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« Liberal Outrage: July 2014 | Main | Liberal Outrage: September 2014 »

Liberal Outrage

But what if we just wanna complaaaaaain?

Riffing off the Knee Defender controversy, Matthew Yglesias says if you don't like how much space you get on a plane, you should pay more.

In the past, though, he's said that airplanes have gotten crappier because of deregulation. But even then, the quality was better because the prices were fixed at higher levels, so you were still paying more.


By fnord12 | August 27, 2014, 6:14 PM | Liberal Outrage & Ummm... Other? | Link



White on white murder

Matthew Yglesias has some snark for you.


By fnord12 | August 22, 2014, 11:55 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link



Well that's a problem

I'm all for solar energy, but not if it's going to create a vortex of fiery bird death.

When i think of solar energy, i think mainly of solar panels on our roofs and maybe, as we have here in Jersey, on all our telephone poles. It never occurred to me that we'd have to create some sort of mirrored monstrosity that focuses the sunlight into laser intensity. It might be a question of trying to fit solar into a traditional power plant model instead of distributing the responsibility (and ownership). Or it might just be that solar panels on the roof aren't sufficient for our power needs in all climates (yet?).

To go back to the Earthship, they are very much designed to work independent of an energy grid, but they also remove the majority of the need for climate control thanks to its use of thermal mass. Climate control is what drains the majority of a typical home's energy. So an Earthship is pretty much self-sufficient, energy wise. But we can't expect to retrofit all existing buildings to be partially underground, even if people would accept that (which they wouldn't). So hopefully this Flamestrike issue is resolvable.


By fnord12 | August 19, 2014, 11:20 AM | Liberal Outrage & Science | Link



Blinded from the science

Kevin Drum has the latest data on his lead & crime beat, and then says this:

It's a funny thing. For years conservatives bemoaned the problem of risky and violent behavior among children and teens of the post-60s era, mostly blaming it on the breakdown of the family and a general decline in discipline. Liberals tended to take this less seriously, and in any case mostly blamed it on societal problems. In the end, though, it turned out that conservatives were right. It wasn't just a bunch of oldsters complaining about the kids these days. Crime was up, drug use was up, and teen pregnancy was up. It was a genuine phenomenon and a genuine problem.

But liberals were right that it wasn't related to the disintegration of the family or lower rates of churchgoing or any of that. After all, families didn't suddenly start getting back together in the 90s and churchgoing didn't suddenly rise. But teenage crime, drug use, and pregnancy rates all went down. And down. And down.

Most likely, there was a real problem, but it was a problem no one had a clue about. We were poisoning our children with a well-known neurotoxin, and this toxin lowered their IQs, made them into fidgety kids, wrecked their educations, and then turned them into juvenile delinquents, teen mothers, and violent criminals. When we got rid of the toxin, all of these problems magically started to decline.


By fnord12 | August 12, 2014, 5:04 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link



One simply does not discuss wages in Purgatory

I stopped linking to Sarah Palin's latest outrageous statements a long while ago, but against my better judgement here's the latest. I justify this in part because she's got her new video blog or whatever now and in part because i'm always interested when people think us vegans are out to force the rest of you - via a stay in Purgatory, apparently - to conform to our way of eating. You may want to go to TPM and watch the video clip of this, or you may want to just shove a sharp pencil up your nose to pierce your brain. It's all the same.

We believe -- wait, I thought fast food joints -- don't you guys think that they're like of the devil or something?" Palin said. "Liberals, you want to send those evil employees who would dare work at a fast food joint that you just don't believe in -- I don't know, I thought you wanted to send them to purgatory or something. So they all go vegan. And wages and picket lines, I don't know, they're not often discussed in purgatory are they? I don't know, why are you even worried about fast food wages? Well, we believe -- an America where minimum wage jobs, they're not lifetime gigs, they're stepping stones to sustainable wages. It teaches work ethic."

By fnord12 | August 11, 2014, 11:02 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link



Sure, we like stupid stuff

Please someone give me a primary option.


By fnord12 | August 10, 2014, 9:57 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link



I want my phosphates

People are weird.


By fnord12 | August 7, 2014, 10:33 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link



Too complex

Obamacare may be working better than its right-wing critics pretend, and it's even better than left-wing critics feared, but it's still a Rube Goldberg device with too many confusing pieces.


By fnord12 | August 6, 2014, 3:29 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link



The case for a Maximum Wage

Yglesias makes it, and he notes that you don't actually have to have an actual maximum wage. Just a top marginal tax rate of between 70-90%, which is what it was from WWII until Reagan.


By fnord12 | August 6, 2014, 3:24 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link



Who Gets to Define "Terrorism"

The people with the better funded media machine, ofc.

In American media discourse, when Palestinians overwhelmingly kill soldiers (95% of the Israeli death toll) who are part of an army that is blockading, occupying, invading, and indiscriminately bombing them and killing their children by the hundreds, that is "terrorism"; when Israelis use massive, brutal force against a trapped civilian population, overwhelmingly killing innocent men, women and children (at least 75% of the Palestinian death toll), with clear intentions to kill civilians (see point 3), that is noble "self-defense." That demonstrates how skewed U.S. discourse is in favor of Israel, as well as the purely manipulative, propagandistic nature of the term "terrorists."

I think the pie charts in the article speak volumes. While both sides have blood on their hands, it's important to note how easily the Palestinians are demonized in the media.

For a media that's obsessed with "balance", they seem to have no trouble unequally representing the sides in this conflict.

The U.S. media needs to do a better job of conveying the complexity of this situation. It can't just be a black and white/good guy vs bad guy story. It's all shades of gray where nobody has claims to innocence.


By min | August 3, 2014, 10:17 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link



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