1/ Probably the most important video you will watch this year. Eli Pariser spells out, simply and clearly, how Google and Facebook are shaping your life through their algorithms.....
Don't switch off because I said algorithm.....you need to watch this because what he is saying is already manipulating you when you google......
Nine minutes of the future, happening right now.....
2/ Most interesting column from the Times....the Ryan plan for Medicare was that seniors over 55 were fine, but anyone under 55 was screwed as they would get a voucher and use it on the private insurance market.
But seniors weren't buying it.....the Republicans played the greed card, and it failed. Now the vote for the Ryan plan will haunt them.......
May 16, 2011, 9:34 PM
The Need for Greed
By TIMOTHY EGAN
The bet was audacious from the beginning, and given the miserable, low-down tenor of contemporary politics, not unfathomable: Could you divide the country between greedy geezers and everyone else as a way to radically alter the social contract?
But in order for the Republican plan to turn Medicare, one of most popular government programs in history, into a much-diminished voucher system, the greed card had to work.
The plan’s architect, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, drew a line in the actuarial sand: Anyone born before 1957 would not be affected. They could enjoy the single-payer, socialized medical care program that has allowed millions of people to live extended lives of dignity and decent health care.
And their kids and grandkids? Sorry, they would have to take their little voucher and pay some private insurer nearly twice as much as a senior pays for basic government coverage today. In essence, Republicans would break up the population between an I’ve Got Mine segment and The Left Behinds.
Again, not a bad political calculation. Altruism is a squishy notion, hard to sustain in an election. Ryan himself has made a naked play for greed in defending the plan. “Seniors, as soon as they realize this doesn’t affect them, they are not so opposed,” he has said.
Well, the early verdict is in, and it looks as though the better angels have prevailed: seniors are opposed. Republicans: Meet the Fockers. Already, there is considerable anxiety — and some guilt — among older folks about leaving their children worse off financially than they are. To burden them with a much costlier, privatized elderly health insurance program is a lead weight for the golden years.
This plan is toast. Newt Gingrich is in deep trouble with the Republican base for stating the obvious on Sunday, when he called the signature Medicare proposal of his party “right-wing social engineering.” But that’s exactly what it is: a blueprint for downward mobility.
Look at the special Congressional election of next Tuesday. What was supposed to be a shoo-in for Republicans in a very safe district of upstate New York is now a tossup. For that, you can blame the Medicare radicals now running the House.
And a raft of recent polls show that seniors, who voted overwhelmingly Republican in the 2010 elections, are retreating in droves. Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says the Ryan plan is a “watershed event,” putting older voters in play for next year’s presidential election.
Beyond the political calculations, all of this is encouraging news because it shows that people are starting to think much harder about what kind of country they want to live in. Give the Republicans credit for honesty and showing their true colors. And their plan is at least a starting point compared with those Tea Party political illiterates who waved signs urging government to keep its hands off their government health care.
When the House of Representatives voted to end Medicare as we know it last month, it was sold as a way to save the program. Medicare now covers 47.5 million Americans, but it won’t have sufficient funds to pay full benefits by 2024, according to the most recent trustee report. Something has to be done.
Many Republicans want to kill it. They hate Medicare because it represents everything they are philosophically opposed to: a government-run program that works and is popular across the political board. It’s tough to shout about the dangers of universal health care when the two greatest protectors (if not creators) of the elderly middle class are those pillars of 20th-century progressive change, Social Security and Medicare.
For next year’s election, all but a handful of Republicans in the House are stuck with the Scarlet Letter of the Ryan Plan on their record. Soon, there will be a similar vote in the Senate. It will not pass, but it will show which side of the argument politicians are on.
There is a very simple way to make Medicare whole through the end of this century, far less complicated, and more of a bargain in the long run than the bizarre Ryan plan. Raise taxes. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but most American pay less taxes now than anytime in the last 50 years, according to a number of measurements. And a majority of the public now seems willing to pay a little extra (or force somebody else to pay a little extra) to keep a good thing going. Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush raised taxes, by the way.
Given a choice between self-interest and the greater good, voters will usually watch out for themselves — unless that greater good is their own family. For Republicans intent on killing Medicare, it was a monumental miscalculation to miss that logical leap.
3/ Music video - "Addiction" by Medina.......sometimes electronic dance music can be really nice, like this track....it helps that she is classically beautiful of course.....
4/ Maureen Dowd with a column on the busted head of the IMF - Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and his alleged rape of a maid in his hotel room. There is already rumbling about how this was a set-up, but if it was it was at the hands of the French Government as this dude was going to challenge Sarkozy for the Presidency of France next year. Strauss-Kahn is also a real, powerful and important financial industry oligarch.......when the mighty fall, it's a long way down....hope he ends up in a cell with Bubba....
But I don't think it was a set-up...he sounds like another rich guy who buys his way out of trouble all the time......
Powerful and Primitive
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: May 17, 2011
WASHINGTON
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Oh, she wanted it.
She wanted it bad.
That’s what every hard-working, God-fearing, young widow who breaks her back doing menial labor at a Times Square hotel to support her teenage daughter, justify her immigration status and take advantage of the opportunities in America wants — a crazed, rutting, wrinkly old satyr charging naked out of a bathroom, lunging at her and dragging her around the room, caveman-style.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s reputation as a thrice-married French seducer loses something in the translation.
According to the claims of the 32-year-old West African maid, what took place in the $3,000-a-day Sofitel suite had nothing to do with seduction. If the allegation is true, Strauss-Kahn’s behavior, boorish and primitive, is rape.
Was the chief of the International Monetary Fund telling other countries to tighten their belts while he was dropping his trousers? Lawyers for the 62-year-old Frenchman, who had been a leading Socialist prospect to run against Nicolas Sarkozy next year, seem ready to rebut any DNA evidence by arguing that sex with the maid who came in to clean his room was consensual.
Will they argue that she wilted with desire once she realized Strauss-Kahn had been at Davos?
Jeffrey Shapiro, the maid’s lawyer, angrily rebutted that there was “nothing, nothing” consensual about the droit du monsieur. (It was not a “come in and see my monetary fund” kind of thing.)
“She is a simple housekeeper who was going into a room to clean a room,” Shapiro told The Times. He called the devout Muslim woman from the Bronx “a very proper, dignified young woman” and said “she did not even know who this guy was” until she saw the news accounts.
Strauss-Kahn’s French defenders are throwing around nutty conspiracy theories, sounding like the Pakistanis about Osama. Some have suggested that he was the victim of a honey-pot arranged by the Sarkozy forces.
Bernard-Henri Lévy, a friend of the accused, says he is outraged at the portrayal of Strauss-Kahn as an “insatiable and malevolent beast.” He wrote on The Daily Beast: “It would be nice to know — and without delay — how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a ‘cleaning brigade’ of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.”
At least he didn’t mention Dreyfus.
For years, I’ve stayed at the Sofitel and other hotels in New York City, and I’ve never seen a “brigade,” simply single maids coming in to clean.
In Washington, they have now nicknamed the street that separates the I.M.F. and the World Bank, where Paul Wolfowitz lost his job over financial hanky-panky with his girlfriend, the Boulevard of Bad Behavior.
These are the two institutions that are globally renowned for lecturing the rest of the world on discipline and freedom, when it’s the West that’s guilty of recklessness and improvident behavior. First in finance, then in sex.
People who can’t keep their flies zipped lecturing other people.
While the French excoriated the American system of justice — discouraging pictures of Strauss-Kahn handcuffed, which are illegal in France — Americans could pride themselves on the sound of the “bum-bum” “Law & Order: SVU” gong sounding, the noise that heralds that justice will be done without regard to wealth, class or privilege.
It’s an inspiring story about America, where even a maid can have dignity and be listened to when she accuses one of the most powerful men in the world of being a predator. (A charge that has been made against him before, with a similar pattern of brutal behavior.)
The young woman escaped horrors in her native Guinea, a patriarchal society where rape is widespread and used as a device of war, a place where she would have been kicked to the curb if she tried to take on a powerful man. When she faced the horror here, she had a recourse.
Another famous European with a disturbing pattern of sexual aggression got in trouble over the help this week: The ex-governor of California, who got elected after his wife, Maria Shriver, defended him so eloquently against groping charges.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was also guilty of the raw assertion of male power. More than mere infidelity, The Sperminator was caught on lying and piggishness, having a son with a staffer around the same time Maria had their youngest son, who is now 13. He kept the staffer on the payroll and even may have brought the son Maria didn’t know about into the house. No wonder Maria fled to a Beverly Hills hotel.
We’re always fascinated with the contradiction that cosmopolitan, high-powered, multilingual people can behave in such primitive ways. But civilization and morality have nothing to do with sophistication and social status.
The lesson of these two fallen grandees, as Bill Maher told Chris Matthews, is: “If you’re going to go after the household help, get a ‘Yes,’ first.”
5/ Good grief - we may have someone in public life who has the cojones to go after Wall Street - the New York State Attorney General. Let's hope he nails these scum.......
There is also a two minute video of Taibbi talking to Elliot Spitzer on CNN in the link.....
Schneiderman’s probe, news of which came out yesterday in this piece by Morgenson, reportedly targets the banks’ mortgage securitization process during the bubble years. Morgenson reported that Schneiderman is focused on at least three companies: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and old friend Goldman, Sachs.
This investigation has the potential to be a Mother of All Nightmares situation for the banks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the decision to go after the securitization process is a total prosecutorial bullseye. This is the ugly heart of the wide-scale fraud scheme of the bubble era. Again, the business model during this time was a giant bait-and-switch scam. Sleazy lenders like Countrywide and New Century first created huge masses of bad loans, committing every conceivable kind of fraud to get people into loans (from doctoring income statements with white-out to phonying FICO scores to engineering fake appraisals). They then moved the bad loans quickly to the big banks, which pooled them and chopped them up (this is the “securitization” process), sprinkled hocus-pocus math on them, and them sold them to suckers around the world as AAA-rated securities.
6/ Newt....ah Newt.
This demented asshole issued a bizarre statement about how the "media" is being unfair to the Newtster, so Rachael Maddow had a field day with this.....funny.....2 minutes...
7/ The drug laws in this country are truly weird, and range from pot being legal for medical use, decriminalised in some other states to draconian laws in bright red states, including Florida. Republicans believe you can legislate behaviour, but all it ends up doing is filling prisons, mostly with the poor.
And certainly in Florida don't expect these punitive drug laws to get better, as Governor Rick and the idiots in the legislature have just passed a bill privatising some of the prisons, so now we have lobbyists for the private prison industry who will resist lighter penalties for drug use....bad for business, fewer prisoners....
Five states to stay away from, including Florida, if you use weed.....
Even a minor pot bust can be life-altering for people unlucky enough to be arrested in one of these five states.
May 13, 2011 |
Police prosecute over 800,000 Americans annually for violating state marijuana laws. The penalties for those busted and convicted vary greatly, ranging from the imposition of small fines to license revocation to potential incarceration. But for the citizens arrested in these five states, the ramifications of even a minor pot bust are likely to be exceptionally severe.
8/ Talk about mixed feelings - Rick Scott and the Legislature are about to take the ax to the St. Johns and all of the other Water Management Districts, so yeay - about time. But it's what they want to do instead that's scary....
At the urging of Gov. Rick Scott, the Legislature earlier this month passed a bill that would cut the water-management districts' property-tax revenues by as much as 30 percent. The legislation, still awaiting Scott's signature, would also give lawmakers line-item-veto power over the districts' finances.
Reaction to the legislation, initially pitched by Scott as tax relief, ranges from optimism among district opponents that the budget cuts will reduce their meddling with utilities and developers to fear among district supporters that the powerful, regional agencies are now on track to be dismantled and folded into state government.
The legislation has already led to some soul-searching among board members of the two districts that divide responsibility for Central Florida: the South Florida Water Management District, based in West Palm Beach; and the St. Johns River Water Management District, based in Palatka.
"This is the discussion I have with our executive director and senior staff: 'Tell me how it is that, everywhere I go, most people are celebrating this reduction and have this anger toward us," said Maryam Ghyabi, a St. Johns board member and president of the engineering-and-planning firm Ghyabi & Associates in Jacksonville.
Reaction to the legislation, initially pitched by Scott as tax relief, ranges from optimism among district opponents that the budget cuts will reduce their meddling with utilities and developers to fear among district supporters that the powerful, regional agencies are now on track to be dismantled and folded into state government.
The legislation has already led to some soul-searching among board members of the two districts that divide responsibility for Central Florida: the South Florida Water Management District, based in West Palm Beach; and the St. Johns River Water Management District, based in Palatka.
"This is the discussion I have with our executive director and senior staff: 'Tell me how it is that, everywhere I go, most people are celebrating this reduction and have this anger toward us," said Maryam Ghyabi, a St. Johns board member and president of the engineering-and-planning firm Ghyabi & Associates in Jacksonville.
9/ Janelle is missing, so two totally hot, bitchy and really funny friends of hers make a plea for her to come back, or something on Onion's Today Now......listen carefully to the "teen talk".....
10/ Here's something different - a quiz that let's you know where you are politically......it'll take you 2 minutes max.....
So, you think you know where you stand, politically. Think again. Interesting!
You'll be asked just 10 easy questions, and then it instantly tells you where you stand politically. It shows your position as a red dot on a "political map" so you'll see exactly where you score.
The most interesting thing about the Quiz is that it goes beyond the Democrat, Republican, and Independent.
The Quiz has gotten a lot of praise. The Washington Post said it has "gained respect as a valid measure of a person's political leanings." The Fraser Institute said it's "a fast, fun, and accurate assessment of a person's overall political views." Suite University said it is the "most concise and accurate political quiz out there."
Click on the link below...
11/ OMG - Bristol Palin has her own reality show.....here Jimmy Kimmel shows us a promo for the extravaganza....1 minute.....
Todays video - some French guy complains about his job......
Todays clever word joke
This two-letter word in English has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is 'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the
sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends, brightenUP a room, polish UP the silver, warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and fix UP the old car.
At other times, this little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP
is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UPabout UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look UP the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out, we say it is clearingUP. When it rains, it soaks UP the earth. When it does not rain for a while, things dry UP. One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now . . . my time is UP!
Oh . . . one more thing: What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?
U
P!
Did that one crack you UP?
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