1/ Washington and particularly our corporate owned media have swallowed the Tea Party line that the deficit reduction is the most important task facing the country, bar none. As Paul Krugman explains this is complete BS, and an excuse to cut benefits for the middle class and enriching the top 10% even more. The Koch Brothers and the right wing oligarchs won't be happy till we are a nation of serfs.....
What’s really remarkable at this point, however, is the persistence of the deficit fixation in the face of rapidly changing facts. People still talk as if the deficit were exploding, as if the United States budget were on an unsustainable path; in fact, the deficit is falling more rapidly than it has for generations, it is already down to sustainable levels, and it is too small given the state of the economy.
Start with the raw numbers. America’s budget deficit soared after the 2008 financial crisis and the recession that went with it, as revenue plunged and spending on unemployment benefits and other safety-net programs rose. And this rise in the deficit was a good thing! Federal spending helped sustain the economy at a time when the private sector was in panicked retreat; arguably, the stabilizing role of a large government was the main reason the Great Recession didn’t turn into a full replay of the Great Depression.
But after peaking in 2009 at $1.4 trillion, the deficit began coming down. The Congressional Budget Office expects the deficit for fiscal 2013 (which began in October and is almost half over) to be $845 billion. That may still sound like a big number, but given the state of the economy it really isn’t.
Bear in mind that the budget doesn’t have to be balanced to put us on a fiscally sustainable path; all we need is a deficit small enough that debt grows more slowly than the economy. To take the classic example, America never did pay off the debt from World War II — in fact, our debt doubled in the 30 years that followed the war. But debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell by three-quarters over the same period.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/
2/ Excellent.....a very insightful story from Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone about the death throes of the Republican party, and why they are more dangerous than ever. Yes, there was a national result for the President last year, but the real story is in the State Houses and the Supreme Court......
6/ So the previous Pope, the one who had a passing resemblance to Satan, covered up the sex crimes of his priests.
It's going to get interesting folks.......
The GOP's Real Agenda
Since last fall, Republicans have pretended to be more moderate - but their politics are harsher and more destructive than ever
March 13, 2013 1:45 PM ET
After watching voters punish the GOP in the 2012 elections, Republican elites have been talking a brave game about reforms that would make the party less repulsive to Latinos, women and gay-friendly millennials. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the GOP's hip-hop-quoting young standard-bearer, is pressing conservatives to back an amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Dozens of party stalwarts, headlined by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, renounced their opposition to gay marriage in a Supreme Court brief. GOP bigwigs have even launched New Republican – a group modeled after Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic Leadership Council – which seeks to rebrand the party as "colorblind," "not anti-government" and dedicated to "ending corporate welfare."
Don't be fooled. On the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation's highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP's severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.
The hardcore rump of the party is even working to punish moderate outliers like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – the party's most popular leader – who was denied a speaking role at the conservative movement's annual convention, CPAC. Today's GOP may desperately need to remake itself as "culturally modern, environmentally responsible and economically inclusive," argues David Frum, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House, but it remains, he says, in the throes of a "Tea Party tantrum."
As it works to lock in as many retrograde policies as possible before it finally chooses to either modernize or die, the Republican Party is like a wounded beast: Rarely has it been more dangerous.
http://www.rollingstone.com/
3/ A wonderful clip from "West Wing" where the President [Martin Sheen] puts a bigoted radio host [I assume this is based on Dr. Laura Schlessinger] in her place...
Two minutes from a great show.......
4/ Yes you have a smartphone which can do just about everything, but the tech guy from the Times tells us this isn't enough - we need more gadgets to improve our lives, so read on at your peril. This could be expensive!
After I bought my first iPhone, something changed. When I bought a new electronic device, I was often filled with regret rather than joy.
The problem was this: Once I bought the new gadget, I realized that a cheap smartphone app could easily replace it. For example, I bought a snazzy point-and-shoot camera, wanting better-looking photos. Later, photo-editing apps like Camera Plus and Instagram appeared in the App Store to touch up my iPhone photos with a few taps. I haven’t used the point-and-shoot camera in years.
Another time I bought a cheap all-in-one printer, thinking it would be good to have a scanner for my home office. Later, I realized an app called JotNot Pro was excellent at making iPhone photos look like scanned documents. (As for the printer portion of the all-in-one — who prints things anymore?)
I even sometimes regret buying an iPad because the iPhone can perform the same tasks, and it’s more portable. True, the iPad is a great couch companion — but how often does a New Yorker stay home and relax?
I’m well aware my chronic buyer’s remorse can be considered a “first world pain,” but you can learn from it. If you want to be wise about the gadgets you buy post-smartphone, keep the following items in mind.
JAMBOX BLUETOOTH SPEAKER The Jambox is a brick-shaped wireless audio speaker. It can play sound from any device with a wireless Bluetooth connection, including smartphones and most laptops and tablets. It is small, lightweight and has decent audio quality.
5/ Jeff Gordon is a professional race car driver, stock cars as well as NASCAR, and this is an amusing prank he played on a used car salesman......amusing to us, quite painful for the salesman......
This is a Facebook viral video.....
The new one from Argentina is 1/ a Jesuit [fanatic] and 2/ covered up brutality and murders committed by the Argentinian junta.....
Pope Francis: questions remain over his role during Argentina's dictatorship
Jorge Bergoglio was head of the Jesuit order in the 1970s when the church backed military government and called for patriotism
If cities were stocks, you’d want to short Phoenix.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Argentina's cardinal Jorge Bergoglio greets followers outside the San Cayetano church in Buenos Aires in 2009. Photograph: Natacha Pisarenko/AP
Despite the joyful celebrations outside the Municipal Cathedral in Buenos Aires yesterday, the news of Latin America's first pope was clouded by lingering concerns about the role of the church – and its new head – during Argentina's brutal military dictatorship.
The Catholic church and Pope Francis have been accused of a complicit silence and worse during the "dirty war" of murders and abductions carried out by the junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
The evidence is sketchy and contested. Documents have been destroyed and many of those who were victims or perpetrators have died in the years that followed. The moral argument is clear, but the reality of life at that time put many people in a grey position. It was dangerous at that time to speak out and risk being labelled a subversive. But many, including priests and bishops, did so and subsequently disappeared. Those who stayed silent have subsequently had to live with their consciences — and sometimes the risk of a trial.
Its behaviour during that dark period in Argentine history was so unsaintly that in 2000 the Argentine Catholic church itself made a public apology for its failure to take a stand against the generals. "We want to confess before God everything we have done badly," Argentina's Episcopal Conference said at that time.
7/ An incredible helmet cam video of a Alpine sled coaster ride down a mountain in Austria......two minutes of adrenalin rush......
It's actually pretty cool.......no brakes on this thing.....
8/ Wow - if I lived in Arizona I would be getting out now after reading this story, which says that Phoenix is a disaster city waiting to happen. All of our country's climate change issues come together in Phoenix, and frankly it couldn't happen to a more deserving city, home of Tea Party central and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
A horrible city, in an awful State......
Of course, it’s an easy city to pick on. The nation’s 13th largest metropolitan area (nudging out Detroit) crams 4.3 million people into a low bowl in a hot desert, where horrific heat waves and windstorms visit it regularly. It snuggles next to the nation’s largest nuclear plant and, having exhausted local sources, it depends on an improbable infrastructure to suck water from the distant (and dwindling) Colorado River.
In Phoenix, you don’t ask: What could go wrong? You ask: What couldn’t?
And that’s the point, really. Phoenix’s multiple vulnerabilities, which are plenty daunting taken one by one, have the capacity to magnify one another, like compounding illnesses. In this regard, it’s a quintessentially modern city, a pyramid of complexities requiring large energy inputs to keep the whole apparatus humming. The urban disasters of our time—New Orleans hit by Katrina, New York City swamped by Sandy—may arise from single storms, but the damage they do is the result of a chain reaction of failures—grids going down, levees failing, back-up systems not backing up. As you might expect, academics have come up with a name for such breakdowns: infrastructure failure interdependencies. You wouldn’t want to use it in a poem, but it does catch an emerging theme of our time.
Phoenix’s pyramid of complexities looks shakier than most because it stands squarely in the crosshairs of climate change. The area, like much of the rest of the American Southwest, is already hot and dry; it’s getting ever hotter and drier, and is increasingly battered by powerful storms. Sandy and Katrina previewed how coastal cities can expect to fare as seas rise and storms strengthen. Phoenix pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, the place to look is where that climate is already harsh, and growing more so—the aptly named Valley of the Sun.
In Phoenix, it’s the convergence of heat, drought, and violent winds, interacting and amplifying each other that you worry about. Generally speaking, in contemporary society, nothing that matters happens for just one reason, and in Phoenix there are all too many “reasons” primed to collaborate and produce big problems, with climate change foremost among them, juicing up the heat, the drought, and the wind to ever greater extremes, like so many sluggers on steroids. Notably, each of these nemeses, in its own way, has the potential to undermine the sine qua non of modern urban life, the electrical grid, which in Phoenix merits special attention.
9/ Not sure if this is true, but if it is it's not good news.....
This story from the Guardian says giant mosquitoes are invading Florida.....gallnipers......Giant Mosquitoes Look Set To Invade Florida
The rainy season could bring a bumper crop of gallinippers - coin-sized, aggressive pests that cause more than a little pain.
A gallinipper and a normal-sized mosquito (Marisol Amador/UF IFAS)
10/ Remember the video about the double back wheel Mercedes off road vehicle? One of our alert readers thought it was a vehicle for wimps, and sent this in.....a South African street legal monster, road tested on a BBC show "Top Gear".....
Eight minutes, but you get the idea halfway through.......
11/ Interesting story on the impacts from the rise in sea levels on South Florida, and how the official response is to screw it up......read the part about the sewage plants....yup we're in Floriduh.......
And I love the first line.......
Human intelligence is highly overrated. Let's take a trip to Florida for a little proof.
Florida is vulnerable to any rise in sea level. The mere 6-7 inches seas rose during the 20th century are already causing coastal erosion and storm drainage flooding. You can see video footage of beach erosion on March 11 from a nothing special storm here.
Another 2-3 feet over the 21st century would be catastrophic, particularly in heavily populated South Florida. Everyone agrees on the basic parameters of the issues. The following graph shows the trajectory of sea level rise in South Florida based on historical trend data (blue line) and on current projection data used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (orange shaded area). Sea level rise during the last half of the 20th century was 1.7 mm yr. By contrast, sea level rise during the first decade of the 21st century was 3.1 mm yr, consistent with the lower bound estimate used by the USACE.
Here are humans who are beginning to see rapid changes associated with climate change. Let's watch how they behave. (By the way, there will be a test at the end of the discussion.)
12/ I can't recall ever posting a blues video, but this from Alabama Shakes "You Ain't Alone" is a wow.....the singer has captured the ghost of Otis Redding and added a Janis Joplin wail all of her own......
13/ We had a story last week about making foreign tourists get International drivers licenses, including Canadians? Well our hopeless dunderheads in Tallahassee are going to repeal it.......
TALLAHASSEE -- From election reform to tougher ethics laws to retooling the campaign finance system, the Florida Legislature will spend much of this legislative session undoing many of the problems it has helped cause in recent years.
Almost no piece of legislation epitomizes that sentiment more than HB 7059, the hurried push to repeal a 2012 law that forced foreign tourists to obtain an International Driver’s Permit.
On Tuesday, the Florida House moved forward on repealing the law — which has caused near-pandemonium among Canadian tourists — in an attempt to fast-track it to Gov. Rick Scott’s desk before any further damage.
“Oftentimes when we pass legislation, we don’t really understand how we could have some unintended consequences, with it,” said Rep. Daniel Davis, a Jacksonville Republican who is behind the repeal effort. "In this case we need to repeal some legislation because it, in effect, has hurt our tourism industry.”
Gov. Rick Scott indicated he was ready to sign the repeal at once, stating that the original law he signed last year “made no sense.”
Canadian tourists mobilized in opposition when they learned of the 2012 law, which required them to get a new license before they could drive in Florida. Traditionally, drivers from Canada and other countries could use their licenses from their home country when visiting the Sunshine State. Lawmakers toughened the statutes in 2012 after concern that some of those licenses were not written in English, but didn’t foresee all the problems that would ensue when the law went into effect on Jan. 1.
After Canadian journalists wrote about the new requirement, frustrated snowbirds from Toronto and Quebec began calling lawmakers and scrambling to get the new permit, which costs $25 and is valid for a maximum of one year.
Todays video - the funniest hot dog commercial ever.......of course it's Australian, I don't think they could show it here......
Today's quickies
Which sexual position produces the ugliest children?
Ask your mother.
__________________________________________________________
How do you embarrass an archeologist?
Give him a tampon and ask him which period it came from.
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What's the difference between a bitch and a whore?
A whore sleeps with everybody at the party; A bitch sleeps with everybody at the party except you.
__________________________________________________________
What's the difference between a Catholic wife and a Jewish wife?
A Catholic wife has real orgasms and fake jewelry.
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What makes men chase women they have no intention of marrying?
The same urge that makes dogs chase cars they have no intention of driving.
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What is the biggest problem for an atheist?
No one to talk to during orgasm.
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What do you call an Amish guy with his hand up a horse's ass?
A mechanic.
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Who is the most popular guy at the nudist colony?
The guy who can carry a cup of coffee in each hand and a dozen donuts.
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Who is the most popular girl at the nudist colony?
The one who can eat the last donut.
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Jewish dilemma:
Free PORK.
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The three words men hate to hear most during sex:
'Are you in?'
___________________________________________________________
The three words women hate to hear most during sex:
'Honey, I'm home!'
Todays linguistic joke
Did you know that, the words "race car" spelled backwards still spells "race car"?
And that "eat" is the only word that, if you take the first letter and move it to the last, spells its own past tense, "ate"?
And if you rearrange the letters in "Tea Party Republicans," and add just a few more letters, it spells: "Shut the hell up you free-loading, progress-blocking, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, violent, lie-to-start-war hypocrites, low-life pieces of crap and deal with the fact that you nearly wrecked the country under Bush and that our president is black, so get over it."
Isn't that interesting?
Todays bonus Polish joke
What do Polish brides get on their wedding day that's long and hard?
A new last name.
Todays Wal-Mart joke
Wal-Mart announced that sometime in 2013 it will begin offering customers a new discount item: Wal-Mart's own brand of wine.The world's largest retail chain is teaming up with Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery of California to produce the wines at affordable prices in the $2 to $5 range.Wine connoisseurs may not be inclined to put a bottle of the Wal-Mart brand into their shopping carts but, 'There is a market for inexpensive wine,' said Kathy Micken, professor of marketing at University of Arkansas, Bentonville. 'However, branding will be very important.'Customer surveys were conducted to determine the most attractive name for the Wal-Mart wine brands and varieties.The top surveyed names in order of popularity were:10. Chateau Traileur Parc9. White Trashfindel8. Big Red Gulp7. World Championship Riesling6. NASCARbernet5. Chef Boyardeaux4. Peanut Noir3. I Can't Believe it's not Vinegar2. Grape Expectations1. Nasti SpumanteThe beauty of Wal-Mart wine is that it can be served witheither white meat (Possum) or red meat (Squirrel).
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