– One Bus Away is pretty rad.
– The Democrats need to stand for something.
– This Charles M. Blow piece on Trayvon Martin is just heartbreaking.
– This is super tacky.
– And God looked upon the penis, guns, trucks, bishops, and Republicans and said “It is good.”
Hey Goldstein, does your marxist-leninist dialectic bring all the boys to the yard?
What’s a ‘dialectic’? Do you have one?
Also, today being the 19th of March it is the anniversary of our invasion of Iraq in 2003.
How’d that go?
The Trayvon Martin incident is all over talk radio.
This Zimmerman guy is a creep who went looking for trouble with this kid while packing heat. He was specifically ORDERED by the 911 operator NOT to follow that kid.
What a braindead idiot! He was not acting to protect his community. He was acting on paranoia. Zimmerman initiated the confrontation.
Zimmerman must be brought to justice. If he isn’t then that’s just the outcome of right-wing Florida politics.
@4 YLB,
The cold blooded murder of that young man is a terrible tragedy.
A ‘law’ that allows the murderer to walk away uncharged is a travesty of the first order.
@2
That’s my Republican alter-ego @1. He seems to stick to a fluster and bluster dialectic, himself.
@4,5
I really hope that guy’s charged with murder soon. Even with a stand your ground law, the shooter was the aggressor in the case. Stand your ground should apply to Trayvon Martin, not Mr. Zimmerman.
Maybe he means diabetic.
“creatures that spread terrible diseases by sucking human blood or which eat the food out of poor children’s bellies are villains I’m happy to spend money against”
When I opened this link, for some reason I expected to find an article about Republicans.
Guns Don’t Kill People Dep’t
10 people were killed — including a 6-year-old girl — and 39 were wounded in Chicago shootings this weekend.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....ose-killed
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Do you ever get the feeling that a lot of the guns floating around in this country end up in the wrong hands? Maybe we should take another look at reasonable regulation of access to guns. I doubt that even Wisconsin Republicans would argue that prison inmates should have guns (but who really knows?) — although they argue that everyone else should be able to get them without a background check and carry them anywhere without a permit. That little girl was shot by 19-year-old and 16-year-old gang members in a drive-by shooting. Do Republicans think teenaged Chicago gangsters should have guns?
Illinois is shaping up as more proof that Mittster is disliked by his own party and will emerge from the nominating process as a weak candidate against President Obama.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....ts-deja-vu
Stocks are modestly up on the day Apple instituted its first-ever dividend. I don’t own Apple, but I do own 35 other stocks, and I’ve made $1200 today so far — and I’m still in my pajamas (yawn). I think I’ll go back to bed and check my stocks again after the market closes. This sure beats working! Anyone who works for wages is a sucker and a sap. As a capitalist, you get paid for doing nothing. Me, I like to sleep all day (yawn). This is so obscene it almost makes wage slaves want to cry! And don’t forget the HUGE tax breaks that capitalists get! Only wage slaves pay retail tax rates.
re 6: I figured he was someone’s alter ego.Other mental miscalculations that SRD could have in this respect could have been to inveigh against ‘marxist-leninist dianetics’. It would be a stretch, but he could also have Walt Whitman ‘sing the body dialectic’.
SRD, I’ve noticed, has had a host of mental miscalculations over the past few months.
Most market mavens believe Bernanke’s promise to keep interest rates low will only last until the election.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46764981
Roger Rabbit Commentary: These same people have been predicting a stock market correction for several weeks now. They’ll eventually be right …
Has anyone else noticed how much more pleasant things are around here now that puddybud (choose one) (a) has dropped dead, (b) is incarcerated, or (c) was sent to his room by his mother?
# 14: There’s the old saw about a stopped clock being right at least twice a day…
It looks like the Republicans are trying to diminish expectations for 2012. The right-wing rumor mill is saying that a defeat in 2012 of Goldwater proportions, as long as the Republicans remain “ideologically pure”, is just setting the ground for an even bigger victory in coming years.
As an example, they point to the “Reagan Revolution” which occured sixteen years later.
Well, if the Republicans want to throw this election in 2012 in the hopes they might benefit from the loss in 2028, I say, “go for it”.
# 15: I assume someone heard him babbling as he was walking down the street, the same way he babbled here, and he was carted off to the padded room.
@13
I love the Walt Whitman reference. Whitman was a baller.
Only In Idaho
A neo-Nazi is running for the GOP nomination for sheriff of Bonner County, Idaho.
“He said he was motivated to run because of the increasing federal reach into Bonner County, the newspaper reported. … ‘I don’t look at myself as a vigilante; I look at myself as a concerned citizen,’ Winkler told the Bee.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....or-sheriff
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I wouldn’t want this guy on block watch, much less county sheriff.
The Party of No
“With just two weeks until a long Easter break, House Republicans are still struggling to show they are able to get something done in a Congress that has been painted as intransigent and divided during their year and a half as the majority … the Republican majority still has yet to pass any legislation of tangible benefit to voters ….”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....plishments
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Why would anyone find it strange that Republicans have nothing to show for being against everyone and everything?
Ron Paul Bullshit Alert
My “bullshit meter” is exploding off the scale after listening to Ron Paul blame high gas prices on the Federal Reserve and government regulation.
(Sorry, I can’t link directly to the video, but you can find it today on CNBC’s home page.)
That’s true as far as it goes — the Fed’s money-printing doesn’t really make commodities cost more, it simply makes money worth less — and any amount of government regulation of business will make whatever the business produces cost more.
I sympathize with Paul’s complaint about Bernanke’s monetary policies to some extent; Ben’s quantitative easing benefits Wall Street and screws everyone else. I’ve made it pretty clear on this blog, over the last year, that I don’t like QE even though I benefit from it financially through owning 33 different stocks.
Paul’s anti-regulation argument seems to be that we should let business do whatever they want, especially in regards to the environment. A pithy reply to that would to be to post a photo of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but I won’t bother — you don’t need my help to understand how disingenuous this argument is.
But where Ron Paul really becomes dishonest in this interview is not what he says but what he leaft out. There’s an overwhelming reason why oil costs more today, which he doesn’t mention, and that is extraction costs of gone up. We burned up the world’s supply of cheap, easy-to-get-to oil in our gas-guzzling land yachts of bygone days. Remember your grandad’s beloved ’57 Chevy with the 4-barrel V-8 that got 8 mpg with a tailwind? Yeah, I loved to drive those things, too, back when gas was 25 cents a gallon.
But that was back when Saudia Arabia could pump all the oil the world wanted for $1 a barrel. Now, a large and growing part of the world’s oil supply has to come from oilfields with extraction costs north of $60 a barrel. Think Canadian oil sands and Brazil’s huge new outer continental shelf finds.
There are two kinds of inflation, monetary and real. Monetary inflation occurs when you print more money. Real inflation occurs when the actual cost of producing something goes up in terms of the resources consumed by making a product or producing a commodity such as oil. It simply costs more to extract oil from arctic wastes or deep seabeds than it does to sink a pipe straight down in Oklahoma, East Texas, or eastern Saudi Arabia. More equipment, more manpower, more labor hours, more fuel, more of everything. That’s the main driver behind higher oil costs, and all the bloviating in the world by an ideologue like Ron Paul won’t change that fact.
Any kid could tell you the plums at the top of the tree take more effort (and a bigger ladder) to get than the low-hanging fruit. Why doesn’t Ron Paul grasp this?
21 – Just read a puff piece by an oil industry engineer on how all our lives are going to be so much better when they start fracking the eagle ford shale in Texas for oil.
Where are they going to get the water to do that? It takes millions of gallons of fresh water.
Drain more of the ogallala I guess. There’s no avoiding it: fracking is going to be an environmental catastrophe.
@21
I’d probably let him get away with yammering on about federal regulation, but the federal reserve is causing high gas prices? WTF?
@23
Fracking’s going to have a short lifespan.
Holy shit, are the Russians trying to start a big old war in the Middle East?
@24 re @21: Actually, there’s something to that. In 2007, when the credit crisis hit, massive amounts of money were withdrawn from circulation by cash hoarders even as the “credit money supply” shrank. At that point, the Fed’s liquidity injections into the financial system were intended do, and did, prevent a monetary deflation spiral. But at some point, the Fed’s monetary policy shifted from deflation-prevention to stimulus — simply by leaving the same easing policies in place — and commodity prices began to rise. When you see commodities going up in a flat economy that’s a sure sign of currency debasement — it doesn’t mean commodities are more valuable because there’s more demand for them, it means money is less valuable because there’s more of it floating around. Continuation of artificially low interest rates, QE2, and “Operation Twist” are all inherently inflationary stimulus measures that have contributed to higher prices for commodities, including gold and oil. The problem with these policies is they help the banksters at the expense of workers, savers, retirees, and everyone else. That’s why I questioned QE2 on this blog last summer, and also is why I oppose a QE3 absent an actual double-dip recession. There’s also real inflation in the cost of oil which is somewhat masked by the monetary inflation that Ron Paul is complaining about. But he’s smart enough to know better than to blame it all on the Fed, Obama’s foreign policy toward Iran, and regulation. He’s demagoguing the issue, and as I said above, he’s lying-by-omission in glossing over the fact that the world now increasingly has to rely on a growing proportion of costlier and harder to get oil. The latter absolutely is a factor in $107 WTI and $123 Brent oil; because once oil goes below $80 you start to get production shutdowns in the costliest oilfields, which reduces supply and in turn drives the price back up.
Here’s another factor in the oil pricing picture. In the market, all oil sells for the same price, regardless of source or production cost, so even though $80 oil may be only marginally profitable for a company with $60 production costs, $80 oil is hugely profitable for companies (and countries) with $20 or $30 production costs. But as these less costly reserves are used up and have to be replaced with more costly oil sources, the average cost per barrel goes up, and therefore the breakeven point also steadily creeps up over time.
Someday, when Saudia Arabia’s daily output of oil that costs $3.50 to produce begins to meaningfully shrink, there’s going to be a huge upward bump in average production costs; and when that happens oil pricing will leap to a new level. Of course oil has market-price swings due to supply-demand dynamics; but over the long haul the average trading range of oil can only drift — or jump –upward, as there is no prospect whatever of aggregate average production costs declining.
23, 24 – Here’s that article:
http://centerforindustrialprog.....ord-shale/
That shale formation lies under 35 counties in Texas..
There’s going to be one ugly extraction boom over that thing.
Yo! Check out this bitumenous rap from north of the border!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....YUd7WOdjyU
The conservatives in Canada must have been hanging out with our Republicans, they’ve started in on election fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
“Do you ever get the feeling that a lot of the guns floating around in this country end up in the wrong hands?”
Yep. When they end up in the hands of the Seattle PD, I feel that way.
Feds Open Probe Into Florida Lynching
With hundreds of thousands of people all over the country demanding action, the Department of Justice and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the refusal of Florida police to arrest George Zimmerman, the shooter.
“In the wake of spreading public outrage, the Justice Department and the FBI have opened an investigation into the shooting of a black teenager by a Florida neighborhood watch captain who escaped arrest.
“More than 435,000 people, many alerted by tweets from celebrities such as movie director Spike Lee and musician Wyclef Jean, signed a petition on Change.org, a social action website, calling for the arrest of the shooter, George Zimmerman.
“The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI announced on Monday that they have opened an investigation into the shooting in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed when he was killed.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....von-martin
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Florida’s “stand your ground” law won’t do Mr. Zimmerman any good if he’s charged under federal law with violating Martin’s civil rights, because the federal civil rights act supersedes conflicting state laws.
Neo-fascists and white supremacists no doubt will be shouting “states’ rights!” as they demand this killer’s exoneration.
How d’ya like the idea of Mexican drug gangs getting weapons-grade nuclear material? What — Mexico has highly-enriched nuclear material? Yeah, they did — for decades. And where did they get it? Same place the rest of the world got it — from us.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26.....6#46790266
OK, so here’s the lowdown. GOP President Eisenhower’s “Atoms For Peace” program spread highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and nuclear technology all over the globe. One of the recipient nations was Mexico. Some countries — Israel, Pakistan, India — converted this stuff into weapons. Mexico never did, and under a U.S.-sponsored repatriation program, over 1,000 kg of HEU — it takes 25 kg to make a weapon — have been retrieved from around the globe, including all of the HEU in Mexico. Another public service brought to you by a Democratic administration.
Judge rules liquor initiative is constitutional, and Pissed on your Guv Union buddies. Judge Steve Warning reversed his earlier decision and said a liquor privatization measure that voters overwhelmingly approved in November does not have two subjects — and is, therefore, constitutional
To show you how stupid it was that the state was ever in that business, all of the liquor stores in the state are being auctioned off, and the prices, except for a very few are ridiculous low (around 1k to 2k), because people know as soon as they purchase one, one of the big box stores in the neighborhood will also carry the alcohol.
Only the beginning of the thinning down of a rediculously too damn large state guv.
@35 Is there something wrong with the state being in the liquor business to (a) prevent proliferation of liquor stores and (b) use liquor profits for public benefit like education, instead of having liquor stores on every corner merely so big businesses can fatten their corporate coffers with easy money?
How “stupid” is it that, for several generations, state liquor stores generated hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues for the state representing taxes our citizens didn’t have to pay?
EU Sold Out Greeks To Bankers
We’re only now learning the price exacted from ordinary Greek citizens to keep banksters happy.
“European Union leaders showed ‘moral decay’ in delaying Greece’s bond swap deal in order to minimize the impact on the region’s banks, according to High Frequency Economics’ founder and chief economist, Carl Weinberg.
“‘Why wasn’t Greece allowed to restructure its debt two years ago, before its economy contracted by 15 percent, and before it was necessary to impose a haircut on private sector borrowers, destabilize the government and the economy, illegally implement retroactive collective action clauses, and trigger credit default swaps?’ he asked …. ‘It was inconvenient for the banks, that is why,’ he said.
“Weinberg added that EU leaders forced Greece to go through severe austerity measures in order to give banks time to deal with the debt.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46785360
Yes there is something wrong with the Liquor stores being run by the state, and better than half of this state said so!..It was too expensive to run a separate Union operation in this state, that could be run by Big box stores for much much cheaper (like they do in 43 other states in this nation by the way).
And this is the first of many….Libraries, Ferries, education, etc etc etc.
Big change is commin boys & girls, and it’s a commin fast.
This is only the tip of the iceburg, we cannot afford all of this bloated government anymore.
@38. I will consider the liquor initiative a success if alcoholism doesn’t rise much and prices actually go down and stay down. Otherwise it’s just corporatization and union busting. We shall see.
Did you notice the theme that he gleefully touched on.
This parallels an interview I caught on Tom Hartman with a impatient man that kept repeating that public libraries should be privatized or abolished. His justification was a huge debt. That’s it. He would not listen to the counter argument that a public library system was worth the sacrifice to keep around.
What is wrong with these people?
Why are they trying to abolish any and every institution that serves the public, that is for everyone, and replace it with institutions that are only for the privileged?
Why did our national character go wrong?
I found this story fascinating.
This seems to tie in the teabagger’s obsession with less taxes and regulations AND the 99% protests against the 1%.
While I think that the booze store vote was the correct one, I agree with your sentiment on libraries, education(although it needs a serious overhaul, and I dont mean just more money thrown at it)and the like.
I think what we are seeing is a blowback due to a (state) government that has gotten too big for its britches by trying to do too much and be in charge of too much.
The old days of the state(and other governments) overstating/hyping up an issue in order to create a solution or over.
@41. On a piece by piece basis. I can agree with you. There are state run programs that don’t see justified any more. Our society has changed so that state run liquor is not a good idea.
Can you name a successful country in the world that has low taxes and low government?
How do you think society will change if we went entirely to private schools? There are countries to copy that do not supply universal free education, like The Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Cote D’Ivorie, and Sudan.
Uhhhhh…does this brain surgeon know that Goldy hasn’t posted here in months? (‘cept for the bible stuff)
I can pick up ‘dialectic’ from the same place I score ‘scruples’…think I should find one for him?
(PS I heard McKenna was trying to get some scruples there the other day…he thought they were too expensive)
$ 40: One of the constant themes of the racists was that “those people” don’t take care of their property, that’s why they are poor. The only difference now is that they have expanded the definition of “those people” to anyone who is of lower income levels than themselves.
But I had an interesting conversation with my landlord when I was in college. I was living in a converted Victorian (converted to put as many student studio apartments as possible within one building). I was trying to save up enough money to get married, so I asked him if I could paint the building in exchange for rent. The building had about six different collors of thes most hidious bargain-paint in splotches all over it. He gave me a horrified look. “Heavens, no! If it looks better, my property taxes will increase!”
I found out shortly thereafter that a lot of low-income people live in such conditions. Their landlord won’t put ANY money into improving the looks of the property, and have a vested interest not to do so. Even if the landlords were willing to have the tenants clean up and improve the appearance of the property, the tenants know that the landlords will just use that as a reason to raise their rent.
After a family lives for several generations under those conditions, it’s awfully hard to change the mind-set towards improving the outside appearance of the property.
One of the things missionaries in Africa discover is that even where education is “free”, (supplied by the government of charities), students are usually required to pay for their own uniforms and books. The cost for one student could easily be half of the parent’s take-home pay. If they can afford it, many families have to make a choice,sending one child to school while the others stay home.
Why does the right wing hate the founding fathers?
It was Ben Franklin who founded the first public library. Books then were extraordinarily expensive, and the well-healed would show off their libraries and exchange books between themselves. Franklin made sure the average citizen had books to read.
And at a time when colleges were mostly church-sponsored institutions, Ben Franklin established the first public college in the U.S. Thomas Jefferson responded by founding a state-sponsored university in Virginia.
Heh. France decided (under conservative governments) to charge library patrons for checking out books and other services.
Result: fewer people use libraries.
It’s the right wing dream. The more people are ignorant, the more they are screwed and the rich get richer. Shit, it’s been that way for at least the last 40 years in this country.
These two graphs tell the whole story. In response to an expanding global economy, the American economy has had an explosion in productivity. Has this helped the average joe?
http://www.wallstreetdaily.com.....lines2.gif
Doesn’t look like it. So who has it helped? You know the answer but the degree will SHOCK YOU:
http://theoprudence.com/wp-con.....image2.png
This is a totally fucked up situation.. Supposedly people emigrated here for opportunity to escape countries where only a few got all the gravy. They may still have it better but how much better shrinks all the time as this country becomes increasingly like other oligarchic places.
That’s not the way America is supposed to be.
What corporation will take over DSHS and run it at a profit? What would the funding mechanism be?
Ban Roger Rabbit the bloviator then this blog would be much improved.
Who the hell needs a senile rabbit posting his rabbit pellet
# 50: So, you can’t fight him with logic, so you want him banned? That’s a typical response!
How will society be changed when all public water supplies are privatized and the water corporations are charged with maximizing profits for the shareholders?
I see at least 12 comments by “Tom Darien” over half of them a variation on “Roger Rabbit, shut up”…
He can’t be Bill O’Reilly so if I had to guess..
He’s mark1.
YLB protector of the senile rabbit :)
YLB where is your liberal tolerance for others?
YLB where is your liberal tolerance for others?
Tom Darien the OCD idiot haranguer of Roger Rabbit:
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.
Now me:
Only a fool tolerates the intolerant (KKK, Nazis, totalitarian marxists, dumbass right wingers)..
Stand your ground, i.e. make my day laws:
A way for the Tom Darien’s of the world to kill people they don’t like and get away with murder, i.e. he was threatening me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....MRU#t=514s
@53
Nah, Mark1 was a bigger asshole.
YLB where is your liberal tolerance for others?
Why should he extend tolerance to the intolerant?
I cannot speak for YLB, but I’m tolerant of the tolerant and intolerant of the intolerant. Why should I be mannered to those who are not mannered in return.