Well today is finally election day, and tonight we'll find out how all of the predictions work out....in the meantime here's some commentary which will get you through to 9pm tonight.........
1/ Politics - how the mainstream big money Republican party will absorb and corrupt the Tea Party groups - really interesting perspective from Frank Rich......
That’s not happening either. McConnell has explained his only real priority for the new Congress with admirable candor. “The single most important thing we want to achieve,” he said, “is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Any assault on Social Security would defeat that goal, and a serious shake-up of the Pentagon budget would alienate the neoconservative ideologues and military contractors who are far more important to the G.O.P. establishment than the “don’t tread on me” crowd.
For sure, the Republican elites found the Tea Party invaluable on the way to this Election Day. And not merely, as Huckabee has it, because they wanted its foot soldiers. What made the Tea Party most useful was that its loud populist message gave the G.O.P. just the cover it needed both to camouflage its corporate patrons and to rebrand itself as a party miraculously antithetical to the despised G.O.P. that gave us George W. Bush and record deficits only yesterday.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and Wall Street Journal have been arduous in promoting and inflating Tea Party events and celebrities to this propagandistic end. The more the Tea Party looks as if it’s calling the shots in the G.O.P., the easier it is to distract attention from those who are actually calling them —
2/ Our moralising about debt is making the world economic crisis worse.....the risk of doing nothing because it might help debtors dooms us all to many years of stagnation.....another great column from Paul Krugman.....
The years leading up to the 2008 crisis were indeed marked by unsustainable borrowing, going far beyond the subprime loans many people still believe, wrongly, were at the heart of the problem. Real estate speculation ran wild in Florida and Nevada, but also in Spain, Ireland and Latvia. And all of it was paid for with borrowed money.
This borrowing made the world as a whole neither richer nor poorer: one person’s debt is another person’s asset. But it made the world vulnerable. When lenders suddenly decided that they had lent too much, that debt levels were excessive, debtors were forced to slash spending. This pushed the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s. And recovery, such as it is, has been weak and uncertain — which is exactly what we should have expected, given the overhang of debt.
3/ The top ten US cities with water supplies at risk
Fascinating report from a Wall Street analysis firm looking at cities's municipal bonds, so this is quite believable......the surprise for me is that Orlando is on the list....
Some parts of the United States have begun to run low on water. That is probably not much of a surprise to people who live in the arid parts of America that have had water shortages for decades or even centuries. No one who has been to the Badlands in South Dakota would expect to be able to grow crops there.
The water problem is worse than most people realize, particularly in several large cities which are occasionally low on water now and almost certainly face shortfalls in a few years. This is particularly true if the change in global weather patterns substantially alters rainfall amounts in some areas of the US.
24/7 Wall St. looked at an October, 2010 report on water risk by environmental research and sustainability group, Ceres.
4/ The Rally for Sanity
Shocking story - Fox News put surprisingly low crowd size estimates on air.....
5/ The Senator from Koch Industries.
How Jim DeMint has played this election to make himself a major power broker - this will be a fascinating battle to come as DeMint will try to take on the GOP establishment.....
Other DeMint-backed candidates in the House and the Senate have ridden the same anti-establishment wave from long shot to likely. And the boast that Mr. DeMint made on that call no longer seems so grandiose: “We can reshape the Republican Party.”
Financing Tea Party candidates and rallying the Tea Party faithful, Mr. DeMint has established himself as an alternate power center in Washington. And his rapid ascent has spawned a parlor game: what does Jim DeMint want?
Supporters in Tea Party straw polls and at conservative conferences have urged him to run for president. Other fans suggest that with several of his candidates poised to win, he could run for Republican leader, making official conservatives’ ascendancy within the party.
6/ The Montana Merkle has been hunted to near extinction because of it's unfortunate bird call.....from Onion News - 2 minutes......funny and a little rude....
7/ A fair and balanced column.
You may or may not agree with Ross Douhat, the conservative columnist, but he makes some good points about the election. One consolation - on Wednesday morning it will be over......no more attack ads.....
It was a significant, long-running shift, pushed along by deeper demographic forces. Reliable conservative constituencies (white Christians, married couples) were shrinking. Liberal-leaning ones (Hispanics, single parents, the unchurched) were expanding. And the next generation seemed to be in the bag for liberalism. Younger voters weren’t just more liberal than their parents (as young people usually are); they were more liberal than the previous generation had been at the same age, suggesting a more enduring shift.
But since Barack Obama took the oath of office, the country’s leftward momentum has reversed itself. In some cases, nearly 20 years of liberal gains have been erased in 20 months. Americans are more likely to self-identify as conservative than at any point since Bill Clinton’s first term. They’ve become more skeptical of government and more anxious about deficits and taxes. They’re more inclined to identify as pro-life and anti-gun control, more doubtful about global warming, more hostile to regulation. And, not surprisingly, they’re more likely to consider voting Republican on Tuesday.
8/ Classic video - remember Robert Palmer - "Addicted to Love"? With the blank faced supermodels? Well here it is.....
9/ The mortgage mess.
Eyes glaze over when you hear this phrase? Well read this editorial - an excellent, concise summary of this unresolved cause of our economic misery.....
Consumer advocates, the press, investors and homeowners have already compiled a compelling list of transgressions: conflicts of interest that have banks pushing foreclosures, without a good-faith effort to modify troubled loans. Dubious fees that inflate mortgage balances. The hundreds of thousands of flawed foreclosure affidavits that violated homeowners’ legal protections. The misplaced documents. And it goes on.
10/ Climate change - two stories
"Companies fight to keep climate data secret"
Think climate change is a myth? Then why are huge corporate oligarchs fighting tooth and nail to keep their pollution data secret.....by the way one of these companies is Koch Nitrogen.......
Some of the country's largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, including businesses that publicly support efforts to curb global warming, don't want the public knowing exactly how much they pollute.
Oil producers and refiners, along with manufacturers of steel, aluminum and even home appliances, are fighting a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that would make the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that companies release - and the underlying data businesses use to calculate the amounts - available online.
While gross estimates exist for such emissions from transportation and electricity production and manufacturing as a whole, the EPA is requiring companies for the first time to submit information for each individual facility.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/Oil producers and refiners, along with manufacturers of steel, aluminum and even home appliances, are fighting a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that would make the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that companies release - and the underlying data businesses use to calculate the amounts - available online.
While gross estimates exist for such emissions from transportation and electricity production and manufacturing as a whole, the EPA is requiring companies for the first time to submit information for each individual facility.
Story on how the wonderful coal industry [remember Massey Industries?] is pouring even more money into lobbying our politicians to kill any chance of them being forced to behave responsibly.......call me a pessimist, but I bet they will get their way with the Congress we are about to elect.....
Its allies in oil and gas, electric utilities, manufacturing and agriculture, effectively killed any prospects for climate change legislation in the near future.
But after two major coal industry accidents, a huge spill of toxic ash in 2008 and a West Virginia mine disaster in April that killed 29 workers, the industry is bracing for new federal action that it fears will curtail operations and drive up costs.
Industry officials believe they face a hostile administration that could seriously harm their business with a range of new federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, mountaintop removal mining, air pollution, coal ash disposal andmine safety.
11/ Cute video of a [probably Mexican] dog dancing the meringue....3 minutes......about a minute too long....
12/ Getting older and "Your Brain"
Here's something new but not that surprising - heavy smokers are more prone to dementia......so if you're a heavy smoker you must read this.....if you can still read big words..... damn where's my lighter.......
Middle-aged smokers are far more likely than nonsmokers to develop dementia later in life, and heavy smokers — those who go through more than two packs a day — are at more than double the risk, a new study reports.
How one of the first signs of Alzheimers is one forgets how to handle money....some heartbreaking stories in this column.... hmmm...Mary - I've lost the checkbook again......
What happened to the Packels is all too common, Alzheimer’s experts say. New research shows that one of the first signs of impending dementia is an inability to understand money and credit, contracts and agreements.
It is not just families who are affected — financial advisers and lawyers say they are finding themselves in a bind when their clients’ minds seem to be slipping.
Todays Video - the Last Laugh [British}
Todays Paul Newman joke
A Michigan woman and her family were vacationing in a small New England town in 1979 where Paul Newman and his family often visited.
One Sunday morning, the woman got up early to take a long walk. After a brisk five-mile hike, she decided to treat herself to a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone.
She hopped in the car, drove to the center of the village and went straight to the combination bakery/ice cream parlor.
There was only one other patron in the store: Paul Newman, sitting at the counter having a doughnut and coffee.
The woman's heart skipped a beat as her eyes made contact with those famous baby-blue eyes.
The actor nodded graciously and the star struck woman smiled demurely.
Pull yourself together! She chides herself. You're a happily married woman with three children, you're forty-five years old, not a teenager!
The clerk filled her order and she took the double-dip chocolate ice cream cone in one hand and her change in the other. Then she went out the door, avoiding even a glance in Paul Newman's direction.
When she reached her car, she realized that she had a handful of change but her other hand was empty. Where's my ice cream cone? Did I leave it in the store?
One Sunday morning, the woman got up early to take a long walk. After a brisk five-mile hike, she decided to treat herself to a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone.
She hopped in the car, drove to the center of the village and went straight to the combination bakery/ice cream parlor.
There was only one other patron in the store: Paul Newman, sitting at the counter having a doughnut and coffee.
The woman's heart skipped a beat as her eyes made contact with those famous baby-blue eyes.
The actor nodded graciously and the star struck woman smiled demurely.
Pull yourself together! She chides herself. You're a happily married woman with three children, you're forty-five years old, not a teenager!
The clerk filled her order and she took the double-dip chocolate ice cream cone in one hand and her change in the other. Then she went out the door, avoiding even a glance in Paul Newman's direction.
When she reached her car, she realized that she had a handful of change but her other hand was empty. Where's my ice cream cone? Did I leave it in the store?
Back into the shop she went, expecting to see the cone still in the clerk's hand or in a holder on the counter or something! No ice cream cone was in sight.
With that, she happened to look over at Paul Newman. His face broke into his familiar, warm, friendly grin and he said to the woman,
'You put it in your purse.'
With that, she happened to look over at Paul Newman. His face broke into his familiar, warm, friendly grin and he said to the woman,
'You put it in your purse.'
Todays Costume Party joke
| A couple was invited to a swanky costume party. The Mrs. got a terrible headache and told her husband to go to the party alone. He being a devoted husband protested, but she argued and said she was going to take some aspirin and go to bed and there was no need for his good time being spoiled by not going. So he took his costume and away he went. The wife, after sleeping soundly for about an hour, awakened without pain and, as it was still early, decided to go the party. Since her husband did not know what her costume was, she thought she would have some fun by watching her husband to see how he acted when she was not with him. She joined the party and soon spotted her husband cavorting around on the dance floor, dancing with every nice woman he could, and copping a little feel here and a little kiss there. His wife sidled up to him and being a rather seductive babe herself, he left his current partner high and dry and devoted his time to the new babe that had just arrived. She let him go as far as he wished, naturally, since he was her husband. Finally, he whispered a little proposition in her ear and she agreed. So off they went to one of the cars and had a quickie. Just before unmasking at midnight, she slipped away, went home, put the costume away and got into bed, wondering what kind of explanation he would make for his behavior. She was sitting up reading when he came in, and she asked what kind of a time he had. He said: "Oh, the same old thing. You know I never have a good time when you're not there." "Did you dance much ?" "I'll tell you, I never even danced one dance. When I got there, I met Pete, Bill Brown and some other guys, so we went into the den and played poker all evening. But you're not going to believe what happened to the guy I loaned my costume to...." |
Todays prison joke
A man escapes from a prison where he's been locked up for 15 years. He breaks into a house to look for money and guns. Inside, he finds a young couple in bed.
He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair. While tying the home- owner's wife to the bed, the convict gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then gets up and goes into the bathroom.
He orders the guy out of bed and ties him to a chair. While tying the home- owner's wife to the bed, the convict gets on top of her, kisses her neck, then gets up and goes into the bathroom.
Be strong, honey. I love you!'
His wife responds: 'He wasn't kissing my neck - he was whispering in my ear. He told me that he's gay, thinks you're cute, and asked if we had any Vaseline. I told him it was in the bathroom. 'Be strong. I love you, too!'
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