What Gives Capitalism A Bad Name

In the 30s and 40s, American companies (GM, Ford, Coke, IBM, etc) were doing a lot of business with the Nazis in Germany.

One example of the truly shitty things that some of these assholes did was GM lobbying hard in Washington against Lend Lease while supplying Germany the technology to help them invade and conquer their neighbors.

Elon Musk has entered the chat.

Russia Deploying Starlink in Ukraine—Reports

Ukrainian soldiers say Russia's military have begun using Elon Musk's Starlink satellite communications network in Ukraine, according to a journalist in the country.

"The military writes that the occupiers have Starlink with licensed accounts," Andriy Tsaplienko, a Ukrainian journalist, said on his Telegram channel, sharing a screenshot of two posts on X, formerly Twitter, that he says are from two Ukrainian soldiers.

"They began to deliver Starlink en masse, via Dubai, accounts are activated, they work in the occupied territories," one of the soldiers with the X handle @_Serhij_ wrote, referring to the four regions of Ukraine that were illegally annexed by Russia in the fall of 2022—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Another X user, @cpt_mitchell, said Ukrainian soldiers "can already see their Starlinks," adding: "I honestly thought they would do it sooner."

Starlink is operated by Musk's aerospace company SpaceX.

Russian news outlets also report that Starlink satellite communications systems are now being sold via multiple Russian online stores, supplied via an intermediary in Dubai. The systems are being sold to the Russian volunteer units for use in the annexed regions of Ukraine, according to the local publications.

Newsweek has contacted SpaceX for comment by email. There is no evidence to suggest that Musk or SpaceX are aware of, or are responsible for, the reported issue.

Musk's SpaceX deployed its Starlink satellites to help provide Kyiv with internet service in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Musk has said that the satellite-internet system provides Ukraine with a "major battlefield advantage."

In June 2023, Starlink obtained a Department of Defense contract to buy those satellite services for Ukraine. Musk's company has so far privately funded a network of nearly 4,000 satellites to be launched into low-Earth orbit. Kyiv's troops use it for battlefield communications in the war with Russia.

While the Starlink network doesn't work in Russia, it is now able to be used in the four annexed regions and in Crimea, which Putin annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian news outlet ComNews reported.

"Merchants do not hide the fact that Starlink kits are addressed to participants [of the war] and are bought up by them in large quantities," the publication reported.

The news outlet cited Russian volunteers in the war, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They said that there are many Starlink kits being used by the Moscow's troops on the battlefield in Ukraine.

"The reasons for use are convenience, mobility and security," one volunteer said.

A source in the satellite communications market, familiar with the situation, told ComNews that Starlink systems are being delivered in bulk to Russia, and named Dubai as the location for the wholesale purchase of the equipment.

"Before being imported into Russia, terminals are registered under various foreign companies (Cyprus is often included), after which an account is activated under any name, often a fictitious one," the source said.

The manager of one company supplying equipment for military needs emphasized that regular units under the Russian Armed Forces are banned from using Starlink equipment, and said they are used only by volunteer units.

"If this rumor is true, supplying Starlink via intermediary in Dubai should be considered a breach of sanctions against Russia. This also raises the question if Starlink is available for the Russians in the front?" asked Pekka Kallioniemi, a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland, in a post on X.

Newsweek has contacted the Pentagon for comment by email.

Musk previously refused to allow Ukraine to use Starlink internet services to launch an attack on Crimea to avoid complicity in a "major act of war."

"There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol," he wrote in early September 2023 on X. "The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."

Once or twice every few generations,

it becomes necessary for us

to save capitalism from the capitalists.

No Good Ones

Adam Conover

We are just a tiny bit too gullible about certain things.

That Thing About Rights

IMHO, an awful lot of the shitty things happening around the world can be laid at the feet of anyone who's bought in to the bullshit notion that "government should work like a business."

Companies are dictatorships, and too many of the bean counters in charge of those companies care about little more than the monthly numbers and what color ink they see on a 12 column ledger.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Human rights and democracy eroding worldwide, U.S. finds

Respect for human rights and democratic norms eroded around the world in 2021, as repressive states increasingly detained opponents and struck out beyond their borders at those seen posing a threat, the Biden administration said on Tuesday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken described what he called a continued “recession” in basic rights and the rule of law over the past year as he unveiled the U.S. government’s annual assessment of the global human rights situation.

“Governments are growing more brazen, reaching across borders to threaten and attack critics,” Blinken said, citing an alleged effort by Iran’s government to abduct an Iranian American journalist from New York; efforts by the Assad regime to threaten Syrians cooperating with German steps to try former regime officials; and Belarus’s diversion of a commercial flight to seize a journalist.

Blinken said the jailing of political opponents had become more common in 2021, with more than a million political prisoners detained in more than 65 countries. He singled out the imprisonment of peaceful protesters in Cuba; activists and advocates in Russia and Egypt, including Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Egyptian human rights lawyer Mohammed al-Baqr; and opposition presidential candidates in Benin.

Hubris and isolation led Vladimir Putin to misjudge Ukraine

The Biden administration has already said it believes Russian forces are committing war crimes in Ukraine. Last week, U.S. officials helped orchestrate an effort to suspend Russia from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.“In few places have the human consequences of this decline been as stark as they are in the Russian government’s brutal war on Ukraine,” he said, pointing to apparent atrocities revealed by the recent withdrawal of Russian forces from some parts of the country. “We see what this receding tide is leaving in its wake — the bodies, hands bound, left on streets; the theaters, train stations, apartment buildings reduced to rubble with civilians inside.”

The report laid out a litany of alleged abuses by both allies and rivals, including forced disappearances in Saudi Arabia and what it characterized as ongoing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims in China. It also cited reprisals by Taliban authorities in Afghanistan against members of the former government and steps to limit freedoms of women and girls, as well as alleged abuses by all parties in the conflict in Ethiopia, including government troops from Eritrea.

Because the report is focused on trends in 2021, it did not explicitly address Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. But Blinken, in remarks to reporters, said that Russian forces’ abuses had been numerous since its offensive began on Feb. 24, including alleged executions, rape and the deprivation of civilians’ access to food, water and medicine.

Here in USAmerica, we've had our fingers in some really bad shit over the years. We can't keep ducking the consequences of our own shitty behavior while expecting everybody else to be held to account.

So this next bit is kind of a big deal - and we'll see how long before the Republicans latch onto it and start screaming about how Biden hates America.

Blinken said the United States would not be spared scrutiny over its own human rights violations. Since taking office, administration officials have said they would openly acknowledge chronic problems at home, including police violence against Black Americans.

“We take seriously our responsibility to address these shortcomings, and we know that the way we do it matters,” he said.

Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, welcomed the report but said it failed to highlight the U.S. role in overseas conflicts where civilians have suffered widespread harm, including in Afghanistan and Yemen. The United States continues to provide arms and aircraft maintenance support to Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition battling Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“Always a little odd to read about other’s human rights abuses as if US had nothing to do with them. e.g. no mention of US support to Saudi [Arabia] in Yemen but the #HumanRightsReport discusses Iran support to Houthis,” she said on Twitter. “No mention of US in Afghanistan or civilian harm caused in Kabul.”

Asked about how the Biden administration would balance human rights against other American interests, and how such acts would affect American partnerships with countries with poor human rights records, Blinken said that officials sometimes chose to press foreign governments in private, and sometimes in public, including in the annual rights report.

“It doesn’t distinguish between friend and foe. We apply the same standard everywhere,” he said.

Such strains have been particularly visible in recent months between the Biden administration and key Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia as U.S. officials seek to secure increased energy output amid the war in Ukraine and Gulf officials bristle at a host of issues, including what they see as overstated criticism on human rights.

Today's Weak Tea

If you sell products and services that facilitate people getting hurt or killed, then you own some of the responsibility.

You can't duck that responsibility simply by intoning some magic phrase like, "Well gee, we didn't know some asshole was going to use it that way."

OK, you didn't know. But now you do know, and now you have to step up and do something.

Content platforms have enormous power, and power has to be closely monitored and counterbalanced.

I don't know how to do that with Spotify and Facebook et al, and nobody wants a new era of Hayes Office or Catholic League bullshit, and we sure as hell don't want official government censorship. But waiting for "the free market to fix it" is inadequate because it's totally retrospective, having always resulted in unnecessary immiseration while we diddle around fretting about the delicate sensibilities of corporations who seem incapable of understanding that killing the customers is a really bad idea.

So anyway, here's a WaPo piece (pay wall)

Spotify responds after Joni Mitchell and others join Neil Young and demand the platform remove their content

Spotify broke its silence on Sunday and announced slight changes to its policies around content concerning covid-19, after facing a week of criticism for allowing its creators — particularly podcaster Joe Rogan — to spread misinformation about the pandemic.

“You’ve had a lot of questions over the last few days about our platform policies and the lines we have drawn between what is acceptable and what is not,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a news release. “We have had rules in place for many years but admittedly, we haven’t been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly.”

That last sentence is perfect CorpSpeak

24 words that say exactly nothing.

The new changes include publicly publishing the company’s internal rules for what is allowed on the platform, “testing ways to highlight” those rules to its creators and “working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19.”

“We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users,” Ek wrote. “In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”

The controversy began last week, when rocker Neil Young posted a letter on his website demanding that his music be removed from Spotify in response to “fake information about vaccines” on the platform. He singled out Rogan, who hosts “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, as part of his issue with Spotify, writing: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Two days later, Spotify began the process of pulling Young’s music, saying in a statement that they “regret” Young’s decision “but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Days later, others began joining Young. “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify,” eight-time Grammy-winning songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote in a statement on her website on Friday. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”

Nils Lofgren, the frontman of rock band Grin and a member of both Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, wrote in a statement on Young’s website that he would “cut ties with Spotify” and urged “all musicians, artists and music lovers everywhere” to do the same. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston who hosts the “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead” podcasts on Spotify, tweeted Saturday that she “will not be releasing any podcasts until further notice,” though she did not say why. Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who have a deal to host and produce Spotify podcasts, expressed “concerns” in a statement released Sunday.

Folk rocker David Crosby, a former bandmate of Young’s, tweeted that he would remove his music from the service, but “I no longer control it or I would in support of Neil.” That’s true for many rock stars lately, who could deal a blow to the streaming service if they hadn’t sold their entire catalogues already for large sums.

Others, including Howard Stern and “The View” host Joy Behar, have argued that while they don’t agree with Rogan, they don’t think the platform should remove his podcast, equating such a move to censorship.

The resulting fallout, according to Variety, found Spotify’s market capitalization falling more than $2 billion last week.

Spotify’s newly published platform rules shed light on why Rogan — who has suggested healthy, young people shouldn’t get vaccinated; praised ivermectin, a medicine used to kill parasites in animals and humans that has no proven anti-covid benefits; and invited prominent conspiracy theorists onto his show — has not been heavily penalized.

The rules include disallowing “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health,” such as asserting that covid-19 is a hoax or “promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death.”

Rogan doesn’t quite do any of that. He often argues that he’s merely asking questions and has insisted that he’s “not anti-vax.” And he’s particularly skilled at insulating himself from criticism by arguing that he knows nothing, so he can’t tell anyone anything. “I’m not a respected source of information, even for me,” he said.

And then finally, we get Rogan's attempt to cop out completely - "Who am I? I'm nobody. People shouldn't make decisions based on anything they hear from me."

And my favorite - the classic DumFux News Defense: "I'm just asking questions - I'm not telling anyone what to do or not do - they're all free to draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions and blah blah blah."

And ultimately, of course, they're right. No one should listen to them. At all. Ever.

But people do listen, and they do make decisions according to what they've heard.

When those decisions are based on bullshit being spouted by some asshole making bank on the ignorance and gullibility of his audience, that asshole has to be held to account. Which must then lead us to devise ways of prospectively mitigating the harm done by those assholes - and their asshole audience.

eVilleMike has spoken. So let it be written. So let it be done.

Today's Factoid

Here in USAmerica Inc, there are about 560,000 homeless people. We could provide all of them with healthcare, a 1-bedroom apartment including all utilities and wi-fi - plus a monthly stipend of $1,000 for some food, clothes and a movie once in a while - solely at the expense of America's billionaires, and every one of those billionaires would still be a billionaire.

The way we're doing things is stoopid - we have to do better.

USAmerica, Inc

Wealth To Scale

Standard issue currency - a single bill - as produced by the US Bureau Of Engraving, is .0043 inches thick (1 mm), and weighs .00220462 pounds (1 gram).

• A stack of 100-dollar bills equaling a million dollars is about 3½ feet tall and weighs about 22 pounds.
• A stack of 100-dollar bills equaling a billion dollars is over 3,000 feet tall and weighs over 20,000 pounds.
• Jeff Bezos owns a stack of 100-dollar bills that stands better than 120 miles high, and weighs well over 2,000 tons.

Jeff Bezos may be insanely rich, but it is a drop in the ocean compared with the combined wealth of his peers. 

The 400 richest Americans own about $3.2 trillion, which is more than the bottom 60% of Americans.

Now try to imagine a stack of 100-dollar bills equaling 3.2 trillion dollars that reaches almost to the moon.

To the fucking moon, motherfucker.

There's no way to get the whole concept of that level of wealth to fit in my little brain all at once, so here's a website that illustrates it:

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Revenue Opportunity

Sometimes the slicing and dicing of market data gets more than a little ridiculous - although "kinky, submissive male Trump supporters with humiliation fetishes" might be quite a bit bigger cohort than I thought at first.

Anyway, there's always somebody looking to cash in on whatever little piece of shit floats by.

Daily Beast:

Groups such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump are organizing their fellow disaffected Republicans. Former CIA and NSA director General Michael Hayden put out a message that is likely to influence the national defense and intelligence communities toward Biden. And leftist groups such as Vote Trump Out are swaying their fellow progressives who can’t stand centrist Democrats—and who are leaning toward voting for a third party or not voting at all—to vote against Trump by voting for Biden.

When such a wildly diverse group of organizers, across the right and left, comes together for a common goal, we’re clearly in an unprecedented all-hands-on-deck moment. Everyone’s doing their part.

But up until recently, there’s one group of potential Biden voters who have not been the subject of voter outreach: kinky, submissive male Trump supporters with humiliation fetishes.

Now, thanks to a Las Vegas-based professional dominatrix named Empress Delfina, this once-overlooked voting bloc is covered—and may be voting Biden. By force.

She calls it “Trump Conversion Therapy.” Her ad for this service reaches out to these potential Biden voters as follows: “Here’s your chance to get berated for being the degenerate Trump supporter you are. I reverse the brainwash you’ve succumbed to that made you into a Simple Stupid Drone. By using lethal mind fucking language and making you repeat dumbass chants like your Bullshitter in Chief made you do to warp you into submission, I transfer your ownership to me for my personal gain and entertainment. Embrace that you need to be saved from being a Trump-bot. Call now to begin your Trump Conversion Therapy.”

At $1.99 a minute, business is booming.

The interview in the piece makes for some interesting prospects for how the rest of us can look for ways to break some of these people free from Cult45.

Sample:

So what happens in a Trump Conversion Therapy session?

"Maybe half the guys just want to argue. They’re not open to getting converted at all. They just call to start berating my liberal politics. And I’m like, “Hey, if you want to pay me $1.99 a minute to argue with me, go right ahead. You’re not getting anywhere with me, and I’m happy to profit off your stupidity—just like your leader did.”

Faux Nobility

Eventually, Capitalism comes down to rich people spending less time doing the actual work, and more time concocting a reasonable-sounding rationalization for being self-centered rent-seeking assholes.

Veronika Tait, PhD - Psychology Today:

Republicans and Democrats explain wealth in different ways. In a survey by Pew Research Center, participants were asked why a person is rich. The majority of Republicans said a person is rich because they worked harder, whereas most Democrats said that it was because they had advantages in life. On why a person is poor, most Republicans attributed it to a lack of effort, whereas the overwhelming majority of Democrats said it was because of circumstances beyond control. So which is it?

Recent findings show that only half of today’s 30-year-olds earn more than their parents. However, 90% of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents. Rather than the ‘rags to riches’ fairytale so many of us want to believe in, opportunities vary widely depending on the occupations of one's parents. Researcher Michael Hout found that social mobility is far from the norm.

Some may argue that the current generation experiences lower ambition and greater entitlement compared to generations past. However, the data indicates that millennials earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same stage of life, despite achieving higher levels of education. While business leaders work hard, it’s difficult to defend the jump in the ratio of pay between a company’s CEO and their average worker at 30:1 in 1978, skyrocketing to 299:1 in 2014.
- and -

With ideals of meritocracy reinforced in American culture, it is tempting to assume that those who are wealthy have worked hard and fairly earned their affluence. But that wouldn’t tell the whole story. One study from 2017 found that 60% of wealth is inherited rather than worked for. There are also stories of executives exploiting workers, such as Jeff Bezos, who recently purchased the most expensive home in California and whose workers reported peeing in plastic bottles because they could not use the bathroom during their shift. 

Some advantages had by the successful are less visible. For example, I worked hard to receive academic scholarships and ultimately earned a Ph.D. in Social Psychology with no debt. However, it would be unfair for me to not also acknowledge my own privilege at play in my accomplishments. My parents never handed me a wad of cash, but they did raise me with clean water and sanitary living conditions, adequate nutrition, a stable environment, a strong support system, quality healthcare, and a lack of childhood trauma.

Evidence suggests that simply having wealth, whether earned or by luck, increases one’s justification for it. Also known as the Just-World Fallacy, those who are on top of the social ladder, that is, those with money, power, and influence, believe the world is just. Those in the middle think the world is somewhat just, and those at the bottom believe the world is unjust.

Researcher Paul Piff cleverly demonstrated this by giving some participants a clear advantage in a game of Monopoly such as giving them extra money. When he asked participants why they (inevitably) won, they described how they had made smart decisions, and downplayed their privileged position.

Those who believe the world is just, that is, believe you get what you work for, are more likely to justify inequality and victim-blame. If those who are wealthy are automatically seen as good, it is assumed that the poor must have done something to deserve their misfortune.

Sarah Kendzior:"When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live."

 

Today's Parable

"Hi, I'm here for an oil change and tire rotation - here's my membership card for the discount."

"OK - that'll be $863.00 please."

"Wait - what? I paid good money for this card, and it's still that much?"

"Without the card, it's $5,289.00 - you're lucky - you have the Silver Club Card."

"Damn. Well, better'n nothin' I guess."

THE AMERICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

The War On Socialism

Cult45 believes the old formula of assigning scary wording to the Dems is how they'll bulldoze their way through and stay in power.

Call it whatever your fragile little ego requires, but Socialism is a pretty great thing when it shows up and arrests the guy trying to rob your liquor store.

Or when it makes sure a homeless veteran gets a hot meal and enough medical care to keep him from attempting suicide.

Or when it sends a helicopter to rescue your neighbor and his family, who're stranded on their roof because of a flash flood.

Or when it takes some of the burden off some old guy struggling to pay for the 12 or 15 pills he has to take every day to stay alive.

Or when it comes in after a big snow and clears the streets so we can all get to our jobs.

Or when it gathers a few bucks from lots of different people so you can get your car fixed after some dumb fuckin' drunk sideswipes it in the parking lot.

Or or fucking or.

So first off, we have to stop being afraid of words, and start using them to turn this shit back around.

EJ Dionne, WaPo:

“We socialists are trying to save capitalism, and the damned capitalists won’t let us.”

Political scientist Mason B. Williams cited this cheeky but accurate comment by New Deal lawyer Jerome Frank to make a point easily lost in the new war on socialism that President Trump has launched: Socialism goes back a long way in the United States, and it has taken doses of it to keep the market system alive.

Going back to the late 19th century, Americans and Europeans, socialists and liberal reformers, worked together to humanize the system’s workings and to find creative ways to solve problems capitalism alone couldn’t. This has been well documented in separate books written by historians Daniel T. Rodgers and James T. Kloppenberg. “The New Deal,” Rodgers wrote, “was a great, explosive release of the pent-up agenda of the progressive past.”

Capitalism is the closest approximation of the "natural order of things" - and that's good - it works really well. But once in a while, we have to reassert the rules to keep the capitalists from ruining capitalism.

Anyway, the short and sweet version is: I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to fuel the work required to go out and find my next meal. ie: I have to make some kind of profit to sustain my existence.

So I'm a capitalist because god's a capitalist.

But part of the deal - the part always ignored by the Unfettered Free Market pimps - is that god also insists on appropriate regulation to keep things in balance. And also too, god gave me a brain that I can use to sort these things out.

• Blood sugar - Insulin
• Adrenalin - REM sleep
• Shivers - Sweats

These are all really great things, but too much of one &/or not enough of the other makes me - uhh - dead.

Capitalism is a good thing, but without a good regulatory system in place, it becomes exactly the problem this country was founded to defeat.

What's so fuckin' hard to understand about this?

At The Crux

A couple of basic truths:

1. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the good sense or intelligence of the American consumer.
2. If there's a problem, look for who profits from the problem itself and/or from the proposed solution.

David Armstrong, ProPublica:

Not content with billions of dollars in profits from the potent painkiller OxyContin, its maker explored expanding into an “attractive market” fueled by the drug’s popularity — treatment of opioid addiction, according to previously secret passages in a court document filed by the state of Massachusetts.

In internal correspondence beginning in 2014, Purdue Pharma executives discussed how the sale of opioids and the treatment of opioid addiction are “naturally linked” and that the company should expand across “the pain and addiction spectrum,” according to redacted sections of the lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general. A member of the billionaire Sackler family, which founded and controls the privately held company, joined in those discussions and urged staff in an email to give “immediate attention” to this business opportunity, the complaint alleges.

ProPublica reviewed the scores of redacted paragraphs in Massachusetts’ 274-page civil complaint against Purdue, eight Sackler family members, company directors and current and former executives, which alleges that they created the opioid epidemic through illegal deceit. These passages remain blacked out at the company’s request after the rest of the complaint was made public on Jan. 15. A Massachusetts Superior Court judge on Monday ordered that the entire document be released, but the judge gave Purdue until Friday to seek a further stay of the ruling.

The short-hand version of Mike's General Theory of Economics (and at the risk of indulging myself in at least a couple of Logical Fallacies):

I'm a capitalist because god is a capitalist.

Capitalism is the closest approximation of "the natural order of things".

To survive, I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to fuel the work necessary to find my next meal.

I should also try to put aside a little something for that rainy day when no matter how much work I do, I get nothing.

But here comes the first part of the greater truth that the Radical Libertarians always ignore in their attempts to rationalize their shitty behavior, which are driven by their equally shitty attitudes:

God also gave me a pancreas to make sure my blood sugar level - boosted by those calories I'm taking in - is regulated. Sugar is a good thing, but without a well-timed little blast of insulin it's going to kill me.

Sugar's good. Insulin's good. Too much of either sugar or insulin - and I fuckin' die.

And god provided me with a nice big brain so I can recognize the absolute need for that regulation - the need for balance - along with the need to incorporate that awareness into whatever philosophies or ideologies I might come up with.

Which leads to a second part: 

We're not the same as all those other life forms (that pesky big brain thing again).

An adult male bear will kill and eat the cubs of another bear as part of his effort to mate with a female and get his genes into the next generation of bears. That's the natural order of things - for bears.

The natural order of things is brutal. And while it seems cruel, without the necessary self-awareness, it's just how that part of the universe works.

But humans are self-aware, and because of that self-awareness, we have to know that emulating certain animal behavior is a conscious decision, and so it can be rightly identified as cruelty.

We should try to make more of an effort to be a little smarter than the average bear.

Products

Twitter pal Eve The Potter recently walked away from a pretty solid tech gig to follow her dreams.

Stonecrop Pottery

I ordered a tankard last week, and it's become a permanent fixture in the daily routine (ie: semi-OCD nut-ball morning ritual) that supports and reinforces my rather sever coffee jones.

Every piece is handmade and unique - built to last.

John Oliver

The addiction treatment industry is dangerously unregulated. John Oliver explains why many rehab programs should incorporate more evidence-based care and carefully reconsider their doctor-to-horse ratio.

Makes me wonder if there are dots in need of connecting - something that would give us a clearer picture of a legalized system of Drug Cartels right here in USAmerica Inc.

• Pharma
• Prescribers
• Insurance
• Healthcare
• Law Enforcement
• Prisons
• Lobbyists
• Congress

I'm a capitalist because god's a capitalist.

I have to take in more calories than I need right this minute because I need a surplus of  energy in order to do the work required to get my next meal. I have to make some profit.

And I insist on appropriate regulation because god insists on appropriate regulation.

Without a properly functioning pancreas, my blood sugar goes wacky and I die.

Without a properly functioning brain stem, my heart rate goes wacky and I die.

...my body temperature

...etc etc etc

"Government Interference in the Free Market System" is what freed the slaves, dummy.

Every once in a while, we have to step up and save capitalism from the capitalists.

One More Podcast

Teddy Roosevelt was my kinda Republican.

He was too cute by half with the whole Gunboat Diplomacy thing, but three things:

1. His forceful attitude on pushing back against corporations - the necessity of regulation in order to keep too much power and too much money from consolidating in too few hands.

2. Trying to balance the interests internal to the US against US National Interests outside our borders.

3. He was a man of his times. That doesn't mean some of the shitty things he did - or were done on his watch - are excusable, or that anybody should approve of them now.

We muddle thru and we stumble forward.

Today's GIF

You work for us. We own you. We own your thoughts; and every idea you've ever had belongs to this company.

American Capitalism

Unfortunately, this isn't new. I think we saw this several years ago. But no matter - when you'll sell armor plates to parents for their grade-schoolers' backpacks instead of insisting that lawmakers address the problem at its source, you have to stop pretending you're arguing against reasonable gun laws from any kind of principled position.

CNN:

A Miami private school is offering parents an unusual item for sale: bulletproof panels for their kids' backpacks. 

The Florida Christian School website has a list of items available for purchase. These include winter wear, red school logo T-shirts and ballistic panels. 

George Gulla, dean of students and head of school security at Florida Christian School, told CNN the bulletproof panels would add "another level of protection" to students of the pre-K through grade 12 school "in the event of an active shooter."

Any foolish claim you've made to the Moral High Ground is now forfeit.

And also too - nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste or intelligence of the American public.

Every Man A Millionaire

Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $100 Billion Cash.

One Hundred Billion Dollars - CASH

Mr Buffett is known as one of the good-guy rich guys, and he knows he shouldn't have that kinda scratch lying around doing nothing.

But not even Warren Buffett knows what he oughta do with all that money when stock prices are crazy high, and most companies worth buying are over-valued, and and and.

He's said recently that the market (Wilshire 5000) is currently valued at about 140% of US GDP, and that usually means there's a "correction" coming.

The word "correction" in this context generally means "Honey, I won't be home for supper tonight because I plan on stepping in front of the train".

Typically, markets collapse right about now.

So here we go again.

BTW, we have a simple response to the GOP's favorite bromide of Tax Cuts for Over-Privleged Entitled-Feeling Rich-As-Fuck Elitist Assholes will boost the economy, create a gazillion jobs and increase federal revenues:

We're left with only one really great way to use all that money, and it ain't Supply Side. After 35 years of trying really really really hard to make it work, and trying even harder to get everybody to pretend it works, we now know the single most important thing about it -  that shit don't work.

I hate saying it, but we prob'ly need to tax the fuck outa some folks and put the money into Education, Trades Training, and Infrastructure.

It's called Keynesian Economics and it works.  We know it works because it always works because that's how a modern economy fucking works.

Today's Axiom

Go ahead and build that 30-foot wall.

It'll make me a fortune selling 35-foot ladders.

Capitalism, dummy.

Without Adult Supervision

Paraphrasing Mr Mencken: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste or the intelligence of the American consumer.  Wal-Mart seems to work very hard at proving it.

All That Boring Policy Stuff

From The Intercept:

As CEI sees it, efforts to address the affects of pollution from fossil fuels on our climate are really a “war on affordable energy.” Bizarrely, the report uses a decline in global death rates due to extreme weather since the 1920s to justify the continued burning of oil and coal and its claim that carbon-based fuels “increase life expectancy.” While fossil fuels have unquestionably kept many people warm over the past century, alternative energy sources can also provide plenty of heat — and have the additional appeal of reducing the likelihood of extreme weather events.

Get ready for a new and even more intense round of "what do you want, a job or a new park  5 states away where only the welfare-moocher hippie elites get to go and play?"

Just to put out some push-back points:

1. the burning of fossil fuels to create some heat in the winter isn't the only thing contributing to a decline in the number of deaths due to bad weather
2. burning fossil fuels isn't the only way to create some heat in the winter
3. don't be fucking daft

There is something sublimely immoral about dangling a job in front of me, and tying the prospects of my landing that job to my willingness to help you create the conditions that will eventually make me too sick to work.

Proper, appropriate regulations are necessary to protect capitalism from the Capitalists.