Suicide By Freedom

Charlie Pierce is turning into a regular go-to guy:

I once again call on all those "millions of responsible gun owners" out there that I keep hearing about every time there's a gun atrocity in the news, and we are told that, in response, we are not supposed to even, maybe, consider, possibly, talking a little about, hypothetically, adjusting both our laws and our attitudes toward firearms in order to make the populace more murderous, lest we find ourselves slandering these "millions of responsible gun owners."

Here's my request. Rid yourself of Wayne LaPierre as a national spokesman.

Gun owners are always reacting to calls for Gun Regulation by saying they have the right to protect themselves, but what about the rest of us?  As a society though, do we not have the right to protect ourselves from them?

Just Wonderin'

The Fiscal Cliff is supposed to be this terrible horrible thing that threatens everything from the lives of our grandparents and/or our grandchildren, and our neighbors and all of our house pets, and basically the very fiber of our all-American being.  It's the worst thing that could ever happen ever.

And the reason it's so awful is that is cuts way back on both revenues and on spending, which somehow coincides almost perfectly with the opposing viewpoints of Dems vs Repubs. I guess that in itself isn't particularly hard to see, but what exactly is it that "going over The Fiscal Cliff" actually means?  What overarching policy does it represent?

Can you say "austerity"?  I knew you could.

So we have one party screaming (as usual) about the need to rein in the gubmint, and impose some real limits on spending - a little austerity, if you will - at the same time it's warning us that we better make a deal that favors their ideology cuz we really don't wanna fuck up the economy with all that austerity stuff.

When do we get some real leaders who aren't constantly taking hostages and trying to terrorize us into doing things that ultimately fuck us over?

Just Keep Pluggin' Away

Repubs lost big last month, but you wouldn't know it by their behavior lately.  Right now, they're concentrating on The Fiscal "Cliff" - which I'm sure you already know is really more of a gentle incline, but hey, we need something to angst about so let's pump up the high school fuck-around drama to maintain some level of interest.  If We The People aren't tuned in on the issues, then the politicians have to admit the thing's a bit of a scam.  But if we "really know what's going on", then we'd be able to see for ourselves what a scam it is, and that's even worse.  So Politicians and Press Poodles come up with ways of framing the issues and reporting the proceedings that keep voters lined up in support of one side or the other.  Red Pols need to point at their numbers to make their claims of "the American people are with us..." and the Blue Pols do basically the same from their side.  The big difference here is that the Red Pol Supporters are almost always on board with bullshit - Climate Change is a hoax; Eric Holder is confiscating guns; tax cut equals tax revenue increase; democracy is threatened because too many people are voting; etc.  Repubs haven't stopped promoting all that crap because The Big Lie works, and we're seeing it in action.

I guess we should expect more of the same as the fight for party control in the GOP continues.

The problem, of course is that we'll be presented various choices from the menu of "very serious GOP intellectuals" who have to carry several tons of Tea Party baggage (which they won't be allowed to offload any time soon), and who'll have to pretend all that dead weight is actually a good thing because it represents good old American Values blah blah blah - which means they'll either never get out of The Bubble, or by the time they're allowed to talk about what they really wanna do, we'll know they don't really know what the fuck they're talking about anyway.  Reality can really harsh your mellow.

Enjoy a little Krugman right now:

As Jonathan Chait points out, Bobby Jindal — who is supposed to be one of the intellectual leaders of his party — has just published an op-ed on the cliff that sure looks as if he has no idea whatsoever what the cliff is about. There’s nothing in that piece even hinting that the looming problem is spending cuts and tax increases that will shrink the deficit too soon; and his big policy ideas would actually make the lurch to austerity worse. It’s not just the idea of a balanced budget amendment, which would force harsh austerity every time the economy goes into recession; putting a cap on spending as share of GDP would do the same, because you’d have to cut spending whenever GDP went down.

Bonnie's New One

Borderline spectacular.

Denis Leary

Yeesh

Just how stoopid do these guys think the rubes are?



Pretty fuckin' stoopid.

Exxon Hates Your Kids

Today's Pix

Maybe Good - Maybe Not

Here's the headline:  "Physicists Bummed That Physics Is Pretty Much What They Expected" (The Atlantic)

The Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson. Hooray! Success for the big machine!

But not really.

The discovery of the Higgs means that an entire era of physics -- in which the so-called Standard Model of particles was theorized and then proven -- has come to an end. And the LHC is not creating any new mysteries to investigate. Physics is following the predictions too closely.

I think I realize that a lot of people were anticipating some surprises when they cranked up the LHC, and I think I understand the disappointment when "all you get" is confirmation of things you expected to happen all along.  Not to mention the difficulties you'll have now that the very large piles of money spent on the very large project might disappear if you can't come up with some new shit to theorize about.

I'm just really hoping the reaction to the results coming out of Lucerne isn't something like, "Well, we know it all now.  It's not possible for us to learn anything else because there's nothing more to learn."  No matter what, guys, ya gotta keep working at it.

Prof Parenti

Here's something that isn't new.




And here's why it isn't new:
(John Kenneth Galbraith's series from the 70s)