Stable Genius Liberal

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?

Bitcoin Wound Up Being Just As Broken as the Corrupt Banking System It Was Trying to Kill

Bitcoin became a thing based largely on the enthusiasm of the same types of people who pushed gold to $1,921 an ounce in 2011 – not surprisingly, this was shortly after Congress’ Big Red Shoes performance in the debt-ceiling crisis that August. Both were based on the notion that Congress, the Fed and the European Union were running traditional currency into the ground. This was always a crazy idea. It was a reaction to emergency monetary policy rooted in a mix of a misunderstanding of what former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was doing and cultural-political alienation that dates back to the right’s reaction to the sixties, if not the dawn of time. …
But the real point is that if you have to even ask what Bitcoin is, Bitcoin really isn’t much

The value of bitcoins stolen seems to be greater than the value of bitcoins traded for goods and services not related to bitcoin speculation. When you point this out you are branded a hater.

The Real Poverty Trap

the evidence suggests that welfare-state programs enhance social mobility, thanks to little things like children of the poor having adequate nutrition and medical care. And conversely,of course, when such programs are absent or inadequate, the poor find themselves in a trap they often can’t escape, not because they lack the incentive, but because they lack the resources.

The stats make the article worth a read. Basically, if you make it easier for people to be less poor, people will be less likely to be poor. No surprise there.

Wallace to Issa: ‘Be honest, you do not have any evidence’ linking Clinton to Benghazi

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday confronted Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) after he was rated as having the “highest level of falsehood” for his obsession with the terrorist attacks in Benghazi.

I am still waiting on those who bought the fanciful theories that the right was selling to admit they were wrong.

“Bank” that claimed to solve Bitcoin’s security problem robbed, shuts down | Ars Technica

I wonder if any of the people who dismissed the gox theft victims as idiots lost bitcoins at flexcoin.

Krugman: Envy Versus Anger

But the polling data don’t say anything about envy: when people say that they have lost their belief that hard work will be rewarded, they aren’t saying that they are envious of the rich; they’re saying that they have lost their belief that hard work will be rewarded. To the extent that people have negative feelings about the one percent, the emotion involved isn’t envy — it’s anger, which isn’t at all the same thing. Envy is when you have negative feelings about rich because of what they have; anger is when you have negative feelings about the rich because of what they do.

The standard defense is to dismiss criticism of 1% by the 99% as envy and criticism of the 1% by the 1% as hypocrisy. How convenient that literally no one is able to criticize the 1% without that being proof that there is something wrong with them.

Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008

In nominal terms, that is the smallest deficit since 2008, and signals the end of a five-year stretch beginning with the onset of the recession when the country’s fiscal gap came in at more than $1 trillion each year. As a share of the nation’s economy, the budget deficit fell to about 4.1 percent, from a high of more than 10 percent during the depths of the Great Recession.

So can we talk about issues other than cutting social programs now? At what point can we start talking about policy that does’t involve cutting taxes for the wealthy and gutting programs for the poor?