Category Archives: The Us

I’m sick and tired of hearing conservatives bitch and moan about having to pay taxes. It boils down to this: conservatives take all the credit for the success they have. To a conservative, if you’re poor, you’re a loser and you’ve gotten what you deserve. Likewise, if you’re rich, then you worked your way up, without any help from anyone, and you deserve to keep every dime you make.

This is, quite simply, bullshit. And the reason I know it’s bullshit is because of my own life.

I’ve done well for myself. I’ve exceeded expectations. I’ve worked hard, and I have a rewarding and interesting career. But I’d be the biggest most arrogant type of narcissistic asshole to claim that I’ve done it all on my own and that I deserve to keep every dime that I make.

Why? Read More →

If there is one thing that we can depend on from the American Right, it’s this: they use fear to motivate their base, and the solution for the fear is always a war. During the eighties it was the fear of drugs, which lead to the War on Drugs. During the Clinton years it was the fear of immorality, which lead to the war on Clinton. After 9/11 it was the fear of Islam, which brought us the War on Terror.

Recently, now that ten years  have past since 9/11, it’s time for a new war. Voters only stay afraid for so long, you see.  So the war or terror has given away to the war on debt and government. Right-wing media is hysterical with the specter of record-breaking dept. Pundits and politicians tell us we’re broke. They say we’ve never been so far in dept. And they say that only savage and immediate cuts will save us.

This chart puts things into perspective. You’ll notice first that, as a percentage of GDP, we’ve certainly had more debt before. We have yet to reach post-WWII levels. And that’s significant because now we’re fighting two wars (some would say three) and the effects of a major recession. The second thing is that debt went up significantly under Reagan and both Bushes, and yet we’re led to believe that Obama pretty much invented the concept of debt. Naturally neither of these facts that are mentioned on Fox news or in the Wall Street Journal. Read More →

This is the kind of logic that makes me despair for the nature and future of the human race:

On the other hand, if the Japanese are able to contain the core at the Daichi plant, which will be determined over the next day, it could invigorate the call for more nuclear power plants.

“If we don’t get a meltdown, it will be fair to point to this as a success in nuclear power. You had a 40-year-old nuclear reactor withstand an earthquake and a tsunami and it kept the core intact,” Cirincione said. “If that is the scenario that will be used as an argument to say look nuclear power is safe even this 40-year-old plant could take a one-two punch from mother nature and survive.”

Umm… no. The only “fair point” is that mother nature will continue to catch us off guard and that we simply cannot foresee every possible way in which disaster might strike, making nuclear power unacceptably dangerous, particularly close to tectonic fault lines, where we know that earthquakes are not only likely, but inevitable. Read More →

It seems crazy, but the US has given a huge gift to criminal gangs: virtually unlimited profit. Furthermore, the US has given this gift more than once.

In 1920, alcohol was banned in the US. The idea was well intentioned but wrong-headed. Supporters of an alcohol-free America naively thought that making alcohol illegal would make it go away. There is little evidence to that effect. Passing a law does not magically change appetites.

What the change in law did do was put legitimate bar owners, merchants, truck drivers, and brewery workers out of business and simultaneously opened up vast new business opportunities for outlaws. Suddenly, instead of providing a living for legitimate, law-abiding people, it was a criminal enterprise.

This period saw explosive growth for gangsters like Al Capone, who went to work putting together bootlegging networks. Inevitably, turf wars started, and violence followed. Additionally, since it was outlaws making the stuff, there was no regulation or safety inspection. People died and went blind regularly during this time due to bad batches of home-made spirits. Read More →

So now we’re awash in pictures of oil-slicked wildlife, and the satellite images of a massive plume of toxic sludge swirling around the Gulf of Mexico. It’s depressing for the obvious reasons — that it’s a crime against nature — that it’s a devastating blow to both wildlife and to humans. There are no winners in this situation.

But it’s also depressing to read reactions and rationales. From Rush Limbaugh opining that the explosion on the oil rig was sabotage by liberals for political gain, to Newt Gingrich blathering about how it is unfortunate, but it shouldn’t stop us from expanding off-shore drilling. To Rand Paul, who apparently feels that being critical of a company that is responsible for the largest oil spill in US history is “Un-American.” Read More →