because the employee is using their money to make them complicit in the practice? How can the government force them to pay people who violate their core beliefs?

How long before other "family-owned" corporations come crawling out of the woodwork saying that they can't hire Hindus because it would make complicit in paganism, or Jews because it would make them complicit in the death of Jesus, or women because their religion preaches that women should stay in the home, or gays because -- well, gays!

In the final analysis the Hobby Lobby case is not about corporate freedom of religion. It's about employers thinking they have the right to control the private lives of the people who work for them.

In particular:

[Hobby Lobby] said they had no objection to other forms of contraception, including condoms, diaphragms, sponges, several kinds of birth control pills and sterilization surgery.

That means Hobby Lobby thinks corporations have the right to tell an employee the only method of birth control they will accept is sterilization, if they couch their reasons in appropriately mystical terms.

That should give even the most die-hard conservative reason to doubt the wisdom of this decision.

The Perception of A Conservative

NPR Plays The Cult of Both Sides

Last Friday, the president spoke in my hometown and NPR in Minnesota aired a post speech analysis. At about the 12 minute mark, Keith Downy, chair of the Minnesota Republican party joins the conversation and, thus, any criticism of NPR being liberal goes directly out of the fucking window. For the next few minutes, Downy spins the usual yarn about how the free market can just sort itself out. If we had only left the government out of it in 2008, all would be well with our economy today.

What fucking planet are these people living on?

Worse, he's being terribly dishonest because he would have done the exact same thing the president did. I'd like Mr. Downy or any other free market fundamentalist to point to real world evidence of their theory. Show me a recession that was that bad and then show me how doing nothing worked out.

Of course the real treat of the segment was Andy from Sioux Falls, a small business owner fed up with federal taxes, who comes in at around 14 minutes into the segment. After hearing his remarks, I have to question whether or not this man was an actual small business owner or whether he was a Tea Party troll calling in to wax Ayn Rand. No business owner (large, medium, or small) turns down making more money because they are worried about paying federal taxes. What a ludicrous bunch of nonsense! After Downy's ad hom on the woman the president met with to discuss local economic concerns, I was left to wonder how NPR let themselves get into such a position.

When will the "liberal" media stop playing the cult of both sides? Sometimes there is only one side to a story. Supply side economics doesn't work. Even the guys that came up with it (David Stockman, Bruce Bartlett) have admitted they were wrong. You can't simply ignore aggregate demand and pretend it doesn't exist. The problem with our economy today is that there are not enough people buying things so businesses don't hire people. There isn't enough population at the top to support our economy.

The middle class is the engine that drives our economy and when they have more money, our economy will improve.

A Sunday Reflection

Free Speech and Clinic Safety

Noah Feldman from Bloomberg breaks down the recent SCOTUS decision which allows anti-abortion activists inside the buffer zones that clinics have created in front of their buildings for safety. He notes that a first glance might reveal a big victory for abortion foes. Yet, a closer examination reveals much more.

The crucial element in the opinion — the element that got the liberals on board and enraged the conservatives — is that Roberts said the law was neutral with respect to the content of speech as well as the viewpoint of the speakers. That conclusion protected the possibility of other laws protecting women seeking abortions that pay more attention to what Roberts said was missing here, namely proof that the law was narrowly tailored.

What would be a real world example?

Consider a law banning sound trucks blaring on your street at night. It would probably be constitutional, because the government has a significant interest in citizens’ sleep, and there would be plenty of other times for sound trucks to operate, leaving ample alternatives for communication. It is this standard that Roberts applied to the buffer zone — and that will therefore be applied to other, similar buffer laws in the future.

Essentially, the details of the ruling give fair warning to abortion foes who may be emboldened to shout or threaten clinic patrons. The constitutionality of a ban or a buffer zone is still there because (surprise!) the freedom of speech is not unlimited.

Democrats Counting Cash

On behalf of all Democrats and liberals, I would like to personally thank John Boehner and all Republicans everywhere for helping out with our fundraising yesterday. The DCCC has the best day it's had this year with a cool half mil coming into the coffer. Thanks dudes!

Perhaps continued attacks on the president will also increase voter turnout in the midterms and he can kick their ass a third time:)

The Thad Tizzy

I'm still trying to figure out why the Tea Baggers and other malcontent conservatives are pissed off about Thad winning the runoff in Mississippi. Democrats can vote in primary elections. It's the law. Why are the being all whiny about it? Don't the Republicans want to expand their base? What better way to do so than by illustrating to African American voters in the state that Thad Cochran considers their interests as well.

It will never cease to amaze me how conservatives continue to do everything in their power to contract their voting base.

Getting Blood Out of a Stone

When you give money to a charity, you expect that they'll spend it on the things they promised to. Right?

So when people gave the American Red Cross $300 million for Hurricane Sandy relief, you would expect that the organization would be quite proud to show how well they did for their donors. Right?

Wrong.

ProPublica tried to find out the details of how the Red Cross spent the money it received for Hurricane Sandy. But getting the information from the Red Cross is like getting blood out of a stone:

If those details were disclosed, "the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross's business model for an increased competitive advantage," [Gabrielle] Levin [counsel for the Red Cross from the law firm Gibson Dunn] wrote.

People give the Red Cross their very blood for free, a donation which carries significant risk of personal bodily harm, and they turn around and sell it to hospitals for a hefty fee. And they're whining about trade secrets?  People give you blood and money. What's the big secret?

When a tax-exempt public charity starts spouting corporate-speak about trade secrets, competitors and business models, they seem to be hiding something.

But what? By all accounts, the Red Cross is doing a pretty decent job of turning donations into help for people in need (91% of every dollar raised goes to humanitarian services). They post the IRS form with the salary of CEO Gail McGovern ($628,386 in 2013). That's not excessive, even though some Internet nitwits pretend it is, and the five other corporate officers listed also have reasonable salaries.

There are a lot of unscrupulous charities out there that do a lot worse job than the Red Cross. The Red Cross is out there on the front lines whenever there's a disaster, so it's pretty obvious they're actually doing something.

Other charities, not so much. There are a zillion charities for veterans, children (foreign and domestic), animal shelters, wildlife, medical research, and so on. But you can never really tell that they're actually doing anything with your money: we'll always have homeless vets, cancer, heart disease, too many pregnant cats running around loose and endangered species. Lots of these charities are completely phony. Most of them spend far more on fund raising than the cause they're supposed to be helping.

The Red Cross is different. They're always around, always helping people when they need it most. But because we trust and depend on them, they really need to be up front about what they do with the money we give them. Because if they're not doing their jobs right, people are going to die.

All charities should be held to that same standard. If the Red Cross is afraid to divulge their "business model" because they believe that the weaselly worthless charities will start poaching Red Cross donors, then we need to strengthen the laws for charitable giving to stop the scum from ripping us off.

A Frivolous Lawsuit?

Conservatives like to whine and shriek about frivolous lawsuits right up until the point when they actually start one themselves.

House Speaker John Boehner confirmed Wednesday that he intends to sue President Obama in the long-running dispute between the administration and congressional Republicans over the scope of the administration's executive authority to enforce laws. 

"I am," Boehner told reporters, when asked if he was going to initiate a lawsuit. "The Constitution makes it clear that a president's job is to faithfully execute the laws. In my view, the president has not faithfully executed the laws." Boehner added: "Congress has its job to do and so does the president. And when there's conflicts like this between the legislative branch and the administrative branch, it's in my view our responsibility to stand up for this institution in which we serve."

I wonder how much this is going to cost the taxpayers.

When Every Quarter Is a Bad Quarter

The Commerce Department says that US economy contracted 2.9% in the first quarter, mostly due to bad winter weather. To be sure, there were lots of other factors:

The latest revisions reflect a weaker pace of healthcare spending than previously assumed, which caused a downgrading of the consumer spending estimate.

and

[Orders for durable goods] were dragged down by weak demand for transportation, machinery, computers and electronic products; electrical equipment, appliances and components; as well as a 31.4 percent plunge in defense capital goods orders.

and

Other drags to first-quarter growth included a slow pace of restocking by businesses, a sharp drop in investment on non-residential structures such as gas drilling and weak government spending on defense.

So, when people save money on healthcare and the government cuts spending, the economy suffers. No wonder economics is called the dismal science: even things that are supposed to good are bad.

But the largest single factor was the weather. Recently a group of economic and public figures from across the political spectrum released a report called Risky Business that details the economic effects of climate change. These include former Republican Treasury secretaries Hank Paulson and George Shultz.

Climate is just another word for long-term weather. Climate change will usher in bad weather every quarter: rising sea levels, more flash flooding, more torrential rains in some areas while other areas suffer perpetual drought, more powerful storm surges and tornadoes, and larger snowfalls. In states like Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana it will be too hot and humid to work outside without risk of heat stroke. In other words, when we're not digging out from snowstorms, mudslides, tornadoes, and floods, it will be too damn hot to get any work done. Productivity will go into the crapper.

The report states that some areas may benefit from a milder climate, like Minnesota and North Dakota. Hey, two out of 50 states ain't bad.

Wrong About Scott Walker

I didn't think there was much to the "Scott Walker is a criminal" stuff that has been floating around these last few years but it looks like that story might have a bit more to it. It's not surprising that Scott Walker says that the probe is all over. Far from it. 

The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation "is expansive," Schmitz wrote. "It includes criminal violations of multiple elections laws, including violations of Filing a False Campaign Report or Statement and Conspiracy to File a False Campaign Report or Statement."

Well, I guess I was wrong again:)