Wednesday's Child

...is full of piss and vinegar.  Fuck you, NSA.

The KrugMan Speaks

August 6, 2013, 10:42 am 48 Comments

Another Bad Story Bites The Dust

One of the remarkable things about the ongoing economic crisis is the endless search for explanations of something that’s actually quite simple — the sluggish pace of recovery. You have a large overhang of private debt; you have a still-depressed housing sector; and you have contractionary fiscal policy. Add to this the well-established fact that recovery tends to be slow after recessions caused not by tight money but by private-sector overreach, and there’s just no mystery that needs explaining.

Yet we’ve seen an endless series of analyses declaring that there is indeed a deep mystery, and it must be Obama’s Fault. Probably the most influential of these analyses was the claim that Obama was creating “uncertainty”, and this was holding everything back.

Larry Mishel did a thorough debunking of this meme almost two years ago. And sure enough, the index of uncertainty that everyone was pointing to has plunged, with no visible boost to the economy.

Will anyone who bought into this story engage in some serious self-analysis? Why am I even asking?

That last line is the dominant theme of our current dysfunction, and I'm trying hard not to think we can just slap some sense into people.  

Groundswell

David Corn talking about the Wingnuts planning to take over the whole joint.



It's a bit less scary when we learn more about it.

But something that stays a little scary for me is that "the messaging" effort (ie: Corn's point about the apparent collusion between GOP and "The Press") is pretty solid simply because we've grown accustomed to the false assertion of a "librul bias in the media".  How long have 'Conservatives' have been bitchin' about that one?  The frame's been in place for a long time, so we're ready to accept this development as just another example of Both Sides Do It.

So here's the pitch: "the media's been lying to us all along - we all know that.  We're breaking away from 'the establishment' and we're gonna tell the real truth about what the government doesn't want you to know...blah blah blah."

Another weird development is that DumFux News is starting to become identified (by some) as not being Pure Right enough.

The glimmer of hope is that these new revolutionaries can be recognized as being  different from the old ones only in the extreme levels of their hunger for power.  And the exceedingly dangerous deliciousness is that Ginny Thomas and Ted Cruz and Alan West make up the monster of the Republican id.  Created for a political purpose, the monster now turns to destroy its creators.

Here's to keeping the collateral damage to a minimum.

One more random connect-the-dots wondering:  how does Jeff Bezos buying WaPo figure into any of this?

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

If It's Tuesday

...it must be time for me to say, "Fuck you, NSA" - and also we should prob'ly figure out how to co-opt something.

So here it is:

That's a t-shirt you can buy at a joint called Red Bubble

I ♥ Capitalism.

Feelin' It

White Privilege - pretty much the king of all redundancies.



Hayes works for a company owned by a company owned in turn by a company that's being run by a lot a people who aren't voting for many Democrats - not the librul Dems anyway - but still sometimes he dances dangerously close to the point where he almost but not quite says there's an awful buncha bullshit about the way we're doin' things here.

Props when they're due tho'.  Nicely done, Chris.

Today's Pix

On A Monday

Good mornin', heartache - and fuck you, NSA.

A Little Serious Mumbo Jumbo

I think somebody needs to do another Jefferson on the bible - that joint's in dire need of an update cuz y'know what? (and this comes as no big surprise) when smart people take a slightly different look at it, sometimes they find a tiny inkling of truth that's managed to leak its way down thru the centuries while they trim away all the suck-up crap and the self-congratulational/flegellational junk.

Anyway, this is from The Book of Habakkuk, chap 2 - which ends up kinda just sounding like, "don't worry so much - what goes around comes around".

Here's the setup: this Habakkuk guy sees that the people with all the power get to keep doing whatever they wanna do, and they never get called on anything, and so his whole world's pretty fucked up, and of course, he's pissed at god because of it(?) and so he lodges a complaint with god somehow(?) - I dunno, but apparently, god made it far enough thru his inbox that day, and this is how he answered Habakkuk.

⁵ Wealth^[c] is treacherous,
    and the arrogant are never at rest.
They open their mouths as wide as the grave,^[d]
    and like death, they are never satisfied.
In their greed they have gathered up many nations
    and swallowed many peoples.

⁶ “But soon their captives will taunt them.
    They will mock them, saying,
‘What sorrow awaits you thieves!
    Now you will get what you deserve!
You’ve become rich by extortion,
    but how much longer can this go on?’
⁷ Suddenly, your debtors will take action.
    They will turn on you and take all you have,
    while you stand trembling and helpless.
⁸ Because you have plundered many nations,
    now all the survivors will plunder you.
You committed murder throughout the countryside
    and filled the towns with violence.

⁹ “What sorrow awaits you who build big houses
    with money gained dishonestly!
You believe your wealth will buy security,
    putting your family’s nest beyond the reach of danger.
¹⁰ But by the murders you committed,
    you have shamed your name and forfeited your lives.
¹¹ The very stones in the walls cry out against you,
    and the beams in the ceilings echo the complaint.

¹² “What sorrow awaits you who build cities
    with money gained through murder and corruption!
¹³ Has not the Lord of Heaven’s Armies promised
    that the wealth of nations will turn to ashes?
They work so hard,
    but all in vain!
¹⁴ For as the waters fill the sea,
    the earth will be filled with an awareness
    of the glory of the Lord.

¹⁵ “What sorrow awaits you who make your neighbors drunk!
    You force your cup on them
    so you can gloat over their shameful nakedness.
¹⁶ But soon it will be your turn to be disgraced.
    Come, drink and be exposed!^[e]
Drink from the cup of the Lord’s judgment,
    and all your glory will be turned to shame.
¹⁷ You cut down the forests of Lebanon.
    Now you will be cut down.
You destroyed the wild animals,
    so now their terror will be yours.
You committed murder throughout the countryside
    and filled the towns with violence.

Not sure what any o' dat has to do with god actually - I guess I was just kinda going for the Authority Confirmation. Maybe it carries a little more weight with 'conservatives' if they hear it from "their book"(?) Prob'ly not - I dunno - worth a shot?

hat tip = The Professional Left podcast

Yay - It's Sunday

...and fuck you, NSA.

Diana Krall

All Or Nuthin' At All.

Paul Simon

Mr Alienation his-own-self.

Phoebe Snow

Goin' on 40 years - still can't beat this.

Welcome To The Jungle

There was a "decent" jobs report that came out a day or two ago, and it indicated a bit of drop in the unemployment rate and some other fairly OK stuff, but the thing I remember most is that the majority of the 162,000 new jobs were Part-Time.  Yay us.

47% of American adults don't have a Full-Time job.

That ain't good, but hey - it gets worse.

A Little Light Reading

Aha - suckered you into a post about science.

From The Verge:

Beams of light are usually speeding along at around 186,000 miles per second, but for one minute, researchers in Germany brought some to a screeching halt. Using a crystal frozen to temperatures below negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit, a research team managed to hold light in place for a full minute — marking a drastic increase from the previous record of just 16 seconds. The technology will eventually be applied to quantum computing as a way to retrieve and read data, but it'll have to work on a much smaller scale and for much longer periods of time before that can happen.

And here's a Peer-Review paper for any uber-nerds who happen by.

Now I suppose I need to ask all you 'conservatives' to stay calm and try not to get too frightened by all this.  I realize you guys can take just about anything and turn it into a massively spooky conspiracy aimed at contaminating our precious bodily fluids or some such nonsense, but really, you don't have to feel threatened by every fuckin' thing that comes around the corner.

And BTW - how come this is the kinda thing that gets done in Germany, and not here in USAmerica?  This wasn't a "pure science" thing - it's happening because there's an application in mind - but this is exactly what we need to be funding in some pretty big ways.  If we just kinda let the smarts guys do what they do, maybe we could find a really great use for the ability to store light that doesn't have to be about blowing shit up or knocking shit down.  Could we at least try that for a while?

Today's Pix

Good Morning, Everybody

...and fuck you, NSA.

Rest o' y'all, have a great day.

Fuck You, NSA

I just wanna give a good solid shout-out to my government, as it wastes an enormous amount of their time and my money looking for shit they can hang on people who have nothing more nefarious in mind than fixing a decent meal for their families, and knowing something about the world they live in.

A New York woman says her family's interest in the purchase of pressure cookers and backpacks led to a home visit by six police investigators demanding information about her job, her husband's ancestry and the preparation of quinoa.

Michele Catalano, who lives in Long Island, New York, said her web searches for pressure cookers, her husband's hunt for backpacks and her "news junkie" son's craving for information on the Boston bombings had combined somewhere in the internet ether to create a "perfect storm of terrorism profiling".

Members of what she described as a "joint terrorism task force" descended on Catalano's home on Wednesday.

I may have to post just that simple loving phrase every day - I may even have to answer my phone with a good hearty "Fuck the NSA", like a lot of us used to say "Fuck the FBI" back in the 70s - and I say 'loving' because just like practically everybody else, I truly love this joint which means I have to insist on expecting my government to live up to the ideals it was founded on.  I want us all - together - to be the country we know we once were, and can be again.

So yeah - Fuck You, NSA.  Here I am.  Come and get me.

Loser Sosh'list Dweebs

According to this piece from The Pachamama Alliance website, the idiots in the Swedish gubmint put together a program that's become so efficient, they've run out of garbage.

Of course here in God's USAmerica, we'd never allow such a thing - there's a not-so-subtle (even if subconcious) attempt to flaunt our status by making sure the neighbors can see the evidence of our latest acquisition, or the sheer volume of the shit we discard, cuz everybody knows the success of your lifestyle is directly proportional to the amount of trash you put out at the curb every week.

In order to continue fueling the waste-to-energy factories that provide electricity to a quarter of a million homes and 20 percent of the entire country’s district heating, Sweden is now importing trash from the landfills of other European countries. In fact, those countries are paying Sweden to do so.

You read that correctly, countries are paying to get rid of a source of fuel they themselves produced so that Sweden can continue to have the energy output they need. You don’t have to be an economist to know that’s one highly enviable energy model.

Why do we insist on being the Capital of Dumb-Ass-istan?

Just Thinkin'

Each of my eyes is made up of about 6 million cells, and each of those cells is made up of about 100 trillion atoms.

Add the hundreds of trillions of atoms that make up all the other cells just in the rest of my Central Nervous System, and you get a number that's as difficult to comprehend as the universe itself.

But consider this:  every one of those atoms was created in the core of a star billions of years ago.  And now, those atoms making up the cells making up my eyes allow me to capture and analyze and appreciate the energies released from the same process that went into creating my ability to capture and analyze and appreciate...

Like the man said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

Yeesh

While we're feeling dewy and inspired by how plucky and brave these guys are, let's try to avoid thinking this isn't just supremely disheartening.



Yes - it's both.  But why the fuck do we think it's OK to put people thru this kind of hell? Do we really believe it's good for a thousand people to have to live like feral dogs in order to give 30 kids a small shot at making it outa there alive?  This 'tough-love-pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps' bullshit is exactly that - it's bullshit.

Here's a tho't: let's stop dumping our garbage on people and then pretending that's what makes 'em good people.  Imagine where these folks could take themselves if they didn't have to start in the shitter.