Again, I will be out for the day. In fact, I will likely not be back until very late so I doubt anything will be put up for the rest of the day. You should check out Andrea’s blog, Curiously Clever, she’s putting up a lot of stuff these days. She also just started a new website, Nice Atheist Girl. We just got the basics set up, but you can at least see the header—assuming the NFS is working. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

It does seem that I’ve gotten caught up on the major stuff that was cluttering up my browser. Now I’ll have to start drilling down into my “ideas” folder. For now, we have these:

1. Josh Barro wrote a great article at Business Insider, Here’s the Conversation We Should Really Be Having About Obamacare and Part-Time Work. In it, he argues for a repeal of the employer mandate. He indicates that it would actually make the law more progressive. I am with him on this, but there is a larger issue that his pro-business orientation blinds him to. All the government subsidies for low wage workers simply give the businesses with the worst treatment of workers a bit of a competitive advantage. This is one of the reasons why I think we should have a single payer system. It would level the business playing field.

   Regardless of the details, it is harder and harder to see Barro as having any overlap with the Republican Party. To me, he’s slightly more liberal than the New Democrats. Check out what he has to say about how the Republican Party approaches Obamacare:

   Republicans like to warn that Obamacare is pushing droves of people into part-time work.

   House Speaker John Boehner has said “millions” of Americans can only find part-time work because of the law. Majority Leader Eric Cantor says America’s economy is now a “part-time job economy.” Sen. Ted Cruz used the talking point over and over again during his long Senate floor speech about defunding Obamacare.

   This talking point is a lie…

   The irony of this discussion is that some of the biggest beneficiaries from the ACA are the same low-wage, uninsured workers whose interests Republicans purport to defend when they complain about the law’s effects on work hours…

   A conversation about improving Obamacare—perhaps someday, Republicans will be interested in having that conversation, instead of undermining and demagoguing the law at every turn—should include repealing the employer mandate so the law can have a positive effect on labor markets instead of a modest negative one. But even if the mandate isn’t repealed, America won’t turn into a “part-time work economy.”

   I couldn’t have said it more forcefully myself.

2. Charles Pierce has a great comment over at Esquire, Uh-Oh, Toto:
   As you may have gathered, I’m a serious agnostic on this whole “Republican civil war” business. I believe it’s merely a fight over tactics; the whole party shares the same crackpot ideas that got the country into the mess out of which the current president has had to pull it in the first place. I do not believe that there are Republican “moderates” of substantial power to make any difference, or to change that fundamental dynamic. I think Steve LaTourette’s new kick-the-Tea-Party-In-The-Balls PAC is little more than a way to attempt to empower supply-side fantasts and deregulation junkies and privatization fanatics without bothering Jesus with the whole business.

   I always think people who agree with me are smart.

3. I’m sure you’ve seen North Carolina GOP precinct chairman Don Yelton on The Daily Show this week. If not, check out, GOP Precinct Chairman Says Voter ID Will Hurt “Lazy Blacks,” Then Resigns, which includes the original clip. But I feel sorry for Yelton. I’m sure in the extremely homogeneous environment in which he lives, what he said was perfectly fine. It calls into question the entire North Carolina Republican Party establishment, regardless of how much they may now wish to deny it. If that kind of behavior was unacceptable with them, he never would have felt it was acceptable on national television. Anyway, I think this skit from That Mitchell and Web Look might be helpful to Yelton in determining what exactly is racist:
4. I came upon a great Latin phrase recently, Inter arma enim silent leges. It means, “In times of war, the law falls silent.” Like so many great things, it was first written by Cicero, although in the slightly different form, Silent enim leges inter arma. I think it is an important phrase for our country because we are now always at war. I think we can all accept that during trying times we might have to put up with things that we normally wouldn’t stand for. During World War II, for example, there was rationing. Fine. But should our rights to privacy and security in our own homes be brushed aside because we are now and forever more dropping bombs on civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Have a good day!

I will be out for most of the day. So this is it until the evening. Savor it. Luckily, this edition of Odds and Ends at least has a couple of fun items. And the Walmart story is especially great. We live in a really screwed up nation.

One of the things I will be doing today is going to see Escape Plan with my brother. I have an open mind about. But what are the odds? It is a Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. I expect that tomorrow night I will write another apoplectic review. So fun times ahead!

1. Heritage Action has a “scorecard” websites where they rank all the current members of Congress. It’s actually a fairly good resource for liberal voters. If the score is low, the politician is good. But beware! Heritage Action is so conservative that Darrell Issa only got a 65% rating. Paul Ryan got a 69%. Even crazy and stupid Louie Gohmert only got a 90%. What could he have done to displease Heritage Action?! My “blue dog” Democratic representative Mike Thompson got 9%. Senator Dianne Feinstein got 4%. And my hero, Senator Barbara Boxer got 0%.

   Heritage Action: when nothing less than pure evil will do!

2. JMF sent me to this amazing creation from Banksy. I like the symbolism of something beautiful growing out of the 9/11 attacks. Of course, this is America and so we did exactly the opposite. You mean terrorists killed a bunch of innocent American civilians? Well we should kill a bunch of innocent foreign civilians! It’s so terrible. But the image is beautiful:
   
3. If you’re like me, you’ve learned to stop worrying and love our corporate overlords. But if you aren’t quite there, then you should really enjoy this story. Last week, Will alerted me to an article on Huffington Post, Walmart Worker Says He Was Fired After Helping Woman Fend Off Attacker. According to the article, Kristopher Oswald, a 30-year-old worker at a Michigan Walmart store was fired for helping a customer who was being attacked. “Oswald says he was on break about 2:30 am Sunday when he saw a man grabbing a woman. He says he asked her if she needed help and the man started attacking him.” But apparently, this broke company rules and so he was gone.

   I’ll admit it: I was skeptical. I figured there might be more to the story than the guy was letting on. So I let the story sit. But today I saw a new story from CBS News, Wal-Mart says Kristopher Oswald Can Have Job Back, After Firing Him for Trying to Help Assault Victim:

   Brooke Buchanan, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart, told CBS News’ Crimesider that after reviewing all the facts of the case, the company has determined Oswald had good intentions when he wound up fighting with the woman’s alleged attacker at around 2:30 am Sunday outside the Hartland Township store.

   I’m sure that’s true; it certainly can’t have anything to do with all the bad publicity. Thus far, Walmart hasn’t been able to find Oswald. But they’ve left messages on his machine.

   What I find interesting here is how quickly, and apparently without thought, Walmart fired this young man. This is indicative of a economy with a high unemployment rate. This is the other reason why the power elites in this country want the Federal Reserve to concentrate on inflation and let unemployment get high. When unemployment is high, businesses have their pick of employees and don’t even think twice about firing good employees. It is despicable. Sadly, it is also common.

4. Jane Mayer wrote a very important article over at The New Yorker, Top CIA Lawyer Sides With Senate Torture Report. It involves the confirmation of Stephen W Preston to become the top lawyer at the Pentagon. His appointment has held up by hero Senator Mark Udall. Apparently, he only allowed confirmation after Preston admitted that he agreed with the classified 6,000 page report. Mayer explains:
   At its core is a bitter disagreement over an apparently devastating, and still secret, report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documenting in detail how the CIA’s brutalization of terror suspects during the Bush years was unnecessary, ineffective, and deceptively sold to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, and the public. The report threatens to definitively refute former CIA personnel who have defended the program’s integrity. But so far, to the consternation of several members of the Intelligence Committee, the Obama Administration, like Bush’s before it, is keeping the damning details from public view.

   It seems that the CIA has been doing everything it can to suppress the report and claim that it isn’t true. But the CIA’s work has been well and long documented. Early on in the War on Terror, the CIA took over from the FBI, who actually knew how to conduct interrogations. It is a travesty that Obama continues to hide our wrong doing from the American people. It’s stuff like this that makes me question all my fairly positive views about him. If he can be this corrupt and, frankly, evil about drones and torture, maybe he’s the same way about healthcare and stimulus. Maybe he is playing 11-dimensional chess. It’s just he isn’t playing it with the Republicans; he’s playing it with us.

5. Regular readers of this site know about the greatest work of satire in the 21st century, Billy Bob Neck. And if you’ve been paying attention, you know that he is the creation of the comedian Paul Day. Well, Day does a whole lot more than just BBN. An example is the following bit of “Gun and God” humor from his Facebook page:
   

If you are on Facebook, you should definitely check him out; he puts out a lot of good stuff.

6. Here is a late addition. Last night’s The Daily Show had a great opening segment on all the nonsense about the business media’s outrage about JP Morgan’s lawsuit. And then Aasif Mandvi did a great segment of voter ID. And then Jon Stewart interviewed Charles Krauthammer and it all fell apart. As usual, Stewart allows conservatives to come on and spout nonsense. Kruthammer said that life expectancies in America are now 80 years. That’s not true, but even the increases we have actually seen are among the more wealthy. Stewart just let it pass. Kruthammer said that Europe was going bankrupt because of welfare. That’s a totally false conservative canard. Stewart said nothing. Kruthammer said the Tea Party came about as a reaction to Obama’s excesses. That’s remarkable since it started just a month after he entered office. Stewart said nothing. In fact, the only thing Stewart did say was that Kruthammer’s conservatism seemed so reasonable but that it didn’t sound like that of other Republicans. Kruthammer is not reasonable. It’s the same thing that I always talk about: the difference between Kruthammer and Ted Cruz is tactics. Kruthammer said he was against shutting down the government, but only because it was bad tactics, not because he was against the reasons. Kruthammer compares the loons in the Republican Party to Alan Grayson. Stewart just lets him. Unbelievable. Stewart just doesn’t understand that soft spoken conservatives are the same as the ranters. Kruthammer said a lot more that was wrong. He said all kinds of things that were total distortions about Obamacare. I just couldn’t keep up with it. Once again folks: Speaking softly does not make you reasonable!

See you all this evening.

Well, here we are with another collection of odds and ends. Rather than just do the old stuff, I’ve thrown in a few things from today and yesterday. I begin and end with some discussion of revolution. Perhaps it is because when you get right down to it, I’m not much of an ideologue, but I don’t dig on revolution. Unless there is just no other way forward, incremental change is best. Violence is almost never the answer. And in America at this time it is most definitely not the answer. Those who think that we are on the verge of tyranny (and that includes people on the left) are crazy. I am all for doing battle, but only in the metaphorical sense of that word. We need to fight with ideas and community, not knives and guns. And if that makes me sound like a new age hippy, so be it.

1. The very great Chris Hedges thinks that the time has come, Let’s Get This Class War Started. He quotes Aristotle as saying that there are two possible ways forward for an oligarchic state. Either those in power repress the masses or the messes revolt. He says we have the first and it is time to do the second. I would put it a bit differently. I think that the masses are repressed, but not so much in the way they once were. We have a system that fools the masses into thinking that they are free. So they keep voting into power different members of the oligarchy. This is doubly constricting because if the masses ever decide that they will simply vote in people who do what is best for the 99%, the oligarchs will just go to Plan B: direct repression. I’m assuming here that Hedges is talking about a peaceful revolt. He’s seen too much war to want to start one. I’m ready for a peaceful revolt. But it will take a long time, because most Americans have been thoroughly indoctrinated into The American Lie of equality of opportunity and all that jazz. That’s no more true than Santa Claus or Thor, but people hold onto it and it is hard to get them to give it up. But we have two whole generations now who have lots of evidence to counter The American Lie. There may be hope—even in my lifetime.
2. This is from Raw Story (via Digby). Pope Francis continues his charm offensive on my heart. And it is working:
   The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid.

   And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason, Jesus said to them, “You have taken away the key of knowledge.” The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with [their?] many requirements.

   The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens. Ideology chases away the people. It creates distances between people and it distances the Church from the people. But it is a serious illness, this Christian ideology. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?

   He might as well have said, “If your Christian faith is easy, you are doing it wrong.”

3. Two important points from Dean Baker. First, Problems With Signing Up for Obamacare Was a State Choice. It appears the reason the exchanges are so screwed up is that the administration wasn’t expecting that 34 states would decide to spite the federal government and their own people by choosing not to set up their own exchanges. As a result, the administration did not initially allocate enough resources to properly do the over-large exchanges.

   Second, Europe and Canada have a tentative trade agreement that eventually will expand the UK economy by 0.08%. Remember this when people talk up a US-Europe deal. These deals do very little good for our country. But they very much increase enforcement of copyrights and other rents that help the rich and hurt the poor. So unless you own a bunch of stock in Disney, don’t buy the rhetoric.

4. Alec MacGillis wrote a good article, Obama Beat the Hostage-Takers. Now He Has to Fight the Fiscal Scolds. It’s about the Peterson brigade, best represented by Simpson-Bowles. They are continuing their full-court press to balance the federal budget. But it does miss the most important element about these people. They don’t care about the deficits. They want to cut entitlements. They are also keen on raising taxes, but mostly on the poor and middle classes. And in a practical sense, their plans will always decrease taxes on the rich. This is because their plans always start with cutting the marginal tax rates. This is paid for by closing loopholes. But as we all know, new loopholes are created as quickly as old ones are plugged. So for a year or so after the Simpson-Bowles plan was adopted, the rich would probably pay higher taxes. And for the decades after that, they would pay less in taxes. So MacGillis is right: Obama needs to fight the fiscal scolds. But they are worthy opponents in the sense that they are a bunch of liars that want to hurt the poor and help the rich.
5. There is a narrative about the Heritage Foundation that goes like this: in the past, they were a real think tank; sure, they were conservative but they did real work; now they are just a bunch of hacks that do nothing but create propaganda for the conservative movement. There is perhaps a little to this narrative. The Heritage Foundation did, after all, put together what we now call Obamacare. And once Obama was in office and he decided to use their policy recommendation, they dropped it like a socialist potato. But as Jason Stahl wrote in Salon, The Heritage Foundation Has Always Been Full of Hacks. He provides an excellent history of the group. It was specifically designed to push conservative ideas—just as it does to this day:
   In the spring of 1971, [Heritage founders] Feulner and Weyrich were working with their bosses on supersonic transport legislation. Both men and the officials they represented favored continued federal funding for the plane but lost the final Senate vote by a slim margin. After the vote the men received an [American Enterprise Institute (AEI)] study on the issue. Weyrich confronted AEI president William Baroody Sr about the tardiness, to which Baroody supposedly replied, “We didn’t want to try to affect the outcome of the vote.” Feulner argues in the official Heritage institutional history, “It was at that moment that Paul and I decided that conservatives needed an independent research institute designed to influence the policy debate as it was occurring in Congress—before decisions were made.”

   What I find especially interesting here is the policy that started all this: supersonic transport. Socialism is just fine with conservatives as long as it benefits the wealthy!

6. This is a very famous photo from the weekend before the government shutdown ended:
   

   I’m very taken with the two flags together. The one flag is for the US Marine Corps. I’m not sure what the message is supposed to be. “This time the Marines will support our treason”? And then there are the signs that the people are holding, “Impeach Obama.” Fair enough. That’s working inside our political system. But the confederate flag is a symbol of treason, pure and simple. See, for example: NASCAR Culture and Sport. And: No More Confederate General Bases! I have zero tolerance for the confederate flag. As I wrote before, “Germans manage to show their pride without waving Nazi flags around.” And I don’t think that’s hyperbolic in the least.

That’s all for now. Slowly I’m getting the backlog out. The problem is that good things just keep coming in!

I’ve had it. At any given time, I have something like 100 tabs open in my browser. Almost all of these could be filed under, “When I get an hour or two, I want to write about that!” And sometimes I do get around to them. For example, it took me weeks to get around writing, Stalin, Not the Bomb, Defeated Japan. But mostly, I don’t. Some go into an ever expanding folder called, “Story Ideas.” But even more just get deleted. So I’ve decided to do these semi-regular posts of worthy issues. And in some cases, just things I don’t have much to add to.

1. Fox News Caught in Epic Lie: Last Friday, Eric Stern wrote an amazing article, Inside the Fox News Lie Machine: I Fact-Checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare. I read it on Friday and really wanted to comment on it. But before I knew it, Krugman discussed it briefly, Lies, Damned Lies, and Fox News. And then tonight, apparently Stern was on All In. Basically, Sean Hannity had three couples on to discuss how Obamacare was costing them and their employees. But when Stern contacted them, there was literally nothing to their complaints. The couple who owned a business weren’t forced to give healthcare to their employees because they were too small; they had apparently cut staff hours because business was slow. And the two other couples hadn’t checked the exchanges. When Stern did so for them, they ended up save huge amounts of money.

   Today, Erik Wemple at the Washington Post wrote, Fox News’s Howard Kurtz (sort of) addresses Obamacare distortions on Hannity. Kurtz is Fox News‘ media critic. But he gave the same bullshit we always get from Fox News. More or less he said that since Hannity is an “opinion guy” that he has no obligation to tell the truth. In other words, pure propaganda is just fine. If you ever see someone from Fox News on The Daily Show, you will hear that. But it is noteworthy seeing such nonsense coming out of Kurtz’s mouth, because he used to be considered an actual journalist. It’s interesting that people like him fit so well at Fox News. It really makes you wonder about the mainstream press.

2. TED Talks Are Useless: Thomas Frank wrote a very interesting article at Salon, TED Talks Are Lying to You. I thought it was going to be about my biggest problem with the TED Talks: they are a megaphone for the elite. His argument is that what the literature about creativity in business and the TED Talks with their “big ideas” are all about one thing: telling a certain class—the professional managers—that they are smart, creative people. He doesn’t go this far, but the fact is that this class is as disposable as assembly line workers. And I suspect they know this and need to be reassured that what they do is really creative and can’t be done by just anyone. Their worst fears are correct.
3. 60 Minutes Distorts Disability: Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes produced a program that really made me angry, Disability, USA. It was about how all kinds of able body people were scamming the disability program and driving it bankrupt. This is not even one of my issues and I could see all kinds of things wrong with it. It was pure propaganda—the sort of thing that I would once have thought would just air on Fox News. The whole thing was revolving around Tom Coburn “investigation” of the program. But clearly, Coburn doesn’t want to save the program; this is just his effort to destroy it. FAIR published a thorough debunking of the story that I highly recommend reading, What Did 60 Minutes Get Wrong About Disability? The answer is, “Everything!” But let me just leave the subject with this: by making disability rules harsher, it means that more people who really do deserve it will be denied. There will always be abuse, but compared to other programs (both public and private), it has very little fraud. Since the episode, I have been unable to watch 60 Minutes. It really has become nothing but garbage.
4. Let Pete Rose In: I was very pleased to see Harry Reid call for Pete Rose to be allowed into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I have a huge soft spot for Rose. For one thing, he played the way people did before the age of home runs that is sadly with us still. And also, I like damaged people. But most of all, what the fuck does professional baseball think it is anyway? Monsters have played the game and monsters are in the Hall of Fame. As long as baseball has been professional, it has not been pure. And a bunch of billionaires standing up for community standards is beyond ridiculous; it is appalling. Pete Rose is one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Let him in the fucking Hall of Fame!
5. No Beaver Butt in Vanilla: I read recently that vanilla comes from castoreum, which beavers excrete from their anuses to mark territory. Despite having heard this, I could not bring myself to find the flavor of vanilla anything but wonderful. It turns out, however, castoreum is sometimes used as a vanilla substitute. Actually vanilla is made from vanillin which is extracted from vanilla beans. And given what we know about fake honey, you might want to choose some expensive organic vanilla the next time you need some.

That’s it for now, but I have a huge backlog, so I’m sure that more are coming soon!