Podcast 3/26/2016: News Rundown and College Tuition

In this episode, we run through a news-packed week including Brussels, Obama in Cuba and Argentina, the real reason behind the "War on Drugs", North Carolina striving to be a shittier state, racist twitter bots, voter suppression in Arizona and more.  We then dive deep into the practical and philosophical reasons for cheap college.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-rgth8-5df71e/download

Notes:

• Timeline of the riots in Gujarat http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/world/asia/modi-gujarat-riots-timeline.html?_r=0#/#time287_8514
• A history of the Tamil Tigers:  http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2008/11/2008112019115851343.html
• North Carolina did ban using climate change data.  More evidence that we should put birth control in their water. http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782
• The Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell (Republican) was in charge of the polling places in by far the most ethnically diverse and most populous part of Arizona.  I implore my fellow Bernie supporters not to engage in ridiculous conspiracy theories about how this was Hillary Clinton's evil plan.  Clinton conspiring with Arizona Republicans is pretty far fetched for me.  Also, you can place  a lot of blame on the Supreme Court overturning parts of the Voting Rights Act, more reason why the "Bernie or Bust" movement is idiotic and counter-productive. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arizona-hearing-latinos-demand-answers-primary-voting-problems-n547131
• Steve Jobs was a terrible person.  Apart from the deplorable near slave labor conditions overseas in Apple's contractors, he engaged in collusion to keep the wages of software engineers down.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/technology/engineers-allege-hiring-collusion-in-silicon-valley.html?_r=0
• Cost of the University of Vermont's proposed new hockey arena:  $65 million  http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/sports/college/2014/11/14/uvm-gaining-ground-new-arena/19053135/ 
• Estimated in-state cost of attending University of Vermont for 2016-2017:  $31,960 ($15,096 in tuition alone) http://www.uvm.edu/~stdfinsv/?Page=tuition-fees.html&SM=tuitionsubmenu.html
• Ben Bernanke's surprisingly good and surprisingly subversive Baccalaureate speech to Princeton http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20130602a.htm#f1

NSFW

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Podcast 3/20/2016: Syria and Brazil

On this episode, Vinny and I discuss American foreign policy as it relates to the Syrian civil war, the crisis stemming from the Petrobras scandal in Brazil, and of course, some tangents.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-nzp8s-5dd1fe/download

Notes:

• Cities and towns of the Syrian Civil War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_and_towns_during_the_Syrian_Civil_War
• Global arms trade http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business
• I mentioned being John McCain being photographed with members of al-Qaeda on a visit to Syria.  I fact-checked myself and the details were sketchy.  McCain was ostensibly meeting with members of the Free Syrian Army, but that has been disputed.  What's clear to me is I can't make that claim as if it is fact.  You win this round, McCain.
• On the drugging of a Kursk relative http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/894597.stm.
• A Vox article on Brazil and the Petrobras scandal http://www.vox.com/2016/3/18/11260924/petrobras-brazil
• 
• A little on the admission of California to the Union http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/california-becomes-state-union
• Shrinking cities in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinking_cities_in_the_United_States

NSFW

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Dorf! Lessons in Self-Awareness

Jeffery Dorfman-Via Forbes

From time to time, a publication founded by a funny-faced multi-millionaire publishes something so tone-deaf and utterly detached from reality, that I feel a visceral need to subject the author to champagne-boarding until they admit supply-side economics is bunk.  The publication I speak of is none other than Forbes.  Today’s author is Jeffrey Dorfman P.H.D. and he explains to us why the student debt crisis is no biggie because people also owe auto loans.

The purported crisis of mounting student loan debt is one of the most overhyped problems of this young century. We were treated to thousands of news stories when student loan debt went above $1 trillion in total, more as it continued to rise, and a growing avalanche of stories designed to create sympathy for these poor indebted college graduates (and drop-outs). Yet, auto loan debt in the U.S. has now reached $1.1 trillion, up 30 percent from its pre-recession peak, without a similar mountain of press warning of the imminent catastrophe. This divergence in media coverage and analysis tells us much about how the student debt crisis is more manufactured than real.

Don’t worry everybody, even though these are two separate loans, for two separate purposes, with limited overlap, the comparison is still great.

The average college graduate who has any student loan debt graduates with between $25,000 and $30,000 in student loan debt. On a standard ten year repayment schedule, this means a monthly payment in the range of $280 to $330 per month. The average new car loan in the second quarter of 2015 averaged $28,500, was for five years, and carried a monthly payment of $483 month. Payments on student loans and auto loans both take up almost exactly the same percentage of income.

This argument is on shaky ground.  First, Dorfman is talking mean not median.  In both cases, the mean is likely driven higher by expensive outliers.  Second, I don’t think I know a recent college graduate, who can pay $483 a month for a car payment without major assistance from family.  Most recent college graduates that I’ve met are lucky if they can afford a 10-year-old Civic.  Third, there is not 100% overlap here.  I would speculate that someone buying a $20,000-30,000 car probably is, at least, employed full-time. Auto loans and student loans are also inherently different.  Auto loans can be forgiven in bankruptcy, cars can be repossessed, and the debt can be settled.  Student loans are not usually forgiven until full payment or death.  Furthermore, if they are also carrying $30,000 in student loans in a job that doesn’t even pay $12 an hour, they aren’t getting any new loan for much at all.

Richard Sherman's right to be an asshole

So did you know that you're not allowed to tell a millionaire professional Guy Who Plays With Rubber Filled With Air unless you too are a current or former Guy Who Plays With Rubber Filled With Air?  Neither did I.  Try telling that to Richard Sherman though (or, don't, because who the fuck are you to tell him anything?).

The owners of all 32 NFL teams met in Boca Raton and discussed 19 rule changes, the one causing so much heartache with Sherman being this: a player flagged with two personal fouls in the same game should be ejected from that game. According to sportingcharts.com:

"The personal foul is considered the most reviled of penalties, and the most avoidable. The two main kinds of personal foul are unnecessary roughness and unsportsmanlike conduct. Examples of unnecessary roughness include a late hit after the conclusion of the play, a  grasp of the facemask that turns the head of an opposing player, an illegal block on the knees of an vulnerable player, or a blow to the head of the quarterback. Examples of unsportsmanlike conduct include taunting, excessive celebration after a touchdown, contact with an official, or fighting with an opposing player. In the event that two players from opposing teams receive personal fouls on the same play, the penalties are considered to be "offsetting" and the down is replayed."

Richard Sherman does NOT like this.  Let USA Today take it from here:

"I think it's foolish," Sherman said in an interview on SportsCenter. "But it sounds like something somebody who's never played the game would say, something that they would suggest, because he doesn't understand. He's just a face. He's just a suit. He's never stepped foot on the field and understood how you can get a personal foul."

What the fuck does that even mean?  So I need to have been a professional football player in order to insist you don't punch another player in the face?  Only if I have taken snaps would I know how hard it is to avoid roughing up an official because I didn't like what he said?  This doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm just a non-football playing face, so what do I know?

 http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/seahawks/2016/03/20/richard-sherman-roger-goodell-foolish-ejection-proposal/82050612/

http://www.sportingcharts.com/dictionary/nfl/personal-foul.aspx

Intolerance must be tolerated!

A funny thing happened on the way to... well, no where.  A funny thing did also happen when people began using that spongy thing inside of their skulls to contemplate the attempt at a T.rump rally in Chicago though. Anyone reading this probably already knows what happened but for those of you who've just returned from drinking your own piss on Mars with Matt Damon, here it is: our future fuhrer T.rump tried to hold a rally on at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion (because it was totally reasonable for trumpets to believe this to be friendly turf) and a large assortment of Bernie Sanders supporters/#BlackLivesMatter activists/people who detest racism and bigotry first infiltrated the audience to the degree that they outnumbered the trumpets themselves, then engaged trumpet violence by meeting it in kind.

The most thought-provoking part, at least for me, happened the following day.  Trumpets, and people who claim not to support such nonsense while supporting such nonsense, began crying about free speech. They claim T.rump's right to it was violated, that Sanders, Obama and Clinton orchestrated it, that protesters are "thugs" (code for the N-word of course), and all manner of other heinous things.  Stripping away the layers upon layers of bullshit that wraps just about everything these people say and do, their argument is this: we must be tolerant of their views, even though the views and beliefs they espouse are that of intolerance.  They believe all Muslims are terrorists, all Mexicans are rapists, all Central American unaccompanied child immigrants are here to steal their jobs, gays getting married are a mortal threat to their religion, unions exist solely to take their money, Bernie Sanders is a communist, all black people are definitely racist against whites but white racism ended long ago, so on and so forth.  They simply refuse to tolerate this erosion of their idea of American values, that Jesus Christ himself the whitest person in history personally founded the United States so Christians can be free of anything and anyone they don't like save for those people they chose to own, and anyone who disagrees is definitely a member of the unholy alliance of the Gay Soviet Islamic Black Power State.

Did you know that civil disobedience is not a thing?  Gandhi and Martin Luther King are definitely not the kind of people for whom you name streets and holidays. Of course this is all complete nonsense.  It takes a special kind of delusion to go out and say that you utterly refuse to believe that terrorism perpetrated by a small group of assholes who will use their own delusions to attach demonstrably wrong concepts of Islam to them are anything more than just that: a small group of assholes with an incorrect interpretation of their religion.  I don't understand how some of the people who will say "yeah Donald, Mexicans definitely are all rapists" will happily pay their daughters' plane tickets to Spring Break in Cancun.  "But wait, because it's over there I don't have to see Mexicans here".  This is what they really mean, for the few who haven't already understood that.  But what can we do?

Tell them how dumb they are, to their faces.  Take their intolerance and....well, don't tolerate it.

Podcast 3/13/2016: Super-Duper Tuesday Predictions, Violence on the Trump Circuit, and Rahm Emanuel Needing the Cersei Lannister Treatment

Better late than never.

In this episode, Vinny and I make some terrible predictions regarding super-duper Tuesday, discuss the weather, Trump's white power rallies, and more.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-d4tin-5da0bd/download

Notes:

• I bring up a demographic stat at one point that I can't place a name to.  I still couldn't find it.  I'll keep looking.
• https://www.yahoo.com/politics/trump-challenged-over-ties-to-mob-linked-gambler-100050602.html Trump and the mob.
• Operation Linebacker II http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/linebacker-2.htm

NSFW

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On Occasion, the Hitler Comparisons are Valid

I rarely refer to people I disagree with as Nazis or compare them to Adolf Hitler.  Usually, those comparisons are hyperbolic and not all that analogous.  Today an exception will be made: There are legitimate parallels to be drawn between Donald Trump and Hitler.

Trump has repeatedly cultivated the support of white supremacists.  He re-tweets them with alarming frequency, including glaringly inaccurate crime statistics that cater to the worst prejudices of white people with a sense of victimization.

Much like Hitler, who played to nationalist sympathies promising to restore Germany to former glory, Trump is promising to "make America great again".

Trump is undoubtedly an authoritarian.  He has openly advocated the commission of war crimes in debates, advocating for torture and the killing of terrorists' families.  He has cheered on violence at his rallies and casually suggested that he wished he could "rough up" journalists.  He has even quoted Mussolini.

For Hitler, the demonized outsiders were Jews, democratic socialists, homosexuals, communists, and the mentally retarded amongst others.  For Trump, the "others" are Muslims and immigrants saying:

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems...they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Trump is often laughed at and not taken particularly seriously (including by myself).  Here's the thing:  Hitler wasn't taken very seriously either.  From my Western Civilization textbook, "...To most, Hitler was simply a right-wing rabble-rouser whose views were not worth taking seriously (p924 Nobel et. al.)."

Podcast 3/6/2016: Democratic Debate Color Commentary and Tuesday Predictions

On this episode, Vinny and I give the play by play on Sunday's Democratic debate.

We apologize for the quality of the audio.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-np3pc-5d5389/download

NSFW

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Podcast 3/5/2016: Super Tuesday Review, Preview of Saturday and Sunday Primaries/Caucuses

On this episode Vinny and I review our Super Tuesday predictions.  How wrong were we?

We'll also preview this weekend's primaries and caucuses.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ycchc-5d4501/download

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Podcast 2/29/2016: SC(D) Recap, Super Tuesday Preview, Drunkenness, Syria, and Gasoline Huffing

On this episode Vinny and I discuss our terrible SC predictions, our new Super Tuesday predictions, drunkenness in history, the Syrian conflict, gasoline huffing, and more.

http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wkt9g-5d2484/download

Notes:

• Hillary Clinton served as a Senator from January 2001-January 2009.

NSFW

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Realism for One

One of the things that irritates me the most about the upcoming election is that the media's line of questioning only seems to treat one candidate's policy proposals as though they're actually serious. Bernie Sanders is routinely questioned as though his proposals are crazy and unrealistic despite the fact that he's basically advocating for what every other western democracy already has.  I have no problem with asking Sanders tough questions like how he plans to pay for universal education or how he would get massive overhaul of the health care system through congress.  What I do have a problem with, is why other candidates are not subject to the same level of scrutiny.

Hillary Clinton has proposed a number of "reasonable" policies that under the current congress, where Obama could nominate Robert Bork and still not get him through confirmation in the Senate, would stand absolutely no chance of passing.  Clinton routinely talks about how she "would get stuff done" despite not offering any actual evidence of it.  The only things I see Clinton actually able to do given the current political climate, is work together with the Republicans to get bad free-trade deals and deeper involvement in wars we can't possibly win.

I don't hear how Clinton would pay for her policies.  Sanders at least has the decency to tell us that his "free stuff" would result in higher taxes and not just for the super-rich.  I never hear Clinton questioned on whether her "reasonable" and "technocratic" health care or education policies would create a massive amount of paperwork and bureaucracy for ordinary citizens to navigate.  I haven't heard anything about how these means-tested policies would be extraordinarily easy for congress to remove precisely because they don't apply to everyone.