CapitalistImperialistPig

Peter Thiel made a billion or so bucks on Pay Pal and Facebook . This essay suggests to me that the pain of having to pay taxes may have driven him over the brink - though he claims he always was. A few of the other things that really piss him off: democracy, women getting the vote and the suggestion that he won't live forever.

I caught this sorry torture apologist being interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show . Even if his message were not so dishonest and odious, his annoyingly chipmunklike chattering would still deserve exile to some dark place of silence.

Check this front page labor graphic graphic Less than 100 days, much of it during the Bush administration, none of it plausibly affected by any action of the Obama administration. ... Mumbles inarticulately.

I've never been impressed with the political acumen of Fox and NPR political hack Mara Eliason, but she can't count, either. This morning on NPR, about Obama's first 100 days: Remember, this is only one tenth of his Presidential term. Obama's term is scheduled to be 1461 days (365 X 4 + 1).

Jason Linkins reports on a study showing that conservatives don't get Stephen Colbert - or perhaps humor at all. ...conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism... Surprising perhaps, but I can definitely see it. Irony apparently involves some sort of higher brain functioning that conservatives mostly lack - a sort of intellectual equivalent of Asperger's syndrome. This could explain a lot - like why conservatives seem to think Rush Limbaugh is funny. And why they tend to be so nasty. Always being the one who doesn't get the joke must be rather humiliating. And what other theory could explain Ayn Rand?

Motl, Barton and the usual suspects make a lot of the fact that the Earth seems to have frequently been a lot warmer in the past than it is today. We are solidly in the territory of the colder periods of the Phanerozoic . This is not mainly an effect of CO2, though current CO2 levels seem to be low by the standards of 50 to 600 million years ago. The biggest effect on climate (aside from the very slow warming of the Sun) is the position of the continents. Our current cold spell, during which we humans and much other life evolved, started when the Isthmus of Panama closed 5 Mya. If it opens again the effect on climate is likely to be as important as a couple or 3 CO2 doublings. These things are well known to climate scientists, and don't affect their arguments (assuming the worst plausible feedbacks - methane clathrate melting) don't occur. Those who believe that anthropogenic CO2 will end the planet, or even the human race, are likely to be dissapointed. It probably will s...

Tyler Cowen points out a probably fatal flaw in the idea of prosecuting the Bush war criminals: At many blogs (Sullivan, Yglesias, DeLong, among others) you will find ongoing arguments for prosecuting the torturers who ran our government for a while. I am in agreement with the moral stance of these critics but I don't agree with their practical conclusions. I believe that a full investigation would lead the U.S. public to, ultimately, side with torture, side with the torturers, and side against the prosecutors. That's why we can't proceed and Obama probably understands that. If another attack happened this would be all the more true. On top of everything else, major Democrats in Congress are likely complicit and the Democrats as a whole hardly made this a campaign issue in 2004; in 2008 the economy was their winning issue, not torture. The public, or a large fraction of it, still believes in torture. Chances of a "Not Guilty" verdict are excellent. Inabilit...