Just how out of touch is John Boehner anyway?

Last year, he nearly caused the United States to default on its debt, and this year, he’s whistling the same tune, refusing to raise the debt ceiling and calling for spending cuts.

We shouldn’t dread the debt limit. As a matter of fact, I think we should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction.

A town “infamous for inaction?” Doesn’t he means a party infamous for inaction?

The GOP unanimously said “no” to the health care reform bill. “No” to the $787 billion stimulus package, which, by the way, is responsible for many job-creating infrastructural improvements across the nation, and “no” to nearly everything else Obama has put on the table.

U.S. House Speaker Boehner commemorate Holocaust victims and survivors in Washington (Benjamin Myers Reuters, REUTERS / May 16, 2012)

The GOP has languished in Washington the last four years and has been little more than dead weight, unceasingly complaining about Obama, yet accomplishing next to nothing, unless pushing the party even further to the right, “symbolically” passing votes and “symbolically” reading the Constitution counts for accomplishing something.

And at a time when we can clearly witness austerity cuts in Europe failing miserably, Boehner is calling for — wait for it — more austerity cuts. Lucid as ever, Fareed Zakaria identifies the problem with spending cuts in already sagging economy:

The problem is that as these governments cut spending in very depressed economies, it has caused growth to slow even further — you see government workers who have been fired tend to buy fewer goods and services, for example — and all this means falling tax receipts and thus even bigger deficits.

Spending cuts don’t just affect government workers. That’s just one obvious example. If the government starts hacking away at services that improve people’s lives, their quality of life diminishes, thus, not only are they less happy, more apathetic and more likely to hoard what little savings they do have, but they are less likely to turn around and invigorate the economy with new consumer-side spending.

I’m reminded of two memorable lines from Tony Benn, who was interviewed for the 2007 movie, “Sicko:”

Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic – see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled — first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

and

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

So, let’s look at the other side. What about people that make more than $250,000 per year? When government hands them tax breaks, do they help stimulate the economy? Not so much. Sure, they spend some, but I would wager that rich people are not primarily concerned with consumer spending, but with saving and investing. After all, there is a reason some people are able to accumulate mass amounts of wealth. They happen to be good with managing money and have some smart investment sense. Good for them. But that doesn’t help the national economy or the American public.

                          

I’m sorry to subject you to this, but this was a stunning quote from someone whose only claim to fame is that he hosts a show on FOX News in the wee hours of the morning when about three people are watching. Why are only three people watching? Because the various retirees, the businessmen, the stock brokers are in their jammies tucked away and dreaming with sugar plumb fairies dancing and thinking about how they might screw the system the next morning.

If you didn’t know, “Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld” – the host is seen in this video – airs at 3 a.m. ET. 3-freaking-a.m. If you thought FOX News was purporting fringe right theories at noon weekdays, you should stay up late (or go to bed really early) and check out the good stuff!

Here is Gutfeld’s takeaway line:

I will actually buy pills to keep a leftist from reproducing.

Really? This is even more reprehensible because the context was on birth control. So he admits that he’s sleazier than the people he is criticizing. Well played … I guess.

Take a look:

                          

Our place in the entire sequence of life is rather meager. Here is the Hillis plot of all life on Earth:

Full tree here.

                          

A Mac laptop: $1,200. A Mac laptop with the Hillis Plot as it’s cover design: priceless:

Hillis Plot on a 13″ MacBook Pro.

                          

From Freethought Firefighters International:

Life does matter and I think everyone, even the most devout Christians, realize this in spite of the rhetoric they get from the church.  I think people are not nearly so confident in their hoped for dreams of immortality in a pie-in-the-sky afterlife.  I think this life is very important to people, and that is why they do everything they can to extend it as long as possible, but recognizing the inevitable, they convince themselves that this life is not all that there is.

I love life myself and I hope it lasts for a long time to come, but if it doesn’t, so be it, at least I was alive and did something productive with it by helping others in their times of need; at least I experienced life and had a family.  Whatever our life spans may turn out to be, just being alive is something to be cherished and should never be down-played or seen as unimportant in terms of some hoped for “eternal life.” Death is the natural end to life and while it is sometimes horrific and almost always painful for the surviving loved ones, it is grotesque to assign some special divine significance to it beyond the natural indiscriminate world we inhabit.

                          

I don’t think this is 100 percent airtight Kantian philosophy, but hey, it’s decent enough for three minutes.

As one YouTube commenter pointed out in the ax murderer example given here, presumably, given Kant’s moral imperative, the ax murderer would not choose for the victim to then go to his own house and slaughter his family as if that too was one of the “universal laws of nature” that everyone should follow.

Credit to CollegeBinary for the video.

                          

The Whole Problem – StumbleUpon.

                          

Here is a little something for those who spew that crazy Tea Party talk about neutering government to the point that it collects few, if any taxes.

100 things these folks should do if they hate paying taxes:

If You Hate Taxes . . . – StumbleUpon.

                          

Yes, that’s right. It’s apparently open season on custom pancakes in the Ugly Pancake Contest. Folks have been sending in Star Wars pancakes, organ pancakes, math constants and my favorite, fractal pancakes.

Here are said edible fractals:

N. Shields