The US is Stupid

ginandtacos.com: THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Man,... I wish i'd said that.

Why the Mass Media Sucks

and Why We Still Need Health Care Reform.

Why does this information have to come from bloggers?

... The budget problem is almost entirely a story of a broken health care system. If the United States had the same per person health care costs as any of the countries which enjoy longer life expectancies than the United States than it would be facing long-term budget surpluses, not deficits.

Ross Douthat Claims That "Everybody Knows" Something That Is Not True | Beat the Press

Map of Unemployment Growth

Wealth in the US: Real vs Imagined

Actual represents the actual distribution of wealth in the US. Estimated is what people think the distribution of wealth is.

Most people think the top 20% of people hold around 60% of the wealth. They think it would be more fair if the top 20% only owned around 35% of the wealth. The top 20% actually own almost 85% of the wealth.

People just don't have a clue.

Matthew Yglesias » Poor People Are Much Poorer Than You Think

Originally from here: Norton / Ariely - *.pdf

Stealing more Land

Dozens of Arab families may be evicted from East Jerusalem neighborhood under court ruling - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Atheists vs Believers

Atheists know more about religion than the believers. Imagine that.

Atheists Outdo Some Believers in Survey on Religion - NYTimes.com

"We Stand by Israel" , Why?

For those in the US with the "We Stand by Israel" yard signs.

from Juan Cole

Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian West Bank in 1967 and has been mistreating its residents, cooping them up, stealing their land and resources, controlling their borders, imprisoning them in cantons and generally making their lives miserable ever since. The United Nations Charter, to which Israel is signatory, forbids the annexation of land through warfare. The Geneva Conventions forbid occupying states to settle their own citizens in occupied territory. The West Bank and Gaza were never awarded to Israel by the United Nations and simply don’t belong to it, nor do their 4 million inhabitants, whom Israel has kept as stateless colonial subjects.

Netanyahu Blows off US; Mahmoud Abbas pleads for Settlement Freeze | Informed Comment

Czars

Good commentary on Christine O'Donnell and the "Made-by-Fox-News" czar controversy.

slacktivist: Nothing can stop The Duke of Earl

Its You vs. Corporations

The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. Corporations - The Big Picture

I agree though, corporations are mostly owned and run by the wealthy so this could still be a capital vs labor thing.

On another level, could we reach a point where corporations replace nation-states? Some corporations have more money than some nations. Hell, the big banks own/control some small states now. Could we reach a point where companies have their own standing armies, when one multi-national declares war on another or maybe one group, say energy corporations declares war on environmentalists? It may not be as far off as we think.

What would a world run by warlord-like corporations, without national boundries, look like?

A fast food marketing trick waiting to happen.

Nudge blog · A fast food marketing trick waiting to happen

Religion vs GDP

Very religious countries are generally very poor. Rich countries aren't very religious. The US is an anomoly.

ComingAnarchy.com » The Great Outlier

Bush Era Tax Cuts

---
Income: Over $200,000
Income Taxes Paid: $0
Being rich and powerful in the US: Priceless.
---

Remember when the Fox/right-Wing propagandists were all wound-up over the fact that "50% of the people didn't pay any income tax". Well, I'm more pissed about the fact that since the Bush Tax cuts, 22,256 taxpayers with income OVER $200,000 paid $0 income tax. That's no tax. nothing. They made over $200,000 and paid $0. How the hell do you do that?

These 28,000 "taxpayers" made over four times as much as the average US household and paid nothing in income taxes. That number is up from around 3,000 "taxpayers" prior to the tax cuts. The Bush era tax cuts let about 20,000 rich people escape their tax liability completely.

This chart and other good Tax thoughts found here: Tax.com: So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?

The Rude Pundit - Nails It.

Speaking of Americans "yearning to be free" and to self-determine shit, the Pledge says, "Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course." Hey, you know what, Mike Pence and the rest? We did vote to institute a new governing agenda, Obama's. Senate Republicans have prevented its passage. Maybe you could complain if we were, you know, being governed by it.

The Rude Pundit

U.S. congressmen: free jailed Israeli spy.

Isn't lobbying to get a convicted spy released getting pretty close to teason?

U.S. congressmen urge Obama to free jailed Israeli spy

Ahmadinejad and the 9/11 attacks

This was all over the news today.

CNN has this video ahmadinejad.remarks

but this says there was a problem with the transation:ahmadinejad

Someone's not telling the truth.

Staged or Not: 9/11 vs Iraqi War

Ahmadinejad and the 9/11 attacks - Americas - Al Jazeera English

A lot of the world believes the US Government staged the 9/11 attacks. Hell, a lot of American believe it. It seems unlikely to me.

BUT.....

It looks like there's little doubt the US leadership staged the Iraqi War.

JUAN COLE: rumsfeld-bush

Who You Gonna Believe

Who You Gonna Believe? - NYTimes.com

Certainly not Michele Bachmann

American Royalty: Evan Bayh

Evan Bayh, Duke of WellPoint, Senator, Son of a Senator, Never had a real job.

The 50 Richest Members of Congress (2010)

Juan Cole: Witches, Exorcisms, and Billionaire Pickpockets | Informed Comment

The crazy Republicans

Witches, Exorcisms, and Billionaire Pickpockets | Informed Comment

Lindsey Graham - U.S. must prepare to attack Iran

Who are the bad guys again?

Lindsey Graham says U.S. must prepare to attack Iran | McClatchy

Update

Here's a good rant on this from Booman Tribune

GinAndTacos: On the Rich

GinAndTacos.com: FAILURE TO PERCEIVE

Stinque: On the Tax Cuts

"Without getting deep into numbers, let’s just note that Obama advocates letting the top marginal Bush tax cuts expire. This means that all your income up to $250,000 will benefit from the same extended tax breaks as everyone else. It’s only the income above $250,000 that will be taxed at the confiscatory Clinton rates. Say your income is $300,000: Instead of paying $16,500 on that last $50k, you’ll be paying $1,500 more.

Or — hold on a sec — $4.11 a day."

Stinque - A Quarter-Million Doesn’t Go As Far As It Used To

Stuxnet Worm

Stuxnet Worm hits Siemens Control Systems

This has to be the work of US or Israeli intelligence. A couple of links...

Digital Bond - Stuxnet Target Theory

stuxnet-worm-is-straight-out-of-a-cyber-espionage-thriller

Drugs: Booze vs. Pot

It's not "drugs" they care about. It whose drug.

You can be high as a kite on the job on legal pain killers or other mind bending legal prescription drugs, you can raise your kid with Ridlin or high-caffeine, sugar laden drinks, you can destroy yourself with alcohol, fat/chemical laden foods or the bible but if you smoked a joint last night and it shows up in your pee today, you're in deep shit.

Let corporate America have control of the Pot market and it would be legal tomorrow.

Political Irony › Booze vs. Pot

Is $450,000 a year rich?

From Brad DeLong

Professor Todd Henderson

Your Tax Dollars at Work

How fucked up is this...

The US is "selling" Israel F35 fighter jets at a cost of 2.5 billion to the US taxpayer. Israel is bitching about the deal due the costs, because we won't sell them as many as they want, and we won't let them modify the planes. BUT,... they're not even really paying for them as the entire cost will be funded by the US military.

Israel-decides-to-buy-f-35-fighter-jets-despite-row-over-cost-of-deal

...despite opposition from a number of senior defense officials over the high cost of the deal.

The Israel Air Force, however, will have to make do with considerably fewer planes than the 75 originally sought.

Negotiations dragged on for more than two years amid several disagreements; many revolved around the IAF's demands that Israeli-made systems be installed for specialties such as electronic warfare and communications. Israel also wanted to expand the plane's capacity to allow it to carry Israeli-made missiles.

The Israel Air Force, however, will have to make do with considerably fewer planes than the 75 originally sought. The entire deal will be funded by American military."

I wonder how the Muslim world will feel when these American made planes kill their people?

In any case, the F-35 will give the IAF outstanding radar-dodging capabilities that allow preemptive strikes against enemy states with advanced air defense technologies

"They hate us for our freedoms"

yeah, right..

Fox News Funnies

Political Irony › The Hypocritical World of Fox News

Big Business

Won't the world be a wonderful place when the free market types Teabaggers republicans democrats our corporate overlords get the big bad government and those pesky scientists off the backs of big business.

Gagging the Mississippi : Pharyngula

Peace in the Middle East

The Israeli View: Israel's ambassador to the U.S.: Why Israelis care about peace - latimes.com

A Palestinian Response: responding-to-michael-oren-in-his-own-words

The US media will print the first but Americans will never see/hear the response.

Latest Real Estate Time Bomb

You should be very cautious when buying a house out of foreclosure. The bank may not really own the title rights. Of course they write the contract so the buyer, not the bank, is responsible if there are problems. You could end up with a big loan but without a house.

Latest Real Estate Time Bomb: Title of Foreclosed Properties Clouded; Wells Fargo Dumping Risk on Hapless Buyers - naked capitalism

The State of Young College Grads - Mandel on Innovation and Growth

Did something change in the 2000-2003 period? College costs started increasing at an even greater rate while wages stagnated? What changed? Also, public school rates have been increasing much faster private schools? State budget cutbacks maybe?

The State of Young College Grads - Mandel on Innovation and Growth

UPDATE:

Here's Peter Orszag's view. The states are spending the money on Medicare costs rather then higher eduction.

A Health Care Plan for Colleges

The 10 Biggest Myths About Gold

For my gold bug friends.

One of the few common-sense looks at gold that I've seen in the US media.

ROI: The 10 Biggest Myths About Gold - WSJ.com

NAFTA vs Mexico

NAFTA was bad for the Mexican people too? You'd have never know that if you listened only to the US Media.

Free trade, fenced people

Many recent migrants had been farmers prior to NAFTA, when heavily subsidised US agricultural products flooded the Mexican market, destroying their livelihoods.

By 2004, ten years after the agreement was signed, 1.3 million farm jobs had disappeared in Mexico, according to a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Operation Gate Keeper [an earlier phase of border militarisation] was launched in 1994 when NAFTA went into effect and I don’t think that was coincidental," Boyce said.

"If you look at the impacts of NAFTA on the majority of people, especially on the demographics who are crossing the border, the arguments for NAFTA have been demonstrably unfounded."

Perhaps, the most lucrative legacy of NAFTA has been the expansion of the drug trade. And the drug gangs are following the basic premises of free trade style capitalism to their logical conclusion: buy low, sell high, make profit, and eliminate your competitors.

US drones prowl Mexico bicentennial

The Liberal Media at Work

..Almost half the country opposes tax increases for the richest Americans..

Phone Calls from God

How do parents explain this to kids? The same way they explain Santa Claus.

Phone Calls From God

More good stuff from Pharyngula

Brad DeLong vs Megan McArdle

Brad DeLong and his readers having fun with Megan McArdle.

Did Megan McArdle Really Graduate from a Business School? - Grasping Reality with Both Hands

Damn, This is good....

Several rants from the past, from GinAndTacos.

Should be required reading in our schools.

ginandtacos.com - Ed vs. Logical Fallacies

Worries of Parents

5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn't : Shots - Health News Blog : NPR:

"Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

Kidnapping
School snipers
Terrorists
Dangerous strangers
Drugs

But how do children really gt hurt or killed?

Car accidents
Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
Abuse
Suicide
Drowning

Why such a big discrepancy between worries and reality? Barnes says parents fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news or from a friend without stopping to think about the odds the same thing could happen to their children."

I think the blame should not be placed on parents who

"fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news...

but on the media who bombard parents and children with the horrific stories.

More Rich vs Poor

Hullabaloo

American Income Inequality

John Hellegers: American Income Inequality is the Cause of our Crisis | Informed Comment

WTF?

Fox and the republicans must be proud of themselves after this poll.

CNN Poll: GOP can handle budget slightly better than Democrats - CNN.com

Twelve years of Reagan/Bush1 end in massive budget deficits.

Eight years of Clinton ends with budget surpluses.

Bush and his war cronies turn these surpluses into huge deficits with wars and tax cuts for the rich, ending with the biggest financial crisis since the Great depression.

Obama and the democrats have been in less than two years, have been buried with cleaning up the Financial crisis, and blocked by stonewalling Republicans at every turn and the people are convinced the Republicans are better with the budget than the Democrats? WTF ??

Some possible reasons??

1. Fox Propaganda Network has done its job.
2. This poll is flawed.
3. The American people are stupid.

Iran Paying Taliban to Kill U.S. Troops

More War-Party propaganda?

FOXNews.com - Report: Iran Paying Taliban to Kill U.S. Troops

This story looks bogus to me. All links I can find site the same source, London's Sunday Times. You can't read the full story there unless you subscribe? Guess who owns the Sunday Times? Mr Rupert Murdoch.

So its "War Party Propaganda designed to drive up Profits"

The true cost of the Iraq war

The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond

Terrorism

------------
ter·ror·ism>   [ter-uh-riz-uhm] – noun

1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Terrorism - Definition
------------

• Burning a Mosque because you're mad at Muslims is terrorism.
• Shooting up an Army base because you're pissed at US government actions against Muslims is terrorism.
• Killing an abortion doctor because you're against abortion is terrorism.
• Burning down new construction because you don't like its effects on the environment is terrorism.

Let's call this shit what it is.

A Pessimist Manifesto

A Pessimist Manifesto

The Real Lesson of Labor Day

Robert Reich has a good, plain-talk summary of the current economic conditions of the US along with what I believe is an accurate description of the root causes: Wealth and Income Inequality.

When the rich have too big a share of the pie they don't really use it to the benefit of the country as a whole. They use it to chase assets around the globe (bubbles), avoid the US tax system, and to increase their political power.

When the rich have too large a share, the lower and middle classes don't have enough so they have to work longer hours and use more credit to "live the American Dream". This leads to a host of other problems. Workers lead generally more stressful lives as they must put in more and more work hours. Children suffer as parents have less family time. The masses are more easily agitated against perceived enemies like immigrants, foreign nations, the government, etc. It generally makes for a more ugly place to live.

On the other hand, it seems like too much equality can lead to problems too. The US in the late 60's and early 70's had a much more even distribution of wealth and income but also had economic problems, recession and inflation, or stagflation. Could it be that when the masses have too much they use it to chase consumer goods which drives up prices but distorts the markets to the point that businesses just crank out the goods without trying to make better investment choices. Eventually all you have is rising prices. Economic vitality has been lost.

Too much in the hands of the wealthy leads to an over excited economy that ends in financial crisis?

Too much in the hands of the masses leads to a economy built on mass consumerism which induces inflation that eventually leads to stagflation?

As in most things it is a balancing act, the extremes don't work as well as some point in the middle, but I think we favor the wealthy too much right now.

---

Anyway back to Robert Reich. The link below is pretty good. Here's a portion but you should read the whole thing.

The Real Lesson of Labor Day

1. The Origin of the Crisis

This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology — things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet — made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.

But for years American families kept spending as if their incomes were keeping pace with overall economic growth. And their spending fueled continued growth. How did families manage this trick? First, women streamed into the paid work force. By the late 1990s, more than 60 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home (in 1966, only 24 percent did).

Second, everyone put in more hours. What families didn’t receive in wage increases they made up for in work increases. By the mid-2000s, the typical male worker was putting in roughly 100 hours more each year than two decades before, and the typical female worker about 200 hours more.

When American families couldn’t squeeze any more income out of these two coping mechanisms, they embarked on a third: going ever deeper into debt. This seemed painless — as long as home prices were soaring. From 2002 to 2007, American households extracted $2.3 trillion from their homes.

Eventually, of course, the debt bubble burst — and with it, the last coping mechanism. Now we’re left to deal with the underlying problem that we’ve avoided for decades. Even if nearly everyone was employed, the vast middle class still wouldn’t have enough money to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.

It’s no coincidence that the last time income was this concentrated was in 1928. I do not mean to suggest that such astonishing consolidations of income at the top directly cause sharp economic declines. The connection is more subtle.

The rich spend a much smaller proportion of their incomes than the rest of us. So when they get a disproportionate share of total income, the economy is robbed of the demand it needs to keep growing and creating jobs.

What’s more, the rich don’t necessarily invest their earnings and savings in the American economy; they send them anywhere around the globe where they’ll summon the highest returns — sometimes that’s here, but often it’s the Cayman Islands, China or elsewhere. The rich also put their money into assets most likely to attract other big investors (commodities, stocks, dot-coms or real estate), which can become wildly inflated as a result.

Meanwhile, as the economy grows, the vast majority in the middle naturally want to live better. Their consequent spending fuels continued growth and creates enough jobs for almost everyone, at least for a time. But because this situation can’t be sustained, at some point — 1929 and 2008 offer ready examples — the bill comes due.

Megan McArdle is Always Wrong

I believe it!

A new entry here: Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | Blog Archive | Comparing the High-Income Tax Cuts and the Social Security Shortfall

The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle has written another post about our comparison over the next 75 years of the Social Security shortfall and the cost of the Bush-era tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. The gist of Ms. McArdle’s argument seems to be that we’re not computing the present value of these two policies in the same way. That’s simply incorrect.

All Entries Here: Megan McArdle is Always Wrong

Mexico's Drug Violence

More violence created by the United State's War on Drugs.

Dozens killed in Mexico shootout - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Marketing Freedom and Tyranny

The left needs to reclaim "Freedom" and "Tyranny"

Freedom and tyranny are two, prominent tea-bagger, right-wing mantras used to hurt the left and fire up the right-wing base. The right owns these words. Beck, Hannity and any other flag-wrapped, right-winger can scream "we want our freedom back" and the right-wingers go wild.

They own these words because they are almost always associated with government actions, keep the government out of my life, etc. "tyranny" is almost always used to denote government oppression of individual rights.

The left needs to take these words back or at least muddy-them-up a little ("luntz" them up?) by pointing them at corporations and big-business. Focus on the things big, corporate interests do that limit people’s freedoms or borders on tyranny while screaming that we want "freedom" from the oppressive, "tyrannical" power of the big business. Make people realize that government is not the only threat to our freedom.

Use the words a lot. Build talking points around them. Run advertisements showing corporations and big-business forcing people to take pay cuts, moving jobs out of the country, encroaching on private individual land rights by polluting, mountain top mining and eminent-domain, show banks trashing retirement funds while paying CEO's big bonuses, manipulating markets to run-up electric and oil prices, dropping insurance coverage, buying political favors to increase profits. Again, show that tyrannical business can be just as bad as any government.

Point out that government should play the middle man, ensuring that individual rights and freedoms are not stomped on by the tyrannical power of corporate money and power.

Done correctly, this could give the left a fighting chance when some right wing lunatic like Hannity or Beck wraps themselves in the flag and screams that "we want our freedoms back".

TNB

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

Well a few words anyway,...

Abbas looks like he knows he been dragged to the table, a beaten man, disgusted, only here because he's been forced to attend by the US. A puppet, representing his people only in the eyes of the American public.

Netanyahu has a shit eating grin and evil stare. He knows he holds all the cards and is the man in control.

Obama doesn't look much different than Abbas. He knows the US is on the wrong side of the moral argument but is powerless to do anything about it. He knows that this "peace process" is only for show and isn't going to work. A puppet of a different sort.

Fibbin'

How elites lie. from uggabugga

Robert Rubin is trying to fool you