Today's Outrage

In case it escaped your notice, The Feds posted a SURPLUS of $113 Billion this past April, and another one ($116 Billion) for June this year.

Makes me wonder about some things: first is why the GOP wasn't jumping up and down taking credit because of their steely-eyed courage for having stomped the fuck outa poor people and unemployed workers.  Second, if we have a surplus, isn't time to cut Mitt Romney's taxes?

But then this:

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Oh - now I get it.  They'll get around to it - they're just not done yet.

BTW - did you catch the part about Repubs voting in favor of the spending of tax dollars that directly benefits themselves?  Poor kids have to skip even more meals now so Michele Bachmann can collect a few thousand greenbacks for not planting any Jesus Weed again this year.

So what is it the 'conservatives' are so fond of grousing about?  Something to do with "undeserving people who will vote themselves a share of other people's money"?  Isn't that it?

Bend over and grease up, America.

Today's Quote

The Amazing Mr Madison:

The original compact is the one implied or presumed, but nowhere reduced to writing, by which a people agree to form one society. The next is a compact, here for the first time reduced to writing, by which the people in their social state agree to a Govt. over them. These two compacts may be considered as blended in the Constitution of the U. S., which recognises a union or society of States, and makes it the basis of the Govt. formed by the parties to it. It is the nature & essence of a compact that it is equally obligatory on the parties to it, and of course that no one of them can be liberated therefrom without the consent of the others, or such a violation or abuse of it by the others, as will amount to a dissolution of the compact.
-- James Madison to Nicholas Trist, February 15, 1830.

hat tip = Charlie Pierce

Whenever I hear "conservatives" bitching about Da Gumbint; or how we should be able to just blow it all up; or how they intend to ignore the parts of the law they find inconvenient; or that their sense of entitlement means they get to do whatever they want while everybody else has to accommodate their childish self-indulgence; whenever I hear that kinda shit, I can only assume they have no real understanding of what it means to make a commitment, and then to live up to it.

No soul and no honor.

USA! USA! USA!

We're #28 - FUCK YEAH - wait, what?

It's almost like there's somebody actively working against doing anything that might help make this whole mess better.

Sweet screamin' Jesus, I'm getting more than a little tired of this shit.

JAMA came out with a study of 34 "rich countries", and the US is ranked 28th in Health Outcomes.

Overall, population health in the United States has improved from 1990 to 2010. Life expectancy at birth and HALE have increased and all-cause death rates at all ages have decreased. Although life span has increased, rates of age-specific YLDs have remained stable, and morbidity and chronic disability now account for nearly half of the health burden in the United States. However, improvements in population health in the United States have not kept pace with advances in population health in other wealthy nations. Regular assessments of the local burden of disease and matching information on health expenditures for the same disease and injury categories could allow for a more direct assessment of how changes in health spending have affected or, indeed, not affected changes in the burden of disease and may provide insights into where the US health care system could most effectively invest its resources to obtain maximum benefits for the nation’s population health. In many cases, the best investments for improving population health would likely be public health programs and multisectoral action to address risks such as physical inactivity, diet, ambient particulate pollution, and alcohol and tobacco consumption.

For all you clear-eyed, pragmatic, bidness-savvy 'conservatives' out there, here's the deal:  Healthy people cost less than sick ones, and Prevention is way more cost-effective than Remedy. 

If you're the soul-dead corporate clods who care for nothing but the Quarterly Numbers that you seem to be, then you have to recognize that a healthy labor pool is more valuable to you than an unhealthy labor pool.  

Of course, since you guys are so highly attuned to the concept of Other People's Money, you can get around the inconvenience of operating within any kind of ethical boundaries  by adopting the Wal-Mart strategy, and simply dump all your healthcare costs onto the taxpayer, but hey - that's Wal-Mart; those guys are absolute masters of The Big Bamboozle.

C'mon - look:

• We have a healthcare system that's Crazy Stupid Expensive which doesn't produce particularly healthy people
• Unhealthy workers are more costly than healthy workers
• Shifting the cost from one payer to another makes the system more complex and that complexity helps drive up the actual cost 

So here's what I really don't understand: Why are so many of you 'conservatives' so dead set against making changes to a system that is so obviously less efficient and more costly than it needs to be?

Imelda May

Just in case you need something to get ya jumpin' this mornin' - this oughta do it.

I Gotcher Well Regulated Militia Right Here

From Centre Daily Times, via Charlie Pierce:

A 45-year-old man shot himself in the hand Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot outside Wal-Mart on North Atherton Street in what police are calling an accident.

Patton Township police are not identifying the man but said he had a valid firearm carry permit.

The man had the gun in a holster and was hurrying across the parking lot to avoid holding up traffic. The firearm fell out of the holster and fell to the ground as the man was crossing the lot.

Police said he went to pick the gun up, but while shifting the bags in his hands, the firearm went off. The man was shot in the hand, and the bullet then continued into the pavement.

The man was taken to Mount Nittany Medical Center for treatment. The parking lot was briefly closed while police investigated.

Ok, so we can't get background checks, and we can't get registration and we can't get any kind of ban on any kind of weapon that isn't fully automatic or that shoots exploding ammo.

But please - can't we at least put something in place that kinda sorta makes it a tiny bit harder for a booger-eatin' moron like this guy to carry a concealed handgun?

Creeping Paganism - Cont'd

As a kind of postscript:

In my haste to slag Liz Trotta's performance on Puppet Show Central, I forgot to mention this other stuff.

First, she mentioned "creeping paganism" as if Wicca or whatever is the only possible alternative to her religious belief.  If I don't worship her god in the same way she worships her god, then I'm obviously on my knees praying to Stink Weed or some fuckin' thing.  Jeesus, these people.

Second, Trotta and most of the other Goddies are always trying to convince me they know best when it comes to my 'salvation' - a conclusion that has no merit, because their premise - that I am somehow 'fallen' - is false.

I am not fallen - you just made that shit up.

But here's the thing:  The purveyors of this theocratic junk are always on about how their mumbo jumbo is the true mumbo jumbo because they've studied their mumbo jumbo and they know everything there is to know about mumbo jumbo.

Bunkum, says I.

You can't know that your mumbo jumbo is the best mumbo jumbo until or unless you know every bit as much about all the other mumbo jumbo as you claim to know about your own mumbo jumbo.

C'mon - do ya really think the Zalmoxians weren't just as fervent about their made-up shit 1500 years ago?

In the end, because we know Religion has evolved over a coupla hundred thousand years, all we're talking about here is a kind of Brand Loyalty.  Let it go.

Storm's A-Brewin'

And it's about to start rainin' estrogen all up in here.  We can hope so anyway.

Sarah Slamen tried to make her voice heard in her home state - in front of a group of her employees - and was forcibly removed from the hearing room when the Committee Chair decided she just couldn't stand any more of Ms Slamen's disrespectful remarks Sarah was revealing the truth about the Texas Legislature.



hat tip = Addicting Info

Creeping Paganism

DumFux News is still the best place on the planet to get a big juicy bite of unintended hilarity (as scary as it often seems):



Ever wonder if Liz Trotta is any fun at all?  How can one person be such an enormous reservoir of sour-puss-itude?  Her ass is so tight, I'll bet she squeaks when she walks.

I do however, dearly love the way 'conservatives' keep trying to make this particular magic trick work.

Ol' Pinch-Face here tries to peddle the notion that her religiosity is superior to anybody else's; and that the law should conform to that religiosity; and that since there are politicians (Catholics even!) who aren't doing exactly what Ms Trotta says her faith requires all of us sinners to do, then Da Gubmint is persecuting poor old Liz by trampling on her 1st amendment rights.

Let's all try to remember that if the 1st amendment requires my government to stay out of your church, then it also has to require your church to stay the fuck out of my government.

The KrugMan Speaks

...and I have to disagree - kinda.

Dr K, if you please:

Even the notion that the GOP might need to accommodate itself a bit to an increasingly nonwhite nation has been fading fast; the big thing now is that the trouble in 2012 was missing white voters, and that the GOP just needs to redouble its efforts to identify itself as the party of white people.

But if there really is a missing-white-voter issue — and I’d like to see some more analysis by serious political scientists before I completely buy in — what will it take to bring these people back out to play? Sean Trende, who has been making the missing-whites case, describes the missing as “downscale, rural, Northern whites”. What can the GOP offer them?

Actually, it's not that I disagree with Dr K's assertions per se; it's just that I think what he's talking about is not the GOP's political strategy at all.  Re-kindling and then appealing to the backlash concerning 'white guilt' or whatever - that's the "strategy" for their dog-whistle propaganda Presentation; the rhetoric; the dog-n-pony show.  Their Strategy is to knock down the number of brown people/young people/old people who're likely to go out and vote against them.

Presentation puts lipstick on the pig, making it less repellent to the voters.

Policy, if well-disguised, is "accepted" by way of electoral success.

Both Presentation and Policy are tools in service of The Strategy...

...and if The Strategy works, The Goals almost take care of themselves.

And so (I think) they're feeling they really don't have to adjust their approach to anything.

They can do exactly what Limbaugh says they should do: "staying true to conservative principles" and "not caving in on special rights for LGBT" and "not knuckling under to union thugs" etc.  (Remember, the only thing worse than being wrong is admitting you were wrong)  Anyway, the SCOTUS decision on VRA plowed the road and Voter Disenfranchisement is speeding along nicely in about half-a-dozen states where they can make enough of a difference to practically guarantee their guys win next time out.

BTW - Krugman's right - the GOP's policies are a total clusterfuck - it's just that I feel the need to nit-pick on some important differences between Presentation, Policy, and Political Strategy (and The Goals of that Strategy).

Now - can anybody guess what those goals might be?  Anybody?

Fouling The Nest - Followup

Some reading for ya today - to go with your assignment to search out and watch Gasland & Gasland2.

Bloomburg via Seattle Times:

Riding shotgun in a Toyota 4Runner rigged with a carbon-fiber pipe and a spectrometer, Duke University researcher Rob Jackson trolled through Washington, D.C., searching for evidence that natural gas is not quite the climate champion President Obama claimed last month.

He was replicating a study he did in Boston, measuring leaks from creaky natural-gas pipes. In addition to being a possible safety risk, methane, the key component of natural gas, is 25 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. And leaks may undercut much of the climate benefits of gas.
“First and foremost this is a greenhouse-gas question,” Jackson said as he drove near the Capitol. “What we are trying to find out is how big a problem this is for cities.”

Obama's cheerleading notwithstanding, the plan seems to be to go forward with Shale Gas, but to look for the drawbacks and (I'm really just kinda hoping here) to push for a real conversion to renewables as we go.

I don't like the way this feels, tho'.  It looks a lot like we're gettin' suckered again, cuz let's see if we can guess what we're up against.

Here's a piece from MasterResource - "a free market energy blog":

Last month, the EPA released its latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory, in which the agency significantly lowered its estimate of the amount of methane emissions from natural gas systems. But even with those dramatic revisions, EPA still has a long way to go to get this right.

So the struggle continues.  Government remains largely captive to Big Bidness, and we get only the slant that the PR Slicksters pressure the feds to give us.