THE SWASH ZONE

Untitled

2013-05-21T10:05:00.000-04:00

Benghazi: Time to Investigate the Investigators

2013-05-17T16:09:00.001-04:00

A CBS News report surfaced yesterday suggesting House Republicans may have altered Benghazi emails to advance a political agenda. Leaked versions of Benghazi emails released last week by House Republicans do not match the same documents made public by the White House. Two noteworthy examples:

White House version: "We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation."

GOP version: "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation."

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White House version: "The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings."

GOP version: “The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda."

Apparently, the White House documents were too generic and ambiguous to satisfy GOP ~~instigators~~ investigators, who wanted to make sure ~~doctored~~ leaked versions of the same emails contained specific references to 'talking points,' the 'State Department,' the 'FBI,' 'CIA,' and 'al-Qaeda' (mentioned twice for good measure). It appears House Republicans were determined to leave no turn unstoned.

Who authorized these changes? What did Representative Darryll Issa (R-Ca), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, know and when did he know it? Can we trust the findings of the House Oversight Committee? How does a partisan hatchet job serve the public interest?

IRS- The Latest Republican Phony Scandal

2013-05-15T16:44:00.002-04:00

I know this issue has already been the subject of a post here, but I wanted to get my two cents in too. I hope that's okay.

Oh, the outrage! How dare the IRS question the honesty of tea party groups who asserted in legal documents that they were primarily social welfare organizations, not political groups! Who would ever think such a thing! And how dare the IRS single them out and not make a move against liberal groups!

Here we go again, with the usual Republican mountain of outrage, designed to smear the Obama administration and at the same time ignite more hatred against the government and particularly against having to pay taxes. And of course, the tools in the mainstream press are likely going to do the bidding of their rich masters and run with this phony scandal all summer long, despite the fact that anyone with an hour or so to spend can completely deconstruct the whole lying pack of nonsense.

Well, here is what I have found out in my hour of time. First of all, the IRS' scrutiny was not directed solely at right wing organizations:

"Liberal groups received same IRS letter that ignited Tea Party outrage...The maelstrom over the revelation that the IRS targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups applying for tax exempt status for scrutiny is showing no signs of slowing down, with Republicans seeing their chance to milk a scandal for political purposes. But while the politics is heating up, some important context is emerging, like the fact that liberal groups were targeted as well, and in fact the only group to have its application denied was a liberal group."

Well, that's the least of the problems with this latest non-scandal. Now on to the real outrage. Here are a few excerpts from an official IRS document* entitled "IRC 501(c)(4)Organizations ByJohn Francis Reilly, Carter C.Hull, and Barbara A. Braig Allen:"

"IRC 501(c)(4) provides for exemption of:

Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.

Local associations of employees,the membership of which is limited to the employees of a designated person or persons in a particular municipality and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes.

Organizations that promote social welfare should primarily promote the common good and general welfare of the people of the community as a whole. An organization that primarily benefits a private group of citizens cannot qualify for IRC 501(c)(4) exempt status.

an organization that loses its IRC 501(c)(3) status because of excessive lobbying or political campaign intervention may not be treated as an organization described in IRC 501(c)(4)."

A few remarks on the above. First of all, let me point out that despite the clear wording of the above, at some point in the past, the IRS decided to replace the word "exclusively" with the word "primarily." If you are interested in why this happened, you are welcome to read more of this IRS document, which contains numerous short explanations of cases the IRS has ruled on, which show that many groups which were clearly social welfare organizations under the meaning of this act had minor activities which could have resulted in their being denied their appropriate status (i.e. bingo games run by charities, which could be seen as a for-profit activity.) Unfortunately, this change in interpretation left the act open to the most egregious abuse. The notion, for example, that Karl Rove's political smear factory is a "social welfare" organization is ludicrous; yet it continues to claim tax exempt status, due to the IRS's utter failure to enforce this law with appropriate action.

Now, a few comments from an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, which I found via the Daily Kos post linked to above:

"• Congress requires the IRS to review every application for tax-exempt status to weed out organizations that are partisan, political, or that generate private gain. Congress has imposed this requirement on the IRS, and its predecessor agencies, since 1913.

• When it comes to 501(c)(4) organizations, what the IRS is supposed to do is draw a distinction between groups that are “primarily engaged” in politics and groups that really are primarily engaged in “social welfare”—somehow “promoting the common good and social welfare of the community.”

• The first scandal here, meanwhile, is that the social welfare tax exemption is being used by existing 501(c)(4) organizations, including some very large ones, to promote partisan political interests—the very activity Congress has explicitly prohibited for a century"

What must be noted here is not that the IRS exceeded its mandate by examining these organizations, but that it was legally obligated to examine all of them; and the real scandal here is that every single one of these purely political groups was not denied its tax exempt status. And further, it is even more of a scandal that Rove's group and the many like it that were formed in the wake of the miserable Citizens' United decision were not laughed out of Washington when they applied for tax exempt status for the hundreds of millions of dollars that their few thousand rich donors spent to buy elections.

But still, we are treated to the mindless regurgitation of the Republican point of view from our mainstream press, such as this example from the Voice of the Serious People, the Washington Post:

"The fact that Tea Party groups — especially smaller organizations — appear to have been specially singled out for scrutiny is what most troubles many experts here. Not least because larger, politically oriented groups like Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA were able to form 501(c)(4) organizations with little trouble.

“The targeting aspect of this is god-awful,” agreed Douglas N. Varley, a Washington-based lawyer with Caplin & Drysdale who deals with tax-exempt organizations. He adds that the agency’s special focus on conservative groups is a much bigger deal than the sheer number of questions that were posed to groups seeking 501(c)(4) exemption, which isn’t by itself unusual."

The targeting aspect of this was not God-awful. It was one hundred percent appropriate, as required by law (which this ignorant reporter would know if he had bothered to do any research beyond regurgitating Republican talking points.) Is there a person in this country that does not know that the tea party groups and all of the other Republican groups like Rove's existed for no other purpose than to elect Republican candidates? When they applied for tax exempt status, they openly perjured themselves by claiming that they had any other purpose. It was the legal responsibility of the IRS to question the legitimacy of their criminal filings, and what is more it was the legal obligation of the IRS to deny every single one of these applications. What is "God-awful" is that the Republican party, along with its stooges in the press, are intimidating IRS officials into not applying the law, so that they may enjoy the privilege of openly breaking the law every day that these organizations exist.

*If you want to read the whole thing (be my guest- I did and it didn't quite kill me,) here it is.

Nothing Political Here

2013-05-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

Move right along

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie "the actor" Sutton is famously but falsely said to have replied: "that's where the money is." Perhaps the IRS has been thinking along the same lines by targeting groups using words like "patriot" and agitating against "how the government is run" and about the debt. Far Right think tanks and agitators tend to have rich supporters.

According to some, Jewish groups as well have been selected for special handling, whether pro-Israel or purely religious. Perhaps not. Perhaps it's all political, a claim which was and is the standard Republican answer for any charges against Nixon.

The comparison with Richard Nixon and his enemies list is inescapable although we certainly don't have audio tapes of President Obama telling Jimmy Graham that we need to go after the Jews who are "ruining the country." Even for long term and relentless Nixon defenders, the opportunity to suggest impeachment, to demand impeachment now is so irresistible that it seems at long last to be acceptable for perennial supporters to remind us of Tricky Dick's tricks even though the dismissal of such charges as political is maintained.

We know Nixon was behind a "weaponized" IRS, but do we have a smoking tape of Obama? I doubt it but that difference will be forgotten. It happened under his watch and that's enough. Claims that the IRS is independent won't matter. Questions about whether the IRS was politically motivated to take down Al Capone won't arise nor did anyone accuse President Hoover of such things.

Of course there have been so many ridiculous claims against Barack Obama of impeachable 'high crimes' already that the demands of the self-righteous Right don't quite have the desired effect on the unconverted and those who catalog Republican transgressions. Still, people like Smugster George sWill aren't going to let it go and the attack on possible 2016 candidates will be joined by increasingly nasal and polyphonic choruses of Sic Semper Tyrannis.

sWill, wearing his outrage costume on ABC's This Week, tells us " all hell" would have broken loose had Bush used the IRS against progressives and his poker face never twitches as he forgets about the political assassination of Valerie Plame and other scandals to voluminous to list. And of course that Bush might in fact be guilty of the same thing isn't quite obscured by the standard props of Gerogewillian pomposity.

But the level of 'truthiness' in charges against several presidents, including Bill Clinton for using IRS harassment in retaliation against personal lawsuits is significant and of course it's scary. Anyone who has been through an audit knows that, and Obama has no choice to make an open investigation rather than to invoke Executive Privilege as his predecessor was wont to do. But regardless of who the Special Prosecutor might be and regardless of evidence or lack thereof, I can already smell the stink of American politics once again.

Terrorist without a cause

2013-05-13T09:57:00.002-04:00

No, this one does not star James Dean chewing on the scenery as he wails "You're tearing me apart" but it's tearing us all apart. I'm starting to think there's a national competition going on and I'm getting tired of saying "not again!"

19 people shot at a parade in New Orleans, with 3 suspected perpetrators as yet to be apprehended. Why? Is it some bizarre political statement only they can understand? I can only guess, but the notion that we have a lunatic fringe competing for their share of obsessive media coverage is tempting. If there are indeed three men involved, we have to rule out mental illness as we usually think of it although we can't avoid the question of what kind of sanity could prompt such acts of random violence.

New Orleans is a violent, crime ridden city with a police force that has been accused of incompetence, corruption and its own acts of violence, but one has to ask why New York is a vastly safer city; Miami, El Paso -- all of which prove that ethnic diversity has nothing to do with it and suggests strongly that strong gun laws have little to do with it.

I simply don't know, but this, once again, isn't crime for profit, it isn't about gangs or gangsters or their territorial disputes. I can only ask myself why people compete, why people are willing to court death, even seek it just so CNN can have another huge boost in ratings.

UPDATE:

And speaking of ratings, why is it that we've been carpet bombed with coverage of this incident as though it were an indicator of increasing violence, yet New Orleans' 193 homicides in 2012 are seven fewer than in 2011 and the slowdown has continued at least through March of this year. We saw and heard little about the January drive-by shooting of five people after a Martin Luther King Jr Day parade, or the four wounded in a shooting after an argument in the French Quarter just before Mardi Gras. Suspects are in custody for those crimes, which seem gang related. Perhaps the Mother's day shooting is too. Are the media suggesting that gang related crimes could be caused by gangs and reduced by somehow getting rid of them? I don't think so.

Police have named 19 year old Akein Scott as the first suspect and have released video of him, according to The Guardian. It's hard for a rational mind to understand why some gang might perpetrate such a crime, but this may be another lesson in how gangsters and the culture of gangsterism eats away at civilization and perhaps how our culture of prohibition, our failure to deal with poverty and lack of education nourishes the criminal culture in America.

Mother's Day Without My Mother

2013-05-12T13:52:00.001-04:00

1926-2013

This will be my first Mothers' Day without my mother who passed away last month at age 86. When you lose your mother, you lose a keeper of your family memories, an eyewitness account, a living legacy. Gone are the stories partially told, or never told, that will never be told again. There is never enough time. Nevertheless, I remind myself: Your mother also lives within you, in your children and in future generations. But Mothers’ Day will never be the same again without your mother.

The Grand and Great-Grand generations

A cute kid until he turned himself ...

... into THIS!

What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

2013-05-12T10:00:00.000-04:00

There's a lesson to be learned from the trial of Guatemala's former dictator Efrian Rios Montt, ‘a man of great personal integrity . . . totally dedicated to democracy’ said Ronald Reagan, surprised upon visiting him in Honduras that Central America was composed of several countries. But few Americans will care or will even be aware that at long last he's been found guilty of genocide and war crimes.

The things that went on in Guatemala were gruesome, horrifying and heart-breaking but I don't have the stomach to relate even part of it. You can read about it here and if you do, if you can tear yourself away from Boston Bomber stories, School shooting stories' da scores' and Cleveland sex slaves long enough, perhaps you'll take a further moment to meditate and perhaps agonize over the part our country, always howling about freedom as if we invented it, played in yet another sordid and brutal horror.

Yes, Rios Montt is a monster like so many Latin American monsters in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere, all of whom were supported by the Land of the Free and even placed in power by violent US assistance. Rios Montt whose squads were supported and advised by and trained by the Reagan administration, wasn't a Communist you see and that's what counts and so it didn't matter that he raped, tortured, brutalized attempted to murder an entire ethnicity because they were better off dead than Red. better off dead than getting in the way of the very few and very rich. Red of course means looking for some hero to improve life from the hopeless, unchanging, grinding, disease ridden, starvation and poverty Central American Kleptocracy needs in order to provide a most excellent life for people like Rios Montt and his generals.

The 86 year old and frail monster has now been sentenced to 80 years in jail, although he claims he never got his hands dirty or bloody, as though that were grounds for clemency or forgiveness.

Who amongst us, the champions of freedom, has clean hands? Kindly old avuncular Ron is dead, but he's still the hero who made the sun come up in America. His own Himmler, Ollie North continues to be admired and listened to and frankly my dear, America doesn't give a damn about any of the things we did in the name of protecting American Corporate imperialism from land reform or about how much innocent blood was soaked into foreign soil to do it.

Go on worrying about how dangerous it is to live in America, how expensive to fuel your three SUVs and how high your taxes are. There's a one in more than a million chance of some psycho shooting you after all and that Asian, Middle Eastern, central and South American blood isn't on your hands. You're not some bleeding-heart Liberal anyway.

The Benghazi Desperation Ploy

2013-05-11T09:40:00.000-04:00

Benghazi, Benghazi! Is this the new Rebel Yell, or the cry of some demented parrot? Or maybe it's the desperate attempt to find some new tail to pin on the Donkey, now that the Birther Bullshit and so many of the previous attempts have failed or backfired for all but the most ardent of the crooks and liars called Republicans.

Benghazi, Benghazi! it may continue to hound Hillary Clinton if she makes the attempt to be the 2016 Democratic presidential Candidate says Democratic pollster and author Doug Schoen. " “Look, the hearing today [Wed, May 8] raises more questions about what happened, why a force was not sent in to try to rescue the ambassador and his colleagues.”

Could it be that Republicans can be considered complicit since they voted against beefing up security, voted to cut security? Hey, can we blame the Republicans for anything, what with their long term sterling record of success in all things? Hell no because the appeal to ignorance, forgetfulness and neurotic hatred of all things not GOP always works. Failure is success. Truth is in the definition.

“We still have unanswered questions about what the president knew, when he knew it, what he was doing,” says Schoen. “So, we are really still in the middle of a drama that’s playing itself out.”

Is farce a kind of drama? Are these "unanswered questions" scripted by the same creative minds that gave us unanswered questions about Obama's birth certificate, about whether he murdered his grandmother, about his terrorist affiliations? Nothing was said by the GOP or their Friends at Fox about what the president knew and all that when we went to war with Iraq or what he knew before Sept 11, 2001.

The Benghazi gambit hasn't really affected the real world that I can see, Obama was handily re-elected despite Fox News' round the clock Banghazithon before the last election, despite Fox & Friends host Eric Bolling's claim that Obama “went gambling in Las Vegas when he could have been saving our people in Benghazi.” Even Geraldo Rivera, that paragon of journalistic integrity, seems to have choked on that steaming turd and called Bolling a liar before his audio was cut off in the interest of fairness and balance.

Benghazi, Benghazi, we haven't heard the last of it and we won't any time soon as the national memory fades and the fake history is implanted. The hypocrisy won't be noticed by those who have forgotten about Reagan, the Marines and Lebanon or by those who still desperately need to hide the real Obama behind a claim of weakness, made of straw.

UPDATE

Seems that Dick Cheney thinks Congress should subpoena Hillary Clinton all over again to get "more answers." You know, sometimes words fail me. Hey, let's bring up Whitewater again. You never know -- we might get more answers in time for 2016. Will we ever get answers about Cheney's crimes - you know the kind of thing he used "executive privilege" to hide behind?

"Fine and dandy. Let us first subpoena Mr. Cheney to testify about 9/11, Iraq, torture and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame."

Says Paul Abrams, but of course we won't, the public having long lost interest in such ancient history or is so entrenched in Denialism and caught up in fake controversies about a non-existent crime wave and other media obsessions. Besides it's not criminal when they do it. Never has been, never will be.

Kokesh and the Marching Morons

2013-05-07T22:23:00.000-04:00

When you look into the career of Adam Kokesh, you realize that he's pretty much just a media whore, who bases his entire schtick on anarchy and "government bad!" In his opinion, governments shouldn't be able to stop people from doing whatever they want to do. That's pretty much the extent of his philosophical depth, as far as I can tell: "you're not the boss of me! I can do what I want!"

I'm pretty sure he isn't married: he couldn't share the spotlight. Life with him would be one constant tantrum-fest.

He likes to stage random events where he can demonstrate that the government is power-hungry and out of control. But most of his problems seem to stem from his own inability to accept authority. He's been reduced to social media and YouTube, since, ironically, even Russia Today (a Russian-funded propaganda channel) got tired of his bullshit.

In the larger sense, I guess I have to appreciate that Kokesh is happy to piss off both sides equally - I can't find a mention of him on any right-wing website that doesn't call him "paid Russian agent Adam Kokesh." But in the end, that isn't enough: he's too busy marketing the one product he has - himself - to be anything more than a self-absorbed yutz.

His latest gag, though, is exactly what a disaster looks like in the fetal state: it's a bad idea waiting to blossom into a nightmare.

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

There's a remote chance that there will be violence as there has been from government before, and I think it should be clear that if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting. We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Really, Adam? You design an event to appeal to the paranoid lunatics with a penchant for violence, and you don't see where it can go horribly, horribly wrong? So I thought I'd make a suggestion.

The DC Metropolitan Police Department has a contact email address right their on their site, so I used it.

You guys don't get enough respect to begin with, and now you have to deal with an internet-celebrity drama queen and his planned act of "civil disobedience." On behalf of the sane people of America, let me apologize to you. You're put in the unenviable position of dealing with a man who wants to attract paranoid gun nuts to try and start a confrontation.

This is an unsolicited suggestion, so take it for what it's worth, but perhaps what you want to do is not treat it as a show of force, but simply an act of crowd control and mass processing.

They've published their planned route, which starts by marching across the Memorial Bridge. Now, that goes right into the mall around the Lincoln Memorial, which is going to make this a logistical nightmare anyway. But if you close the Memorial Bridge off to vehicular traffic and use a lot of crowd-control fences to block them off when they're distinctly in the District, you'll have already disrupted their plans. Then you set up a bunch of folding tables and chairs so that you can process 40 or 50 at a time, and a person with a loudspeaker advising them "Are you aware that you're breaking the law? This is your opportunity to turn around." Then, for any of them that continue, have a smiling officer direct them to the next open table where they can sit for the initial processing.

The Facebook page for the march says that they want it to be "a non-violent event" and "if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting." So take them at their word.

You'll probably want to have some quick reaction teams nearby, but don't have them visible to the idiots. Just professional uniformed police officers.

Borrow a lot of gun racks from the National Guard, and do the minimum processing on the scene, including, obviously, confiscating their weapons ("Oh, no, sir. You'll get a receipt, and you'll get it back when this is all over.") Two-part receipt, with half tied to the weapon and the other half given to the owner. Quick frisk to find any other weapons, basic paperwork at the table, hustle them out of sight into GP Large tents set up on either side, and when you have good-sized group, put them on buses to finish the processing elsewhere.

Mostly, you want to break them into manageable groups, get the ringleaders shipped out fast where they can't make a spectacle (that being Kokesh's big plan), and keep them moving. And anybody who wants to go back across the bridge to Virginia? Don't stop them. Once a few of them decide they don't want to get arrested today and start walking back, more will join them.

Everybody you arrest gets fined, run them for outstanding warrants, check that the firearms are legal somewhere, and let them go. They get the various weapons back after all the checks are done and you know that everything is clean, if the owner goes to a specific location (a National Guard armory, for instance - someplace you can secure that many weapons), Monday through Friday from noon to four. (You're under no obligation to make it easy for them, are you?)

Like I said, mass processing. Break up their momentum. Let their "statement" fizzle out. Anyone who wants to be arrested gets their wish. Everybody wins.

But mostly, good luck.

The cops can't let the march happen, and a show of force is just a mistake. I have no idea what they'll do, but with any luck, Kokesh will end up looking like more of a fool than he usually does.

Risk

2013-05-06T11:22:00.000-04:00

Is America really dumbing down or is the body of knowledge just outpacing the public's desire or ability to keep up? When I see 'documentaries' on very liberal Free Speech TV like

Resonance: Frequency of Beings. "This spectacular documentary uncovers our relationship to the frequency of Earth and our bodies; and how cell phones can affect these and cause cancer."

I have to wonder if spectacular and speculative have a special relationship here. What the hell is the frequency of Earth? Would that be mechanical resonance, orbital period or some electromagnetic phenomenon that has some supernatural relationship to Maxwell's equations? I sure as hell don't know and I'm very skeptical about my body or yours sharing any of those things. I do wonder if the producers know why police radios at vastly higher output power and at adjacent wavelengths don't give you cancer, but then people who talk about "cell phone frequencies" usually don't know what they are, or where. Still it sounds good if you're one of those people who talk about energy as though it were something mystical contained in crystals and pyramids, arrangements of furniture, chakras or one of those 'As Seen on TV' bracelets "tuned to natural frequencies."

Then there are devices like the "Electromagnetic Frequency Protector Shield" selling for 5 bucks on eBay which protect you from "streams of energy with electrically charged particles released from electrical devices." which 'continue to flow' even when the device is turned off. It's a few inches of wire wrapped in a coil and does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deflect, subdue or protect you from the imaginary, nonexistent dangers described. Not a damned thing and no, your hair drier isn't emitting radiation when it's turned off: neither particulate or RF. Sweet Jesus, but maybe I should be grateful that they're no longer trying to sell you the idea that TV will make you blind and give you cancer. Remember that? Remember when canvass shoes would ruin your kids' feet and Rock music would cause premature puberty. Maybe we shouldn't laugh when the far right idiots tell us that Teletubbies will make the kids gay.

Whatever the frequency of beings might be, the frequency of belief in mystical properties and mystical phenomena amongst people who call themselves both liberal and enlightened is appalling. The propensity to believe without critical thought is not restricted to those without a monkey's knowledge of physics. It's not restricted to those who fear radios and believe in mysterious energies that either radiate away into oblivion or float around hallways at night scaring people. We all do it.

If some study, whether truly scientific and objective, randomized and double blind or a collection of dubious anecdotes designed to sell a product of no merit, we're likely to believe it, quote it and use it to support our opinions. Take the oft-cited study that came out in Early March that purports to show that there is a positive correlation between "more gun laws" and fewer gun deaths. I was tempted to think it lent support to the conclusion it claimed, but does it? Or does it show a correlation not with severity or comprehensiveness of gun legislation but simply with the number of separate laws? The latter would fail to support the arguments it's being used to support and that seems to be the case. Lumping suicides into the equation takes it further from credibility as we cannot know how many potential suicides chose another option.

Frankly, the phrase "studies show" is a red flag. It's part of the headlines of innumerable scams, deceptions and marketing strategies, but the public knows little more about statistics and about what constitutes a scientific study than it knows about electronics and electromagnetic propagation.

So are we really at risk from gun violence and are we all at equal risk? Yes and no. Here's a study that ranks places and risk, now versus a decade ago. Is it surprising that the odds of becoming a victim of violent crime are one in seven in certain areas of Detroit and that other areas of equal population density that once were as bad have since fallen off the charts? Who knows? studies show what you hope they show, but this one argues that demographics may play a vastly larger part than legislation or enforcement in reducing violent crime. Gentrification may control gun use more than legislation. Affluent people may not be any more honest, but they don't need a gun to do business.

As concerns the risk of gun violence, the gun friendly South has improved enormously in the last decade, Some Northern neighborhoods with their handgun bans and registrations have got a lot worse. Miami is not only no longer the murder capital, it's far safer than Chicago on a per capita basis. New York, however, with it's strict gun control of many years' standing is much safer as well. The risk seems to have more to do with immediate neighborhood conditions than with what metropolis the neighborhood is in or what laws the state or city may have.

So am I buying this study because I'm prejudiced? Maybe I am, everyone is, but to a gun control activist, all problems of violence are the same and can only be addressed by gun control laws. I'm not so simplistic. I think problems like violence in America are complicated and have many factors of varying importance and are more appropriately treated as such.

Why is Miami where virtually anyone of good character can legally carry a concealed weapon -- a city with poverty, with many ethnic minorities and all the urban problems of Chicago -- a far safer place than a city with complex, rigid gun control where only the police can own a handgun and carry permits are not permitted at all and gun ownership is lower? Some decades ago, it was quite different. What has changed? Don't we need to know? Maybe I am prejudiced, but I think there are more questions than certainties and as has long been the case in America the center cannot hold because there is no center, because the other side is the enemy, is crazy and dishonest and all interchangeable and we don't listen to them.

When it comes to studying the effects of radiation I try to give weight to what physicists and engineers have to say over the opinions of gadget salesman and crystal therapy gurus. When it comes to slaughter, I try not to start with a conclusion, a solution. I'm open to the idea that we have more than one type of violence with more than one dominant cause. I'd rather hear from real statisticians, from law enforcement experts and from objectively gathered and interpreted data and a good deal less from activists, propagandists creating collages of observation, anecdote, myth or whatever it takes to support a program that's far too fervently supported, too aggressively marketed to be scrupulous about data or its interpretation.

Say hello to the correction

2013-05-05T10:54:00.000-04:00

You know, markets are self-correcting to some extent, maybe not enough that we don't have to inspect meat or test drugs or set safety standards for airplanes, but maybe enough that dangerous products, unappealing products and frankly annoying things like the lies and propaganda and bigotry that Clear Channel produces and airs on about 600 radio stations in the US aren't doing well in the market any more. Perhaps it's that people are getting tired of the slander and quasi-treasonous, excremental and septic opinions of Rush Limbaugh, or perhaps it's the effect the boycotts, the petitions and various activist campaigns are having on investors. Booya!

Clear Channel's latest earning report shows even worse declines than they did a year ago. Sponsors are being deluged with angry invective and over 2,600 companies have pulled their ads. Say hello to the correction.

Godnuttery

2013-05-03T12:13:00.000-04:00

There are times I think that a society with too much religion is like a society that leaves loaded guns all over for kids and idiots and lunatics to create mayhem with. Our founding fathers may even have thought it was worse but certainly, following the story of a five year old killing his two year old sibling with a rifle casually left in the corner with a story of a physically more adult Godnut blaming Hitler's atrocities on the European Age of Reason has to make one take notice.

Yes, reason is the enemy if you're a Godnut. Martin Luther is famous for calling reason "that damned whore" and he may have had as much to do with the violent, murderous anti-Semitism as the Roman Catholic Church he rebelled against. It's hard for an honest person to ignore this and blame irrational and murderous hatred in countries like Germany on Vernunft or Reason. No, Reason isn't the whore, she's the one telling you to stay out of the whorehouse.

But all things are possible with God, more indeed than are possible with automatic weapons and together -- well, watch out.

For irrational Godridden harpies like Penny Nance, CEO of the Christian activist group Concerned Women for America is the kind of Rasputinoid advisor Fox News and people like to dress up and present to the public as though the stench of the charnel pit didn't pervade every phrase, the problem today is too much reason, too much science, too much empiricism lurking behind our decisions and behind the way we treat our fellow humans. Instead we ought to be concerned with what peremptory proclamations religious leaders make. You see, all's fair in the war on reason, on a rational view of morality, on science, on honesty, on decency itself because it challenges the right of that scaly ecclesiastical abomination with its bowels full of god to squat on civilization like a defecating toad.

When Charlotte, NC Mayor, Anthony Foxx proclaimed a day of reason as well as a day of prayer, he was advocating moral relativism, says Ms. Nance with dubious authority, which is what the Vermin of the Lord call any view of human behavior not taken from their ever shifting and baseless Biblico/Political cesspool.

"You know, the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust… Dark periods of history is what we arrive at when we leave God out of the equation.”

And yes, the Dark Ages and the Inquisition were a paradise compared to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, weren't they? And God's hand, God's lash, God's glowing poker, God's swords and God's executioners and torturers and immolators of the innocent. Liar, liar, liar. Democracy itself could only have arisen with the forced removal of religious authority and its racks and stakes and dungeons and exterminations, and that rise was fought with hellfire and sulfur and gunpowder. Be morally certain -- absolutely certain of this: Penny Nance is not a friend of the facts, nor is she advocating freedom or Democracy. She's not -- and by putting her cosmetically plastered, meretriciously dressed and coiffed self on the air, neither is Fox News. Penny Nance and the carrion eating fly larvae that constitute Concerned Women for America and the hidden obsceneties who finance her thrive on the corruption and dissolution of virtually all that is good and honest and humane -- all that all the generations before us have fought and died for and dreamed of creating for their descendants and my hefty vocabulary of obscenity and blasphemy aren't adequate to the kind of malediction they deserve. Odiamus te, maledicimus te, et blashpemamus Nomen tuum in seculum, et in seculum seculi, Amen.

“You know, G. K. Chesterton said that the Doctrine of Original Sin is the only one which we have 3,000 years of empirical evidence to back up. Clearly, we need faith as a component and it’s just silly for us to say otherwise.”

Empirical evidence! Picture me as the radio reporter at the Hindenburg crash: "Oh the dishonesty!" Oh the obscenity, oh the insanity. If there are 3,000 years of empirical evidence -- and there are and thousands more -- it screams that faith is the enemy and if Luther was right and reason is the greatest enemy of faith, then faith is the enemy of humanity. That means you and me and the United States of America.

Would Fox have mocked Galileo and the host of others? Presented "empirical evidence" of their base reason and objectivity? Would the Concerned Women have agreed with Luther that

"This fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." -- Martin Luther, "Works,"

Of course, and every philosopher from Bentham, Locke, Hume -- silly Einstein to ludicrous Feynman to risible Heisenberg and they still persist in pumping the proudly ignorant and imbecile audience with lies and deceptions and breathing vampirical life into some obscene homunculus made from shit and calling it 'empirical evidence.'

And yet, who was it that introduced moral relativism to antique Christianity? Didn't Paul "set us free" from absolutist moral law anyway? Wasn't it Jesus who opined about refraining from absolute judgement?

Look, these gods, these idols, these human voices chanting from hollow scrolls have slaughtered and oppressed more people than crooks and madmen with guns alone and it's time we recognize it while there's time to save our culture and way of life.

My First Rifle

2013-05-01T11:28:00.003-04:00

Years ago, I read The Adventures of Bobby Orde by Stuart Edward White. I suppose that few young people have heard of him these days, but his stories about late 19th and early 20th century America were part of my youth and have something to do with my love of the outdoors and what they used, somewhat euphemistically, to call the Pioneer Spirit: woodcraft, love of nature, the urge to preserve and enjoy it and ability to get along away from civilization and its expensive comforts.

Bobby Orde grew up near a logging camp in Michigan and winning a shooting contest brought him a Flobert Rifle; an inexpensive single shot .22 rifle made for boys as a "first rifle." Of course, this being a story and being a story from an era when that Pioneer Spirit was very much alive in a rapidly urbanizing America, Bobby learns, through owning it to be a man, to take responsibility for his actions regardless of the consequences. Indeed, learning to use a firearm responsibly is still a rite of passage in some parts. Yes, those parts still exist even if invisible to the Urban majority for whom making a fire in the rain isn't a vital skill.

People still collect the Flobert, cheap thing though it was when new and they still spruce up and restore the Ithaca 49; First Rifle to a subsequent generation. I bought one in 1963 for 18 bucks at a Hamilton, New York hardware store. Those manufacturers are gone and too many kids are too absorbed in iPods and X boxes and cellular phones today to venture out into the real world of planet Earth -- but not all of them. Some still have nostalgic parents, some families live to hunt and fish and enjoy the wilderness and still try to instill that outdoorsman's "Pioneer Spirit" in their kids. A good part of our largest state feed their families with a rifle. Watch Swamp People and see where your alligator Guccis come from.

So anyway, let me introduce you to Crickett rifles -- they're meant for kids, but smaller adults buy them. They even come in pink, for the girls. "My First Rifle" reads the website. For people in the vast empty spaces of America and yes they still exist, that first rifle is still an experience, just like the first bicycle, the first fishing pole, the first car and to each of those there is a time and a place. Cumberland County may be the place, but the time is hardly appropriate for a 4 year old. A year after being given a Crickett rifle, he shot his two year old sister with it. She died soon afterward.

The family didn't know the gun was loaded, said the Lexington Herald-Leader Perhaps you've heard that said before. They were used to leaving it in the corner.

“Just one of those crazy accidents,” said the Cumberland County Coroner. I call it reckless endangerment. I call it involuntary manslaughter. I call it the end of a family, the beginning of a lifetime of shame and anguish. This isn't the story of someone learning to take responsibility, it's the story of stupidity, irresponsibility and criminal negligence. The shooting will be treated as "an accident" but it wasn't. Leaving a loaded, unlocked gun where a toddler can get it is criminal in many states and so it should be. Having guns in a house where there are children is questionable, even when they are locked up. Not teaching your kid never to aim a gun at anyone, is unforgivable -- teaching them to never assume it's unloaded, never to pick it up and hold it anywhere but at a shooting range with adult supervision. . . Well I don't have to continue, and how much can you rely on a 4 or 5 year old to understand the danger anyway?

Background checks aren't going to prevent things like this, nor waiting periods nor registration nor magazine restrictions. Kids getting at legally owned family guns have been the cause of recent acts of mayhem at Columbine and Sandy Hook and elsewhere. The only way these artifacts, these manifestations of stupidity can be addressed is through education or elimination. There is no way to eliminate guns and there is no responsible agency to promote education, now that the NRA has become an anti-government militia.

So perhaps the people who talk about individual responsibility Vs. Government regulation can come up with an answer since teaching such things is what My First Rifle is all about?

Death in Dhaka

2013-04-25T12:51:00.001-04:00

Bangladesh. If you wear clothes, you probably own some that were made there and you probably paid a whole hell of a lot less for them than had they been made in the US and odds are you have more than one change of clothes too. You probably don't spend much time feeling bad that the people who made them can't afford them and are far more likely to die of poverty and disease than collect a pension or social security or Medicare. Whose fault is that anyway?

Odds are as well that you won't even know about and aren't likely to be in a state of shock and obsessive mourning -- won't be seeking healing and closure or holding moments of silent prayer -- if you're an American, that is. Americans have time for that sort of thing: time to run marathons, time to feel sorry for themselves if a few are killed by something other than an industrial accident, time to feel oppressed by taxes.

We'll pretty much ignore the building collapse that killed at least 244 in Bangladesh and we'll pretty much ignore the accident in Texas too, because to question the wisdom or more importantly the expense to industry of safety standards or building codes or zoning, just isn't the sort of thing we devoted Capitalists like to do. We're not Muslims, after all.

Kill me once, shame on you

2013-04-24T10:31:00.001-04:00

Kill me twice?

What do you say about a "religious" couple who have so much faith that they let their 2 year old die in 2009 because they thought prayer was making him better and again letting their 8 month old die from diarrhea last week because, you guessed it, the power of prayer was better than Immodium or God forbid, a trip to the pediatrician.

Well, I won't tell you what I'd say, I'll say it. Maybe it's true that Gods don't kill people -- people kill people, but maybe it's also true that faith is dangerous and maybe faith kills and maybe it kills all the more because we worship faith itself and give special status to people who believe in such dangerous superstitions instead of charging them with manslaughter.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible have been teachers in and members of the First Century Gospel Church in Philadelphia, PA where 'faith healing' is promoted. A church that receives taxpayer support for convincing people to let their children die rather than receive medical attention. First Century indeed. In the 21st, it's unacceptable, it's shameful, it's ignorant, it's murder. Yes, I believe in religious freedom, but not in the freedom to inflict dangerous superstitions on other people, particularly minor children. I fully support the freedom of people like the Schaibles to jump off cliffs to prove that faith will support them as long as no one is forced to hold hands with them in the attempt.

Too bad you can't make people blow into a meter and determine their faith level, but any level that allows children to die to prove their parents' devotion to asking gods for favors rather than doing what can easily save their lives -- is too damn much.

Oh, and by the way, if this is a "Christian Nation" why aren't we indicting the Federal Government? Why not the First Century Gospel Church? Why not Jesus as a co-conspirator, an accessory before and after the fact? If he could have acted and didn't -- if in fact he exists, isn't he guilty too?

If you're going to give me some crap about 'Heaven' and God's 'mysterious' ways, or God giving us free will, don't bother to blow into the Faith-O-Meter. You're already proved how full of it you are

Children of an Angry God

2013-04-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

O lieber gott sei doch nicht so böse.

-P.D.Q. Bach-

It seems to be that Tamerlan Tsarnaev underwent some sort of epiphany not long ago, after which he became withdrawn, dressed more modestly, began to talk about his deep faith and started assembling bombs.

“Isn’t the takeaway here,” asked Bill Maher, talking about the Boston Marathon bombing, “that there are many bad things that can happen in the world, for many bad reasons, but the winner and still champ is religion?”

It's an old and often asked question and defenders of belief in the abstract and defenders of specific beliefs all have a well developed defense and a lot of practice using it -- but still. In my experience it boils down to: it feels good, it comforts people, it offers hope. So do lies, palliative fictions Ponzi schemes, dating services and of course drugs. Don't get me wrong, this isn't an attack on religion or religions as tools for making life easier, for promoting good behavior, it's an attack on the human species and its innate ability to lie and rationalize and use most anything as a tool for justifying whatever purpose or desire it needs to defend, no matter how heinous, hideous, horrifying. Religion is no better and no worse than those who use it, defend it, promote it. It's just a powerful and an unstable tool whether handled by professionals or tried at home.

Perhaps it's true that good people espouse good beliefs, envision good gods who manifest love and compassion and at worst have good reasons for allowing the pain, sorrow, suffering, misery, grief and random horrors of life. It's different for the children of angry Gods; the gods who drown worlds, advocate the extermination of whole peoples, condone slavery and conquest and oppression and sometimes play games with people's lives for their own amusement. It's different for Gods who promise eternal punishments of unendurable pain simply for disobeying arbitrary rules, having stray thoughts -- unimaginable horrors of destruction for people who simply don't believe impossible, absurd and demonstrably untrue assertions about reality and the universe.

I'm not talking about Kali or Isis, Krishna or Asherach or Enpu or Jesus Christ alone. I'm talking about your god, whether you call him El Shadai or Yaveh, the Holy Trinity or any of the 99 names of Allah, the merciful and compassionate. He's no better than you are when it comes to what you do in his or her or their names. Angry people have angry gods and people with angry gods are prone to violence and the mental illnesses found in violent people.

A scientific study published in the April edition of Journal of Religion & Health finds, according to the author, that:

". . for those who think God is angry and preparing punishments for sinners, “ that belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms.”

Symptoms like like social dysfunction, paranoia, obsession and compulsion -- and perhaps I might suggest misogyny, homophobia, bigotry and racism as well as the desire to be God's instrument of punishment on innocent bystanders on a Boston street. Is it a paradox that the Gods most desirous of acting our their wrath need the most help from mortals in doing it? Not if you perceive that angry people need angry Gods to justify their angry and injust acts.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote 150 years ago that

"The first duty of man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience. For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature, and we do not depend at all upon his authority. We arrive at knowledge in spite of him, at comfort in spite of him, at society in spite of him; every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity."

The hostility of God, I take to be self-evident, both from the confected selection of descriptions in artifacts we call the 'Scriptures' wherein whole populations are exterminated for things that history assures us are no more often punished than random chance would provide for and for the endless unpunished horrors human life has always endured.

Yahveh famously mocks the humble, respectful piety of Job, expressing nothing whatever resembling compassion for the family he murdered just to provoke him. "God is evil" concluded Proudhon and if it weren't that God was a human creation, I would have to agree. Is there any way to hunt the idea of God the Avenger out of religion without hunting him out entirely? Gods who punish evil, gods who punish thoughts about sex, gods who punish ham and cheese sandwiches or cotton threads in linen shirts. They outnumber secular teachers like the Guanyin or Shakyamuni the Buddha. The Bible is replete with horrible aspects of that supposedly loving God. Perhaps we can't handle Gods as much as we love or even need them.

Man is evil. That's what I take from Proudhon, what I take from history. Nothing else apparent in existence but Man is capable of evil, nor even able to comprehend the meaning. God is a weapon. I see this as equally self-evident. Do we allow anyone to have such weapons without background checks? Angry, insane, tortured, alienated even sociopathic people? We do. In fact we prescribe it, advocate it even demand it. We can't help it, gods are in our nature and have been since we were able to communicate; able to form words in our heads to attribute to them. Perhaps they will always be there tempting us, threatening us, making us guilty and afraid and unworthy --- unless. . .

" For God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood; God is tyranny and misery; God is evil" says Proudhon.

There is no God but God in man, I answer

The rocky nook with hilltops three/Looked eastward from the farms

2013-04-21T21:02:00.000-04:00

So, what is our takeaway from the Boston bombing? Three people were killed, and over 170 people were injured. What should we do about it?

Well, Senator Lindsey Graham (belle of the ball and well-known Scarlett O'Hara impersonator) believes we should take away the rights of American citizens, skip having a trial entirely, and pull out the whips and cattle-prods.

Wonkette published a list of people who they suggested should eat a bag of dicks on the subject. But I'm pretty sure Lindsey has dreams like that, and I'm not in the business of making him happy.

Over on the openly-insane side of the argument, we have Alex Jones of the conspiracy-theory site infowars.com saying that the Obama administration staged the whole thing in order to establish martial law and take away our rights. (On the other hand, a blogger at Forward Progressives makes an equally persuasive argument that Alex Jones’ desire for farm animals fuels his distrust for the government.)

Jones wasn't the only conspiracy theorist to go completely bugnuts over this whole thing. There was just too much misinformation out there for their tiny little brains to process. For one thing, the media certainly failed to do anything except look like incompetent idiots (here's a visual representation of who said what and when, if you're curious.) The most egregious lies, of course, came from publications owned by Rupert Murdoch: the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Fox "News" Channel.

Easily the worst of those three was the tabloid NY Post, who decided to devote their front page to two bystanders who the Post implied were the bombers. Because, hey, they had dark skin, right?

One of them, a high-school track star, turned himself in to the police because he didn't want to get attacked by people who still believe that the NY Post covers the news.

Social media wasn't much help - Twitter and police scanners allowed the innocent people to end up smeared as "suspects," or sometimes, to create people who didn't exist.

Meanwhile, at 2:14am Eastern, an official on the police scanner said, "Last name: Mulugeta, M-U-L-U-G-E-T-A, M as in Mike, Mulugeta." And thus was born the newest suspect in the case: Mike Mulugeta. It doesn't appear that Mulugeta, whoever he or she is, has a first name of Mike. And yet that name, "Mike Mulugeta," was about to become notorious.

One of the things that spurred many a paranoid rant, of course, was the fact that a Saudi man was (or wasn't) taken into custody (or to a hospital, or escaped) after being seen planting a bomb (or running from the scene, or acting suspticiously), and then was released (or disappeared, or was taken up by the alien mothership).

Yes, "facts" became remarkably fluid over the course of last week.

What basically happened was a simple combination of paranoia and racism.

A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn't alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in "a startling show of force," as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a "phalanx" of officers and agents and two K9 units...

Why the search, the interrogation, the dogs, the bomb squad, and the injured man's name tweeted out, attached to the word "suspect"? After the bombs went off, people were running in every direction—so was the young man. Many, like him, were wounded; many of them were saved by the unflinching kindness of strangers, who carried them or stopped the bleeding with their own hands and improvised tourniquets....

In the midst of that, according to a CBS News report, a bystander saw the young man running, badly hurt, rushed to him, and then “tackled him,” bringing him down. People thought he looked suspicious.

What made them suspect him? He was running — so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb — as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead — a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops.

He was cleared by the authorities. But not by social media. And he has now become another puzzle piece for the paranoid to obsess about.

And our right-wing media continues to fan the fear. We have columnists ranting in national outlets that this attack (which, as I mentioned above, killed 3 people and injured 170) was literally worse than 9/11, or the Oklahoma City bombing, or any attack ever, all the way back to the Great Flood!

Huh. If you think about it, the Biblical Flood was just another mass killing. What does that make God?... It is the Old Testament, so it could be argued that He was Middle Eastern...

Sorry. Seem to have gone off on a tangent, there...

So, what should we take away from this experience? Well, while there were more injured, there were less people killed than there were at Sandy Hook. We should probably react to this tragedy just the same way we did to that one. Just as much should get done because of this, as will get done because of that.

And maybe, just maybe, the media can get its head out of its ass, and go back to reporting facts, instead of rushing to get something (anything!) out there to the public, and to be first!

Somehow, I doubt that any of this will be the case. But we can hope.

Liars Can Figure

2013-04-21T18:31:00.000-04:00

The last half of the old saying, "figures don't lie, but liars can figure." I'm referring to what is by far the most important story to have surfaced in the last couple of weeks, the tale of a paper written by two Harvard trained economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

This paper, called Growth in a time of Debt, purported to show that, when a nation's debt exceeded 90% of its annual GDP, a tipping point was reached which crushed economic growth. It has been constantly quoted and hailed far and wide by proponents of the miserable "austerity" policies which have nearly destroyed the European economy, and which continue to damage our own.

It now turns out that this paper contained a number of serious errors, the most comic of which (if it wasn't so catastrophic) was a simple Excel coding error that "accidentally" left out the data of several of the most well-off countries. Including that data, the conclusion of the paper is totally negated. Thus it may be very fairly said that a large part of the suffering forced upon the people of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and indeed here, is the result of what can at best be considered a mistake which anyone who uses Excel should be able to spot quickly.

I am not an economist. I tried to find a way to explain the whole thing quickly, but as you might anticipate, I was easily bested by Paul Krugman, who is beginning to seem like the only sane voice in the whole mainstrteam press:

"In fact, Reinhart-Rogoff quickly achieved almost sacred status among self-proclaimed guardians of fiscal responsibility; their tipping-point claim was treated not as a disputed hypothesis but as unquestioned fact.

...the truth is that Reinhart-Rogoff faced substantial criticism from the start, and the controversy grew over time. As soon as the paper was released, many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth. It could just as easily be the other way around, with poor economic performance leading to high debt. Indeed, that’s obviously the case for Japan, which went deep into debt only after its growth collapsed in the early 1990s.

Other researchers, using seemingly comparable data on debt and growth, couldn’t replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results."

I occasionally recommend that your read some article- I plead with you to read all of this one, as it reveals the utter bankruptcy of the endless campaign by the rich and powerful to restructure the whole world for their sole benefit.

Krugman, of course, never gets to the question of motive. As a civilized individual he is content to let this whole incident pass as a tragic mistake. Green Eagle has no such brake on his behavior, so he will take up the question with a few comments about Carmen Reinhart.

Before continuing, however, I need to turn to another subject: that of Peter G. Peterson. I was surprised a couple of days ago to discover that my wife had never heard of him, and if she hadn't, I suspect most other people haven't either. Here's some information from an article in the Los Angeles Times:

"Who's the most influential billionaire business figure in national politics?

If you answered one of the Koch brothers (Charles or David) or George Soros, you're wearing your partisan blinders. The former are known for their devotion to conservative causes, the latter to liberal. In either case, you're wrong.

The most influential billionaire in America is Peter G. Peterson. The son of Greek immigrants, Peterson, 86, served as Commerce secretary under President Nixon, then became chairman and chief executive of Lehman Bros. Subsequently, he made his big money as co-founder of the Wall Street private equity firm Blackstone Group.

Peterson doesn't attract venom from the left like the Koch family or bile from the right like Soros. In Washington, he's treated with sedulous respect as a serious thinker about public policy willing to support earnest public discussion with cold cash. His money backs a large number of think tanks across the political spectrum...Peterson's views are subtly infiltrating the Washington debate — which is why Americans should start getting worried about him."

Peterson is the number one proponent of "austerity" proposals in the United States. And let me say that I put that word in quotation marks, because it always turns out to mean austerity for you and me, but more money for people like Peter G. Peterson.

Now, why the detour to discuss Peterson? Well, it turns out that, in 2010, a few months after publishing this paper,

"Carmen Reinhart, the University of Maryland professor who has studied eight centuries of financial crises, was named a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Washington-based nonprofit said."

But of course, nothing to be seen here. You can be positive that, with this "appointment" Reinhart's income increased vastly, but of course that could not possibly suggest that there is anything deliberate in her having produced a fallacious piece of academic "research" which so fully supported the positions of her future employer. And just to add insult to injury, we learn:

"Her husband, Vincent Reinhart, is a former monetary- affairs director at the Federal Reserve and now resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute"

The American Enterprise Institute- possibly the biggest corporate lie factory in the United States.

So, the question remains, cheesy, high school grade error, or deliberate lie fabricated to delude the nations of the world into following a ruinous economic policy? Unfortunately, whichever is true, the results are likely to remain the same. I'll give Krugman the last word:

"So will toppling Reinhart-Rogoff from its pedestal change anything? I’d like to think so. But I predict that the usual suspects will just find another dubious piece of economic analysis to canonize, and the depression will go on and on."

Mirandize this!

2013-04-21T11:26:00.000-04:00

Why are we supposed to be "terrorized" by the one in a hundred million chance of being blown up by cookware in the streets when we have black-booted, goose-stepping Republican goons insisting that the rights and liberties guaranteed by the US Constitution don't apply any time they don't think they should? What terrifies me is not the bang in Boston but the whimper of cowards demanding that people can arbitrarily be deprived of their innate and inalienable rights by semantic chicanery and that we justify it by fear. Why is the serial killer, the arsonist, the murderous Christian leader not a terrorist and so exempt from the protection of the law we fraudulently flaunt as our American birthright? Because we don't like their religion? Because they have 'foreign' names? Ask the Republicans. Ask them why they're again demonstrating that the Constitution is a quaint anachronism and an impediment to the lustful needs of absolute power -- or 'Homeland Security' as they like to call it. Ask them why a massacre in Boston justifies the dismemberment of the Constitution that grew out of a previous one.

There is no chance in hell that whether or not young Mr. Tsarnaev talks to the FBI truthfully or not at all, has anything to do with whether or not he is ritually told he has the right to keep quiet, is responsible for what he says and has the right to legal counsel. He has those rights and we all have the guarantee of those rights. He already knows it and he's already demonstrated the personal qualities that prove he doesn't have a hell of a lot of respect for the USA or its laws and restraints anyway. If he can be forced to incriminate himself, if he can be stripped of all the rights we used to guarantee, we thereby incriminate ourselves as liars, hypocrites and barbarians unworthy of being called a free nation.

We have no idea whether he was in any condition to answer questions when apprehended or whether or not any were asked. We know that the request to surrender was first answered with a fusillade which is prima facie evidence of a mood of non-compliance. Police weren't required to "Mirandize" him before asking him to give up or asking him if he had explosives or if the boat was booby trapped or if he had accomplices at large or anything similar and at present he's sedated and intubated and the question of further questioning is moot. Nothing he might say or might have said, is needed to convict him.

When the Senators from the Great State of Chickenshit insist that they have or someone has the power to ignore the US Constitution with some peremptory declaration that a criminal is an "enemy combatant" when there is no declared state of war and no entity at war with us that the criminal belongs to or acted in concert with, it's possible they are so stupid -- Republican Stupid -- that they haven't thought it out, but far more likely that they're still their old anti-American, Democracy hating, liberty fearing bastard selves -- and cowards, of course. Are they really afraid that he will be released for lack of evidence, exonerated by some court just because he has a public defender? Of course not. It's not about bombs, it's about Obama. It's about accusing Obama of being a terrorist sympathizer and crypto-jihadist for the benefit of the fearful, the bigoted, the ignorant, the racist, the demented, delusional and dimwitted: the Republican Base, or as one says in Arabic -- Al Qaeda.

The stain remains on the American escutcheon from having sent American citizens to the gallows using a secret military tribunal in 1865, but I guess there's plenty more room for bloody fingerprints in the opinions of Senators McCain and Graham, who by fighting against the foundations of our nation are in my opinion true Enemy Combatants, subject to indefinite imprisonment without charge or access to due process and of course torture for the crime of having declared war on our country and the laws they have sworn to uphold.

If we lose the protection of the law simply because some political demagogue can strip you of it then we have lost the moral basis of the American revolution and the country should declare it's mistake and pledge its allegiance to the Crown of England which may long since have surpassed us in its concept and guarantee of justice anyway.

9/11 didn't change a goddamn thing. 9/11 was an excuse our internal enemies have been waiting for since the beginning.

Et Tu?

2013-04-20T09:02:00.001-04:00

I had MSNBC on most of yesterday. I can't stand the sight of Wolf the Weasel and what other choice is possible?

I'm disappointed. When the evening network news came on I began to learn facts the cable guys never mentioned, That the FBI had investigated these boys, for instance and they managed to give us the facts without the constant theme of "you can see that it's been worth it to give up our privacy." Cowards! Is this what it means to be a Liberal today? Sacrificing freedom for some imagined and miniscule increase in safety?

Needless to say, I don't think so. I don't think this gruesome incident is anywhere near the calamity it's being made out to be. It's no worse than a good part of the world has to put up with all the time and that it's being made out to be something on the order of WW III it's only because giving up our privacy is only a taste of what some would have us give up. The Right, predictably, is growling about Miranda rights because we can't go around thinking that this crime is a crime and a US citizen is entitled to civil rights if he's motivated by some sick religious doctrine that isn't Christian. Is this pathetic teenage loser an "enemy combatant" while Tim McVeigh, David Koresh and Jim Jones weren't?

It has to be a WAR because then all's fair therein including making a mockery of our Bill of Rights. It has to be a war so that they can find yet another reason to attack Obama as a weakling, or perhaps a clandestine Muslim for trying to fulfill his oath to preserve and defend the same Constitution the Republicans have seen as a stumbling block for years.

Of course the NBC reporter who told us last night that we'd just witnessed "the greatest manhunt in American history" needs to go back to school if indeed he's ever attended or at least read up on Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Jesse James and of course John Wilkes Booth, but such idiocy is all part of the effort to make everything seem like a catastrophe and every crime an apocalypse.

I have to be impressed however with Boston and Massachusetts law enforcement, both for their efficiency and their restraint. Supporters of the "government can't do anything right" battle cry should take this opportunity to shut the hell up.

Silent Running

2013-04-17T09:54:00.000-04:00

The weeping and wailing industry is almost as quick to react to certain events as the paramedics are, and this morning's paper has a local runner's group holding a silent run in the attempt to feel relevant or perhaps to express ire that anyone would interfere with one of America's sacred sports. Yes, I'm sounding cynical here, but it's not because I'm callous with regard to the loss of life and all the injuries, it's just that in recent decades, the public reaction to high profile death has been so orchestrated and so formulaic that it cheapens the moment and distracts us from seeing such things in context. I'm not interested in crying, I don't subscribe to self-pity and I don't need closure or healing. I'm interested in being able to keep the kind of things that have plagued us all at least since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament from happening, as much as is possible in a free country.

Judging from other events, we'll soon be seeing piles of Teddy Bears on Boston streets and other silent runnings slowly turning our anger and willingness to learn from this event into a declining series of maudlin and sentimental exhibitions of self-pity and the lachrymose quest for 'healing.' One might forget just how rare such occurrences are in our country. One will forget what must be done to keep things that way. Our record, at least since the Oklahoma City bombing and the events of 2001, to thwart bombing attempts has been pretty good and the mawkish mourning and stuffed animal social club hasn't played much of a part.

According to a CNN.com editorial, only one successful bombing in America has been carried out since 9/11/01 -- by a White Supremacist. In the decade before that there were many, not the least of which were the killing of 168 in Oklahoma City, the 1998 Olympic bombing in Atlanta and the 1993 World Trade garage bomb which killed 6. I don't include the horror of the 'Branch Davidian' holocaust, where David Koresh and his devout men of valor as he called them burned his followers to death.

What can we learn from the recent past? That such events are pretty rare in America and getting more so as compared with Europe -- that our domestic politics of anger and violence is costly, for another. 380 people have been indicted on terrorism-related charges in the United States between September 11, 2001 and December 31 2012 and of those 207 have been so-called 'jihadists' or Muslim extremists, but non-Muslim perpetrators, 80% of whom have been American "conservatives" have killed 29 versus 17 by Muslims. All this and more from a Syracuse University study.

But we've obviously gotten better. We're catching nearly all the bombers and poisoners before they can act. We'll never achieve perfect safety, not even if we achieve a perfect police state, but we'll come closer if we pay more attention to our own potential terrorists all across the political and religious spectrum and spend less time wallowing in stylized and choreographed sorrow.

Is it time to notice just how much of our grossly exaggerated fear of mad bombers should be directed toward the American Right? How much is fueled by Rush and Fox and Coulter and Bachmann and yes, the holy hellfire Christian Conservatives?

The Mouth of The Lord

2013-04-16T13:41:00.002-04:00

The 'reverend' Phelps is at it again, twittering that God Bombed Boston for the same reason God does most of the horrible things he does like letting millions of children die miserably and needlessly and live miserably and hopelessly all over the world -- because they aren't actively persecuting gay people. So busy is the God of Rage and so obsessed with regulating love and sex that he's never had the time to do anything else. You'll notice that he never blew up Sobibor or Auschwitz or wasted his time with chastising the murderers of millions of children in Africa and Asia and yes, even Europe. In fact he must have blown the budget on his flood since he hasn't done shit that looks anything like divine retribution since -- except for the odd bombing or two -- and a lot of threats.

No, what God, or at least Deus ex Wesboro, is about is -- you should pardon the term -- "fags." God just hates 'em, the way Indiana Jones hates snakes or the way I hate preachers. He can't really do much about it though, whether he's in the form of the old man or his son who's also himself or that bird that crept in sometime in the 4th century when they left the window open, other than to use an improvised explosive device against people who can hardly be blamed for not persecuting anyone. Little kids, for instance.

Persecuting gay people isn't something God is good at doing all by himself actually. He needs kids and grown ups with hate in their hearts and not much in their heads. Gay people or doctors who perform abortions or as the commandments stress: abominable people who eat cheeseburgers or hate any of the 613 commandments. The best he can do is kill one or two here or there who have no connection to his weird dislikes and kids are always best. No, those flood days are over for good what with the economy as it is.

Typical of helpless tyrants, what God does best is to make gruesome threats and Phelps quotes Leviticus 26:15-16 where the anonymous author speaking for his version of God, tells anyone who doesn't like all those psychotic prohibitions and commandments:

"I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it."

He quotes the Prophet Micah as saying "Hear ye the Rod and who hath appointed it"

So what I put together from this strange choice of divine inspiration is that we should be concerned with our rods and that our enemies will eat them. You know, I suspect and I suspect that you suspect that Phelps is a bit overly concerned with rods and those who eat what issues from them.

Too bad for him and good for us, that celestial ventriloquist's dummy only speaks with our voice and only says what each of us thinks he does. For my part, I see Phelps' lips moving with desire when God talks about Rods and Staffs and the seed thereof and as the Old man of the Sky happens to be sitting on my knee at the moment, I seem to hear him saying "SUCK IT PHELPS -- YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO."

Stupid

2013-04-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

Remember when talking down the economy was "hating America?" Remember when Liberals were badmouthing the market because they wanted to destroy America? Now I don't think I have any special kind of memory or that I'm the most well informed or well read person on Earth but I want to know how the hell we remember only what's convenient or what we're told to remember in order to support our political pieties. I remember this crap. I remember 8 years of it because I was predicting a collapse from the beginning of that misbegotten administration and predicting the loss of civil rights and Goddamn it, I was right. They were wrong. They were lying like Limbaugh. Why don't you remember? Do you even remember Bush?

Yeah, right, Obama's private army and I'm sure they all wear "jack boots" whatever the hell those are. Remember when George W. Bush decided to use private troops at a huge expense because the American military had too many rules against things like killing civilians and torturing prisoners? Oh, you don't? Do you remember when it was anti-American even to mention that people were getting killed on the news? Sure, watch the 'shocking video' while you suck down another Budweiser, you sick, moronic loser. Feel sorry for yourself because you have to pay for all those sluts to have sex and all those slackers to get foodstamps while the liberals take your guns so that the illegal aliens can rob you and rape our daughters ( unless they're unconscious in which case it's OK)

My mailbox is full every morning with apocalyptic economic predictions that somehow don't seem to provoke the offended responses from "conservatives" who not long ago told us, as it was happening, that the markets were sound and robust and that borrow like there's no tomorrow policies would require some payment to the piper and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were more than we could afford if we didn't raise taxes back to where they were in our most prosperous years. Oh, but paying off the interest on that bastard's debts is "reckless spending."

Well I guess it's different now and I guess these lying vermin don't hate America, they don't hate freedom -- they don't care as long as they can steal it all from us and from what I hear and overhear every day, they certainly have been successful. America just eats it up like a pig eats it's own shit. Oh, yes, you think Obama stole everything in Fort Knox and is going to call down an airstrike from flying saucers and take everything from you and give it to the "takers" because I hate to say it, we're not just an ignorant nation, we're fucking crazy pigs and destined to become somebody elses bacon.

Rape, and a Little Reality

2013-04-14T22:08:00.000-04:00

So, another sad example of male privilege and victim-blaming came to light last week, when Canadian teen Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself after the RCMP decided that it didn't have enough to act on, and closed the case. Despite one of the four boys having circulated evidence of him committing the crime (which also constitutes child pornography, incidentally). Despite the fact that it took hacker group Anonymous about two hours to find the names of the four boys involved.

Backed against a wall, the RCMP agreed to reopen the case. So, bravo, Anonymous.

This case is remarkably similar to the Steubenville, Ohio rape case, in which two teens took advantage of a drunk underage girl to abuse her when she couldn't fight back. In both cases, the victim was blamed for being a slut, when they were both unconscious (or all but) at the time. In both cases, the police tried to cover it up, and members of Anonymous wouldn't let them.

The Far Right (and some other idiots) practically dryhumped the Steubenville story, trying to empathize with the rapists and saying it was the victim's fault (because, after all, all men rape - they can't help themselves, right?).

Easily the weirdest reaction, though, came from a libertarian college professor, who put it this way:

Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?...

As long as I’m safely unconscious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?

Now, I'm not going to try to refute his argument directly (if you aren't sociopathic, the answer should be obvious). What I'm going to point out is this:

A. Following that logic out to its obvious conclusion, there is no private possession of any item. This is more extensive than anything ever suggested by any follower of communism or socialism.

By this reasoning, nobody should ever be allowed to take their keys with them after they drive to work; while you're in your office, other people should be allowed to use your car. After all, if they refill the gas and return it before you leave for the day, there's no problem, right?

Nor can you lock your door: people should be allowed to have parties in your house while you aren't there, shouldn't they? As long as they clean up after themselves, no harm, no foul, right?

(Let's just pretend that there's no such thing as "depreciation" in the tax code: these are his thought experiments, not mine.)

B. Would you like to guess why the Right Wing is losing the idiotically-named "War on Women"? It's fascinating how this argument joins up with the abortion question: it's all the same. Dr Landsburg doesn't expand on his rape-apology in the way that I just did, because that's where it breaks down. In his view, not only is a woman's body just property (and not property that she controls, by the way), but it isn't even as important as his house, or his car. She's just there to be used by other people.

This is why the Right Wing is roughly as popular as chlamydia in most polls.

We are not alone

2013-04-14T08:52:00.002-04:00

We're going to have to get used to drones. They're available everywhere and getting better and cheaper as electronic toys do. HD TV cameras can be added that are now tiny and lightweight and cheap and can even see in the dark

I hope we don't have to get used to the constant surveillance they make possible and it's not just the invasion of our private spaces by government agencies I'm alarmed about. Various people and groups of people with all kinds of ideas about what you're doing, aren't doing and should be doing are now able to watch and record from hundreds of feet above wherever you are.

PETA, one of those well-intentioned groups whose sentimentally extremist views about things like the personhood and civil rights of insects isn't the kind of organization I want watching me if I'm out in the woods or down at the dock fishing seeing as for them, fish are sensitive and loving and self aware creatures and catching them is murder. But hunters are evil too as are those with leather shoes or eating sushi and PETA intends to "monitor those who are out in the woods with death on their minds," according to a press release. Those feral hogs we have here need to be protected against my violating their civil rights as well, and what about the local butcher shops! Death on their minds! But according to the FAA, as long as you fly your Hammacher Schlemmer drone below 400 feet, there's no problem with areal reconnaissance. For extremists, kooks, voyeurs and fanatics, it's a whole new day.

"The average person has no worries" is the kind of 'reassurance' one expects from advocates of random and warrantless stops and searches. Steve Hindi, president of yet another animal rights group called Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, or SHARK, assures us we have nothing to fear from him unless you have death on your mind. He likes to watch bird hunters and post video on line and sending links to law enforcement. Perhaps the average hunter has no worries but what looks like one thing may look like another thing from a TV camera from 40 stories in the air and after all, Steve doesn't want you hunting in the first place you evil carnivore Bambi murderer you.

Of course flying your drone a few hundred feet above people with shotguns has it's hazards. Drones have suffered mysterious failures and there's a lot of giggling going on in the bird shooting community. Might be some mirth in my back yard as well should there be an unidentified flying object hovering over my swimming pool, but I'm not sure the future doesn't hold endless drones over our heads and perhaps under our feet making sure we don't have aces up our sleeves or that we're not walking on the grass or filling out our golf score cards improperly or actually are playing cards with the guys like we said. But let he who is without sin not worry, right?

Drones are the future. Insurance companies are already 'offering' gadgets that record how fast you drive -- to save you money of course, but also to deny claims because you might have been observed at 5 over the limit. Red light cameras don't seem to reduce collisions at intersections and may actually be causing more, but hey, you have nothing to fear in our brave new world where you have so many big brothers watching our for you.