Far East Cynic

And trust me-its not pretty.

I have been in a very pessimistic mood lately. I think it has a lot to do with the transactional nature of the interactions we have with others on the internet. I’ll expand upon that in a couple of paragraphs, but it has me wondering whether the time has come to unplug entirely.  It would probably return a lot of time to me-but that said, I am not sure how I would use it. In the vernacular it is known by the more descriptive term, committing Internet suicide.

NOTE: Please not the word “Internet” in front of the “S” word. I am not mentally disturbed and will not do anything towards my real existence.

I first read about it in a computer article. Internet Suicide is the act of removing your online presence from cyberspace.

Sick of horribly embarrassing things showing up when potential employers Google your name? Tired of everyone knowing you live in a garden level dungeon apartment? Perhaps you just don't like the fact the internet makes you easy to find. Thankfully, it's not that hard to delete yourself entirely. Here's how to do it.

As most bloggers eventually discover, it’s hard to blog in anonymity forever. A lot of people now know my “real” identity and I am fine with that. What I am not fine with is the idea that people think they have a right to make comprehensive value judgments about a person based on solely on what one discusses or argues about on Facebook, in a blog, or on Twitter or any other venue. I am a lot more complex than that-and I think most people are the same way. Yet as I have pointed out in several humorous posts and not so humorous posts-gone on long enough-any internet discussion that goes on, spirals down into an angry oblivion. Especially in today’s politically polarized society. It is a coarsening factor in our American society-and its creating a lot of the political problems that we now have to deal with. Blogs and people were supposed to be better than that. Sadly, they are not.

The herd mentality is alive and well in the world of the blogosphere-a lot more so than when I started blogging back in 2005. The popular response is that “well both sides do it-it is not just a conservative thing”. That’s true-but there are differences between the way conservatives and liberals approach the tactics of internet discussions. Definitions of “civilized discussion” differ a lot. One man’s mannerly discussion is another man’s gang beating.

Conservatives tend to believe in moral absolutes a lot more than liberals seem to. Liberals-not near as much. ( Which is probably why they are liberal-they have seen the world and discovered the hard way that , in general, things are not simply black and white-but rather an overriding shade of gray).

Another thing is that conservatives hate it when you dismiss the source of their information. They come at you saying you are not discussing the main points or “dealing with issues”. I am sorry-in many cases the source is the issue. If you are quoting from Breitbart, the National Review, or several other sources-it means the veracity of the material you cite is suspect to begin with. Sorry, but it is true. There are many sources on the internet-not all of them are good. It is perfectly acceptable to be dismissive of the trash that resides in over half of Memeorandum. Liberals, I feel are not burdened so much-mainly because they place a higher value on providing scrutiny of sources anyway. The “well MSNBC is biased too” argument grows tiresome-they forget that MSNBC is not nearly as successful as Fox is. And as Jon Stewart loves to point out, they have not made it an art form to complain about control of content-while at the same time being the biggest practitioners of it.

One thing I have always been slow to recognize is that there are simply some people that can never be convinced-no matter how hard you try. These people live to make trouble and they love to reinforce their own self worth by trashing the merit of the other person. It has gotten me into online trouble far too often. More so in my early years of Facebooking and Blogging-but it still happens now.  The ideal solution to such a situation is never to play at all-or walk away early. It is not cowardly to that-its actually the more prudent path. Especially,  when you have been drinking. I have a hard time remembering that and I really need to do so. There are a lot of supremely self confident people out there who have perfect lives and hate your life because it does not meet their predetermined moral standard. It must be nice to have that level of self confidence. I know I don’t and certainly don’t place much value in their moral judgments anyway.

At some point, I believe, you have to come to peace with your internet personality-and accept yourself for who you are and be comfortable with who you are on line. If others don’t like that-it is their problem, not yours –and if that means you have to resort to the block button to regain some peace and sanity, then so be it. It’s a lot better than getting an ulcer. So I have made a resolution to be more comfortable in my own internet skin. I am who I am –and more importantly-you are never going to be me. So stop trying to tell me how to live my life.

If you are looking for a point in this post, there really isn’t one. I am writing to work through my own issues and and I am allowing you to be my “counselor” –so relax and enjoy the ride. This is nothing more than "a steam of my conciousness" post. I get to do that from time to time. Unlike the people in the lovely land of certitude-I do not believe in moral certitudes or self confidence. Such is the lot of the man of thought.

Help me to always give 100% at work
12% on Monday.
23% on Tuesday.
40% on Wednesday.
20% on Thursday.
5% on Friday.

And help me to remember…
When I'm having a really bad day,
and it seems that people are trying to piss me off,
that it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4…
to extend my middle finger and tell them to bite me!
Amen."

I have been reading the reactions to the sequester-and I am truly coming to the firm conviction that the United States of America has gone insane. Not only did Congress not avoid this abomination-but they didn't even stick around and try to work it out even after the deadline has passed. That astounds me beyond all belief. Even more so is the reaction of some in the proletariat who actually believe that this approach to budgeting is a good thing and are saying we need even more cuts ( without offsetting revenue restoration).

There are a whole host of lies and distortions out there-and that is what bothers me the worst. One cannot even correct the record-because there is no willingness to understand, much less believe the facts.

Lets review the facts shall we?

1) It is not just "a 2 percent cut" in federal spending. Its an almost 9 percent whack in defense and a combined 8% whack in non defense when the various non defense cuts are aggregated. And even more importantly-because the Congress did not act to allow the Administration to execute reprogramming actions, the various departments cannot do what common sense says they should do-make vertical cuts and tough reductions in programs wholesale. ( Like cancel LCS for example and move the money to other accounts). Yet there are people-I've argued with them who just go on saying that we can  do this and no one will get hurt. Well, they are wrong-and deserve to be beaten for their inability to understand. Yes I said that-its how I feel.

2) The GOP insistence that there can be no restored revenue-even when it makes sense and will better spread the burden around-is total lunacy.

Ezra Klein mans up and admits he was wrong. He had written a piece suggesting that if only Republicans knew how much Obama has been willing to offer, they might be willing to make a deal. Jonathan Chait set him straight, informing him that no matter what Obama put on the table, Republicans would find a way to say that it’s not enough. And sure enough, a Twitter exchange lets Klein watch that process in real time, as a top Republican consultant, confronted with evidence that Obama has already conceded what he said was all that was needed, keeps adding more demands.

So Klein admits that Republicans just don’t want to make a deal. Their objections to the deals on the table aren’t sincere; if convinced that Obama has met their demands, they just make more demands.

I think it’s important here to understand the broader implications.

The whole push for a Grand Bargain has been based on the notion that we can reach a fiscal deal that takes the whole fight over the budget off the table. What Klein has belatedly learned is how unlikely such a Bargain really is; but the same logic tells us that any Grand Bargain that might somehow be struck, via Obama’s mystical ability to mind-meld Star Trek and Star Wars or something, wouldn’t last. In a year — or more likely in a minute or two — Republicans would be back, demanding more tax cuts and more cuts in social programs. They just won’t take yes for an answer.

Meanwhile, it’s not just Republicans who refuse to accept it when Obama gives them what they want; the same applies, with even less justification, to centrist pundits. As people like Greg Sargent point out time and again, the centrist ideal — deficit reduction via a mix of revenue increases and benefits cuts — is what Obama is already offering; in fact, his proposals have been to the right of Bowles-Simpson. Yet the centrist pundits keep demanding that Obama offer what he has already offered, and condemn both sides equally (or even place most of the blame on Obama) for the failure to reach a deal. Again, informing them of their error wouldn’t help; their whole shtick is about blaming both sides, and they will always invent some reason why Obama just isn’t doing it right.

 

This is the whole false equivalency thing again. "Both sides do it". No, in this case only one side has-and since they don't experience any consequences for it-they do it again and again. The fiscal scolds and whack jobs in the GOP should have their balls in a vice right now-being squeezed until they pop. But no one is inflicting the pain on them to get them to do what is right. America only has two branches of government right now. Congress for all intents and purposes has ceased to exist. The founding fathers never intended for that to happen.

Basically its a continuation of the total freak out 30% of America had when Obama won in 2008 and when he won again in 2012. Unlike others its not about race, but it is about his proposing ideas that that show compassion for the non-wealthy. The 30% on the teabag side of the aisle don't really believe in the two party system anymore. They only know that if they can't be in charge than they are going to whine and cry like the selfish spoiled children they are.

Fact 3-Congress bears the bulk of the blame. Between the filibusters on the Senate side and the GOP in the house proposing nothing of substance-they created this situation and what's worse, they like it.

Meanwhile, budget cuts or no budget cuts, the military budget is being hollowed out from within by rising military health costs. Over the past decade, the military’s health-care costs have tripled, surging from $19-billion in 2001 to $53-billion in 2011. Health costs are projected to rise to $63.9-billion by 2015. An additional 6% cut atop those previous problems begins to look like a serious challenge to readiness and effectiveness.

Yet this serious challenge is not being taken seriously by the very people you’d most expect to be concerned. According to a Gallup poll released last week, 80% of self-identified Republicans feel it is very important for the U.S. to have the world’s strongest military. Only 48% of self-identified Democrats think so, as opposed to 51% of Democrats who say military predominance is “not that important.”

In Washington, however, it is the Republicans who are behaving cavalierly about the defense budget…….

The trouble is that the new Tea Party congressional GOP no longer minds defense cuts as much as it used to — or as much as the rank-and-file Republicans surveyed by Gallup. Congressional Republicans increasingly welcome the sequester as a good thing, or anyway, an acceptable thing.

According to Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee: “[This] shows we’re finally willing to stand and fight for conservative principles and force Washington to start living within its means. And that will be a big victory.”

It should be stressed: The Republican Study Committee is an important group within the Republican caucus. These are not Ron Paul style isolationists, but mainstream conservatives. Unfortunately, mainstream conservatives are increasingly willing to risk national security to score points in the Washington partisan competition.

Americans sense the decline in their country’s strength. Gallup finds that only 50% now express confidence that the U.S. military ranks number one, the lowest number since the end of the Cold War. Such pessimism is exaggerated of course. But it’s not completely ill-founded. Not since the 1970s has Congress taken the kind of risks with national security that it seems ready to incur today.

 

I am becoming more and more pessimistic-and less able to control my anger. Ronald Reagan would weep at what his party has become, and Tip O'Neill would weep at the state of Congress today. No matter how polarized the discussions were in the 80's they were still able to negotiate compromises. But now-then, the debate was about the policies. Now, its about Obama. The useless people in the crazed 30% of America who make up the teabagger village cannot come to grips that there is a better and different solution than to give in to their inherently selfish instincts. And I am at a loss as to how to make them understand it short of depriving them of oxygen and letting them suffocate.

The truth is, most of what "conservatives" believe to be true is false. And there is no one in America who can convince them other wise. Such is the result of 10+ years of an alternative world-led by Fox News-that makes up its own facts, distorts the truth and allows shills to gain positions of prominence. The US has become what it says it despises-a 2nd rate power. It has no one to blame but itself. you can't cut, cut, cut-and not pay the bill.  We can have less government spending-but do not kid yourself, it comes at the cost of global retrenchment. By deciding not to decide-Congress has decided. Let the withdrawals begin. But please don't complain when the results are not what you wish.

The douchebags elected representatives in Congress have once again failed miserably at their jobs..

You will notice the Countdown clock to your left, counting down the days till my furlough and or layoff-whichever comes first.

One of my favorite writers, Charles Pierce has summed up the situation quite well:

Whatever happens tomorrow, the utter failure of sequestration to do what it is designed to do is of a piece with the previous failures of the Gang Of Six, the Gang Of 12, and the king of all revered utter failures, Simpson-Bowles, which still has most of official Washington feeding Vaal at every turn in service to a commission that couldn't even muster a majority of its own membership, Whatever happens tomorrow, the utter failure of sequestration to do what it was supposed to do — namely, to be so utterly horrifying that it would force a deal — should bring an end to government by gimmick.

Government by gimmick is a dodge. Government by gimmick is a way for politicians to protect their status as politicians without actually doing the jobs they were elected to do. Government by gimmick depends vitally on the fundamental Beltway anti-democratic heresy — that the system as designed is inadequate to present circumstances and that the only way out of this is to go put together the proper group of bipartisan Very Important People to apply common sense to the problem. It was government by gimmick — the Tower Commission — that probably bought Ronald Reagan out of the Iran-Contra scandal because the gathering of wise men determined from the start that holding the president responsible by constitutional means would scare the children and disturb the horses. This is the principle that was applied to the useless Gang Of 14 solution to the "problem" of judicial filibusters. And, ever since the American people elected a Congress full of right-wing chew toys in 2010, government-by-gimmick has been the way the American economy has been directed, and now all the duct tape is failing, and the balsa's cracking, and the whole thing is coming apart, and the people in charge are spending long hours talking about how they couldn't have foreseen any of this.

The great thing about Pierce is that he does not succumb to all the nonsense about "both sides do it". He puts the blame squarely where it belongs-on the selfish children who inhabit the tea party crazed GOP.

Tomorrow night I plan on getting really loaded after I go to Hebrew class. I should have been on a plane to Tel Aviv tomorrow-there to look at nice Israeli women with big knockers and drink Goldstone beer, but thanks to the lunacy known as the sequester-and the impending layoff I am expecting to receive because of it, it was decided they could not afford to send me. Even though there is a lot of work to be done on my project-that cannot be thrashed out by that bane of my existence-the video teleconference. ( If I could uninvent that abomination, believe me I would.).

So as we count down the hours to yet another fiscal disaster our GOP Galtian overlords have put upon us-I thought it would be a great time to point out that most of what they are telling you about the "problem" is wrong. If they are not outright lying-they are leaving out important bits of context and detail out that change the picture rather dramatically.

Lets start with Lie # 1: Obama was the father of the sequester. It is a complete and utter untruth to say that because it ignores the background and the context. What the House Republicans fail to tell you are that Republicans had threatened to crash the economy on purpose unless their debt-ceiling demands were met, and in the hopes of resolving the crisis, President Obama offered Republicans an overly-generous, $4 trillion "Grand Bargain," which included entitlement cuts and new revenue. Boehner was inclined to accept it, but his caucus balked, forcing the Speaker to walk away from the table. Eric Cantor has admitted this, twice. Instead of a Grand Bargain, Cantor and the House Republicans made a grand bet. The bet failed spectacularly. Obama won the election.

Now lets move on to lie number #2-under President Obama, federal spending has exploded and as a result he has added 1 trillion a year to the deficit. "Its the spending stupid-we have to cut spending! We are robbing from our children".

Well, first of all, "Your children are going to be just fine", and second-its not true. Either on the spending side or the deficit side. Oh there was a President that exploded federal spending-most of it for stupid wars for worthless Arabs and for a lot of things we didn't need, but his name began with a B, and not an O. Consider the fact that for the last several years, federal spending has actually declined.

Now if that were not enough to refute the critics-then consider this little tidbit, federal hiring has also declined significantly too:

And of course there is always my favorite-which shows definitive that it is the tax cuts-combined with the recession and the wars that have ballooned the deficit. Not that deficit scolds like the evil man himself-Paul Ryan-have been paying attention.

One of the most frustrating things about this whole silly "Fiscal Cliff" nonsense is that the people supporting our Galtian overlords never tell you the whole story. They just point out the things that they want you to hear-and hope that you are not smart enough, or knowledgeable enough on tax laws to spot the obvious holes in their narratives.

Take this story that appeared in the NY Post and was taunted forth by Phib.

The Post showed a chart and then told "horror" stories of how very well off people are going to "suffer". Lets look at the chart shall we?

Oh the horror! The misery! Someone making 300,000 dollars a year might be reduced to the ruin of drinking Gallo with dinner instead of a fine French Burgundy! Oh the unfairness of it all!

It must be the fault of those goddamned moochers.

Except of course its not one bit true. The chart is one of the most misleading ones I've yet to see in the recent month-and trust me, I have seen a fair share.

Let's take a couple of the "horror stories" that are cited in Phib's post and dissect it a little more shall we?

“It’s that much higher?” asked IT worker Vikas Kataria, 34, who discovered that his combined household income of about $250,000 per year will cost him nearly $10,000 more in taxes. “I thought it was a couple thousand — but that’s a lot,” said Kataria, who works at Merrill Lynch in Manhattan and is married to a systems analyst for a brokerage firm. “That’s huge!”

 

With higher taxes, the couple would have to cut out on traveling and family vacations.

Give me a fucking break, you, whiny, selfish,  bastard. 

First of all, you work for Merrill Lynch and you can't get decent tax advice? Then you deserve to pay more taxes for being stupid. And second-by your own admission my dear Vikas, you are not going to see your taxes go up by 9730 dollars. Or have you forgotten that Post did not take your dependent deductions into account? Or that it also doesn't factor in many of the probable tax deductions you will take because being a high earner, you have the ability to take them. And lets not forget the Post chart has deliberately left off the tax sheltering effect of even putting the maximum allowed into your 401K-which at 250K per year should be pretty easy to do.

Factor all of those things in, I'm willing to bet your taxes only go up about 5600 or so. 400 dollars a paycheck on someone receiving a pay check of  almost 11000 every two weeks. ( Before taxes and other withholding). 21000 a month.

Yes that is the right number of zero's.

God damn it all-it must really suck to be you. Oh the heartlessness of having to make ends meet on at least  13000 dollars take home a month.

When is the last time I ever saw that much money in a month? Oh right, never. And I still take vacations and drink premium quality beer-and have a piece of my hard earned retirement stolen from me every month by a thankless, fuck less, fat shrew.

But I'm supposed to feel sorry for you and your plight. Uh-huh. Right…………………………………………….

Now journey to the top end of the scale-someone making a million dollars a year is forced by the hand of a draconian government to get by on a paltry 650,000 a year. So much for that new Lexus or my business class ticket to Paris. Good God Man, just how unreasonable can you get?!?

As Mitt Romney showed us-the odds of the 1 million dollar earner actually paying the amounts listed above are slim to none. And that's what this pointless whining fails to highlight-effective tax rates are what really matter. And those tend to be statistically higher for those in lower income brackets. Furthermore, its not going to help anyone if all the country does is continue to just hold down already low tax rates on the rich without addressing the real issues that are at stake in today's economy. And all of this tax talk ignores the fact that neither side is doing what it needs to about addressing seriously the issues of income inequality, wage stagnation, and the forces that are crushing the American middle class. This is why I am not crying any salt tears about the plight of rich people working for Merrill Lynch or business owners who are too stupid to take advantage of incorporation rules that would lower their tax liability. And I am not afraid of the "cliff" except in how it will affect the stock market. The market of course will be affected, primarily because of the whining by people who actually have a lot to be thankful for.

AND TAX RATES WILL STILL BE THE LOWEST IN THE US IN 50 YEARS.  The repeal of the Bush tax cuts will, however,  restore much needed revenue to balance the budget.

That is something these morons crying about tax cuts conveniently forget.

The social costs of an austerity agenda — and, certainly, all the available evidence from those European countries wherein one was imposed — are profound. Whether you like it or not, there has been a general political consensus for the paste eight odd decades that a social safety net is one of the legitimate products of that creative enterprise of self-government, that it is part of what we agree to when we form the political commonwealth. To have an austerity agenda imposed from above, and by a relatively unaccountable political elite, and because of the damage done to the nation's finances by an absolutely unaccountable financial elite, is to make an obvious mockery of that political commonwealth, and to do so hard upon an election in which the existence of that safety net was so directly and democratically validated, is to spit in the eye of a self-governing people. This, in turn, will engage all the worst popular instincts, including ill-directed and abandoned popular wrath.-Charles Pierce.

Whenever I get depressed about the sad state of American politics-which in the month of October is just about every day-I don't have to look far for people who should be held to blame for polarizing our politics.

The collective group of idiots who populate the Liars Club.

To review, the Liars Club is that group of conservative bloggers,who no matter what the subject is, will ensure that whatever story they post on their blog is casting the current President of the United States in the worst possible light-and casting themselves in a light of "brilliance". Or at least that is how they want you think they are. They consist of the National Review, Powerline, Gateway Pundit AKA Jim Hoft, also known in saner circles as the "dumbest man on the internet", William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools ( the last word is a correct title-they are fools),  any Town Hall author-but especially Hugh Hewitt. And last but not least, the emotionally crippled children who carry on the legacy of their thankfully expired namesake-Andrew Breitbart.

All of them are quite useless and all of them to figuratively to be beaten to death with a Louisville Slugger.

When they can't find anything news worthy to tar and feather the President or any other Democratic Party member about-they just make shit up.

What probably depresses me the most is that -one can just know when one reads a tag line by them on Memeorandum, that they are completely and certifiably insane. While they all have different day jobs-some are professional   hacks "journalists", others are part time writers-but they are all certifiably stupid. I hate them all with a well deserved passion.

They are as John Cole describes it, Serious Persons:

Serious Person- Also frequently appearing as “Very serious person,” this is applied to a person held in great esteem by The Village, who is repeatedly entirely wrong about everything, usually with tragicomic results. Conversely, those who have pretty much been right about everything the last twenty years are referred to as “not serious.” Serious persons believe the only solution to any foreign policy issue is bombing brown people (preferably Muslim, when at all possible), and the only solution to domestic affairs is cutting entitlements and demanding that the poor and working poor “sacrifice.” 

In other words, they have no fucking clue what they are talking about. Nor do they have any idea at all the world has changed and its not going back to the 80's-EVER.

Why do I hold them to blame? Because they write for an audience that clearly is as ignorant as they appear to be. Notice I say appear to be-because deep down they know what they are doing. They have no desire to have an honest discussion about anything. Their sole purpose in writing is not to celebrate the joy of communicating a well thought idea. And to take the time to do some research about it. Or to even pause to write about the truly beautiful things in life that have nothing to do with politics.

No they do what they do for the purpose of getting people angry. They want their supporters to be angry at the nasty black man in the White House. They want people like me-smarter than any of them-to get angry in return. And then if I write something that actually catches them in their lie-or points out again how they love to lie-they will simply turn up the volume and make it about me and/or some aspect of my personal life.  They truly are reprehensible people.

They exert too much influence in American politics today-and sadly the news media by and large seems to take cues from them. In the case of Fox News, they appear to get story lines from them.

And they get away with it. They shouldn't but they do-because too many Americans are stupid. Right Charles Pierce?

The threat to the country, and to its commitment to self-governing democracy over the previous decade, and especially at the end of it, when the institutions of self-government seemed powerless to stop a cascade of destruction brought down on all of us by the institutions of private capital, the strength of which most of us never had begun to guess. That, through lassitude and a nearly bottomless thirst for snake oil, we had been complicit in the coring out of the strength of the institutions of self-government seemed terribly beside the point at the time, given the ruin that seemed to be looming to all points of the compass. But now, in the first real election conducted entirely after the crisis, and after the depths of the recession that it caused, we do not have that luxury anymore. The stakes are plainly clear. The decision, at this point, may well be irrevocable, and the first opportunity to make that decision is in the simple act of voting, and of explaining to ourselves why we vote. We vote because it is something we do together, for one another. We do not vote to take something back from someone else. We do not vote in a bubble, even if we think we do. Voting is communal, whether we want to look at it that way or not. We will have a self-governing political commonwealth or we will decide not to have one. And, right now, 20 days out, you'd have to be crazy or Nate Silver to think you know what which way that decision will fall.

The lies of the aforementioned members have a lot to do with that. And so I place the blame squarely on them-and hate them with a fervor that will be a flame unrequited until they are exposed as the charlatans they truly are.

The Supreme Court actually got it right for once-but the fact it was a 5-4 decision is troublesome for many reasons. This should have been a no brainer for the Court. Of course to do that-you need high caliber Justices.

The Supreme Court led by Chief JusticeJohn G. Roberts Jr. upheld the heart of President Obama's healthcare law Thursday, ruling that the government may impose tax penalties on those who do not have health insurance.

 

The decision came on a 5-4 vote, with the court's four liberal justices joining with the chief justice.

On one hand, Roberts agreed with the law's conservative critics who said Congress does not have the power to mandate the purchase of a private product such as health insurance.

But the Affordable Care Act does not impose a true legal mandate on Americans, he said. It simply requires those who do not have health insurance by 2014 to pay a tax penalty.

And that is constitutional, Roberts said. "The federal government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance," he wrote in the majority opinion. "The federal government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance," he added.

The mandate is expected to raise about $4 billion a year to help pay for healthcare coverage.

The opinion by the chief justice is likely to surprise his liberal critics and his conservative admirers. He played the decisive role in rejecting the Republican-led legal challenge to theDemocrats’ most ambitious social legislation in decades.

Thanks be to God! Now the ruling is going to have to be parsed for some days to come.

Women in particular should pop the champagne and celebrate. Of those millions of uninsured, 19 million are women.

Justice Ginsburg (joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) agreed with the Chief Justice’s bottom line – that the mandate is constitutional under Congress’s ability to tax – even while disagreeing with his Commerce Clause conclusion; those four Justices would have held that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce to pass the mandate.  With five votes to uphold the mandate, it will survive, and the Court did not need to consider the “severability” issue — that is, what other parts of the law would have to go if the mandate were unconstitutional.

And so-by a very narrow majority the Court did the right thing. 

I tried to watch the US news about this when I got home. Because I have Sky Satellite all I get is Fox News. I lasted all of 40 seconds watching Lindsay Graham prove what a worthless piece of shit he is by whining about the decison. It took me that long to flip a bird at the TV and tell him to go fuck himself. Then I switched to Bloomberg for much more rational news.

Unexpected though it may be- A great day for America.

Is that group of increasingly reprehensible bloggers who make up the "professional right wing blogosphere". (Membership names listed below).  Besides the fact that they generally have their facts wrong-they are just about universally a group of douchbags loathsome group of people to be around. Their blogs are essentially interchangeable, fact free-and in general-poorly written and edited.

So imagine my surprise when , this guy paid them a visit last week:

NEW YORK — In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C. club, according to attendees.

Romney, who struggled with some members of the conservative media during the Republican primary, is banking on their support in his campaign against President Barack Obama, regardless of whether they were previously in his corner or not.

The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator,Washington Examiner, Human Events, RedState, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier and PJ Media. RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

Details of the Romney meeting did not previously leak out because of the off-the-record ground rules…

As to why he was not invited, Andrew Breitbart could not be reached for comment.

But rest assurred, his snot nosed, idiotic, children where there.

The meeting, which included writers from RedState and Breitbart.com as well as a list of conservative publications reported by Huffington Post — National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Powerline*, Townhall,, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier, and PJ Media (though not, as an early report had suggested, the conspiracist site WorldNetDaily). RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

Notably, the meeting also included some grassroots bloggers with no real institutional ties to the Washington Republican Establishment, including the Twitter virtuoso Ace of Spades and John Hawkins of Right Wing News.

John Hinderaker and his blog Powerline, are especially vile-especially given the fact that in this election, as in the last, he is something of a special pleader:

[* Powerline Proprietor John Hinderaker is the newest Koch installation on the Cato Institute Board of Directors, his firm does work for Koch and the blog was prominent in the takedown of Dan Rather via blogswarm. This memory will be important below.]

 

I despise John Hinderaker-and everything he and the rest of that crowd represents. If you want a great example of why I am down on American politics-look no further than this: The GOP nominee having to grovel before this group of lunatics.

PS-If you want a pretty good accounting of what a loons Hinderaker and his supporters are-look no further than here.

I'm tired of seeing your vile trash everytime I open up Memeorandum.

I've been in Germany about six months now and I thought I would take a moment or two to write about my experiences with the German Medical system.

In my previous employments I was either under American insurance and being seen by American doctors or I was under military care and being seen and having my medical information used against me-against my will. In only selected cases was I  personally seen and treated by foreign doctors-in Japan, Singapore,  and Australia.  I was able to witness the S.O.'s dealings with the Japanese system as well as the frustrations of her transition to American doctors and their different standards of courtesy towards patients ( something I heard about from her repeatedly-and not in a good way).

However, here-my ability to see American doctors is quite limited. Its not impossible-just not practical. As a military retiree I have some access to American military clinics. However it is such a low priority ( and it probably should be IMHO-given the budget cuts the services are taking), it is simply not practical. I do use them to fill my prescriptions though. As a result, I see German doctors. So far the experience has been exceedingly positive and it only serves to reinforce my belief that the American health care system is really fucked up-and needs massive changes.

Actually I should correct that a bit. America medical care itself is quite fine. Our system of paying for it though is completely and totally fucked up. The malfeasance of insurance companies is simply criminal.

As an "Auslander" I am not a full participant in the German Health Care system.  A system, by the way,  that is not " socialized medicine"-but does make kliniks and insurance companies adhere to a standardized set of rules and fee structure.

I have a German primary care physician. He is superb-and has done diagnostics for a particular issue relating to cholesterol-that I never got in the states. Its helped-and its actually cost a lot less than I thought it was going to. Same is true for the S.O. and her back issues. An MRI cost half what it cost state side-and the same is true of the ten sessions of physical therapy that were prescribed. The procedure where I had a sonogram of my neck and other locations was fairly reasonable given the amount of time the doctor took to perform it and explain what he was doing and the results he saw as he went.

In all cases the doctors were patient-spoke English well-and  the technicians were patient with my less than perfect German. So far I have never had to wait longer than 10 minutes to get seen after my arrival at the doctor's office. In Shopping Mall the wait was usually about 25 minutes or more.

The primary difference between Germany and the US-as far as I can concerned- is that in the US, I could rely on the doctors office to do all the billing of my insurance company. Here I have to serve as my own billing agent-meaning that I had to establish a "war chest" of money to pay doctor's bills and then replenish it through my payments from the two different health insurance plans I belong to. (TRICARE and my employer provided program).  If I had German "Versicherung" they would bill for me-but I don't and can't join because I am not a German citizen. So I am learning more than I ever cared to about filing and following up on insurance claims.

And I'm not liking it very much. With my employer provided insurance-I actually can upload claims fairly quickly, and thanks to the type of plan it is -one aimed at American Expatriates- I don't have to do medical translations of German bills. They are able to do it for me. TRICARE on the other hand is much more time consuming proposition. Not because it has to be-but because they have not taken advantage of several time saving things.

(I, like most veterans,  am completely opposed to the upcoming TRICARE fee increases, but that is a topic for another time).

So because of the requirement to deal with claims stateside I average 3-4 weeks, " in the hole" money wise. The German system of payment requires electronic bank drafts-checks are not used very often. ( For anything-I pay my rent and electricity via bank drafts too). So I have to have the cash on hand. Fortunately thanks to the advice of the S.O. and a savings effort that started the day I got rid of a substantial amount of American female baggage-it is not so big a deal. And certain Kliniks are getting up on line and direct billing my insurance company in the future. ( E.G., in Garmisch the ER was able to bill TRICARE directly).

So what are my conclusions after admittedly-a short amount of observation?  Well I have several, actually:

1) I think Doctors are pretty much the same. They got in the profession because they wanted to help people. What they morph into after being their a while though-varies from country to country. The US has probably the biggest transformation-because in the US doctors make HUGE amounts of money. ( Some of them). In Germany and Japan, doctors are still well compensated-and in Japan doctors enjoy a status in society-but not nearly as well as their American counterparts. Being human,  there is some resentment of that.

2)T.R. Reid is right: " No other country would dream of doing things the way we do. So it’s clear that we can’t fix the basic problems by tinkering at the margins of our existing system. Any proposal for “reform” that continues to rely on our fragmented structure of overlapping and often conflicting payment systems for different subsets of the population will not reduce the cost or complexity of American health care. Any proposal that sticks with our current dependence on for-profit private insurers – corporations that pick and choose the people they want to cover and the claims they want to pay – will not be sustainable."

In particular I am now more convinced than ever that insurance companies should be not for profit vehicles-and no employer or employee should be able to "opt out" of paying for health insurance. The mandate is essential-unless you wish to follow a model of Medicare for all Americans. Which would be also fine with me-but I think the private insurance model, provided employers were held down and forced to fulfill their moral obligations as employers would probably be more suitable for American society.

3) The process of paying a claim should be a lot easier and a lot more automated. If I can pay my credit card on line-insurance companies should be able to pay me electronically with 10 days from claim submission.

4) The people screaming about Obamacare "socializing medicine" and how it is making government run peoples lives-don't have a fucking clue what they are talking about. Private, for profit,  insurance companies are doing that now-and with no consistency. Free markets do not solve everything. In particular, with respect to health care, the blatantly encourage a criminal and immoral mindset among insurance companies.

5) Cost controls don't seem to be stifling patient care or innovation here in Germany.

6) American exceptionalism sucks! It is stopping us from capitalizing on the best experiences of other nations and as T.R. Reid pointed out is mostly founded on collective ignorance of how other nations really are. 

Another reason Americans tend to ignore the valuable lessons we could take from the rest of the world is that we have been in thrall to conventional wisdom about health care overseas. Thus we conclude that the foreign approaches would never work here. In fact, as I found on my global quest, much of this conventional wisdom is wrong. A lot of what we “know” about other nations’ approach to health care is simply myth.

Where Newt Gingrich may have a chance to win in Florida:

Courtesy of the Reformed Broker:

“Let me help you out, sir.  Finance is one of the things we do terribly in this country, not well.  Alan Greenspan’s policies simply created the illusion that we “did finance well” when in reality, what we did well instead was wealth transference.  We used inflation as a weapon and permitted the privileged few to gorge on a bloated, overly-financialized economy that was fed with debt growth rather than actual production.”

I continue to marvel at the pettiness of the critics of Occupy Wall Street and their inability to understand underlying reasons why these demonstrations are happening at all.

Most of the criticism of the Occupy Wall Street crowd stays away from that key point. Instead it fixates on their hygiene ( which I suspect are isolated instances blown out of proportion). If anything, it is completely arrogant of the people who fixate on: sex and drugs (at least somebody is getting laid), the fact that people are sleeping the streets(unlike your average fat teabagger, a lot of these  folks cannot afford an RV) the fact that they don’t respect teabag conservative values, the idea that everyone who supports OWS is not paying taxes and is a freeloader, the idea that they are all dirty hippies-and finally the idea that Wall Street is totally blameless and without their greed,  we would not have nice things. Other than the fact that just about all of those statements are a lie-it ignores some basic fundamental realities of life here in the Whining States of America.

The folks who started Occupy Wall Street started a website called I am the 99 percent. It has taken off and become viral. Professional conservative douchebag activist and general all around twit, Erik Erikson, started an opposition web site called I am the 53%. It gets its name from the self serving lie that tebaggers in particular and the GOP in general seemed obsessed with-that “47% of Americans don’t pay taxes”. This, apparently, annoys them to no end. Even though it was their tax cutting policies that created this situation. The irony, or course, is lost on them. Part of the reason that over 40 percent of Americans don’t pay federal taxes is because of the continual push to lower them — a cause that conservatives have championed. And 86% pay taxes of some sort-a detail I am sure that most of the people making their pompous and arrogant statements on the web site are too lazy to actually do some research.

Its kind of sad really-but altogether too typical of the way our Galtian overlords think these days. The 53% folks  believe that they and they alone are supposed to represent the opinions of the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes, and its ( very flawed)  assumption that the Wall Street protesters are part of the 46 percent of the country who don’t. Besides the fact that the numbers are incorrect, there are all kinds of problems with the douchebaggers their approach here, including the fact that they seem to want to increase working-class taxes and also seem entirely unaware of the fact that it was Republican tax cuts that pushed so many out of income-tax eligibility in the first place. There’s also the small matter of some of those claiming to be in “the 53 percent” aren’t actually shouldering a federal income tax burden at all, but are apparently unaware of that fact.

But this is Eric Erikson-a man for whom facts are optional, so lets play everybody’s favorite game, “Rip Erik’s Strawmen to bits!”:

 Take a look at Erick Erickson’s argument, presented in a hand-written message posted to the 53% blog: “I work three jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.”

Just for heck of it, let’s take this one at a time.

The very idea that Erickson works “three jobs” is rather foolish.

Blaming financial industry corruption and mismanagement for Erickson’s troubles selling his house is actually quite reasonable.

If Erickson’s reference to “family insurance costs” is in reference to health care premiums, he’ll be glad to know the Affordable Care Act passed, and includes all kinds of breaks for small businesses like his.

And the notion that victims of a global economic collapse, who are seeking some relief from a system stacked in favor of the wealthy, are “whiners” is so blisteringly stupid, it amazes me someone would present the argument in public.

If there are any actual “whiners” in this scenario, shouldn’t the label go to millionaires who shudder at the idea of paying Clinton-era tax rates?

A good rejoinder if there ever one was one, but I’ll go you one better why you should support the OWS crowd and not the selfish pig crowd over at 53% land. My own recent experience.

For starters, I too am part of the 53%. I pay federal income taxes, I pay state taxes, I pay gas taxes, I pay sales taxes, I pay property taxes, I pay utility taxes. When I travel I pay rental car “concession fees” and vendor taxes. I also pay hotel taxes. If hookers in Wanchai could charge taxes-I’d probably be on the record as paying those too. Do you hear me whining about it? (Just a little) I paid 19% of my income in federal taxes last year-on top of having my “wealth” redistributed in a form of outright theft of my military retirement to the tune of 37.7%- to be given to a fat, non-fucking, worthless whore who does not deserve dime one of it. Yet you don’t see one single solitary teabagger, or Eric Cantor type Congressmen lobbying for repeal of that “unconstitutional law”. ( Which it is-check out McCarty vs McCarty in 1981 if you don’ t believe me).

The reason is simple-paying taxes in those numbers means I brought in some comfortable money-certainly more than I ever saw during any of my time on active duty in the Navy. Rather than complain about it-I rejoice in the fact, that I was granted that opportunity. And that I was able to turn a great percentage of what remained after taxes into equity in a house, savings and retirement investments. Hell, if you think about it-the “safe way” would have been to continue to struggle away as a wage slave making good money and living the suburban Alabama life.

Except of course-it was stifling my soul and driving my spirit into the dirt. Especially in the last year-where you literally have to navigate your way through fat and stupid people every single day. A change was required-and while it was not the “safe” way-it was the necessary way, if I hope to keep my sanity.

Yet, not one bit of that money stopped me from losing my job,  thanks to some incredibly short sighted thinking by the worst agency in the Federal government. Nor it did prevent, me from being forced to re-examine a whole bunch of different options and fall back strategies to avoid falling back into the trap of near bankruptcy. It did not keep me from having to take a decent sized pay cut in order to keep working-all so I can still have 37.7% of that “wealth” redistributed.

Maybe its because I have already stared into the pit of bankruptcy once-that I understand , perhaps better than most, how easy it is to slide right back to that precipice. The ingratitude and sheer shelfishness of retired Air Force weather forcasters ( who have a guaranteed government pension, guaranteed health care, guaranteed educational benefits, and probably a preference in hiring) just appalls me. Especially when you consider that him and many others like him are just one serious illness, just one stupid decision by an arrogant three star that hasn’t been in the line since he was a Cpt, one natural disaster that wrecks his home, or just one downturn in the ( stock market, housing market, or any other source of growing savings income), from going from the 53% over to the 46%. Or to state it more accurately, that 35% of Americans who make 30,000 dollars or less and are just a stone’s throw from the poverty line. As I have pointed out before-the reason these folks are not more grateful and wanting to help others is they earnestly believe it cannot or will not happen to them. Well I’m here to tell the other “52%”-that it can and it will if you are not careful. Even if you are careful-it can still happen to you, you arrogant swine, you.

As E.D. Kain points out, ” More than a few of these people would benefit from the government stepping in against the people who are the cause of their economic distress. ‘Making your own way’ when the deck is stacked against you instead of calling on the government to get rid of the game-rigging seems illogical to me.”

But of course,  they won’t dare think it through. These supposedly hard working people would actually benefit if the bankers were kicked in the teeth. Its they and a lot of others who are being charged to use their own money-so that banks can pay 11 million dollars to employees who fail.

Get back to the facts my tri-corner hat wearing ignorant “ friends”, no matter what your thoughts are on Obama, the facts are still the facts:for the majority of Americans wages and real earning power have declined in the last twelve years. During the same time period the earning power of the top 1% skyrocketed. In the long run that kind of income inequality hurts overall growth and prevents a recovery of any meaningful sort. That is something to be angry about. If your friendly neighborhood teabagger had even a lick of smarts or sense-they would be supporting the crowds in New York, and thankful that the youth are actually informed enough to take the time to get angry. These folks know more about the realities of our current predicament than most of the flag waving fatties knew about health care in 2009. They are being screwed too-they just don’t realize it yet.

I AM PART OF THE 53%!  HOWEVER I SUPPORT THE 99%.  ITS ABOUT TIME SOME FEAR WAS PUT INTO THE 1%.

The more the selfish crowd whines-the longer this is going to go on. Didn’t you guys learn anything from the 60′s?

P.S. Erik Erikson can go fuck himself!

From those dirty hippies in New York:

Address it to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. Its just a short, pretty cogent explanation as to why a significant number of people in America want you to die:

Eleven million dollars?  What the hell world are you inhabiting?  Eleven million dollars for two departing executives because things didn’t work out?  I’m sorry, but were these two executives of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez-level importance for your organization?  Is that why there are severance deals like this in place?  Or are you just completely psychotic?

It’s not that this isn’t your prerogative as a private company – it is.  But seriously, numbers like these at a time when you’re instituting added fees on customer accounts just sound farcical, almost like you’re making these payments to get a reaction out people.

You look completely ridiculous with news like this at a time when thousands of people are massing in every major city in the country to make the case that you don’t deserve to exist.  At a time when you’re being investigated for employing robo-signers just to maintain a certain level of foreclosures processed per month. At a time when you’re laying off rank-and-file employees not by the hundreds, not by the thousands – but in the tens of thousands.  At a time when retired seniors, desperately seeking income, have been pushed into annuities, life settlements, commodities and junk bonds because of the zero percent interest rate policy that was meant to nurse you and your balance sheet back to health – and this is what you do with the money?  With OUR money?

Are you crazy?

So what color Brooks Brothers suit looks good hanging from a lampost anyway?

I love the fact that conservative supporters of the selfish, fat, ignorant, pigs teabaggers are up in arms because literally thousands of their fellow citizens exercised the same right claimed by the selfish, fat, ignorant, pigs teabaggers to assemble peaceably to express their displeasure with the government’s obsession with rewarding the top 1% of this country while ignoring the other 99%. Protests based on a flawed interpretation of the Constitution, historically inaccurate readings of a narrow group of historical documents-while ignoring equally valid other commentaries-with people wearing stupid hats and costumes and carrying stupid signs with lies posted on them comparing the duly elected President of the United States to Hitler; those are OK. But people who are outraged at getting fucked over repeatedly, having to struggle to get things that they should be able to obtain by right, people who have been kicked out of their homes, have lost their jobs, have been unable to get another one-those things they are not allowed to be angry about. Got it.

Or as Jon Stewart expressed it:

On Wednesday evening, Jon Stewart gazed at the Occupy Wall Street movement through the lens of Fox News sound bites–especially the condescending and incoherent ones. The negative sentiment was the exact opposite of how the News Corp. property felt when it was fanning the flames of the Tea Party opposition only a year and a half ago. And The Daily Show host makes sure to point out that nonsensical logic (especially jabs at Sean Hannity and Steve Doocey), while singling out one of the budding stars of the protest movement, Jesse LaGreca, along the way. The takeaway line though, was Stewart just leveling: “Look, if this thing devolves into throwing trash cans into Starbucks windows, nobody’s going to be down with that … but these protesters, how are they not like the Tea Party?”

The differences of course are several. One is demographics-the tea party was primarily white, middle aged, overweight, and more than a tad bit selfish and stupid.  Occupy Wall Street protesters are younger, much better informed than their tea party counterparts, and are not being astroturfed by rich bastards like Dick Armey for one thing. They also have a big difference in the use of money and busses:

There is one not so obvious or immediately noticeable difference between the Occupy Wall Street protests and your average Tea Party protest. Sure, the crowds seem to be younger, signs featuring Obama as Hitler are entirely absent, and there aren’t many people who are dressed like Uncle Sam sneezed stars and stripes all over them. There are no guns or demands to see the president’s birth certificate. But the less obvious difference is in buses. While the Tea Party protests always feature big buses covered with flags and eagles, buses at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are used to haul the protesters to jail.

I bring this up because teapartiers like to pretend they’re running their own show. That their protests are grassroots and their organizations are of their own construction. But those buses carting them around from protest to protest didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Someone paid for them, someone gave them their ultra-patriotic paint jobs, someone’s buying all the gas. All that takes funding and, as much as the ‘baggers like to pretend they’re an independent movement, they’re all bought and paid for— and then moved from square to square like pawns on a chessboard.

It has also been very well pointed out by those who are not watching Fox News, that unlike the teabaggers-the Occupy Wall Street movement does not have herds of Democratic politicians running over to suck their dicks jump on board their band wagon. If anything they have been avoiding them. Greg Sargent points out why:

If there’s one thing that’s growing clearer by the hour, it’s that this is an entirely organic effort, one that’s about nobody but the protestors themselves. In this sense, we’re seeing a replay of the Wisconsin protests. Those ended up falling just short of what activists had hoped to achieve, but their months-long showing was still important — it demonstrated that left wing populism is still alive and well and sent an important message about the mood of the country. The key was that it grew organically with little to no involvement from Beltway Dems and the White House.

If anything, Occupy Wall Street’s lack of outside encouragement from bigfoot Dems has been a strength, rather than a weakness. As major progressive groups debate how they can contribute to strengthening the movement — and how to give it specific direction and a specific agenda — the need to preserve its grassroots nature will remain paramount. Who knows where this will end up, but for now, this is another reminder that the Tea Party isn’t the only voice of popular discontentment over the economy. We don’t necessarily live in Tea Party Nation, after all.

And finally, as Jon Stewart points out very ably, the Occupy Wall Street folks, “don’t feel the need to constantly reassure themselves and each other how ‘patriotic‘ they are. They just are.”

Of course-to a dedicated tea sniffing fanatic, the irony and hypocrisy of their criticism is just lost on them: