http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/flash-boys-michael-lewis.html?hp&_r=0
It's long, but basically it lays out yet another example of how fundamentally sociopathic Wall Street is.
Just sickening.
But let's not tax these "job creators".
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Masters Of The Universe
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/flash-boys-michael-lewis.html?hp&_r=0
It's long, but basically it lays out yet another example of how fundamentally sociopathic Wall Street is.
Just sickening.
But let's not tax these "job creators".
Monday, March 31, 2014
Skewed ACA
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/31/1288596/-GOP-senator-claims-White-House-cooking-the-books-on-Obamacare-enrollment-surge
Yes, the RAND Corporation is cooking the books. The CBO is cooking the books.
Or alternately, the ACA is kind of working as intended. People are getting insured. The government is not a bunch of blind monkeys trying to defuse a nuclear bomb. It can do some things that makes people's lives better.
Given how that undercuts everything Republicans believe, I can see why they can't believe it.
Yes, the RAND Corporation is cooking the books. The CBO is cooking the books.
Or alternately, the ACA is kind of working as intended. People are getting insured. The government is not a bunch of blind monkeys trying to defuse a nuclear bomb. It can do some things that makes people's lives better.
Given how that undercuts everything Republicans believe, I can see why they can't believe it.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Walking Dead Liveblog - Season Finale
Ah! Herschel!
You know, Scott Gimple - the latest "showrunner" - has a really good sense of how to set a story. Great opening.
***
"Who are we?" Apparently people who allow guys to die.
"You get to come back." This finale seems to be about Rick going back into the darkness.
Nice that they are getting back to the desperation of the road.
Wow. Getting the confrontation into it early.
***
Don't put down the crossbow, Daryl.
Oh... damn...
Rick...um...Rick.
***
Rick's a better brother than Merle, by the way...
Still wondering what Terminus really is. I guess we are about to find out.
Michonne is a better mother than Lori, by the way...
So suddenly this is Monsters, Inc?
OK...So Terminus is about as bad as we might have thought.
***
Did they just kill off a whole bunch of regulars? Couldn't have. Glenn, Maggie, hell, they just added Abe.
Post-apocalyptic Legos...
Once again, no one in the apocalypse can shoot unless it's walkers. (I guess they meant to miss.)
Oh, and they are cannibals.
This is going to be a ridiculous cliffhanger.
***
It's a veal pen.
Ah, there are the regulars!
Looks like Tyrese and Carol to the rescue!
Yes. Yes they are screwing with the wrong people.
***
I like this half season, because it was about character development. The Governor story got tedious, but this could be very interesting.
And, Rick Agonistes was never THAT interesting. Rick Badass is much more interesting.
American Has No Foreign Policy...
... that disagrees with Israel's.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bow-down-to-pharoah
HolyLand Crap, Batman!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bow-down-to-pharoah
Holy
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Impressive Ad Campaign
As part of the release of Noah, apparently the studio has arranged for us to get 40 days and nights of rain...
Friday, March 28, 2014
Your Bright Eyed Boy, Mr. Death
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/28/see-where-every-execution-has-taken-place-since-1977-in-one-map/
I am not 100% opposed to the death penalty.
But it is interesting to see which states love them some killing.
It's not surprising. But it's interesting.
I am not 100% opposed to the death penalty.
But it is interesting to see which states love them some killing.
It's not surprising. But it's interesting.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Krugzilla Vs. The Gay Math Wizard
I've only been mildly interested in the feud between Nate Silver and Paul Krugman.
I do think that Silver risks becoming a mere contrarian, rather than a data driven journalist as he proclaims.
And I do think Krugman has a point when he says that there are such things as "experts" in certain fields, though we can all agree that Op-Ed columnists rarely qualify. Unfortunately for Silver, Krugman IS an expert and has a prognostication record about as good (and much longer) than Silver's.
I get that Silver might be picking fights in order to drive web traffic, but that's not a long term tactic to make himself the place I think he wants to establish in American journalism.
Anyway, this is a good take on it:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/taking-sides--2
The Long Fight To Prevent People From Going To The Doctor
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/halbig-sebelius-dc-circuit-arguments
I wrote the other day about how the GOP is constantly engaged in fighting yesterday's battles.
But it occurs to me that it makes a certain amount of sense for them to do so. Their aging base is engaged by the idea of turning back to "their America" where "people knew their place".
And when we look at the constant, even desperate, attempts to overturn ACA through the courts, it strikes me that this is merely the judicial equivalent of the Kristol Memo.
The Kristol Memo - written during the health care debate during Clinton's first term - basically acknowledges that passing health care reform would dramatically undermine the GOP's ideological claims that "government isn't the answer to your problem; government is the problem." If the government can insure millions of people, which will have a powerful effect on the financial well being of millions of Americans, then we will have another example - like Social Security, Medicare and public education - of tangible efforts by the government to improve the lot of the majority of Americans.
This is a pretty critical five to six year window for Obamacare, because once it survives the myriad legal challenges it will be ingrained in the social and economic fabric of the country. But it's most vulnerable in its infancy.
The GOP has certainly shown a desire to keep fighting fights long after they seem to be over. In some cases - abortion - they seem to be tilting the battleground in their favor. Whereas in other areas - immigration, contraception - it only makes them look worse.
But for the GOP to pay a political price for this constant assault on ACA, Democrats have to defend it and counterattack. I realize that they don't have the Koch billions at their disposal, but they have to start making the point that this law is tangibly helping millions of people RIGHT NOW.
This isn't "bully pulpit" nonsense. This is about flooding the airwaves with positive Obamacare stories. Right now, the Kochs and others are running ads - almost all of which prove to be faulty, lies or half truths - that talk about the disruption of ACA. Democrats HAVE to point out the good it's doing - while simultaneously talking up the minimum wage increase.
If you want to shape a populist economic message, the ACA is a wonderful opportunity to show how Democrats want to make life better for the 99%.
First, Democrats need to stop avoiding fights with a GOP that's unpopular. Approve the nominee for Surgeon General already. Stand up for judicial nominees.
Fight.
Be Democrats.
I wrote the other day about how the GOP is constantly engaged in fighting yesterday's battles.
But it occurs to me that it makes a certain amount of sense for them to do so. Their aging base is engaged by the idea of turning back to "their America" where "people knew their place".
And when we look at the constant, even desperate, attempts to overturn ACA through the courts, it strikes me that this is merely the judicial equivalent of the Kristol Memo.
The Kristol Memo - written during the health care debate during Clinton's first term - basically acknowledges that passing health care reform would dramatically undermine the GOP's ideological claims that "government isn't the answer to your problem; government is the problem." If the government can insure millions of people, which will have a powerful effect on the financial well being of millions of Americans, then we will have another example - like Social Security, Medicare and public education - of tangible efforts by the government to improve the lot of the majority of Americans.
This is a pretty critical five to six year window for Obamacare, because once it survives the myriad legal challenges it will be ingrained in the social and economic fabric of the country. But it's most vulnerable in its infancy.
The GOP has certainly shown a desire to keep fighting fights long after they seem to be over. In some cases - abortion - they seem to be tilting the battleground in their favor. Whereas in other areas - immigration, contraception - it only makes them look worse.
But for the GOP to pay a political price for this constant assault on ACA, Democrats have to defend it and counterattack. I realize that they don't have the Koch billions at their disposal, but they have to start making the point that this law is tangibly helping millions of people RIGHT NOW.
This isn't "bully pulpit" nonsense. This is about flooding the airwaves with positive Obamacare stories. Right now, the Kochs and others are running ads - almost all of which prove to be faulty, lies or half truths - that talk about the disruption of ACA. Democrats HAVE to point out the good it's doing - while simultaneously talking up the minimum wage increase.
If you want to shape a populist economic message, the ACA is a wonderful opportunity to show how Democrats want to make life better for the 99%.
First, Democrats need to stop avoiding fights with a GOP that's unpopular. Approve the nominee for Surgeon General already. Stand up for judicial nominees.
Fight.
Be Democrats.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Wow, This Is Good
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/why-henry-kissinger-never-goes-away.html
The strange credibility of one of America's premier war criminals.
The strange credibility of one of America's premier war criminals.
It Goes Further Than This
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-2014-obamacare-fatigue-kff-poll
While voters are no doubt tired of the Obamacare debate, I bet they're tired of all the rest of the GOP schtick.
I, personally, am tired of:
- arguing about a women's right to contraceptive care.
- arguing about a women's right of choice.
- arguing about whether kids on food stamps are moochers and takers.
- arguing about the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
- arguing about marriage equality.
- arguing about whether unregulated financial markets will self-regulate.
- arguing about Austrian vs Keynesian economics.
- arguing about whether global climate change is derived from human causes.
The GOP has not had a genuinely new policy idea in years. Medicare Plan D was a disastrous maladaption of a Democratic idea. Maybe No Child Left Behind, but... meh to that.
The problem with being a retrograde political movement extends beyond the fact that the GOP base is a bunch of shouty old people yelling at the brown people to get off their America. It's the fact that all they can do is fight the old battles.
And it does work to the degree that the Left gets tired of fighting the same old rearguard actions to protect gains already made (see abortion, contraception).
The only reason Rand Paul is at all appealing to the political press is that at least he's being stupid about new things.
While voters are no doubt tired of the Obamacare debate, I bet they're tired of all the rest of the GOP schtick.
I, personally, am tired of:
- arguing about a women's right to contraceptive care.
- arguing about a women's right of choice.
- arguing about whether kids on food stamps are moochers and takers.
- arguing about the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
- arguing about marriage equality.
- arguing about whether unregulated financial markets will self-regulate.
- arguing about Austrian vs Keynesian economics.
- arguing about whether global climate change is derived from human causes.
The GOP has not had a genuinely new policy idea in years. Medicare Plan D was a disastrous maladaption of a Democratic idea. Maybe No Child Left Behind, but... meh to that.
The problem with being a retrograde political movement extends beyond the fact that the GOP base is a bunch of shouty old people yelling at the brown people to get off their America. It's the fact that all they can do is fight the old battles.
And it does work to the degree that the Left gets tired of fighting the same old rearguard actions to protect gains already made (see abortion, contraception).
The only reason Rand Paul is at all appealing to the political press is that at least he's being stupid about new things.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Rationality
There can be no more perfect example of the batshit insanity of conservatives than this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/drudge-liberty-tax-update
Here we have noted conservative attention monger, Matt Drudge, voluntarily acting against his economic interest for the purpose of protesting a law that is designed to either help or not even touch the vast majority of Americans. The purpose of the Affordable Care Act is to provide affordable care. It is designed to help take millions of Americans who have no health insurance and bring them into either government or private insurance.
That's it.
It's not an assault on liberty. It's not the end of America. It's a plan to get people health insurance, just like Medicare and Medicaid were.
For this numbnuts to voluntarily pay a penalty to protest a law that's designed solely to make it easier for people to get health coverage - when he doesn't have to pay that penalty - is the height of idiocy.
A lot of economics rests on the idea that people will make rational decisions about their fiscal situation. They may have incomplete information or make a poor choice, but it will rationally proceed from the information they have, the intellectual abilities they have and the education they have received.
Conservative opposition to ACA began with states voluntarily denying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies to enroll their citizens in Medicaid. At least there is some signs that some states are reconsidering. Freaking Utah is looking into it.
So hopefully the massive conservative irrationality is abiding somewhat at the macro level and will instead seep down to idiots like Drudge who are free to squander their money and their health in moronic protests that only prove what colossal dipshits they are.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/drudge-liberty-tax-update
Here we have noted conservative attention monger, Matt Drudge, voluntarily acting against his economic interest for the purpose of protesting a law that is designed to either help or not even touch the vast majority of Americans. The purpose of the Affordable Care Act is to provide affordable care. It is designed to help take millions of Americans who have no health insurance and bring them into either government or private insurance.
That's it.
It's not an assault on liberty. It's not the end of America. It's a plan to get people health insurance, just like Medicare and Medicaid were.
For this numbnuts to voluntarily pay a penalty to protest a law that's designed solely to make it easier for people to get health coverage - when he doesn't have to pay that penalty - is the height of idiocy.
A lot of economics rests on the idea that people will make rational decisions about their fiscal situation. They may have incomplete information or make a poor choice, but it will rationally proceed from the information they have, the intellectual abilities they have and the education they have received.
Conservative opposition to ACA began with states voluntarily denying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies to enroll their citizens in Medicaid. At least there is some signs that some states are reconsidering. Freaking Utah is looking into it.
So hopefully the massive conservative irrationality is abiding somewhat at the macro level and will instead seep down to idiots like Drudge who are free to squander their money and their health in moronic protests that only prove what colossal dipshits they are.
Corporations Are People, Too, My Friends
It's just that they're assholes.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/03/24/why-corporations-dont-deserve-religious-freedom/
As we saunter through the new Gilded Age, it is worth contemplating the origins of corporate personhood.
Corporations were made people by a Supreme Court court reporter, who not coincidentally was a railroad official before working for the Supremes (many of whom had been... railroad lawyers). In the Santa Clara decision, Bancroft took a position that Chief Justice Morrison Waite expressed orally and added it to the final decision. Here is what Waite said:
"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that 'corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.' Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
The problem is that the case in question had nothing to do with equal protection of laws. Which is why Waite didn't want to argue about that. But by adding this interpretation, the Santa Clara case has become extraordinarily important in this post- Citizens United world.
The basic idea of corporate personhood should be extended to contract law. Corporations must have the same legal rights to enter contracts as regular humans.
But that's not the same as having Constitutional rights. The idea that a corporation enjoys the same rights as an individual is absurd. For instance, Citizens United says that corporations have the right to free speech.
Yet who makes the determination what to say? The President? CEO? The Board? The shareholders? Corporations have no individual rights because corporations are not individuals.
The greater perversion of the idea of corporate personhood arises out of the history of the 14th Amendment. The Mighty Fourteenth was designed to do several things to resolve issues attendant to Reconstruction. But the most important thing it was designed to do was to overturn Dred Scott and that "a black man had no rights that a white man was bound to respect." The Fourteenth was designed to give citizenship to the Freedmen. And then it was to make sure that ALL citizens have rights. Previous to the Fourteenth, the Bill of Rights applied only to the NATIONAL government. Any rights from the states would have to be the state constitutions.
So the corporate lawyers nominated by such worthies as Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester Arthur and James Garfield basically re-wrote the Fourteenth Amendment as a form of corporate protection clause. At the same time, they were stripping away the Fourteenth Amendments protections for African Americans in the Slaughterhouse Cases and the Civil Rights Cases.
It's a travesty.
And it's a travesty that leads directly to Citizen's United.
And it could very well lead to a further tragedy if the "Free Market" Five decide to apply religious exemptions to the ACA in order to exempt it from contraception coverage.
The only possible solution would be a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of their personhood for anything but contract law.
And while that would be most welcome, it would be impossible with the dysfunction that we currently see in our government.
Welcome to the plutocracy, plebes.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/03/24/why-corporations-dont-deserve-religious-freedom/
As we saunter through the new Gilded Age, it is worth contemplating the origins of corporate personhood.
Corporations were made people by a Supreme Court court reporter, who not coincidentally was a railroad official before working for the Supremes (many of whom had been... railroad lawyers). In the Santa Clara decision, Bancroft took a position that Chief Justice Morrison Waite expressed orally and added it to the final decision. Here is what Waite said:
"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that 'corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.' Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
The problem is that the case in question had nothing to do with equal protection of laws. Which is why Waite didn't want to argue about that. But by adding this interpretation, the Santa Clara case has become extraordinarily important in this post- Citizens United world.
The basic idea of corporate personhood should be extended to contract law. Corporations must have the same legal rights to enter contracts as regular humans.
But that's not the same as having Constitutional rights. The idea that a corporation enjoys the same rights as an individual is absurd. For instance, Citizens United says that corporations have the right to free speech.
Yet who makes the determination what to say? The President? CEO? The Board? The shareholders? Corporations have no individual rights because corporations are not individuals.
The greater perversion of the idea of corporate personhood arises out of the history of the 14th Amendment. The Mighty Fourteenth was designed to do several things to resolve issues attendant to Reconstruction. But the most important thing it was designed to do was to overturn Dred Scott and that "a black man had no rights that a white man was bound to respect." The Fourteenth was designed to give citizenship to the Freedmen. And then it was to make sure that ALL citizens have rights. Previous to the Fourteenth, the Bill of Rights applied only to the NATIONAL government. Any rights from the states would have to be the state constitutions.
So the corporate lawyers nominated by such worthies as Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester Arthur and James Garfield basically re-wrote the Fourteenth Amendment as a form of corporate protection clause. At the same time, they were stripping away the Fourteenth Amendments protections for African Americans in the Slaughterhouse Cases and the Civil Rights Cases.
It's a travesty.
And it's a travesty that leads directly to Citizen's United.
And it could very well lead to a further tragedy if the "Free Market" Five decide to apply religious exemptions to the ACA in order to exempt it from contraception coverage.
The only possible solution would be a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of their personhood for anything but contract law.
And while that would be most welcome, it would be impossible with the dysfunction that we currently see in our government.
Welcome to the plutocracy, plebes.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Freaking Cold
And it's going to snow Tuesday night.
I was going to write about the spinelessness of Democrats, but it's just too cold.
So cold.
I was going to write about the spinelessness of Democrats, but it's just too cold.
So cold.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Soccer Day
Two games at almost the same time, and I appear to have some food poisoning.
Survived it.
This time.
Survived it.
This time.
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