Spam, Spam, Spam, John Bolton, Spam, Spam and Spam

I actually find myself partially agreeing with John Bolton about Russia. Not that we should back away from arms control-- Bolton would suggest that on any day ending in -y. But it might be a good idea to push forward on missile defense in Europe so that we have something utterly inconsequential on the table that we can give up so Putin can stop making the situation in Syria and still be able to declare victory when he goes back to the harem of half-tiger dancing girls whom I assume will be waiting for him in Moscow.

I am, of course, suspicious of any time I even superficially agree with someone who sees the UN as legitimate only when it serves his neoconservative agenda. Especially since his proscriptions are being offered in the context of there needing to be a fundamental shift in the strategic realities in the Middle East if we are to see peace there (Ok, what he said was "advance legitimate American interests," and he almost certainly meant something else by that, but seeing as peace is the only legitimate American interest in the Middle East, that's what I'm running with.) Seeing as Russia's sociopathic behavior on the world stage more or less stems from concern about the expansion of American geopolitical capital, it's hard to see how we're going to save any lives in Syria by telling them, for instance, that we have no interest in pursuing agreements aimed at preventing the militarization of space.

Pounding our chest at Russia and saying "come at me, bro," is many things, but it's not strategic. Where there is a whisper of kinda-maybe truth is that Putin, keen political operator that he is, is likely basing his posture via a vis the US on how the President has dealt with bald faced unprincipled intransigence at home. If that's the case, and this is a matter of Putin crowding the plate, as it were, it's because he doesn't think that Obama has it in him to brush him back. If so, it's possible that it might be  tactically sound to give him some chin music. But all that can possibly do is get him to take half a step back. It isn't going to win the ballgame. The only way to win the ballgame is to ultimately find a way to make peace with Russia and Iran without giving away the store. Honestly? I don't remotely have the policy chops to tell you how that's going to happen (working on it). I am, however, keenly aware of what not to do.



On an unrelated note, I would like to ask people who are posting this image on social networks to please fucking stop

Congrats, folks! You've found a way to save less than 1% of the deficit whilst giving members of Congress further incentive to seek outside income! You know, the outside income they get by investing on inside information and taking high-paid gigs from the people who were lobbying them while they were supposedly serving our interests. This is no different than Republicans going after foreign aid or funding for the arts. You can fundamentally believe that the people who are receiving this money don't deserve it, but pretending that cutting it off is going to solve any problem is severely fucking delusional. It's the sort of thing that distracts us from, you know, actually solving our numerous problems as a nation.

The Most Astounding Fact About the Universe

Explaining the inner workings of the Universe so that all might understand them better is a noble endeavor. Doing so in a manner that excites us and urges us to participate in the process of scientific discovery is a necessity for any society that wishes to continue the march of scientific process. Towards that end, one could do far worse than Neil Degrasse Tyson, whose answer to the question "What is the most astounding fact about the Universe?" has been set to music and images of the cosmos by vimeo user Max Schlickenmeyer.



This is nearly identical to the notion which Miley Cyrus has recently been flamed for tweeting as a macro, save for the "forget Jesus" bit. Which was perhaps impolitic for a public figure, but considering the multitudes of exhortations from pulpit I've witnessed by those who hold that people like me who take no solace in the idea that an invisible man (and it is always a man) watching over them lead worthless lives, I offer a hearty fuck you to anyone who refers to the valuation of science over mysticism as "bigotry," while failing to speak up when your fellow Christians declare people like me to be valueless, even if I never said a bad word about their Lord (I would in fact give quite a lot to be able to break bread with the man, even though I'm convinced that he was just a man).

The problem is-- and I say this with a heavy heart-- there is a limit to the persuasive power of telling people to go fuck themselves.

So where do we go from there?

Everybody's concept of the universe is an imperfect model of the one we actually inhabit. Because the people who are most open about this fact are the ones who are trying to build better models for how the Universe works, their efforts are often lost on those who desire the certainty offered by theodicy.

Of course, if this was just about how people prefer to live their own lives, that would be one thing. We have known for quite some time now that separation of church and state is not a complete defense against the influence of the church.

I'm all for allowing people their comforts up to a point-- we do live in a supremely fucked-up world-- but this fictional asshole who torched a city because they were having too much buttsex, promises eternal punishment for his female creations who refuse to be enslaved by their biology, and demands that one particular method of sucking up to him be enshrined above all others has outgrown his usefulness. Actually, he's been past that mark for quite a while now.


Is there a way out?

Humanity is capable of witnessing and creating far more truth and beauty than this tyranny is allowing us. We need to find a way to loose this millstone from around our necks. I recognize that any attempt to get the majority of people around the world to eschew divinity is doomed to failure. I do wish, however, that we could find some of them a new God. There does not seem to be a sufficient firewall on offer against the excesses of their current one.

As I don't happen to have any gods on me, I would say this, as per the lesson given us by Dr. Tyson. We are the Universe. If you believe that love is the most powerful force in it-- which is, as I understand it, the central tenet of most faiths-- learn to seek and cherish and embolden the love of, by, and for your fellow human beings and you will bring about the realization of your desires. Even if I'm absolutely wrong about everything I hold to be true about the universe (a possibility accepted by every rational thinker), any God worth worshiping would appreciate the effort.

Fuck You, the Economist

The fact that world news from other countries tends to be better than what we get over here may sometimes lead one to expect that when a foreign publication comments on America, that they'd understand us better than we do them.

The Economist has seen fit to remind me that I ought to jettison that expectation just as soon as I can manage.

You can tell right away that the author(s)' concepts of political science are stuck in the UK. Despite clearly stating that the crisis is entirely a political one, they continue on to state that the House GOP was acting reasonably within its electoral mandate from 2010 in being the first American majority caucus in history to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

What, pray tell, is this mandate? According to The Economist, it's "to hold the government of Barack Obama to account."

Yeah, we get it. They have Parliament where you live and you don't know how a proper democracy works. Here's a hint-- politicians are supposed to be elected to do the will of the People, not to play Thunderdome with other politicians. We don't have a paradigm where there's a coalition whose job is, officially, to oppose the majority. It has to do with the fact that our system of representative government was designed on purpose, not retro-fitted to a constitutional monarchy. And while we've made plenty of our own mistakes, a lot of what we got right are things that we recognized were horribly wrong with the British system, one of which being the fractious nature of the British Parliament.

Nowadays, the phrase "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" gets floated as a justification for the GOP's chauvinistic obstructionism by American pundits who are too piss-scared of being seen as a part of the Liberal Media to speak honestly about the Republican Party. It's bullshit. That's not how the system was built to work; there are far too many mechanisms built in that grind everything to a halt. Operating our government like it's a Parliamentary system has been nothing short of disastrous for the American People, and the Economist's failure to grasp that basic fact ought to disqualify any commentary it offers on American politics.


When we send politicians to Washington, it's to do the job that the prior incumbents aren't doing well enough. And in 2010, that was create jobs. Which the polls confirm. The electorate is concerned overwhelmingly with jobs and the economy.

You'll notice that "just fuck with Obama a lot" isn't on that list.

The Economist is claiming, essentially, that a populace whose top 6 priories were (in descending order) The Economy, Jobs, Terrorism, Social Security, Education, Medicare, issued a mandate to Republicans to betray five of them in the service of their sixth priority, deficit reduction, while leaving tax cuts--which only 42% rated as a top priority-- alone

It's pretty easy math, The Economist. Isn't math supposed to be a feature of your discipline?

The math gets easier when you consider that those medicare cuts were originally part of a budget plan that also slashed taxes, and only would have significantly reduced the deficit if you assume quite a lot of nonsense. The Ryan plan was quite clearly not about the budget. In order to support the thesis that government is bad, evidence to the contrary must disposed of. It's only natural to target the nation's most popular government program.

The thing is, all of this has been available to anyone with a cheapass computer and the ability to find a WiFi hotspot somewhere. Does part of getting an Economics degree necessitate having the part of your brain capable of parsing this shit get cut out? Did Paul Krugman just not show up that day?

Was it a burning need to break out the "pox on both your houses" that persuaded the Economist to chide Obama for not finding a way out of the deficit crisis in the same breath that it had proclaimed said crisis to be a politically manufactured one?

I didn't even have to get into the utter lack of precedent for the debt ceiling vote being tied to ten-year budget outlooks to demonstrate just how clueless these wankers are.

And yeah, plenty of American outlets have been this fucking idiotic or worse in their coverage of the debt ceiling talks too, and none of them have resulted in me taking to the blogs.. But if the Economist is going to look down over the rims of its glasses at America without actually understanding what's going on, they've opened themselves up to ridicule.

Will You Idiots Please Stop Crying?

I was on break, stealing wifi from the hotel across the street from the store where I work when the 30-minute warning for the Casey Anthony verdict was issued. I walked back in and told my coworkers that the news was coming, and that there was no way that Casey was going to jail.

Nobody believed me, which was hardly surprising, and part of the reason why I bothered to tell them. After the verdict came back I spent a good portion of the rest of my shift explaining the American criminal justice system to the two coworkers of mine who had an excuse, not originally being from this country.

Later I took one of them bowling for the first time, cultural ambassador am I.  But I digress.

What made me absolutely certain of the not guilty verdict was the short deliberations-- establishing reasonable doubt doesn't take nearly as long as exhausting reasonable doubt. But the only reason I wasn't certain beforehand was because I'm not brimming with trust in my fellow Americans to pull their end of the rope where phrases such as "beyond all reasonable doubt" are concerned, let alone"air of reality"

If you watched the news coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, you were bombarded with how many fun things Casey did while her daughter was supposedly missing and what an incalculably cold, evil woman Casey must be. Also, we might kill this one, who's excited? If you watched the trial, you saw the prosecution lean heavily on the above while utterly failing to make its case. Their first boneheaded mistake was not charging involuntary manslaughter as a lesser included for a case where the actual event of the victim's death was never established.  And it didn't get a whole hell of a lot better from there.

It was kind of surreal watching the esteemed members of the legal commentariat assembled on MSNBC's live team do Orwellian backflips to explain how the short closing argument by the prosecution had to be some trap so that it fit their Official Casey Anthony Narrative, designed seemingly to entice their viewers into believing that this was a done deal and if they tuned in next week they'd get to see live footage of a young woman discovering that the possibilities for the rest of her life have been narrowed down to the long one or the short one. They were too busy speculating how Jose Baez would react if it were a movie to notice that he'd knocked his closing out of the park without the cheap theatrics they described. He simply explained in clear and uncertain terms that function of the jury wasn't there to solve a mystery. If after the prosecution rests there remains a mystery as to the facts of the case, then the function of the jury is to acquit, no matter what they think might have happened.

News is, for most proprietors of it, a revenue-driven enterprise. And you can't help but notice that the outrage that has resulted at least in part from the media's role in shaping expectations is a neat and tidy consolation prize for not being able to use any of the catchy slogans they'd come up with for the death penalty hearings. Here's what you won't hear from many of them: Even if the worst is true about Casey Anthony, it's unequivocally a good thing that she was found not guilty, as any standard of proof that would have lead to her conviction would put many, many innocent people behind bars. Everyone crowing about how justice wasn't served can fuck right the hell off.  Justice was never on the damn menu.

Caylee Anthony is dead. Nothing can change that. It may confound the chest-thumping law and order set for  me to say this, but the purpose of our criminal justice system isn't to punish criminals. It's to remove dangerous people from the public and place a deterrent on criminal behavior. Punishment isn't an end unto itself; It's a method of deterrence. Nancy Grace can talk all she wants about how the devil is dancing. I'll take her word for it as a subject matter expert-- when Nancy Grace dances with the devil, she leads.

One person who you can trust to get it right when countless others get it wrong is Chris Hayes, who was music to my ears on The Last Word last night when he spoke about the greater implications of the verdict and the public and the media's reaction to it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Not for nothing, but I'd absolutely watch that anti-Nancy Grace show.