But no economy can maintain momentum just on the spending of the richest 10 percent. …
So what is Washington doing? Worse than nothing. It has now adopted the same kind of austerity economics that’s doomed Europe — cutting federal spending and reducing total demand. And the sequester doesn’t end until September 30. It takes an even bigger bite out of the federal budget next fiscal year.
Earth to Washington: The economy is slowing. The recovery is stalling. At the very least, repeal the sequester.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says treating him as an enemy combatant is appropriate “with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda.”
Hold it. Tsarnaev was arrested on American soil for acts occurring in the United States. No known evidence links him to Al Qaeda. He is Muslim — so is Graham really saying Muslims are presumed guilty until proven otherwise? …
Memo to the Xenophobe Party: The so-called “war on terror” is a war without end. If we arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trials, without lawyers, and without the protection of our system of justice, because we suspect they have ties with terrorists, where will that end? …
The horror of the Boston Marathon is real. But the xenophobic fears it has aroused are not. I would have hoped United States senators felt an obligation to calm public passions than pander to them.
He was charged with using weapons of mass destruction in the Boston Marathon bombing. But a vocal group of fans says he’s innocent and we should leave the guy alone.This is pretty weird. Thousands of young fangirls and boys of Dzhokhar are coming up with conspiracy theories which assert that although his brother may be guilty, Dzhokhar was set up, including one in which they call the innocent, young student originally from Saudi Arabia, who was initially deemed suspicious because of his ethnicity, the “ring leader.” A 20-year-old young woman named Emily Jolly draws upon some pretty bigoted beliefs to explain why she’s adamant that Dzhokhar is innocent in an interview:
“Here is a kid with no known terrorist ties,” she said. “He is nineteen years old, he’s a US citizen, he has never been in trouble with the law previously, and the main reason—there’s no motive. There’s no evidence that Jahar was a radical Islamist. He barely even attended his local mosque. What reason does he have to hate the U.S.? He’s got scholarships from the state of Massachusetts. he’s a citizen, this is his home and it has been his home since he was nine years old.”
Most terrorist attacks in the United States have been committed by non-Muslim U.S. citizens, some of them even maintained prestigious positions. I suppose that’s rather inconvenient to acknowledge though.
People are bizarre.
Yet another massacre has occurred in the historically war-torn region of the Southern United States – and so soon after the religious festival of Easter.
Brian McConkey, 27, a Christian fundamentalist militiaman living in the formerly occupied territory of Alabama, gunned down three men from an opposing tribe in the village square near Mobile, the capitol, over a discussion that may have involved the rituals of the local football cult. In this region full of heavily-armed local warlords and radical Christian clerics, gun violence is part of the life of many.
Many of the militiamen here are ethnic Scots-Irish tribesmen, a famously indomitable mountain people who have killed civilized men – and each other – for centuries. It appears that the wars that started on the fields of Bannockburn and Sterling have come to America.
As the sun sets over the former Confederate States of America, one wonders – can peace ever come to this land?
AMAZING. This should be in fucking high school history textbooks!!!!
Imagine that you are the manager at a small factory.
As the manager, you oversee around 100 employees daily and it’s your job to not only maintain production quotas, but to design project ideas, organize teams, and provide quarterly evaluations of your workers.
The problem? Every time that you…
US official says 77 inmates now on hunger strike over jailing without charge or trial, nearly half of total population.
Nation Starting To Realize New Era Of American Innovation Never Gonna Happen
The biggest economic debate is between Keynesians (who want more government spending and lower interest rates in order to fuel demand) and supply-side “austerics” (who want lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to boost incentives to hire and invest, and who see government deficits…
Should NASA fake an interplanetary holy war?
Neil deGrasse Tyson is probably the last person to suggest NASA falsify the threat of alien invasion to play on humanity’s fears. I also doubt he’d suggest that the space agency exploit America’s religious conservative movement with “proof” that said aliens are governed by demons.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s you and I go there.
Along with my Stuff to Blow Your Mind co-host Julie Douglas, I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Tyson on the motivators for space exploration and his upcoming book “Space Chronicles.”
He stressed that while the whole “exploration is in our DNA” argument is fine and dandy for multibillion-dollar space projects, it simply doesn’t work past the $10 billion funding ceiling. Here’s what he had to say:
“The only drivers that really stimulate people to spend money are war and economics — and the third one, which is less common today, is the praise of royalty or deity. There was a day when you could invoke one or both of those and get anything done. You get the pyramids and all the church building in Europe, the cathedrals of England. You could do that if there is a power above you that you fear or you want to praise. But that doesn’t happen much anymore. That leaves war and economics.”
In the interview (available here), Tyson goes on to discuss economics. But what about that war option? Rather than engage in another Cold War space race to the moon, why not pull a page from the Orson Welles playbook and fake the threat of an alien invasion? Heck, Noble Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman jests that it might just fix the U.S. economy:
“If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months.”
We can do better. As Tyson pointed out, the praise of royalty or deity is what really motivates us to get things done. If NASA were to frame the alien threat as a demonic one, might that motivate the U.S. evangelical movement to back space exploration? How else are we going to fund SETI surveillance to intercept satanic dispatches from deep space?
Plus, we should probably send a manned mission to Mars just to make sure the aliens don’t use it as an invasion base.
In an Aug. 24, 2011 “Fresh Air” interview on NPR, author Rachel Tabachnick discussed how politically influential members of the evangelical New Apostolic Reformation believe that demonic forces control the “seven mountains of culture” and must be defeated to ensure God’s rule on this demon-haunted world.
If NASA should prove those demons are headquartered on Kepler-16b, all the better, right? Pass the collection plate.
About the author: Robert Lamb is a senior writer and podcaster at HowStuffWorks, where he co-hosts Stuff to Blow Your Mind with Julie Douglas. He has a love for monsters, an aversion to slugs and a hankering for electronic music.
Originally published at STBYM: Should NASA fake an interplanetary holy war?
