Fending off the Google Anti-historians

 Upon hearing that Google plans to purge old inactive accounts, thereby erasing a great history of blogging upon which I often depend, I have decided to revive a few old favorites, like this one and Keep Talking Wingnuts, where we have finally crowned a new King Wingnut after ignoring his entire presidency. 

My advice to all Democrats is to get these assholes talking about rape, abortion, and gays getting married, and don't let them stop. Make them brag about forcing women to give birth. Make them brag about letting rapists have parental rights. Just ask them if they're proud of what they've done and then let them talk, and keep talking, right up to election day.

Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind

Dickenson:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --

Karl Popper:

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Emphasis mine.

When facts are thrown out, there is no way to convince anyone of the truth. And if what those who can't be convinced are doing is as horrible as what these people are doing, then how are we going to stop them? With an election? LOL.

It's the age-old MLK vs Malcolm X argument. And here's where MLK wound up on that:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

Now think about that from the perspective of a parent who came here seeking an asylum from a drug war that is our fault and who had their kid ripped away from them, and then go down there and patiently tell them that we have to dazzle hateful, willfully ignorant monsters who are kidnapping their children gradually.

Liberals Need to Stop Pretending that Being Nice to These People Will Make Them Listen

Trump is out of control. He's destroying norms and institutions that have held this country together for centuries. He attacks people viciously while the conservatives and libertarians cheer him on. They laugh about it. They think it's awesome to make liberals cry. The night of the election, they were literally making fun of anyone who cried. Liberal tears, yadda yadda. He has infected these people with his venom, and now they viciously go after people they disagree with. They have attacked me in ways I've never attacked them. And then they're snowflakes if you dare to even approach their level of viciousness with mere words. 

Because that is who they are. That is what they do. They are vicious people who cheer on war or care so much more about tax cuts and forcing women to give birth that even if they don't like war they just shrug it off and make the false equivalence that Dems are just as bad. They put forward policy prescriptions that aren't abstract thoughts; they're horrible actions that affect people's lives in horrible ways. When people say shit like that--tell us that they want our country to do horrible stuff--then being nice to them only enables them. It normalizes them. When they lie, and we say that's unconfirmed or that's questionable, we only enable them to lie more.

We need to call lies lies. We need to say that something horrible is horrible. When they say that "stealing" their money is horrible, they're full of shit. It's not theft, it's the price you pay to live in the greatest country on earth. And when you say you don't care about anything but getting a tax cut, you are literally saying FUCK YOU to all the people who will suffer because you cut the things that make us civilized, the things that keep old people from starving or freezing, that keep young people from being so hungry they can't learn. I have shown them how universal health care would save us money, they don't care. I have shown them that investing in infrastructure will save us money and bring jobs home, they don't care. I've shown them how having an educated populace makes us stronger and richer, they don't care. I've shown them that immigrants make us stronger, commit crime at lower rates, provide a workforce that Americans don't want to be in, they don't care. I've shown them that minorities do drugs at the same rate as whites but are about 8 times as likely to get busted for it... They. Don't. Care. 

Even if you show them how supposed conservative goals, like debt reduction, can be better achieved through investing in people and infrastructure, they don't care. If a liberal thought of it, it must be wrong. I see liberals trying to bend over backward, like Obama did with O-care, with almost giving up chained CPI, and what did he get for it? Donald Trump spreading racist rumors about him not even being an American. He got more hatred from the right than any other Democratic President since FDR, despite the fact that he was the most moderate Democrat in modern history.

I've tried to show these things to them by being nice. When I was younger, I thought I could be persuasive with speech. What I learned is that if you win an argument with them, they get quite angry and go directly for the personal attacks and threats of physical harm. I've actually found that former conservatives with whom I used to argue vigorously were impressed that a liberal would stand up to them like that. Some of them, due to the Iraq war, now vote for Democrats. One of them is now a sober Buddhist who has thanked me for changing his life. We used to get in each other's faces over this shit. He said my willingness to stand up to his old self and the barrage he could throw (this is a very tough Biker/ mercenary stagehand friend--you know who you are) impressed him enough to consider what I said more carefully.

Now if you guys all want to play footsie with these accomplices to mass murderers and fraudsters and racists and child starvers, you go right ahead. But you're not going to get anywhere, just like I haven't. The only thing they care about is making liberals cry. Or making liberals mad. As long as they get their tax cuts, they don't give a fuck about anyone else. We're all lazy or stupid to them; there's no such thing as bad luck in their world. There's no racism to ruin the lives of minorities, just stupid minorities. There are no accidents that are beyond people's control, just lazy people who don't want to work. There's no bad luck, or lead in the water, or pesticides the EPA lets be used even though they're proven to make people stupid. There's literally nothing that ever happens in this world that you didn't bring on yourself.

They cheer for our family business to fail, even though we are literally doing the thing they say liberals don't do. We make our community a better place. We work hard. We support our local farmers, serve healthy food that makes our people healthier. And what do we get for all this? We get ridiculed. I hear jokes about how much our place must suck, how we're doomed to fail... It's so sickeningly hypocritical and counterproductive. 

They have no empathy. Their arguments are just a big pile of puke covered fallacies and vicious threats when they can no longer argue. But please, go right ahead and play nice. I can't wait to see the frustration that will result from trying to reason with anyone who would vote for Donny T or Roy Moore or any of the other piles of fat and hubris that pass themselves off as anything other than the hatemongers they are.

If any of you really think you can convince people to not support Trump by being nice to them, then go for it. I feel the same way about you being nice to them as you feel about me being mean. 

I've lived through Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush II, and now this. I've seen a lot of bad shit happen, like Reagan joking about gay people dying of AIDS while he did nothing about it. Like W killing a million people and blowing trillions of dollars on a war of lies. Like Republicans cutting funds to even study gun violence, or not doing anything to protect children in school. Nobody ever stopped anything like that by being nice. There comes a time when you have to stand up and call this shit what it is: unacceptable. There comes a time when vicious thugs who promote deadly bullshit have to be called out and fought in the streets if necessary. Too many people hide from these things, hate the confrontation, don't want to get involved. If we're nice, then all the horrible shit gets swept under a rug instead of splayed out in the public square for everyone to see.

Read MLK's letters from the Birmingham jail. Realize what he realized: that the moderate afraid of confrontation because they prefer "peace" and "order" (for themselves, of course, but not for those suffering) over justice is the bigger problem. It's time to stand up to these people. Do it nicely, fine, whatever, but stop taking shit. Stand up for what you believe in. Do what you think will make the world better. You might think that what I'm doing doesn't help, fine, I think the same of you. But it's going to take all of us doing what we think is right to change anything, and it's going to take all of us attacking the worst of them head-on.

Now I'm exhausted. I'm old, in constant pain, and still doing my best to leave the world better than I found it. If you made it through this whole tirade, I thank you. Now get out there and get in someone's face that deserves it. Don't be scared. Stick your chin out. Let them take a swing. You'll love yourself in the morning for it.

An Interminable Succession of Absurdities Imposed by the Myopic Logic of Short-term Thinking

Trump lead in MI: 16,701. Votes for Stein: 51,103. Votes for Johnson: 171,699.

Trump lead in WI: 26,889. Votes for Stein: 30,957. Votes for Johnson: 106,292.

Trump lead in PA: 68,012. Votes for Stein: 48,998. Votes for Johnson: 142,625.

Trump lead in AZ: 81,607. Votes for Stein: 22,734. Votes for Johnson: 72,183.


"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking."—Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Hard Out Here for a Media Whore

What happens to bullshitting narcissists who lose the interest of their sycophants?

Jeb! Bullshits on How Republicans Win Elections

While looking at how his lack of understanding of The Donald could be leading Jeb! to trouble, Booman notes a quote from Jeb!

“A Republican will never win by striking fear in people’s hearts.”-Jeb! Bush

Silly, Jeb! That's the only way Republicans win. To wit:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."--GW Bush, Aug 5, 2004

If Nate Silver Ignores the Emerging Democratic Majority I Hope His Readers are Betting On It

Nate Silver has dipped his toe into the 2016 Presidential prediction market with some typical horse race bullshit that papers over a few key points.

As Sean Trende has pointed out, it relies on a selective reading of the evidence — emphasizing 2012, 2008 and 2006 but ignoring 2014, 2010, and 2004.

14 and 10 are midterms, when the emerging demographic nightmare for the GOP stayed home. 2004 was way back on the demographic curve, and it was a warmongering year when the GOP used gay marriage as a wedge to get their voters out. And even then, Bush barely won.

Perhaps more important, predictions made on the premise of “emerging” majorities have a miserable track record: Republicans were bragging about their “permanent” majority in 2004, for instance, only to get their butts kicked in 2006 and 2008.

From Pew Research Center

Republicans might not have gotten their butts kicked if they hadn't lied us into a $2 trillion (borrowed) war and crashed the economy into the Little Bush Depression. They really might have had a better chance if they'd passed immigration reform.

However, this still ignores the surge in minority voters, especially Latinos, and especially in swing states, or previously red states like AZ that will gradually turn blue as long as Republicans keep hating on minorities.

And this is the important part. The sliver of the GOP that wants immigration reform, or sentencing reform, or any other logical "outreach" to minorities will be crushed by the xenophobic base that votes in primaries.

It's a real problem for them, and to shrug it off with such a condescending brush off reveals a lack of understanding of the facts behind the actual demographic theory.

So, comparing Democratic claims of an emerging majority to Republican claims isn't really fair. The GOP was bullshitting. They had nothing to base their claims of an emerging majority on. Democrats actually do. See the original book on the subject, The Emerging Democratic Majority, by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.

But, hey, Nate, at least we can bet on it at Predict It, where a Democrat is currently a 56% favorite to win the White House.

The Large Print Giveth and the Small Print Taketh Away

Things were different back in Lil' Johnny's day.

Speaker Boehner bullshits on 60 Minutes:

I’ve had every kinda rotten job you can imagine growin’ up and gettin’ myself through school. And I wouldn’t have had a chance at half those jobs if the federal government had kept imposing [a] higher minimum wage.

OK, 60 Minutes, you're journalists. You should be ready for that question. If Scott Pelley is too chicken shit to follow up with the obvious facts that prove the Speaker is bullshitting, then maybe your ratings would go up if you hired someone who could....

Here's Steve Benen:

Boehner expressed relief that the government didn’t keep “imposing” a higher minimum wage at the time, but in reality, the government actually did keep “imposing” a higher minimum wage, raising in 1974, 1975, and again in 1976 – just as Boehner was working through college.

And adjusted for inflation, those minimum wages had greater purchasing power than the minimum wage now.

Now, was that so hard?

Too bad all those old folks at home just nodded along with the Speaker while Scott Pelley moved on to the next question.

Too bad all those old folks will never know the real math: "...if the federal minimum wage had risen in step with both inflation and average labor productivity since 1968, the federal minimum today would be $25.50 an hour."

The Cost Shifting of Negative Externalities Lands Mostly on Those Least Able to Afford It

Photo from the LA Times

From a heart-wrenching LA Times story on Mexican farm laborers, here's the rest of the price of the cheap food--the part you're not paying:

• Many farm laborers are essentially trapped for months at a time in rat-infested camps, often without beds and sometimes without functioning toilets or a reliable water supply. 
• Some camp bosses illegally withhold wages to prevent workers from leaving during peak harvest periods. 
• Laborers often go deep in debt paying inflated prices for necessities at company stores. Some are reduced to scavenging for food when their credit is cut off. It’s common for laborers to head home penniless at the end of a harvest. 
• Those who seek to escape their debts and miserable living conditions have to contend with guards, barbed-wire fences and sometimes threats of violence from camp supervisors. 
• Major U.S. companies have done little to enforce social responsibility guidelines that call for basic worker protections such as clean housing and fair pay practices.

Erik Loomis has an answer:

If wages are stolen, workers threatened, bathing facilities not provided, etc., then workers should have the right to sue for recompense in American courts. Subway, Safeway, McDonald’s, etc., must be held legally responsible for the conditions of work when people labor in growing food for them to sell.

If the food is cheap, someone paid something along the way--a subsidy paid by someone--that made it cheap. Either someone got underpaid, or had to work in horrible conditions, or some pollution went into the environment that causes someone illness or death. If we don't allow that to happen in this country, then why do we allow it to happen in some other country if that other country is shipping the product to us?

Next time someone tries to sell you one of these so-called free trade pacts, ask them about the cost shifting. If you're not paying, someone is.

Romans Spent Years Building, Nero Spent a Few Hours Fiddling

A different kind of crumbling being ignored by the GOP.

I'm sure Nero's fiddling sounded something like this:

"[Obama has] the worst record of any president when it comes to putting America deeper in debt.”--Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus

Steve Benen does his usual great job chipping through that old outcropping of bullshit.

...just last week, congressional Republicans pushed for a package of tax breaks that would cost $440 billion over the next decade. How would GOP lawmakers pay for this? They wouldn’t... 

President Obama has overseen the fastest deficit reduction seen in the United States since the end of World War II. For that matter, nearly all of the president’s agenda – Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, etc. – would actually improve the nation’s finances. 

...turned a massive surplus into a massive deficit, putting two wars, two tax breaks, Medicare expansion, and a Wall Street bailout on the national charge card, leaving the bill for future generations. 

...public debt grew under Reagan – who promised as a candidate to balance the federal budget – by 186%. 

...H.W. Bush increased the debt by 55%, Clinton by 37% (he’s the only modern president to see surpluses), W. Bush by 86%, and Obama by 59%.

Benen doesn't even mention that most of the debt accumulation under Obama can be laid squarely at the feet of GW Bush, as shown by this well-known-outside-the-conservative-bubble chart.

So, at a time when Republicans' precious free markets are screaming at us to invest in infrastructure (low fuel, materials, labor, and borrowing costs), we are, instead of borrowing and spending on infrastructure that more than pays for itself like any good CEO would do now, watching little corporate piss ants like Reince Preibus give millions of wingnuts a talking point to drop like a bomb while they run away from the real fight.

But the frame is set that Democrats are free spenders, so the GOP looks thrifty while the country literally crumbles.

The Battle of Ideas Was Lost at Abu Ghraib

This is the US losing the war of ideas.

Or maybe Nagasaki.

BBC: "Eight civilians, including three children, were reported to have died."

Donald Rumsfeld: “We are capturing and killing a lot of terrorists. But we also have to think about the number of new ones that are being created, it seems to me, and the memo I wrote raised that question — how might we do that? How do we win that battle of ideas?”

My Grandfather was UDT in WWII. He came back to Hawaii from island hopping and saw a bunch of Japanese playing volleyball with their guards. He got mad and asked one of the guards what the hell they were doing being nice to them. The guard answered that once the Japanese saw that we weren't the devils they’d been told, they told us everything we needed to know from them.

Democrats to Hold Senate is a Nice Long Shot If You Can Get It

The Geeky Version of Senate 2014 Election Day Model from Sam Wang

From the mixed up files of the #ThingsIWishICouldBetOn, this year is serving up an excellent long shot: Democrats to retain control of the Senate. It's a long shot for a reason, of course. Gamblers, especially the right-leaning ones looking for confirmation bias, learned that Nate Silver has been right a lot (something many of them learned the hard way). Democrats have to defend more seats. Midterms go against the incumbent President. People prefer Republicans in times of terror threats Republicans drum up (shorter Lindsey Graham: We're all gunna die!), even though Republicans want to start another land war in Asia that the people supposedly don't want.

Because, of course they do.

So, the nerd war between Nate Silver and Sam Wang have been entertaining as a way to highlight the differences between their prediction methods, but as we approach election day, Nate's model looks less at the "special sauce" and more at the polls. Since Wang doesn't add any special sauce, the two models will start to agree more. And it's Nate's model that's moving into agreement with Sam's. In fact, 538 moved from 64% GOP to 53% GOP in 9 days.

And Wang's prediction is a 70% chance of Democrats holding control of the Senate.

Betfair is paying 16/5 odds for Democrats to hold 51 seats.

In one of the play-money prediction markets I'm in, I'm getting Dems to control (VP breaking tie counts as control) at 23.4 a share (pays 100).

I made some money betting with the Princeton model at Intrade, and, of course, now that there's decent odds against Wang, I have no where to legally bet.

Figures.

Standard long shot warning applies: don't bet as much on long-shots, as you're already subjecting yourself to some long-shot bias. But in a showdown between Silver and Wang, my money, at least a small chunk of it, would go with Wang. So, a sizable chunk of my play money is.

Furthermore, the Democrats have an ace in the hole, or, more precisely, some jokers: pent up pressure building under the lid the GOP is trying to hold on top of their boiling pot of crazy.

...we are well positioned to see some of these candidates take a journey on the crazy train in the closing weeks of this election cycle. Why? Three reasons. First, the debates are coming up, and as we saw in 2012 with Mourdock, the more these people talk in an unscripted forum, the more likely the guano will ooze out.

Second, in the tighter races, the candidates are feeling the heat. Consequently, they may make an unforced error or try to offer some red meat to the far right hoping it brings their base out in what’s expected to be a low-turnout election.

Finally, there are some male Republican candidates for Senate, like Colorado’s Corey Gardner and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, who are playing with dynamite. By that I mean they’ve decided to talk birth control thinking it can help them, but one slip up on this issue, and cue the “Republican war on women” headlines.

Any of these scenarios could be trouble for the GOP. And not just for the candidate who made the comment, but it could put Republicans on the defensive nationwide. 

The Sarah Palin of the cornfields, via the Everlasting GOP Stoppers

Dean Obeidallah lists his Final Four crazies most likely to blow, which includes noted nullification expert Joni Ernst, the GOP Senate candidate in Iowa, who's reached pressure cooker levels of pent up crazy.

Nate Cohn notes:

If all of the candidates currently leading in the polls go on to win, which is not at all assured with so many close races and still 45 days to go, then the party that wins two from the list of Iowa, Alaska and Kansas will win the Senate. 

With Kansans, despite polling problems, looking more and more like less is wrong with them (they had to learn the hard way that Republicans are what's the matter with them) and Alaska being a tossup like Iowa, it seems my long shot could be depending on Joni Ernst doing or saying something really crazy, and when it comes to corn-fed Republicans and the crazy, the long shot looks better than even money.

Ma Nishtana

GW Bush palling around

The first line of The Four Questions song from the Passover Seder asks "Ma Nishtana?" Or, "What has changed?" The term is often used sarcastically to refer to something that someone thinks is new, but is actually not.

So, I ask, in a more contemporary English translation, "This is different how?"

“There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. 

That's Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker, via Digby, on the Twenty-Eight Pages the Dubya administration removed from the 9-11 Report.

Here's Josh Roggin at the Daily Beast with the answer to the question of why on earth doesn't Dick Cheney talk about who's backing the bad guys de jour:

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror.

Ma Nishtana?

Meanwhile, occasionally, someone from the elite actually stands up and tells us what all this palling around with fascists has gotten us.

"I can only plead with you to examine the current political and cultural works of my country [the U.S.]. We are in the hands of a terrible counterrevolution and a great reaction, a second Civil War sponsored by the same people that lost the first Civil War," the director said.

"And it has created a good president who is a prisoner of the White House who can do little beyond the ceremonial," McTiernan continued. "It has made, despite of what you may see on screens, a prison country, and I've had the pleasure of seeing what most people in our class are never allowed to see. I've seen the engine of the beast, it has given us a country with more prisoners than North Korea per capita, more policemen per capita than Germany in 1938. They have suspended trial by jury in most of America."

Now there's a guy I hope keeps talking.

Good to Go Local and Organic

Turkey Canadian bacon grilled cheese with caramelized
onions, arugula, and tomato.

Long time readers know we're big fans of organic gardening and organic and local food in general. Now that we live in a rural area surrounded by great organic farms, we've decided to put our money and effort where our mouths are: a small, take out restaurant that focuses on local and organic food: Good to Go.

We've just begun the venture, so we're at the fundraising stage. Rather than trying to borrow all the money to start the business, or going to accredited investors through a crowd funding site, we've decided to sell a 20% interest in the soon-to-be-formed LLC to our friends, family, readers, and community. We see this as a chance for anyone who truly believes in the resiliency of the local and slow food movement to help us create more demand for our local farmers.

Shares are $100 each, and represent a 0.1% share of the company. After we've been in business a few quarters, we plan to start buying back the shares over a 5 year period. During that time, by law, the LLC must pay each co-owner (known as members in New York) their percent of the net profits.

Visit the Good to Go Organic and Local Food web site, read the business plan, and decide for yourself. We're sure you'll see this as a great way for the slow, organic, and local food community to create more demand for food that gets eaten as close to where it's grown as possible. And while we're not getting too dreamy about the whole thing, we see this as a kind of co-op model for financing these kinds of ventures as an excellent opportunity for investors and those who want to do something similar.

So, please, get involved today. We're also looking for suppliers of organic and local food in the Cherry Valley, Cooperstown, and Sharon Springs New York area. If you have any questions, just leave a comment, or contact me directly (scott at supak dot com).

The Great Intrade Sock Puppet Fire of 2012

Photo by Bastique

Seems Putin's asymmetric war on public opinion may have been fought with an army of sock puppets.

Russia’s campaign to shape international opinion around its invasion of Ukraine has extended to recruiting and training a new cadre of online trolls that have been deployed to spread the Kremlin’s message on the comments section of top American websites.

At Intrade in the spring and early summer of 2012, I was commenting regularly in the "Obama to win" market. For every liberal commenter, there would be at least ten "conservatives." I would get pounded with insults, Gish Gallops, every kind of fallacy in the book behind some of the most horrific arguments for terrible things you've ever heard of.

It got so bad that Intrade changed the policy to only allow paid accounts (people actually funding their accounts for betting) to comment.

It got so quiet all of a sudden that I still call it The Great Intrade Sock Puppet Fire of 2012.

GOP Letting It All Crumble Because They Like Bombs Better Than Bridges

The opposite of what we
should be doing right now.

Government spending is down, deficits have been halved, and the public sector is smaller since Obama took office. Of course, this is the opposite of what a Progressive government would be doing with so many people out of work and so much infrastructure crumbling.

Democrats, especially progressive ones, but even the President (a moderate Democrat), have been pushing for more infrastructure spending. Republicans will not pass any. They won't even pass minimal funding for an Infrastructure Bank, which used to be a Bipartisan idea, supported by Former Senator Hutchison of Texas, for one.

Now they seem intent on letting our infrastructure, which makes us more productive, pays for itself, and helps keep American companies here, crumble.

If terrorists were killing as many Americans as our crumbling infrastructure, I wonder how much Republicans would be willing to borrow and spend to invade and occupy a country that had nothing to do with it?

The Planet Was Really Hot Last Month and Damn Do I Miss Intrade

November was record warm.

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for November 2013 was record highest for the 134-year period of record, at 0.78°C (1.40°F) above the 20th century average of 12.9°C (55.2°F).

The November monthly GISS temperature anomaly was 0.77 above the 1951-1980 base period used by Intrade, where I was buying the monthly GISS temperature anomaly to be more than 0.75 C for 25 cents a share (binary market, pays off $10).

If I bet the same amount of money 39 months in a row and lost, then a win in the 40th would cover all my losses. I started betting at Intrade in Dec 2011. So, now it is 24 months and I would have had a win. At that rate, one is almost doubling one's money, with a guarantee of higher rates of return if one understands that temperatures are rising.

Considering the enthusiasm of the deniers over their (unskewed) "pause" and the amount of time it had been since an anomaly over .75, I could have been paying even less than 25 cents per share for the over 0.75 market.

Too bad the American Civics Exchange contest (which I won the $1000 second prize in last month) won't be doing climate markets... But if you want to join and make political and economic predictions, go play! Use my user name "supak" when you sign up; I think I still have a few thousand in bonus play money to collect for signing people up.

Never Been Confirmed by the Facts: Piling on the Trickle Downers

From the Economic Populist

Guess who said this:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. 

This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system. 

Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

Nope, not me. Not Paul Krugman. Not Jared Bernstein. Not Dean Baker.

It's Pope Francis.

Now, if the Pope can see through the right wing bullshit and say something publicly against it, I think he might want to start riding around in that bullet proof Popemobile.

Donald Rumsfeld Said Bin Laden's Mountain Lair was Serious Business

The fictoid of Bin Laden's mountain fortress

Paul Waldman has a great piece that will defibrillate your memory of the kind of BS that was coming out of the Bush-Cheney administration after they got caught with their pants down--after W himself had told the CIA agent that gave him the PDB on August 6, 2001 entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Here's a paragraph and the footnote from Paul:

The answer, in case you've forgotten, is that [Cheney] and so many other Bush administration officials were basically enacting a fantasy in which the enemy—"the terrorists"—were not actually a bunch of semi-literate religious fanatics who got incredibly lucky one time with an extraordinarily low-tech attack, but were actually evil geniuses, had unlimited resources at their disposal, and could execute complex, highly technical schemes with multiple interlocking parts that enabled them to do things like get close enough to the Vice President to deliver him a fatal electric shock. And of course, we can't close Guantanamo and house the prisoners now there in supermax prisons in the United States, from which no inmate has ever escaped, because they're terrorists, and who knows what super-powers they might have developed in the fantastically well-equipped lab in their hollowed-out-mountain lair? 1 

1 I joke, but do you remember Bin Laden's mountain fortress? It was quite a remarkable feat of engineering—check out this conversation between Tim Russert and Donald Rumsfeld, going over all its amazing details. "A ventilation system!" marveled Russert. "The entrances large enough to drive trucks and even tanks!" Even computer systems and telephone systems. It's a very sophisticated operation!" "Oh, you bet," responded the Secretary of Defense. "This is serious business. And there's not one of those. There are many of them." You may also remember that the mountain fortress never existed. It was all made up.

It's amazing alright. Go read the story of how this particular piece of bullshit made it out of Rumsfeld's mouth,  from Edward J Epstein, and how, perhaps even more horrifying, the press ate it up.

From a Conversation on Political Philosophy: The Conservative Infatuation with The Violence of Empire and Inequality

I highly recommend this conversation between Corey Robin and Daniel Larison. Maybe now I'll get off my lazy ass and order Robin's book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin . Maybe it will stir up distant memories from philosophy classes that will make me better understand the underpinnings of today's conservatives. After reading Robin's blogging for years, I'm certain I'll learn something.

I took a few notes while reading the riveting conversation, when I wasn't busy looking up topics like pan-Slavism, which I had forgotten about. Mostly I was interested in Larison's apparent embarrassment in regards to the right's infatuation with violence.

Daniel Larison: "...there is no disputing that most conservatives in most Western countries in the past two centuries have supported their governments’ foreign wars. I am still not persuaded that this is because there is a conservative infatuation with violence. There are several other factors that may help account for it: deference to authority"

If authority is violent, and you defer to it, is this not an infatuation w/ violence? Is deferring to violence not support for it? If they're not infatuated with the violence (and I think they are, based on how many times I heard "nuke all Muslims" during debates about Iraq), then they are infatuated with the perpetrators of violence. So infatuated, in fact, that rather than think through the conservative implications of imperialism, they not only defer to the violent authority, but they use violence against those who oppose it.

I was physically attacked many times by people who got angry that they couldn't argue with me about the war. I was attacked a few times by people who attempted to make a coherent argument for the Iraq war, but found themselves floundering to the point that they had to resort to throwing a punch. I argued with conservatives and some neo-liberals, some of them in my own family, and was eventually told that either I should support my president in a time of war, or I was a traitor. This seems more like "the distorting effects of nationalism" Larison lists as another possible explanation for the tendency for violence on the right, but if someone allows nationalism to distort their view to such an extent as to accuse someone of treason (punishable by death), doesn't this expose an infatuation with violence that is tempered only by a desire not to get one's hands bloody?

To this day, I hear people try to defend the Iraq war (mostly lame arguments involving the "everyone thought they had WMD" BS, which isn't really a defense but a spreading of blame). Is this infatuation with defending the violent Bush administration not itself an infatuation with violence? If not directly, then indirectly through continued support for those who committed it?

Corey Robin: "the primary audience for violence on the right is the perpetrator and/or his/her allies. In other words, the right sees violence as primarily a source of rejuvenation among a ruling class that has gone soft. "

Is this not the best explanation for the support of GW Bush's $6 trillion dollar war? And even if you don't think the "deference to authority" is, in itself, violence, then isn't the right's continued defense of the Iraq war a result of the primary audience for violence on the right being the allies of the perpetrator? Isn't the right's continued defense of Iraq an attempt to milk every last ounce of rejuvenation from the violence in order to toughen up the right that has, supposedly, gone soft?

It reminds me of the Lee Atwater quote about the southern strategy (the audio of which was recently released). He says that you start of saying "nigger, nigger" in order to get votes for the GOP in the south, and then that starts to backfire, so you start talking about bussing, taxes, more "abstract" things that still, essentially, say "nigger, nigger!" In this case, it's hippie punching. Right wingers still want to punch hippies, and many of them still do, but that kind of lashing out tends to backfire, makes you look bad. So, now you're talking about opposing a violent, power crazed President who's lying us into a war, you must be a traitor who would be toast in any other country, so you should surrender to the power of the authority that knows what's good for you. It's certainly more abstract than a right cross to the nose, but the infatuation with violence has merely gone from actually throwing the punch oneself, to wishing that the powerful authority to which one defers would put you to death for your non-Patriotic use of the 1st Amendment. Just because your hands don't have blood on them doesn't mean you're not violent. It just means you don't like the mess, so you defer to an authority--a kind of outsourcing of the violence.

I often think of how, when he was running for office, GW Bush used the phrase "compassionate conservatism." Is the continued defense of the Bush administration, with a gaping lack of reference to compassion, and a continued reliance on the idea of spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun, not the  toughening up of a philosophy that many on the right saw as "too soft." Is not the current fervor to stop people from getting affordable insurance, or to cut food stamps, or to cut minorities off from the voting booth, or to blame the 47% who are moochers for all our problems, aren't these all methods to "toughen up" the right? Aren't these all just more abstract ways of punching hippies?

Larison: "If we assume that concentrating wealth and increasing economic inequality were goals of the right, I suppose I would have to agree that there has been success of a sort. But I don’t consider either of those things to be desirable or consistent with conservative assumptions."

If economic inequality were not goals of the right, then what is trickle down economics? Are we to believe that conservatives actually believed that if we cut taxes on the rich that would lead to more economic equality? And since Larison admitted earlier that a large part of conservatism is deference to authority, then isn't having more wealth in the hands of the supposedly deserving meritocracy an outcome the right would desire?

Anyway, great conversation. Very educational. Go read the whole thing.

Wingnuts Say Obama Has Exploded US Debt Which Is, Unfortunately, Wrong

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis
based on CBO estimates.

The more I listen to elected Republicans, who, thank goodness, just won't stop talking, the more I realize that they're bullshitters. They must know basic facts like the size of US deficits and debt. They must know that the deficit is falling. They must know that the current debt cannot, in any honest economic sense of the word, be blamed on President Obama. But they don't care. They have an impression they want to make, so they don't care what's true and what's not. They just say whatever they have to say in order to convey the impression they want to make, which is, of course, that Democrats are big borrowers and spenders, and they are the party of fiscal responsibility.

Of course, anyone with even a loose grasp of facts knows why this is bullshit. But, apparently, some people still need help with the facts. So, occasionally, I set people straight. It's especially fun to set wingnuts straight, although it gets old when you point out how wrong they are, and they just disappear, only to come back some other day with more bullshit that shows that they just ignored the actual facts.

Today, I see that Bloomberg has a poll that illustrates this break with reality that Tea Party Republicans have suffered, and continue to suffer, because they believe the BS from the people they elected. They allow the impression being made by the bullshitters to take root in their walled off minds, and they pick and choose the information they need to feed that impression until it festers into a boil that sorely needs to be lanced. If only they weren't so afraid of needles.

Two-thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal budget deficit has grown this year and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree. Both are wrong; the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion.

That's just this year. Go back a ways, and their delusion gets even stronger. For example, tell them Obama has cut the deficit in half since he took office from GW Bush, and they often become apoplectic, if they don't just leave and avoid the subject. They'll wail about how Obama sent the deficit soaring to such heights that even he could keep it up.

So, the real kicker is when you show them what the money is for. Like any good bullshitter, they'll say I'm a weak, pathetic libtard for blaming Bush. When the truth is, for centuries in this country, those described as weak and pathetic were the ones who knowingly chose to believe fantasy over reality. I'm looking at you, Confederate States of America.

The chart at the top of this post lists the sources of the current deficits that are adding to our debt. It is a stark reminder of the fact that any Republican who claims they are the party of limited government is bullshitting you and will probably ask for a campaign contribution right after doing so. The entire GOP has become a country club of con artists, and their base is the mark.

Source: ZFacts

The chart at the right is the one that should be shoved in the face of any bullshitting wingnut who dares to suggest that Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility. And note that anyone capable of putting chart A and chart B together will realize that the debt spike under Obama is really legacy spending from that codpiece wearing hero of the Mission Accomplished wingnuts, GW Bush, from his wars (the Iraq war will eventually cost over $6 trillion), his tax cuts (which we were told would create millions of jobs and resulted in the worst job creation record on record), TARP (started by Bush and finished by Obama, but only necessary because of Bush), recovery measures from the Little Bush Depression (like the stimulus, which was one-third tax cuts, something Republicans refuse to believe), and the reduced revenues due to the Little Bush Depression.

One last fact to keep in mind on this last graph: When calculating debt as a percent of GDP, it's important to remember that GW Bush's final GDP, in 4Q2008, was negative 9%. When GDP spikes down like that, and emergency spending goes up (job losses were at 800,000 per month when Obama took office and  in the three months before the stimulus passed, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers), the debt as a percent of GDP will, of course, go up. To blame that on Obama is the ultimate in bullshit.

"Private fixed investment as a percentage of potential GDP.
When it gets back to historical norms, the free lunch
on infrastructure investment will be over."
Neil Irwin, Washington Post

What this whole argument misses is that cutting the deficit right now is the worst thing to do. We should be be doing what the Congressional Progressive Caucus's People's Budget would do: borrow more at currently low interest rates, buy cheap materials, and put unemployed people back to work fixing our crumbling infrastructure, which would more than pay for itself. This won't happen, of course, as long as the GOP controls the House. But if they keep spewing their bullshit, and enough people learn the truth, maybe we can extend the half life of their polling plunge, take advantage of the hidden weakness of gerrymandering, and then keep the bullshitters talking long enough to replace them with some people who want to put this country back to work.

Scalia Is the Right Wing's Version of the West Wing's Justice Roy Ashland

Fictional Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roy Ashland

In season five of The West Wing, the great Irish actor Milo O'Shea played aging Supreme Court Justice Roy Ashland, whose mental deterioration had the White House worried when he wrote an opinion in trochiac tetrometer. I'd have loved to see the reaction in the west wing to Justice Antonin Scalia's interview in New York Magazine today.

"...power tends to corrupt."

Lack of self-awareness can be a sign denial (in his case, projection), or some worse problem, like anosognosia.

"If Congress can get its act together, it can roll over the president. That’s what the framers thought. They said you have to enlist your jealousy against the legislature in a ¬democracy—that will be the source of tyranny."

I don't disagree, but I wonder if he thinks the logic applies to his branch enlisting its jealousy against the legislature? When he says one thing, then does another, the hypocrisy appears to be politically motivated, and he just sounds like the Bullshitter he is. But perhaps his logical inconsistencies and lack of self awareness have really been flare ups from an undiagnosed condition?

Here he is on the Defense of Marriage Act, in his dissent in US v Windsor:

"We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation."

This is precisely the opposite of his opinion (joining Roberts) in Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, where he joined in striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which had been reauthorized by a near-unanimous Congress.

Of course, Jennifer Senior doesn't follow up with any questions about this glaring inconsistency in the long interview. Damn liberal media being so mean to him and all... can't be too tough or conservatives won't agree to interviews (looking at you, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, et al)...

This guy is such a stouthearted originalist that "cruel and unusual" punishment does not include flogging, so of course being put in jail for butt sex is fine.

"...if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional. I gave a talk once where I said they ought to pass out to all federal judges a stamp, and the stamp says—Whack! [Pounds his fist.]—STUPID BUT ¬CONSTITUTIONAL. Whack! [Pounds again.] STUPID BUT ¬CONSTITUTIONAL! Whack! ¬STUPID BUT ¬CONSTITUTIONAL … [Laughs.] And then somebody sent me one."

Someone please ask Justin A. Frank to write Scalia on the Couch next. I'd like to know more about the proximity of his affinity for flogging and his pounding of his fist to mimic the stamping motion.

Just how stout is this stouthearted originalist?

What about sex discrimination? Do you think the Fourteenth Amendment covers it? 

Of course it covers it! No, you can’t treat women differently, give them higher criminal sentences. Of course not.

He tries to weasel a little as to why he's given a different answer on that before. Fact is, the people who passed the 14th didn't have women in mind. The Supremes themselves determined that the 14th did not apply to women in Minor v. Happersett (more accurately, that decision claimed voting was not a constitutional right). It took the 19th Amendment to overturn that "originalist" decision. Go read the whole article to watch him contort himself into defending unequal treatment of women as NOT discrimination, like prohibiting women from combat. I'd have loved to hear him expand on that list, but alas, onward we must go, because Liberal Media!

"You can’t go to a movie—or watch a television show for that matter—without hearing the constant use of the F-word—including, you know, ladies using it."

We all know what this gesture means
here in the US, Antonin.

Scalia thinks ladies saying fuck is more coarsening to society than his words on the Voting Rights Act:

And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

My Italian wife says "Fuck you, Tony."

Here's Justice Scalia's contribution to a less coarse society:

The one thing I did think, as he said those somewhat welcoming things to gay men and women, is, Huh, this really does show how much our world has changed. I was wondering what kind of personal exposure you might have had to this sea change. 

I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual. Everybody does.

Have any of them come out to you?

No. No. Not that I know of.

Has your personal attitude softened some?

Toward what?

Homosexuality. 

I don’t think I’ve softened. I don’t know what you mean by softened.

If you talk to your grandchildren, they have different opinions from you about this, right?

I don’t know about my grandchildren. I know about my children. I don’t think they and I differ very much. But I’m not a hater of homosexuals at all.

Evasive much? But note that Scalia's son also doesn't exactly hate homosexuals, he just denies they exist.

Maybe Scalia and his son do differ, and Scalia believes homosexuals exist. His comment ("I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual") seems to suggest that he thinks they exist. So there's a big difference with his son.

The obvious point is that when Scalia says he doesn't hate homosexuals, it seems to not fit with his desire to declare sodomy laws constitutional (Lawrence v. Texas). It does not fit with his desire to allow states to deny gay couples marriage rights. But even if we don't look at his record, we can just see what he's said about homosexuals.

He joked about sodomy laws being like laws about flag pole sitting. He suggested that laws banning homosexual sex were like laws against murder. He suggested they were like laws banning child porn, incest, and bestiality. But he doesn't hate you, gay people, so relax. It's not like he thinks you're the work of the devil.

Can we talk about your drafting process—

[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.

You do?

Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …

If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.

Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?

You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

No.

It’s because he’s smart.

Smart like a homosexual fox. I wonder what Scalia would think of the proposition that the Devil is so smart he actually wrote the Bible? Maybe Satan has just gotten lazy and prefers to watch cable.

I watched one episode of—what is it? Duck Dynasty?

What?

I don’t watch it regularly, but I’m a hunter. I use duck calls …

We know.

"It did not involve a lawsuit against Dick Cheney as a private individual," Scalia said in response to a question from the audience of about 600 people. "This was a government issue. It's acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are not personal claims against them. That's all I'm going to say for now. Quack, quack."

Later he says his statement refusing to recuse himself from Cheney's case was his most "heroic" opinion. Gotta get in a shout out to his partner in crime. Maybe Scalia would feel differently about hunting, and his old hunting partner, had Scalia gone on a different hunting trip with Cheney.

Scalia's tell that he has a good hand. (Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

Of course, it's next to impossible to interview what might be the biggest bullshitter in the country without accidentally exposing some bullshit.

Here’s another thing I find unexpected about you: that you play poker. Do not take this the wrong way, but you strike me as the kind of person who would be a horrible poker player.

Shame on you! I’m a damn good poker player.

But aren’t you the kind of guy who always puts all of his cards on the table? I feel like you would be the worst bluffer ever.

You can talk to the people in my poker set.

Do you have a tell?

What?

A tell.

What’s a tell?

What’s a tell? Are you joking? 

No.

Scalia with a bad hand. Getty Images, via.

Hey, Antonin, how do I get in your poker set? I regret that I couldn't have played you before you learned what a "tell" is, but I'm thinking even knowing about such a thing won't stop you from having one.

And, isn't gambling in DC, Virginia, and Maryland illegal? Can a Supreme Court justice be indicted? If he's convicted, can we replace him? Or do we have to watch him deteriorate in prison, while he decides cases from his cell?

But how will you know when it’s time to go? It doesn’t seem like you have anything to worry about at the moment, but it’s interesting to hear you even flick at that.

Oh, I’ll know when I’m not hitting on all eight cylinders.

Are you sure? All these people in ¬public life—athletes in particular—never have a clue.

No, I’ll know.

Hopefully, he'll read this interview. But, even if he was aware that he's losing it, he most likely won't resign if there's a Democrat in the White House. I'm sure he figures even if he is losing it, he'd still be a better justice than his replacement.

My proof for this? Just witness the level of narcissism already on display here in his praise for his heroic lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson, which declared the Independent Counsel Act constitutional.

I care about the reasoning. And the reasoning in Morrison, I thought, was devastating—devastating of the majority. If you ask me which of my opinions will have the most impact in the future, it probably won’t be that dissent; it’ll be some majority opinion. But it’ll have impact in the future not because it’s so beautifully reasoned and so well written. It’ll have impact in the future because it’s authoritative. That’s all that matters, unfortunately.

Respect My Authoritah!

Hopefully the literary scholars will team up with the lawyers and watch for any signs of trochiac tetrometer in Scalia's opinions from now on.

A Grain of Salt to Go with a Post from a Blogger I Admire

Ratio of government spending to potential GDP, via K-Thug

John Robb's a good guy. USAF Special Forces pilot, war expert, organic gardener... Writes a great blog on asymmetrical warfare called Global Guerrillas. Also writes a terrific blog on how to make yourself more resilient, Resilient Communities. I love that blog because, for environmental reasons, being resilient is a great idea. Also saves you money.

But his big reason for being resilient is that he thinks the nation state is hollowing and out, and he apparently doesn't believe that democracy can work out the huge problems we face. While I sometimes think he might be right, simply because Republicans seem determined to ruin everything if they can't get their way, I really wish he'd get his facts straight. Repeating right wing BS talking points to convince his readers that the government is going to fail might convince some of his right wing readers to plant a garden or install some solar panels, worthwhile goals indeed, but the lack of substance to his claims tends to just make him sound like another crackpot prepper (complete with the BS on the LifeLine, or Obamaphone, program!).

And since he's apparently decided not to post my comments correcting his mistakes, and I really believe he deserves this free service, I'll do it here...

"a government shutdown is nothing new. This is the 18th shutdown in the last 37 years."

Not really. As K-Drum points out today in his series of reminders you should read on this subject:

Prior to 1980, everything kept on running pretty normally during budget impasses. True shutdowns didn't happen until after a series of Justice Department rulings at the tail end of the Carter administration. Since then, there have been a handful of shutdowns prompted by garden variety disagreements over funding levels for defense and domestic programs, but they've been so brief as to be barely noticeable. The only exception was the long shutdown of 1995, prompted by Newt Gingrich's demands. 

So when you hear someone saying that there have been loads of government shutdowns in the past and this one is really nothing new, it just isn't true. In practice, there's only been one serious shutdown in recent history, and like this one, it was the product of Republican ultimatums.

"100% at the mercy of the 535 folks sitting in Washington posturing their next political move."

Jack Sheldon was the Bill who became a Law.

Actually, we're at the mercy of about 30 - 60 Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives who apparently never saw the Jack Sheldon School House Rock where he explains how a bill becomes law. You know, Democracy! What you flew jets to protect! That you blame both sides without understanding the dynamic that is causing this doesn't really help your case.

"This time, it’s not because of your safety, but just so the egos in Washington can watch out for your best interest."

What does this even mean? The egos in Washington that are causing this are a handful of Republicans that the Speaker of the House is too chicken to stand up to. All the Democrats in the House of Representatives would/will vote for a clean CR to keep the government going. And how was the last shutdown about safety? I thought it was about Newt Gingrich throwing a temper tantrum...

"The federal government stands for FAILURE."

Tell that to the millions of seniors and disabled people who aren't starving or freezing to death thanks to Social Security, SNAP, etc. It's still a shining city on a hill to those folks...

"Aside from its spending of over 9% of the total economy, the federal government is also deep in bed in key sectors, including; agriculture via Farm Bills, food and drugs via FDA and Food Stamps, banking and finance via the 6 agencies for oversight, rental real estate via Section 8 housing, cell phones via the LifeLine program and almost a dozen major undeclared wars since World War II."

Do you have a source for your numbers? Federal spending as a percent of GDP isn't really that far outside recent historic norms, considering the fact that we just had the biggest recession since the great depression (aka, The Little Bush Depression), and spending is designed to go up during bad times. In fact, federal spending as a percent of potential GDP is actually dropping now.

Feeding America

But I'm more interested in the details. While I agree that subsidies to highly profitable corporations are not helpful and a form of market rigging by the elites who like to redistribute wealth and income upward, you are lumping a lot of things together here that are actually quite different, and some of which are quite necessary if we'd like to live in a civil society where grandma doesn't have to eat cat food and keep her house 40 degrees in the winter. Cause, you know, Grandma can't exactly build an attached greenhouse or some solar panels. For instance, "76% of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person." It's a very efficient program with very little waste that does a lot of good.

The FDA may be in the pockets of big pharma, (the bigger problem with drugs is that overly extended patents on drugs rip us off for about $300 billion a year), but when run by Democrats, they tend to take public safety a little more seriously than when run by Republicans who are just tools for the elites. Same with banking oversight. Republicans put foxes in charge of hen houses, and let Wall Street run wild enough to create the Little Bush Depression, while your Sr. Senator for Massachusetts is out there fighting everyday to make them more accountable. Doesn't seem fair to lump her in with the market riggers who caused the meltdown.

The "Obamaphone" program you mentioned is a favorite of wingnuts, which makes me wonder exactly where you're getting your information... The FCC recently enacted measures to save $2 billion over three years. In 2011, the program cost $1.6 billion (CEPR's handy budget calculator tells me this was 0.0452% of total spending in 2011--the horror!). And just today we found out that the strapping young bucks ripping off this government program include the wireless service providers. Odd that we don't blame these businesses for our future collapse as much as we do the "government."

And while you're well aware that I'm all for resilience, especially for environmental reasons, this kind of disingenuousness isn't helping:

"It would be easy to name billions, or trillions, of dollars of fraud and waste that goes into each and every one of these agencies and programs. Including the trillions of dollars of promises made into the future that they can’t mathematically keep (it may even be hard for them to print money fast enough to meet the demand)."

Actually, the amount of fraud and waste in our social insurance and welfare programs is surprisingly low. Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, AFDC, Section 8, all run very efficiently, and have very low rates of fraud. The idea that they are riddled with fraud is generally perpetuated by bullshitting conservatives and libertarians who care more about making a certain impression than they do about facts.

Further, our "unfunded" mandates are also overblown by the right wing blowhards. Social Security is fine for decades, at which point the relatively small shortfall could easily be made up for by lifting the cap on earnings subject to the tax, lowering payments, or increasing the tax slightly.

Via the Washington Post

The rapid rise of health care costs have slowed down, at least partially because of Obamacare. Maybe this is why the market rigging GOP is trying to stop it? Because it will fight the rapid cost increases in health care sector that are THE single issue driving our long term debt, but which also put money in the pockets of their contributors? We pay twice as much per person for health care that the rest of the civilized world. If we paid even close to what they pay, we'd have surpluses as far as we could see, even at current low historical tax revenues and high defense spending.

So, yeah. I love your work, man, but when you venture off into this stuff, it's like you're just regurgitating the BS scare tactics from Fox News. Read some Dean Baker and find out the actual facts about these things. You'll be doing your readers an even bigger favor if you use facts to make your case, instead of the right-wing detritus you're scooping up off the side of the road.