Today's Quote

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”

--Thomas Paine

The KrugMan Speaks

There are plenty of smart guys who talk in high-blown language because they're kinda desperate to make sure everybody thinks they're as smart as they need everybody to think they are.

But the really smart guys are the ones who can take the densest, most impenetrable content and turn it into words that fit nicely into just about anybody's brain - anybody who's willing to do his part in actually learning one or two things anyway.  You can't expect it to be spoon-fed to ya - because it does, after all, take some effort on the part of the listener.

(Always remember: for every problem that's gnarly and complicated and difficult, there's a solution that's simple and elegant and fucking wrong - are ya paying attention here, wingnuts?)

Paul Krugman:

The dollar is, first of all, a vehicle currency (mainly in the interbank market) thanks to thick markets: if a bank wants to convert bolivars into zlotys, it will generally trade the bolivars for dollars, then the dollars for zlotys, rather than try to find someone wanting to make the reverse trade. It is the currency many though by no means all international transactions are invoiced in. And to some extent people hold dollars or dollar-denominated assets because the dollar is more liquid than other currencies.

Meanwhile, governments trying to prop their currencies up or hold them down often do so with trades against the dollar, even if they’re trying to affect some other exchange rate, again because of those thick markets. Some countries peg to the dollar, although not too many these days. And governments hold dollar-denominated reserves.

I won't pretend I understand the whole thing, but if I take the gist, then I have to look at the wild-eyed panic of "conservatives" running around screeching about the Debt and the Deficit and Fiat Currency and Hyper-Inflation etc, and I just have to wonder what purpose it serves for them to kick up such a fuss.  It's never really about what they say it's about, so what's it about?

Today's Pix

Coining A New Term

To co-opt Mr Clemens - There are lies, damned lies, and TeaParty Rhetoric.



So, lemme see.  We can add Job Killing to Death Panels; Abortion Surtax; Healthcare Rationing; Government Takeover; blahblah blahblah blahblah.

The GOP is just straight-up lying.  And they can lie all they want because they know there's a constituency out here just waiting to lap up whatever falls outa their asses.  Which is why I've decided to start referring to the Tea Party in a way that more accurately reflects their actual function: Toilet Paper Republicans.

Seriously tho', what does it take to get some of these people deprogrammed?

A Word From Professor Cole

Juan Cole (aka the smartest guy in any room when it comes to talking about the gigundous cluster fuck polite people call The Middle East):

Why the US needs Electric Cars: Saudi Arabia threatens Pivot away from US
Posted on 10/23/2013 by Juan Cole

The royal family of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no constitution and no elected legislature, is in a snit about US foreign policy. King Abdullah doesn’t like even the mild American criticism of the Sunni Bahrain monarchy’s brutal crackdown on the majority Shiite community in that country. He is furious that President Obama went with the Russian plan to sequester Syria’s chemical weapons rather than bombing Damascus. He is petrified of a breakthrough in American and Iranian relations that might permit Iran to keep its nuclear enrichment program and allow Tehran to retain a nuclear breakout capacity, which would deter any outside overthrow of the Iranian regime. Those are the stated discontents leaked by Saudi uber-hawk Bandar Bin Sultan.

Behind the scenes, another Saudi concern is that the US likes democracy too much. Washington ultimately backed the Arab upheavals that led to the fall of presidents for life in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Saudi Arabia hated this outbreak of popular politics and parliamentary competition. It connived with Egypt’s generals to roll back gains in Egypt in favor of more authoritarian rule. It has just cut off Yemen because the post-Saleh situation there isn’t developing its way. Only in Syria do the Saudis want regime change, and there it is because they want to weaken Iran and depose a Shiite ruling clique in favor of a fundamentalist Sunni one.

Today's Toons

That's Pretty Fucked Up, Right There

And the binary thinking "on the right" means that if you're talking about Wealth Inequality, then what you're really after is to upset the natural order of things and to turn USAmerica Incorporated into a Bolshevik nightmare and make Jesus cry.  Cuz everybody knows Capitalism is god's way of separating the good smart people from the poor stupid people.

Uh - no, actually.  We're talking about not returning to the glory days of the 18th century, when the king could do no wrong; when the noble class owned everything and collected rent from anybody who worked for a living, and "justice" was all about the aristocracy keeping the commoners in line by meting out punishment that included branding, whipping and partial hanging.

In this country today, tell me how it's fair and equitable to fill the prisons to overflowing with people making minimum wage while the real crooks on Wall Street and the Rentiers in the executives suites can buy their way out of any jam at all because they have the money and the connections.

Today's Quotes

"Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould, Evolutionary Biologist

"That evolution is a theory in the proper scientific sense means that there is both a fact of evolution to be explained and a well-supported mechanistic framework to account for it."
-Richard Lenski, Biologist

"One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun."
-Richard Dawkins, Biologist

"Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution."
-Neil Campbell, Biologist

"The basic theory of evolution has been confirmed so completely that most modern biologists consider evolution simply a fact. How else except by the word evolution can we designate the sequence of faunas and floras in precisely dated geological strata? And evolutionary change is also simply a fact owing to the changes in the content of gene pools from generation to generation."
-Ernst Mayr, Biologist

Jesus, Jesus

A new site for me - Happy Nice Time People (via Wonkette)

Jesus and his golden retriever, Sam, have cured your son of being in a wheelchair. That’s just dumb. Who has this painting? Someone with a baby in a wheelchair? Don’t you love your baby as he is? Do you want him to feel even worse because Jesus has not cured him of being in a wheelchair? Go fuck yourself.

UPDATE: Commenter Actor212 rightly notes

Trix, look again: the kid is DEAD. Those are the bright gates of heaven and the children are running into the light. This painting is for parents who wish their crippled kid was dead. Also dead: Sam, the golden retriever because dogs should be dead as well in Christendom

Actor is right. It is a fucking snuff painting! AIYEEEE!!!!!

ACA Testamonials

From a post at Democratic Underground:

Right now I pay $650.00 per month for myself and my son (he is 19)

with a $5,000 deductible. The quotes I saw were from $180.00 to
$375.00 per month and in many cases the deductible was from $1,500
to $2,500 ...... I entered my phone # @ the web site and with in 3
minutes a broker who looks @ 62 different insurance companies called me
and said that she could get me a quote w/in 24 hours and it would include
free check ups, and for a little more money it could include vision and
dental too.

**********
No wonder the republicans are so scared of Obamacare.

Some comments from that post:

From DailyKOS:

My sister was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, among other things. By the age of three, she had three open heart surgeries, an ovary removed, her appendix out, and her tonsils removed. The medicines that she will need to take for the rest of her life, in addition to the other heart surgeries that she will eventually need are very, very costly.Our health care providers told my parents that they would be dropping her at age 18, and after some shopping around we learned that no other insurer would pick her up. This meant that there was a high likelihood of death during her early adult years. But, thanks to Obamacare, she can now be covered for life with these preexisting conditions and without any benefit cap.Now age 12, she is a very active young lady. She is involved with many community volunteer activities and is very inspirational to me. I am very thankful that we no longer have those serious worries of constant debt and looming death. I love her so much!I wish that I could get some of my extended family members to recognize the seriousness of this issue.

And a slightly different angle - again from DailyKOS:

I woke up one morning feeling like my testicles were being crushed in a vice. I had been unemployed for a year, and my fiancee of two weeks was making about 19k/yr, so I tried to tough it out for several hours. I tried ibuprofen, soaking in hot water, soaking in cold water, anything I could think of to dull the pain. Eventually I gave up and called my dad and he drove me to the hospital.I spent another six hours in a semi-lucid state getting x-rays and CT scans, and lying on a gurney in the hallway.They came back with the diagnosis of a kidney stone. They determined that the stone was positioned right by the opening of the urethra and was just small enough that it should pass on its own. The doc decided that a natural passing would be less disruptive than a stent, so they put me in a room for the night.I spent the next four days loaded on morphine and some of its sister drugs before the stone finally passed, my fever subsided, and I was cleared to go. Every time the morphine wore off, I would be writhing in agony, counting the minutes until I could get another dose. When I did get another dose, it still hurt like hell, but I didn't care any more.A week later, I decided I had to face facts and deal with the bill. I called the hospital and was told that I owed $400 because the urologist who checked up on me every day was not completely covered by my plan. The remainder of the bill, $26,000, was covered because I was on the Mass Commonwealth Care emergency care plan. If not for that program, both my and my wife's life would be completely fucked over.So former Governor Romney, I would like to thank for making that plan available, but I also want to ask why the fuck you don't think anyone else in the country should have access to it?

There are problems with the thing, and those problems aren't just about the tech glitches.  There're way too many people stuck on one of the several bubbles of the system.  They make a few bucks above whatever threshold, and so they don't get the price break they need, or they don't qualify for the subsidy, or whatever - they just don't get the help they oughta be getting.  All of which can be fixed once the whole thing is up and running.

It's interesting to note that in the states where they've accepted the Fed Bucks for Medicaid expansion and the grants for establishing the exchanges, the thing is working pretty well - plus it seems the insurers are selling a boatload of new policies.  I have to assume somebody's looking hard at the numbers, and here's to hoping the "Risk Mix" is good enough to make it profitable at some sustainable level.

Meanwhile:

They're runnin' scared.  They've made such a big deal over how ACA will kill all the jobs and ruin the economy and make Jesus cry - if it works, they are madly deeply truly fucked.