Deep tweets

Posted for our cherished Capt. Fogg and the pedant in all of us.

@CarrieRickey @LanceMannion pic.twitter.com/50sJQkq5mw
— Rob Patterson (@BfloHealthAtty) February 26, 2014

Look at all the hungry people

Wall St. Journal is concern trolling about the rise in use of the food assistance. Some well fed genius is appalled to learn the number of enrollees aren't falling along with the unemployment rate. Well you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. There's a simple answer:

There are record numbers of Americans on food stamps today because there are record numbers of Americans in poverty (records begin in 1959.)

As of 2011, there were 46.2 million men, women, and children living below the U.S. poverty line. There isn't much reason to believe that the last year of mediocre job growth has dented that number. And until it plunges, the food stamp rolls are going to stay full -- plain and simple.

The jobs being created are minimum wage positions that often only offer part time hours. Minimum wage in this state is $7.25 and most of the jobs in that range won't give any one person more than 24 hours of work in a week. The price of everything from food, to fuel, to clothing to shelter has risen far faster than wages, which we already know have been basically flat for over a decade. Every private food bank is seeing an astronomical rise in clients who were formerly secure in the middle class.

Furthermore the vast majority of the weath that's been created during this stubbornly slow recovery is being sucked up by the already wealthy 1% at the top. But sure, let's demonize the poors. You know, you give those people too many free ramen noodles and they'll never want get off the dole. Better we should let their kids starve than ask the wealthy to kick in a few more tax dollars to help them out. [graphic via Class Wars]

Phil Griffin is going to kill news journalism

Interesting profile of MSNBC Chief Phil Griffin in TNR. Also disturbing. The shorter would be: Fuck delivering the news, I just want to beat Roger Ailes -- hard -- in the ratings. To be fair, he comes off as a pretty cool guy, but here's the scary part:

But even if MSNBC doesn’t surpass its main rival in the next year or the next five, Phil Griffin has managed an unprecedented feat. He has created a thriving and lucrative liberal TV business, the long-sought answer to Fox News and conservative talk radio. Above all a businessman, though, Griffin understands that people’s tastes change, so even now, at the height of MSNBC’s power, he’s talking about “evolving” the network. He wants it to become more of a lifestyle brand than a political hub. Which means that the biggest threat to MSNBC’s position as a liberal oasis may not be a newly invigorated CNN or Fox News; it may be the man who shaped the network into what it is today. [...]

... “It’s a mistake for us to limit ourselves to news,” he says. He wants to build something he calls “the MSNBC lifestyle,” and so he’s spending a lot of time figuring out what works for Bravo and USA, two hugely lucrative cable properties also owned by Comcast. “We may find that they can teach us more about how to find our audience than CNN or NBC News can,” he says.

In other words, he wants MSNBC to "evolve" into the televised version of a tabloid in the supermarket checkout aisle. Which also appears to be the plan of his newly installed rival at CNN, Jeff Zucker. That sound you hear is the gurgling death rattle of hard news journalism, becoming just a little louder as the profession inches ever closer to its demise. [image via]

Voters support stimulus spending for job creation

More proof nobody cares about the deficit. When it gets down to specific policy voters support "government spending" to create jobs. Even Republican voters:

Americans widely support each of three job creation proposals, including offering tax breaks to businesses that create jobs in the U.S. and a program that would put people to work on urgent infrastructure repair projects. Support for these programs is only slightly lower in a variant of the question that asks respondents if they are in favor of spending government money to pay for the programs.

Greg breaks out the figures:

* 72 percent support a “federal government program that would spend government money to put people to work on urgent infrastructure repairs.” This is also backed by 71 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans.

* 72 percent support a “federal jobs creation law that would spend government money for a program designed to create more than 1 million new jobs.” This is backed by 69 percent of independents and 52 percent of Republicans.

So why does the polling always show deificit concern in the abstract you ask? It's all that other spending that's wasteful.

More than two-thirds of Americans think the budget deficit is largely a result of waste and fraud? But wait! It's all explained by a deeper dive into the poll results:

A more detailed look at which programs were named by Democrats and by Republicans suggests that for many, waste is indeed defined as "money spent on some government program I don't like."

It has always been so. Voters like spending when the money goes to their priorities. I believe this is called "enlightened self-interest" by conservatives and glibertarians. An old liberal like me calls it selfishness and quite often greed. Doesn't help that we have an entire political/corporate/media system dedicated to promoting that mindset as an appropriate definition of morality.

I come not to mock Rob Portman

This is the big news of the morning. Republican Senator Rob Portman now supports gay marriage because he found out his own son is teh ghey.

Portman, an Ohio Republican, made the stunning revelation just a week before the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on a 1996 federal law asserting that gay marriage is not legal, a measure that Portman co-sponsored as a member of the U.S. House.

This, of course, unleashed a tsunami of snark on the intertoobz. Me, I'm not willing to give the man any huge huzzahs for coming out as it were because I agree the timing is just a little too convenient. Also, it's not exactly a full-throated endorsement for equal marriage rights:

But like former President Bill Clinton, who signed the law, Portman now wants Congress to invalidate the law’s declaration that marriage is between a man and a woman. Instead, Portman said he would prefer that it be left to the states to decide the definition of marriage.

Sure leaving it up to the states now run by crackpot conservatives is going to be a big game changer.

Nonetheless, I'm not willing to criticize him too much because it does help over the long term. This is how society changes. I remember when it was absolutely scandalous for a man and woman to cohabitate outside of holy matrimony. Still recall the first couple I heard about who did it. It was spoken of in whispers, only among the closest family and friends. It was a huge deal that they put both their names on the mailbox. Even divorce was a big taboo only 50 years ago.

Took a generation or two before these things became socially acceptable. It happens in exactly this way. One preachy moralist at a time finding a path to tolerance. And that first step is almost always taken because it happens in the family. So, while I don't feel much like lauding Portman, neither will I mock him. No matter what his motivation, it's not an easy thing for him to do and every little bit really does help over time.

To serve with honor and retire with nothing

Esquire posts a long story on the man who shot Osama bin Laden. It goes into great detail on the mission that ended with bin Laden's demise that will surely fascinate fans of war porn. For myself, the big takeaway is his disgraceful treatment in retirement by our government.

The man served valiantly for sixteen years at no small risk to his own life. The stress of his deployments ruined his marriage. He killed America's number one enemy, face to face. And then he burned out. He didn't want to roll the dice for another four years and choose to get out while he still has a chance to see his kids grow up. Maybe live to see grandkids. And so, he gets exactly zero benefits. No pension. No health insurance. No employment assistance. Indeed, he can't even use his military experience to get a job because his work remains under the top levels of secrecy.

Meanwhile, he and his family, not unreasonably, live in fear for their lives. Any moment some revenge seeking maniac could target them in retaliation for bringing down the father of al Qaeda. The government's only possible assistance is some vague notion they could put them in a quasi-witness protection program. In which case they would lose everything. All contact with their extended family and friends. All their worldly goods. And realistically would still be living in fear of having their true identities discovered.

Hell, our useless politicians at every level of government who face nothing more dangerous than elevated cholesterol from too many fancy dinners with lobbyists, get a much better deal than that for far less years of service. But these are the military rules and regulations.

Furthermore, it's not just the elite troops that get shortchanged. So many whose careers are less dramatic but serve our country no less honorably end up without proper care. An "Urban Institute study found that those requirements leave 1.3 million veterans without health care benefits, alongside 0.9 million members of their families."

It's not just disgraceful, it's immoral. Honoring the troops by such gestures as applauding them in airports is little more than a cruel joke if we don't take care of them when they come home.

And nothing else matters

There's a reason our corporate and political overlords aren't troubled by insanely high unemployment some five years after the crash. Wall Street is doing just fine so, no problem. This from an interview with some financial wizard explains it all:

Q: But unemployment remains high, and there are other troubling signs in the economy.

A: Yes, but it's better when you look at what drives the stock market, and that's corporate earnings. Stocks continue to be priced inexpensively relative to the earnings they generate and we're seeing decent earnings growth. And America's competitiveness is very strong. Natural gas is incredibly cheap, and we've got an efficient and strong labor force. We've had lots of productivity improvements in corporate America and modest wage growth.

Translated from greed speak, "We're making tons of money. Unemployment is good because, profit.

And apparently they've found the long sought certainty. Congressional gridlock don't bother them no more:

I suspect we'll have more last-minute compromises that won't make Republicans or Democrats happy, but will advance the ball a little bit. It doesn't matter much for corporate America, and for the market and average consumers. The economy and the strength of corporate profitability is what really matters.

Think about that for a minute. In their world, "The economy and the strength of corporate profitability is what really matters."

And by average consumer, I'm pretty sure this guy means the little people like the single mother making only $260K a year the Wall Street Journal was so concerned about recently. Anybody much below that rung on the economic ladder is invisible. Nothing more than a single obscure number on a cost/benefit printout analyzing long term trends in spreadsheet capitalism.

[Photo via TEDSARMY.COM]

An accidental army of paranoid gun nuts

It appears James Yeager isn't ready to give up the limelight just yet. He apparently took down yesterday's crazed video but Yaeger has a new warning today.



If you can't watch the video, here's the basic text:

Now, I don't condone anybody doing anything rash. I do not condone anybody committing any kind of felonies up to and including aggravated assaults or murders. Unless its necessary.

Right now, it is not necessary. I understand that my video was very volatile. You have no idea how many people that sent me emails and texts and call me like 'Right on! My shit's clean. My bag is packed. You tell me when and where.' You have no idea how quickly I accidentally assembled an army. I assure you, a quite formidable army. But now is not the time. It's not time yet.

But, it is time to get ready!

I remind you Yeager runs a training camp for gun nuts and terrified upper middle class people prepping for a breakdown in society that guys like Yeager promise is just over the next horizon. And if necessary, he'll crash civil society himself with "volatile" videos like this. Good for his business don't you see?

I don't know if he's just a shameless grifter looking to promote his product or an actual lunatic. Either way, he probably belongs on locked psyche ward where he can't poison the public discourse with this insanity.

Second Amendment solutions

To be clear, I support gun rights for responsible owners. I know many of them intimately. But this happened all across America in the week after the Newtown massacre. At gun shows. Where not everyone does a background check.

More than 200 people lined up at each of three entrances on Saturday morning to pay the $8 entrance fee to the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, which has an exhibit hall spanning 25 acres. They crowded the aisles of the show and stood two-deep at booths for assault weapons and ammunition clips.

At all three shows the attendees were overwhelmingly white men, with some women and very few ethnic minorities.

These are people who honestly believe without a shadow of doubt they are right -- both morally and intellectually -- and everyone else is either wrong, evil, or both.

Bob Hofmeister, whose wife owns Xtreme Sports, a gun dealer with a table at the Kansas City show, said the business sold 15 to 20 AR-15s in the past week.

"Some of these people just want to show their rights to own guns," Hofmeister said.

Because freedom, and nothing quite says public safety like tens of thousands of paranoid gun hoarders rushing out to panic buy semi-automatic weapons and stockpile high capacity ammo clips.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

The internets are in an uproar about persistent rumors that the dreaded fiscal deal is going to shake out with Obama accepting a slightly lower than Clinton rate rise on the 2%ers and an agreement to raise the Medicare age to 67 years old. I'm not going to get too freaked just yet. I find it hard to believe that Obama doesn't know raising the Medicare age is the fking dumbest idea ever.

Besides the fact that it doesn't save any money and would actually would cost more, it endangers the public health. As Adele says in her post:

But the added cost is not the trigger for the invective; that comes from this: Raise the eligibility age and PEOPLE WILL DIE.

No, that’s not an exaggeration, and the failure of certain wonks to take that into consideration speaks to their isolation from everyday people, even the everyday people who provide services to them, such as grocery-store clerks, waitresses, and construction workers in right-to-work states. These are people who cannot wait until they’re 67 for the full complement of Medicare benefits. Many of them are people who will wind up paying the individual mandate penalty in Obamacare, because even if purchased through an exchange, the monthly premium will be more than they can afford.

And I actually didn't know life expectancy has dropped for the demographic that needs Medicare the most.

Life expectancy among the less educated and those with lower incomes has actually dropped. New research shows that between 1990 and 2008, white women lacking a high school diploma lost a shocking five years of life, while their male peers lost three years.

Our well fed, financially secure, very important pundits seem to be unaware, or perhaps they've simply forgotten, that there are millions of long term unemployed out there. I'm willing to bet a majority of them are between the ages of 50 and 65 years old. If anything we should be lowering the age limit to keep these people out of emergency rooms and prevent expensive medical crises that could be avoided with proper preventative care.

Meanwhile, there are some purportedly liberal contrarians of the very important pundit class who are asking what's the big deal about raising the age limit? They're finding "great" reasons to accept what would be a gross betrayal of the voters trust. They didn't re-elect Obama and give the Dems some gains to be sold out in lame duck negotiations. Which of course spawned the traditional December internet fights. If you like watching these unfold, you can probably catch up on the tick tock here.

In any event, I'm not going to freak out just yet myself. For one thing, Nancy Pelosi has been very clear that she's not accepting the age raise. So think I'll stay calm for now. Which is not to say I won't be polishing my pitchfork -- just in case.

Jutxaposition

A truth:

And a validation:

Mental health break

Good unemployment numbers, sort of ok jobs report, so wingers are in melt down mode. The crazy on the internets today is so toxic, here's a little heart melting story that will restore your faith in humanity.

These ducks were rescued from a hoarder, who was keeping over 160 fowl in filthy, overcrowded conditions. The neglected birds had never even seen a pond. But the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary has nursed them back to health, repairing infections, injured feet, and nutritional deficiencies — and now you can watch these newly rehabilitated duckies learn to swim. They’re a bit confused about it at first, but eventually, they take to it like a … well, you know.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Christ on a half eaten tortilla

Regular readers know how much I love these sightings. This Jesus on a tortilla is one of the best ones I've seen in a while.

And love this detail:

"I usually get up and go to the counter to get my taco," Garza recalled. "But this morning, a little girl, about five years old, brought my tacos to my table."

Garza said he had never seen the little girl before.

Read the rest of the story at the link.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Make it stop

This sums up where my head is today.

Mass murder renders me useless. I pretty much spent yesterday in stunned disbelief, musing on what a relief it would be to be living on a remote beach on the Caribbean where the internets don't reach. Guess it will pass eventually. [graphic via]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Decline and fall of western civilization

Surely an omen predicting our impending doom. That's apparently Snooki in the middle.

Post title stolen from Josh Marshall's tweet.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Everything changes

I'm so old I remember when the first half of this panel was everyday reality. Didn't expect to live long enough to see the other come true.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

When you wish upon a star

Former conservative kid hero, Jonathan Krohn reflects on the backlash he's endured from his former fans after rejecting knee jerk conservative ideology. Actually a better written piece than any of the juvenile rants being spewed against him around Nutopia. Recommend it as a read in full, but here's the money quote:

I was just a 13-year-old kid spitting up the nonsense he’d learned. In the future, a good rule of thumb might be: If you’re not old enough to have consensual sex, you’re probably not old enough to make consequential political statements.

In the case of the alleged adults who now attack him for growing up and learning to think for himself, I suppose we have to amend the rule to read, anyone who hasn't acheived the emotional maturity of a ten year old...

Which pretty much includes every frothing at the mouth member of his former fan club.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Conservative Utopia

You often see people suggest social cons, glibertarians and other "small government" preachers should move to Somalia. But there is another option that's even better.

[Found on twitter]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Money changes everything

There are most certainly exceptions but this new study pretty much confirms my life experience. Too much money kills empathy. It turns people into power hungry, self-entitled asshats.

And an appalling lack of empathy would explain how our wealthy ruling class can so easily ignore the legions of newly homeless middle class Americans emerging from the wreckage they made of our economy for their own benefit and still sleep at night. I suppose that's why everybody uses Ambien." [graphic via]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

One of us

The news has been so depressing for so long, it feels especially great to find a feel good story. This one gives me some hope for the future of mankind. Once conservative whiz kid turns liberal.

If you don't remember the 13 year old who became the darling of the cons after he gave a blistering speech at CPAC in 2/09, Wonkette has the video. The kid, Jonathan Krohn, is 17 now and he has seen the light. He renounced all his former views because he grew up and starting thinking for himself.

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

Sadly, most of the role models of his childhood apparently never made the same transition into the critical thinking of mature adults.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]