What's the True Cost of an Unsafe Pain Killer? 150? 33,000? 78,000? Or Billions?

ProPublica published an article about how easy it is to overdose with acetaminophen, best known under the brand name Tylenol. If you take just 25% more, only 2 extra pills a day over a few days, you can cause liver damage. Higher overdoses can cause liver failure and death.

Accidental overdoses killed 1,567 people between 2001 and 2010, or about 150 people a year. In a given year, double that many die, but the other cases are either intentional or the intent is unclear.

Furthermore:

Acetaminophen overdose sends as many as 78,000 Americans to the emergency room annually and results in 33,000 hospitalizations a year, federal data shows. Acetaminophen is also the nation’s leading cause of acute liver failure, according to data from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes for Health.

In addition:

In 2010, only 15 deaths were reported for the entire class of pain relievers, both prescription and over-the-counter, that includes ibuprofen, data from the CDC shows. 

And finally:

The London-based Lancet declared in a 1975 editorial that if [acetaminophen] “were discovered today it would not be approved” by British regulators. “It would certainly never be freely available without prescription. 

One major problem is that many drugs contain acetaminophen (such as Nyquil), so it becomes extremely easy for people with a pounding headache and a bad cold or the flu to overdose when they take Nyquil and Tylenol at the same time.

This allows us to draw three conclusions. 1) Anything containing acetaminophen (including Tylenol and Nyquil) should be more tightly controlled, probably prescription-only. 2) The warnings on Tylenol and Nyquil should be much more explicit and obvious: even a small overdose can send you to the hospital, especially in combination with alcohol. And 3) if you can tolerate safer pain relievers, you should use those preferentially.

Fine. The FDA should tell these drug companies to stop pretending their product is absolutely safe. Case closed.

But then I came to the comments at the end of the article. The first commenter said, basically, "Only 150 dead people? So what!" Other commenters chimed in with stuff like, "More people die from can opener accidents." Would they think that if their daughter just died because they just tried to soothe her suffering with a spoonful of medicine? Or she was forced to undergo months of waiting for a liver transplant?

The trolls intentionally obscure the real point of the article: 78,000 emergency room visits and 33,000 hospitalizations annually. If the average emergency room visit costs $1,283, that's $100,000,000. If the average hospital stay costs $15,734, that's another $519,000,000. Many victims of acetaminophen poisoning will suffer permanent liver damage, and some will require liver transplants, which means they'll spend their entire lives taking anti-rejection drugs. If the average liver transplant costs half a million dollars and the antirejection drugs cost $12,000 a year, acetaminophen poisoning will directly cost billions of dollars annually.

And then there are the indirect costs: some victims will suffer other debilitating medical problems as a result of liver failure, which will prevent them from working, or will require expensive special care. Some of these people will wind up on welfare and Medicaid. Parents and spouses will miss work to care of them.

The real cost of lax regulation of Tylenol is not just 150 dead people a year. It's billions and billions of dollars in medical costs, plus millions of hours of lost productivity, plus an incalculable amount of human suffering.

So, who are these guys who troll the web, who minimize other people's pain and defend the profits of giant corporations who market dangerous products? Are they paid shills? Rabid libertarians who think companies should be able to make money any way they can, and let everyone else clean up the mess while they laugh all the way to the bank? Conservatives who hate it when people sue corporations? Why do they leap to these companies' defense and obscure these drugs' true costs to society?

Don't they get that dangerous products hurt everyone, even conservatives and Republicans?  Republicans like Antonio Benedi, for example. Benedi was once an assistant to president George H. W. Bush. He took some Tylenol, as per the label, and it almost killed him. He had to get a liver transplant. He sued Tylenol's manufacturer and a jury awarded him $8.5 million.

I don't think people should sue companies at the drop of a hat. But these companies are selling a product that has been known to be dangerous for decades. They've tried to make it safer and have failed. They've even produced an antidote for acetaminophen poisoning. So they know exactly how dangerous it is. Yet they're using their economic and political clout to prevent the FDA from enacting additional safety measures. All the while still telling parents that Children's Tylenol is completely safe (when used as directed).


Medicine is supposed to make us better. Not poison and kill us.

Good Words

“We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.” ~John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

How Fucked Up?

When children throw a temper tantrum, they usually end up breaking something. Mom's dishes or dad's sports memorabilia isn't quite on the level of the US Economy.

Republicans are far more likely to oppose raising the debt limit than anyone else; they say don’t raise it by 61-25. Republicans, however, also believe overwhelmingly that not raising it would cause serious economic harm — by 66-27.

At least we now have confirmation as to just how fucked up the Right is there days.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Two men with concealed-carry weapon permits shot each other dead in Michigan in a road-rage incident. 

Witnesses tell WZZM 13 one driver was following another driver too closely. The first driver pulled into the Wonder Wand Car Wash parking lot and the other driver followed him into the lot.

Witnesses say the driver of the following car fired shots, and the first driver returned fire. Both drivers were shot and killed. Authorities say both men had licenses to carry concealed weapons.

These weapons sure did a bang-up job protecting these two guys. I bet this makes you feel so much safer.

Back in the day nuclear Armageddon loomed over us: the Mutually Assured Destruction of two gigantic nuclear arsenals pointing at each may have prevented World War III. There's no incentive to shoot first if you know that your entire country will be wiped out.

But the small-scale Mutually Assured Destruction of handguns provides no such protection. The mindset is that whoever shoots first wins. Obviously, this is a failed strategy: you need to shoot the other guy in the back proactively in order to really protect yourself.

Welcome to the nightmare world of the NRA.

First Star To The Right, Straight On Until Morning

This recent piece in the Times about Voyager I leaving our solar system filled me with melancholy. What happened to our country's spirit of exploration? One of my criticisms of the president is his continued belief that the space program should be privately funded. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to see a future that looks like the Aliens universe. I'd rather it be more like Star Trek.

Think about what Voyager will see as it leaves our solar system after having traveled 11.7 billion miles. It's simply mind boggling!

From the article...

Dr. Gurnett and his team have spent the past few months analyzing their data, trying to nail down whether what they were seeing was solar plasma or the plasma of interstellar space. Now they are certain it was the latter, and have even pinpointed a date for the crossing: Aug. 25, 2012.

I have to admit that part of me is wondering if some alien ship will snap it up and transmit a message back to us.

We Dodged a Bullet in 2008

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, there were two main Russian newspapers: Pravda ("Truth"), which was the official organ of the Communist Party, and Izvestiya ("News"), which was the official organ of the government.

These ironic names elicited a popular saying: "In Pravda there is no news, and in Izvestiya there is no truth."

Both of these publications still exist, though there are two versions of Pravda: one is still the Communist Party organ, and the other is just a Russian news website.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin published an article in the The New York Times arguing against an American strike on Syria to avenge gas attacks on Syrian civilians, Putin articulated many of the same arguments that most Americans already believed. Though Putin's article was obviously slanted, it was relatively tame, stating many obvious truths, and even co-opted conservative Republican language, ending with, "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

John McCain apparently saw Putin's article as a direct slap in the face, as it completely gutted every argument McCain had made for attacking Syria. McCain complained bitterly about the Times letting Putin speak to the American people, saying that Russian citizens don't have the right to criticize Putin in their own country.

So a Russian website took McCain up on that, and his article has now appeared in Pravda.ru. McCain's column ripped Putin a new one. Where Putin's article was a reasoned argument against American intervention in Syria and a call for peaceful decommissioning of Syria's weapons of mass destruction, McCain's article was a petty, personal diatribe against Putin. It had nothing to do with Syria, and made no case whatsoever for an American strike against Assad. McCain had to personally attack Putin because the Russian president dared criticize McCain's entire ethos of attacking any country that he feels like.

In the end, the publication of McCain's article showed that his main argument was false: people can criticize Putin in Russia. McCain only made himself sound like a maniacal blowhard, compared to Putin's smooth arguments calling for peace and reasoned cooperation. Which is bad, because many of McCain's criticisms of Russia are dead on. His pettiness discredits himself and the arguments he is  trying to make.

And it turns out McCain published his article in the wrong Pravda: it appeared on the website Pravda.ru, not the Communist Party's Pravda. The editor of the Communist daily called Pravda.ru "Oklahoma City Pravda." Not that it really matters, because the Communist Party no longer controls the Russian government: Putin's party is called United Russia, and holds more than 50% of the seats in the Duma. It's basically a collection of plutocrats bent on self-enrichment, rather than Communist ideologues who use the Party apparatus for self-enrichment. A subtle, yet important, difference.

What we have here is another example of John McCain's overweaning egomania. The only reason McCain was ever considered a "maverick" is that he has always felt the need to exact revenge from anyone he felt wronged him, even erstwhile political allies. For example, George Bush unfairly trashed McCain in the presidential primaries in 2000, so McCain got his revenge by cosponsoring the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.

And how seriously did McCain take the whole Syria debate in the first place? Apparently, not very: he was playing poker on his iPhone during the Foreign Relations committee meeting on Syria.

All this shows that the American people really got it right when they rejected John McCain in 2008. This guy is egotistical, unbalanced and monomaniacally bent on attacking any country that crosses him. As president McCain would have gotten us back into Iraq, and he would have started three more wars in Libya, Iran and Syria. In short, he is the last guy you would want to have the nuclear football.

At this point, even die-hard Republicans have to agree that we almost literally dodged a bullet when Obama beat McCain in 2008.

Good Words

“Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.” ~John Adams, (“A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1787-88))

Look To Your Right

If you look to your right, you will see that I have a new contact form on the site. This replaces the old email contact which got lost at the bottom of the page and I think disappeared for awhile when I went through my last redesign. I've had a few emails of late from people who don't want to comment but would like to send me information to share on the site if we so desire. Likely, there are others so this note will go directly to my email. Speaking of which...

I've had more than a few emails regarding my Neighborhood Mental Watch post from Tuesday. Interestingly, many of them told me that they already have community organizations like it in place where they live and have had them since Columbine. One email suggested that, rather than start a new organization, we should simply add it in to the already effective Neighborhood Watch program. After all the support George Zimmerman enjoyed in tracking suspicious characters, one would think that keeping an eye in mentally ill people with guns would spark a bipartisan bonanza of neighborhood vigilance, right?

It seems like it would be easier to take what the Lemmers did with their son and Pete Hoffmeister suggested we all do with troubled young men and fold it into the already existing USAonWatch program. Certainly, it would address the more common problem of gang violence in addition to shooting sprees. Our president sets a great example of what a community organizer can do so why not follow his lead?

Good Words

“The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”   ~1797 Treaty of Tripoli signed by John Adams

On Stiglitz: Part Eight

The next chapter in Stiglitz's book, The Price of Inequality, is called "The Battle of the Budget." Written around the time of the 2011 budge battle (see also: When the Right Lost the 2012 Election Due to Moonbattery), it's frustrating that in 2013 we are still having the same fight and have not progressed.

This budget brinksmanship obscured the real economic challenges facing the country: the immediate problem posed by the high level of unemployment and the gap between the economy's potential output and its actual output, and the long term problem of growing inequality. The brinksmanship shifted attention away from these fierce problems to the issues of deficit and debt reduction.

Stiglitz describes this shift as being caused by what he terms " debt and deficit feitishists." Ironic that these people ignored the actual causes of our debt and deficit and, instead, ascribed the cause to their emotional feelings (see: psychosis) about government spending. I'll get to spending later but as he notes correctly, the four main causes of our debt and deficit are: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Medicare D (a huge rent for the drug companies) and the underperformance of the economy itself due to contraction. The figures for each of these causes are: $3.3 trillion dollars, $2.5 trillion dollars, $500 billion dollars, $900 billion dollars. Given that we have made some small improvements in the tax structure earlier this year, these numbers aren't quite as bad anymore but they still illustrate the need for improvement.

But we still have a fundamental and systemic problem with our tax structure. The people that contribute the least to our economy (the financial sector) are taxed at a ridiculously low rate for the amount of money they make. As Stiglitz notes, the lower tax rates on capital gains did not lead to higher, sustainable growth but rather, two speculative booms (1997, early 2000s) in the technology sector and the housing sector.

Bush argued successfully in 2003 for a (temporary) cut on the tax on dividends, to a maximum of 15 percent, less than half the rate paid by someone who receives a comparable income in the form of wages and salaries. The claim was that it would lead to more investment by firms in plant and equipment, but it didn't. Arguably, it may have had the opposite effect. Firms were, in effect, encouraged to pay out dividends while the tax rates were low, leaving fewer funds inside the corporation for a good investment project, should have turned up.

Stiglitz goes on to argue the need for stiffer taxes on rents and how we need to put more taxes on the toxic things in our economy. He makes a very interesting point that considering the fact that the financial sector nearly brought down the world economy, they are "polluters" and need to be taxed accordingly. For those of you unfamiliar with basic economic theory, taxing good things distorts markets and can do harm. Taxing bad things corrects the erosion of consumer surplus and inefficiency of markets due to the public expense of something like pollution. The public has born a great deal of expense as a result of the financial collapse and the people in those markets should be taxed at a higher rate.

In addition, the financial sector (along with many other sectors of our economy ), no longer need subsidies. It continually amazes me that the Right argues vociferously for less social welfare but wants corporate welfare to continue in earnest. The tax breaks we give to the multi-billion dollar oil industry are ridiculous.

So, Stiglitz has six action items in regards to our tax system'

1. Raise taxes on the people at the top
2. Eliminate loopholes and special treatment for upper incomes
3. Eliminate subsidies
4. Tax rents at higher rate
5. Tax pollution
6. Tax the financial sector similar to the ways we tax pollution given the costs they impose on the rest of society.

As I stated above, the deal on the budget reached earlier this year is a beginning down this path but it's not enough.

Now, seeing the word "tax" is sure to cause the mouth foamers' blood to rise. They will caterwaul and bloviate about how it hurts businesses and they won't hire people but they are pushing a myth, which is a polite way of saying they are lying, as Stiglitz notes on page 225. Suppose you own a business and calculate that hiring a worker will yield you a return of $100,000. $50,000 of that will go to costs the firm has to pay (including taxes, salary, other costs etc). This leaves a profit of $50,000. Now, you had to pay an extra tax of $2500 (5 percent) on that employee, would you still hire? Of course you would. Taxes don't prevent people from hiring if there is profit involved. What prevents people from hiring is a lack of demand (discussed many times on this site) which would push that $100,000 figure downwards. If they don't have the business coming through the door, they won't hire.

Moving past the issue of revenue, let's turn our attention to spending. Stiglitz argues for more spending to really get the economy going again. He dismisses the deficit/debt fetishes and notes...

The United States is an especially good position to pursue this strategy, both because returns to public investments are so high, as a result of underinvestment for a quarter of a century, and because it borrow so cheaply long term. Unfortuneately, especially among the Right (but, even, alas, among many in the center) deficit fetishism has gained ground. The ratings agencies-still trusted despite their incredibly bad performance in recent decades-have joined in the fray, downgrading US debt. But the test of the quality of debt is the risk premium that investors demand. As the book goes to press, there is a demand for US T-bills at interest rates near zero (and, in real terms, negative)

Exactly right. The fetishists don't get to determine the quality of our debt. The free market does. It simply isn't justified on the basis of economic principles. Stiglitz goes on to note that economic stimulus can be achieved through a long standing principle called the balanced budget multiplier (increasing taxes and expenditures simultaneously while taking care to not add any more to the current deficit). He argues that if this happens, GDP would increase two to three times the rate of spending. This growth would decrease the national debt over the intermediate term (pages 217-218).

But won't all this spending make us "like Greece?" No, says Stiglitz...and everyone else who doesn't let their emotions about spending dictate policy (side note: why is it that the Right cite power hungry human nature as the reason why people in the government should not be allowed to spend money yet believe, in the same head, that people are little angels when they make financial decisions privately?). Greece owes money in euros of which they have no direct control. US debt is in dollars and we control the printing presses. The idea that we would default is pure moonbattery. Sure, you'll hear bloviating about inflation but, again, the free market does not see that happening.

One can infer that both from the very low interest rate that the government has to pay on its long-term debt and even more from what it has to pay for inflation-protected bonds (or more accurately, the difference between the returns on ordinary bonds and inflation protected bonds). Now, the market could be wrong, but then the rating agencies giving a downgrade to the United States should have explained why the market was wrong, and why they believed that there is a much higher risk of inflation than the market believed. The answers have not been forthcoming.

Likely because it was politically motivated. The United States knows that the Fed will buy government bonds. Greece has no idea if the ECB will buy their bonds at all. Essentially what's going on here is that the adolescents are playing make believe and saying that there is less faith in the US government than there actually is. Considering they are big believers in the free market, this makes no sense to me.

Some other bits from the chapter...

Reagan supply side economics, which held that lowering tax rates would increase economic activity, so much so that tax revenues would actually increase, has (as we noted in chapter 3) been disproved by what happened after both the Bush and the Reagan era tax cuts.

Ah, but we should never let reality get in the way of a good fantasy, right?

No deficit reduction group suggested a frontal attack on corporate welfare and the hidden subsidies (including the financial sector) that we've stressed in this book, partly because the Right has succeeded in convincing many Americans that an attack on corporate welfare is "class warfare." 

Of course, when Reagan said it, it was okey-dokey.

Regarding Social Security and Medicare...

In the most hopeful scenarios, the Right would privatize both services. Privatization, of course, is based on yet another myth: that government run programs must be inefficient, and privatization accordingly must be better. In fact, the transaction costs of Social Security and Medicare are much, much lower than those of private sector providing comparable services. This should not come as a surprise. The objective of the private sector is to make profits-for private companies, transaction costs are a good thing; the difference between what they take in and what they pay out is what they want to maximize. 

Social Security and Medicare can be fixed quite easily with very simple adjustments phased in over time (increasing retirement age, means testing etc). Unfortunately, no one in Congress seem willing to move towards that end. Privatization is absolutely the wrong answer and we all know the real reason why the Right wants to get their hands on that money. As Stiglitz notes..

The agenda for privatization of Social Security was not about providing more money to America's retirees or more security or about increasing efficiency. It was about one thing only: providing more money to the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent-more money to Wall Street. The magnitudes involved are potentially enormous. Think of the $2.6 trillion in the Social Security Trust fund. If Wall Street could get just 1 percent per year for managing that money, that would be an extra bonanza for the managers of $26 billion dollars a year.

It's about as obvious as the smell of pig shit.

Stiglitz round out the chapter with a discussion of how the Right likes to blame the victim (in this case, the middle class) for our economic woes. Cuts in wages reduce economic demand so, again, it makes no sense to blame your average worker, especially considering how well the wealthy have done despite the contraction. On the last few pages of the chapter he offers a scathing indictment of austerity (pages 230-231) as well as an evisceration of the myth of the failed stimulus (page 232)., explaining in detail just how awful it would have been had we not had it and how the Obama administration failed to note just how deep the hole was that we dug ourselves.

He challenges anyone to find historical examples of austerity actually working in more than just rare cases in countries that are small and had trading partners experiencing a boom. He blows apart the myth of how a government budget should be like a household budget. Considering that the former can change the macro-economy and the latter counter, one would think the differences are obvious.

So, as this latest round of budget battles gets underway, Stiglitz is correct when he says government spending can be very effective. Funds directly spend on high productivity, structural reform, and basic infrastructure will increase productivity which will include an increase in demand. One need only look at examples from the past like Grand Coulee Dam or the current return on government investment in research to see that this is true.

(Note: the link to The Price of Inequality in the first line of this post takes you to Amazon.com where you can look inside and read the entire book and source material)

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH!!!!!

Black NRA from Sarah Silverman

The Usual Malarky

The gun community and the Right are foaming at the mouth again about gun free zones after the Navy Yard shooting. As usual, they aren't really thinking. If they allowed anyone to carry a gun in a place like the Navy Yard, then guys like Aaron Alexis, a gun enthusiast with mental health problems, would have free access to roam around as they please. Further, Alexis was going in to kill people no matter what the state of defense in the Navy Yard. This was a very mentally disturbed man who was angry at his employer.

This military directive, issued in February 1992 under George HW Bush, explains the policy of the Department of Defense on Use of Deadly Force and the Carrying of Firearms by DoD Personnel Engaged in Law Enforcement and Security Duties. It is a very reasonable policy that makes perfect sense which is why the gun community hates it.

Speaking of making perfect sense, props to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz for politely asking his customers to leave their guns at home. This comes on the heels of some gun supporters playing a role in "ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction, including soliciting and confronting our customers and partners.” I guess there was an incident recently at the Newtown, Connecticut Starbucks. Man, these folks are all class. I love the first photo in the link that shows the woman working on her laptop next to the nutjobs.

Note that Mr. Schultz did not call for a ban on the premises of his stores which means people can still bring guns into Starbuck's. Essentially what he is saying is, "Hey, jack wagons, take your psycho elsewhere."

Good Words

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.” ~John Adams, (“A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” 1787-1788)

Neighborhood Mental Watch

As more information comes out about Aaron Alexis, it's becoming very clear that we, as a nation, are falling short in terms of mental health. Someone that hears voices should not be allowed to own firearms. Period. Yet, as is usually the case now with these shootings, the gun community is falling all over themselves to make sure that none of our nation's gun laws are changed in terms of mental health restrictions. Since we've seen the piles of dead children's bodies won't move them, this latest incident won't either. Further, the Bloombergs and Bradys of the world will be equally as impotent in bringing about change. So, it's time to turn the whole debate on its ear.

I propose bypassing civil law (for the most part) and creating private, community based organizations around the nation that keep an eye out for mentally unwell people and raise a red flag if they own firearms, specifically focusing on young men as they seem to fit the profile of these spree shooters. We can use Bill and Tricia Lemmers, along with suggestions from Peter Brown Hoffmeister, as the models for how to intervene in such situations. Think of it as a Neighborhood Mental Watch.

The structure could be set up in a similar way to MADD or DARE (so we would need to come up with a cool acronym...NMW doesn't really pop...any ideas?) juxtaposed with a local militia. The gun community has their views on militias being allowed to protect local communities. Fine. So will we. It will be staffed by mental health experts, community leaders, retired law enforcement officials, teachers, ministers, and other concerned citizens who will keep on eye out for the next Adam Lanza. Like George Zimmerman patrolling his community for thieves, the Neighborhood Mental Watch will be ever vigilant and seek to keep towns safe.

Perhaps it's time to admit that the gun community is correct. Police are inadequate in terms of providing protecting from criminals. So is the law. It's time to take matters into our own hands.

Good Words

"We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition… In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.” ~George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793

Another Incident With Alexis

It looks like Aaron Alexis has a real problem with guns (see: not mentally fit to own one). Ah well, 12 people are dead. Who cares? At least there are plenty of other mentally unhealthy people that have their 2nd amendment rights protected by 12 year olds with massive insecurity complexes.

Patience

I wrote this over the weekend before the Navy Yard shooting and planned to post it tonight...

I'm trying to figure out what I hate more after the Colorado recall election of two state senators over their support for new gun safety laws: the usual bloviation from the gun community or the hand wringing from the left that gun control is dead. I think it's the latter.

It's always amazed me how opponents of the gun community (and other conservative causes) cower in the face of defeat. Maybe they should take a page out of the Right's playbook and lie, foam at the mouth, and scream that America is being raped. Nah, they can't do that...sensible people are too reflective and honest!

What they should do is realize that the recall election was actually a failure. They wanted to recall five senators but only got two. The Democrats still have the majority in Colorado. It's amusing that the "liberal media" is spinning this as a loss.

Further, the only thing now that is required in the Great Gun Debate is patience.  Eventually, we are going to see something like this  on a larger scale within the gun community and all this nonsense will be over. Likely, it will come from the area of mental health as it relates to gun ownership and gun rights groups themselves will be falling all over each other to pass the legislation.

Until it affects them personally, nothing will be done.

As of right now we know that Alexis was a military contractor and a gun enthusiast. He was arrested in 2010 on gun charges (firing his weapon within city limits in Fort Worth). So, how did he get the guns he used in today's shooting? And I thought that mass shooters don't attack gun full zones like a military base...

Shooting at the Navy Yard

There has been another shooting. Multiple gunmen. We don't know yet if it is home grown or international as of yet. We do that one of the shooters is dead  and is identified as Aaron Alexis. One or two others may be at large.

A House With No Rules

It's been pretty obvious for quite some time now that the Right in this country behave like adolescents, specifically 7th graders. Two of the four quarters every year, I amble over to the junior high and teach a block at that level in US History. It is truly remarkable how similar they are to conservatives' words and actions (see: blurting, temper tantrums, bullying, game playing) that I see in that class. Specifically, they have real problems behaving and following the rules they don't like.

This point was driven home recently be a discussion on FB with Reverend Jim. He and I are good friends and do see eye to eye on some issues of the day but he has fully bought into the American Taliban line of thought. Recall that the people calling themselves conservatives these days can be accurately characterized by the following characteristics

• Ideological purity 
• Compromise as weakness 
• A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism 
• Denying science 
• Undeterred by facts 
• Unmoved by new information 
• Fear of progress 
• Demonization of education 
• Need to control women's bodies 
• Severe xenophobia 
• Intolerance of dissent 
• Pathological hatred of government

One need only spend a few minutes exchanging views with a conservative today and it is clear this is the bedrock of their ideology. Stylistically, they use a wide range of logical fallacies to "prove" their point. Here is a handy one sheet that you can use as a checklist when talking with a conservative. I have found that their favorites are Appeal To Fear, Hasty Generalization, Ad Hominem, Appeal to Probability, Slippery Slope, and Misleading Vividness. They also employ other tactics that summed up most wonderfully by Cynthia Boaz.

Reverend Jim used many of these themes and styles in his assertion that religion was under attack by the state. Interestingly, he used the exact same examples that I have heard from other conservatives (wedding planners not accepting gay people etc). It's almost as if they get their news from the same source...hmmm...

Based on a couple of examples, religion was under attack everywhere...ahhh, the secular state...look out!!! (of course, the exact opposite is true). He employed DARVO and laughingly played the victim card. He seemingly threw out previous complaints about our country being too outraged at everything and became outraged himself (we hate in others what we fear in ourselves). He ignored the words of the founding fathers on the separation of church and state and proceeded to rewrite history. He took issue with a person's right to take to social media and other avenues to call out these businesses as prejudiced. Given his belief in the free market, this made no sense. He was adamant about taking away government power yet failed to realize that doing that would accomplish the exact opposite of what he desired: protection of the rights of the people. In short, he was completely irrational...just like a 7th grader.

The most glaring illustration of this was his disappointment that life wasn't fair and our system of justice isn't perfect. How many times have we told that to our teenagers? Very odd that we have to tell it to adults, especially ones that rail against self esteem culture and too much fairness.

Anyway, the discussion ended when I asked him to present his ideal, in terms of the law. If someone can turn someone away based on their religious beliefs, does that mean businesses can turn away women that aren't submissive? How about other beliefs? If I don't want black people coming in to my business, can I turn them away? Where do we draw the line? As of today, he has not yet responded.

At that point it occurred to me that the Right may not want to draw the line anywhere. One might think they would still like to have laws about murder and stealing. But given how much they love their guns and go into anaphylactic shock over financial regulation, it seems that they don't. Most conservatives take a dim view of police and think that people should just police themselves. Cops are slow and can't be counted on to get there on time. After all, nothing says civic justice like your local Oathkeeper. They have a direct line to what God intended to the law!!

Like the 12-13 year olds in my class, they want a house with no rules. In the same way they rebel against their parents and me, they only want to follow the laws they like which honestly seem like not very many. Like an adolescent that is told to be home by 10pm, they foam at the mouth about paying taxes and view it as stealing. Just like those same conversations with teenagers, the challenge is always the same: if you don't like it, leave. No one is keeping you prisoner here.

I used to think this way when I was their age. And then I grew up. They never did and they put the government in some sort of daddy-mommy role and then proceed to rebel against it, never taking into consideration that human nature is such that we do need laws otherwise people wouldn't behave themselves. The centerpiece of this is civil rights, the very foundation of our society. People should not be refused service because of the color of their skin, their gender, their physical and mental abilities, and their sexual orientation. We don't discriminate in this country. Period.

My entire conversation with Reverend Jim boiled down to his inability to accept the changes that were happening for the betterment of our society. We are constantly improving the way we treat people and that's exactly what we should be doing, especially if we consider ourselves a Christian nation. Jim doesn't get to decide who is better and who is worse in our country. No one does. That's why we have laws.

Maybe someday conservatives in this country will grow the fuck up and accept that simple fact.

"Stealing" From Others and Giving to Himself

Last week, the Times published a great piece about living on the edge of poverty. I hope we can see more like it because there are many myths that need to be destroyed. The article points out one that always bothers me: people on food stamps are lazy and don't work. Not true. Most people on food stamps are considered working poor and can't afford to do anything beyond paying for their house. That's why they need money for food.

Here's another giant pile of bullshit.

Surrounded by corn and soybean farms — including one owned by the local Republican congressman, Representative Stephen Fincher — Dyersburg, about 75 miles north of Memphis, provides an eye-opening view into Washington’s food stamp debate. Mr. Fincher, who was elected in 2010 on a Tea Party wave and collected nearly $3.5 million in farm subsidies from the government from 1999 to 2012, recently voted for a farm bill that omitted food stamps.

 “The role of citizens, of Christianity, of humanity, is to take care of each other, not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country,” Mr. Fincher, whose office did not respond to interview requests, said after his vote in May. In response to a Democrat who invoked the Bible during the food stamp debate in Congress, Mr. Fincher cited his own biblical phrase. “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat,” he said.

So, subsidies and handouts are just fine for him but no food for the poor. How very Christian of him. By his logic, he himself took from others and gave to..himself!! Kinda cool how that worked out.

In addition, I'll never understand how elected members of Congress fail to recognize that the United States government has the power to tax. Calling it "stealing" is simply an adolescent blurt rooted in a flat out lie.

Good Words

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.” ~George Washington (letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792)

The Limited God

Recently, I have realized that my non belief in Republican Jesus is too simple a way to characterize my distaste for the beliefs of most conservative Christians. Over the last couple of weeks, I've thought about how to expand my critique of their child like view of the Bible and have come to the conclusion that they start from a point of a very limited God.

For them, it's all about being naughty and hoping that the authority will forgive them. They are incredibly vain in assuming that we, as human beings, are the most important things in God's universe (especially our sexual habits which I will never understand as the Bible rarely talks about sex). One of my recent posts shows that if look at the percentage of time man has been on the earth as a part of the age of the earth...well...we really aren't all that important. Now, I know the Bible says we are but that was written by men so, honestly, would we expect anything less than such vanity?

Compare the small percentage of time man has been on the earth to to the age of the universe and we seem even less significant which is astounding. This general theme is explored in the wonderful Terrence Malick film entitled The Tree of Life. If you haven't seen this film, I highly recommend it. Here is the trailer.



All of this makes me ask the question...how significant are we to God? Given how long the universe has been around...how big it is...how it's very likely that there is plenty of life out there we have not yet discovered...how long the earth has been around...how big it is...how there is life on this planet we have not yet discovered...where do we fit in? God obviously has a wide variety and high number of other things with which to handle. Of course, it's God so H/She can deal with it:)

Generally speaking, starting with faith is good idea. My faith tells me that the most important thing we can do is love one another as we would want to be loved. We can care for each other and help out the poor and the sick, individually and collectively, privately or publicly. Doing His works and greater than these...

We don't do a very good job with the Golden Rule these days but we are better than we used to be. In some ways, we are ready to take the next step in human evolution and that's just what I think God wants us to do. We are very close to technology extending life indefinitely. Think of what it's like to be a parent. You want your children to do better than you did in every aspect of life (money, friendship, love, school, career). God wants the same thing for us. Science is indeed a part of God's creation so we need to take that as far as we can. Why limit ourselves/ Again, doing His works and greater than these...

I think our culture is on the cusp of a shift. It's time to shrug off thousand year old perceptions of God and not be content with having such a simple approach to our creator. The people that believe in Republican Jesus have a hostile fear of progress in just about every aspect of our society and that needs to left behind in history's dustbin along with the heavenly sphere, flat earth, and leech bleed believers.

We are clearly a small part of God's vision and we need to imagine how we, his children, might grow to a bigger role. Again, isn't what all parents want of their offspring?

Still Stagnate

Emmanuel Saez from UC Berkeley has released his latest report on inequality and it reminds me that I need to finish off my last three installments of Joseph Stiglitz. I'll have Part Eight up sometime next week, perfectly timed as well as the title of that chapter is "The Battle of the Budget."

Saez's latest report has quite a bit of useful information, including...

Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. Hence, the top 1% captured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery. From 2009 to 2010, top 1% grew fast and then stagnated from 2010 to 2011. Bottom 99% stagnated both from 2009 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2011. In 2012, top 1% incomes increased sharply by 19.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 1.0%. 

So, what does all this mean?

Top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover. 

Shocking, I know:)

Saez notes that after the Great Depression, there were policy changes that reduced this income concentration. Today, however, there have been none. Again, I'm shocked.

On page seven, the data shows that during the Clinton administration, the wealthy did quite well, increasing their income by 98 percent! Yet, so did the 99 percent, who saw their income increase by 20 percent. Now, take a look at the Bush Years. It's apparent that the policy changes under his administration favored the wealthy and even then, underperfomed compared to Bill Clinton. The collapse of 2008 seems to have permanently stagnated the income of 99 percent of Americans.

We simply can't have an economy like this. Two thirds of our economy is consumer spending and there just aren't enough people spending. They don't have any extra money.

So, what do we do now? Well, any policy changes are going to be nearly impossible to pass with the Republicans hell bent on the president failing. They certainly don't want any successes on his watch as that would really drive home the contrast between the utter failure of George W. Bush and any potential gains under Barack Obama. In fact, our economy is doing mildly better and that's just about all they can tolerate as they still have to have something negative to caterwaul about.

In some ways, I hope that we elect a moderate Republican so he or she can do all the things that Barack Obama was not allowed to do because of adolescent temper tantrums.

Are Our Kids too Fat to Defend Our Country?

How do you get conservatives to express concern for the health and well-being of our kids? Appeal to their fear and selfishness, according to a study at the University of Minnesota.

Obesity is a serious problem in this country. But conservatives don't think the government should do anything about it, even though rampant obesity drives up Medicaid and Medicare costs, sends paupers in diabetic shock to hospital emergency rooms (which the rest of us pay for), costs employers billions of hours in lost productivity, clogs doctors' waiting rooms with people whose medical problems all boil down to being too fat, and fills the aisles of Walmart with slow, waddling oafs who are so wide you can't get by them.

Conservatives tend to blame kids and parents for childhood obesity. They don't hold fast-food, soda and snack manufacturers responsible -- even though these companies are pushers for the gateway drugs to morbid obesity. Conservatives in general don't think the government should address the problem at all. But the study found that there is a way to change conservatives' minds: point out that obesity in children will severely hamper our military readiness.

Our data [suggest] that a message linking a problem traditionally considered under the domain of public health to national defense has the potential to shift public opinion among conservatives. This message was likely effective because of its novelty, and also because it tapped into values beyond those — such as equality and social responsibility — that are typically associated with public health.

What exactly are those values?  Conservatives like to pretend they embrace patriotism and love of freedom. But it's now revealed that fear and selfishness drive them. They're afraid that if our kids are too fat to serve in the military, they won't be able to interpose themselves between us and all them A-rab terrorists. (It's also interesting to note that more blacks serve proportionately in the Army -- 21% of soldiers are African American, while blacks constitute only 12.4% of the general population. Why? It's one of the few ways out of endemic poverty.).

So, conservatives don't give a damn about American children or blacks unless they need them to save their bacon, or protect oil company interests in the Middle East.

I don't usually give a lot of credence to studies like this. But years of mouthing from conservative "thought leaders" convinces me it's true. Rush Limbaugh dismissively derides Michelle Obama's efforts to encourage children to exercise and eat better. Sarah Palin screams bloody murder when it's suggested that kids shouldn't be eating cookies in the classroom. All conservatives bitch endlessly about the "nanny state" when states pass laws that ban candy and soda machines in schools, and prevent companies like McDonalds and Pizza Hut from setting up shop on school campuses.

As I'm sure that "big fat idiot" Rush Limbaugh knows from personal experience, being fat has less to do with willpower and more to do with biology. Our bodies are specifically built to store fat in times of plenty in preparation for times of famine. This propensity to store fat saved our ancestors but is killing us.

Yes, we should be responsible for what we stick in our own mouths. But most people -- especially the poor, who are generally more obese than the wealthy -- are at the mercy of the giant companies that control our food supply. They produce what's most profitable for them, not what's best for the health of the American people, giving the poor no choice about what they eat.

Good Words

“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” ~George Washington (letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789)

Hmm...

Yesterday I put up a post about how I'm only going to engage in comments if people have something new, interesting and not adolescent to contribute. The posts with the most hits since then? The ones with no comments.

In addition, our hit rate for the site overall seems to have doubled as well with very few people reading the comments section of the posts since then. My post about the comments section got the least amount of hits and the renewable energy and soldier posts got the most.

Best blogging decision I ever made...

Voices in My Head

Evidence the illogic, hypocrisy, and coercion of the state's secular "neutrality." Western democracies continue to head towards demanding ultimate allegiance to the state. Any who refuse will be eventually treated as the enemies of peace and unity--(Reverend Jim, Facebook friend).

Man, we still have a long way to go in this country...

China Caves

The excuse "China does whatever it wants in terms of carbon emissions so why can't we?" can no longer be used.

The plan, released by the State Council, China’s cabinet, filled in a broad outline that the government had issued this year. It represents the most concrete response yet by the Communist Party and the government to growing criticism over allowing the country’s air, soil and water to degrade to abysmal levels because of corruption and unchecked economic growth.

It's only a matter of time now before the rest of the world realizes how bad climate change due to carbon emissions is for economic stability.

Amen, Soldier

Check out the soldier that comes in to this video at about the 5 minute mark. A true hero...

 

Making Natural Gas out of Thin Air

Mark's post about the people of Boulder challenging Xcel Energy's power generation monopoly and replacing coal with with renewables and natural gas finally prodded me into writing a post I'd had on the back burner for a while.

Here's the question: What if you could use wind power to literally generate natural gas out of thin air?

People in the energy industry invariably criticize "tree-huggers" as naive about the vagaries of power generation. Renewable energy sources are too unreliable, the old argument goes. What do you do when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine? You have to keep power generation and consumption balanced or the grid collapses. Often, they claim, sun and wind generate too much electricity when you don't need it, and since you can't store it it just goes to waste.

First off, the excess power argument is flat wrong with solar. Solar generates the most power when we need it the most: at peak load times during the heat of the day. Solar is perfect for places like the American West, which get a lot of sun and use massive amounts of air conditioning.

Wind power -- and hydro for that matter -- do generate a lot of electricity during off-peak hours, and in places like the Dakotas that are distant from major population centers.

The question is how to store that energy for later use. If you could save it for later and use it for load balancing, the argument against wind completely falls apart.

Battery technology isn't up to snuff: too expensive and too small-scale. So there have been grand suggestions to use the excess electricity to compress air into vast underground caverns or pump water uphill into reservoirs, which could be used to turn turbines to generate electricity later. These solutions take a lot of space and have negative environmental and safety considerations.

But there's something else you can do with electricity: make hydrogen. A company in Germany is building a pilot plant to do exactly this. Their plan to pump hydrogen into natural gas pipelines seems a bit odd, but the basic idea is quite interesting.

Hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis, which uses electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. This hydrogen could simply be burned against to make electricity (producing water), or to power fuel cells. These fuel cells can be used to generate electricity directly (which is what NASA did on the Space Shuttle Apollo moon missions), or they could be used to power cars that run on fuel cells (remember that song and dance from the George W. Bush days?). The International Space Station also uses electrolysis to generate oxygen (they vent the excess hydrogen into space).

One problem with hydrogen is that there isn't a lot of infrastructure for storing, transporting and distributing it. However, we do have a lot of infrastructure for natural gas (methane). So we could take this one step further, and produce methane.

Using what's called the Sabatier process hydrogen (H₂) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be combined to produce methane and water:

CO₂ + 4H₂ → CH₄ + 2H₂O

NASA is looking at using this reaction in the International Space Station to make a more closed life support system that recycles the CO₂ that astronauts exhale into water, and to make propellant for the return from a Mars mission.
Though NASA's space applications sound distant, these processes aren't fancy pie-in-the-sky physics pushing the boundaries of engineering like thermonuclear fusion. They're basic, centuries-old chemistry that mirror the natural processes of respiration, photosynthesis and bacterial decay. This kind of power generation would give us the ability to balance loads as well as produce fuels for cooking and transportation, all with zero carbon footprint.

There's a certain amount of inefficiency generating natural gas this way. But even so, it's still more efficient than blasting off mountaintops to expose coal seams, using millions of gallons of oil to mine the coal, then millions more gallons of oil to restore the mountaintops, then millions more gallons of oil to ship the coal across country to run power plants that belch out CO2, carcinogenic particulates, sulfur dioxide and mercury.

When their backs are against the wall, climate change skeptics always retreat with, "Well, if the climate really is warming, we'll just adapt. Humans are amazingly inventive when pressed."

I agree, we are inventive. But isn't it better to adapt before the emergency becomes dire, resources become scarce, floods and droughts become endemic, Miami and New York are inundated, famine becomes widespread, and wars over dwindling energy resources suck up our the time, energy and money?

The Case Against Attacking Syria in Two and a Half Words

It's getting rather irritating for Americans to be lectured by despots and dictators. Earlier this week Bashar al-Assad appeared on American television telling us why invading Syria was bad. Now Vladimir Putin published an editorial in The New York Times saying the same thing.

These two tyrants have a point that can be summarized in two and a half words: George W. Bush.

George W. Bush blew all our credibility when he invaded Iraq based on the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Since then no one -- not even the American people -- will trust any American president when he claims that we must attack a murderous thug who has been gassing his own people.

Republicans have been claiming that Obama weakened the presidency by going to Congress to ask permission to retaliate militarily against Syria for using Sarin gas. Why is it weakness to obey the Constitution, which specifies that only Congress has the power to go to war? The truth is, Bush destroyed America's moral high ground when he fabricated evidence about Saddam's WMDs and lied about Iraq's involvement in 9/11.

Since then Obama has been saddled with Bush's wars, Bush's domestic spying programs, Bush's torture, Bush's Guantanamo, Bush's indefinite detentions, and so on. As Republicans keep telling us, once a federal program is entrenched, it's all but impossible to get rid of it. To wit: President Obama tried to close Guantanamo, but Congress stopped him cold.

No matter what his personal convictions, the president becomes a prisoner of precedent and his predecessors' pecadilloes.

Bush's blunders have now made it all but impossible for us to get an international consensus for action against Syria. Our closest allies were burned (Britain in particular) over and over by Bush and Cheney's machinations, and no one else trusts a word we say.

We actually did this right once upon a time. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, George H. W. Bush got overwhelming international cooperation to oust him. By February 1991 Saddam's military was destroyed and he was ejected from Kuwait. It's ironic that that president's son and his secretary of defense learned absolutely nothing from this great success.

Conservatives like to say they'd rather be feared than liked. Now that the Bush's misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have burned out the American military, we're neither feared nor liked.

The Future of Renewable Energy

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in Boulder over the next few years. Something else that struck me about this video. Isn't the action of these residents, in no small way, a rally against big government? They are assuming local control of their power and shunning the government sponsored monopoly. Perhaps this is a way we could find some common ground in the renewable energy debate.

Time For A Change

This time of year brings with it reflection and a desire for change. When I started this blog eight years ago (after four years of it being an email list started on the day after the 9/11 attacks), September has always been when I have felt the most like shifting gears and trying something new. This year it's clear that the comments section is what is most in need of change.

One of the first things they tell you when you start your own blog is to engage in the comments section. With only 150-200 regular readers, it makes sense that most don't comment, given that only a few people comment on much larger hit sites.  I've always tried to spur discussion but I've noticed that the posts that get the most hits are the ones without the long comments threads.  This is largely due to the fact that the same 3-5 people leave comments. All of them are migrants from a right wing gun blog (the one that I was recently asked to leave by vote) and they...well...they are complete dicks. There's just no sugar coating it anymore. I've tried to be fair over the years with them but they play a never ending childish and dishonest game that has left me completely disgusted.

I've decided after a few long threads in the last couple of weeks that it is a waste of time to engage these people any longer. If anyone has been reading these threads (and my stat counter shows that it's the same 6 people, btw), it's painfully obvious that nearly all of their comments are ridiculously adolescent and employ troll tactics that would not be allowed on most message boards and blogs. Their primary goal is to insult, scream, mouth foam, and denigrate anyone who doesn't agree with them. When the facts don't, it's instant rage that would dwarf a teenage temper tantrum. I get the fact that they see blogs as a place they can "win" because their ideology certainly isn't winning in the real world (see: outside of the bubble) but their willful ignorance, granite intransigence, and moonbattery has gotten so bad lately that I have realized it's utterly pointless to have discussions with them. In so many ways, this is the very definition of the Right today.

Their comments range from dick to asshole to 12 year old bully to psychotic mouth foamer unmoved by facts and undeterred by new information. They are so insecure that they have to stick together (despite obvious disagreements) for fear of losing the purity of MARKWRONG, MARKLOSE, never once questioning each other and having any sort of real debate with multiple sides. Odd, considering they bemoan collectives. Yet they are the ones that buy into the myth (again, 12 year old bully) that more people against one means a "win."

More frustrating (and highly immature) is their refusal to accept that they are the ones at fault combined with their insistence that I am actually the problem. Honestly, it's like I'm talking to my seventh graders in every discussion now. One need only look at the comments after this post to illustrate this point. There will be cries of "chicken" and links to Brave Sir Robin videos as well as long paragraphs which essentially amount to "No, You are!" It's the same shit over and over again and I am terribly bored with it.

Now, I'll always allow comments to be open and will continue to allow people to post their views (minus spam, of course) but I'm pretty much done with leaving comments unless I see some change. I'd rather spend my time writing posts then put up with the crap from these 3-5 individuals. Another reason for this change is that whenever a long comments thread develops, my hit count for that post goes down. People just aren't interested in hearing what these asshats have to say. I don't blame them and I'd rather have more people read my blog.

I understand now why Nikto rarely comments. He has always told me in the past that it's a waste of time. Indeed. I love a good debate and have certainly grown from a few of these discussions but now it's time to move on. And maybe the comments section will as well. Maybe some new commenters will start leaving comments. Maybe these 3-5 commenters will change and leave something new and interesting in which case I will respond. I sadly doubt that will happen, of course, given their hostile fear of progress and total lack of people skills. Obviously, they don't get along well in the real world and that's why they spend so much time posting here.

Without me around, I'll admit that it will be mildly amusing to watch them yell at air, kind of like the guy on the street you see pushing a shopping cart, listening to his short wave radio and screaming about communism.

Isn't that where they came from anyway?

12 Years

I've gone back and forth between putting something up on this 9/11 anniversary and not putting something up. There's something contrived and shallow marking this day simply because of ceremony. It should be from the heart, right? Not out of some sort of civic obligation. The people that died that day deserve more than just going through the motions. And I'm certainly not going to stop talking about the issues that are important to this country because of what religious extremists did to our country 12 years ago especially considering that we have our own religious extremists to deal with at home (hence, the post previous to this one).

The film below changed my mind about putting up a post about the 9/11 attacks. Like many Americans, the jumpers out of the World Trade Center have always haunted me. Who were they? What was their story? Would I have done the same thing? That is the subject matter of this 71 minute documentary which I highly recommend watching today.

It's an excellent tribute.



UPDATE:

The video above has been taken down from YouTube for copyright infringement. For more information on this film, click here. 

Making The Case

I thought the president made a compelling case tonight in why strikes against Syria might be necessary. Since it appears that Assad is caving, we might not have to act after all. My big takeaway from the speech is how this president is adamant about protecting children. Whether it's domestic policies aimed at curbing gun violence or protecting Syrian children from future chemical weapons attacks, he is firmly on the side of the children.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming days. Will Syria give up their chemical weapons and put them under UN control?

Change Up

It looks like there is a distinct possibility that a strike against Syria may be delayed or even not happen at all. A conversation between the president and Vladimir Putin at last week's G20 meeting sparked a Russian overture to the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be placed under UN control or possibly destroyed all together. Taken with a grain of salt, this is good news.

Assuming they allow such a thing to happen, this would head off an attack by the US and might actually start the country back towards stability once again. If the UN is allowed in for this purpose, it might be able to spread its influence around the country and be able to be our eyes and ears on the ground in Syria. We can monitor what Assad is up to and gauge our response accordingly.

This also gets Congress off the hook from having to make a very tough vote. Now they can back to the business of being silly about the budget, health care, and immigration.

What The Heck Happened To This Party?!?

George Zimmerman Back in the News Again. And Again. And Again...

Since being acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman has not kept a low profile.

He visited a gun factory, was stopped for speeding in Florida and Texas, and was sued for divorce by his wife of six years. Shellie Zimmerman recently pleaded guilty to perjury for lying about the PayPal account that held money people sent Zimmerman.

Now Zimmerman has apparently punched his father-in-law in the nose and threatened his wife with a gun:

Shellie Zimmerman, who has filed for divorce, initially told a 911 dispatcher that her husband had his hand on his gun as he sat in his car outside the home she was at with her father. She said she was scared because she wasn't sure what Zimmerman was capable of doing. But hours later she changed her story and said she never saw a firearm, said Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell.

I think Shellie Zimmerman knows exactly George Zimmerman is capable of, and that's why she changed her story -- she doesn't want to get him too riled up. It's ironic that of the two of them, she is the only one to pay a price for the killing of Trayvon Martin: she is on probation and community service; Zimmerman got off scot-free.

Zimmerman appears to be a violent and arrogant man, who has learned how to manipulate the system, perhaps due to his close association with the law (his father is a judge). He has proved that he can literally get away with murder.

Is Zimmerman arrogant enough to think he's so clever that he can pull the same trick again, or will he simply self-destruct in a very public and messy way?  The real question is how many other innocent victims he'll take with him.

Does it really make sense for guys like this to be able to run around with guns at will?

Back In Session

Congress comes back this week from summer vacation with a veritable schmidt load of items on their agenda. First up is whether or not to strike Syria. As of right now, support looks pretty thin in the House. Shocking, that the House GOP would use any means to fuck over the president. My oh my how the hawks have become doves...

Of course, the president is getting much support on the left either so his address to the nation better be a home run tomorrow night otherwise he won't get the vote. Contrary to the media hysterics, if he loses the vote, this will not be the end of his presidency. Congress did not support FDR during the 1930s regarding Hitler's march across Europe. Congress did not support President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Anyone remember who those people were?

The budget is probably the next item on the list to tackle and we are already hearing signs of playing chicken again with the debt limit. It seems we will have a large group of people that don't understand that it's money we have already spent. Worse, far too many still haven't grasped the concept of the difference between individual debt and government debt. I'm sure we'll be hearing the anti-spending old ladies out in full force over the next few weeks.

Immigration is likely to take a back seat which is really a drag as reform could solve many of our other economic problems. I was impressed with Marco Rubio and his fellow Senators for coming up with a great bill to address this issue. Unfortunately, it has now come to the short wave radio listening Civil War reinactors in the House so that means it's going nowhere.

Oh, and doesn't the ACA roll out on October 1?

This is going to be one exciting fall!

Climate Change Update

There have been several interesting pieces about climate change over the last few weeks. The first is the draft summary of the next United Nations report on climate change which states with a higher level of certainty the effects that human beings are having on the rise global temperature. They also address the adolescent "n'yah n'yah" of the recent slowdown of warming which is interesting.

NASA has a nice list up of why climate change is settled science, thus torpedoing the notion that there is conflict not consensus in the scientific community.

And Time magazine put a piece last month about why more people aren't acting on climate change even though more people accept that the earth is warming.

For some, the answer lies in cognitive science. Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has written about why our inability to deal with climate change is due in part to the way our mind is wired. Gilbert describes four key reasons ranging from the fact that global warming doesn’t take a human form — making it difficult for us to think of it as an enemy — to our brains’ failure to accurately perceive gradual change as opposed to rapid shifts. Climate change has occurred slowly enough for our minds to normalize it, which is precisely what makes it a deadly threat, as Gilbert writes, “because it fails to trip the brain’s alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.” 

Recalling our times as cavemen, most people don't act until they are on fire. Essentially, it needs to be personal.

Hey Kids...Want Some Candy?

It's hard for me to imagine the gun community being even bigger dicks than they are but this idea really sucks.

The group is working on educational pamphlets in advance of the event. Reed said some gun owners may pass out candy to neighbor kids.

I wonder how many people are actually going to turn out and, if they do, what happens if there is some sort of accident? And how can we tell if they are "good guys?" It seems to me that some "bad guys" might try to take advantage of this...

Well, anyway, there goes the small amount of concern that I had that the bloviating gun rights folks would be taken seriously for a significant amount of time. Maybe they should hand out the candy from tinted vans...

The Syria Explanation

The president did a great job yesterday explaining why we need to attack Syria and why it's not really his ass on the line. Check out the video below. My only gripe with it is he used the word "unpack" in reference to an idea which is bullshit seminar speak.


   

We Overcame It!

The Colbert Report
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How Far They Have Moved Right...

Finally

I'm happy to report that someone got the memo on the need for a real fucking news station as opposed to three we have now that can't resist bright shiny objects like Miley Cyrus. Al Jazeera America is simply fantastic.

I waited a few weeks since it launched to see if they could resist the paparazzi like stories we see on the other three networks and they have. In addition, they pick an issue on focus on it for a considerable amount of time. The show, "Inside Story," recently focused on climate change and to my complete delight, they did not play the Cult of Both Sides and focused on the actual science.

No doubt AJA will lead to several bowels being blown by those on the Right who just can't help themselves in predicting the coming End Times. Clearly, those who will engage in this haven't even watched the station. I was struck by how many average Americans participate in the discussions. These people come from all walks of political ideology and don't necessarily look great on TV which I think is totally fucking mega.

To see where you can watch Al Jazeera America, click here and enter your zip in the upper right hand corner.

The Only One

It appears that I am the only one who thinks that the president asking Congress for permission to bomb Syria makes him stronger, not weaker. That's true even if Congress turns him down.

Consider what would happen if that was the scenario as it was in the UK. Congress, not the president, would be blamed if we allowed the use of chemical weapons to go without an appropriate response. This would be a similar situation to World War II where President Roosevelt lobbied hard to get the United States involved in the war only to be rebuffed continually by Congress and their isolationist ways.

Granted, Bashar Asssad is no Adolph Hitler but ignoring his actions would have massive repercussions in the region. Iran would feel emboldened as would the various terrorists networks that both they and Syria support. In short, it's far too late to do nothing.

And the president knows this. But he wants to do this the right way and that's why Congress needs to be in the decision making process. They need to see the evidence over the next week (as will the world) of Sarin gas use in Syria. Once this happens, much of the hand wringing and fretting that we see in the "liberal" media is going to go away.

Honestly, I think Assad's days are numbered.

250 K?

On this Labor Day, I thought it appropriate to check in on how Governor Scott "250,000 jobs" Walker is doing on his promise. We need look no further than Walker Job-O-Meter over at Politifact. Apparently that promise is now a goal, not necessarily a reality. He's also been lying about some other job related matters but what do the numbers actually say?

It looks like is about a third of the way there with 84,000 jobs added. This graphic shows it's been real up and down this year...sort of like that national picture.

Now, if this were President Obama, these numbers would be horrible. But since it's Scott Walker, well, what a great job he is doing, eh!?

Great Quotes

Addicting Info has a great list of quotes from our founding fathers that don't really seem to jibe with the whole not really sort of but really yes please theocracy conservatives want for our country. Among them...

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” ~Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814

I think I might need to highlight a quote a week from this page.