Everything is terrible Archive

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SHOCKER: MoDo’s column today isn’t totally banal

By
Ben Nolan
– November 30, 2011

It’s about Gingrich. Teaser:

…next to Romney, Gingrich seems authentic. Next to Herman Cain, Gingrich seems faithful. Next to Jon Huntsman, Gingrich seems conservative. Next to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Gingrich actually does look like an intellectual. Unlike the governor of Texas, he surely knows the voting age. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if brains were elastic, Perry wouldn’t have enough to make suspenders for a parakeet.

In presidential campaigns, it’s all relative.

She goes on to concisely document all the ways in which Gingrich might actually be the biggest hypocrite and most preposterous human being in the world.

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Life is only on Earth, and not for long

By
Ben Nolan
– November 28, 2011

News:

‎The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

[snip]

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

Worse than the worst case scenario about which this was written…

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.

7.5 degree delta F is about a 4 degree delta C. From the food issue of FP that ran a couple months back…

The rule of thumb among crop ecologists is that for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the growing season optimum, farmers can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields.“

So, assuming every degree added to global temperatures will be a net degree added over and above the growing season optimum, taking 90% (current yield minus 10%) to the power of 4 (90% of 90% 4 times), you get end-of-century grain yields approximately 34% smaller than current yields.

This is without taking into account the inevitable-seeming depletion of a terrifying portion of the world’s aquifers (described in detail in the same article).

Nor, giving the optimists their due, is it taking into account technological advancements in grain production — though marginal improvements attributable to technology, the same article reports, have been shrinking as mass capitalized agriculture has almost run out of traditionally-tended quality land to “modernize.”

Other news….

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that farmers will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world’s expected 9-billion-strong population. That amounts to 1bn tonnes more wheat, rice and other cereals and 200m more tonnes of beef and other livestock.

Other news…

Canada will announce next month that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, CTV News has learned…

Why? Because CHINA.

Shoot me through the part of my brain that conservatives are apparently missing. Please?

Here’s the prologue to the new Trier film, Melancholia — fitting, no? I’m pecking away at a review, the tl;dr version of which is that it’s basically the best movie I’ve ever seen.

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The Society We Live In

By
Tom OHare
– November 15, 2011

Steve M. on the clearing of Zuccotti Park:

I’d also add that the removal of OWS and other Occupy encampments is justified on the basis of their real or perceived effect on the community — cost to local businesses (a special obsession of the New York Post), noise, crime, and so on. But isn’t that precisely what we’re not supposed to consider when dealing with Wall Street itself? The dominant Randians and semi-Randians in our government don’t want us to intercede to minimize the social impact of the financialization of our economy and the casinoization of finance. We’re not supposed to care, for instance, whether communities are being destroyed by an epidemic of foreclosures caused by financial recklessness; the current president can’t or won’t do anything effective about foreclosures and the man most people think will run against him thinks the foreclosure crisis should just play itself out. There’s community impact, but it’s created by billionaires, not drum circles, so in this case we’re not supposed to intervene. And that’s the society we live in.

It seems as though the NYC chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild obtained a temporary restraining order against the NYPD and the protesters will be let back in. Everyone’s property has been destroyed though, so it might take a while to get back on its feet, if it ever recovers.
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More Joe Pa Faux Pas

By
Trevor Macomber
– November 11, 2011

Yeah, okay, the title’s kinda weaksauce, but I couldn’t think of anything pertinent to rhyme with “fucking insane,” which is what the pedophilic rape scandal embroiling Penn State still qualifies as even after the too-long-in-coming firing of Joe Paterno two days ago.

First of all, forget everything else you know or think you know about this story for a moment and wrap your head around the fact that, as Dan Shaughnessy points out in the Boston Globe this morning,

assistant coach Mike McQueary — the man who admits he did not attempt to stop the alleged rape of an 10-year-old boy by former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky in the football shower facility — will still be coaching Saturday. [emphasis my own]

To repeat: a man who witnessed the raping of an elementary school student and did nothing about it except mention the fact to his boss is still employed even though said boss has been canned. Not only that, but when asked if there was any consideration being given to dismissing McQueary, interim coach Tom Bradley responded by saying “absolutely not.” Not just “no,” but “absolutely not,” as if the very thought of firing a person who enabled a child molester is absolutely inconceivable.

Close it out, Dan:

It seems that everybody knew, but nobody went to the police. This perfectly demonstrates the skewed priorities in yahoo towns with big-time football programs and little else. Institutions of higher learning become enablers of the “program”

[...]

It’s still not too late to fire the coaching staff, cancel the game, and cancel the season. Before the legal system plays out and the jail sentences are issued … before the glacially-paced, ever-sanctimonious NCAA gets around to its sanctions … Penn State has a chance to deliver a message and restore some of its soul.

No Senior Day? Those players will recover. They’ll get over it.

Wish we could say the same for Jerry Sandusky’s victims.

***

UPDATE: Slate agrees.

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This is why countries hate us sometimes

By
Trevor Macomber
– November 10, 2011

From Pratap Chatterjee, writing for The Guardian:

Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.

Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed by such missiles carried by drone aircraft such as the Predator and the Reaper, and launched by remote control from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed in this way to 175, according to statistics maintained by the organisation I work for, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The author goes on to describe his brief time with Tariq — including the tragic irony that much of their second day together was actually spent at a “jirga” organized on behalf of drone strike victims — and ultimately concludes that:

Unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed an imminent threat (as the White House’s legal advice stipulates a targeted killing must in order for an attack to be carried out), or that he was a key planner in a war against the US or Pakistan, the killing of this 16 year old was murder, and any jury should convict the CIA accordingly.

What isn’t entirely clear in either this article or any of the others I came across while trying to ascertain the fact is whether or not Tariq and his cousin were intentionally targeted in this strike or whether they were just two more slash marks on the blood-soaked wall of human collateral.

In some respects it doesn’t matter, of course. How could a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old do anything to justify outright assisination versus at least an attempt to apprehend or interrogate? And if, like so many others, their deaths prove to be inadvertent after all, so much the worse.

To give the last word to Tom’s one-time (current?) Blogger-for-President candidate, Glenn Greenwald:

After I linked to this Op-Ed yesterday on Twitter — by writing that “every American who cheers for drone strikes should confront the victims of their aggression” — I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama’s drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it’s that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama’s militarism.

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Also, too, black helicopters and my tin foil hat!

By
Tom OHare
– November 8, 2011

This is why we’re all going to die.

Because people like these are granted more respect in our national discourse than people pointing out that, you know, Wall Street isn’t really looking out for the little guy.

Stolen from M. Bouffant.

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Getting rid of poverty is easy. Just change the definition, silly.

By
Tom OHare
– November 8, 2011

This is insane:

Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what is happening to the poor person’s wallet — good and bad. It overlooks hundreds of billions of dollars the needy receive in food stamps and other benefits and the similarly formidable amounts they lose to taxes and medical care. It even fails to note that rents are higher in places like Manhattan than they are in Mississippi.

On Monday, that may start to change when the Census Bureau releases a long-promised alternate measure meant to do a better job of counting the resources the needy have and the bills they have to pay. Similar measures, quietly published in the past, suggest among other things that safety-net programs have played a large and mostly overlooked role in restraining hardship: as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappears.

People on food stamps aren’t impoverished, they’re “near poor.” WE DID IT, GANG! WE SOLVED THE PROBLEM!

Oh, wait:

In North Carolina, poverty has risen by more than 250,000 people by official count, but stayed flat under the alternate measure despite soaring unemployment.

Did I mention that this is insane? One really terrific way to screw up your ability to measure things in a consistent manner is to arbitrarily choose a different metric by which to measure the phenomenon you’re observing (it’s not even arbitrary, given that it’s designed to lower absolute poverty numbers, but I’m being charitable). As someone who’s been on food stamps before, it’s not really comforting to a person in that situation to be told, “Hey, you’re not really poor. Just imagine what life would be like if we took those EBT benefits away from you, buddy!” In other words, I was poor and I was perfectly aware that I was poor. I was so poor, in fact, that I qualified for government aid! I was not “not poor” simply because I received that aid. I was simply “not starving.”

But, you know. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

(via)

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With Competition Like This (QOTD)

By
Tom OHare
– November 7, 2011

It’s hard to believe that Obama could possibly lose in 2012. But he could. And that’s crazy.

Michele Bachmann said:

Takeaway: “If anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

So here’s Dave Noon reminding Michele Bachmann that Captain John Smith, of Jamestown “fame,” shared her affinity for a certain Biblically-derived work ethic to “work or starve,” and that it didn’t turn out so well the first time.

When his patience with the idlers expired, Smith had a public hissy fit, announcing his famous policy that “he that gathereth not every day as much as I do, the next day shall be set beyond the river, and be banished from the fort as a drone, till he amend his conditions or starve.”

It’s worth noting, I suppose, that Smith’s orders were conceived with idling gentlemen as much in mind as the scrofulous poor. It’s also worth noting that Smith’s efforts did little to alleviate the long-term Hobbesian conditions that prevailed in Virginia for years after he left the colony forever. But I think it’s even more interesting that in trying to inspire her fellow citizens to great feats of self-reliance, Bachmann — who presumably remains a somewhat viable Presidential candidate for a major political party — would turn to a slogan befitting an experimental, disorganized, resource-strapped, unskilled menagerie of landless gentlemen, unemployed soldiers and indentured servants living in a 17th century malarial swamp. And the Republicans criticize Obama for not being sufficiently optimistic?

Zing!

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Crying Purple People Cheater

By
Trevor Macomber
– October 28, 2011

So EM-EYE-ESS-ESS-EYE-ESS-ESS-EYE-PEE-PEE-EYE wants to call fertilized human eggs (aka, Denny’s Cannibal Slam Breakfast®) “people.”

From yesterday’s NYT editorial:

A ballot measure going before voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8 would define the term “person” in the State Constitution to include fertilized human eggs and grant to fertilized eggs the legal rights and protections that apply to people.

I see red(state) people.

The rest of the piece goes into detail about why this is a terrible, ridiculous idea –convenient, since I don’t have any desire to delve into the more highfalutin ethical and legal ramifications anyway. However, I worry about some of the lesser absurdities that such a ruling might lead to.

For example, if life truly begins at conception, then age must also logically begin at conception, which means that someone’s day of birth (what some people call a “birth day”) is no longer a valid indicator of how old he or she is. Furthermore, since life is life no matter how far along in it you already are, presumably any such ruling would have to apply retroactively. Which means that, if Missippians really believe in the new law, they’ll have to start giving 17-and-three-month-year-olds (give or take) the right to vote and 14-and-whatever-year-olds the ability to earn their learner’s permit and on and on and on. Because age is merely a reflection of how long someone has been a person, right? And if personhood is applied at conception to a gloopy dribble of non-sentient cells, then that’s when the clock starts ticking. To argue otherwise would be to deprive your citizens of their sperm-given humanity.

(And yeah, I know that, as a nation, we’ve already complicitly — if tacitly — agreed to compromise on the birthday convention for purposes of convenience, but we’re talking about a single state here, so if this law passes, they better be prepared to put their penis where their vagina money where their mouth is.)

***

[Editor's note: I'm not sure if the parodic title of this post makes any sense, but I'm a little punch drunk this week. My thinking was: it's almost Halloween, "Flying Purple People Eater" is one of the few well-known Halloween-type songs, babies don't fly but they cry, they're a little purplish looking in the womb, this story is about the legal definition of "people," and classifying them as such at conception is cheating. So we cool?]

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Surprise, surprise: Walmart has no soul

By
Trevor Macomber
– October 21, 2011

Hey, guess who topped the Global Fortune 500 this year with $422 billion in revenue ($16 billion in profits)? Walmart!

Now guess who’s “substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff”? Walmart!

Because, you know, fuck coming away with only $15 billion next year.

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