1/ Paul Krugman reviews 2010 and the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Republicans in Congress.....the latest idea is tax cuts don't have to be paid for...ever....but it's the last paragraph in this article that gives me chills....
And I don’t just mean politicians. Did you notice the U-turn many political commentators and other Serious People made when the Obama-McConnell tax-cut deal was announced? One day deficits were the great evil and we needed fiscal austerity now now now, never mind the state of the economy. The next day $800 billion in debt-financed tax cuts, with the prospect of more to come, was the greatest thing since sliced bread, a triumph of bipartisanship.
Still, it was the politicians — and, yes, that mainly meant Republicans — who took the lead on the hypocrisy front.
In the first half of 2010, impassioned speeches denouncing federal red ink were the G.O.P. norm. And concerns about the deficit were the stated reason for Republican opposition to extension of unemployment benefits, or for that matter any proposal to help Americans cope with economic hardship.
But the tone changed during the summer, as B-day — the day when the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy were scheduled to expire — began to approach. My nomination for headline of the year comes from the newspaper Roll Call, on July 18: “McConnell Blasts Deficit Spending, Urges Extension of Tax Cuts.”
2/ A challenging premise from Nicolas Kristof - unequal societies are the most unhealthy and the most unhappy.....if you're in the bottom 90%.......
A fascinating article....this is why I enjoy doing DDD, which is to find these illuminating truths.......
......at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.
That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.
“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police,” they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.”
The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies.
3/ There was a phrase in Britain that describes fox hunting by the upper classes - "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable", and this is kind of how I feel about the latest scam by Big Pharma which is impacting health Insurance companies.....a pox on both their houses.....
How it works is the drug companies are giving a coupon to patients that cuts their co-pay, so the customers will then go for the more expensive drugs because "net out of pocket" the brand name drug, which is hammered home by TV ads, will cost the same as the generic for the patient. But the insurance companies have to pay out for the more expensive drugs.
What a scam. No wonder we have the worst and most expensive health care in the world......
EXECUTIVES of a small insurance company in Albany were mystified when, almost overnight, its payments for a certain class of antibiotics nearly doubled, threatening to add about a half-million dollars annually in costs.
The reason, it turned out, was that patients were using a card distributed by the maker of an expensive antibiotic used to treat acne, sharply reducing their insurance co-payments. With their out-of-pocket costs much lower, consumers had switched from generic alternatives to the more expensive drug.
With drug prices rising and many people out of work, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly helping patients with their co-payments. The use of such co-payment cards and coupons and other types of discounts has more than tripled since mid-2006,
4/ Fun compilation of the best viral videos of 2010.....see how many you recognise.......
5/ The corporate media tend to refer to the black community as one bloc, but Eugene Robinson the MSNBC commentator argues there is no one single black interest group - there are four.....a most interesting premise, but the most insightful is his description of the group at the bottom "the Abandoned"......
Sounds like an incredibly good book.......
These Transcendent men and women, Robinson tells us at the outset, live and work in a privileged world of wealth and power. Despite the color of their skin, they do not belong to the black community.
Fair enough, but Robinson does not stop there. Over the next 200 pages, he demonstrates rather convincingly that no one belongs to the black community anymore. The race-based community that was a fixture of American life for generations — the traditional locus of racial experience and solidarity, the idealized entity that many of us still refer to, indeed still cling to, as an institutional and social reality — no longer exists. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of this slim but powerful book.
During the past four decades, Robinson persuasively argues, black America has splintered into four subgroups: the Transcendent elite; the Mainstream middle class, which now accounts for a majority of black Americans; an Emergent community made up of mixed-race families and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean; and the Abandoned, a large and growing underclass concentrated in the inner cities and depressed pockets of the rural South.
This label "the Abandoned"doesn't just apply to the black community. If you open the "people of WalMart" jokes a lot of the scuzzy people in those pictures fit this description, so there is a lot of poor white Americans in this category. No help from the government, dead end jobs, no hope.....
The "Transcendent" label also applies to the 1% superrich.....
6/ President Obama was caught lip-synching a speech recently....and Onion News reveals the President's real voice later in this satirical video.....very funny.....2 minutes....
7/ I had a discussion recently with someone who took exception to my approval of anyone who "strategically defaulted", which is to walk away from a property and give it back to the bank. My argument was what is morally wrong with an individual behaving like a corporation, many of whom have defaulted on major real estate without comment or opprobrium.
Here's a story about billionaires who have done just that, but who are lining up investors for their next real estate ventures.....
Think the system isn't rigged?
Industry lore has it that New York is one of the toughest, most unforgiving real estate markets in the world. The costs are so high, the unions so ornery, the politicians so demanding and the rivalries so fierce, that one false move invites financial disaster.
But the truth is that there have been surprisingly few career fatalities among New York developers, even though they have lost billions of investor dollars on overpriced real estate and have littered the city with unfinished apartment buildings. While a homeowner who lost a house to foreclosure would find it difficult to borrow for years, developers who defaulted on enormous loans have still been able to attract money.
The reasons, experts say, are that there is still plenty of money floating around and that the market has a very short memory.
“You can always find an investor who’ll put up equity with a guy, unless he’s Attila the Hun,”
8/ Fox News - "There's no climate change"
Australia has had incredible flooding in Queensland, the north eastern part of the country....so much so it's being called "a disaster of biblical proportions"......see the pictures....awful.
Days of pounding rain last week left much of northeastern Australia swamped by a sea of muddy water, with flooding affecting about 200,000 people in an area larger than France and Germany combined. The rain has stopped, but rivers are still rising and overflowing into low-lying communities as the water moves toward the ocean.
9/ Four minute medley from the MTV Music Awards, with a short piece from Bruno Mars [great voice], the rapper B.o.B [pull those damn pants up] and Hayley from Paramore......pretty good.....
10/ The media drum is starting - blame the unions for our economic troubles, and whereas they certainly aren't perfect some of the over-generous deals they have got for pensions and benefits have been enabled by politicians of both parties......
The right wing won't be happy until they have totally destroyed the union movement in this country, which is about the only thing left standing protecting the middle class.....think about that the next time someone starts ranting about the unions....a Fox News talking point.
Your counter is ...Wall Street have anything to do with our problems? Billionaires's tax breaks? Corporations shifting jobs to China?
Good luck.....
11/ TV Tonight [Monday]
Ladies - a movie for you on Lifetime.....
At Lifetime, the cable channel built on the idea that the male of the species is at heart pure evil, the real-life case of Philip Markoff must have seemed like something the script department concocted. Lifetime has always trafficked in woman-in-jeopardy movies in which a central element is often the old “he’s not what he seems” villain. Mr. Markoff was certainly that: a top medical student, good looking, charming, limitless future.
12/ Good story called "Movies Worth Another Look"
Two of these sound really good - "Animal Kingdom, a drama from Australia about a dysfunctional criminal family,
Sharp details of human behavior are a hallmark of this film, the first dramatic feature by the former film journalist David Michôd. “Animal Kingdom” won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s a crime-family drama, and the boss is J’s grandma, a middle-aged blonde called Smurf (the Australian star Jacki Weaver, now nominated for a Golden Globe, above with Sullivan Stapleton), who rules her gaggle of sociopathic sons with a mix of unnerving intimacy and bright-eyed ruthlessness.
and "Never Let me Go" a British sci-fi movie set about 100 years in the future.....about clones.....
Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” is one of the best dystopian science fiction films around, a potential classic of the genre. Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel of the same name, this deeply felt movie is short on hairless, almond-eyed aliens, giant warrior insects and slavering zombies. What it has is clones, and they look a lot like us, only prettier and younger. As played by Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and the rising British star Andrew Garfield(from left above), they’re also heartbreaking, groomed from infancy to serve as organ donors in a verdant, near-future Britain whose population boasts an average life span of 100 years.
13/ Mount Dorans
Athens Cafe - Another local business closing down, the Athens Cafe in the Golds Gym plaza will be closing this week. I talked to the owner and he told me the landlord wants an exorbitant rent increase which he felt he couldn't meet with the present level of business in this economy. Maybe it wasn't the fanciest place in town, but it was good food and decent service at a reasonable price. His lamb shank was excellent.....
So.....another small business gone, ho hum, another one will open up. But the Athens had 35 employees including some older ladies who are now out of work in a town where there are no jobs, due to the stupidity and greed of whichever bastard owns the plaza. There are already two vacant stores there, driven out by the rents, so who are these "businessmen"? Anyone know? Wonder if it's a hedge fund...or the Chinese.....
Downtown Mount Dora - you have to give credit to Mazik and Majestic Properties, as whoever they have as their window display person has done a wonderful job with the Christmas decorations disguising the fact there is about a 40% vacancy rate downtown.
What the hell is going on? The cities around us, Tavares and Eustis, seem to be getting it together and also Sanford and Winter Garden are competition for visitors.....the empty stores aren't good for Mount Dora......
I just hope the new owner of the Lakeside Inn opens a good upscale restaurant which might jumpstart some other decent eateries. We need a good steak house in town, a coffee house like Starbucks or anything with a new looking interior like Casa Mia in Tavares. One of the charms of Mount Dora is the 40's facades of the buildings, but this doesn't mean the interiors can't be nice......
Eating out - when we lived in Miami Mary and I had a list of our C&C's, which were our "cheap and cheerful" restaurants we would eat out in on about a monthly basis, and we'd often have the same dish at every restaurant. We'd try other selections because it seemed boring to order the same thing every time, but would always regret it. So here is a list of our Mount Dora area C&C's.....by the way only two of them are in downtown Mount Dora.....
Italian - Casa Mia in downtown Tavares looks and feels like a big city restaurant, and the food is decent as well. Their spaghetti bolognaise is great, and they often have an interesting seafood special...
Thai Jasmine on old 441 in Tavares is excellent all round, the Japanese rolls are excellent and they do a fine chili fish, which is a whole snapper deep fried with chili sauce. Good pad Thai as well.....
Pizza - Great Pizza Company in downtown Eustis has really good thin crust pizza, with the Mongolian Beef our favourite.
Cuban - the Copacabana in downtown Mount Dora is family run and has Cuban and latin food comparable to anything we have had in Miami....bonus is the outside bar is now open and they have plenty of seats on the terrace. Good picadillo......
Lunch Deli - the Lakeside Deli over the tracks in downtown Eustis has delicious soups and sandwiches......try the steak sub with hot peppers......
Jamaican food - Cafe Basil in Tavares has some native dishes and a mean jerk chicken.....there's a normal lunch menu as well, but go for one of his Jamaican specialities......and try a slice of his rum cake for dessert.
Wings - Sinbads in Tavares has some of the best wings we have ever had in a very shabby environment - we've been going here for 12 years and they may have put $20 into the decor..... wear dark glasses so you don't notice the dirt and have some world class wings extra crispy.....try the Firecracker sauce.....
Also try to avoid using the bathrooms.....yuck....but if you have to there's a cool map of the chain of lakes in the mens room.....
Soup and salad - One Flight Up in downtown MD has a decent lunch menu, but one of the pleasures of this place is sitting outside in the evening over a glass of wine....nice upscale feel to it....
Al's Landing in Tavares on the water - we keep going back here because the ambiance is so great.....a Key West feel to the place in the evening, and we keep hoping the food will improve from marginal to acceptable....the only dish we can recommend is the flatbreads.....great bar......
BBQ - there are about 5 mobile stands selling pulled pork and BBQ etc., and regular readers may recall we did a survey of them all a few months ago. Overall the best was "Big Mikes" on 441 opposite RaceTrac......great pulled pork [we served it at one of our parties!] with a bold spicy sauce, and he has wonderful collard greens as well. Good honest grub....
Enjoy any of these eateries, and if any of you have a place to recommend we try please let me know.....we're always looking for more choices.....
Disclaimer - DDD doesn't get any freebies from any of these places, this are just my opinions and if my recommendations help these restaurants stay in business, great. For more on this topic, see "Athens Cafe" above.....
Todays video - the Secretary......
Todays blond joke
Blind Man
A blind man enters a lady's bar by mistake. Finding his way to the bar, he orders a drink. After a few drinks he yells, "Does anybody want to hear a blonde joke?"
The place gets silent. Then a woman with a deep, husky voice sitting to the right of the man says, "Sir, since you are blind, I think it is only fair to let you know that
- The bartender is a blonde woman.
- The bouncer is a blonde woman.
- The woman on your left is blonde and a professional wrestler.
- I'm a six foot tall blonde woman with a black belt in karate.
- The woman next to me is blonde and a professional weight lifter.
Do you still want to tell that joke?"
"Nah," says the man. "Not if I'm gonna have to explain it FIVE times."
Todays LOL joke
Todays political joke
A cannibal was walking through the jungle
and came upon a restaurant operated by a
fellow cannibal.
Feeling somewhat hungry, he sat down and looked over the menu....
******************************
+Tourist: $5.00
+Broiled Missionary: $10.00
+Fried Explorer: $15.00
+Baked Democrat or Grilled Republican: $100.00
******************************
The cannibal called the waiter over and asked,
"Why such a high price for the Politicians?"
The cook replied, "Have you ever tried to clean one?
They're so full of shit, it takes all morning."
****************
No comments:
Post a Comment