Stable Genius Liberal

Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees

My libertarian friends keep telling me that in a free market this type of thing simply can not happen. That companies will bid-up the wages of in-demand workers and could never take action to suppress those wages without state involvement. After all, in a free market everything is voluntary.

Those million tech workers must have voluntary agreed to the wage suppression agreement somehow. In some way I just can not see.

Creationists Demand Airtime On ‘Cosmos’ For The Sake Of Balance

The Creationist group Answers In Genesis, which was already incensed about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s revival of Cosmos, is now complaining that the show lacks scientific balance because it fails to provide airtime for evolution deniers.

Do the followers of Zeus get a booth at the creationist museum?

Promoting Evolution Is ‘An Act Of Disloyalty To America’

“American political philosophy is based on the belief that the world was created by God in six days, and that this creation event occurred about 6,000 years ago,” he explains, adding that news reports describing the Earth as millions of years old were either ignorant or “anti-American.”

Where is genesis mentioned in the constitution?

Work Like a German

Germany suffered a more precipitous drop in gross domestic product than the United States, but it experienced almost no change in unemployment. Here, it doubled. Today, unemployment in Germany is actually lower than it was pre-crisis, and long-term unemployment is negligible.

Rather than enforce austerity on the population, German reformed and improved its social safety net during the crisis and is better for it.

We have a growing problem with disability insurance. But because its whiter, more southern and more male than the nation as a whole, no one dare call it welfare. When white southern men get paid to not work it’s not welfare.

Paul Ryan’s Irish Amnesia

What infuriated Mitchel was that the Irish were starving to death at the very time that rich stores of grain and fat livestock owned by absentee landlords were being shipped out of the country. The food was produced by Irish hands on Irish lands but would not go into Irish mouths, for fear that such “charity” would upset the free market, and make people lazy.

….

“We have this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In other words, these people are bred poor and lazy.
Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes — 19th-century England. The Irish national character, Trevelyan confided to a fellow aristocrat, was “defective.” The hungry millions were “a selfish, perverse, and turbulent” people, said the man in charge of relieving their plight.

Worth a read. The inference to suffering on the right is amazing.

Koch Group Abandons Obamacare ‘Horror’ Stories After Fact-Check Backlash

But what’s notable about the ads is what they aren’t: A personalized story of someone who’s been negatively affected by Obamacare, the kind of verifiable set of facts that can be checked – and rebutted, as happened with a recent AFP ad that led to significant backlash from the fact-checking community.

The facts have a liberal bias….so lets base our opinions on something other than facts. Wonderful.

MtGox knowingly traded non-existent bitcoins for two weeks, filing shows

Every Bitcoin devotee claims this simply could not happen. you can’t buy and sell bitcoins that don’t exist. Fractional reserve isn’t possible.

So how did it happen?

The C.I.A. Torture Cover-Up

Ms. Feinstein’s accusations carry an additional weight and credibility because she has been a reliable supporter of the intelligence agencies and their expanded powers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001

Can we investigate this rather than a hold a 51st vote on Obamacare and another fishing expedition on Benghazi? Why are the real scandals ignored by this congress while they fixate on phony issues?

Woman with cancer refuses life saving Obamacare coverage.

When advised of the details of her Blues’ plan, Boonstra said the idea that it would be cheaper “can’t be true.” “I personally do not believe that,” Boonstra said.

It represents a kind of final victory for mean-spirited and uncharitable propaganda over reality, a triumph for misinformation, sabotage, and arrant bullshit in the service of a cruel ideology and faceless oligarchy. It is a measure of the failure of all of our institutions, which definitely includes my own, which allowed charlatans and frauds to hijack too much of the public debate. I pray for this woman’s recovery.

This is just sad. She has so totally bought the right wing propaganda that she is choosing to die for a falsehood rather than live and admit she was lied to.

Krugman on Paul Ryan at CPAC: Actually kind of awesome, in the worst way.

the caricature of Ryan and people like him is that they treat the hardships of poverty as if they were merely psychological, that they talk big about dignity while ignoring the difficulty of getting essentials like food and health care. Well, it’s not a caricature

Worth reading, but also read Ryan’s words. The inability to see the world past their own noses seems to be a problem with politicians in general, but on the right it is stunning.

What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul

Ummm…hierarchy of needs? Have they heard of it?