Maybe I’m just a cynical old guy. But Rachel Maddow spent the entire A section of her show talking about gun control. I’m cool with gun control. As I’ve argued before: by the time we notice that the government is coming for us, our guns won’t do bit of good. (It is interesting that those most concerned about their guns being taken away, are not at all concerned about targeted assassination and executive overreach. Instead, they cheer it on: we’re number one! We’re number one!) So I’m fine with the government coming in and taking away all our guns. The idea that universal background checks will destroy our liberty is more than ridiculous.

But it isn’t that important either. With tighter gun control, we might reduce the number of gun homicides by a thousand per year. That’s a very big deal to those thousand people who don’t get murdered. My question is just how big a deal it is more generally. Families USA reported that 26,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance. It is hard to say how many people die early because of poverty. We do, however, know that people in the upper half of income earners live six years longer than those in the bottom half of income earners. So I tend to think it is millions.

This isn’t just about what’s most important. I believe that Rachel Maddow is pushing the gun control story—which she has been doing for months—because it is one issue that looks like a winner for liberals. But is that really what liberals should be pushing? I find that liberals do this much too much for my tastes. There was much rejoicing after the Fiscal Cliff deal, “We made the Republicans cave on taxes!” The fact that the president didn’t get a good deal didn’t seem to matter. And now it looks like a Pyrrhic victory.

So what are we going to get now: a universal background check that is a no brainer in exchange for the 700,000 jobs lost via the Sequester? Is that what we liberals are hanging our hopes on? Are we going to celebrate nationwide same sex marriage while millions of children are born into perpetual poverty? I know it isn’t an either or question. It is just that liberals seem to cheer for the easy, but mostly useless issues, while they don’t even talk about the really important issues.

People are dying but at least we banned that 31 round clip. Now gunmen can only kill 30 people before reloading!

Steve Benen at Maddow Blow noted a really telling anecdote over at the New York Times about Obama’s GOP outreach. Four months ago, the president invited five GOP congressional leaders to a secret screening of Lincoln with some of the stars of the film. All five people declined.

As Benen notes, “Are we to believe that all five—invited in secret so they wouldn’t have to take heat from Fox or the GOP base—were all washing their hair that night?” He thinks the GOP is just being unreasonable, but I think there is something more profound going on here. The modern Republican Party (as I’ve said again and again) is a revolutionary party. They are not the loyal opposition. They are the disloyal opposition. They do not think that the Democratic Party is legitimate.

So these Republicans refusing to go to the White House is all about snubbing him. The fact that the president is offering fine food, entertainment, and Tommy Lee Jones makes the event all the more repellent. It highlights the fact that Barack Obama really is the President of the United States. He really does have the power to screen films with movie stars. And most of all: it highlights the fact that the Republican Party in its current form is going through its death throes. Think: the Federalist Party in 1805. And that is the point: the Republicans do not want to think of the Federalist Party in 1805, even though the party staggered along until 1829.

I can’t exactly say, “It’s been good to know ya.” But I am eager to say, “So long!”

Afterword

I have no idea if Tommy Lee Jones was there or not.

Vincent Woo, who claims to be “a t-shirt hawker at everlane.com[1]” has created quite a zany website, The Krugman Times. You can see a screen capture above. What the website does is grab the front page of the New York Times, replace all the images with pictures of Paul Krugman, the author with Paul Krugman, and words it doesn’t understand with economic jargon. It is charming as hell. If you want to see the page it was based on, press the “?” key. This is a much more enjoyable way to check out what the Times currently thinks is important.

Click on over. In addition to everything else, it is some cool technology. And his personal site is the sort of thing that people who visit here would find interesting, although he doesn’t post that often.

[1] I would provide a link to everlane.com, but it is one of these annoying and creepy sites that require an email address or Facebook account to visit. Imagine walking into a store that wouldn’t let you shop until they had all your contact information. “No clothes for you!” Well, no sales for you!

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?

—Alexander “You damn dirty prols!” Hamilton
Debates of the Federal Convention (1787)

You may have heard the story of Patricia Barnes, the woman who stopped at a roadside restaurant to use the bathroom only to get a bill from the restaurant for $5 in her mailbox a couple of days later. I think the story has caught fire because we’ve all used restaurants that are “for customers only” and worried that they would call the cops on us. And that is effectively what the owner of the restaurant did.

The woman tried to pay the $5 to the restaurant—Twice!—but the owner refused. She said that she was just trying to make a point. I don’t think she meant it this way, but she did make a very important point: Don’t eat at The Flood Zone in Erin, Tennessee because they are total assholes!

As celebrity chef Bobby Flay said, “There’s plenty of people that come to the restaurant, use the bathroom and leave, and that’s the way it goes.” As the article notes, “It also shows good will on the part of the owner.” But more to the point: a stunt like this shows bad will. Look: if I have stopped shopping at Whole Foods, where it is incredibly convenient for me to shop, all because they don’t pay their employees enough, I surely would boycott this stupid little restaurant if I lived anywhere near Tennessee.

None of this really matters; most business owners are dicks. What matters is that the owner did in fact call the police. And the police gave her the woman’s address. Even if there was proof (other than the owner’s word) as to this unauthorized bathroom use, it isn’t a crime; it is a civil matter. And even if it were a criminal matter, the police would deal with it themselves and not encourage some random citizen to become a vigilante. This is basic law enforcement. I understand that cops have to be fairly stupid to be employed, but someone really ought to be fired for this.

The Today Show did a survey of their viewers (not a scientific survey, but still), and 30% of the people said it was always wrong to use a restroom if you aren’t a customer. It is shocking that such a large fraction of our country believes in such ridged rules. These are the people who think that a rich man has a greater right to his wealth than a poor man has to his life. It is pathetic. Yet this kind of thinking undergirds the entire conservative movement.

This is an image of most of the Orion Constellation. It is without a doubt the most recognizable constellation in the night sky. Everyone knows the Big Dipper, but most can’t find it without a lot of work. Orion blazes in the sky; there is no missing it.

And I hate it. I go outside most nights and look at the stars—even when I don’t go out during the day. And Orion is always there. It taunts me. Not the whole thing; just the belt. It is pretty close to a straight line. But it isn’t quite straight. Aesthetically, I find it aggravating. And it brings out my mostly latent obsessive-compulsive behavior. It needs to be fixed and yet I am powerless to do anything.

Orion is also a useless constellation. It doesn’t tell me anything about the rest of the night sky. It just sets there daring me to adjust its belt. Compare it to the Big Dipper, which is responsible for all of my star gazing knowledge. I know where three stars are thanks to it. If you follow the handle, the first bright star you come to will be Arcturus. I remember this because I follow the arc of the dipper to Arcturus. Following along further, you come to Spica. For whatever strange reason, I imagine the arc ending in a spike. And perhaps most useful of all: if you follow the front edge of dipper up, you will come to Polaris or the “North Star.”

You could use this knowledge to navigate by, but I never have. I always figure it’s easier to pull over and ask someone. But it is very useful in romantic encounters. And my knowledge level seems optimal. Most women find it charming when a man points out two or three stars. More than that makes them feel that there may be a quiz at the end of the evening.

So there you have it: two constellations, three stars, and my nightly struggles with OCD.

Afterword

I absolutely hate this song:

It isn’t that I don’t like Vincent van Gogh, although he is not exactly a favorite of mine. And it isn’t that I don’t like Don McLean, because he definitely had his moments. But this is sentimental crap. Just because van Gogh was a great artist does not mean that he was some great guy. He wasn’t trying to set us free. He was trying to sell some paintings. What most bugs me about the song is the last line, “They’re not listing still, perhaps they never will.” Oh yeah, coming a hundred years after van Gogh when the artist’s paintings sell for millions, Don McLean makes a bold claim about how “they” (that is: those idiots who are not Don McLean) will never understand him. As van Gogh would say, “Oy vey!”

This is so much better:

Antonin Scalia is 77 today. There are other people born today who have made the world better, like the great American composer Carl Ruggles. Scalia has made it worse—much worse. But I can’t get past the man today.

On one hand, Scalia is a proud iconoclast. I’m an iconoclast. I love iconoclasts. But on the other hand, Scalia is evil. Like Hitler, he combines iconoclasticism with villainy. And that is always a recipe for disaster when such a person gets power. And Scalia sadly has power and has had the annoying tendencies to outlive Hitler by 21 years (minus 10 days). (That’s right: I’m counting the days.)

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with conservatives on the court. There are 8 of them on the current Supreme Court and I’m fine with 3 of them. And 2 more are not totally reprehensible. Unfortunately for Scalia, he is a member of the Totally Reprehensible Three (TR3). I can’t decide if he is worse than Alito, but shocking though it may seem, he is certainly worse than Thomas. Thomas at least is fairly consistent. I don’t agree with where he’s coming from but I at least understand it. I don’t have a good take on Alito, because he hasn’t been there that long. He is, however, clearly a racist and sexist asshole. Sadly, that doesn’t really say much about how he stacks up in the TR3.

In the old days, Scalia had a brilliant mind. But no more! All he has to offer now is arrogance and abuse. He seems to stay on the court primarily to continue his long running protest against modernity.

Corey Robin explains Scalia well in his three part series on the colorful judge:

I don’t want to think about the man. I am just counting the days before he has a massive stroke. But I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Dying would be a kind thing to do for our country. Scalia doesn’t do kind.

Afterword

A salve for our woes:

Update (11 March 2013 7:48 pm)

I found this comment by Alex Bailin to Corey Robin’s review of American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the London Review of Books. It gets more at my thinking regarding Scalia than Robin’s:

And that is what I find so troubling with Scalia. He decides what he thinks and then comes up with something to justify it. He may have had a brilliant mind but he was never a brilliant jurist.

I finally got a chance to see Django Unchained without even indirectly putting any money in Quentin Tarantino’s pocket. That’s very important to me, because as much as I think that Tarantino is a very talented guy who at times makes fine movies, I am also convinced that he is a total dick—symbolic of everything that is wrong with Hollywood as an institution.

The first half of the film is very good. I don’t see what the big deal was about racism. Tarantino’s use of the word “nigger” is more appropriate here than it ever was in any of his other films. As for the content, it is “Tarantino does the antebellum south.” With a notable exception that I will discuss in a moment, the film is a fantasy. And what’s more, the portrayal of the slaves in generally fairly accurate. It is a welcome salve after the “We jus’ loves bein’ slaves” of Gone With the Wind. And Tarantino does a good job of making each slave an individual rather than a representative of a class.

If there is a problem here, it is with the whites, who seem like a bunch of yahoos created by a man whose only knowledge of the south comes from watching Hee Haw as a kid. Still, I can justify it. We do tend to see only the whites who are most vested in the slave system. But we know from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass that not all whites on the slave farm were hate-filled psychopaths.

The only problem with the first half of the film is that it uses a number of flashbacks to establish Django’s character. These scenes are distinctly realistic. And they are jarring compared to the main narrative that is full fantasy. They remind the viewer that the subject is no joke—there were real people suffering real torture and real lifelong servitude. And this is a real buzz kill when you’re just trying to watch a fun western where the evil slaveholders get their due. I’m afraid that their inclusion in the film is indicative of the problems that Tarantino has understanding real life. He probably put those scenes in the film because he didn’t want to be attacked for making light of the subject. But is just made it worse. This is not Schindler’s List; such a film could be made, but certainly not by Tarantino.

The second half of the film is where it all falls apart. It moves from fantasy to brainless action movie. Characters act in ways that are determined entirely by the dictates of the plot rather than their actions up to that point. What’s more, it all gets very predictable. And boring. I think that Tarantino is very often confused. He thinks he’s Sam Peckinpah when he’s really more Michael Arndt. And the less talking, the more boring his films are. Oh: the film is also about an hour too long.

But Django Unchained is not a racist movie. It is a Quentin Tarantino movie. And that means a whole lot: both good and bad.

Afterword

One thing that really struck me in the first half of the film was the way that the heroes talked about playing a part in real life. This reminded me of the commode story from Reservoir Dogs, where the undercover cop has to learn a script to use in his work. We get the same thing here. It is interesting, because I think there is a lot of truth to this. In fact, Marlon Brando used to say that there was no big deal about acting—everyone did it everyday in real life.

I don’t know much about Osama bin Laden. But I’ll tell what I think of him. Unlike most people, I don’t think he was a crazy and evil man. I think he was an entitled rich boy. This allowed him to be just like rich guys all over the world: absolutely certain that whatever stupid thought entered his brain must be right. Most rich people follow the likes of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman who tell them that they deserve their wealth—that it is a sign of just how morally superior they are to all the prols they walk on.

But bin Laden was different: he took his marching orders from the Quran. It seems that like most believers of the Abrahamic religious, his reading of the book was simplistic and based mostly (Just like other rich people!) on his existing prejudices that he wanted to justify. If you look at his career, such as it is, he wasn’t that successful. He just spent a lot of time hanging around, most of the al-Qaeda leadership had abandoned him, and his greatest “success” was a fluke that certainly worked better than even he could have expected.

I imagine him sitting around his compound during those last years. He watched his pornography. He wrote about the coming Islamic revolution. Maybe he watched the newest Bollywood films. He was a man of leisure—just like all the men of his class. Anyway, he would be celebrating his birthday today if it weren’t for the fact that he is dead.

Luckily, Edie Brickell is 46 today. So I get to listen to the the Top 10 hit, “What I Am”:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just put out a paper on austerity. It argues that in the medium term, austerity is self-defeating. This is because austerity causes the economy to shrink by a greater percentage than the debt shrinks.

When deficit scolds talk about the national debt, they almost always do it in raw numbers. This is because “$14 trillion” sounds a lot more scary than “Our debt is equal to about our yearly productivity.” But the proper way to look at government debt is relative to GDP or even more so Potential GDP. Traditionally, the way to get debt paid off is to outgrow it. This is how we got rid of most of our debt from World War II. (At least we did until that great debt cutter Ronald Reagan got into office.)

Given this fact, when looking at debt, we have to look at two variables: the size of the debt and the size of the economy. Those who would have us cut and tax our way out of debt introduce the concept of “confidence.” This is the idea that businesses will see that the government is “serious” about debt, think the economy will soon by roaring, and so start investing in capital equipment and hiring people. This is a ridiculous idea that shows a shocking level of ignorance about how businesses actually work. As we have seen again and again, when the government cuts its spending, businesses correctly determine that the bad economic times will continue. This is exactly why business groups were against the Sequester.

There is, of course, a time when cutting government spending will help the economy: during a boom. When the economy is humming along, government debt can make it more expensive for businesses to borrow money. This is because the government has to borrow a fair amount of the available funds to service its debt. But that is most definitely not the case right now. In a depressed economy, there is too much money looking for too few opportunities to be used. Now is exactly the time for the government to be running large deficits.

Paul Krugman created a simple model of the effect of austerity on the government’s debt to GDP ratio. He calls the country Osbornia, after the austerity true believing Prime Minister of the UK. He assumes an economy very much like our own and shows that after 5 years of gradual austerity, the debt problem is worse than doing nothing for 6 years. Of course, the problem isn’t one round of austerity. The problem is that austerity is piled on top of itself. We’ve seen this in the 2011 deficit deal, then the Fiscal Cliff deal, and now the Sequester deal.

All of this shows what we already know: all of this austerity (which isn’t nearly so bad as what they are dealing with in Europe) is slowing our economic recovery. What we need is to put people to work and grow the economy. Even the conservatives claim to understand this. The problem is that they seem to think that the way to grow the economy is to destroy the government and allow the “magic” of the market to work. The problem is that everything we know about economics shows that this isn’t the case.