Yeesh

Say it with me, America!

We're number 30, we're number 30, we're number 30!!!

On the list of the best airports in the world, there are no American airports in the top 25.  Zero. Zip. Zilch. We got bupkis.

The best we could do is Covington (just over the river from Cincinnati) - the 30th best airport in the world - where you get to climb up and down nice big flights of stairs and ride a bus to get from one concourse to another.  Woohoo.

The airport in Lima Peru ranks 5 places ahead of our best airport.  Lima.  I didn't know airplanes could even fly that high.  Lima-fucking-Peru!?!

There are, however a few "bright spots".  When they break it down by traffic volume (passengers), we show a little better.

Still - just another example of how smart it is to invest in your infrastructure.  Every business plan of every company worth half a shit includes a hard cold look at transportation issues.  If your town can't offer a decent level of easy access - including modes of transport as well as travel routes - then your town isn't a good place for that company to be, and the same goes for the rest of your country too.  It's almost that simple.

Fuck austerity - make the right investments now.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Krugtron The Invincible

Economists aren't supposed to have personalities - not the good ones anyway.  Paul Krugman is one of those genius-level guys who can take something as ridiculously complicated as economics and explain it in a way that makes it more or less understandable for a dope like me.

April 28, 2013, 8:01 am 244 Comments

Knaves, Fools, and Me (Meta)

One criticism I face fairly often is the assertion that I must be dishonest — I must be cherry-picking my evidence, or something — because the way I describe it, I’m always right while the people who disagree with me are always wrong. And not just wrong, they’re often knaves or fools. How likely is that?

But may I suggest, respectfully, that there’s another possibility? Maybe I actually am right, and maybe the other side actually does contain a remarkable number of knaves and fools.

The first point to notice is that I do, in fact, perform a kind of cherry-picking — not of facts, but of issues to write about. There are many issues on which I see legitimate debate, from the long-run trend of housing prices to the effects of immigration on wages. And in happier times I would probably write more about such issues than I do, and the tone of my column and blog would be a lot more genteel. But right now I believe that we’re failing miserably in responding to economic disaster, so I focus my writing on attacking the doctrines and, to some extent, the people responsible for this wrong-headed response.

But can the debate really be as one-sided as I portray it? Well, look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible!

Am I (and others on my side of the issue) that much smarter than everyone else? No. The key to understanding this is that the anti-Keynesian position is, in essence, political. It’s driven by hostility to active government policy and, in many cases, hostility to any intellectual approach that might make room for government policy. Too many influential people just don’t want to believe that we’re facing the kind of economic crisis we are actually facing.

And so you have the spectacle of famous economists retreading 80-year-old fallacies, or misunderstanding basic concepts like Ricardian equivalence; of powerful officials instantly canonizing research papers that turn out to be garbage in, garbage out; and so on down the line.

I know, the critics will respond that I’m the one who’s being political — but again, look at how the debate has run so far.

The point is not that I have an uncanny ability to be right; it’s that the other guys have an intense desire to be wrong. And they’ve achieved their goal.

Fugelsang

Y'are What Ya Eat

...so knowing what you're shoveling into your gob every day is kinda the key to the whole "Know thyself" / "To thine own self be true" thing, ain't it?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One of the things we have to get done is to take the FDA back from the Big Ag and Big Pharma mega-corporations that own it now.

Today's Numbers

The most recent WingNut Fuck-Around is North Carolina.  Kornacki spent most of his show yesterday highlighting the horror stories that always pop up whenever one political entity has too much power.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here's the brightest shiniest fact from the discussion of what the Repubs are up to all over the place - not just in North Carolina - Voter ID and the rigging of the election process:

In the 12 years from 2000 to 2011, there were 18,000,000 votes cast in NC elections.  

During that same time, there were 22 cases of voter fraud.  

For the benefit of all my fellow math-challenged history majors, I have it on good authority that it works out to .000122222%.

It's a horrible huge pressing problem with just over 1 Ten-Thousandths of one percent of the votes cast in a single state in 12 fucking years.

And yes - it's about the power - the GOP just happens to be the most convenient vehicle for this kind of coup right now.

Well, If It's Sunday

...then it must be time for Sunday School, so here's your homework.

(Christians who don't like questions should move on past this one quickly - this guy does not play nice and doesn't much care for your delicate sensibilities)

"Argument"

And try not to think about what goes on when you try to engage your more "conservative" friends in a real discussion on anything that matters.



Every fucking time.

And damn if it wouldn't be great for the cops to come in and arrest the whole bunch.  Or even better if the fuckin' thing just ended with a

hat tip = Crooks & Liars

Prankin'

They called it a prank call, but when what she's saying is pretty much the gods' own truth, how exactly is it a prank?



hat tip = Democratic Underground

What's Wrong - Explained part deux

Here's David Stockman on NewsMax TV.

The money shot hits at about the 4:00 mark, when Stockman is asked about what's up with the GOP.

"The Republican Party is not really a party...it's a coalition of gangs."

Rhetorical Inflation

Louis CK is definitely not for everybody, but there's almost always the requisite kernel of truth in his whacked out bits.