More tin foil, Crazy Joe. The government mind control beams are clearly addling your brain. Just sayin'.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Various conspiracy type sites such as Firebagger Waterbody have broke the "news" that the Department of Homeland Security is buying thousands of armored MRAP vehicles. At which point I say... "huh?!"
So I head over to the Navistar site referenced by the Firebaggers, where Navistar helpfully notes that an upgrade of the current MRAP chassis leaves them with 2,717 rolling chassis already paid for by the Federal government. And Navistar would love, love I say, to sell bodies to put on those things to do any number of things from dump trucks to armored SWAT team carriers.
Still, no Department of Homeland Security there. So next thing I do is head over to Federal Procurement Data System and download their data set for the Department of Homeland Security. The latest data as of April 3 is available (they release data quarterly), and given how Federal procurement works, DHS certainly would not be getting anything with less than three months notice, so ... 425 megabytes of XML later, I have a database with contracts indexed by DUNS number. So I grab every Navistar DUNS number and search the database for *any* occurrence of *ANY* Navistar DUNS number in Department of Homeland Security contracts issued for the first quarter of 2012 and... nada.
Now, granted, a contract might have been issued since April 4. But you certainly wouldn't see vehicles rolling off the line with DHS markings on them yet, because these were rolling chassis -- i.e., nothing but a frame and drivetrain -- and it would take Navistar *time* to build bodies to put on them and put markings on those bodies. If a contract was issued on April 5, just how likely do you think it'd be that Navistar managed to work with *their* subcontractors to get everything needed to assemble bodies for these frames and managed to assemble even a *single* body for *one* of these frames in *SIX WORKING DAYS* since the contract was let? Yet the conspiracy sites have a PHOTO of one of these supposed DHS MRAP vehicles! Or, should I say, a PHOTOSHOP?
So anyhow: On a scale of zero to 100, I put the likelihood of DHS buying thousands of MRAP's at somewhere between zero to 1. The reason why I rate it above zero is that things on the Mexican border are not looking good right now -- and in case you didn't know, the Border Patrol *is* under the Department of Homeland Security now, and has been under fire multiple times from the Mexican drug gangs. It may be that the DHS has decided that armored trucks are necessary for the safety of Border Patrol patrols along the Mexican border and is procuring some. But if so, there has been no contract let yet, unless that happened in the past week -- and certainly no vehicles have rolled off the lines yet, despite any photoshops supposedly proving otherwise.
-- Badtux the Un-paranoid Penguin
In today's World Nut Daily, famed economist Chuck Norris says President Obama is behind the recent surge in gas prices, because it's part of his secret Kenyan plot to not get re-elected in November. Or something like that. Hey, it's Chuck Norris. If you're Chuck Norris you don't have to make sense, reality bends to fit *you*. Or something like that.
-- Badtux the Snarky Wingnut Watching Penguin
Today I got an email blast from World Nut Daily trying to sell some of the books they publish. One of the books is by famed birther book author Jerome Corsi. It is entitled Atomic Iran, and it details how Iran is on the verge of creating an atomic bomb because of the misdeeds of the Clinton Administration. This book boldly predicts that Iran would have a bomb within five years.
Pretty scary, eh? That means that we need to work hard to keep Iran from getting an atomic bomb, maybe even to the point of launching bombing raids on Iran to keep them from building a bomb. There's only one problem with that bold prediction and prescription for action: This book was published in 2006. Today is 2012. Which is, erm... *six* years after Jerome Corsi made that prediction. Oops! Yet Crazy Joe Farah of WND.com actually *included* the publication date in his email blast, even though the publication date *proves* that Corsi is either an idiot, a moron, or a liar!
Fail.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
One of the notions that those squishy Yurpeens and Canucks have decided upon is that freedom of speech stops at the point that a) it's false, and/or b) it incites hatred against groups of people. Truth is always a defense, but once truth has been established beyond a reasonable doubt, denying the truth is not a free speech right.
So France has passed a law now stating that publically denying a particular historical fact is illegal in France, and in response, Turkey has thrown a hissy fit. Wait, Turkey? Yes. Because the historical fact in question is the Armenian Genocide, and despite the fact that this is established historical fact, with well-established research showing it happened, Turkey continues to act like a Nazi sympathizer that says "the Holocaust never happened!".
What is baffling to me is why Turkey even cares. This happened years before the modern state of Turkey was created. I can see why they wouldn't want to dwell on it -- just as U.S. history books don't dwell on the genocide of the Native Americans that happened as us white people stole their land -- but this is ridiculous. The Armenian Genocide happened. Denying this is ridiculous and makes you look like an idiot to the rest of the world. If Turkey is trying to impress the EU in order to get entry into the EU, this isn't how to do it -- it just makes them look like a bunch of hot-headed neo-Nazis denying the Holocaust, and makes most Europeans wince and quietly make jokes behind Turkish diplomats' backs unfavorably comparing them to skinheads and other right-wing Holocaust deniers.
-- Badtux the News Penguin
So anyhow, a bunch of lefties over on Twitter were joking around that since Romney's daddy was born in Mexico, that meant Romney was no more (or less) a "natural born citizen" than Obama is. At which point someone said, "quick, someone tell Crazy Joe over at World Nut Daily!" and sure enough, this morning I got an email blast from Joseph Farah, owner/editor of World Nut Daily, with the Cavuto, "Is Mitt Romney a Natural Born Citizen?"
Dear Crazy Joe: We were JOKING. We weren't being serious. In fact, we were making fun of *you* and your demented crusade to overturn the will of the American voters via legalistic mumbo jumbo about how someone born on American soil might not *really* be a "natural born citizen" (what, he was artificially born?!). I realize that right-wingers have no sense of humor but dude. Get a grip!
- Badtux the Head-shakin' Penguin
unless you're a government employee, at which point I guess you give up your right to read his web site.
Look. There are times when I post things that have folks from unallocated IP addresses stop by. (That is, there is no official entry in the ARIN reverse lookup database for these IP addresses, there's No Such Address, read the initials ;). It's called GOOGLE. Some of those folks are dropping by because it's their job. Some are dropping by because they're on their lunch break. Either way, they typed in something like, say "B-1 crash afghanistan" to Google and came to my blog. That's how the Internet works. That's how it's always worked, all the way back to the early webcrawlers that required you to be really creative to actually find things.
So we are left with two options here: Either Drudge really believes that becoming a government employee means you lose your right to use Google to find articles of interest to you or your employer, or Drudge is a cretin. I report, you decide.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Bumper sticker on a Texas pickup truck: "Capitalism rocks! Socialism sucks!".
Seen in a government-run socialist rest area (which sucks?) alongside a government-operated socialist Interstate highway.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Okay, first of all, economies are like magic zoos, see. There are lions and tigers and bulls and bears, oh my, and stuff goes in and stuff goes out and like everybody lives happily ever after and such. So how do these "economy" thingies work? Well, first of all, meet the Free Market Fairy:
So anyhow, these magic unicorns poop this "choice" stuff and then we get all the benefits of low prices and good service. Like, at my house, I have a lot of this Choice stuff when it comes to high speed Internet -- I have Comcast, and I have, err, Comcast. Hmm. I must be wrong, because these magic Competition unicorns are EVERYWHERE, even though nobody's ever seen them outside of narrow marketplaces for consumer baubles, and thus there's ALWAYS a choice, just like my choice between Comcast and, err, Comcast, for high speed Internet. The Competition Unicorn *does* exist, like Santa Claus, magically bringing gifts to all the deserving people. And if you don’t get gifts from this magic competition unicorn, why, it just means you’re a bad person and probably deserve to get coal in your Christmas stocking, ho ho ho!
And that's right wing economics in a nutshell. Tomorrow, boys and girls, we'll talk about right-wing biology. That's even stranger than right-wing economics... like, *really* strange, as in, it's a wonder that right-wingnuts ever manage to reproduce. See ya!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
I supposed I'm supposed to be talking about Herman Cain's sexual harassment problem right now, but c'mon. Everybody knows that white women throw themselves at black men 'cause they're curious to see whether black men's, err, instrument, is as big as reputed, and if the black man doesn't reciprocate then they file these bogus sexual harassment charges in retaliation, right? (Note: Sarcasm intended).
So anyhow, back to something more interesting to me. Anarcho-capitalism makes no rational sense if you know anything about human psychology and human history. Anarcho-capitalism is extremely inefficient -- for example, anarcho-capitalism requires that all roads be turned into toll roads, but collecting tolls is far more expensive than simply collecting taxes at the gas pump -- and does not deal with the freeloader problem of externalities. That is, if I pay a security company to catch the burglar who burglarized my house, and pay them to put this burglar in jail, I'm not the only person benefiting. Every other person that this burglar would have burglarized in the future is also benefiting. Unless they're paying part of the cost of catching and imprisoning him, they're free-loading off of me. Anarcho-capitalism has no solution to that free-loading problem, whereas democracy does -- in democracy, everybody who benefits pays (which is pretty much everybody to some extent, since a burglar in jail is no longer a threat to your own home and thus putting him in jail at least provides a mental benefit to you). I.e., *taxes* are the solution democracy has to the free-loader problem.
So, why do so many engineers, who are supposedly logical thinkers, fall prey to supporting anarcho-capitalism ("libertarianism")? In my opinion it's because they fall prey to the fact that the society that engineers live in, by and large, is a very circumscribed one filled only with like-minded people who behave in a way that ordinary people simply don't behave, and they then extrapolate from that to believe that society at large behaves that same way.
First things first. Engineers are a very special people. First of all, by and large engineering operates on anarchist principles. That is, engineering teams operate via consensus and engineers who are not capable of operating in that environment don't last, they leave or get fired. So engineers soon fall into the trap of believing that *everything* can operate via consensus that way. After all, if designing a huge software system can operate via consensus, why not society as a whole?
Secondly, there are very few Wallys out there -- Wally being the free-loading engineer from Dilbert. Engineers who don't enjoy their work don't last. They move into sales or marketing, or they move into management, or they end up in customer support somewhere, or they end up delivering pizzas or working as a "sandwich artist", but they don't stay in engineering. So the average engineer has very little experience with freeloaders in the workplace, the only society he really knows.
Finally, engineers generally are not... how should I put this? Engineers are typically not social creatures. They don't have many hobbies outside of the workplace, they don't socialize with non-engineers very often.
The end result is that engineers operate in a bubble, a bubble filled with like-minded people all of whom are devoted to creating good product, a bubble that has no freeloaders and where everybody is able to reach consensus on major issues and where everybody operates in good faith. And in this bubble anarcho-capitalism would work just fine, because there would be no freeloaders and everybody would agree on the final solution to the problems faced by the society and there would be nobody gaming the system for their own benefit at the expense of everybody else.
The problem is that real society -- the society outside the bubble -- just doesn't work like that. In real society, there are people who will never agree on anything. There are people who will game the system for their own benefit. There are violent people who will use violence to get their way. There are externalities that almost guarantee freeloaders unless you have taxes, which anarcho-capitalists declare is "slavery" and thus evil, thus meaning that society collapses under the weight of the freeloader problem. Anarcho-capitalism ("libertarianism") simply doesn't work when faced with actual reality, which is why there are no examples of anarcho-capitalism on the face of this planet right now (unless you count the warlordism of Somalia as anarcho-capitalism, which I don't). Anarcho-capitalism in the face of reality simply doesn't work. End of story.
Yet engineers insist upon believing that it does work, because it does, in the little bubble universe of their engineering departments... and so it goes, when people observe a small bit of human behavior then think that applies to all humans, everywhere, the end result is generally stupid. Like anarcho-capitalism.
-- Badtux the Democracy Penguin
Okay, you have a job. Others don't. They're hungry. And you say, "so what? What's it to me?"
Thing is, I keep trying to tell folks, human beings don't just starve to death without doing something about it. Usually something that the "so what?" folks aren't going to like. And now we have proof -- actual data showing that if you condemn a large segment of your population to starve to death, the inevitable result is violence, unrest, and eventually revolution, typically followed by a draconian dictatorship that is, as you might think, rather bad for business as well as being rather nasty to live under.
I mean, I shouldn't have to even point this out. Every system of religious morality on this planet holds that we are our brother's keeper, and that if our brother is in need, it is our religious duty to do whatever we can to help. Every long-term system of non-religious morality also insists upon such a duty to care for our fellow man. It is only the newbie "greed is good" lizard people philosophies that insist that if a man is hungry, the correct thing to do is to kick his feet out from under him and laugh at him. But the thing is, these newbie "greed is good" philosophies never seem to last long for a simple reason: reality just doesn't work that way. See paragraph 2, above.
Caring for our fellow man isn't just the moral thing to do just because some religious book says so, in other words. It's also the right thing to do because reality says so. Yet some delusional morons insist that kicking the unemployed while they're down is the right thing to do, because even though there's four unemployed people for every job opening, kicking the unemployed will somehow make the Austerity Fairy swing his magic wand and create jobs. Eh. Youse guys and your Austerity Fairy. Bah humbug.
-- Badtux the Caring Penguin
Hopefully temporarily, but got tired of deleting nonsense after the fact. The upside is that anonymous comments are enabled for those who don't feel like logging in.
-- Badtux the Spammed Penguin
Anybody else sick of those drama queens on Capitol Hill hamming it up on the whole debt limit thing? Jeezus. Sir Orange Boner is chewing up more scenery than a hoard of Oompa Loompas high on sugar cookies. Then there's the rest of the Capitol Hill gang doing their best to hog as many cameras as the King of Oompa Loompas does.
It's as if they don't realize that, uhm, there's some real problems that are going to happen if they don't get their asses back to work and fix this shit for another few years. Like, checks are gonna stop going out on August 2. Like, Social Security checks won't go out. Medicaid and Medicare checks won't go out to providers. The entire Federal Government pretty much shuts down, because there's only enough money coming in for around 40% of what the government does -- there isn't even enough money in that pot to fully fund the military, the only thing the right-wingers admit is acceptable for government to do. Do these drama queens really think they're gonna come out smellin' like roses when Granny doesn't get her check and hoards of prunes with plenty of time on their hands descend on Capitol Hill and start clogging the halls with their Hoverrounds? WTF?
-- Badtux the Baffled Penguin
Bastille Day, July 14, was the beginning of the end for the French Monarchy. It was also the start of a bloody revolution that ended up with millions dead. The dictatorship and mass murder that followed was typical of the dismal aftermath of every single such armed revolution that I’ve ever studied.
That’s why right-wingers disgust me so much, because their policies of “let them eat cake” and dismissive sneers at the plight of the poor always lead to such bloodshed because, here’s a clue: human beings do not voluntarily just sit down and die just because right wingers think the poor are excess population if they can’t feed themselves. They will do anything — ANYTHING — they think will increase their chances of survival. Including following the sorts who always end up in charge of these violent revolutions — sorts who are not, as a rule, nice people.
My opinion of this aftermath of violent revolution is irrelevant, because reality simply is, and doesn't require the approval of myself nor the approval of right wingers. Reality is that if you treat your population with disdain as they starve, your population will rise up and bloodshed will happen. It’s called CAUSE AND EFFECT. If there’s lots of humidity in the air and a cold front comes through, it rains. If there’s lots of poverty in the population and the royalty says “Let them eat cake”, bloodshed happens. Whether I or right wingers approve of it or not is irrelevant, it rains (water or blood) just as hard. Reality simply is.
-- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin
Q: What do free markets and Santa Claus share in common? A: They're both myths.
There is no such thing as a free market. The central problem ignored by the Free Market Fairy Dust Believers is the central problem of anarchy theory: The problem of power. Belief in a magical Free Market Fairy who spurts his Free Market Fairy Dust all over and thereby eliminates the problem of violence and coercion is as silly as believing that Santa Claus fits down furnace chimneys with his big bag of toys and visits every child in the world on Christmas Eve. It simply has no relationship to any objective reality which exists or has ever existed.
The simple reality is that there is no such thing as equality of power in economic transactions. Credit cards are virtually unregulated, yet I cannot negotiate the terms of the credit card agreement that I am required to sign in order to obtain a credit card. Instead, they impose their terms on me, take it or leave it. The credit card companies have a disparity of power over me -- they have billions of dollars of bank deposits, I have thousands of dollars of bank deposits, money is power, you do the math. Where there is inequality of power, the party with more power imposes his will upon the party with less power, perhaps not with force, but certainly with coercion -- you can't shop on the Internet without a credit card, and you can't buy a large swathe of goods unless you shop on the Internet. That's coercive power. That is the central problem of power that occupied anarchy theory since its beginnings.
People who ignore the problem of power in regard to economic transactions are ignoring realities of coercion, monopolies, economics, and even simple geography. An example is the monopoly that the Southern Pacific Railway had on intercontinental freight from Los Angeles to the East for many decades. They could impose any terms they wished upon shippers that wanted to ship goods back East -- and did. This was power. This was coercion. They used force to keep freight trains off their rails that weren't their own. Power, coercion, and force -- the triumvirate that the free market fairy believers claim don't exist in free markets. The AT&SF decided to break that monopoly and to head them off, the SP laid its own line to the desert that met the AT&SF at Needles, CA. When the AT&SF road crews arrived at Needles in 1883 and started building a bridge across the river, SP's rails were right there at the end of their bridge, thereby blocking the AT&SF from going any further. Not because AT&SF couldn't continue building westward. Not because there was any government grant of a monopoly to the SP -- the AT&SF could indeed have simply kept building westward, under the laws that existed then, though they'd have to stay a certain distance away from the SP's line to stay out of SP's right-of-way. Rather, there was simply no point in building further westward and paralleling the SP line, because there was only enough traffic to keep one rail line busy, not two parallel ones. Simple economic reality meant that the SP blocked the AT&SF from completing their transcontinental railway and retained their monopoly on shipping out of Los Angeles. Geography and economic reality gave SP power to prevent AT&SF from breaking their monopoly, and they used it.
So if free markets are a theoretical construct that cannot exist in actual empirical reality because of the problem of power, why do so many appear to tout and worship them? Well... there appears to be two issues there. The first is that they seem to recognize only government coercion. The Pinkertons apparently never existed in the alternate universe they live in, because they refuse to acknowledge that the time prior to widespread government involvement in the economy was characterized by as much ruthless use of brutality and force as they attribute to government. Secondly, they appear to believe that even if the reality of an UN-free market is true and removal of government force merely replaces government force with private party force, they will be the ones who will be able to exercise coercive force and rule over other people. Which might be a reasonable belief if you're one of the Koch brothers, but not if you live in a trailer park like a lot of these "Libertarian" free market fairy believers, who seem to delude themselves about their ability to come out on top if not for that mean old government that keeps them from exercising coercive power over others.
So in any event: Any time you see the words "free market" in any economic or political discussion, substitute the words "Santa Claus". Either way, you're talkin' about mythical bullshit, yo.
-- Badtux the Economics Penguin
Birthers, deathers, sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrom, screeching ninnies of the right and left... people. Get a grip. Just get a grip. Whether you're the gang of left-wing lunatics at Corrente or a teabagger, reality simply *is*.
Look. I understand the disappointment that you folks at Corrente have with Obama. You forgot to look at the label on the back that said "Eisenhower Republican". Well, folks, Obama is the candidate you guys chose, he's doing exactly what he said he'd do in all his policy papers on his web site prior to his election, so you have no one to blame but yourself. In the meantime he's the Democratic President we have -- basically Eisenhower Jr. -- and not the Democratic President we need -- FDR reincarnated. But there's no way to get from point A to point B in 2012. There isn't. Attempting to primary Obama will simply end up electing some right wing lunatic as President. Every single one of the Republican candidates I've seen so far makes George W. Bush look like a socialist. Is that really what you want to do to America?! So quit with the deather conspiracy theories (Osama bin Laden is dead, alright, already), and the rest of the weird Obama conspiracy theories you keep messing around with, and live in the world we have, not some alternate universe where primarying a sitting president results in victory for your party.
As for folks on the right... people. Get a grip. All this after-birther stuff doubting the authenticity of Obama's long-form birth certificate makes you look like raving lunatics to the 90% of America who's satisfied that Obama is American. We have a way of handling these situations where you don't like a President. It's called a VOTE. Find yourself a good candidate for 2012, and get the most votes. It's called DEMOCRACY. I know it's a dirty, ugly business, but what's your alternative? Tyranny of the minority over the majority? Yeah, like that ever turns out well...
-- Badtux the PO'ed Penguin
So S&P gave a "negative" rating to U.S. Treasuries because of all the teabaggery going on in the House of Representatives. YAWN. S&P is the same outfit that said that a bundle of liar loans guaranteed to go bad was an AAA-grade mortgage-backed security, remember? And the teabaggers as usual whine that continued deficit spending during a depression will cause bond vigilantes are going to show up right now, any moment now, to drive the interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities up into the stratosphere. So what's happening there? This penguin went off to Bankrate.com and found.... THIS:
| This week | Month ago | Year ago | |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-Year Treasury Constant Maturity | 0.24 | 0.23 | 0.44 |
| 91-day T-bill auction avg disc rate | 0.060 | 0.095 | 0.145 |
| 182-day T-bill auction avg disc rate | 0.110 | 0.150 | 0.220 |
| Two-Year Treasury Constant Maturity | 0.77 | 0.61 | 1.05 |
| Five-Year Treasury Constant Maturity | 2.22 | 1.95 | 2.57 |
| Ten-Year Treasury Constant Maturity | 3.51 | 3.29 | 3.85 |
| One-Year CMT (Monthly) | 0.26 | 0.29 | 0.40 |
| One-Year MTA | 0.295 | 0.307 | 0.421 |
-- Badtux the Snarky Economics Penguin
Everybody knows that the Magic Free Market Fairy will keep airplanes from dropping out of the skies because, well, airplanes dropping out of the skies is bad for business and thus the free market fairy's magic fairy dust will just, like, automatically keep them up in the sky, yo. So the FAA ordering inspections of all older 737 airliners just makes no sense.
Ignore those cracks in the airframes, people, Chicago economist Eugene Fama says that markets are perfectly efficient and will take care of that like, well, magically! Who needs government regulators to force inspections anyhow? According to Fama, the market would naturally weed out executives who have only short-term profit goals and reward executives who care about the long-term health of their corporations and thus who would not skimp on maintenance today for immediate profit at the expense of future profit after planes started falling out of the sky. Also according to Fama, unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees. And he has equations to prove it. Which means it must be true.
Alrighty, then!
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The free market types say that private business will always work better than government, despite the many examples to the contrary (for example, does anybody believe that mall cops are anywhere near as competent, well-trained, and well-equipped as your city's police force?). So what about medicine? Same deal there.
Well, except that the State of Texas is getting whanged big-time for neo-natal ICU care, and... claims it's because hospitals are money-grubbing capitalists who are ripping people off (including the State of Texas's Medicaid program). They didn't use those exact words, of course. But that's what they basically said: That capitalism doesn't work for medical care, because hospitals will suck you dry for every dime they can, regardless of whether it's warranted or not.
Waiting for wingnut heads to explode... err... never. Because they'll just say "Nuh-uh, not so!" and petulantly stamp their feet and put their hands over their ears and say "nyah nyah nyah I can't hear you!", then call you a Communist for daring suggest that capitalists could ever be, well, evil. Uhm, sorry, honeys. That wasn't me saying it. That was the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, a division of the Texas state government.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
In a credible mainstream news publication, a famous physician with top credentials from the best medical school in the nation counsels us not to worry about the possibility of Curly-san, Larry-san, and Moe-san managing to melt down their reactors and catch the uranium on fire (thus emitting tons of heavy isotopes that will be radioactive for decades). This walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge, gained from years of study at top universities, advises us that radiation is actually good for us.
Oh wait, no, that was clownhall.com and that was Our Lady of the Skanky Black Cocktail Dress, Ann "The Man" Coulter. Whose only medical degree is her temperature once she gets into full vitriol rant mode.
Hmm.... anybody else think Ann's stinky little cocktail dress that she's been wearing for the past few decades has maybe cut the flow of blood away from her brains, which apparently reside in her testicles? Hmm?
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
And for the record: Burning uranium *bad* for people and critters both, 'kay?
