Keep an Eye on the Bull at All Times

I broke that cardinal rule today, and I've got a beat up body to show for it.  This bull has seemed much more temperamental than the last one, but I didn't thin k of that when I climbed over a six-foot wooden gate to bust a non-working tank heater out of the ice in the water trough.  After pounding the ice a few times with a wood post, I was trying to pry the heater up when the bull hit me in the crotch with his head.  He knocked me off balance and pinned me against the gate. Each time he pulled back to hit me again, I scrambled to get better footing.  It was a little worrisome waiting while he pinned me until another instant of freedom before he struck again.  Finally, I was able to scramble up the gate and get to safety.  I've got to keep him a few more months to get my cows bred back, but he's worn out his welcome at the farm.

Browns Have Paid or Owe $49 Million to Fired Coaches

Plain Dealer:

Coach	Yrs. after fired	Sum owed
Chris Palmer	3 years	$3 million
Butch Davis	3 years	$12 million
Romeo Crennel	3 years	Approx. $10 million
Eric Mangini	2 years	$7.8 million
Pat Shurmur	2 years left	About $5.6 million
Rob Chudzinski	3 years left	$10.5 million
Source: Various media reports

 ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Monday the Browns owed Chudzinski about $10.5 million over the next three years. Shurmur was due roughly $5.6 million at the time of his dismissal.
Since 2001, the Browns have gone through only one season (2008) without compensating a former head coach not to blow a whistle or design a game plan. By the end of 2016, they will have paid for 16 years of non-service from the pink-slipped six.
The most expensive buyout: Butch Davis, who Randy Lerner still owed $12 million at the time of his 2004 firing. The cheapest buyout: Chris Palmer, who the late Al Lerner owed $3 million over three years beginning in 2001. Remember, these figures don't include monies paid to coordinators and assistant coaches.
Since their 1999 return, the Browns have two winning seasons, one playoff appearance and no post-season victories to show for their investment.

That is the most ridiculous aspect of teams firing their coaches after a poor season.  It is bad enough that the team appears rudderless and lacking in any plan on how to improve, but then they have to shell out tons of money for guys they determined weren't good enough to keep around.  Honestly, why do teams give a new coach a 4 year contract?  No offense, but shouldn't Rob Chudzinski be pretty damn happy with getting paid $3 million for less than a year's work?  Why does he need guaranteed nearly $14 million to take the job?  That is obscene.  I guess it is nice work if you can get it.

Bye, Bye Incandescent Bulbs

Hello, energy savings:

The whining about government thugs limiting light bulb choices has mainly disappeared to the libertarian loon fringe, where I found my classmate from high school and Galtian Hero/Postal Worker (I know, wtf?) moaning about not being able to waste massive amounts of heat while lighting his home (and getting to burn his fingers if he grabs the wrong bulb to change after turning off the light).  He also made a comment about not having a Hazmat suit to clean up if the bulb breaks.  I tried to point out the benefits of moving from 130 year-old technology and offered that he still had the option of lighting dollar bills on fire instead of burning them secondhand through outdated illumination methods, but he was still kind of bummed out.  It would seem to me that a political ideology based on "rational" decision-making might lean toward electrical efficiency, but apparently, I would be wrong.  Oh well.

Why The Dairy Cliff Won't Materialize

Because it would be a stupid pain in the ass:

U.S. farm law is set by a 1949 act that includes hefty price supports for dairy farmers. Those supports were once needed because dairy prices often weren’t high enough to cover the costs of production. The law directs the federal government to buy milk, butter and cheese, artificially inflating prices to prop up farmers.
But the “permanent law” is superseded by the farm bills Congress is supposed to pass roughly every five years. Not surprisingly, the current Congress has had some trouble reaching an agreement this time around, and the farm bill is now ridiculously late. A one-year extension at the end of last year wasn’t enough, and congressional leaders have said the bill will be taken up in January. Theoretically, that means a reversion to the “permanent law,” which would force the Department of Agriculture to start buying dairy products at (perhaps) about double their current prices on January 1. Hence the headlines warning that a gallon of milk is about to shoot up to anywhere between $6 and $9 a gallon, depending on which account you believe. There were even more scary “dairy cliff” headlines last year, before the extension was passed. We weren’t any close to the edge then than we are now.
Like the debt ceiling, the “permanent law” carries the “threat that it’s such a goofy law that Congress will pass a new one and rewrite the rules and not go back to the old rules,” Kent Olson, a University of Minnesota Extension economist, told Minnpost.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, though, has said that he won’t implement “permanent law” as long as Congress continues debating the farm bill in January, which they will be doing. And even if we were to go over the dairy cliff, Vilsack has any number of options for stalling price supports. It’s not like the federal government can suddenly just start buying (and storing) vast amounts of dairy products.

The Farm Bill is one of the better examples that Congress is full of clowns.  They've had forever to bang out a farm bill, and they are still unable to get anything done.  And the kicker is that the reactionary morons from rural areas in the House decided to hack the food stamps out of the bill, which was the only reason the Congressmen representing areas with sustainable population densities had any interest in passing a Farm Bill.  What a bunch of asshats.

In Which I Agree With Alan Greenspan

I know, it sounds crazy, but:

Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value

I think this is pretty accurate:

 Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Bitcoin prices are unsustainably high after surging 89-fold in a year and that the virtual money isn’t currency. “It’s a bubble,” Greenspan, 87, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from Washington. “It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.”

The worst part about it is that computers are just burning up electricity doing useless calculations to mine Bitcoins.  You may as well get them for collecting your own shit.  People are stupid.

Investment Bubble Chart of the Day

Here you go:

 You know, I don't know about much, but Bitcoin is a joke.

The Other Ford Brother

Lots of people see the resemblance:

Mayor Ford on 60 Minutes

At least SNL's version of it:


Update: A more serious look at the Toronto mayor's recent lunacy.

We Need Better Legislators

Rep. John Becker has a stupid idea:

House Bill 340, sponsored by Rep. John Becker, R-Union Twp., would exempt all firearms manufactured and sold in Ohio from federal law and regulation. Firearms produced in Ohio would be stamped “Made in Ohio.” The bill excludes machine guns, bombs and weapons that cannot be operated solely by one person.
Becker’s not sure which federal laws or restrictions would be impacted by the changes he’s proposing but said the bill will do two things:

• Assert Ohio’s sovereignty to an increasingly intrusive federal government
• Encourage firearm manufacturers to open up shop in Ohio

“[The feds] use the Commerce Clause or General Welfare clause to effectively make the Constitution do and say anything they want it to do or say, which is very much the opposite of the original intent of the Constitution,” Becker said.
The bill cites the Second, Ninth and Tenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution to justify the change.
Montana passed a “Firearm Freedom Act” in 2009, and other states have passed similar legislation: Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming. Nearly identical legislation failed to move out of an Ohio House committee in 2009. That bill had about 10 more cosponsors than the three who have signed on to Becker’s.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials told Montana firearm manufacturers that federal law supercedes the Montana law and pro-gun rights groups there have filed suit against the feds. Two courts ruled in favor of the government, and the pro-gun groups plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

So just a couple quick questions, how does Rep. Becker propose to make sure these "Made in Ohio" guns don't enter interstate commerce and would this mean an Ohioan would not be able to take this gun with him out of state?  Really, there is no need to take this legislation seriously, because it isn't serious.  The guy doesn't even know which laws he's proposing the guns would be exempt from.  Could we just not propose stupid bills?  Just a tip, if similar bills are only passed in states such as Arizona, Idaho, Kansas or Tennessee probably are pretty stupid and/or unconstitutional laws.  Luckily, most Ohio Republican leaders are smart enough to bottle stupidity like this up in committee.

What the State of Northern Colorado Would Look Like

 Pacific Standard:

 North Colorado would contain just over 350,000 people, making it by far the smallest state in the union. (Neighboring Wyoming has over 550,000.) About 1.6 percent of its residents would identify as African American; 15 percent would be Latino. The state would have a median income of about $24,000. Its most populous city would be Greeley, with fewer than 100,000 residents.
This state would be overwhelmingly rural and not terribly wealthy. It would lack many of the attractions (ski resorts, waterways, mountains, etc.) that bring tourist dollars to Colorado, and it would be cut off from various forms of public support the region now receives from Denver. So why build it?
Because this is what frustrated minority party activists do when they see the other party taking control of the state government and moving the state in a direction that seems alien to them. In this case, it is a response to the Democratic-controlled state government enacting firearms restrictions and renewable energy requirements.

What a ridiculous idea.  Manhattan has five times as many people in a 26 square mile area.  And yet, if this were to become a reality, which it won't, these 350,000 people would have the same representation in the Senate as the approximately 38 million people in California.  That makes a fuckload of sense.

Our Health Care System Sucks

So says conservative apostate Josh Barro:

And while we enjoy those high costs and middling quality, we leave one in seven U.S. residents without a good way to pay for health care they might need — care that is drastically more expensive here than it would be anywhere else on a pre-insurance basis.
In a sane world, "This health reform plan will make America like France!" would be praise, not a dire warning.
But instead, politicians run around talking about how wonderful American health care is. Republicans have a de-facto agenda of opposing any reform to the health insurance system. Democrats are reduced to lying and saying their reform efforts won't change anything for people who like the coverage they have, because huge numbers of Americans have decided for some insane reason that they like the crazy expensive, often spotty, not-especially-effective coverage they have.
I support Obamacare because I believe it will improve our terrible health care system on the margins. Subsidies will tend to be shifted toward people who need them and away from those who don't. More people will be covered. Modest cost control improvements will be implemented, such as through a tax on high-cost plans and new payment systems that encourage providers to focus on producing good outcomes rather than providing expensive treatments.
But the real problem with Obamacare is that it does not change the American health care system enough in the direction of other countries' systems. Republicans are wrong to warn that Obamacare will turn America's health care system into a European-style one. I wish they were right.

Amen.  We have a health care system.  It isn't the best in the world.  It is the most expensive in the world.  It would probably help if we took a look at how other first-world countries ran their health care systems and tried to emulate them.  Instead we've got to pretend our system is great because we are morons.

I'm Outta Here

That's what rural areas in some liberal states are saying:

The map says this is northern California, so mapmakers and visitors might be a bit confused about a sign claiming this is the State of Jefferson.
"The State of Jefferson, as originally envisioned, would be the same size as, say, New Mexico," said Geri Byrne, Chairman of the Modoc County Board of Supervisors, which passed a resolution in September to leave California and help form the State of Jefferson. "It would be, like, the 44th largest state, and the 44th largest by population, too."
A newspaper poll in Siskiyou County next door showed overwhelming support after that county's board also voted to leave California: 66 percent for secession, 22 percent against, 11 percent not sure.
And the sentiment is spreading to other counties across northern California.
It is fed by anger across rural America . . . a mood of us-against-them, against big cities that increasingly dominate state legislatures, passing laws some say ignore rural needs.
Bryne said that regulations on agriculture and timber harvesting have a direct impact on their community. "Our local economies in rural California are basically dependent on ranching, farming, timber, hunting, fishing. And every time, you know, we make bureaucratic decisions that impact that, we destroy the economies of northern -- the North State."....
Listened to or not, these modern-day movements are popping up from Maryland to the upper peninsula of Michigan to northern Colorado.
In northern Colorado this Tuesday, voters in 11 counties will decide about letting their county commissioners explore breaking away from the state. Opinions are mixed.
"It's divisive," said one man. "Pretty soon, we'll have 100 states, potentially."
Joy Beuer told Petersen the Colorado counties should be allowed to secede. "Because we are not getting heard," she said.
A forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, drew a full house in Weld County.
"Something's changed in the last decade," said county commissioner Sean Conway. "The Colorado we grew up in, the Colorado we love, has changed."
Chuck Sylvester's family started a farm in 1869, which he and his wife, Roni, still run. Now he lives in a Colorado with legalized marijuana, new gun control regulations, and civil unions for gays.
"In my job that I had, I had many people of different sexual preferences," Sylvester said. "And some of them were like sons and daughters to me, I thought so much about. But it is defined by God in the Bible that marriage is between a man and a woman. Don't change that."
"So that wasn't your culture when this was being dealt with, as in your beliefs?" asked Petersen.
"Yeah, that's very correct," he replied.
Petersen asked Brinkley, "When I hear the word 'values' by people in rural areas, is this part of what's at play, that our culture has really changed dramatically?"
"Absolutely," he replied. "Anybody who's a hardened secessionist, in the end, you're going to find just doesn't like 'the other.' And 'the other' tends to be people with different colored skin or different cultural values than the ones they grew up with in their particular county."

I hate to break it to them, but most of these areas would be worse off on their own.  They get lots of money for their roads and schools from people in the other parts of their states.  They pay less in taxes than what they get back in spending.  And they want out mainly because of the gays and the blacks.  Well these rural folks have to realize, they are a minority, too.  Suck it up.  A couple laws you don't like aren't enough to screw yourself over about.  I was hoping that one positive outcome (the only one) from the flooding in Northern Colorado would be a realization that we're all in this together, and that while we might not agree on everything, at least when we need something, people are there to help.  Apparently, that wasn't an outcome of the flooding.  What would be interesting is if, say Research Triangle said screw all these rural idiots in North Carolina, we're setting up our own state.  That would highlight how dependent rural areas are on the more prosperous and populous areas of their states, and that dissatisfaction with a political majority cuts both ways.

Not a Good Day

This:

I was getting over a little bit for a car when the combine started sliding down the ditch and into the worst wet hole you could imagine.  It was tipped far enough over that the front wheel was spinning and throwing some smoke about time I got the hydrostatic turned off.  We tried pulling on it with two tractors, but it was getting buried deeper.  Eventually, we got a wrecker out there, and working with a tractor and the wrecker, we got it out.  I tell you what, climbing up that ladder and then walking down a really steep slope into the cab felt really weird.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day than today.  I'd say the odds are in my favor that it will be.

Way To Go, House Republicans

The Des Moines Register points out ways Iowans were hurt by the House Republicans government shutdown:

One of the important take­aways from the government’s limited shutdown was this: While lots of people like to complain about the federal government, there is little agreement on what less government should look like.
Folks around Moville who suffered tornado damage recently were frustrated that the government representatives whose reports were needed for federal disaster assistance weren’t there when they were needed.
Some of the businesses in West Branch, home to the Herbert Hoover birthplace and presidential library, were frustrated that tourists stopped coming to the government attraction and their sales declined precipitously.
Scientists at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, the U.S. government’s largest facility to track and deal with livestock diseases, were concerned that their long-term experiments were jeopardized because no one was tending their laboratories.
Officials at the University of Iowa began formulating contingency plans in case the shutdown continued and they had to end tens of millions of dollars in medical and scientific studies conducted there for the federal government.
In Des Moines, Gov. Terry Branstad’s staff was well aware that a prolonged shutdown had far-reaching implications for the state. Nearly every state agency relies to some extent on money from Washington. In fiscal year 2012, the cost of operating state government and programs that 3 million Iowans depend on was about $14.6 billion, with $6.5 billion of that coming from the federal government.
Without the federal government, Iowa would lose almost all its money for nursing home inspectors and services to foster care families. The state would have to find other ways to get food to seniors and low-income people. Needy college students would have to find other ways to pay for their schooling — or do without.
But that’s not all. There were delays in processing disability benefits, performing food safety inspections and investigating transportation accidents. Some businesses were unable to import and export goods. The nation’s king crab fishing fleet remained in port because there were no federal workers to set quotas for their catches.

There was some talk by Republicans that they might raise the debt ceiling for six weeks but leave the government shut down.  They are lucky that the Democrats didn't let them do that, because they would have looked pretty damn stupid as more and more people realized how they were negatively impacted by the shutdown.  Yes, a functioning society needs government, and Republicans would do well to remember that.

Business Interests Consider Targeting Tea Party

Wonkblog:

Now that the shutdown and debt-ceiling fight have exposed a rift in the Republican Party, lines are being drawn in the battle for control: On one side, there is Boehner and his circle of powerful business allies. On the other, tea party lawmakers and activist groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth.
“I don’t know of anybody in the business community who takes the side of the Taliban minority,” said Dirk Van Dongen, longtime chief lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, who has known Boehner since the lawmaker’s first election.
In the hallways of the country’s leading trade associations, there is talk about taking on tea party Republicans in at least three states. (Michigan, Alabama and Idaho)

Please God, could the business lobby find somebody with half a brain to take on Jim Jordan (Dumbfuck-OH).  Preferably somebody who, unlike Jordan, hasn't spent his whole career pulling a government salary to attack people who depend on the government to get by as ne'er-do-wells.  Pot-Kettle.

Quote of the Day

“The president gets up every day and reads the newspaper and thanks God that Ted Cruz is in the United States Senate,” a Republican senator pointedly told Cruz at a closed-door meeting.

The President and Jon Stewart.  The rest of the country, not so much.

Hahahahahahahahaha

So this government shutdown was for what?  Obamacare is still in place (although it is struggling mightily, and might be the biggest story on the news if Republicans weren't able to make the most incompetent Democrats look like Goddamn geniuses) and Republicans got pretty much jackshit out of their "negotiations" .  So we went through 16 days of bullshit sideshows like the World War II Memorial circus, and the evidence comes in that if my Congressman, John Boehner, had brought the original Senate bills to the floor, we never would have had a government shutdown.  But the thing is, the Republicans made themselves look so damn stupid all on their own.  This was the world's biggest unforced error. 

I have been wondering something about the WWII monument clusterfuck.  Tea Partiers claim to be big fans of history.  Yet, they didn't realize that in the last government shutdown the National Park service shut down the D.C. memorials?  And did they realize that the same big government that they hate now was much more omnipresent during World War II?  The government then had a much higher debt to GDP ratio, dictated what industry would build, built factories to manufacture more products for government purchase, rationed fuel and food, installed price and wage controls, enforced mandatory conscription, taxed incomes at rates up to 90%, enforced blackouts at night and generally made Barack Obama look like a reactionary.  How can they shut down the government, make some ridiculous scene about the government blocking veterans from their memorial because the government they shut down is shut down, and then talk about how much freedom we've lost compared to when those same veterans were young.  How is that for cognitive dissonance?  These guys claim to be patriots, but they are the Southern Democrats of 1861.

This is What You Get When You Vote for Morons

The House Republicans can't even agree amongst themselves on a proposal to settle this fuckup they (along with that narcissistic prick Ted Cruz) brought on.  Josh Barro isn't surprised:

Roughly one-third of this caucus thinks hitting the debt ceiling and shutting down the government are great strategies to try to stop Obamacare. The other two-thirds of the party has realized all along that this strategy sucks, but they could not find any way to stop their party from implementing it — even though these "reasonable" Republicans outnumber the crazies....
Can you imagine the situation this country would be in if Republicans controlled both houses of Congress right now? Or if we had a President whose administration gets jerked around by Heritage Action in the same way that House Republicans do? It would be a trainwreck, and "reasonable" Republicans like Nunes would still be on television saying they understand it's a trainwreck, but by golly, operationally, they had no way to stop it.
There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power.
A party that is this bad at tactics can't be expected to be any good at policy-making.

Voting for Republicans to run the government is like putting arsonists in charge of the fire department.  These idiotic, mouth breathing, Dominionist, dumbfuck assholes have no business being in charge of a Neighborhood Watch or a church council, let alone being the deciding votes on whether to allow a completely unnecessary default on our national debt. If you look at the Tea Party caucus very closely, you'll see some of the dumbest people to ever serve in Washington.  Unfortunately, we may just find out how dangerous that many incompetent morons in power can be.

Hopefully, the Senate, along with Democrats and what few sane Republicans are in the House, will be able to get something done to prevent a financial meltdown for no reason other than letting bed wetters play with matches.

More Rural Voters Threaten Secession From State

This time it's Western Maryland, and not Northern Colorado:

Strzelczyk, a father of five from New Windsor, Maryland, told the conservative Tea Party group in Westminster, about 50 miles north of Washington, that the uphill fight for secession was essential because of gerrymandering by Democrats.
"We are basically enslaved to one political party. There is no simple way around that," Strzelczyk said in a movie-themed mall restaurant, with a life-size cutout of John Wayne as part of the backdrop.
He was also fed up with rising fees and taxes and a state land-use plan he sees as government meddling. But the last straw, he said, was the state's passage this year of one of the toughest gun control laws in the country.
Maryland's five western counties - Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Carroll and Frederick - stretching east from the Allegheny Mountains, stand in sharp contrast to urban areas centered on Baltimore and the Washington suburbs.
Census Bureau figures show the area has 11 percent of Maryland's population of 5.9 million and much of it has significantly lower median income than the state as a whole. It has a much higher percentage of white residents, compared with 58 percent of the state overall.
Garrett County Commissioner Gregan Crawford said the mountainous county had good relations with the state capital Annapolis, and with Washington, and had received extra state money for education and sports events.
"When you look at the reality of what it would take to secede, it's really, I think, a folly," Crawford said.
A spokeswoman for Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley had no comment on the Western Maryland Initiative.

Well at least Northern Colorado has a bunch of oil and gas money coming in.  These guys are being subsidized by the rest of the state and are still wanting to leave.  Things are tough enough in rural areas without folks trying to make themselves worse off.  I just don't understand these folks.

Jordan vs. Boehner

Rolling Stone lays out the battle lines: 

As leadership struggled to corral the class of 2010, a fellow congressman from Boehner's home state of Ohio seized the advantage. Jordan, the RSC chair, recruited 78 freshmen into his fold. The RSC suddenly comprised a majority of the majority party, and Jordan found himself in a position of tremendous power and leverage, concepts that the wiry but broad-shouldered third-term congressman understood in his bones – he won two NCAA championships wrestling in the 134-pound class.
Boehner never knew what hit him. The speaker would soon suffer two stinging defeats at the hands of Jordan and the RSC. The first came during the 2011 debt-ceiling battle, when Boehner shut out his conference to negotiate with President Obama a $4 trillion "grand bargain" that combined modest tax increases with draconian spending cuts. By any objective standard of Washington deal making, Boehner had extracted extraordinary concessions from a sitting Democratic president.
Believing the old rules of Washington still applied, Boehner was confident that where he led, House Republicans would follow. But Jordan's RSC simply wouldn't abide any deal that raised taxes, and more than 170 members were united against the speaker. If Boehner pressed ahead, the Grand Bargain could only pass with a majority of Democratic votes – a scenario that Cantor feared would spark a mutiny. So he spiked Boehner's deal. "We were preventing the speaker from making a bad mistake for himself and the rest of the leadership team," a former leadership aide tells Rolling Stone.
Jordan's intransigence forced Republican leaders and the president to settle on a smaller, cuts-only package that cost America its AAA credit rating and created the blunt across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. Jordan and more than 60 House radicals opposed even that final deal, but he still claimed victory: "Conservatives stood firm," he gloated. "We [forced] Washington to begin addressing its spending­driven debt crisis."
Jordan beat Boehner again a year later during the fight over the expiring Bush tax cuts. In December 2012, the speaker introduced a compromise measure to preserve the Bush rates for incomes of less than $1 million.

I really don't understand who Jordan is fighting for.  Why would he care about folks who make more than $1 million a year.  His district just isn't very well-off.  Not only that, but he doens't have much more than government pension assets (ironic) of his own.  He is just one of the religious nut true believers.  What is his plan?  God only knows:

 Even the men who put this chaos in motion have admitted they don't have a strategy for the endgame. They just wanted to put the ball in play. Speaking on September 19th, after the House had all but guaranteed a federal shutdown, Jordan invoked the coach of the NFL's New England Patriots. "Even Belichick," he said, "doesn't script out the whole game."

What a fucktard.