Some very good political stories today....but read #1.....
1/ Thomas Friedman is pissed. I've not read such a searing column in the Times for a while.....actually it is most depressing because after he lists the pathetic policies both parties are pursuing he then lists out where we stand vs the rest of the world in competitiveness and anything to do with science and engineering.....I recommend reading this if you are fed up with our disgustingly stupid politics and intend to move to Canada....it'll make up your mind.....
Policies sampler.....
Let’s immediately cut government spending, instead of phasing cuts in gradually, while we’re still mired in a recession — because that worked so well in the Great Depression. Let’s roll back financial regulation — because we’ve learned from experience that Wall Street can police itself and average Americans will never have to bail it out.
Let’s have no limits on corporate campaign spending so oil and coal companies can more easily and anonymously strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to limit pollution in the air our kids breathe.
Where we stand sampler.....
“Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today,” says Vest: sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.
2/ Another "what might have been" column from Paul Krugman, this time honing in of how the much reviled stimulus package should have been larger.....and jobs jobs jobs the priority.....oh well......
A few commentators will point out, with much more justice, that Mr. Obama never made a full-throated case for progressive policies, that he consistently stepped on his own message, that he was so worried about making bankers nervous that he ended up ceding populist anger to the right.
But the truth is that if the economic situation were better — if unemployment had fallen substantially over the past year — we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We would, instead, be talking about modest Democratic losses, no more than is usual in midterm elections.
The real story of this election, then, is that of an economic policy that failed to deliver. Why? Because it was greatly inadequate to the task.
When Mr. Obama took office, he inherited an economy in dire straits — more dire, it seems, than he or his top economic advisers realized. They knew that America was in the midst of a severe financial crisis. But they don’t seem to have taken on board the lesson of history, which is that major financial crises are normally followed by a protracted period of very high unemployment.
3/ Excellent essay on Turkey, the Muslim nation that is also a success story.....also a country we are trying to bully into following US foreign policy and who is having none of it.....welcome to the future.....we don't dominate the world quite like we used to.....
Ahmet Davutoglu, who birthed a foreign policy doctrine and has been Turkey’s foreign minister since May 2009, has irked a lot of Americans. He’s seen as the man behind Turkey’s “turning East,” as Iran’s friend, as Israel’s foe, as a fickle NATO ally wary of a proposed new missile shield, and as the wily architect of Turkey’s new darling status with Arab states. The Obama administration has said it is “disappointed” in Turkey’s no vote on Iran sanctions last June; Congress is not pleased, holding up an ambassadorial appointment and huffing over arms sales.
Nostalgia is running high in Washington for the pliant Turkey of Cold-War days. Davutoglu is having none of it. “We don’t want to be a frontier country like in the Cold War,” he told me. “We don’t want problems with any neighbor” — and that, of course, would include Iran.
4/ A missing college student, and the girls from her sorority make a plea for her return....moving story from Onion News....funny too.....
5/ Justice Clarence Thomas
Excellent summary of the whole rotten mess of this weekend's controversy with Justice Scumbag....it would just be pathetic if he wasn't so powerful......to have an evil man like him as one of the Supreme Court says a lot about our country.....declining standards indeed.....
Joe Biden, the senator who ran those hearings, was leery of the liberal groups eager to use Hill as a pawn to checkmate Thomas. He circumscribed the testimony of women who could have corroborated Hill’s unappetizing portrait of a power-abusing predator.
For the written record, Biden allowed negative accounts only from women who had worked with Thomas. He also ruled out testimony from women who simply had personal relationships with Thomas, and did not respond to a note from McEwen — a former assistant U.S. attorney who had once worked as a counsel for Biden’s committee — reminding him of her long relationship with Thomas.
It’s too late to relitigate the shameful Thomas-Hill hearings. We’re stuck with a justice-for-life who lied his way onto the bench with the help of bullying Republicans and cowed Democrats.
We don’t know why Ginni Thomas, who was once in the thrall of a cultish self-help group called Lifespring, made that odd call to Hill at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. But we do know that the Thomases show supremely bad judgment. Mrs. Thomas, a queen of the Tea Party, is the founder of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, which she boasts will be bigger than the Tea Party. She sports and sells those foam Statue of Liberty-style crowns as she makes her case against the “tyranny” of President Obama and Congressional Democrats, who, she charges, are hurting the “core founding principles” of America.
6/ "Boot the Blue Dogs"
Interesting commentary on divisions inside the Democratic Party....don't often see such a good analysis....if you're interested in politics read this - you'll learn something....
What happened? One important explanation is that divisions inside the Democratic coalition, which held together during the 2008 campaign, have come spilling out into the open. Conservative Democrats have opposed key elements of the president’s agenda, while liberal Democrats have howled that their majority is being hijacked by a rogue group of predominantly white men from small rural states. President Obama himself appears caught in the middle, unable to satisfy the many factions inside his party’s big tent.
7/ Amusing [and affectionate] take on President Obama's present troubles in a musical Gilbert and Sullivan format.....not sure who the actor playing Obama is but he sure can sing!! Very good indeed......
8/ Never made this connection before, but now I've read it it seems obvious. The parallels between the "big food" industry and the financial system.....and how they are both bad for you.....amusing little essay.......and very illuminating about food.....
I just read Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food, and what struck me was the parallels between the evolution of food and the evolution of finance since the 1970s. This will only confirm my critics’ belief that I see the same thing everywhere, but bear with me for a minute.
Pollan’s account, grossly simplified, goes something like this. The dominant ideology of food in the United States is nutritionism: the idea that food should be thought of in terms of its component nutrients. Food science is devoted to identifying the nutrients in food that make us healthy or unhealthy, and encouraging us to consume more of the former and less of the latter. This is good for nutritional “science,” since you can write papers about omega-3 fatty acids, while it’s very hard to write papers about broccoli.
9/ Fly a lot? The Practical Traveller on how airports could improve themselves.....for instance did you know Vancouver Airport has a bar in the luggage carousel area?
Useful stuff.....
It took more than half an hour to get through LaGuardia security, and once I got to the overcrowded gate — after a stop in a less-than-clean bathroom — the cacophony of competing announcements, a blaring television and a passenger’s music player blasting without headphones was deafening, especially at 9 a.m.
But when I landed at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, the highest-ranking large airport in this year’s J. D. Power & Associates North Americacustomer satisfaction survey, it was as though I had arrived in another country. The main terminal, finished in 2002, is spacious and full of light, with plenty of comfortable seats at each gate and a wide choice of restaurants.
Stuart Greif, vice president of the global travel practice at J. D. Power, said the contrast between the two airports illustrates the widening spread between the best and worst domestic airports.
10/ Interesting story of how the huge cruise ships are creating separate spaces for their suite passengers.....boy how the wheel turns.....for the last 40 years the big advantage of modern cruising was the egalitarianism of it - same dining room, same shows, same treatment for all classes of cabins, but now we are back to "first class" and "all others".......come to think of it isn't this happening in our society?
Here's a freebie for you, NCL boys - a new slogan for ads in upscale magazines - "come sail in your own gated community".......
In fact, this more sophisticated and upscale version of cruising is becoming so widespread that the industry calls it the “ship within a ship” experience, with VIP decks accessible only to other suite passengers. Almost all are booked months in advance. The Villa Complex on Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest and largest 4,100-passenger ship, Epic, includes 13 penthouses—with one measuring up to 2,200 square meters—where guests order from a special room-service menu and enjoy private courtyard, pool, lounge, and fitness areas. The November arrival of Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, with a passenger capacity of 5,400, has eight different types of suites, including three loft categories that vary in size, with a Concierge Club lounge and reserved prime seating for shows. The AquaClass status on the 2,850-guest Celebrity Eclipsebuys guests accommodations in one of the 130 staterooms on Deck 11 that include, among other amenities, access to Blu, the specialty restaurant designed exclusively for AquaClass guests.
11/ Music Video
Dark and gloomy video from Linkin Park....why is this in here? Mirrors the elections.....
12/ Book Review - "Life" by Keith Richards
You know when the talk gets idle at the dinner table and you're asked if you could come back as someone, who would it be? I always say I want to come back as Keith Richards.....and now he's written a book? Oh joy.....Mary! Another one for the Christmas stocking!
Now Mr. Richards has written the keeper: “Life,” a big, fierce, game-changing account of the Stones’ nearly half-century-long adventure.
“It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” he says about the book. “I’d rather make 10 records.”
But he sounds anything but weary. And he seems refreshed, bearing surprisingly little resemblance to the battered, kohl-eyed pirate Keith Richards who looks like 50 miles of bad road. Today, in neutral street clothes and hot-green shoes, he is positively debonair. On his hands: the ubiquitous silver skull ring, swollen knuckles, the thin white scar from a hunk of steaming phosphorus that burned his finger to the bone while he played through a concert without stopping.
And here's a column on our Keith from Maureen Dowd, very sympathetic, she says he's a gentleman!
The shy English Boy Scout and choirboy who started out with “no chick in the world” describes the women he was involved with — from road flings to his manager to his ex, Anita Pallenberg — with candor but generosity.
Even groupies are accorded respect. “You could look upon them more like the Red Cross,” he says. “They’d wash your clothes, they’d bathe you and stuff.”
Learning that there’s a blind girl who loyally follows the band, he arranges for her to get rides from the group’s truck drivers.
13/ New TV Show - "The Walking Dead".....yeah baby.......it's about zombies.....need any more detail? Why?
Set your TiVo's now.....
In some ways the television version of “The Walking Dead” hews closely to the story established in the comic books. Its central character is Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln), a Kentucky police officer who is hospitalized in a coma after being wounded in the line of duty. He revives weeks later to a world that has been devastated by zombies, leaving him to seek out whether his family — and humanity — has survived.
The series also finds ways to weave in subplots that were not in Mr. Kirkman’s original tales, expanding on the back stories of supporting characters, lingering on scenes that in the comics are told in just a few panels.
Todays Daytime Lover joke
The man says, 'Yes, it is.'
Boy: 'I have a baseball..'
Man: 'That's nice'
Boy: 'Want to buy it?'
Man: 'No, thanks.'
Boy: 'My Dad's outside.'Man: 'OK, how much?'Boy: '$250'In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the lover are in the closet together.Boy: 'Dark in here.'Man: 'Yes, it is.'Boy: 'I have a baseball glove.'The lover, remembering the last time, asks the boy, 'How much?'Boy: '$750'Man: 'Sold.'A few days later, the Dad says to the boy, 'Grab your glove, let's go outside and have a game of catch.'The boy says, 'I can't, I sold my baseball and my glove.'The Dad asks, 'How much did you sell them for?'
Boy: '$1,000'The Dad says, 'That's terrible to over charge your friends like that...that is way more than those two things cost. I'm taking you to church, to confession.'They go to the church and the Dad makes the little boy sit in the confessional booth and closes the door..The boy says, 'Dark in here.'The priest says, 'Don't start that shit again; you're in my closet now.'
Todays slightly rude but really funny joke [1]
A man laid off from work went into the Job Center in downtown Boston and saw a card advertising for a Gynecologist's Assistant. Interested, he went in and asked the clerk for details.
The clerk pulled up the file and read...
"The job entails getting the ladies ready for the gynecologist. You have to help the women out of their underwear, lay them down, and carefully wash their private regions then apply shaving foam and gently shave off the hair after which you must rub in soothing oils so they're ready for the gynecologist's examination.
The annual salary is $75,000, and you'll have to
go to Burlington, Vermont ."
go to Burlington, Vermont ."
"Good grief; is that where the job is?"
"No sir, that's where the end of the line is right now".
Todays slightly rude but really funny joke [2]
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