If Corporations Are People When Will We Be Arresting Adair Grain, Inc?

Crime scene in West, TX, LM Otero/AP, via the CSM

The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards went into effect in the US in June of 2007. These regulations require any chemical facility that stores over a certain amount of dangerous material to report to the Department of Homeland Security. The chemical industry fought the regulations, and managed to get them relaxed for certain compounds, like urea. Ammonium nitrate did not get a pass.

So, when Adair Grain, Inc, of West, TX, failed to report that they had "been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security," they were violating the law. Donald R. Adair (President of Adair Grain) Wanda Adair (Vice President), and Tedd Uptmore Jr. (General Manager) broke the law by not reporting the fact that they were storing more than 400 lbs of ammonium nitrate. In fact,  according to the Reuters story, they had 240 tons of the stuff on hand last year.

"It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. "This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up."

Reuters contacted Bryan Haywood, a hazardous chemical expert.

"That's just a god awful amount of ammonium nitrate," said Bryan Haywood, the owner of a hazardous chemical consulting firm in Milford, Ohio. "If they were doing that, I would hope they would have gotten outside help." 

In response to a request from Reuters, Haywood, who has been a safety engineer for 17 years, reviewed West Fertilizer's Tier II sheets from the last six years. He said he found several items that should have triggered the attention of local emergency planning authorities - most notably the sudden appearance of a large amount of ammonium nitrate in 2012. 

"As a former HAZMAT coordinator, that would have been a red flag for me," said Haywood, referring to hazardous materials.

Crime scene in West, TX, via KABC

Violation of federal law is a felony. The Felony Murder rule makes any death that occurs during the commission of a felony a murder.

To "qualify" for felony murder, the underlying felony must present a foreseeable danger to life, and the link between the felony and the death must not be too remote.

Storing 240 tons of a highly explosive material in the middle of a town of 2000 people certainly presents a foreseeable danger to life, and the link between not reporting the storage of more than 400 lbs of the stuff and the deaths of the people who died in the explosion is certainly not too remote.

I'm not a lawyer, but considering the fact that this occurred in the Great Law and Order State of Texas, where people are railroaded on trumped up murder charges all the time in the name of Justice, I find it odd that the Governor hasn't sent the Rangers to arrest the Adairs and Mr. Uptmore. But since it's a felony, who needs Ranger Rick? The FBI could march into West, Texas right now and arrest these people for their role in the killing of at least 14 people.

The reckless endangerment of the residents near this plant certainly qualifies as manslaughter, and the violation of federal chemical storage safety rules suggests it's felony murder. And yet the owners of this plant sit in their presumably nice homes, releasing statements of heart break:

"We are presenting all employees for interviews and will assist in the fact finding to whatever degree possible," Adair said. "We pledge to do everything we can to understand what happened to ensure nothing like this ever happens again in any community."

Crime scene in West, TX, by Mike Stone/Reuters/Landov, via NPR

Too little, too late.

Texas is one of the 24 states that actually allows the execution of people convicted of felony murder. I'm against the death penalty, but it would seem that in a state where the driver of a car that transported a murderer can be executed, the state might want to go after folks whose 240 tons of high explosives in the middle of a town exploded after they had not informed the DHS, as required by law.

This is the state of corporate responsibility in the US today. A couple of idiot kids set off some pressure cooker bombs that kill and maim hundreds, and we have US Senators calling for them to be treated as enemy combatants and tried in military courts. But a corporation can willfully and blatantly flaunt federal law, leading to the flattening of a small town, killing and maiming hundreds, and the owners and operators of that corporation walk free and lament the heart break of such a tragedy, knowing that they will likely just have to pay a fine, and maybe get sued.

It's enough to make you think that if you want to commit felony murder in this country, you should incorporate first.

While Thatcher Mauled Britain

Robyn Hitchcock's I Wanna Go Backwards 

If you're not familiar with Robyn Hitchcock, today's death of Margaret Thatcher is a good reason to get familiar. Hitchcock's album While Thatcher Mauled Britain, included in the remastered box set I Wanna Go Backwards, is a haunting collection of typically Hitchcockian weirdness--banging his brilliant head against the hard reality of Thatcherian despair:

Hitchcock explains that these records were inspired by the despairing state of Britain at the time they were written and recorded. Aside from elucidating the frequent appearance of colonial themes (see Eye opener "Cynthia Mask" and I Often Dream of Trains' "This Could Be the Day"), this also speaks to the oddly intrusive quality of the darker elements in Hitchcock's work. While these albums take place largely in the plane of the imagination, the integrity of this world is always being undermined by an invisible dialogue with an increasingly sad and decrepit reality.

Like her wrecking crew partner Reagan in the US, Thatcher installed a junta of elite supply-siders who spent the next three decades systematically redistributing wealth and income upwards. Their policies live on, continuing to rob the middle class of wage increases associated with productivity, which had been the norm up until the Reagan/Thatcher era.

When I listen to these albums, I get a sense of the era that's eerily more human than my philosophical, economic, or political thoughts are capable of giving me. The disjointed, schizophrenic, chilling tones and effects, combined with hypnotic lyrics that jolt the neurons into contemplation, paint a picture of the time of the Great Mauling that no history book or obituary ever could.

Another Guy With a Desk Job Bitches About Those Lazy Union Thugs

Courken George Deukmejian, Jr. 

Conor's back with another column wherein he simply cannot bring himself to blame Republicans for anything. Instead, he goes after K-Thug for not blaming the Democrats for anything.

"...political victory doesn't guarantee good governance."

I know, right? Just look at the disaster that was the Bush Administration. The David Brooks of the Atlantic really nailed that subtitle.

Jerry Brown's secret tree-hugging, union-thugging plan to bankrupt the state right into the Pacific is totally like something that happened that Conor doesn't like to talk about.

But California Governorships? He's all over that...

"Since Ronald Reagan departed in 1975, it has gone back and forth between Democrats (like current and former governor Jerry Brown) and Republicans, most recently the moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger."

CA Governorships since 1975:

1975-1983 DEM 8
1983-1999 GOP 16
1999-2003 DEM 4
2003-2011 GOP 8
2011-2013 DEM 2

Peter Barton “Pete” Wilson

24 years of GOP, 14 yrs of DEM.

Conor Math: 24/14  = "gone back and forth."

If we really wanted to stay out of the obfuscation game we'd take a more recent, and relevant time frame, say, 1983-2013, the last 30 years of pertinent American History. During this period of mostly GOP presidents, the CA Governorship has been 24 years of GOP, and 6 years of DEM.

The "back and forth" for the last 30 years has been a 4 to 1 GOP dominance of the California Governor's Mansion.

So, right off the bat I get the feeling that Conor's is bluffing. But here's his tell:

"...the moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger."

See that gentle nudge to the left Connor gives the union hating, Ken Lay and Dick Cheney secret meeting taking, lower taxes for the rich loving, education slashing, safety-net-cutting Plutocrat who happened to believe in global warming while he drove his Hummer down the sunny beach of gay rights?

Conor's never-blame-the-GOP-for-anything-unless-you-call-them-RINOs attitude runs rampant while he criticizes Krugman for not blaming the Democrats for anything (and, seriously, go read K-Thug's column, because Conor's really stretching it).

Of course, there is no mention of Prop 13.

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger

Conor's serious tackling of The Big Issue? Blame the unions.

In Conor's world, union thugs (who bust their asses fixing roads, controlling violent prisoners, policing dangerous streets, risking their lives to put out fires, and teaching our children while the school crumbles around them) are just a bunch of greedy socialist parasites because they want a defined benefit pension that gives them a decent retirement. In Conor's world, it's fine to let corporate market riggers hijack corporate boards and reward themselves golden parachutes after tanking their companies and the world economy, but if some hard working middle class union member wants a decent retirement, they're greedy and responsible for the downfall of the whole state. It's fine to keep paying into a bloated and corrupt medical industrial complex, the main reason for our long term debt, but wanting to be modestly middle class in a home you've lived in all your life in one of the most expensive states to live in is just too much.

I wish we had a program where people who sit on their asses for their whole career actually have to go work at one of those cushy union jobs guarding dangerous criminals or getting shot at or teaching kids in a crumbling school for crappy pay for just one year. Just one year. Maybe we'd get a lot less Glib Bullshit and a little more sympathy for the people who literally bust their asses making the world work well enough for Conor Friedersdorf to get paid to sit on his ass and write Glib Bullshit. Maybe one year on the streets of south central LA would make him think twice about raising the retirement age, or cutting pensions, or not giving those hard-working, brave Americans raises that keep up with inflation.

Maybe one year isn't enough of too little sleep, sore feet, aching joints, permanent physical damage and pain, while simultaneously never having enough money to make ends meet, not being able to afford college for your kids, or not being able to stay in your home after retirement. The real trick to appreciating the life these hard-working Americans lead is to have to face the long, backwards bending arc of the universe of hard work for little reward. I'm not sure one year of walking in those shoes would be enough for the pampered hordes of Conor Friedersdorfs to really appreciate what it's like to Play Spent in the real world.

My advice to liberals and progressives? If you're ever in contact with some union hating, hard work punishing, market rigging, plutocrat ass-kissing suck up, tell them to just try one little on-line game about being poor. Let's see what kind of choices they make when faced with near poverty, no savings, and one bad break from homelessness and hunger... one medical emergency from bankruptcy. Maybe they'll be kind enough to explain how it's their own lazy faults.

The Eternal Sunshine of the Glibertarian Mind: an Open Letter to Freshwater Economists

Much of US political history was a kind of de facto libertarianism. Modern libertarians often deny it, and rightly point out that it was not "true" libertarianism (what political system is ever perfectly applied?) but it was very libertarian. It kind of had to be. It was a big country. Travel took a long time. It was impossible to enforce strong federal laws, so they tended to be weak. It led to robber barons, monopolies, weak regulations, corruption, and lack of adequate oversight by people who didn't want to spit in the soup they would be drinking out of.

Sound familiar?

What we know about these past days of no workplace safety rules, no overtime, no minimum wage, no OSHA, no anti-trust, and no child-labor laws is that those days sucked. The vast majority of humans suffered mightily, despite the fact that they worked hard, found ways to increase their own productivity, and in many cases took years off their lives for the enrichment of their bosses. For their trouble they were treated like shit. There was no market punishment for treating workers poorly, only rewards. They stole people's labor and productivity, and no one could do anything to stop them.

Sound familiar?

Government is how we protect ourselves from corporations run wild--cost-shifting negative externalities onto tax payers, polluting and rigging the markets, and daring me to sue in a court they bought. Gutting, laws (using politicians they bought), or passing laughingly weak ones, is now the logical extension of the power of money being called equal to speech, and corporations being called persons. I want no part of that. My ancestors fought in the coal wars, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit by while I listen to someone who would glibly take us back to the days when people would get so pissed they'd take up arms and literally wage war to stand up for their rights and what they believed in.

"Left wing" market riggers, too,
here behind Mr. Ayn Greenspan

Sound familiar?

You can put a water fountain in the middle of your Freshwater Economics pond and flash pretty lights on it all day, but the greatest quote about this subject is Alan "Ayn Rand Loved Her Some Medicare and Social Security" Greenspan, who famously said:

"Today’s competitive markets, whether we seek to recognise it or not, are driven by an international version of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” that is unredeemably opaque. With notably rare exceptions (2008, for example), the global “invisible hand” has created relatively stable exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and wage rates."

Things are better than they were back in the day of the Battle of Blair Mountain. This is largely because our well-regulated markets have been more efficient than those of the past. I fully support efforts to make our markets more fair and free for everyone. Just check out Dean Baker's free Ebook The End of Loser Liberalism for some examples of the kind of thinking I admire.

Knowing all this history, basic economics, and simple logic, you'd have to be gargantuanly Glib to even say out loud that the markets would behave better if we let them be more free. We just had yet another giant supply-side experiment. It's what they've been conducting on us lab rats since Ronny and the Tricke-down-o-nauts set the charts ablaze some 33 years ago with their number one hit We'll Be Taking Your Productivity Now.

Washington Post

And once again, it has led to income inequality way more severe than Americans think it is, much less where they think it should be. Once again it has led to bubbles, booms and busts, persistently high unemployment, and a lack of investment in public infrastructure that is literally costing us hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands lives every year.

I wonder what Libertarians would do if terrorists were killing as many Americans every year as our deteriorating infrastructure is?

The latest "notably rare exception," the Little Bush Depression, was worse than the last four recessions combined. The loss of public sector workers is unprecedented in a modern recovery, making the misery even worse. A great many people lost their homes, their health, their lives, their cars, their children, all through no fault of their own. All because the right leaning policies put in place since Reagan--unfettered markets coupled with open incentives toward certain favored industries--have done nothing but rig the markets to help redistribute income and wealth upward.

You Freshwater "economists" can put together extremely well debunked, life-destroying policies and call them custard pie all you want, but you're really just deluding yourself. It's a good thing you don't care about the politics of your politics, because you'd be sorely disappointed at your prospects. And it's not because we're all a bunch of dumb ass statists sucking off the giant teat. It's because progressives want to protect a free and fair market economy by setting the ground rules that let management and labor get down to business* instead of bitching and ripping each other off every chance they get.

*If that sounds familiar, see Costco v Walmart, for example.

Conor Friedersdorf Creates an Outrage-fatigue Backed Security Filled with Assertions not Backed up by Facts

Confederate VP Stephens' statue in US Capitol.  

To paraphrase Conor's quasi-famous article on Occupy Wall Street:

It's much easier to decide that it's wrong to create an outrage-fatigue assertion filled with statements you know are not backed by fact so that you can sell it to readers who aren't aware that you're bullshitting by intentionally picking the misleadingly stated false equivalence most likely to be proven to be slanted toward your particular philosophy.

In today's article, Conor makes his observation that "most" Americans are sick of partisanship. He doesn't  mention the fact that, for the most part, it is the right that has big problems with facts. Let's start with the fact that the right-leaning Conor ignores: GOP approval has hit a 20 year low, with 33% rating them favorably, and 58% unfavorably.

Despite this basic fact, Conor says that Sonny Bunch's lament resonates with him...

"I don't worry too much about growing partisan gridlock," Bunch goes on, "but I do worry somewhat about an America in which each half of the country hates the other so viscerally that they won't even interact." I agree that there is cause for concern. But I also think it's a mistake to conceive of the problem as halves of the country pitted against one another, because I think and hope that many more Americans are uncomfortable with the attitude Bunch describes than embrace it.

No, Sonny and Conor, half the country doesn't hate the other half. 58% of the country has a negative approval of 33%. Connor says he thinks and hopes that many more Americans hate the bickering than participate in it, but he offers no evidence.. Maybe the polls are skewed... Who knows? Without evidence to support his thinking and hoping, we're all just supposed to assume, along with him, that his equivalence is correct?

Later in the piece, he tells us, again without any evidence to support his assertion:

Politicized people are much more common in politics than they are in the general population.

Perhaps. But is this because non politicized people have left politics in disgust, as Connor suggests, or is it because they're in politics which means, by definition, that the are politicized? Either way, I don't see him offering any evidence for his assertion, which is enough to make me suspect that he's some kind of partisan trying to stamp some crap-filled political security AAA before he tries to sell it to me.

But wait! Connor has more outrage-fatigue-based securities to sell us!

The biggest advantage the politicized being has is that no one wants to vocally disagree with someone who seems to have no compunction about trying to destroy everyone who disagrees with them.

I don't want to destroy everyone who disagrees with me. Just the ones who want to destroy the world, lie us into wars, force the old and poor to die instead of giving them health care, and perhaps a few other horrific things. Mostly I want the wingnuts who have been so disastrously wrong about so much to keep talking so we can all hear and analyze the ignorant shit they're trying to sell us. The advantage I have, as a politicized being, is that only the craziest of the wingnuts will vocally disagree with me when they don't have the facts to back up their assertions.

I am politicized because I have watched the right, time and time again, be disastrously wrong about things. For me, it started with the attacks on Clinton, which were way out in right field, and undeserved. (If left wingers slandered Reagan or Pappy Bush with accusations of murder, they either didn't get nearly the mainstream press coverage that the accusations against Clinton did, or there weren't any). But when Bush lied us into a $6 trillion dollar war, or told us that tax cuts to the rich would create millions of jobs, or that there was no housing bubble, that was all Bullshit. Are the right wingers politicized because liberals lied us into similar disasters or because they're defensive, embarrassed, and bitter that their ideology has proven so disastrous?

In the case of Global Warming, where the evidence is clear that we are headed toward the biggest human created disaster in the history of the world, is Conor suggesting that I should be nice to the people who are actively trying to bring on that destruction? Should we have been nice to the tobacco executives who lied and bribed their way into profiting from millions of deaths? Should we have been nice to the people who were actively lying us into a war that killed and maimed millions?

Do I blame liberals who spent their time during the Bush Administration calling out policies they found deeply wrongheaded and ignoring Olbermann's excesses? No, I totally understand their priorities. 

I'd like to see what Conor thinks is excessive from Olbermann. Considering that we were lied into the biggest national security disaster in American History that cost $6 trillion, maimed and killed millions, and destroyed our world reputation and future ability to influence events in the middle east, it's good to see that he doesn't begrudge those of us who got "politicized" because of Iraq a little in-your-face response to the warmongers who lied us into it.

Isn't the proper response to someone preaching politics of death and destruction (or hatred and bigotry) to get in their face and challenge them? Do we really make "most" Americans turn on American Idol when we challenge the Bullshit that will lead to more death, poverty, disease, destruction, bigotry, hatred, war, and suffering? From what I've seen in the polling Americans are sick of war, angry at those who lied us into it, and would welcome a little more forceful resistance to another war-backed-security fraud.

American history is chock full of heroes Americans admire because they stood up for what they believed. Even a racist bigot like Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, who helped start a war over his belief that white people are superior to blacks, has a statue in statuary hall in the US Capitol, not far from Rosa Parks'. Standing up for what you believe, and doing it forcefully, is how we move the conversation forward on issues of great importance. Had Rosa Parks quietly and politely argued with the bus driver, I doubt she'd have gotten much attention. If Alexander Stephens had politely argued for a compromise on slavery, it might have been a long time before the centuries long war on black people suffered a severe set back.

In my almost 5 decades on this planet, I've found that people respect people who stand up for their values, especially when they back up what they say with facts. If the right wing would like to earn some respect from me, they should try it for a change.

A Fundamental Problem for Fundamentalists

Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni as Satan from The Bible on the History Channel

An old friend, who for these purposes goes by the name ThomasD, had me build a blog for him many years ago. He wanted to get the attention of people who claim to base their beliefs and actions on the teachings of the Bible. ThomasD often has brilliant insights into the workings of the Christian mind, and in the case of his blog, he used one of his most insightful insights, ie, that the God of the Bible seems really, really worried that the readers of the Bible might not believe he wrote it. ThomasD postulated that perhaps, just perhaps, given the details of the matter, the evidence points to the possibility that Satan Wrote the Bible.

This is from the essay that started it all:

The first three commandments tell followers that there is only one God and that the author of the Commandments is it. Not only is he the one and only God but if you dare to question him, he will lay a curses on you and your children and your children’s children. That goes beyond jealousy. That is vindictive in the extreme. Why not give the future generations a chance to make their own mistakes? The answer is that this “god”, the god who caused the writing of this Bible, doesn't want anyone to question him. Why? Perhaps because questioning will lead to a better understanding of the world than the one presented in the Bible.

It's an interesting, and provocative point. The God of the Bible really seems worried that readers will, as the Blog's tagline says, "Leave your leap of faith behind and use your God-given mind."

ThomasD has a talent for capturing the essence of his conversation with fundamentalists and various other sects of people who seem determined to not use the brain they believe God gave them. His latest example of this kind of dialogue, on the apparent inability of fundamentalists to understand allegory, was a real gem, worthy of repeating here, without further comment.

Me: You believe life is a gift?
CF (Christian Fundamentalist): Yes.
Me: A gift from God?
CF: Yes.
Me: God the Father?
CF: Yes.
Me: Do you think life is a wonderful gift?
CF: Obviously.
Me: You are a father. Have you given your children gifts?
CF: Of course.
Me: Imagine giving your son a wonderful gift, the best gift you could imagine and he said “Thank you Dad. What else did you get me?” How would that make you feel?
CF: What’s your point?
Me: God gave you a wonderful gift, you say, but you turn around and ask for another life, a heaven that you know nothing about other than you are sure it is better than this life, this gift. How do you think that would make God feel?
CF: I’m not God.
Me: You believe you were created in God’s image. God shows lots of feelings and emotions that you can identify with including rage. You call him your Father in Heaven. If I gave my son a beautiful bicycle that he wanted and he said, “Thanks Dad. What else did you get me? I’d be pissed.
CF: I’m sure you are a good father.

Smoking Guns: The New Infrastructure Report Card

From ASCE's Infrastructure Report Card

(Click for high-res version)

"You know a D turns into a B so easily."--Homer Simpson

Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers releases an infrastructure report card. If America had a Mom and Dad, they wouldn't be too happy right now.The grades are out, and the bottom line is a D+. The estimated investment needed by 2020 is $3.6 trillion.

Considering that the Iraq war cost will, after interest on the debt and Veteran's health care, come to $6.2 trillion, I'd say our grandchildren were doubly robbed. If some wingnut had the balls to say, well, we blew our infrastructure money on Iraq, so we'll just have to suffer, I would calmly suggest that what he knows about economics, if converted to gasoline, wouldn't fill a piss ant's go-cart enough to go around a cheerio once.

I'm not Dean Baker, but as he likes to point out, I have an advantage over many so called economists in the pundit class--I can do basic arithmetic. 2020 is 7 years away. $3.6 trillion, divided by 7 equals $514,285,714,285. A half a trillion dollars a year for 7 years to get our infrastructure up to par would, of course, be a major investment. It would require borrowing a lot more (at negative real interest rates). It would require hiring a lot of unemployed people. It would require buying a lot of materials that are currently cheap. We would have to, essentially, be willing to buy low. The payoffs for this investment are enormous (see the info-graphic, right).

This is from the executive summary of the report card:

We know that investing in infrastructure is essential to support healthy, vibrant communities. Infrastructure is also critical for long-term economic growth, increasing GDP, employment, household income, and exports. The reverse is also true – without prioritizing our nation’s infrastructure needs, deteriorating conditions can become a drag on the economy.

One would think that the very real threat we face from our crumbling infrastructure would be enough to make Americans want to spend to save all the people that will die on our crumbling roads, our collapsing bridges, or from our exploding gas mains... If only we could make infrastructure spending as sexy as shock and awe...

The report card from 2009 stated that 1/3 of all traffic fatalities, or about 10,000 deaths per year, are caused by poor road conditions. I wonder how much money we'd spend on war if terrorists were killing that many Americans every year?

The report card is full of all kinds of interesting facts that won't make it to the news, where mythical mushroom cloud smoking guns get more air time. The report card is full of many warnings of what will happen if we don't invest, none of which will get the kind of main stream air time as Dick Cheney telling us we'd be greeted as liberators, or Donald Rumsfeld telling us the WMD are "...in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." In short, this report card, like the last one, will get ignored, for the most part, by the press that helped sell us a $6 trillion war.

Since so many in the American Press were so anxious to get us into that war, we aren't hearing a whole lot about the group-think of calling anyone who doubted Bush and Cheney a traitor. We won't hear much from a press (that bought the lies) about those lies. But here we have a chance for all the reporters and pundits, from Bill "Iraq has been won decisively and honorably" Kristol to Tom "FU" Friedman, to step up and recommend we spend big on something that will cost a little more than half of what Iraq cost, and this time the spending really will more than pay for itself.

So what are you waiting for? All you Iraq War cheerleaders should be out there now, with this report card (they even have an app) in your hand, telling the intransigent House GOP to get off their bloody hands and fix this country now. After all, we wouldn't want the smoking gun to be another city block going up in a gas main explosion.

An Iraq War Argument that Bothers Me to this Day

Bush collage from photos of soldiers who died in Iraq. Origin unknown.

About this time 10 years ago, right in the middle of an argument, in the middle of our kitchen, a family member told me I would be "toast" in some other countries for opposing the Iraq war.

I always wondered exactly what she meant by that... that we should be more like those countries and kill the people who disagree, or that I was lucky to be in a country where I could speak out? I think the latter, but it's still an odd thing to say when debating whether we should have fought the war. Just out of the blue, like, well, don't you want to fight to protect your right to say you don't want to fight? As if Saddam Hussein was a threat to my right to speak. 

Bush and Cheney lied the right people into it, and the group-think led the rest. It was all threat inflation, all the time, even with supposedly smart people. And it will bother me forever that even close family members who are otherwise perfectly sensible people will succumb to the blood lust that a few neo-cons can fire up, given the right circumstances.

Keep Talking, Wingnuts

I finally did what I've been thinking about for a few weeks and started a blog called Keep Talking Wingnuts where I will post the stuff that is so wingnuterific that I won't have to say much at all. I'll just quote them, and try to keep them talking, while I stand next to them with my virtual "I'm With Stupid" shirt.

So, any of you who might be offended by my usual Gonzo attitude toward these fat cats in their corporate sinecures can follow that feed for pure, unadulterated wingnutitude which you can then use in anyway you think best.

For example, for the inaugural post, there's shorter Celeste Greig: "Todd Akin was insensitive. Now watch me hit this drive!" Maybe some of you would like to talk nicely to her to convince her that yes, women's bodies can get pregnant when they're traumatized, and at least one study shows that because rapists generally don't wear condoms, pregnancy is actually common as the result or rape, to the tune of 88 American women a day.

Frankly, I'd rather ridicule, belittle, and otherwise put her through a little dose of some mental violence exercise, since what she wants to do is force rape victims to give birth to their rapists' babies. Think of it as me physically stopping her from doing that to any women at all if you want. As the descendant of people who fought in the coal wars, I'd call that doing a good thing.

Backstage with Dad at the Hollywood Bowl

You can take a little history of backstage at the Hollywood Bowl tour on my Dad's page. He was the head sound man at the Hollywood Bowl from 1970 to 1993. I spent those summers hanging around the Bowl as much as he would let me. They were great years, and I got to learn things like Jazz, Classical, and live audio mixing from a perspective that few ever see. Dad was a proud member of IATSE Local 33, and died thirteen years ago today, 2000/3/3, at about 3:30 pm.

To continue the odd coincidences, one of our favorite musicians, Robyn Hitchcock, was born 60 years ago today. He has a new album that comes out Tuesday, Love from London---something to look forward to on a melancholy day, when we'll listen to some of Dad's favorites like Miles Davis, Art Pepper, and various other Jazz legends.

Lindsey Graham is Lying Again

Think Progress catches Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SuCk) lying.

"Well, all i can say is the commander-in-chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk."

Obama did not come up with the idea of sequestration. And the sequester will not destroy the military.

It's like they have to start off with the scariest bunch of BS they can think of to get all the wingnut ears to perk up. Er? Destroy the military? Take my guns? Wind up like Greece? Smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud?

Keep talking, wingnuts.

Man Who Shot World in Face is Sad Someone Took His Gun

"I think the President came to power with a worldview that's fundamentally different than mine. The sense that he wanted to reduce U.S. influence in the world. He wanted to take us down a peg."-- Former Vice President Dick Cheney

Well, Du-Uh-uH-uh-UH...

Jesus on a pogo stick, Dicky, if you haven't figured out that that is precisely the point yet, then I wonder how you ever got as far as you did in life? Oh, wait, I almost forgot about Wingnut Welfare, which is why Dick Cheney still appears in public to actually say things, and why a man with a list of deferments longer than his heart lasted was put in charge of the Pentagon, and then in charge of GW Bush.

Just for the record, here are some of my favorite Dick Cheney quotes:

• I think Barack Obama is a one-term President. 
• I had other priorities in the sixties than military service.
• My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.
• We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.
• I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.
• Go fuck yourself.

Yeah, Dick, I'll give you this: you helped convince a majority of Americans that the whole idea of increasing America's influence on the world by lying us into a multi-trillion dollar war that killed and maimed millions of innocent people is precisely the kind of thing we need to take down a peg. And I hope sucking on that at least gives you a little agita until the day you die. 

In the mean time, please, keep talking while the rest of us try to find peaceful, lasting, and moral ways to increase our influence in the world. You know, things that people will thank us for, instead of shooting back.

Step Right Up and Get Your Shiny New Infrastructure

Steel Mill in Bethlehem, PA, photo by S Supak

What part of buy low don't you "conservatives" get? Invest now, while it's cheap! Borrow at real negative interest, and you pay less than tax and spend later. Hire unemployed workers now and you don't crowd out private construction later. Stimulate growth now, increased revenues lower deficits later. Duh.

It comes as we may be approaching the end of a five year period in which investing in the nation’s physical infrastructure has been something close to a free lunch. With interest rates near all-time lows and millions of construction workers unemployed, the last few years have been a time that it would have been a historical bargain for the United States to do upgrades to roads, bridges, and airports that will eventually need to take place anyway. It has been a political breakdown—in particular conservatives’ view of almost any non-defense federal spending as wasteful—standing in the way.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says we need to spend $2.2 trillion over 5 years to fix what's falling apart. Whole city blocks have exploded from leaking gas mains. Bridges have collapsed and killed people. One third of all traffic fatalities involve poor road conditions. If terrorists were killing as many people as our decrepit infrastructure is, how Keynesian would you "conservatives" get on defense spending?

And just look what we can fix with the money (from the ASCE):

Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost of $78.2 billion a year--$710 per motorist. Roadway conditions are a significant factor in about one-third of traffic fatalities. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs--$333 per motorist; 33% of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 36% of the nation's major urban highways are congested. The current spending level of $70.3 billion for highway capital improvements is well below the estimated $186 billion needed annually to substantially improve the nation's highways.

Neil Irwin goes on in his post to Ezra Klein's blog to mention the politics of it. Seems Republicans are concerned we'll just use their money to build bridges to nowhere. Interestingly, the President's JOBS bill, up on Capital Hill, has funding to start an infrastructure bank, a bi-partisan idea that eliminates a lot of the politics from infrastructure investment, to avoid just such a thing. But maybe the "conservatives" have forgotten that they once liked that idea?

Very Little Left in Their Body or Soul Worth Protecting

Jim Carey leapt into the gun controversy with a couple of tweets that are worth repeating here.

Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after the Newtown massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting. ;^\
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) February 2, 2013

Yes, i agree with the ppl who argue that cars can be as deadly as guns but a car is a lot harder to get through the door of a classroom. ;^]
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) February 5, 2013

I love it when famous people have the balls to speak up.

I briefly met Jim Carey once, when he had taken a bunch of kids from the Make a Wish Foundation to see Lion King, and he brought them backstage after the show for a tour. All I could think to say as I shook his hand was, "What a great thing to do."

The Fun's in the Fight

Molly Ivins (photo from Mother Jones Magazine)

Molly Ivins died 6 years ago today. This is an anniversary that many people, like Pat Buchanan, probably celebrate with glee, a celebration that would, or course, sound better in the original German (PDF).

Anyone who's happy that Molly Ivins is dead can suck it. The reason they are happy? They could never argue with her when she was alive. They didn't stand a chance. And, to add insult to injury, she really enjoyed giving them shit. That is the trick to a happy life. Stand up to the assholes, and have fun doing it. Here's how she put it in 1993:

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

Ironically, with John McCain trying to give Chuck Hagel the business over the Iraq surge today, Molly's last column was an exhortation to stand up against the war mongers who wanted to waste more American and Iraqi lives on a war that we should have never allowed ourselves to be lied into in the first place.

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.

Raise hell, indeed. Damn fine advice. If you're not out there making the ridiculous look ridiculous, then you're just wasting your limited time here. So, in memory of Molly, get out there and keep the wingnuts talking!

Annihilation Offense

Still got your guns? Still illegal?

"Yesterday we had to get rid of our guns. Today we gotta grant amnesty... They're running the no-huddle offense on us. We don't even have time to catch our breath. They're running play after play after play."--Rush Limbaugh

So, then, we can all agree that Rush is a liar? So is Speaker Boehner when he says Obama wants to annihilate the GOP. Because if running a 32 Dive on 3rd and 10, in the third quarter of a tie game means we've got you on your heels and moving backwards, then either you don't know football, or you're just lying. And anyone who listened to Wayne LaPierre before congress knows damn well the right wing will never be out of breath.

I'll be surprised if the Republican house passes any kind of sensible regulations on deadly high speed metal. We're talking tea-baggers, here--they want a Randian Autotopia of Mad Max cars with a mounted 50 cal machine guns, Praise the Lord.

It's just not the same without Sarah "Blood Libel" Palin being paid to whine about all this. Rush is getting lonely, Fox's ratings have fallen through the floor, and even sociopaths are getting sick of Glenn Beck. Isn't it time for Ted "Pants Crapper" Nugent to say something excrutiatingly stupid? Oh, right, he's supposed to be dead, or in prison by now.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

This is the kind of thing that would have gotten Gomer kicked out of the USMC.

Jim Nabors, the Hawaii resident well known for his starring role in the 1960s television sitcom "Gomer Pyle, USMC," married his longtime male partner early this month, he told Hawaii News Now Tuesday. 

[...] 

"I'm 82 and he's in his 60s and so we've been together for 38 years and I'm not ashamed of people knowing, it's just that it was such a personal thing, I didn't tell anybody," Nabors said. "I'm very happy that I've had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed.  And, what can I tell you, I'm just very happy."

I can't wait to hear the wingnutteratti tell us how wrong his happiness is.

Signed, Noisemaker

I had no idea Pauline Phillips was still alive a few days ago when I started learning John Prine's Dear Abby. Ms. Phillips died yesterday, at the age of 94. My Dad used to say that things only seemed like one in a million to us because we don't live a billion years. But still, that's just weird.

Gonzo Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben:

Obama versus physics: Why climate change won't wait for the president

"In fact, he didn't even appear to notice those phenomena, campaigning for a second term as if from an air-conditioned bubble, even as people in the crowds greeting him were fainting en masse from the heat. Throughout campaign 2012, he kept declaring his love for an "all-of-the-above" energy policy, where apparently oil and natural gas were exactly as virtuous as sun and wind."

Reminds me of one of The Great Hunter S. Thompson quotes:

"I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from."
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)

I blame the air conditioners! Up here at this latitude, we still just use the basement (geothermal heat pump).

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Ezra Klein Should Know Our Roads Are Killing People

Ezra Klein has a commendable piece on facts about guns and mass murders, but I'm shocked that he doesn't realize that we also have an epidemic of death in this country from poor road conditions. Here's Ezra:

If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.  

Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late.

Actually, the American Society of Civil Engineers says roadway conditions are a significant factor in 1/3 of all traffic fatalities.

Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost of $78.2 billion a year--$710 per motorist. Roadway conditions are a significant factor in about one-third of traffic fatalities. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs--$333 per motorist; 33% of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 36% of the nation's major urban highways are congested. The current spending level of $70.3 billion for highway capital improvements is well below the estimated $186 billion needed annually to substantially improve the nation's highways.

US traffic fatalities average over 30,000 per year, so we have over 10,000 deaths due to road conditions, and many billions of dollars wasted, every year. Seems like we learned to ignore our deadly infrastructure and our epidemic of gun violence. Maybe Americans are ignoring all kinds of things that are literally killing people? Pollution, Climate Change, Budget Cuts, Inadequate Health Care, Wars...

If terrorists were killing 10,000 Americans every year, I wonder how much we'd spend on war and security? The ASCE says we need to spend $2.2 trillion over the next five years to fix our crumbling infrastructure and make ourselves safer, more productive, and more competitive. So, a little over $400 billion a year (which we can borrow at negative interest and buy cheap materials with) seems like a real bargain.

Nectar Hills Designs on Etsy

Our friends at Nectar Hills Farm have started an Etsy store: Nectar Hills Farm Designs. The store features handmade sheep skin pillows, handbags, and hats, plus this amazing Scottish highlander cow skull.

This is a great way to shop for gifts that will help support our local organic farmers!

Dave Brubeck Changed the World of Jazz

My Dad taught me that Dave Brubeck changed the way the world thought about Jazz. Mr. Brubeck, who died today, one day short of his 92nd birthday, recorded an album, Jazz at Oberlin, that literally changed the way the world thought about, and listened to, Jazz.

From Wikipedia:

The concert is credited with making jazz a legitimate field of musical study at Oberlin, but it and the album did much more that. The album is further credited with initiating making jazz a subject of serious intellectual attention in a listening-centric environment; Wendell Logan, the chair of Oberlin's Jazz Studies Department, described it as "the watershed event that signaled the change of performance space for jazz from the nightclub to the concert hall". 

In addition, it was one of the early works in the cool jazz stream of jazz; The Guardian's John Fordham wrote that "indicated new directions for jazz that didn't slavishly mirror bebop, and even hinted at free-jazz piano techniques still years away from realisation"; he further observed that it "marked Brubeck's eager adoption by America's (predominantly white) youth - a welcome that soon extended around the world ... for a rhythmically intricate instrumental jazz". 

Just listening to the album now takes me back to my youth, when I would listen to Dad play it--loud, so loud that you could hear it up the hill behind the house, all the way up to the shed (which he later tore down and put a hot tub on the slab), all the way up to the Kumquat tree, where I would sit on a limb and listen while looking at the view of the San Fernando Valley.

Of course, I was just one of many kids who's Dad taught him about Brubeck. Brubeck inspired many generations of musicians. While I tend more toward John Prine than Jazz, the influence is there, and it makes up a part of who I am musically--from what I play to what I listen to to this day.

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I Know Comedy is Tragic, but...

Someone needs to tell Willard and his merry band of cheering wingnuts and assorted snake oil salesmen that this isn't funny.




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