Chris Hedges

I'm not completely down with all of his conclusions, but the guy speaks to some very uncomfortable points, which generally makes me think I should at least stop to consider what he's trying to say.

The Chicken Or The Egg

The question is whether some dick came up with the idea for the shirt first - or did the dick wearing the shirt voice his demand for it?

Answer: Doesn't really matter, does it?

The Repubs have gone right 'round the bend, hand-in-hand with the freaks who make up their constituency.  In fact, in this little thing we call 'democracy', the freakiest of the freaks in the constituency become the 'leaders' of the freaks - so again - doesn't really matter.

Not that this skinhead was open to the message, but shouldn't the GOP have gotten a pretty clear signal?  (Real glad a prick like this guy wasn't rewarded for crap like this)

And secondly - for anybody still laboring under the twisted delusion of 'both sides do it', please tell me where I can find the Librul Equivalent of this shirt?

Today's Gun Nut

As always, for every complicated gnarly problem there's a solution that's simple and elegant and wrong.  So it's not as simple as removing guns from the equation - or removing certain types of guns - but it's a good place to start.

And it wouldn't hurt my feelings if we could actually stigmatize the need to own combat-style weapons - use the powers of marketing and advertising to redefine the relationships, and to associate guns with people who struggle with lingering hangups about their sexual identities, or Daddy Issues, or whatever.

That's prob'ly a bad idea in the long-term, but think how fun it'd be - for a while anyway.  You take the one thing that helps the average gun freak feel good about himself and turn it around so it's something that makes people point and laugh.  Yeah OK - publicly mocking somebody with an AR-15 and 10,000 rounds of ammo is a little dangerous, but dang...

Here It Comes Again

The Debt Ceiling looms again as the next perfect opportunity to fuck with us like we had tails.

Via Democratic Underground, this guy's a new one for me:

Scalia's Hat

No, seriously - I think there may somethin' wrong with this guy.

The Lady Michelle

Body language makes a beautiful sound sometimes, and Michelle Obama speaks with a lyrical perfection in this short clip from the Inaugural Luncheon.



Can't wait to hear from Wingnut-topia about what a horrible person it makes her for having the nerve not to put up with the drunken antics and attempted glad-handing (ie: pawing) of Sir John the Orange of Paintboothshire.

1,384,171

1,384,171 is the number of Americans who have been killed by guns in the last 43 years.

One million-three-hundred-eighty-four-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-one.

Since 1775 (237 years), having fought dozens of battles, skirmishes and outright wars; putting many millions of American uniformed people in harm's way - the estimates look like this:

CONFLICT - TIME SPAN - DEAD AMERICANS
War of Independence (1775-1783) 25,000
Quasi-War (1798-1800 ) 20
Barbary Wars (1801-1815) 35
War of 1812 (1812-1815) 20,000
1st Seminole War (1817-1818) 30
2nd Seminole War (1835-1842 ) 1,500
Mexican-American War (1846-1848) 3,283
3rd Seminole War (1855-1858) 26
Civil War (1861-1865) 623,026
Indian Wars (1865-1898) 919
Spanish-American War (1898) 2,446
Philippine War (1898-1902) 4,196
Boxer Rebellion (1900-1901) 37
Mexican Revolution (1914-1919) 35
Haiti Occupation (1915-1934) 146
World War 1 (1917-1918) 116,708
World War 2 (1941-1945) 407,316
Korean War (1950-1953) 36,914
Vietnam War (1964-1973) 58,169
El Salvador (1980-1992) 20
Beirut (1982-1984) 266
Persian Gulf Support (1987-1988) 39
Invasion of Grenada (1983) 19
Invasion of Panama (1989) 40
Persian Gulf War (1991) 269
Somalia (1992-1993) 43
Bosnia (1995) 12
Afghanistan / Iraq (2002-2012) 6,616

For a grand total of 1,317,130

In just 43 years we've killed 67,041 more Americans than all of our "enemies" have managed to kill in 237 years of armed conflict.  Who looks at this and then says to himself, "So, yeah - I guess what we need is a lot more opportunity for Americans to kill each other"?

The Internet Is Outa Control

Today's Pix

Manti T'eo

Here's a picture of all the fucks I give:

Seriously - I've tried, but I just really really don't care.  And it's not that I don't care about a young man on the verge of fame and fortune being scammed to the point where he somehow felt compelled to go along with it (WTF?) only to get publicly fucked over anyway -  the story here is that the Press Poodles couldn't be bothered to do their fucking jobs.

As usual, Charlie Pierce gets it about right:

I remain fascinated by the unfolding saga of Manti Te'o and the alleged death of his imaginary girlfriend — Who exactly got the white roses he sent to the funeral anyway? — partly for the pure schadenfreude of watching the perpetual-motion Notre Dame mythmaking machine sputter and wheeze, leaving gears and tiny springs and pieces of itself all over the landscape as it augers in spectacularly, and in full public view. (And the Gipper was a gambler and a bounder and drank South Bend dry. Pass it on.)

Yesterday's Dildo-Brained Gun-Fucker News

From Balloon Juice:

Today is “Gun Appreciation Day.” An event created by right wingers with penis issues, and so called because “Insensitivity To First Graders Being Slaughtered Wholesale Day” doesn’t roll as glibly off the tongue. It also gives the game away, but I digress.

At gun shows across the country, the hicks and goobers line up to look at and buy all sorts of guns, and more guns and still more guns instead of getting the roof fixed, buying a used truck less than eight years old, or saving up for Billy Bob’s and Jolene’s tuition at the junior college that might have allowed them to not work at Walmart as adults.

And here are some hi-lites from This Week In Gun Safety:

• a 6-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio who died after she likely shot herself in the face.
• a 15-year-old in Anchorage, Alaska who was shot in the leg as guns were fired at her home.
• a 12-year-old in Bainbridge, Georgia who was seriously injured, already requiring two surgeries, after shootinghimself in his leg while hunting.
• a 4-year-old in Richmond, Virginia who unintentionallyshot and killed a relative in his home using a gun he found on a table.
• a 2-year-old in Savannah, Georgia who unintentionallyshot himself with a gun he found in a drawer.
• a 17-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio who was unintentionally shot in the chest while he and a friend were handling a gun.
• a 16-year-old in Kearny, New Jersey who was shot and killed in her home while babysitting her younger brother.
• a 15-year-old in Chicago, Illinois who was shot in the shoulder near LaFollete Park.
• a 17-year-old in Chicago, Illinois who was shot and killed just outside the Chicago State University gymnasium after a high school basketball game.
• an 18-year-old in Watsonville, California who was shot and killed.
• a 16-year-old in St. Louis County, Missouri who was shot in the leg after leaving a high school basketball game.
• a 15-year-old in Columbus, Ohio who was shot and killed during an after-school fight.
• a 17-year-old in Baltimore, Maryland who was shot and killed.
• a 15-year-old in Wilmington, Delaware who was shot in the leg.
• a 12-year-old in Hazard, Kentucky who was shot and killed in a parking lot at Hazard Community and Technical College, along with her father and 20-year-old cousin.
• a 15-year-old in Yakima, Washington who is in critical condition after he was shot in the head. A 17-year-old companion was shot in the back.
• a 16-year-old in Lexington County, South Carolina who was shot in the back while sitting in a pickup truck.
• two young children in Kansas City, Missouri who were shot as gunfire from the street entered their house.
• a 14-year-old in Las Vegas, Nevada who was shot and killed outside a party at an apartment complex.

--paraphrasing here: When it's stupid to own a gun, only the stoopid own guns.

A Small Win

...or maybe that should be the word 'win' spelled with the lower case 'w'(?)

From Addicting Info:

The full body scanner technology, which produces a semi-nude image of a persons body, has been controversial since they were first introduced. While the advocates for it called the scanners safe, that the images were not clear enough to be considered intrusive, privacy advocates have taken, at times, odd measures to protect the scanners.

What has been neglected in much of the media attention, however, is the safety of these scanners. The radiation used by the models of machines built by OSI Systems has been called into question, with serious concerns about the levels of dosage used. Late last year, OSI failed to meet critical safety requirements, and on Friday, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) announced their termination of the OSI contract. While OSI is not the sole supplier, its systems were under the most scrutiny due to the clarity and detail they provided.

So first, chalk one up for even a slight delay in stomping all over people's rights - of course, with one contractor out, it only makes things better for somebody else's brother-in-law to become very wealthy at taxpayer expense while doing practically nothing effective about the problems of terrorism.

Second, it's kinda nice to know that an opportunistic slug like Mike Chertoff is being left on a dry sidewalk under a scorching summer sun.

Today's Toon

Today's Toon

The Directory Of Sick Fucks

Via Democratic Underground:

In the increasingly distant past, the National Rifle Association (NRA) largely advocated for policies related to hunting and marksmanship, but today its leaders are defined by unsavory conduct and the advancement of extreme, anti-government ideology. While the NRA innocuously describes itself as the “nation’s oldest civil rights organization,” this portrayal serves only as a smokescreen to mask the fact that the organization is a rogues gallery of the most odious voices in the contemporary Conservative Movement.

One only has to look to the NRA’s leadership to discover that the organization is operated by a group of individuals who promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-immigrant animus, religious bigotry, anti-environmentalism, and insurrectionism. Some active NRA board members have even had close relationships with brutal dictators in outside nations. Put simply, members of the NRA leadership no longer make for polite company.

Moreover, while superficially bipartisan, the NRA is closely aligned with the most extreme elements in the Republican Party and has brought a number of the GOP’s most influential operatives into positions of power within the organization. The GOP and NRA are now locked in a symbiotic relationship where Republican legislators advance the NRA’s extreme agenda while the NRA musters its hardcore supporters to serve as attack dogs for a wide range of conservative causes.

This website shines a light on the background of members of NRA leadership, in large part by allowing them to comment on the issues of the day in their own words. It is intended as a resource for those who cherish moderation, civility and principled advocacy in American politics.

Take a look around at some of the leading lights in the NRA - some of these people are too nutty for granola.

NRA Leader Profiles

Today's Great Idea

pure fucking genius

Music Redux

Some of my visitors have been hitting on this Steely Dan tune I posted a coupla years back.  The original YouTube video had been taken down, so I updated it with this one, which I think is pretty timely now that we're busily trying so very hard not to do anything about our gun problems.



It occurs to me that during the last 65 years or so (aka America's Imperial Period), we've spent a lot of time shooting people just about everywhere in the world, and so it shouldn't come as a big surprise that eventually, it wouldn't seem at all unusual for us to shoot each other.

Solar Dreams

I've not confirmed this is real -

- but what a great idea.

Of course, the real problem is that once the utilities companies perceive any threat to their 19th-Century Profit Model, they put their Coin-Operated Politicians to work knee-capping anybody who dares to compete with them.

From The Mail & Guardian (Africa Edition):

But renewable energy has become politically divisive as businesses complain the shift away from nuclear power towards subsidised renewables is adding to consumer costs and jeopardising economic growth.

The government agreed last year to cut the level of feed-in tariffs – the industry's lifeblood as long as solar power is more expensive than conventional forms of energy to produce – in order to reduce the pace of installations.
Tariffs were cut by 2.5% a month between November 1 2012 and January 31.

Installation decrease
An Environment Ministry spokesperson said installed capacity in the last quarter of 2012 was less than a fifth of overall installations last year.

An American Hero

He doesn't carry a gun; he doesn't threaten anybody with bodily harm; he isn't throwing bombs - he isn't doing anything in the mode of violence that we've come to expect just in the everyday transaction of living with other people.

He's "just a kid" asking to be told the truth; so he isn't passing on a lie.

From io9:

Kopplin, who is studying history at Rice University, had good reason to be upset after the passing of the LSEA — an insidious piece of legislation that allows teachers to bring in their own supplemental materials when discussing politically controversial topics like evolution or climate change. Soon after the act was passed, some of his teachers began to not just supplement existing texts, but to rid the classroom of established science books altogether. It was during the process to adopt a new life science textbook in 2010 that creationists barraged Louisiana's State Board of Education with complaints about the evidence-based science texts. Suddenly, it appeared that they were going to be successful in throwing out science textbooks.

"This was a pivotal moment for me," Kopplin told io9. "I had always been a shy kid and had never spoken out before — I found myself speaking at a meeting of an advisory committee to the State Board of Education and urging them to adopt good science textbooks — and we won." The LSEA still stood, but at least the science books could stay.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

New Vocabulary

Here's my new term - this is what I'll be calling members of the GOP for a while at least:

Renege-licans

• If you voted for a shitload of spending under last year's budget (or actually Continuing Resolution, since we don't really do budgets anymore) - but anyway; if you voted to spend the money last year and now you're talkin' about voting against the Debt Ceiling which allows us to pay for the shit you voted to spend all that money on, well, you might be a Renege-lican.
• If you intend to vote to cut Social Security benefits or Medicare for people who've been paying into the system for 50 years, you might be a Renege-lican.
• If you jumped up and down thumping your chest chanting "USA USA" sending a million Americans to fight and to bleed and to die in various desert shit-holes, but now you're having second thoughts on paying for VA Benefits or Survivors' Benefits or or or - then you're a fuckin' Renege-lican all the way.

Renege-licans:  buncha whiny-butt pussies who want all their relatives and especially all those best-buddy beltway thieves to get a good long slurp at the federal trough, but when it comes time to pay the check, these pricks are absolutely nowhere to be found.

Today's Toon

John Fugelsang

It Ain't Healthy

From NYT:

The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.

The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”

Coupla things: "This is not the product of a particular administration or political party."

WTF?  Even if I'm willing to say it's not so much a particular party but a particular outlook, that statement is borderline criminally stoopid.  Which side in any debate over any health-related issue has been funding the kind of quack science that said cigarettes aren't that bad?  that said Love Canal wasn't making the whole neighborhood sick?  that AGW and Climate Change are parts of an elaborate hoax?  that Obamacare is a federal takeover?  that artificial food additives are a good source of nutrition?  that Fracking isn't contaminating our drinking water?  that even the study of gun violence wasn't something we should spend tax dollars on? and and and.

So OK - let's focus on fixing the problem instead of the blame - but if we're gonna have any real shot at getting it right, we hafta identify the full scope of the problem.  And a big part of the problem is that "one side" keeps lying us into making bad decisions or actively seeks to keep us from making good decisions.

It's good to get this info out into the light of day, but let's remember to have the balls it takes to see the whole problem - and to call the problem by its full name.

Today's Toon

The Party Of Dementia

From Charlie Pierce:

Look at all the state representatives and senators proposing these bills and voting for them. That's your next generation of national Republican politicians. That's your Triple-A ballclub. For all the phony introspection that followed Romney's defeat, the internal processes by which the Republican party is shaping itself into a regional white-people's party that for an ideology has substituted only its various fears and hatred continue apace. The sudden media superstardom of a one-term governor of New Jersey isn't going to obviate the fact that, out there, more people take Glenn Beck seriously than take Chris Christie.

We can't make the mistake of 2008, and kinda sit back after the election thinking good ol' Barack'll take it from here.

Constant, steady pressure.  Call your reps and senators, and tell 'em what you expect.

Today's Toon

From Clay Bennett:

The Krugman Speaks

..for a good long time, and says a lot of great stuff.



I guess a coupla main points for me are these:

• We have to stop allowing ourselves to be made to believe that Democracy and Capitalism are interchangeable terms.
• We have to understand just how close we're coming to letting the Bain-type Vultures pull off a corporate takeover of our government. (Don't think so?  Think about the assets owned by the USA, and then try not to think about that fat and juicy Pension Fund we've got, just layin' there ready for some smart buzzards to swoop in and pick it clean.  What's happening now - what's been happening for 25 years - is classic Bain Capital / Henry Kravitz leveraged buyout bullshit.)

Today's Pix

Heard Today

When the facts are with you, argue the facts.
When the facts are against you, argue the law.
When the facts and the law are against you, pound the table.

The Professional Left Podcast.

Just A Reminder

Reagan was shot by a random douche-nozzle carrying a legal gun; and he was shot while  being guarded by well armed and very well trained professionals who were hand-picked because they were at the top of their game.



And now, this:


And:


Questions?

Today's Jon Stewart

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be funny.

Calling All Wait Staff

Honest - I'm not advocating actually spitting in anybody's food and/or drinks, but dang; wouldn't it be just a tiny bit satisfying?

Today's Gun Nut

A guy named Keith Ratliff was a major player on YouTube, advocating the glories of guns and fun-with-a-gun and the importance of having a gun for personal protection, etc.

Mr Ratliff was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head last week in Georgia.

kentucky.com:

A Frankfort man who was a business partner of the popular YouTube video channel personality known as FPSRussia was found shot to death last week at their firearms business in Carnesville, Ga., a sheriff there said Tuesday.
Franklin County, Ga., Sheriff Steve Thomas said he was investigating the death of Keith Ratliff, 32, as a homicide. Ratliff, who his family said commuted between Frankfort and Georgia, was found Thursday with a single gunshot wound to the head.

Thomas said Tuesday that no arrests had been made. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also is investigating, he said.

So, we can just let all that sink in for a short moment.

It really sucks for his family; and his friends; and for whoever else is affected by the ripples created whenever anybody connected to any other human is suddenly gone.

I didn't know Ratliff, and while I won't be celebrating his death, I'm not gonna be shy about pointing out the simple fact that the irony here is thick enough to choke a fuckin' hippo.

ad more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/08/2468950/frankfort-man-who-died-in-georgia.html#storylink=cpy

A Quick Reminder

...from truthout.com about something that needs to stay near the top of our priorities list:

The problem, of course, is our health care system – although “system” seems like a flattering word for this greed-driven, anarchic three-ring circus. Our health care system – guess we’ll need to call it that for lack of an alternativer – is the worst in the developed world. It costs far more, provides much less, and has worse outcomes than any system that’s even remotely comparable.

--and--

If we spent the same on health as the average developed country (as a percentage of GDP) that would inject more than a trillion dollars per year into other parts of the economy.

The "clear-eyed, pragmatic grownups" (mostly Repubs calling themselves conservative) are full o' shit.

Today's Quote

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) on Monday mocked the 67 House Republicans who voted against disaster relief funds for the victims of Hurricane Sanday. “It’s the same 67 over and over again,” he noted on The Stephanie Miller Show. “It’s the bath salts caucus, the people that would rather eat your face than raise taxes on the rich.”

Above The Law

Elizabeth Warren is on 'em like the sun covers Dixie - and my mad crush on that woman continues unabated.

“Beginning in 2008, the federal government poured billions of dollars into AIG to save it from bankruptcy. AIG’s reckless bets nearly crashed our entire economy. Taxpayers across this country saved AIG from ruin, and it would be outrageous for this company to turn around and sue the federal government because they think the deal wasn’t generous enough. Even today, the government provides an ongoing, stealth bailout, propping up AIG with special tax breaks — tax breaks that Congress should stop. AIG should thank American taxpayers for their help, not bite the hand that fed them for helping them out in a crisis.“

The violence that some of these fuckwads did to our economy is criminal.  And while I'm trying to reform my hard-ass Ayn Rand reactionary self, I have to wonder: when do we get to hang a few of these jag-offs?

The Krugman Speaks

The true sign of competence (if not genius) is the ability to explain some of the high-brain complicated stuff in a way that makes it understandable to guys like me.

(This not to be confused with the usual mode of Repubs to dumb everything down so as to give the rubes the comfortable feeling that anybody with a GED and the "common sense of the country-folk" could run this joint).

Anyway - Paul Krugman at NYT (re: the Trillion Dollar Coin):

There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. It turns out, however, that the Secret Service has figured out a way to disarm this maniac — a way that for some reason will require that the Secretary of the Treasury briefly wear a clown suit. (My fictional plotting skills have let me down, but there has to be some way to work this in). And the response of the nervous Nellies is, “My god, we can’t dress the secretary up as a clown!” Even when it will make him a hero who saves the day?

The other objection is the apparently primordial fear that mocking the monetary gods will bring terrible retribution.

 --and--

The other side of this debate has been predicting runaway inflation for more than four years, as the monetary base has tripled. The same people predicted soaring interest rates from government borrowing. Meanwhile, the liquidity-trap people like me predicted what would actually happen: low inflation and low rates. This has to be the most decisive real-world test of opposing theories ever.

"Them Damned Libruls" have been right about a lot.

Sweet Justice

It won't work because mocking the law (even when the law is down on its fucking knees begging to be mocked) can be really dangerous.  That said - go get 'em, tiger.

Addicting Info:

The designated carpool lane on Highway 101 near Frieman’s northern California home is specified to be for “two people or more” during rush hour. The police say Frieman was driving alone, but rather than pay the $478 fine, he plans to head to court on Monday to challenge the ticket. His reasoning? He had his papers of incorporation with him and since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, there were two people in the car.

Just As I Tho't

Gosh - y'mean anything that gets to be too big and too powerful always ends up being kinda bad for most of us?

And, if we don't constantly revisit and re-examine and re-interpret history we run a much greater risk of being cynically manipulated, if not flat-out hornswoggled?



Here's a question:  "Conservatives" are always yammerin' about what a bad thing it is when Government gets too big - and one of the main arguments is that "centralized power is never a good thing" - but where are they when we know with near-absolute certainty that Big Banks (just to take one good example) are ridiculously inefficient, and that the inefficiency in our financial system is a major drag on the US economy?  Where the fuck are all those anti-centralized-planning yahoos when there's really something to worry about?

Today's Gun Nut

Nothing better than this from Wonkette:

So here is one of those stories where the initial impression — “Maybe-crazy teacher was toting around an AR-15 just like the one used in the Newtown massacre!” — sounds like perfect Wonketfodder, and then you start looking at it more and finally you kind of throw your hands up in the air and wish you’d gone back to re-reading Scud: The Disposable Assassin, where it’s clear who the bad guys are. In keeping with Wonkette Policy, we will not be making fun of possibly-mentally-ill high school teacher Steven Davis, “a beloved science and math teacher at Mount Anthony Union High School” in Bennington, Vermont. Davis surrendered a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to police and was hospitalized for observation last week after neighbors spotted him carrying the weapon to his car; he also had posted several rambling, maybe-threatening videos to YouTube and his wife had taken their children from their home and gotten a protection order against him. Judges don’t grant those on a whim.

--and--

(One of the few brightly lit zones of moral clarity here: Wayne LaPierre sucks ass.) 

Pass The Bleach, Please

Posted on Democratic Underground and Addicting Info:

According to Google Translate, the bottom sign says: "you must have a permit to play in this field. violators will be at risk from police action".

And of course, that translates to "Whites Only" in a de facto kinda way; ie: most white people can't read Spanish so they'll ignore the warning.  Hell, most white people can't read much English, and a boatload of the ones who can read English "don't give a fuck what the gubmint says I ain't allowed to do".

So anyway, when the Spanish-speakers show up, they're likely to assume the white kids have the necessary permission and since they're mostly decent law-abiding folk, they'll turn away (can you say, "self-deportation"?).

According to snopes.com it's legit, but the school district superintendent says it was just a big oops - she and her husband grabbed the tool box and took the thing down as soon as she was made aware of it.

The remaining question is whether or not it was any kind of deliberate attempt to maintain/re-establish White Supremacy.

Driftglass and BlueGal have a great segment on this week's podcast about important (and subtle) differences between White Supremacy and straight up Racism:

The Professional Left, episode 161

Today's Tweet

This is a screen shot from twitter.

Check out the rest of them at :#bothsidesdont

hat tip = Professional Left Podcast #160

The Parade Of Fail

La Vita Loca

Inheritance

We're starting to get more flack about "the death tax", and of course, the frame is that we simply must protect the children of the small business owner or the family farmer from losing everything to the Tax Man when the patriarch croaks.  And I'd go along with it if there was any real truth to it.  But there isn't, so I can't.

The National Memo:

You may have heard of the estate tax, but chances are you will never have to pay it, especially now that the Senate has set the exemption at $5 million.

That means that if you inherit an estate, likely because you were born with the right last name, you won’t have to pay taxes on any of it unless its value is over $5,000,000 — then you’ll pay 40 percent on the amount above that, about the same as the new top rate on high earners. And that $5,000,000 exemption will be adjusted for inflation yearly.

The argument I find truly bogus is the one revolving around, "that money's already been taxed..." cuz that one's just pretty dumb.  Every dollar has already been taxed.  The dollar you spend at the movies is an after-tax dollar; so is the dollar you spend on rent or food or gas etc etc etc.  These arguments are in favor of the Ownership Class grabbing more for themselves and leaving less for everybody else.

I have great sympathy for anybody who survives the tragedy of losing a family provider, and we have to make sure we take care of people who need taking care of, so let's be at least a little careful with how we set it up; intergenerational wealth transfer is a good and important thing - we have to put some limits on it though.

So I'm thoroughly unconvinced that a first son or the designated heiress to the family business deserves to be handed a multimillion dollar enterprise at no cost, owing solely to their choosing the right joint to be born into.  Here's a thought: Come up with a business plan, go to the bank, borrow the bucks and let's see if you're as good at farming as your dad was.

Any other way of doing things is anti-competitive, anti-meritocratic, and pushes us all back towards the kind of imperial aristocracy we're supposed to be resisting.

The Cook Book

Brian Dalton (Mr Deity) tells us why Cook Book Religion doesn't make for a better world.

Today's Pix

Some Random Tho'ts

• My bed is a magical place where I suddenly remember everything I was supposed to do.

• I'm having one of those days where my middle finger seems to be the answer to every question.

• The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google Search Results.

• Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.

New Music

Dunno what exactly to think about this - I guess it could just be the standard teenage angst-y thing about looking for a place to belong, but there's something that feels a little more universal to me.  It's interesting.



hat tip = Balloon Juice

Gotta Keep Going

Getting Obama re-elected wasn't the end of anything.  I have to remind myself constantly  that the "other side" plays the long game.

The Wingnut Welfare system is alive and doing quite well, and people like Davie and Chuckles Koch never stop - they don't have to stop because it's practically impossible for anybody to spend all the money these guys have.  Once upon a time, we had some semi-scoundrels like Carnegie and Mellon, who surely did plenty of unpleasant things to make their fortunes, but who ended by building public libraries and endowing universities - in a certain sense, they paid it back to us.  The Koch Boys are glorified rent-seekers who seem to have no potential for such redeeming gestures.

It's important to remember also that whenever we have these cancerous growths on the body politic, we're bound to get a large rasher of opportunistic parasites that go right along with them - from Addicting Info:

1. You want an abortion? That’s ok, but you’ll need to wait 24 hours. Oh, and here’s a pamphlet explaining how an abortion can contribute to your risk of breast cancer.
2. I’m sorry to tell you that we’re going to have to let you go. We have a moral objection to your use of birth control. But other than that, we really like the job you’ve done.
3. Would you like your aborted fetus to be cremated, or would a casket suit you better?
4. You can have an abortion, but you should know that you will likely want to commit suicide, as a result. Sign here, and initial here.
5. You were raped by your uncle? That’s awful. But you should know that if you choose to abort the baby, you’ll have to pay for the abortion. Taxpayers frown on that.
6. You should really take a look at your fetus before it’s aborted. No? Well, that’s ok. I’ll describe it for you then.
7. You were raped and beat up? How horrible. We can help except if you’re Native American, an undocumented immigrant, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
8. That poor woman has a fetus that will never make it to term. But I’m going to lie to her because I’m afraid that she’ll abort it. Good thing I won’t get sued over it.
9. Abortions will no longer be available for women who are pregnant for more than 20 weeks. We don’t care about Roe v. Wade. We’re invoking states’ rights!
10. You can’t use the word vagina anymore. However, we can regulate what you do with your vagina.