Obamacare: The Comic

A very good, but long, comic explaining our health care system. One of the best summaries I've seen.

Obamacare: what it is, what it’s not - Boing Boing:



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Israel vs International Law

Netanyahu vows to continue building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem | Al Jazeera America:

Israel’s construction of settlements in East Jerusalem ..( ) .. is illegal under international law. 

If a Muslim country was doing this we'd be threatening to bomb the hell out of them.


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Israel and Palestine killing Americans

Compare How U.S. Responds To The Killing Of American Kids Based On Identity Of The Killers - The Intercept:

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Marriage

‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration by Andrew M. Francis, Hugo M. Mialon :: SSRN:

"In this paper, we evaluate the association between wedding spending and marriage duration using data from a survey of over 3,000 ever-married persons in the United States. Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony."

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Israel in the West Bank

Well, at least they're trying. The US has basically given up.

EU seeks talks with Israel over ‘red lines’ in West Bank - Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz:

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We support Israel?

Why?.... Israeli Squatters Sabotage Palestinian Wells in Jordan Valley | Informed Comment:

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Terrorism in Context

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Putting Terrorism Risks in Context:

Overall a decent post on the risks of terrorism but where in the hell did the original authors get their data claiming 553 deaths in the "Intifada Israel 2000-2006" line?



Here's the entry from Wikipedia [Second Intifada]

 There is little dispute as to the total number of Palestinians killed by Israelis. B'Tselem reports that through April 30, 2008, there were 4,745 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, and 44 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians.[137] B'Tselem also reports 577 Palestinians killed by Palestinians through April 30, 2008.[137]

... 

The sources do not vary widely over the data on Israeli casualties. B'Tselem reports that 1,053 Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks through April 30, 2008

553 is not even close. The closest number listed by Wikipedia is the 577 "Palestinians killed by Palestinians" which seems like an odd number to use given the data available.

I 'll hold this up as an example of the US elite burying their heads in the sand (or having their heads up their ass) when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

Also note that far more Palestinian children than Israeli children are killed.

 "Remember These Children" reports that as of February 1, 2008, 119 Israeli children, age 17 and under, had been killed by Palestinians. Over the same time period, 982 Palestinian children, age 17 and under, were killed by Israelis

I'd like to see "Being Palestinian" or "Being Born in Gaza" incorporated into this table. I'll bet simply "Being Born in Gaza" ranks up there pretty high.

tnb

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Government By Wishful Thinking

Balkinization: Government By Wishful Thinking:

".. government has a habit of governing idealized persons, while the people being governed have an equally strong tendency to behave in ways that are not ideal. "

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We Support Israel

That nice Israeli occupation force at it again.

Palestinian boy, 13, killed by Israeli forces raiding West Bank village:

If an Israeli 13 year old had been killed by Palestinians, The story would have had plenty of air-time on US media and Netanyahu would have used it as an excuse to bomb the hell out of Palestine.

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Links

Consumer Protection?

Measuring Tools

Fire Pits. These will be the hottest selling item at Lowes, Walmarts, and Home Depots, next summer.

Of course for eastern Indiana Teabagistan, they will be NFL, NASCAR, Harley Davidson, or Gun themed.

1963 Gretsch model 6120 Chet Atkins Nashville hollow-body guitar

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Ebola

Found here: Hullabaloo:



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Palestine

Small step but still something you won't see in the US.

A Symbolic Vote in Britain Recognizes a Palestinian State - NYTimes.com:

Though the outcome of the 274-to-12 parliamentary vote was not binding on the British government, the debate was the latest evidence of how support for Israeli policies, even among staunch allies of Israel, is giving way to more calibrated positions and in some cases frustrated expressions of opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance toward the Palestinians.

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Motivation

Found at Marginal Revolution

Jean Tirole and Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motiviation:

For example, if I tell my son.  “If you get an A in math, I will give you $1000.”  What does my son conclude? 

My father must think math is very important for my future to offer me $1000.  My father is smart.  I will work hard. 

This is the message that I hope to send. But my son knows that I know something about math and also that I know something about him and he may use this knowledge to make a very different inference. 

If my father thinks I need $1000 to get an A, math must be very hard or I must lack talent.  I will work for an A this year but next year I should probably not sign up for advanced math classes. 

Or perhaps he infers 

If my father is offering me $1000 to do the right thing , he must not trust my judgment.

Or perhaps 

My father is trying to use his money to control me.  I rebel! 

Thus reward has two effects a pure incentive effect (holding information constant) and an inference effect. Notice that the inference effect depends on the context. Thus, without knowing the context–how the father gets along with the son and their history of interaction–we can’t know what the effect of the “incentive” will be. Thus I have argued that “an incentive is not an objective fact but a subjective interpretation.” 

- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/10/jean-tirole-and-intrinsic-and-extrinsic-motiviation.html#sthash.GqTn736M.dpuf

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Cops

For all you Libertarians out there. When you get your "limited government", local groups like these will be in control.

Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes | The Washington Post:

"A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities."

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The Rich get Richer

or ' F#ck them Poors"

They don't need better wages: The Great Wage Slowdown of the 21st Century - NYTimes.com:

The typical American family makes less than the typical family did 15 years ago, a statement that hadn’t previously been true since the Great Depression.

or education: [WSJ link]

On average, students in 2014 in every income bracket outscored students in a lower bracket on every section of the test, according to calculations from the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (also known as FairTest), using data provided by the College Board, which administers the test.

or health insurance

Starting Jan. 1, Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week…”We had to make some tough decisions,” Sally Wellborn, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

...

The six Waltons on Forbes’ list of wealthiest Americans have a net worth of $144.7 billion. This fiscal year three Waltons—Rob, Jim, and Alice (and the various entities that they control)—will receive an estimated $3.1 billion in Walmart dividends from their majority stake in the company. 

The Waltons aren’t just the face of the 1%; they’re the face of the 0.000001%. The Waltons have more wealth than 42% of American families combined.

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Links

AIG: Wait. So THAT’S what the bailouts were about? — Medium:

You just can't trust a Capitalist

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Corn

A hard look at corn economics — and world hunger | Marketplace.org:

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Stuck in the Bubble

We have the same issue with our Corporate-Political-Media-Elite types here in the US.

Stumbling and Mumbling: "The economy":

Worse still, by "fixing the deficit" they mean some type of austerity. But there's a big difference between the two. We could - perhaps - fix the deficit by state-contingent fiscal rules, or by adopting a higher inflation target (or NGDP target) and thus using monetary stimulus to inflate our way out of government debt. However, even these options are outside the Overton window. 

Instead, the only economic policy permitted by the Bubble is the fake machismo of "tough choices." Not only are these tough only for other people - mostly the most vulnerable - but they don't even work in their own terms; one lesson we've learned since 2010 is that "tough decisions" to cut the deficit don't actually do so as much as their perpetrators hope. But then, in the Bubble's hyperreality, neither justice nor evidence count for anything.

also,... HyperReality 

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War on Coal

5 days in Kentucky: The war on coal | Al Jazeera America:

"While many here blame Obama personally, coal in Eastern Kentucky was in deep trouble long before he took office. Production has declined 63 percent since 2000. Over generations, the state’s richest and most accessible coal seams have been tapped. Eastern Kentucky coal now costs as much as $70 a ton to mine, making it the most expensive coal in the country. In Wyoming, coal is mined for $10 a ton"

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Sacred Obligation to Die

The Daily Show via Political Irony

Political Irony › Sacred Obligation to Die:

The Daily Show

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The war on Isis defies logic - FT.com

The US government's stumbling-around in the middle east over the last couple of decades, especially since 9-11, has really earned a new section in Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly" . Rarely has there been a better example of a government repeatedly shooting itself in the foot.

The war on Isis defies logic - FT.com:

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Danny Macaskill: The Ridge

Democracy

We really don't give a damn about it.

After Feigning Love for Egyptian Democracy, U.S. Back To Openly Supporting Tyranny - The Intercept:

That pro-democracy script is long forgotten, as though it never existed. The U.S. political and media class are right back to openly supporting military autocracy in Egypt as enthusiastically as they supported the Mubarak regime. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who last year led the military coup against the democratically elected Egyptian government of the Muslim Brotherhood, is now a Washington favorite, despite (or because of) his merciless killing and imprisonment of dissidents, including Al Jazeera journalists. In June, Human Rights Watch noted the post-coup era has included the “worst incident of mass unlawful killings in Egypt’s recent history” and that “judicial authorities have handed down unprecedented large-scale death sentences and security forces have carried out mass arrests and torture that harken back to the darkest days of former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.” 

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Barbaric Muslims

Our media sucks. They remind me of the cheerleaders and football meat-heads of high school during a pep rally. Rah.Rah. Rah... War! Fucking war! Beat those bastards.. etc..

Read and watch this...Hullabaloo:

This is ridiculous.

"The Muslim world is responsible for a really big part of religious extremism right now," Cuomo continued. "And they are unusually violent. They're unusually barbaric in the places where it is happening."

Yes there are Muslims that are extreme but have you talked to an American evangelical or an Israeli far-right Jew? There's a lot of fucking crazy religion out there.

As far as violence goes, they've cut off a few western heads which is pretty damned ugly but they don't really have any drones or other high-tech military crap to fight with. They don't have a state-sponsored media to spread their propaganda. They are fighting with the tools and methods they have.

Hell, moderate Christians,...think about that,... moderate, Christians have invaded their countries, killed their people, destroyed their lives and are still lobbing missiles at them on a regular basis. Jews invaded their land years ago and are still killing them and stealing their land. Imagine what would happen if our radical Christian groups or Israel's far-far right ever managed to take control?! The Muslim countries in the middle east would be radio-active wastelands.

tnb

 






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Palestine goes to UN Security Council

The US will veto this. We don't allow any Anti-Israel stuff on our watch.

 Palestine goes to UN Security Council to Demand Israeli Withdrawal by 2016 | Informed Comment:

Palestine will argue that Israel has systematically and over decades violated all the international laws regulating military occupations, and that it is quickly marching toward being an Apartheid state (Apartheid is itself a form of crime against humanity).

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Inequality

The Walmart Heirs Are Worth More Than Everyone in Your City Combined | Mother Jones:

"In 2013, the Walton family's net worth was $144.7 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 1,782,020 average American families"

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Links

Good Point..."$22 Billion to Fight ISIL in same Year Congress cut $8.7 bn in Food Stamps".



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