In spite of reports to the contrary, the sky's still up there.

Badtux the Snarky Penguin has an excellent post that provides some needed context for the latest Republican concern over the sky falling:

A common thing I hear is that “we’re broke”. Except the numbers don’t say that. The U.S. is the least-taxed major economy on the planet. During the horror of peace and prosperity that was the Clinton Administration taxation reached 29% of the economy, today it is at 26.9% of the economy. The OECD average is 35%. The deficit for the last fiscal year is estimated to be at 4% of GDP, so we could eliminate the deficit by raising taxes to 30.9% of GDP. That would still be lower taxes than every Western nation including all of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and lower than Japan if you use comparable figures, though slightly higher than South Korea. And we already know how to raise taxes to 30.9% of the GDP: just eliminate the tax loopholes that allow millionaires like Mitt Romney to pay only 15% of their income as taxes when you and I pay 30% or more of our income as taxes (if you count all taxes, including sales taxes, state taxes, property taxes, and Social Security/Medicare taxes).

As for the notion of the accumulated deficit being too high, the accumulated deficit currently stands at around 100% GDP. As in, if we paid off the entire accumulated deficit over the next 30 years similar to the way you’d pay off the mortgage on a house, we’d have to raise taxes roughly by 3.3% of GDP to do it, and we’d *still* be less taxed than the OECD average. Of course, there’s no real reason to do so since current Treasury bond offerings are going for 0% effective interest. As long as people are willing to let us use their money for nothing, why pay it back?

In other words, the notion that the United States is “broke” is utter nonsense. The numbers simply don’t support such a statement. The numbers are the numbers (and BTW, I got most of those numbers from the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s web site, so don’t claim the numbers aren’t the numbers).

Too bad it had to end...

So what did you all think of the ending of Breaking Bad? Personally, I felt that everything was wrapped up a bit too tightly without enough loose ends. But all told, it was a great show. I hate to see it go.

Global warming

Another IPCC summary for policy makers titled "Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis" is now out. The basic message seems to be that change is significant, far-reaching, and caused by human beings.

Is the world's policeman retiring?

If the Syrian accord goes through and Iranian-U.S. relations thaw, Obama will be able to declare some major foreign policy successes, taking some of the wind out of the sails of Republicans hawks and naysayers during the next election cycle. That said, the U.S. military, if it's going to continue its skimming of all the cream from atop the U.S. economic pie, will have to justify its existence somehow. Since the U.S. public doesn't have much appetite for African adventures, this would leave the Middle East. Unfortunately (for the masters of war), the American public has seen the movie countless times. I'm not so sure they'll sit quietly through yet another rerun.

Warren on the plan to break up mega-banks

The Seager equation

The shift in the quest to detect extraterrestrial life is rightly shifting toward the detection of any type of life--to include the unintelligent kind that swims in mud puddles. Centauri Dreams has a post on Sara Seager's new reformulation of the Drake Equation:

In Seager’s view, there is at least “a remote shot” that we’ll detect a biosignature within the next ten years. Inferring some kind of life on a distant world isn’t like being handed the password to the Encyclopedia Galactica, but it would tell us that life is not confined to our own world.

How striking to think that the first discovery of life elsewhere may come from the light of a distant exoplanet rather than from an object in our own Solar System! But ponder: Seager is talking about a possible biosignature detection within a mere ten years. Are we likely to have unambiguous evidence of life on Mars, Europa or any other nearby object as soon as that?

This is exciting stuff. To think that we could be just a decade away from seeing our first sign of distant life in the universe!

"I feel as if I should be doing something now..."

Dilbert, which usually isn't a very political comic strip, has been repeatedly poking fun at the government in the wake of revelations of government spying on the U.S. public.

The last strip is truly a masterpiece of sardonic humor!