I don’t know if you have noticed, but I’ve been feeling really down the last few days. But I just noticed something that really improved my mood: Avik Roy tweeted my last rant about him:

A lefty blogger: “I want to rip off your scrotum and suffocate you with it. Cock sucking plutocrat bastard!” franklycurious.com/index.php?item… #avikroy

— Avik S. A. Roy (@aviksaroy) December 10, 2012

When I wrote those words, I knew they had a certain poetic charm. Like Crow T. Robot’s six pages of “no” in Earth Vs. Soup, I wanted to get across the raw terror I must feel as a giant bowl of California Cornucopia Vegetable Jubilee slithers towards me on all fours. I mean: my raw anger at Avik Roy’s public disinformation campaign. I’m glad they didn’t go to waste on a bunch of people who agree with me!

And now my opinion of Avik Roy has gone way up for two reasons. First, he tweeted my link out which resulted it quite a lot of traffic. Second, that picture of him with the open collar makes him look kind of cool. Or like some lounge singer. Not that I take back a thing. He really is a cock sucking plutocrat bastard. Maybe I’ll take back the exclamation point.

There has been a lot of reporting on the fact that there isn’t anything to report about the Fiscal Cliff negotiations. John Stanton makes a big deal of this in his almost fun article for BuzzFeed, The Fiscal Cliff Is Boring Washington To Death. Everyone seems to agree that the lack of leaks indicates that the negotiations are at least going fairly well. I have a different theory.

The two sides have decided that they can’t get anything done until next year. The Republicans just can’t allow a vote on supposedly raising taxes. And it’s even worse than that. If they struck a deal on the income tax rates, they would either have to give on the extension of the payroll tax holiday, or they would also be in effect raising payroll taxes. So everything gets a lot easier for Boehner & Co. in 2013.

But there is a wrinkle. The staffs of Obama and Boehner really are meeting all the time. What could they be doing? They could be working on a deal that they will make on January 2nd or 3rd. I really don’t know. What I do know is that Obama gets a better deal in 2013. And I know that Boehner will have a much easier time selling a deal to the Republicans in 2013. (I would be embarrassed if I were a Republican and I had to take a worse deal just to satisfy the idiots in power in my party.)

So I’m still inclined to think that we are going over the Fiscal Cliff. Or maybe I’m just optimistic. Or drunk.

Ah, justice! The London bomb plotters are in jail, but the English court system isn’t done yet; they have thought crimes to punish! Ruksana Begum is the sister of one of the plotters. She downloaded a copy of Inspire, al-Qaida magazine in order to understand what was going on with her angry brother. I’m not just saying this. This is what the judge in this case says. Unfortunately, like all the Nazis at Nuremberg, he must “follow orders” and so was left with no choice but to put her in a cage for a year.

In one way, this makes me feel good. It isn’t just the United States that is a horror show of injustice and cruelty. But in a more fundamental sense, it makes me despair: humans are just a horrible species. It reminds me of the cannibalistic chimpanzees from Planet Earth.[1] The truth is, I don’t really understand the justice system. We should perhaps rename it the “law system,” because it is about enforcing laws not meting out justice. If we cannot have justice, at least we can stop claiming that we do.

[1] Here is a clip. “Enjoy”:

Earlier today, I was surprised that people were surprised that reality TV was staged. This is different. Then it was surprising that people didn’t already know what was obvious. This time, it is surprising that we have had our expectations lowered so much that we are surprised when the Federal Reserve does something that is marginally good. This morning, the Fed announced that they were going to keep interest rates low until certain well defined economic conditions are met. This is good news. But not that good.

The Fed says that it will not raise interest rates until unemployment gets below 6.5%. This is the first half of the problem. An unemployment rate of 6.5% is nowhere near full employment. To have full employment, we would have to get to a rate less than 5%—perhaps quite a bit less. This has long been the recommendation of Robert Reich. So the Fed is still carrying the water of the rentier class. All they’re saying they will end their policy of not caring at all about unemployment and start caring a little.

But it is worse than this. The big problem with the Fed is its inflation target. When Reagan was president, the inflation target was 4%; now it is 2%. This is just ridiculous. The reason our economy is depressed is that the middle classes are in debt (or at least feel that way) and so aren’t spending money. The easiest way to get an economy out of debt is to allow a little inflation. By effectively keeping inflation at zero, the Fed is giving debtors almost no help in paying off their loans. As I said, this is all about keep the wealthy as rich as possible.

Now the Fed says that if unemployment stays high, they may even be willing to allow inflation to go all the way up to 2.5%—briefly. Are they not magnanimous? Taking upwards of a half percentage point away from the wealthy for—What?!—a couple of months?! I’m sure we’ll be screaming to recovery!

The terrible thing is that this really is big news. This really will help the economy. We could use a lot more. And we could have used this four years ago. But still, better late and weak than never and nothing.

Over at Slate, L.V. Anderson tells me, You’re Doing It Wrong: Latkes. First things first: no I’m not!

The truth is that Anderson and I agree on the nature of the perfect latkes. She explains that people who claim that latkes should be nothing other than potatoes and salt are apparently mistaking them for hash browns. But even apart from this, people often get very opinionated about the amount of flour that should go into a latke. As I try to stress: the amount of flour is a very personal thing. If, like me, you really squeeze your grated potatoes and get most of the water out of them, you really don’t need that much. But you do need some. Experiment! And the great thing is that you can experiment as you go along. Try a little flour, and then try a little more.

Anderson suggests a really interesting idea: use instant mashed potatoes instead of flour for part of the recipe. I’ve never done this but it sounds like it would make latkes even more delicious (if that’s possible). Otherwise, she offers nothing new. She suggests adding baking powder. Oh! Where did you learn that? The Joy of Cooking, first published in 1931? She also suggests using olive oil, which seems to me a very bad idea. But over all, I’ll bet her latkes are wonderful—perhaps as good as mine.

As much as libertarians drive me crazy, there are some who are smart and serious. You will get the best thinking on libertarianism from Reason Magazine, which I once subscribed to. Still, it is mostly all the usual theoretical, trapped in our own minds kind of nonsense that is libertarianism. But sometimes, they make me smile. Like today.

J.D. Tuccille writes, When Right-To-Work Is Wrong and Un-Libertarian. He basically says what I said on Monday. Of course, he is much more respectful because he’s part of a Fantasy Politics team. But it is encouraging to read. In particular, he makes the argument that there is a difference between “free markets” and “pro-business.” This is an excellent distinction because as a rule businesses are not in favor of a free market.

Unfortunately, the idiots who read the magazine are not even as enlightened as Tuccille. The first comment to the article is simple, “I want to work. I don’t ever want to join a union.” What that has to do with the subject, I can’t say. But this one is more typical, “The business is coerced into its contract with, and association with, the union, under our current labor laws.” Ah! So businesses can organize themselves anyway they want. Business laws don’t, for example, coerce workers to have to work for corporations. But laws that allow workers to do what one would think would be a right—things like organizing with coworkers and refusing to work—those are coercive. I think I understand. Business goood! Worker baaad!

I’ve got to stop reading the rantings of libertarians; it is just too upsetting. Even when they are shown what rights really mean, they can’t accept it. They just know that private contracts between people are bad when they don’t like the people making those contracts. Reality goood! Libertarians stuuupid!

Unlike Atrios, who is correct when he says he is a lazy blogger, I work very hard in my 24/7 ranting. But there are some things that I will not do. One of them is to find out any more than necessary about the various reality shows on the TV machine. I am long on record about my hatred of these shows. The biggest problem is that there is very little reality in the “reality” shows. As I wrote back in January, “Another complaint is that all reality shows depend upon producers working behind the scenes to enhance the reality.”

I based this observation on the little reality TV I’ve watched and a decent knowledge of how TV shows are actually produced. But now, we have evidence. There is a show called Storage Wars. Apparently, it is about people who bid on the contents of storage containers left by people who abandoned them. One of the former stars of this show, Dave Hester, is claiming that the show is not so real. He says that producers spiked random containers with valuable objects to heighten the drama of the show.

What is surprising about this is that anyone is surprised about this. There is a reason that people watch TV: real life is boring. Buying stuff low and selling high isn’t that interesting in itself. Shows need to have some gimmick. Many make a contest out of something that everyone would normally find boring. For example, who really likes ballroom dancing enough to watch it out of context? Even with the competition, Dancing with the Stars is slipping in the ratings. Many reality shows depend upon watching horrible people to make the audience feel better about themselves. (I guess.) So you get shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Cops. But mostly, people watch reality TV to see the money: how much is it worth? How much will they make? Thus Deadliest Catch and Pawn Stars and Storage Wars.

I’ve never seen Storage Wars, but I know a bit about Pawn Stars. One thing I hate about the show is how they imply great knowledge in the greedy bottom-feeding family. But I have often wondered how much of the show is a setup. There was a recent one where the main guy bought something expensive without checking on it and it turned out it was fake. He lost a whole bunch of money, blah, blah, blah. But I felt certain a producer was there who said, “Go ahead and risk it; if it turns out to be fake, we’ll reimburse you.” Drama!

By now, I thought that reality TV would be winding down. Its various cliches are too easy to figure out and there is an unrelenting sameness to them. But the combination of viewer apathy and low production costs keep the system going strong. Hester’s claims against Storage Wars may be very bad for that show. But I doubt it will affect the industry as a whole, even though it ought to.

File this one under, “What southern racism?” Rhonda A. Lee is a meteorologist at KTBS-TV, in Shreveport, LA. She’s pictured on the left and I think you can see the problem: that hair! Can you say “colored dyke”? Maybe you can’t, but keen viewer Emmitt Vascocu could. He wrote on Facebook, “The black lady that does the news is a very nice lady.the only thing is she needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair.” But it’s not that he’s a racist or a homophobe. He just hates cancer and he fears that Lee may have it. I’m serious: I don’t think that Vascocu is a racist so much as a complete idiot. I’m not writing this article about him.

The story continues. Lee responded to Vascocu the way one ought to: like he was a confused child. First she explained that she was very healthy. Then she noted that she was an African American and that her hair doesn’t grow down—it grows up. Implicit in this is the question, “Do you want me to look like Link from The Mod Sqaud?” She sums up by explaining that people are made in all kinds of ways, “Conforming to one standard isn’t what being American is about and I hope you can embrace that.” And finally ends with, “Thank you for your comment and have a great weekend and thank for watching.”

This is very nice and intelligent and restrained. Let me only add that it in no way resembles how I would have responded, which would begin, “You you fucktard…” So good for Rhonda A. Lee: she was tested by the idiocy of the world and she came through with flying colors! Except: she was fired.

The issue at hand is that she violated a KTBS-TV policy. Not a written policy, mind you. A verbal policy that they’ve had for a long time. A month and a half. It was announced at a meeting. That she was not present for. It isn’t even clear what this policy is. I’m thinking something vague like, “Coloreds have to know their place!”

Bravo KTBS-TV! You’ve made me want to move to Shreveport, just so I can boycott you!