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Anecdotally speaking

Gherald — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 20:23:19 +0000

See: GOP Sours on Romney

1 comment(s) for this post:

Gherald:
18 Sep 2012 I thought this was interesting enough to share the day before the 47% video came out... but in light of that development it's pretty much trivial.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Marx at 193

Gherald — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 06:46:35 +0000

John Lanchester in the LRB (6000 words)

1 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
04 Apr 2012 Lanchester is the man! His book on the financial crisis is top-notch, he explains all the pieces and how they fit together perfectly.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

GOP Voters: ‘Can We See What It Looks Like With Huntsman And Perry Again?’

Gherald — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:48:35 +0000

WASHINGTON—Claiming something “just seemed off” with the combination of candidates currently seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for president, voters asked Tuesday if they could see once more what the GOP field would look like with Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry back in the race. “Could you just show me Huntsman next to Santorum again, and maybe Perry in there, too, trailing just a bit behind Romney? Not too close, though,” said Cleveland-based voter Alan Sanders, squinting as he contemplated the grouping of presidential hopefuls. “No, that’s still not quite right. What if we try Pawlenty, Paul, Bachmann, and Gingrich—in that order. Ugh, never mind, that just looks weird. Maybe take Romney out and put Herman Cain back in? That might work.” At press time, the nation’s Republican voters were asking to see Sarah Palin in there, too, just for fun

3 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
15 Feb 2012 Love this.
Metavirus:
16 Feb 2012 there are so few things that i love more than the onion.
Mark Schumaker:
21 Feb 2012 The shame of it is that they really need a good candidate to give the president a real run for the money. As it is they can only generate hate and hope that they can buy the election with the super packs.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

The GOP in one sentence

Gherald — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:46:49 +0000

“[The Republican Party] consists half of people who think like Michele Bachmann and half of people who are afraid of losing a primary to people who think like Michele Bachmann and that leaves very little room to work things out,” -Barney Frank

2 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
30 Nov 2011 i am sooooo going to miss the barney. he has such a quick wit! i wish more democrats had some piss and vinegar in them.
Lev:
01 Dec 2011 Ditto. I feel like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now: if we had a handful of men like him, our troubles here would be over very quickly.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Deep Thought

Gherald — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:51:52 +0000

When people say things, the logical, objective meaning of what they said doesn’t matter nearly so much as the abstract idea of what they meant. This is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

11 comment(s) for this post:

Matt:
21 Oct 2011 I would request a specific example of a difference between logical meaning and abstract idea (which sound a bit similar to me right now) so as to clarify if my liking of this status is justified.
0whole1:
21 Oct 2011 If you strip away the actual meaning of the words, doesn't what they said become delphic? IE, the words mean what *the listener* thinks (or twists, or defines, or conflates, or....) they mean?
Gherald:
21 Oct 2011 It's "abstract idea of what they meant", in toto --------------------- Edit: For example, someone says "I'll pray for you." The important meaning is "I care and empathize for your situation". This is in contrast with the logical, objective meaning of "I'm going to talk to a transcendent, omnipotent, invisible higher power and hope He is of some help."

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

“Economic Turbulence”

Gherald — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:37:42 +0000

If you only read one financial crisis / economics interview this year, it should be this one with today’s new Nobel Laureate, Thomas Sargent. (via Marginal Revolution)

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Ron Paul 2012!

Gherald — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:47:55 +0000

3 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
04 Feb 2012 nice. what are you doing in arizona??
Gherald:
04 Feb 2012 Most of the same stuff I was doing in Wisconsin, minus the freezing my butt off
metavirus:
04 Feb 2012 lol. they had the weirdest commercial recently that basically highlighted that wisconsin has buttloads of snow... in order to encourage people to GO THERE! httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZzFQDNpbY4

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Deep Thought

Gherald — Thu, 19 May 2011 05:35:53 +0000

With all these foot-in-mouth gaffes, maybe Gingrich is running for Vice President.

1 comment(s) for this post:

Kevin Ortiz:
19 May 2011 Gingrich said Herman Cain was clean and articulate.

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Something finally happened in Canada

Gherald — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:35:10 +0000

Just sayin’

4 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
03 May 2011 Pretty much expected--government runs the economy well, gets another term in office. I'm no huge fan of Harper, who reminds me of a competent George W. Bush in many ways, but it's hard to say it wasn't deserved.
Gherald:
03 May 2011 *scratches head* Harper doing well was expected, sure, but after previous electoral non-events this is kind of a big deal compared to 2008: Conservatives: 143 -> 167 (majority at 155) Liberals: 77 -> 34 NDP: 36 -> 102 Québécois: 47 -> 4 Green: 0 -> 1 Conservatives finally get their majority, NDP finishes with 3x more seats than the humiliated Liberals, pain in the ass Québécois are deliciously DECIMATED to 4 seats, and there's even a new Green for entertainment purposes!
Lev:
03 May 2011 Well, okay, I guess it was a little more transformative than that. Stupid morning comment--after my early A.M. conference call, my brain is mostly mush :)

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Taxation And Misguided Compassion

Gherald — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:04:44 +0000

Yesterday the Dish quoted Gregg Easterbrook:

Wealthy people who say the rich should pay higher taxes — Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have joined Obama in declaring this — are free to tax themselves. If you believe the top rate should rise to 39.6 percent (Obama) or 50 percent (Buffett), then calculate the difference and send a check for that amount to the Treasury. Of course no one individual doing this, even a billionaire, would have much impact on the deficit. But if rich people who say they believe in higher taxes were willing to practice what they preach, this would prove their sincerity, making legislation on the point more likely.

Presumably Obama and Buffett don’t send such checks to the Treasury because they believe they have better things to do with that money. Being a candidate for president can get expensive, after all–and Mr. Buffett probably thinks his vast charitable donations do considerably more worthwhile good than Uncle Sam would, dollar for dollar.

But the double standard is telling: While Obama and Buffett think they’re putting their own money to better use than the US Treasury would, they don’t support other billionaire and multi-millionaires’ right to make their own call. Their support for higher taxes is thus a transparent desire to appropriate other people’s money for government use (which they apparently have greater faith in when it comes to other people’s, but not their own).

This brings me back to something Lev wrote while blogging about Atlas Shrugged:

When you get down to it, Objectivism and Communism are utopias of different forms. One says not to help out anyone, to let them stand on their own two feet. But this ignores the human tendency toward compassion, a strong urge in most people.

I’ve never read Ayn Rand or anything Objectivist, and don’t much care about them or the latest in bad cinema (my guys are Friedman and Hayek). But insofar as libertarianism is thought to parallel Objectivism here, let me address it.

Libertarianism is fine with the human tendency towards compassion. We say you should have ample freedom to be compassionate with your own resources; the giving of your money and time to charitable causes (or if you’re feeling terribly inefficient, to the U.S. Treasury) is perfectly appropriate and laudable. (Although libertarianism per se is amoral, taking no stance on what you do with your money–only that you should have the freedom to choose.)

What libertarians don’t support (indeed, vehemently oppose) is the pernicious idea that taxes should force other people to put their resources towards your (or a democratic majority’s) preferred statist ends. Being a good Samaritan with other people’s time and money is a morally worthless and tragically misguided cause–most especially when it results in absurd implicit marginal tax rates. Europe is, of course, worse. Basically, our human tendency toward compassion should always be charitable–never forced nor an entitlement.

Now, U.S. tax law is far from perfect and in dire need of overhaul. Pretty much everybody agrees on this except the makers of Turbo Tax, H&R Block, and lobbyists for companies benefiting from write-offs (e.g. General Electric, as was recently in the news). So let’s fix those things, and let’s bring revenue and spending on a sustainable path. But all this is independent of the misguided idea of taxation in the name of compassion. We can easily do it with flatter effective tax rates. And from a standpoint of sheer utilitarian economic efficiency, we should.

10 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
21 Apr 2011 Yeah, libertarianism is not directly comparable to Objectivism. I'm well familiar with both, having once been the former and having read/discussed the latter countless times. Libertarianism isn't opposed to private charity--indeed, it seems to encourage it. Objectivism actually considers charity a moral failing. You know, I've heard the "people should just be charitable" reasoning a few times now, and something about it just doesn't sit right with me. It's ironic that the central libertarian/conservative critique of welfare programs has been that they are dignity-sapping and degrading, fostering a cycle of dependence, when saying that people should rely on others' charity to survive strikes me as an even more extreme example of that. I'm a believer in charity myself, but far better as far as I'm concerned to decide a minimum acceptable standard of living, design a program to deliver it, and rely on charity to carry people further than that. And in a lot of areas, like endangered species, relying on charity is clearly subpar because that means you get lots of cute baby koalas but some of the less cute (but important) species get jack. Also, you ought to realize that hypocrisy and being against unilateral disarmament are not the same thing. It's true that Buffett could tax himself, but this is just the flip side of Republicans inveighing against government healthcare while being a part of Medicare. I think they should have it, I just wish they would think a little more about what they get from it.
Rupert Psmith:
21 Apr 2011 Let me see if I get you straight, Gherald (your last paragraph sort of defuses the steam of your rant a bit) -- Gherald is okay if the taxes of billionaires and multimillionaires effectively get raised (whether via adjusting the top marginal rate or sweeping out all of the loopholes, as long as we are on a sustainable path which will require both revenue increases and spending cuts), he just doesn't like it when politicians discuss raising taxes on the rich because it offends his libertarian notions about private property rights or he feels they are demagoguing the issue, correct? Any liberal reading your post though is likely immediately thinking back to the first and fundamental argument we have with libertarians -- we believe the government, while far from perfect, is our instrument for "the Commons" and an individual's wealth is not somehow separable from the community he or she built that wealth in. As Obama made clear in his long discussion about this at Facebook yesterday, he and most wealthy people in the US owe their success to "the Commons" they grew up in, so they should be willing to pay a little more to sustain those opportunities for future generations. This just goes to the tone of your post though, as it seems you are okay with the realities of additional revenues in the current climate.
Gherald:
21 Apr 2011 *blink* Objectivism is crazy in that respect, then.
It’s ironic that the central libertarian/conservative critique of welfare programs has been that they are dignity-sapping and degrading, fostering a cycle of dependence, when saying that people should rely on others’ charity to survive strikes me as an even more extreme example of that.
No, people should NOT rely on others' charity. There's no entitlement, and that's a feature. If your cause seems worthy, someone or some groups may voluntarily choose to provide for you. This is much less likely to foster a permanent cycle of dependence. Also, charities 'compete' with each other to provide more efficient, reputable service and attract more donors. Governmental bureaucracies are no better at charity than they are at running supermarkets; people are just more deluded about the former, and vote with bleeding hearts rather than what makes economic sense. Don't get me started on the insane tradeoff of protecting every endangered species--priceless does not mean we should pay any price. Avoiding senseless extinctions makes sense, but things also go extinct for good reason. Cuteness is as good a reason as many to save a nearly-extinct species, though there are sometimes better reasons (like trying to rebalance an ecosystem). In those situations you might have a case for collective action to better a shared ecosystem; that's a separate issue, and can be organized in as a local nonprofit anyway.
Buffett could tax himself, but this is just the flip side of Republicans inveighing against government healthcare while being a part of Medicare
Maybe, though Republicans might say something about using a benefit they payed into. Also, many people would be happy to take cash in place of Medicare and spend their own money, thank-you-very-much, which is comparable to Buffett choosing his own charities.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Obama Orders Guantanamo Prisoners Transferred To Next President

Gherald — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:45:40 +0000

Bold action:

After two years of false starts and protracted legal wrangling, President Barack Obama signed an executive order Tuesday authorizing the transfer of all 172 Guantánamo detainees to the next chief executive of the United States of America. “The president’s decision to move these enemy combatants to the subsequent administration should finally quiet critics who have accused him of inaction and impotence,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, after noting that Obama had—in favor of the more politically pragmatic option—passed on several opportunities to relocate the inmates to correctional facilities in the continental United States as a first step toward affording the prisoners due process of law. “This will not be an easy process, but all of the detainees should be transferred by 2012, or 2016 at the very latest.”

1 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
14 Apr 2011 hahahaha. excellent. this is one failure that i lay squarely at the feet of the weak-kneed democrats in congress who caved to republican fear-mongering and passed a law pretty much preventing Obama from doing anything else

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Obama’s “bad negotiating” is actually shrewd negotiating

Gherald — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:42:22 +0000

What to say about today’s Glenn Greenwald column? Well… that it’s worth thinking about. A taste:

I experience such cognitive dissonance when I read all of these laments from liberal pundits that Obama isn’t pursuing the right negotiating tactics, that he’s not being as shrewd as he should be. He’s pursuing exactly the right negotiating tactics and is being extremely shrewd — he just doesn’t want the same results that these liberal pundits want and which they like to imagine the President wants, too. He’s not trying to prevent budget cuts or entitlement reforms; he wants exactly those things because of how politically beneficial they are to him — to say nothing of whether he agrees with them on the merits.

When I first began blogging five years ago, [..] I’d attribute those failures to poor strategizing or a lack of political courage and write post after post urging them to adopt better tactics to enable better outcomes or be more politically “strong.” But then I realized that they weren’t poor tacticians getting stuck with results they hated. They simply weren’t interested in generating the same outcomes as the ones I wanted.

It wasn’t that they eagerly wished to defeat these Bush policies but just couldn’t figure out how to do it. The opposite was true: they were content to acquiesce to those policies, if not outright supportive of them, because they perceived no political advantage in doing anything else. Many of them supported those policies on the merits while many others were perfectly content with their continuation. So I stopped trying to give them tactical advice on how to achieve outcomes they didn’t really want to achieve, and stopped attributing their failures to oppose these policies to bad strategizing or political cowardice. Instead, I simply accepted that these were the outcomes they most wanted, that Democratic Party officials on the whole — obviously with some exceptions — weren’t working toward the outcomes I had originally assumed (and which they often claimed). Once you accept that reality, events in Washington make far more sense.

3 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
13 Apr 2011 i think that is certainly a fair argument.
witness:
13 Apr 2011 I'm waiting to see what happens after the negotiations - just what the budget will look like, what the impacts will be. After the budget frenzy of the last few weeks, I am exhausted. I know what the Republicans is just horribly wrong and cowardly. And there was no evidence of disagreement from the White House. Even more scary. I think that's bad tactics. Now, they are asking me to sign on to support the Plan. Before it's finalized. I can't talk politics with my family because they do not see President Obama supporting them. It's true that you can't turn 30 years of bad policies around in a short time, but you can at least hold the line and not lose more ground. I don't want Obama to be Clinton. That's a mistake. I saw Clinton at a rally in September stumping for the Vote 2010. A woman in the crowd said that Clinton only shows up when he wants something. Sigh....
Schu:
14 Apr 2011 Once again a very valid point by Gherald. There is to much my way of the highway, and not just by the wingnuts.

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Political Derangement Syndrome

Gherald — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:10:27 +0000

Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

2 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
12 Apr 2011 It sure does seem like the leftosphere has gone a little nutty as of late. I mean, Obama has not caved on the debt ceiling and he's not proposing full-on Simpson-Bowles cuts, but everyone there is acting like it's a fact. Ugh. I have no problem identifying sell-outs, but doing so preemptively is pointless. Derangement might be too kind a word. Anyway, I'm not sure the 24-hour news cycle killed politics in America. I think it was more the "your politics are a statement of who you are" theory that the right pioneered and the left has, to some extent, co-opted in its nascent partisan media. It's easy enough to debate taxes or climate change. It's harder to debate whether someones VALUES are being respected, especially if they think they're not. The media explosion has merely amplified all that.
Metavirus:
12 Apr 2011 it sure is an interesting time to be paying attention to things. the people on both sides have both changed, while yet retaining a lot of their original attributes. i really do think that the primary driver behind whatever this "new culture of politics" is both (a) the debasement of large swathes of what used to be decent media outlets and (b) the intertubes. Pretty much the only reason that I have continued to be interested in blogging for the last few years is the growing sense that most folks aren't routinely getting fact-based analysis anymore. Sure, I can be nasty and vituperative but i constantly yearn to figure out what is hiding behind all the hubbub (and yes, I may occasionally call someone pushing falsehoods an asshole in the process).

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Hugo Chavez, Xenopolitical Theorist

Gherald — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:41:17 +0000

CARACAS – Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on the planet Mars, Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday. “I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet,”

Ha! I thought he must have been joking, then remembered the guy suspects the moon landing and 9/11 are imperialist propaganda. So who knows? Perhaps we can explain the problem of evil by supposing God was an imperial capitalist?

1 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
23 Mar 2011 Wow, it's like that last scene of The Wire when all the young characters take over for the old ones. Gadhafi might go down and Chavez rushes to replace the crazy. It's too bad that there aren't any good versions of Bob Dylan's With God On Our Side on YouTube. That would have been a timely thing to put up.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

The United States should wage war in order to combat creeping nihilism?

Gherald — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:16:37 +0000

Neocons are totally insane… but you knew that, right?

1 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
22 Mar 2011 But of course. You linked to an interview with Bradley Thompson...I actually read his book. Pretty good, though it wasn't advertised as coming from such a strident libertarian perspective. You'd probably like it.

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Wisconsin State Senator Discusses Scott Walker And Stuff

Gherald — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:27:36 +0000

[Embedded Video]

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Issues w/Various Countries

Gherald — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:30:01 +0000

Donald Rumsfeld needs some help here.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Europeans Pay Their Mortgages

Gherald — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:51:40 +0000

Planet Money, NPR:

Spain, like the U.S., is going through a huge real estate bust.
But only around 3.5 percent of Spaniards with mortgages stopped making payments last year. In the U.S., the rate was above 9 percent.

What’s true for Spain is true for most of Europe: Homeowners are much more likely than Americans to keep paying their mortgage, even when the economy falls apart.

Read on for why.

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Tweets that mention Europeans Pay Their Mortgages | Library Grape: Planet Money, NPR: Spain, like the U.S., is going through a huge ... -- Topsy.com:
18 Feb 2011 [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Heath Lackey, Home4utoday, HomeBuyer, Kat Jaff, lat hat nam and others. lat hat nam said: Europeans Pay Their Mortgages | Library Grape: Planet Money, NPR: Spain, like the U.S., is going through a huge ... http://bit.ly/fkBl12 [...]
Schu:
19 Feb 2011 I would think that more research need to be done on this topic. As I am dealing with this problem right now, I can tell you that once you are behind on your US mortgage, the bank will not take any any money from you and move to foreclose. If you are 2k behind you cannot pay part of it to catch up.
Gherald:
20 Feb 2011 That's not mysterious--in the U.S., foreclosing is practically the banks' only recourse to dealing with a delinquent mortgage, so they're much quicker to swoop in and cut their losses.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Quote of the day

Gherald — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:00:45 +0000

QDB: Quote #301779 [Indogutsu] According to an “On This Day in America” calendar hanging on the wall in my office, Robert Fulton (the inventor of the steamboat) appeared before a House committee on February 14th, 1810 to explain the uses of torpedoes. [Indogutsu] So to all of you who, for whatever reason, can’t find love and feel left out and bitter on Valentine’s Day, you can instead use this day to remember Robert Fulton and his contributions to undersea warfare.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

I’m (metaphorically) dying here!

Gherald — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:54:49 +0000

It used to be I had Gmail and Google Reader as permanent tabs in my browser, and spent 3 or more hours a day in the later. But the permanent Reader tab has been displaced by…. Facebook, and I just noticed I have 781 unread Daily Dish items. Egads, but I’d hardly recognize myself from 4 months ago. Any day now I’ll be forced to turn in my political junkie credentials…

2 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
20 Jan 2011 we miss you!
Lev:
20 Jan 2011 Yes we do!

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Why you can’t invest in Facebook (unless you’re a millionaire)

Gherald — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:01:47 +0000

Would anyone care to remind me why government restriction of private investment is a good thing?

1 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
03 Jan 2011
That is pretty dumb. "The rationale is that investing in private companies is too risky for ordinary investors." Shit, Joe Six-Pack couldn't do any worse than the finance industry over the past decade, now, could he? Unbelievable.

That any company with over 500 investors needs to make its finances public rule is pretty silly too, though I guess you have to put the cut-off somewhere, and it's going to be arbitrary no matter what.

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The Art of Letting Go

Gherald — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:53:53 +0000

Jason Kuznicki’s post at Ordinary Gentlemen is perhaps the best explanation of libertarianism I’ve ever seen.

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Rage Against The Tax Cuts

Gherald — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:00:04 +0000

This Bernie Sanders video from November 30 has gone viral in the leftosphere:

With this populist furor gathered behind him, last night Sanders took to the Senate podium for an old school nine hour filibuster, standing there and speaking nonstop. The traffic demand caused the Senate’s video servers to temporarily go offline.

But it was all show; Reid will be bringing the tax cut compromise to the floor on Monday.

The White House, meanwhile, defended its deal by circulating this chart among Democrats on the Hill:

2 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
11 Dec 2010
nice graph
Metavirus:
12 Dec 2010
and often the impact of a thing is not what one precisely intended:

On Nov. 30, 2010, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, made a Senate floor speech about the gap between rich and poor in America. It soon went viral on the Internet. After receiving a number of requests from readers to fact-check it, we decided to do just that. [...]

So, we're left with three studies that vary slightly but which all point in the same general direction -- showing the top 1 percent earning between 21.4 and 23.5 percent of the national income in 2007. The studies also show that this share exceeds what the entire bottom 50 percent of the United States earns. So we rate Sanders' statement True.

It can't be a bad thing that more people now realize how dramatically skewed our national income distribution has become over the last 50 years.

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Thursday links

Gherald — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:00:37 +0000

Contrasting Medicine and Macroeconomics – Jim Manzi Garry Kasparov on playing vs. chess machines – NY Review of Books The 24 types of authoritarians – Misis Caffeine: Good In Moderation – Live Science So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again? – Answer generator When TV Went To Bed: 13 Classic TV Sign Offs – Woot An awesome Redditor – Read comments

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Dept. of magical thinking

Gherald — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:03:33 +0000

Christine O’Donnell: “Tragedy comes in threes. Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards’ passing and Barack Obama’s announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits.”

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

If “starve the beast” doesn’t work…

Gherald — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:25:22 +0000

..then why is the Democratic left afraid the tax deal “basically ends progressive governance in America.” ? They quote a “bipartisan fetishist”:

The tax deal between the White House and Congressional Republicans, if approved, will put a little extra money in your pocket for the next two years. But you’re going to pay for it eventually. Without sizeable cuts in federal spending, Americans can expect higher taxes down the road to cover the cost of the package.

And retort:

Except that you cannot physically enact higher taxes in this day and age, and so more likely you’ll see savage spending cuts.

In other words, they expect “starving the beast” will work! Plain and simple. Kevin Drum, one of the more illustrious progressive bloggers, put it this way:

Looking at American politics from a 100,000-foot level, conservatives have won. Programmatic liberalism is essentially dead for a good long time, and small bore stuff is probably the best we can hope for over the next 10-20 years — though social liberalism will continue to make steady advances.

Is he right?

2 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
08 Dec 2010
1. Jane Hamsher is insane. I know you didn't actually cite Hamsher, but still. FDL's arguments are based on what I'm assuming is a strategic misreading of Obama's deal. The payroll tax cuts aren't coming out of the trust fund. That's just wrong.
2. I love Drum, but he's one of the biggest pessimists out there on most every topic. A valuable perspective, no doubt, but statements like that need to be taken with a grain of salt.
3. You can't enact higher taxes nowadays? I thought that the Affordable Care Act did a bit of that.
Some days I fear that starve the beast might work. But in general, I just don't think it will. Larison keeps bringing up the fact that Republicans won last month in large part by convincing seniors that the ACA will reduce their benefits. Back in 2006, seniors voted significantly for Democrats, and it's impossible not to see that as fallout from Bush's Social Security privatization scheme, though that failed. Any proposal to cut benefits for seniors from here on out is going to require bipartisan cover, and Democrats aren't going to dismember the welfare state.

Starve the beast always struck me as the Atkins Diet of cost-cutting. The pitch is irresistable: you mean I can lose weight by eating burgers? Where can I sign up! But the end result is that you gain back the weight and your kidneys take a pounding. A genuine fiscal crisis would be unprecedented and only an exceptionally arrogant person would say for sure how that would turn out, but given that most polling shows the public are very enthusiastic about raising taxes on the rich even at a time where there is no crisis, the prospect of real economic pain visited upon them would only increase that margin. The politics of this are largely unpredictable, but if one figures that pocketbook issues are what matters most, I suspect all but the most well-off conservative rank-and-file are not going to be on board with dismembering Social Security and Medicare, considering that most Tea Partiers seem to utilize them. Starve the beast will probably wind up counterproductive and self-refuting by my estimation, and conservatives would be better off coming up with smart ideas to cut out inefficiency in government, but that's hard and it requires priorities. Forget that.
Mental Health Break | Library Grape | Mentlog:
13 Jan 2011 [...] If “starve the beast” doesn’t work… [...]

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by Gherald @ Library Grape - The Best in Politics, Culture and Delicious Snark

Really, OFA?

Gherald — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:11:41 +0000

After the 2008 election, Obama’s campaign operation–Obama For America–became Organizing for America. I’ve stayed on their list, and here’s an email I just received:

The President has been on the phones. He’s asking lawmakers to finally end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” With a vote coming as soon as today, we need as many Americans as possible to join the effort. Right now, there are a handful of senators who will make all the difference. The last time repeal came up in the Senate, it failed by just two votes. But that was before a Pentagon study confirmed that ending this policy would not negatively affect our military readiness or troop morale. In these final weeks of 2010, we now have a real opportunity to change the minds of some one-time opponents. The single best way to do that is to ensure that the lawmakers on the fence hear from their constituents about why repeal is so important. We need you to call supporters in key states like Maine, Ohio, Alaska, Illinois — and more — and ask them to get in touch with their senators. Can you call supporters in key states now?

They want me to call people in other states, and ask those people to call their senators… I don’t know whether to characterize this as “creative”, “weird”, or “silly”, but it’s… something.

1 comment(s) for this post:

Lev:
08 Dec 2010
They could always spoof the return numbers for caller ID, so that you would appear to be calling from other states. It wouldn't exactly be ethical, though.

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Doritos and Pepsi commercial

Gherald — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:44:05 +0000

They’re holding a contest to air one during Super Bowl XLV. Check out this contender.

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Today’s Liberal Menace: Bake Sales

Gherald — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:48:26 +0000

As we know, Michelle Obama is a very serious person who is very concerned about child obesity. And the obvious partial solution is to ban school bake sales:

(AP) A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama—and championed by the first lady—gives the federal government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom. [..] “These fundraisers are happening all the time,” Wootan said. “It’s a pizza sale one day, doughnuts the next… It’s endless.” [Under the proposed rules], bake sales cannot be held on school grounds unless the items meet nutrition standards that specifically limit portion sizes, fat content, sodium and sugars. That two-ounce, low-fat granola bar? Probably OK, depending what’s in it. But grandma’s homemade oversized brownie with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips inside? Probably not.

5 comment(s) for this post:

Joe:
05 Dec 2010
You and everyone else flipping out over this get an F on reading comprehension. From the same article: "It wouldn't apply to after-hours events or concession stands at sports events." It wouldn't "ban bake sales" or any nonsense like that. The bill puts all food sales during school hours on equal footing.

So fair credit to AP for at least mentioning it, but that tiny mention is more than overshadowed by the fact that most of the rest of the piece is propaganda straight from Palin.
Metavirus:
05 Dec 2010
let me see if i can guess exactly whats happening here

a. michelle obama is super gung ho about a children's nutrition bill that does tons of good things to address all the little fatties we are breeding (yes, me included)

b. one minor aspect that got inserted due to some random fuckhead in congress' amendment is silly

c. barack and michelle therefore want to starve elian gonzalez while gobbling communist lemon squares in front of nazi satan
Gherald:
05 Dec 2010
Yes after hour events and sporting events are exempted, but so what? I never attended those things.

Surely you remember what it's like to be a bored kid on an uneventful school day? That's the only time bake sales interested me.

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Sunday links

Gherald — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:00:20 +0000

My one post on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – Daniel Drezner

My Agnosticism About Unemployment Insurance – Greg Mankiw

Our Worst of Both Worlds Health Care System – Ezra Klein

The Conservative Recovery – Yglesias

Smart Takes on Wikileaks – Radley Balko

Are bees more Bayesian? – Tyler Cowen

D.C.’s Mom ‘n’ Pops Afraid of Walmart’s Cost-Conscious Customers – Mark Perry

Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1 – Slashdot

I really didn’t see this one coming – Reddit

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Cigarette Taxes Lead To Black Market Surge

Gherald — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 05:23:16 +0000

NY Post:

“The underground tobacco market is spreading like a fast-growing cancer in the wake of tax hikes that make New York cigarettes the most expensive in the nation — and it’s costing the state tens of millions a month in lost tax revenue. Illegal cigarettes are pouring into neighborhood bodegas by the truckload from neighboring Indian reservations, lower-tax states in the South and even as far away as China. Government data show that New York state is being smoked out of as much as $20 million a month from all these illegal cigarette purchases — an estimated 7.3 million packs a month sold off the state tax radar. Sales of taxed cigarettes have plummeted 27 percent since July, when state lawmakers raised the excise tax to $4.35 a pack on top of the city’s tax of $1.50, making the average price of Marlboros here $11.60, with some shops charging as much as $14. About 30 million packs are being sold legally each month — down from 41 million packs a month before July. The plunge far exceeds tobacco-control experts’ predictions that sales would fall 8 to 10 percent, indicating that smokers are finding other means to get their nicotine fix.”

Additionally, minors are more likely to have access to cigarettes on this expanded black market. Mark Perry offers some economic lessons:

1. Taxes are always distortionary because people can change their behavior to avoid the tax. Elected officials almost always underestimate the ability of taxpayers to change their behavior to avoid taxes, and the New York cigarette tax example is no exception – experts predicted a 8-10% reduction in sales vs. the actual 27% decline. 2. In any discussion about taxes, we have to distinguish between “tax rates” and “tax revenues,” especially when we talk about “increasing or decreasing taxes,” with the assumption being that increases (decreases) in tax rates and increases (decreases) in tax revenues automatically happen together. In the case of cigarettes in New York the “tax increase” in rates resulted in a “tax decrease” in revenues because of what happened to the “tax base” (the amount of activity subject to the tax). In this case (as often happens), the increase in tax rates on cigarette caused the tax base (amount of cigarettes subject to state taxes) to shrink so significantly, that there was a decrease in tax revenue. The same outcome often happens, whether the tax increase is on income, dividends, capital gains or retail sales.

3 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
05 Dec 2010 "The same outcome often happens, whether the tax increase is on income, dividends, capital gains or retail sales." Good post right up until that last bit. Perry's analogy is a really shitty one. A tax targeted at particularly disfavored items will always run into a theoretical limit where the tax has the effect of being effectively prohibitionary. Perry is right to a certain extent with regard to sales taxes (i.e., there are a good number of circumstances where misguided sales tax rates can have complicated spillover effects that effectively reduce the tax base) but is dead wrong when it comes to income, dividend and capital gain rates. This is just the flip side of the tired old canard that cutting income tax rates increases the tax base and therefore increases net revenue - which is a steaming pile of republican orthodoxy that has been disproven over and over and over again (see, e.g., Bush Tax Cuts).
Gherald:
05 Dec 2010
Actually the effect is more pronounced on capital gains taxes than income or sales--this is something economists of all stripes have figured out. Bruce Bartlett noted it in The New American Economy.
Metavirus:
06 Dec 2010
true in some ways, but not so in others. it's not as simple as targeted, e.g., "sin" taxes. for sales taxes one has to consider things like the proximity of population centers to states with lower sales taxes, etc. on capital gains, we are nowhere near the realm of capital gains rates that would arguably have a negative effect on the tax base.

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Close The Washington Monument

Gherald — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:04:32 +0000

The National Park Service wants to add airport-level security to the Washington Monument.

Bruce Schneier would prefer it be closed:

Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They’re afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism — or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity — they will be branded as “soft on terror.” And they’re afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred. Perhaps they’re right, but what has happened to leaders who aren’t afraid? What has happened to “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?

An empty Washington Monument would symbolize our lawmakers’ inability to take that kind of stand — and their inability to truly lead.

..The empty monument would symbolize our war on the unexpected, — our overreaction to anything different or unusual — our harassment of photographers, and our probing of airline passengers. It would symbolize our “show me your papers” society, rife with ID checks and security cameras. As long as we’re willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety, we should keep the Washington Monument empty.

Terrorism isn’t a crime against people or property. It’s a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed — even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we’re indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail — even if their attacks succeed.

..We can reopen the Washington Monument when we’ve defeated our fears, when we’ve come to accept that placing safety above all other virtues cedes too much power to government and that liberty is worth the risks, and that the price of freedom is accepting the possibility of crime.

I would proudly climb to the top of a monument to those ideals.

Me too. (via MR)

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Friday Night Caffeinated Drinking

Gherald — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 01:27:21 +0000

Let me say up front that I’m a light drinker. I have one or two craft ales on a typical weekend. That’s all.

Over the last year the FDA and state governments have been cracking down on alcoholic energy drinks. I had nearly zero interest in such drinks on their own merit. But when governments seek to ban things for moral panic reasons, I get somewhat interested.

The latest on drink-ban insanity, from Reason’s Jacob Sullum:

Timothy Leary once noted that psychedelic drugs cause panic and temporary insanity in people who never try them. The same can be said of Four Loko, the drink that federal regulators banned last week amid a nationwide fit of hysteria about “a toxic, dangerous mix of caffeine and alcohol” that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned was “spreading like a plague across the country.” A fruity, bubbly, neon-colored plague.

Well then. Purely in the interest of science–er, liberty, or something–I sought out one of these pathogens:

Caffeine, ginseng, taurine, and…. “certified colors”? What the hell?

Whatever. Google pointed me to this charming reviewer:

I think all the 24oz cans of EMB’s are mostly the same. Max Live (grape) is no different than the Four loko or Joose (grape) flavors. Grape is by far the best flavor, Its not over powering, but yet lets you know, “HEY!!!! I’m grape flavor fuck-head!!!!”. I’d drink MAX (live) again in a hearbeat, well as long as its not too late. MAX (live) is Great!!!

Sounds rad, dude. I presume you’re the target demographic?

My local store stocked this in the back corner, advertising: “Get it before the prohibition!” (which they double-underlined with colored markers). The price was a mere $10 for a 12-pack of these tall pints–66% off the usual. A firesale in expectation of an upcoming ban on all such drinks–let it not be said prohibition was never nice to my wallet.

Anyhow, I went home and primed myself with a bottle of my usual weekend fare. Lovely as ever.

Then… wow. As I write this I’ve consumed two of these MAX drinks on an otherwise an empty stomach–apparently the equivalent of 7 beers.

I do declare: this shit is nasty. Awful. Think of a typical energy drink like Red Bull, then imagine adding a more bitter alcohol taste. Then imagine it tasting 50% worse for good measure.

After drinking merely half a can, I felt like I might vomit from the ugly taste. No shit. I wasn’t sure how much further I could go, so I went to the bathroom and slowly consumed the remaining 1/2 and another, second can. EWW! I timed this at just over 15 minutes to down two cans.

And as I write this some ~30 minutes afterwards, I’m having a bit of difficulty standing straight (No sitting down at my desk).

I’ll need to wait and feel the later effect, but I’m guessing a more experienced drinker could handle 4-5 of these without much trouble. I dunno though. Just thought I’d share my experience while it’s fresh. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go lay down for a bit.

Update, four hours later: I’m rolling my eyes at how predictable the effect was. Combine cheap malt liquor with a shitty energy drink and this is what you’ll get. Those things will never be illegal; all this does is put them in the same can!

I certainly don’t recommend this drink. If you want to get caffeinated and shitfaced, there are far more enjoyable ways than gagging several of these down by the pint. Why not chase red bull with something that tastes decent? Have some shots–Jager or peppermint schnapps with chocolate milk, if you’re feeling uncreative. Or any drink combined with one of those 5-hour energy shots.

Anyway, back to the ban–more of Jacob Sullum’s post:

The main knock against Four Loko, which is less potent than Chardonnay, is that the caffeine masks the alcohol’s effects, leading people to underestimate their impairment and drink more than they otherwise would. Two studies have found that college students who drink alcohol combined with caffeine tend to consume more and take more risks than college students who drink alcohol by itself. Neither study clarified whether the difference was due to the caffeine or to the pre-existing tendencies of hard partiers who are attracted to drinks they believe will help keep them going all night long. But that distinction did not matter to panic-promoting politicians and their publicists in the press, who breathlessly advertised Four Loko while marveling at its rising popularity. Like other officially condemned intoxicants, Four Loko was linked to a disfavored group—reckless, hedonistic “young people”—and everything about it was viewed in that light.

Over and over again, fear-mongering officials and hyperbolic reporters cited two incidents—one at Ramapo College in New Jersey, the other at Central Washington University—in which students who drank Four Loko were taken to the hospital. These 15 students, most of whom seem to have been drinking other alcoholic beverages in addition to Four Loko, represent something like 0.015 percent of the 100,000 or so 18-to-20-year-olds who make alcohol-related visits to American emergency rooms each year. Yet their drunken stupidity was repeatedly presented as evidence of Four Loko’s unique dangers.

So basically:

(1) Hard partiers can and will abuse alcoholic drinks–film at 11! (And 12, and 1, and on while the sun don’t shine)
(2) Political busybodies are ever desperate for a new imaginary menace to, uh, rave against.

Media sensationalism certainly hasn’t helped:

[T]he National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted 13,800 alcohol-related fatalities in 2008. It did not put crashes involving Four Loko drinkers in a special category. But news organizations around the country, primed to perceive the drink as unusually hazardous, routinely do. Three days before the Food and Drug Administration declared Four Loko illegal, a 14-year-old stole his parents’ SUV and crashed it into a guard rail in Denton, Texas, killing his girlfriend. Here is how the local Fox station headlined its story: “‘Four Loko’ Found in Deadly Teen Crash.”

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (who will soon join Schumer in the Senate) calls Four Loko a “witch’s brew,” and apparently it really does have magical powers. Although one 23.5-ounce container has less alcohol than a bottle of wine, news reports call it “blackout in a can.” ABC News implies that a single can, containing as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, can trigger a fatal heart attack in a perfectly healthy person.

The New York Times reports that Four Loko, which features a drug combination familiar to fans of Irish coffee or rum and cola, “has been blamed” for causing a 20-year-old Florida college student to shoot himself in the head. A CBS station in Philadelphia said a middle-aged suburban dad suffered “a hallucinogenic frenzy” featuring “nightmarish delusions” after a can and a half, while another CBS affiliate in Baltimore said two cans made a 20-year-old “lose her mind,” steal a friend’s pickup truck, and crash it into a telephone pole. Under the evil influence of this demonic drink, the St. Petersburg Times reports, a 21-year-old in New Port Richey, Florida, broke into an old woman’s house, trashed the place, stripped naked, and took a dump on the floor.

So there you have it. Drink a bottle of wine plus a cup of coffee, and you might black out or have a fatal heart attack!

Despite such alarming reports, the FDA did not conclude that alcoholic beverages containing caffeine, which are made by dozens of companies, are inherently unsafe. Instead it focused on Four Loko’s manufacturer and three other companies that “seemingly target the young adult user,” who is “especially vulnerable” to “combined ingestion of caffeine and alcohol”—and too dumb, apparently, to mix vodka with Red Bull.

Yes, Vodka + Red Bull sounds a pretty close approximation for what I drank.

What shall I do now with my remaining “witch’s brew”? I guess it will stay in my fridge and I’ll just laugh every time I see it.

Late Update: I just noticed that I missed the “1 pt 7.5 fl oz” on the can. 23.5 oz is actually about 1.5 pints. So I actually drank THREE pints of 12% alc/vol this night–not 2 pints as I’d thought. Well, whatever.

3 comment(s) for this post:

dandalion:
05 Dec 2010
Interesting experience you had there..... I have done my fair share of vodka infused drinking and posting :D

Being in Washington state and an employee of the LCB I have seen both sides of this story. Some people can tolerate the caffeine - alcohol mix and others cant. I can drink a sailor under the table but if you give me more than just shots it will make me sick.

Washington had been looking at banning caffeine infused alcohol drinks for some time and that incident with the students at a college party just put a nail in the coffin. But these cans can be bought just about any where and are hard to tell if they have booze in them. And honestly without reading the fine print how can one tell the difference from Monster to Four Loco or any other one? My husband worked at a mini mart when 'Sparks' came out and a lot of people didn't look close enough to see that they were a malt beverage and thought they were buying an energy drink. So the marketing of these things are very tricky, some can and will buy them and not realize what they have. Yeah, buyer beware, but if the clerk is not on their toes it could end up in the hands of minors very easily. (playing a bit of devil's advocate)

These drinks should make it easier to identify as malt liquor or as an alcoholic beverage of some kind.
Gherald:
05 Dec 2010
I can see how it was a problem when this stuff first came out, but I'd figure we're over that hill now that alcohol in energy-like cans is common.

This MAX is well-labeled--it has a big "CONTAINS ALCOHOL" just below the rim (not pictured above) and also running vertically (pictured). And of course 12% ALC/Vol plastered in multiple places (obviously a selling point : )

I bought Sparks once near when it first came out. I was just curious and thought it'd be like Mark's Hard (they were after all on the same shelf at the mini mart). But gee, Sparks tastes even worse than MAX! How can this stuff sell?
dandalion:
05 Dec 2010 Some are easier to read and I think as more and more have been added to the market they are making them easier to identify. But I know a lot of people (I work in retail and see it daily) do not read labels very well. Not that is the manufacturers fault, but they do seem to take advantage of that with their marketing. When Sparks first came, the owner of the mini mart my husband worked at didn't even realize they had alcohol in them until my husband pointed it out to him. So who knew how many he sold to minors. M

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Kansas 8th Grade Final Exam From 1895

Gherald — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 04:47:35 +0000

Some problems:

Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m? [per m = per 1000 board feet?]
Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods? [1 acre = 160 square rods]
What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

The math is pretty straightforward non-algebra grade-school stuff, once you get past the outdated terminology.

A comment on genuineness:

Snopes list it as “False”, yet lay out a purely circumstantial case that it isn’t real. The truthorfiction link is much better, but even there, they document that the test is in fact real, but seem to pretty strongly imply that the test is for teachers, yet show as little evidence for this view as the view that the test is for 8th graders.

Full test here, via Tyler Cowen

3 comment(s) for this post:

Metavirus:
03 Dec 2010 i'm pretty comfortable calling BS on this.
dandalion:
03 Dec 2010 I had to google number 10....
Gherald:
03 Dec 2010 Salina Journal article - among other things, it says this test was unusually difficult and there was a lower rate of graduation than usual. Combined with the five hours students had to take this, and the differences in teaching styles back then (they did more rote memorization) it's plenty plausible. Anyway here are answers

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Unmanned Wikileaks Drone Destroys Village

Gherald — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:47:34 +0000

LONDON – Wikileaks has been accused of endangering lives after destroying an Afghan village with an unmanned drone. Leading secret experts have determined that the attack by the online whistleblower was the most devastating since it killed tens of thousands of Iraqis in search of weapons of mass destruction that it secretly knew were all made up. The slaughter came just hours after the website, popular with paedophiles and smokers, published 250,000 secret documents that revealed, for only the 78 millionth time in human history, that governments are run by the sort of utter tosspots you wouldn’t have in your house. Former foreign secretary, Sir Malcom Rifkind, said: “I used to go to secret meetings with generals and ambassadors and people with codenames. Sometimes I would use a codename, but it really depended on how many other people in the meeting were using their codenames. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what my codename was because if I did I would be putting lives at risk in Norway and Burkina Faso. “Anyway, we talked about vitally important things that need not concern your decent hard-working little head. Suffice to say we are extremely clever and the things we do are so breath-takingly important that we have to keep them a secret or someone with a codename will be strangled by a man in a turban. Jafaz Al Jalali, a trainee suicide bomber from Rawalpindi, backed Sir Malcolm, adding: “I was going to blow myself up purely because of your mini-kilts and your Bacardi Breezers but now I know that Prince Andrew may have behaved inappropriately on some junket I have decided to blow myself up twice.” Julian Cook, professor of international news stories at Reading University, explained: “Everyone that America has been spying on would have already assumed that America was spying on them and if they didn’t then they are even more cretinous than these leaks confirm them to be.” He added: “Nevertheless, the point about Wikileaks undermining the safety of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan would have some validity, if only it wasn’t such a humongous vat of liquidised monkey-shit from start to finish. “Because – and you might want to write this down and keep it somewhere safe – the key thing that has undermined the safety of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is firing their big fucking guns at Iraqis and Afghans. Sources at the Ministry of Defence confirmed that Professor Cook’s comments had already put lives at risk in Belgium and Ecuador, and informed us that he’s also a rapist.

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