1/ Frank Rich, the best Times columnist, on the challenging premise that Christine O'Donnell is a useful foil for the Republican party to divert attention from the quiet purchase of the Tea Party by the oligarchs.....the Koch brothers should love O'Donnell...
Excellent article for anyone interested in American politics......
But surely the larger motive for his retreat was the dawning recognition of just how valuable O’Donnell is to the G.O.P.’s national aspirations in November — even should she ultimately lose her own race in blue Delaware. Whatever her other talents, she’s more than willing to play the role of useful idiot for her party. She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.
2/ Two British articles about the President....
The first is the idea that Jon Stewart is now Obama's fiercest critic......a point of view I would have to dispute, but there is certainly some truth to Jon's disillusionment with the President.....
But over the past year Stewart, who was a notable supporter of Obama in the presidential election campaign of 2008, has taken an increasingly strident tone on a wide range of White House policies, from the war in Afghanistan to gay rights and the economy.
Last week Stewart twice took on Obama head-on in brutal attacks during his trademark monologues at the start of the Daily Show. On Wednesday night he lambasted the president and the Democrats for their lack of backbone when it came to standing up to Republicans. "We came, we saw, we sucked," Stewart mockingly quipped.
The outburst created waves and prompted the influential gossip website Gawker to describe the incident under the headline, "The night Jon Stewart turned on President Obama".
The second is a realistic assessment of the core Democratic Party, demoralised and disenchanted with the Administration......
Alas, Democrats these days need a lot of firing up. The standard wisdom of this campaign is that the party's biggest problem is a reinvigorated Republican Party, goaded on by ultra-conservative Tea Partiers, that has become the vehicle for the country's anger and frustration. But the real difficulty faced by Messrs Biden and Obama is the mirror image – the disappointment and apathy of the liberal Democratic base, whose enthusiasm swept them to power just 23 months ago.
3/ The financial system
After all of the BS about the Finance bill that ground it's way through the Senate, with giveaways to lobbyists at every turn, what has changed in the system that makes us safer? The answer is .....nada....it's still the same....we, the taxpayers, are still in hock to the banks and financial oligarchs and guaranteeing their bets......they are still laughing, and wait till the bonuses get paid at the end of the year......bigger than last year, I'll bet.....
As such, Dodd-Frank specifically provides that “in unusual or exigent circumstances,” the Federal Reserve may provide such entities with a financial backstop, including borrowing privileges.
Remember this: Financial backstop is just another term for a taxpayer bailout. And the major banks and brokerage firms are the members of the clearinghouses, so a backstop would essentially be for them.
According to the Bank for International Settlements, the entire derivatives market had a gross credit exposure of $3.5 trillion at the end of 2009. Obviously, even a small fraction of that amount could represent a sizable call on the taxpayers if a clearinghouse hit the skids.
So much for eradicating too-big-to-fail.
4/ Good grief - Justin Bieber has been unmasked as a 51 year old pedophile in disguise.....amazing story with footage of the beast singing Justin's songs....from Onion News....
5/ A British University has estimated the annual loss of the planet's wetlands and tropical rainforests to cost in the order of $5 trillion a year.....a startling number, but no matter how they arrived at this astonishing figure nothing is being done about the degradation of our world....nothing. And no government appears to give a shit......
Oh well.....I'm over 50 [OK OK 60] so it won't matter to me......but where's the anger, the passion in the youngsters about the mess we're leaving them?
The UK Government is championing a new system to identify the financial value of natural resources, and the potential hit to national economies if they are lost. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) project has begun to calculate the global economic costs of biodiversity loss. Initial results paint a startling picture. The loss of biodiversity through deforestation alone will cost the global economy up to $4.5trn (£2.8trn) each year – $650 for every person on the planet, and just a fraction of the total damage being wrought by overdevelopment, intensive farming and climate change.
6/ A scary story about how Big Pharma has been pushing anti-psychotic drugs like they are aspirin. I am touching wood right now that I don't need to take any medications for anything, but if I did I would be doing some research about any prescription drug I was prescribed.
This year, with a decent person in charge of the FDA [not an industry hack that we had for the last 8 years] it's coming out that every trial, every test, every sampling the drug companies have used to get their new drugs approved is bullshit. So whatever you're taking, look at it.......cut down your dosage, think about the side effects........protect yourself against the drug companies. They ONLY care about money......
And if you're taking Lipitor, you're nuts. Get off it.....
Big Pharma got behind them in the 1990s, when they were still seen as treatments for the most serious mental illnesses, like hallucinatoryschizophrenia, and recast them for much broader uses, according to previously confidential industry documents that have been produced in a variety of court cases.
Anointed with names like Abilify and Geodon, the drugs were given to a broad swath of patients, from preschoolers to octogenarians. Today, more than a half-million youths take antipsychotic drugs, and fully one-quarter of nursing-home residents have used them. Yet recent government warnings say the drugs may be fatal to some older patients and have unknown effects on children.
7/ Music Video
Ke$ha with "Take it Off".....red hot music star [hot indeed] with a video that looks like a zombie movie in wasteland Los Angeles....or Vegas.....or Ciudad Juarez.......
8/ Are you pregnant? Know someone who's expecting? Neighbor, relative?
You may want to read this one about what affects an unborn child.....
If it's true it's quite depressing, as the solution to the poverty trap is better pre-natal care, which lower income mothers don't get and given the mood of the country towards the poor [get a job!] things aren't likely to improve.....
We are so screwed.....the IQ level will keep sinking......
Perhaps the most striking finding is that a stressful uterine environment may be a mechanism that allows poverty to replicate itself generation after generation. Pregnant women in low-income areas tend to be more exposed to anxiety, depression, chemicals and toxins from car exhaust to pesticides, and they’re more likely to drink or smoke and less likely to take vitamin supplements, eat healthy food and get meticulous pre-natal care.
The result is children who start life at a disadvantage — for kids facing stresses before birth appear to have lower educational attainment, lower incomes and worse health throughout their lives. If that’s true, then even early childhood education may be a bit late as a way to break the cycles of poverty.
9/ Vegas baby!!! Yeah!!! Paaaaaaarty.....
Hold the phone....the party's over in Las Vegas.....all levels of gaming action are down, from the high rollers to middle America, and real estate declines are the worst in the country.....
The nation’s gambling capital is staggering under a confluence of economic forces that has sent Las Vegas into what officials describe as its deepest economic rut since casinos first began rising in the desert here in the 1940s.
Even as city leaders remain hopeful that gambling revenues will rebound with the nation’s economy, experts project that it will not be enough to make up for an even deeper realignment that has taken place in the course of this recession: the collapse of the construction industry, which was the other economic pillar of the city and the state.
10/ Random notes from London
We saw our fourth fat person today.....we've been walking London for four days now, passing thousands of people, so the calorifically challenged really stand out........kind of like New York - you rarely see big people in NYC.....
The food here is amazing.....we rented a studio in Ladbroke Grove which is just slightly off the tourist track, so the local restaurants are for Londoners....some of the best ethnic cuisine we've ever had. Yum.....glad we're doing all the walking!
There was a one day strike on the Tube system today causing chaos in Central London, with many more cars than normal and jammed buses. Funny....strikes never happen any more in the US, but are pretty regular in Europe.....
11/ Monty Python - maybe their best sketch of all of them - "The Parrot" - John Cleese and Michael Palin at their funniest......
12/ An HR story about how companies downsize and what happens to the morale of the people left working....having been through what at Royal Caribbean they called a RIF [reduction in force] twice, I can attest to the truths in this article. If your company is laying people off, or you think they might, read this one.....
Unfortunately, managers often lay off more people than necessary, to ensure that they don’t have to repeat the ordeal anytime soon. The remaining workers must work harder, taking on some of the work of their missing colleagues, and productivity rises. (The economy today shows both increasing productivity and increasing corporate profits.)
Those relegated to unemployment can’t directly “poison the atmosphere” in their former workplaces. But they remain friends and neighbors of the employed, and their anger and distress, repeated in thousands of communities, contribute to a poisoning of the atmosphere of the entire nation.
Todays video - Room 808....
Todays golf jokes
Aren't golfers wonderful people?
A husband and wife are on the 9th green when suddenly she collapses from a heart attack.
"Help me dear," she groans to her husband.
The husband calls 911 on his cell phone, talks for a few minutes, picks up his putter and lines up his putt.
His wife raises her head off the green, stares at him and says, "I'm dying here and you're putting?""Don't worry dear," says the husband calmly, "they found a doctor on the second hole and he's coming to help you.
"Well, how long will it take for him to get here?" she asks feebly.
"No time at all," says her husband. "Everybody's already agreed to let him play through."
_____________________________________________
A gushy reporter told Phil Mickelson, "You are spectacular, your name is synonymous with the game of golf. You really know your way around the course. What's your secret?"
Mickelson replied, "The holes are numbered."
_____________________________________
A young man and a priest are playing together. At a short par-3 the priest asks, "What are you going to use on this hole, my son?"
The young man says, "An 8-iron, father. How about you?"The priest says, "I'm going to hit a soft seven and pray."
The young man hits his 8-iron and puts the ball on the green.The priest tops his 7-iron and dribbles the ball out a few yards.
The young man says, "I don't know about you, father, but in my church, when we pray, we keep our head down."
___________________________________________
Police are called to an apartment and find a woman holding a bloody 5-iron standing over a lifeless man.
The detective asks, "Ma'am, is that your husband?"
"Yes" says the woman.
"Did you hit him with that golf club?"
"Yes, yes, I did." The woman begins to sob, drops the club, and puts her hands on her face.
"How many times did you hit him?"
"I don't know -- five, six, maybe seven times.....just put me down for a five."
______________________________________
A golfer teed up his ball on the first tee, took a mighty swing and hit his ball into a clump of trees.
He found his ball and saw an opening between two trees he thought he could hit through.
Taking out his 3-wood, he took a mighty swing. The ball hit a tree, bounced back,
hit him in the forehead and killed him.
As he approached the gates of Heaven, St. Peter asked, "Are you a good golfer?"
The man replied: "Got here in two, didn't I?"
__________________________________________
The bride was escorted down the aisle and when she reached the altar, the groom was standing there with his golf bag and clubs at his side.
She said: "What are your golf clubs doing here?"
He looked her right in the eye and said, "This isn't going to take all day, is it?"
Todays Schnauzer joke
My neighbor found out that her dog (a Schnauzer) could hardly hear, so she took it to the veterinarian. The vet found that the problem was hair in the dog's ears. He cleaned both ears, and the dog could then hear fine. The vet then proceeded to tell the lady that, if she wanted to keep this from recurring, she should go to the store and get some "Nair" hair remover and rub it in the dog's ears once a month.
The lady went to the store and bought some "Nair" hair remover. At the register, the pharmacist told her, "If you're going to use this under your arms, don't use deodorant for a few days."
The lady said, "I'm not using it under my arms."
The pharmacist said, "If you're using it on your legs, don't shave for a couple of days."
The lady replied, "I'm not using it on my legs either. If you must know, I'm using it on my Schnauzer."
The pharmacist says, "Well stay off your bicycle for about a week."
Todays motoring joke
Subject: A story with a moral...
| Always wear clean underwear, especially when working under your vehicle .... From the Daily News comes this story of a Leicester couple who drove their car to ASDA, only to have their car break down in the car park. The man told his wife to carry on with the shopping while he fixed the car. The wife returned later to see a small group of people near the car. On closer inspection, she saw a pair of hairy legs protruding from under the chassis. Unfortunately, although the man was in shorts, his lack of underpants turned his private parts into glaringly public parts .... Unable to stand the embarrassment, she dutifully stepped forward, quickly put her hand up his shorts, and tucked everything back into place. On regaining her feet, she looked across the bonnet and found herself staring at her husband who was standing idly by watching... The AA mechanic, however, had to have three stitches in his forehead .............. |
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