Dumb and Glib

On MSNBC tonight, Cenk Ungyr asks his power panel, "What do Republican voters want?" One week they are all for Haley Barbour, the next for Mitt Romney, and now it's Michele Bachmann. In polls, the placeholder Republican candidate wins overwhelmingly over actual Republican candidates.

So, who do they want? They discard Tea Party crazies, authoritarians, anti-union, pro-Christian, anti-tax, and anti-abortion candidates at a dizzying speed. And these are issues they say matter. So what is it? What do they want?

Come on. They want Ronald Reagan. If they could just dig him up, prop him up, and run him again, they would be so happy. But what they get are G. W. Bush II. All these candidates are dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. They are dumb and glib, just like George W. Bush. If they know anything, and most don't, they sometimes know something about business (just like George W. Bush), which makes them shitty politicians who sleep with shitty greedy people who have shitty anti-worker goals.

God, these people are dumb. Republicans are not going to vote for another dumb, glib candidate. And that leaves them with no one. There is no credible, intelligent person on this Earth who believes that cutting government spending leads to jobs. That's just about the most fucking stupidest thing anyone has ever drunkenly bloviated from the podium. No person with a working gray cell in his or her head believes that shoveling money into Swiss bank accounts puts food on the table or pays the rent.

Jackasses.

A Different History

I'm thinking about Michele Bachmann and her continuous history gaffes. Why doesn't she look stuff up before going on TV or giving interviews? She knows her own platform, one of constitutional authority and basking in the wisdom of our founding fathers - she certainly sounds as if she is reciting facts and giving us a history lesson, why is she always wrong?

Maybe she does look stuff up.  But maybe she uses different history books than the rest of us.

Links: Liars for Jesus

Begging for It

Why do some people want to be persecuted? Christians, Glen Beck, Michele Bachmann, Roger Ailes...

No one is persecuting them. Oh, yes, they are hated, despised, and disliked, but it's a warm mist of hate, drifting over the cities, the blogs, the psyches of people, lightly glancing over buildings, words, and skin -- causing no actual harm, just raising the temperature a few degrees.  Like righteous indignation is wont to do.

But they actually think there are people who are out to kidnap and kill them, that people are hiding in bushes and in bathrooms, that people will surround them in parks to harass and harm them. But it's never true. No one is out to get them. Yes, many people want them gone, but they don't want them dead. Most people want them to get their just desserts, to be brought to their knees with a well-timed and very public dose of poetic justice.

Maybe this isn't so hard to understand. Maybe it's an internal equation that everyone who has a vested interest in belonging to community subconsciously seeks to solve. X amount of violent thoughts and rhetoric directed against a blameless victim should cause an equally violent reaction in the community. Even Beck/Bachmann/Ailes/Xians would be aware of this compulsion for balance. A healthy, happy community, which fosters the pursuit of happiness of its members, would do its best to silence jackasses and nutbags who shriek and rail against valuable members of society for irrational and wrong-headed reasons. Maybe what they are haunted by aren't liberals bent on taking a piece out of their hides, but retribution.

Links:
Jezebel: The Time Michele Bachmann Thought She Had Been Kidnapped By Lesbians
Gawker: The Real Story Behind Glenn Beck's Hellish Outdoor Nightmare
Daily Kos: Roger Ailes, Living in Fear of Gay Violence
Study-Grow-Know: Impatient Homosexuals and Persecuted Christians
The Psychodynamics of Scapegoating
The Political Cartel Foundation: Christian Persecution Complex

Scrip Nation

In the 1800s, back in the days when mining and logging were becoming major industries, companies were located in remote areas where there weren't established towns or cities, so the bare necessities -- housing, dry goods stores, maybe a post office, a saloon, probably stables -- sprung up to serve the workers, some of whom were immigrants, all of whom had moved to these places solely for the work.

And then this happened: Companies began to pay its workers in scrips, company currency, rather than U.S. currency. The local businesses, which were the only place for the workers to purchase goods and services, were often owned by the companies, and those businesses would only take scrips. So workers were paid in scrips and had to purchase everything with scrips and then of course, the goods and services were grossly overpriced, so very quickly these workers became indebted to their employers. This was an awesomely anti-worker, anti-human business plan. 

It should be no surprise that it is the business model most preferred by anti-worker corporations; now it's called privatization. 

Privatization is the business practice of taking over portions of government for profit. Prisons are sometimes privatized, public transportation, some utilities, bridges, tolls -- things like that are privatized. Corporations break off a discreet portion of a government service and purchase it outright, or pay fees until some point in time or in perpetuity, or a combination of both. Government gets the ready cash it so desperately needs and businesses get a guaranteed revenue stream.

But if there is profit to be made, why doesn't government just make the profit and plow it back into government, maybe fund some other underfunded service? Because business convinces politicians that business can run it better, more efficiently, and more profitably and is willing to pay a premium for it. And for various reasons, some thoughtless, some corrupt and some honest, they buy it.

But all things being equal, how can business make so much more profit from a government service than government does to make it a worthwhile purchase? Efficiency isn't something that is a magical attribute to business. It's doing things faster with less waste, and in order to obtain efficiency some variable has to change.

You can offer less service.

You can employ fewer people and require those left to do more work in the same amount of time.

You can charge more for the same service.

Offering less service means that we, the people, are actually effectively getting a tax hike. So we just gave money to some company for nothing. We didn't get better service, we got less service and we pay the same damn fees for it.

Firing people is not a good thing. Even if they are government employees. I have no idea why people think that firing people saves money. It doesn't. We are a community, tied together at the ankles. If this newly unemployed person isn't someone in your family you have to directly lend money to, s/he is someone who will drag you down if you don't pull him up. I know that some of you think that you can just reach down and cut the rope and go on about your merry way and I have to say, you can't. You just can't. That doesn't work. It never works. The reason why we have social safety nets is because we need them, and we when we don't have them, we make them. It's part of who we are, and it's a sign of a mature, stable society.

Charging more for the same service is not supposed to be part of the deal, but it does happen. Business agrees to keep the sames fees, but then at some later date says that it must raise fees for some unforeseen reason, which, is of course, a tax hike to us.

There is another insidious, slightly evil, way that business can make a profit from a service previously provided by government: It can only take over a fraction of the service and leave some of it to be run by government. Like administration of civil servants (testing, vetting, bonding, etc.), or not be required to pay a single cent for the initial capital investment of building, equipment,  This has to be done with the tacit approval of politicians, which is the evil part, this collusion between business and government to defraud the people. It's also effectively a tax hike, because once again, we are paying the same amount for less, less service and/or less investment. 

So privatization is only profitable to business if it is more costly for us.

The connection between privatization and company scrips is this: We are being forced to purchase goods and services from companies who are grossly-overcharging us for things we already own. Our taxes, the money we earned through our hard labor, is being used to in-debt us to corporations and to take profits from the mouths of our children and their children.

Privatization takes our assets, gives it to corporations, and then over-charges us for their use. 

Why?

Why?

Why isn't Barak Obama a progressive? We voted for a progressive. He sounded like a progressive.

Why isn't he a progressive?

What happened?

Link: Glenn Greenwald @ Salon
Link: Glenn Greenwald's twitter

Hero Worship: David Mamet

I don't understand people, what they aspire to, what makes their hearts beat faster, what makes them break out into a cold sweat and fall to their knees. You would think it would be something you could have, something you could hold in your hands, something you could touch. It never is; it's always something forever beyond your reach.

For progressives it's true equality, true justice. Even just writing these words dilutes their power, but they are so meaningful to me. They aren't words, they are the ultimate, the goal I would lay down and die for if I could.  

For conservatives, it's something different, something just as ephemeral but just as impossible: It's a particular type of American heroism. The gruff battle-worn soldier who has saved a thousand men with his wit and courage. A million things have to fall into place to make this man. He has to be a warrior at heart, impatient of rules, wary of authority but tersely, perfectly authoritative himself. The foundation to grow this man has to be fertile. A hard-scrabble, take-no-charity, give-no-quarter, dusty life with only family and integrity to count on. He is raised by a no-nonsense mother and a task-maker father who spend little time nurturing, expecting instead for him to take lessons from the deep earth, from the forever skies. There are no excuses for this man. You either do or you are done. He does. Every day in the hot sun and the unforgiving land. And then he goes to war and kills because he has to, because he believes in his fellow soldiers, in his family, in his America, and in his God.

This is the man David Mamet idolizes. This is a man he has spent his life trying to write, trying to articulate, trying to materialize. And why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't you? This man would save your life and not expect anything in return. What could be more seductive than that? 

This man is the epitome of masculinity -- and it is such a delusion. The idea of this man has swept across nations and may honestly be the personification of Satan. Because I don't think there is one single other thing that has caused more harm than this idea of what makes a man a real man and is more seductive, more insidious, and less attainable. And yet what passes for it, what masquerades as real masculinity has none of the generosity and all of the intolerance -- and this is what passes for the masculine ideal because it's the closest anyone can ever hope to achieve. That has to be the most fucked up thing ever.

If a man didn't have to try to cobble together the qualities that make a supreme warrior, he could probably make a better father, a better friend, a better lover, a better husband, and a better human. Because life today needs a more complex man, someone able to temper force with compassion, action with forgiveness, camaraderie with integrity, and authority with understanding. The warrior ideal is a great archetype for story, for legend, but less so for family and community.

Because the men who idolize this ideal the most are the least likely to have experienced the ultimate test and have not been forged by the fire of battle but by the shallowness of political or corporate-life, the hyperbole is perhaps the most heroic thing about them. It's hollow heroics, the words absurd and empty, the ideas devoid of intellectual attention, the concepts barren and dishonest. It's just words, culled from the Book of Warrior with no purpose but to make your heart race, ready for a battle that will never come, that you will never fight, against enemies you don't have.

Link: PZ Meyer. 

Lies Business Told You - Time Thieves

Business tells you a lot of lies. But there is one special lie that is particularly insidious to wage slaves with a personal code of ethics (that's everyone, FYI).

There are two muses for this post: Citizen Radio and me 20 years ago. Poor little me, so earnest, so eager to please, so gullible -- hugs and kisses, but no, feelings are not truth. Facts are truth. Be armed with facts. Facts fuck feelings until feelings pass out from the joy of knowing. copyright. today. me.

On an podcast episode some time ago, Allison and Jamie were riffing about their soul-crushing jobs at Borders back in the day. How someone was taking a 15 minute break and gasp, went over the allotted break time and was caught! Oh noes! The manager told one of them, I think Allison, that she was a time thief guilty of stealing time from a company that paid her to work. Of course, listeners were all "corporate assholes, fuck you," and Allison and Jamie were all "soul sucking fuckers suck our souls no more!" But that's from a distance and in retrospect -- most people of conscious care if someone accuses them of wrong-doing. Allison and Jamie cared and felt bad at the time (and a little residually, you bleeding heart progressives), you would care too and feel bad, I'm pretty sure (that's what progressives do, feel bad). But You do Not Have the Facts. I have the facts and I will give them to you.

The biggest time thieves of any company are not hourly workers, it is revenue-drivers, the people who make the money. Hey, guess what! When IT did a audit of computer use in a certain hospital I was working at, guess what the doctors (hospital money makers) spent oodles and oodles of time doing?? Hey, stop it, you will never guess. You think they were talking, or drinking, or golfing, but no! They were watching porn on their computers. For hours each day. Oh, yes. Guess what other money makers are doing? Going to strip clubs, prostitutes, expensive dinners with $100 bottles of wines, and of course, surfing the net for porn. The second biggest time wasters are management. Yes, that's right. The woman who accused you of stealing five minutes typically steals two hours a day. Update: four hours a day.

Never feel bad for stealing five minutes, ten minutes or an hour. It's a drop in the bucket and it's bourgeois and that's the last thing you are.

Links: Citizen Radio

Lies Your Father Told You - THE CEO PAY LIE

CEOs get paid commiserate with their experience and competence. It takes a unique and rare set of skills to manage a successful multi-national conglomerate so of course they get paid millions and billions in cash and other compensation.

That's a lie. It doesn't take any skill to operate in a favorable market. I could do it. You could do it. All you have to do is hire really good people and require them to provide you with good information. And that isn't hard to do. It's not hard to make decisions when very smart people work for you and are paid help you and want desperately to impress.

It doesn't require that much more skill to operate in a less favorable market. Any first year MBA could do it. Because this is what happens: There are very few ways to reduce expenses. The most obvious way, the glaringly, transparently obvious way is to reduce variable expenses. The expenses below fixed expenses. Guess where the non-revenue driver salaries are, where hourly employees fall, where secretaries, clerks, maintenance, facilities workers fall? That's right. Payroll expenses for non-professionals are usually the largest single variable expense item on the balance sheet and the easiest to experiment with. Guess what usually happens when revenues fall? Yep, that's right. Non-professionals get the ax, or are asked to take pay and/or benefit cuts. This is so asinine. So insane. You know the person who is the LEAST responsible for falling stock prices? The janitor. The administrative assistant. They have nothing to do with company profits. The people who should fired, who are responsible, are above the line, so they never get fired.

The few times when business professionals have actually creatively developed new ways to make money or save money are so few and far between, entire schools of thought, six month-long seminars, books, degrees are given to them (JIT, SIGMA, ect.).

In general business executives are not creative, particularly intelligent or talented people. So they compensate for their lack with degrees from prestigious universities, friendships with well-connected people, aggressive and ruthless tactics. They inflate salaries of entry-level executives for no other reason but to show the extent of their power, and they inflate the salaries of top executives by sitting on each others' boards and bidding up each others' salaries as if money were the only measure of anyone's worth. Which it is. No one can paint, or sing, or nurture, write, teach, or golf. All they can do is charge a premium for a marginal product. That's what they get paid big bucks for.

They sell shit. That's it. They sell shit, and if the market is saturated, they sell new and improved shit, and if that market is saturated they buy some other company that sells another kind of shit and sell that. When we get sick of their shit here, they start selling shit overseas. If they get away with overcharging for their shit for too long, they use that money to make it possible to sell the same shit for more money or to stop other people from selling better shit. They are shitty people who wallow in shit. No one deserves to get paid a million dollars for selling bags of shit.

Business is a cesspool.

Links: MSNBC Live with Cenk Ungyr June 21 2001

The Republican Plan to GET YOUR VOTE with the Anti-Ticket

This is the plan. It's a two-tiered plan meant to capture the largest amount of people.

The top tier is promised low to no taxes and anti-workers' rights legislation. That's about 1-5% of people (including the starry-eyed wanna bes and sycophants). I think.

The bottom tier is promised anti-choice, anti-non-white, anti-GLBT, anti-immigration, anti-"nanny state," anti-science, anti-freedom from religiosity, anti-government, anti-whatever polling discovers will make you motivated enough to vote. There is about 23% of the population who freely admits they are anti-tolerant and will always vote on an anti-ticket. But as we all know, if they ratchet up the hyperbole enough, people who aren't comfortable admitting prejudice and anti-other sentiment to neighbors, co-workers, and friends will be compelled to pull the lever in the voting booth. That percentage could climb to at least 35%-45%. This is why the anti-rhetoric is so prevalent and so hysterical; it needs to be to convert ambivalence into rage

So, if you are anti-something not yet demonized or magnified by pseudo news, start shrieking about it now, you could be the spokesperson for a new movement.

It is curious that people who have some anti-other thinking are so willing to put that above their own financial interest.

Republicans are losing the support of American seniors because of the plan to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. If they can't get seniors back, they will have to make up those losses some how. I wonder who they will demonize next?

The Tea Party Summer Camp

Apparently the tea party is sad about the long-lost Gold Standard.

So am I! I am totally bummed about that.

You know what else I'm bummed about? Stamps! Stamps are legal currency! Hey, you know what? You can't use stamps at 7-11 to buy anything! I swear. Try it

You know what else you can't use? A giant bag of pennies. You totally cannot buy about a million things with giant bags of pennies. You can't buy a car. You can't buy a TV. I would PAY to see you try and buy a pair of sexy expensive shoes with bags of pennies and books of stamps. I would fucking pay to see that.

Oh, Tea Party, you are so silly.

Or, you could do what everyone else does, you could work for the money to buy the shoes or to qualify for credit. Because that's the way the world works today. Our monetary system is based on work and the confidence that we will continue to work.



Tea Party Summer Camp for Tiny Tea Tots

Why Does Dan Savage Always Have to Do the Work for Us?

Sorry, Citizen Radio, Dan Savage didn't say that he would try to make more of an effort to differentiate between hateful Christians and tolerant Christians. He said the exact opposite, he said it wasn't his job to point out good Christians don't believe hateful things, it was Christians job to confront hateful Christian and point out how not Christian they are.  Loudly.

Dan Savage, Rhodes University

Oh, Atheists, can't you be less right? And If you can't do that, can't you just apologize for it more?

Why does everyone want scientists, especially atheist scientists, to apologize for being right, or to be right less emphatically? I don't get it. Facts are important, and people should know them. Without facts people make awful, dreadful decisions. The thinking is that creationists and the like would be more willing to listen and accept facts if the facts were presented in a more politic fashion.

Creationists say that they aren't mad at scientists for citing science (because that would be awesomely silly), they say they are mad at scientists for the way it's done, for the "condescending manner," for the aggressive defense of science-y facts. That's a lie. They are embarrassed about being wrong and want some way to be less wrong, so they say, "It's not what you said that I'm upset about, it's the way you said it."

People say this all the time and it is never, ever true. There is no way to point out to someone how wrong they are without hurting them. Especially when what they are wrong about is something they profoundly believe and that gives them so much pleasure.

Being wrong is painful, and there is nothing we can do about it. 


All you can do is let them feel it, let them complain about it, let them blame the manner they were told and not the substance of the facts. That's okay. Everyone does this. We get hurt, we get defensive, we react poorly and lash out, and then, if the field is ready, if the seed is sown, we grow. That's life. That's how learning works.

The thing we shouldn't do is blame scientists and put the onus of easing people's pain on them. That can't  done. Pain is progress. Without pain, no progress. If scientists couch things in such a way that believers, people who have a heartfelt stake in "truth," can't feel it, they haven't been told, and they can't learn. All you can do is nod, and say, yes, it must have been a difficult experience, I'm sorry you were hurt.

Because it probably was.

Irrelgiosophy's filthy and foul podcast always starts with a handful of stories about skunk-dicks in the news. Skunk dicks are terrible people, doing terrible things, usually in the name of religion or tacitly condoned by religion. The most recent podcast, Episode 105 The Ten Commandments, goes over the recent story from Egypt about the military subjecting women protesters to "virginity tests" (which either Layton or Chuck pointed out was probably a polite euphemism for rape) because apparently they were worried that the protesters might actually be prostitutes. (?). This is a prevalent theme in the Middle East: Women as prostitutes. And I was thinking...

How the fuck is that possible. Women can't drive, can't leave the house without a man, can't speak to a man, and if caught alone with a man is beaten, if caught kissing a man is stoned to death. So how is possible for any woman, anywhere, in the Middle East to be a prostitute?

It's simply not. The word "prostitution" utterly fails as a descriptor for what must actually occur. The general understanding here is a prostitute is a woman who sells herself for sex with or without the help of a man for various reasons, usually indicated by price: a desperate woman addicted or starving will sell herself far cheaper than a woman looking to make a lot of money very, very quickly. This cannot be what a prostitute looks like elsewhere. In the Middle East, she could not possibly prostitute herself without the help of a man. It seems to me, she cannot sell herself at all. She has to be sold, with or without her consent. That has to be a far, far different thing.

A Slow Clap in Rapeland

Citizen Radio picked up a story from Atrios about Dan Rottenberg's item on Broad Street Review. I guess it's synopsis for a new bro comedy.

Dan Rottenberg writes:

From rape to war
Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal— especially the male animal— craves drama as much as food, shelter and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much drama as a man can find without shooting a gun— and, of course, guns haven’t disappeared either.

Earth to liberated women: When you display legs, thighs or cleavage, some liberated men will see it as a sign that you feel good about yourself and your sexuality. But most men will see it as a sign that you want to get laid.

So let's armchair this, just for a couple of minutes, as an exercise in logic and maybe a lesson in the way the world works. Not that lesson, the one Rottenberg is trying to sell, we've all heard that one before and boy, is it tired.

Let's say you hate women.  A really effective way for you to keep women from having a voice and from pursuing their own goals and objectives would be to to use rape and the threat of rape. That way whenever women stepped out of line, attended a protest maybe, expressed an interest in sex or a man, or wanted educate herself at a university, rape would be an immediate and effective punishment and serve as a warning to other women.

And if you hate women but live in a less rape-permissive society, I guess you could just applaud from the sidelines.

"Green Grow the Lilacs" - The Works Projects Administration

On Friday, the Majority Report played an excerpt of Mike Stark's phone call to Rush Limbaugh's show where he asks Rush how he can defend Republican fiscal policy of cutting taxes.

Among other things, Limbaugh insisted that the government can't create jobs, and he said it like it was a monumental truth that had been discussed and proven true and only a fool could believe otherwise.

Which is patently insane. Not only can the government create jobs, the government does create jobs. In the 30s, during the Great Depression, The Works Projects Administration was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and employed millions of Americans. Americans built roads and bridges, theaters, parks, and electrical infrastructure, firehouses and airports. Women with families were employed to sew sheets for hospitals and clothing for orphanages; artists, musicians, and writers produced murals and guidebooks, symphonies and plays, sculptures and paintings. Other public works projects were in sanitation, agriculture, and conservation.  Beneficiaries included men, women, African Americans and teenagers. It was a tremendous success and Republicans hated it as they do everything that lifts the status of everyday Americans.

"Almost every community in American has a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency." -- 


How can the government create jobs? By employing people to build roads and a bridges, to renovate existing roads and bridges and public buildings (which we sorely need). It can invest in new business, in ideas that are good but not yet profitable, like green technology or new sources of energy. It can invest in existing businesses that want to extend in other areas, like robots or artificial intelligence. It can fund the arts. It can build more schools and community health clinics. It can invest in rural infrastructure -  electricity, telephone lines, cable and Wi-Fi (yes, there are still places in the United States that don't have reliable electricity, telephone service, cable or the internet). There are a million ways the United States government can create jobs. And it is the only institution in this country that would create jobs without a promise of profit or tax breaks.

Or it can create an entire new agency. The Department of Homeland Security was created during the Bush Administration and at the time cost 8 billion dollars. It costs a lot more now.

The Bleeding Heart with the Big Dream

I don't know about the world today, what people undertand, what people know. People know about the Democratic social agenda of equality for all genders, all races, all sexual orientation, and all ethnicities. This resonates for so many people, especially those Americans who travel down the road less traveled and for those younger Americans who feel that there is no road, no path, that you don't have to fight a horde of demons to cross. Demons and isolation produce a kind of sympathy, of empathy, that makes you see all struggle, all tribulation as a kind of rite of passage into the Tribe of Other.

But does anyone know about the other Democratic agendas, the other deeply held beliefs that are the foundation of the Democratic Party? It isn't just about who you love and how you live. It's about common good.

In my 20s I used to rail about taxes. I think single people hate taxes because the burden on us is so high and the benefit doesn't seem accessible. We are always at war, and I really think young adults aren't ambivalent about war. They either hate it, or they see it as an opportunity to experience life.

MSNBC Live! and the Chortling Dumbass

I rushed home to watch Cenk Unger's show on MSNBC and was confronted with three distinct guests:

 Moore, Senior WSJ Economic Writer

This is the gist of what Stephen Moore maintained when discussing Elizabeth Warren, banks, and banking regulation: Banks don't need regulations, Elizabeth Warren is anti-bank so she would be the last person anyone would want to regulate banks, bad loans are the fault of consumers, and banks aren't loaning money so we want to do everything we can to make sure banks loan money. He said all this in between braying like a jackass when Cenk was speaking.

Let's discuss. 

Back in the day, banks were regulated less and that is when they caused the Great Depression. (This was the 20s and 30s for those looking to complement with a cocktail -- I recommend the Aviator). So, Congress, which was full of good, fiscally conservative Republicans and morally suspect Democrats, REGULATED them. The intent was to force banks to exist on margins, profits of small percentages, which would force them to make fiscally conservative decisions and not to take risks, or make risky loans, or risky deals. Every single time these regulations have been loosened banks have fucked us royally: the savings and loan crisis, credit card fees and rates, junk bonds, bizarre loan packages, and now mortgage loans. 

This is history, it's actual history. It's not news to anyone in business. I didn't look any of this shit up, I know it. Everyone knows it. For a senior economic writer of a major news publication devoted to business, for him to sit down in a television studio, with the camera light on and a news anchor asking him DIRECT questions, for him to pretend that none of this happened, to flat out DENY that deregulation was the direct and immediate cause of every single one of these banking crises, that regulation is not only warranted but imperative, that regulation will only, happily, thankfully, force banks to make good, sound fiscal decisions...I am speechless. For him try to desperately assert with a straight face that consumers don't need protection or advocacy against banks and that it's banks who need protection against consumer protection agencies... 

I am fucking flabbergasted. He can't be that stupid. He has to be a bought man. I hope he chokes on his $200 bottle of wine tonight at dinner. 

Also, and an economist should know this: We don't need more loans; we are drowning in loans. We need more money and for things to cost less. Like medical care, food, clothes, cars, housing, appliances, credit, loans, and banking. But that's about us, the people, and what we need. Why would a Wall Street Journal writer give a shit about actual people.

Pat Buchanan 
I was glad to see him, as I always am. I only agree with him about half the time, but it seems to me that Pat Buchanan is an honorable human being who replies in a thoughtful, measured way with his own analysis. Actual analysis. No one hands this man a script or sends him a get-on-board-memo. He is his own man. I like that.

Donald Trump
Cenk showed footage of Donald Trump making some sensible points: That the Paul Ryan plan is not smart or fiscally feasible, that Paul Ryan was not smart for presenting it, and that the wars are insanely costly. It made me want to smack him. If this man had shown up instead of that clown that was pre-running for president, he could have changed history.

We've cut taxes, cut spending -- Why isn't it working?

Because cutting government spending means cutting jobs. Remember jobs? It's those things at least 7 million Americans don't have.

Why doesn't cutting taxes work? Because cutting taxes kills jobs.

How the World Works: The Tineless Pitchfork and the Devil's Bargain

According to James Campbell there is only one plot: a hero comes to town. In this town, the hero is something more American, a little more crunchy: he's the anti-hero, and he's come to this town, our town, in a horse-drawn wagon, the sides painted in bright, primary colors, curly serif letters announcing that Doctor Wilder's Cure for the Common Complaints of Hard-Working Folks is here.

The cure is a wonderous thing. Housed in a small blue glass bottle with a jeweled stopper, the liquid catches the sunlight and sparkles like magic. Five bottles are quickly sold to the dusty, tired farmers and shopkeepers, then many more to the bankers, the tellers, the mothers, the soldiers. In this town everyone works, from sun-up to sun-down, and the farmers have aching backs, the bankers aching eyes, the soldiers aching feet. Dr. Wilder is tireless in extolling the medicinal, almost miraculous, qualities of the cure. At the end of the day, all the bottles are sold and all the customers are home taking their medicine right before bed for the first night of a six night course.

At the end of six nights most of the townspeople have found no relief, half found themselves with debilitating migraines, the other half with facial tics and restless leg syndrom.

After a heated town meeting, the townspeople, every single one of them, gather pitchforks and torches and meet Dr. Wilder on the dusty road out of town intending to burn his wagon down and get their money back, either in coin or in blood.

Because that's the way the free market worked before governemental regulation.

When citizens have no recourse after they are cheated or injured by snake-oil salesmen or the cable company, they get out their pitchforks, and they get out their torches, and they get their own back any way they can.

Soon this and other dusty roads were littered with leaky charlatans and the towns with twitching, glowering townspeople. Something had to be done.

This is what was collectively decided: In exchange for not being burned out and stuck with pitchforks tradesmen and women agree to abide by rules and regulations. Those regulations vary from state to state but by and large they require business not to harm customers, to use safe methods and ingredients, and to adhere to industry standards and practices. In return, townspeople agree to appeal to the system instead of torches and pitchforks when injury occurs. Both sides contribute to the adminstration and monitoring of these regulatory and consumer advocacy agencies via taxes and special fees.

So, when elected officials vote to defund the EPA and OSHA and the like they are reneging on the bargain we all made back in the day. They are relieving business of its obligation but haven't given consumers a single sliver of pitchfork tine back. That is not right. It's hypocritical, and it is not free market. It is weighted market and it's weighted in favor of business.

Let's illustrate the enormous and egregious hypocrisy of free marketeers.

The cell phone industry and the cable industry is massively non-competitive. From contracts, which are anti-competitive, anti-consumer, to the dearth of actual head-to-head competition, to the non-standardized equipment (which inflates costs to the consumer and to the community), to the costly inflated monthly plans, ... really, they are industries which are operating completely outside the free market environment.

If Rand Paul were actually pro free market, he would attack those contracts, he would unravel the byzantine barriers to entry, and he would dismantle the government/business deals that deter proper competition. But this he will never do. Because Rand Paul is not a libertarian, he is not a pure free market advocate; he is a unethical, unprincipled corporate hack. Just like every other Republican. He is not on the side of the people. He is on the side of business profit and everything he does, everything he says, is to that end.