Zeebiz has the article Magic Leap has done it again; releases new video.

Magic Leap, recently released a video titled ‘Just another day in the office at Magic Leap’, that has some pretty big implications, and is hands down the most exciting thing we’ve seen in a while.

Unlike the Zeebiz article, I actually include the video under discussion.

Where is the cgi mouse?

Short List has the article World’s First Commercially Available Flamethrower is Here.

Thanks to Randy Howard Katz for posting this on Facebook.

I remarked to him:

You Californians just don’t know what ideas over 100 inches of snow can give you. This is exactly what I was thinking about. Someone told me that you can get a flamethrower at Harbor Freight. Just don’t use it on your roof to clear ice dams.

By the way, I just went online to Harbor Freight, but could not find a flame thrower.

Facebook is just a fount of knowledge. Emin Gün Sirer answered my questions about flamethrowers.

He provided the link to the article on the xkcd web site. There are a lot of fascinating calculations in the article, but I will just pull out one that is relevant to the use of a flamethrower.

Gas mileage in the US is often measured in “miles per gallon” of gasoline. With your flamethrower guzzling fuel, your mileage would be about 17 feet per gallon.

I have an 11 gallon tank that I use to supply my snowblower, generator, and lawn tractor. That would give me 187 feet before I had to go to the gas station according to the above calculation. That’s about ⅔ of my driveway.

As for using a nuclear reactor to melt the snow, the article had a nice graphical way of showing what would be required.

The New York Times gives the piece by Paul Krugman the headline Trillion Dollar Fraudsters.

The Daily Kos article that refers to this piece headlines it Paul Krugman is a Must-Read Today (Again).

My comment on The Daily Kos has the title Krugman Finally Wakes Up.

Bill Black, New Economic Perspectives, Naked Capitalism, and others have been shouting about this for years.  Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are but two of the politicians who recognized this problem years ago.

When Krugman denounces the Clintons for their part in this, then I might believe he is sincere.

There is not much wrong with Krugman’s article, and he does slip in the following:

Does this mean that all those politicians declaiming about the evils of budget deficits and their determination to end the scourge of debt were never sincere? Yes, it does.

A fact that I have been trying to point out on this blog for a long time.  In fact I have posted about this several times in the past few days.

I knew when I made my previous post, Do Not Sign the petition, Do Not Be a citizen co-sponsor of the People’s Budget, that this budget would be hawked relentlessly. Well, I can tell people “no” almost as often as they try to sell it.

The National Priorities Project has this posted on Facebook.  Here is their innocuous looking poster.

Unfortunately, this budget also promotes the myth that increased federal spending in one area must be paid for by cuts in another area. This is as if a country that is sovereign in its own fiat currency could ever run out of its own money. For that reason, I cannot support this people’s budget that legitimizes the myth’s that the oligarchs want us to believe.

A budget should promote a healthy economy, full employment, and decent standard of living for all. Under these conditions, the deficit will take care of itself. The deficit should never be used as a primary measure of the success of an economic policy.

As proof that the oligarchs do not believe the myth that they want us to believe, consider the following: even Republicans tell you that when you want to go to war to support the military/industrial complex, deficits don’t matter. By their perverted logic, deficits are only a roadblock if you try to spend the money on anything that you do not blow up in the act of using it. To put it another way, the Republicans seem to believe that you should never go into deficit to actually help anybody lead a decent, peaceful life.

Perhaps the “People’s budget” is what happens when you let budgets be created by amateurs, or by people who believe in myths, or by amateurs who believe in myths, or by oligarchs who will promote their myths one way or another.

Here is another interesting article from Juan Cole, Tom Friedman & funding ISIL: Israel/Iran Derangement Syndrome.

…If the US has to play whackamole with everyone in the Middle East who objects to the sordid goings-on in Israel/Palestine, we’ll eventually be bankrupt and without regional allies, and the region itself will collapse and present more severe security threats of the Daesh sort.

In contrast, a de facto US rapprochement with Iran to squelch the Daesh/ ISIL threat before it metastasizes further (see: Tunisia) is clearly in the interest of the United States and its people, including Jewish Americans.

Cole presents some interesting theories about the conflict in the middle-east that may be worth considering.  I don’t have the expertise to say exactly how much of his theory is historically accurate.  Probably the reason I first looked at this article was the possible attack on Tom Friedman, a famed reporter whose 15 minutes of fame was up a long time ago.  Friedman still gets undeserved respect in some circles., but fortunately Juan Cole is not afraid of him.

Informed Comment has the article Yemen Bombing: It’s not ISIL and it’s not Sunni-Shiite Conflict.

So this is political. The Houthi movement has politicized Zaidi Islam, after the Saudis politicized hard line Sunni Islam. The Houthis have all kinds of enemies now– secular Arab nationalists loyal to the Aden government, Sunnis who resent Houthi dominance of largely Sunni cities like Taizz, southern secessionists, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Any of these could have hit the mosques, not because they hate Shiism but because they oppose the Houthi take-over of Yemen’s government in the north.

I don’t know enough about this situation to pass judgment on the accuracy of the above analysis.  However, it is worth keeping in mind as an inoculation against what you will read and hear in the lame stream media.  The lame stream media has a preconceived notion as to what this is about, so they feel no need to spend any resources digging any deeper.  Besides, the lame stream media’s story helps promote more war which is  very profitable to the owners of the lame stream media.

Politico has the story Jeb Bush’s forgotten father-in-law.

Bush says his Mexican father-in-law abandoned his family to work in the U.S. That’s not how his other relatives remember it.

I know from experience that there may be a side to this story that nobody wants to talk about.  It makes it impossible to judge who is “right” and who is “wrong” in this story, without knowing whether or not there is a hidden part.

I don’t think either political side in this country gains or loses by hearing this story.  I publish a link to it more for the human interest aspects than for any other reason.

Politicus USA has the article Bernie Sanders Demands War Tax On Millionaires To Pay For GOP Military Spending Increase.  The article quotes Sanders’ statement as follows:

The Republican Party is going to have to end their hypocrisy with regard to deficits and the national debt. They are going to have to be honest with the American people. Wars are enormously expensive, not only in terms of human life and suffering, but in terms of the budget. If the Republicans want another war in the Mideast, they are going to have to tell the American people how much it will cost them and how it will be paid for.

Either the Republicans agree to pay for it, or they tell the truth about the deficit and debt.  The Republicans know full well, that under the current economic situation, the deficit could stand to be, and actually needs to be higher than it is now.  Their attempts to cut all non-war related spending on the backs of the poor and middle-class has absolutely nothing to do with the economics of deficits and debt.  It has everything to do with draining the last drop of blood from the poor and middle-class so they can give it to the top 0.1%.

Politicus USA has the article John Boehner Going To Israel To Try To Sabotage Likely Obama Nuclear Agreement With Iran.

Republicans are opening a new front in their campaign to undercut the Commander In Chief. Speaker of the House John Boehner will be going to Israel to meet with Netanyahu around the same time that the White House expects an agreement to be reached on Iran’s nuclear program.

I can only hope that Politicus USA is overestimating the perfidy of Speaker Boner, but given his past actions, that might be hard for them to do.

The Republicans will keep this up until someone shows some interest in looking into the ramifications of the Logan Act.

Why does Obama think punitive measures are the only way to get the Iranians, the Russians, the Syrians, and North Korea to talk, but he thinks sweetness and light will sway the Republicans?

CNN has the story Congress gives Obama room on Iran.

Congress is giving President Barack Obama some breathing room on nuclear talks with Iran, while Obama is appealing directly to Iranians to support a deal facing a deadline at the end of the month.

After weeks of contentious maneuvering by the Senate and the White House over a bill that would force the administration to submit any deal to a congressional vote, senators pushing the measure said Thursday they would wait an additional three weeks before bringing the legislation to the floor.

CNN had a clip of the video that I will show in its entirety below.  What CNN showed wasn’t bad, but somehow I had the feeling that I wish Obama would learn the lesson of STFU sometimes.

After watching the entire video, I see that there is a little more diplomacy and tact in the thing, but there still remains a little of the feeling of STFU. What are the idiots in this country going to make of the President speaking in a language they don’t understand? I won’t even give dignity to their thoughts by quoting the words that they will probably use.

So what are we to make of the Reuters article Deadlocked Iran nuclear talks break off, to resume next week?

Iran and six world powers suspended negotiations on a nuclear agreement and were set to meet again next week to break a deadlock over sensitive atomic research and lifting of sanctions, Western officials said on Friday.

While the negotiations have made progress over the past year and both sides appear determined to push for a deal, differences on sticking points are still wide enough to potentially prevent an agreement in the end. France was demanding more stringent restrictions on the Iranians under any deal than the other Western delegations, officials said.

Maybe this is where my thought that a little STFU would be in order.

I just ran across The Washington Post article Latest round of Iran nuclear talks end abruptly, slated to resume next week.

I quote the following excerpt mainly because it plays a key part in my comment on the article. It does not give you nearly the impression of even handed coverage that is in this article.

The Iranians, however, say the onus for the tough political decisions falls on Washington and its allies.

Zarif tweeted a message in response to Obama’s Nowruz greeting, saying, “Iranians have already made their choice: Engage with dignity. It’s high time for the U.S. and its allies to choose: pressure or agreement.”

My response to the article was:

Wow, of the three stories I have read today, this is the most complete one. It seems pretty even handed. What is amazing is that the article even covers the Iranian response to US claims that Iranians have to make tough choices. Who in this country would know that Iranians have their own opinions, too, if at least one newspaper didn’t mention it?

In fact the article was not overly optimistic like the CNN article, nor overly pessimistic like the Reuters article. The Washington Post article gave more of the information you would need to make your own judgment.