The Dallas Morning News is reporting that a paramedic who was one of the first responders to the fertilizer plant explosion was arrested for possession of a destructive device.

Let me preview all of the talking head arguments coming up about this:

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CON: See, you stupid hippies said this was about workplace safety and blamed Texas for lax safety rules, but it was a criminal!

LIB: He’s white! So you called him a criminal instead of a terrorist! Are you going to see if he’s connected to al qaeda! Ha! No.
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First, this doesn’t disprove that there are problems with worker safety in Texas or that this place had way more explosive material on hand than it should have, so if it had complied this would have been less of a tragedy—and the other objection we heard was to the zoning problems putting schools etc. near a factory with explosive materials which works either way.

Second, unless there’s any indication he’s connected to terrorists or a militia, he’s just a terrorist on his own. By being the paramedic showing up to his own bombing (if that’s what happened), I think we have a psycho narcissist who might have been trying to copy the love we saw in Boston right before.

Third, the Boston bombers were connected to anti-American groups, but seem fantastically incompetent compared with the 9/11 folks or the operations being carried out against our troops abroad.

But, in the event he is connected with some fringe or militia movement, I hope people take notice.

Also, too, some kind of worker safety rules in Texas aren’t a bad idea, no matter what.

Yes, his comments about Keynes were shitty argument and homophobic, but don’t forget to see the underlying argument here.

Keynes is famous for saying, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” This is his justification for expansionary policies in the present, even if they accrue debt later. More classic economists’ formulas don’t see much difference between spending now and spending later; it still has to be paid back.

Of course this highlights the sociopathy of classical economics: it not only discounts the human suffering that contractionary policy causes in the present, but when you say in retort that the future debts can be inflated away, they then want to bend reality to avoid inflation. This second point is the whole ballgame in my opinion: classical economists depart from any pretext of empirical science whenever the rentier/creditor/wealthy class’s entitlements are threatened. Some (few, I think) actually believe that this security in their property helps everyone, but in our political discourse it is mostly used as an ideological justification for kicking poors.

Remember this next time you hear a deficit scold talking about “our children having to pay off our debts.” It sounds like a good argument until you realize our kids wouldn’t have to pay it off at the same real value if they (the deficit scolds) weren’t agents of non-producing wealth trying to prevent inflation no matter what pain it inflicts on 99% of us. Also, too, they would have a growing and expanding economy giving them better and more secure jobs to pay it off with if we weren’t destroying it and the middle class so that the Koch brother’s ill gotten gains retain the same buying power.

So, the homphobic stab at Keynes—about him not having kids because he is teh icky geh—is as much about being a homophobic reptile brain as it is about keep up this legend/talking point that our kids will have to pay for our sins.

Printing more money and handing it out to everyone would solve all of our economic problems right now, but it wouldn’t tickle the ruling class’s kick-the-poors g-spot, so it won’t happen.

If you’re interested in paying down a debt that our children cannot inflate away and in doing a little suffering now to avoid a lot later, I suggest you ignore the deficit and worry about global warming.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday said Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe was plotting to kill him.

Just in the last few weeks, Evo Morales of Bolivia has decided to become a caudillo. He has taken Chile to court over sovereignty of territory Bolivia lost over 100 years ago, despite Chile giving it all kinds of privileges at the port there.

He has had the Supreme Court declare that he can run for a third term because the Constitution wasn’t in effect when he ran the first time—a common legal ploy in Latin America that was not OK when Fujimori did it.

And now he’s kicking USAID out of the country because—wait for it—they’re plotting to overthrow the government.

Chavez did a decent job of filling in the void left by an aged Castro and had the oil to do it. Morales doesn’t have shit just pissed off his most important economic neighbor trying to fill that void. Mr. Morales, I knew of Hugo Chavez. I wrote about Hugo Chavez. You, sir, are no Hugo Chavez.

This is a recounting of my first exposure as a sort-of political official. Last month, after being involved in politics for years, I managed to get appointed to something. This something consists of 7 people and has oversight over a small local government agency in rural California—let’s call the place Banana Valley.

There was a perturbed citizen who had bitter comments to make about everything on the agenda, but whose outrage was strangely shaped by some higher decency to conform to his time limits. He had no point at all. By his dress, I assume he was a high school teacher or a scientist of some kind.

There was a yokel colleague who voted in favor of one of the stupidest things in our area’s history complaining about our agency’s lack of money. Everything in government budgeting had to be just the same as his shitty construction business. Right. When it didn’t come out that way, he would say that he didn’t believe it as if he was being told that pigs could fly.

There was another colleague waxing philosophical but who was almost senile when he tried to pin down his point.

There were the employees trying to explain everything to a group of people who were just trying to find something to tear them apart for even though they were doing a good job. There were members of a different local government agency from Banana Valley trying to restrain their contempt for the members of this agency.

And most of the fighting was over trivial amounts of money.

What struck me so deeply was that the “tea party” instinct in some of these folks in order to save taxpayer money is on so many levels penny wise and pound foolish. They want them to get cheaper equipment. Then it has to be replaced. They want them to get lower paid employees. Then they need more employees to do the same work, or they get employees that are stupid.

What’s scary is that this is one of those things that nobody cares about until it doesn’t work. If this agency does nothing wrong, no one cares. The vote totals are the lowest of anything. Yet Banana Valley would be burned to the ground if it failed in another Southern California fire. And it shouldn’t be hard to prevent failure, except for these whack-packers trying to play Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.

There has to be some juice to be had in standing up for this “just make it work” for the silent majority type of philosophy, right?

I think people coming out only helps. Collectively, it seems the moral thing to do, but I don’t second guess anyone wanting to keep their private business private, much less something that is guaranteed to make them a target of hatred—even from those who are normally engaged in jock sniffing full time.

To that end, I always thought the way to do this would be to get like 50 guys from a bunch of different sports to do it all at once. It takes the focus away from one individual, and so on.

Maybe there weren’t that many guys willing to do it. I don’t know. But Martina Navratilova was out 30 years ago and I think tennis was actually more popular then.

Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Did they attend the Pinochet library opening too?

• Drum, Atrios, TAP, and DeLong are all pissing their pants about what will happen in 2014 when Obamacare goes online. They are worried that Obama will “own” the terrible healthcare system. Obama owned since he came into office, the way he owned everything. And he super, double-plus owned it the minute the law was passed. Yes, people will grumble with any and all change. The question is whether they already didn’t think he owned it.

• Hagel says Assad probably used poison gas. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons not to do anything about that, but I’m not sure any of them matter at that point. Remember, we accepted the argument in this country that if a country does that we get to invade them. Assuming this time they actually, you know, verify that and it’s actually true I don’t think the experience in Iraq makes “doing something” less likely.

What it means is that it will be a Libya/Kosovo/Bosnia style mostly air (or DR0NZ!!!) operation. I would personally just hope that it would target one man, but we don’t assassinate because then less people would die it would be destabilizing, but we do sometimes and we have in the past. Meh.

• In Venezuela, defeated presidential candidate Capriles has accused the new President of stealing the election. It was close enough to be stolen, and while the campaign rules there are completely unfair, everyone seems to say the actual vote process is good. I wouldn’t doubt the election was stolen—not because it’s a banana republic—because that, you know, can happen here. But the long game for the anti-Chavista coalition in Venezuela has always been to let Chavez fade into the past and make his successor own the fallout (which is substantial). But maybe that coalition can’t hold, or Capriles can’t stay atop it, and maybe that close of a defeat made them feel differently.