Great article by Matt Taibbi....#1
A test for your memory, sent in by one of our alert readers......
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401K’s, took trillions in taxpayer funded bail outs, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither.
1/ Another amazing article from my favourite writer, Matt Taibbi. He gives us a biography of Michele Bachmann, and advises us not to laugh - she could be the candidate for the Republican party in 2012. This is absolutely the most fascinating bio of a politician I have read in years, and it filled me with dread in case her ambitions come true. Don't ever underestimate her.....
This should be required reading for everyone with even a smidgin of interest in politics.....here are some samples.....
It's a long story, but make the time......
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.
It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics.
..............................
Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government.
..............................
And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-
2/ An excellent column about our President from Maureen Dowd....how he finds it impossible to make a stand on anything, works both sides of every issue and has no backbone......
I really hope she's wrong, but I am afraid she isn't......
HE was born this way.
Bi.
Not bisexual. Not even bipartisan. Just binary.
Our president likes to be on both sides at once.
In Afghanistan, he wants to go but he wants to stay. He’s surging and withdrawing simultaneously. He’s leaving fewer troops than are needed for a counterinsurgency strategy and more troops than are needed for a counterterrorism strategy — and he seems to want both strategies at the same time. Our work is done but we have to still be there. Our work isn’t done but we can go.
On Libya, President Obama wants to lead from behind. He’s engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi while telling Congress he’s not engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi.
On the budget, he wants to cut spending and increase spending. On the environment, he wants to increase energy production but is reluctant to drill. On health care, he wants to get everybody covered but will not press for a universal system. On Wall Street, he assails fat cats, but at cocktail parties, he wants to collect some of their fat for his campaign.
On politics, he likes to be friends with the other side but bash ’em at the same time. For others, bipartisanship means transcending their own prior political identities. For President Obama, it means that he participates in all political identities. He does not seem deeply affiliated with any side except his own.
3/ How our corrupt and dysfunctional politics produces insane results - an excellent article on the corn grown in the US......
Excellent article....
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Great Corn Con
By STEVEN RATTNER
Published: June 24, 2011
FEELING the need for an example of government policy run amok? Look no further than the box of cornflakes on your kitchen shelf. In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.
Related
Times Topic: Corn
Even in a crowd of rising food and commodity costs, corn stands out, its price having doubled in less than a year to a record $7.87 per bushel in early June. Booming global demand has overtaken stagnant supply.
But rather than ameliorate the problem, the government has exacerbated it, reducing food supply to a hungry world. Thanks to Washington, 4 of every 10 ears of corn grown in America — the source of 40 percent of the world’s production — are shunted into ethanol, a gasoline substitute that imperceptibly nicks our energy problem. Larded onto that are $11 billion a year of government subsidies to the corn complex.
Corn is hardly some minor agricultural product for breakfast cereal. It’s America’s largest crop, dwarfing wheat and soybeans. A small portion of production goes for human consumption; about 40 percent feeds cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens. Diverting 40 percent to ethanol has disagreeable consequences for food. In just a year, the price of bacon has soared by 24 percent.
4/ Remember Weird Al? - he's still around, and has just released "Perform this Way", his takeoff on Lady Gaga.....3 minutes, and mildly amusing......he has grafted his head electronically on to a dancers body in case you were wondering if he had a sex change......
5/ Indiana is held up as a poster state for how conservative policies really work, and it's Governor, Mitch Daniels is being urged to run for President. However under the gloss is another reality that is gradually sinking in - the budgets are being balanced on the backs of the middle class.....
“Look, people think fiscal solvency, they think Indiana,” he says. “People think great business climate, Indiana comes to mind. People think infrastructure, we’re exactly who they think of.”
Because recessionary winds have not toppled Indiana’s house, this state is often overlooked in the news coverage of budget crises across the nation — particularly since its next-door neighbor Illinois offers such an outsize example of the financial ills afflicting state and local budgets.
But Indiana is no world apart, even if Mr. Daniels would like to suggest it is. Large cracks have opened in its economic foundation, a sign of just how severe the downturn remains.
Mr. Daniels alone cannot take all credit or shoulder blame for the health of Indiana’s economy. But it is his work here — and his reputation as a cost-cutting, tough-on-labor conservative obsessed with fiscal problems — that fueled interest in his presidential ambitions before he announced that he would not run because of family considerations.
The state also serves as a case study of the often large tradeoffs required to balance the books when political leaders take the possibility of raising income taxes off the table. Fiscal conservatism, in other words, comes with its own costs.
6/ Although this story is about a car, the Chevy Volt, it's really about our energy future. It's written by Joe Nocera who is an economics columnist......
Anyway I found this most interesting, as he goes into not just the economics but our driving habits, and concludes GM may have a real winner with this one.....
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Is This Our Future?
By JOE NOCERA
Published: June 25, 2011
THE moment I realized that driving the new Chevrolet Voltwas fundamentally a new experience was not when I first turned it on and went around the block. Yes, it was whisper-quiet, powered by its 16 kilowatt-hour, 400-pound battery, but it still felt like a “normal” automobile. And it wasn’t when I drove the 100 or so miles from Manhattan to Southampton, N.Y., either. Although the battery’s range is only about 40 miles, the car kept going even after the battery was drained; it just switched to its gasoline engine, in a transition so seamless I barely noticed it. It wasn’t even when I arrived in Southampton that evening and plugged a special cord into an electrical outlet in the garage, to recharge the battery overnight.
Multimedia
Related in Sunday Review
News Analysis: Oil Oozes Through Your Life (June 26, 2011)
Adam Simpson
Readers' Comments
Share your thoughts.
No, what made the experience truly different — and what got me thinking about the Volt’s potential to change the way we think about gas consumption — was what happened after that.
You know the story of the Volt, don’t you? As the General Motors entry in the race to build a viableelectric car — a race that includes the all-electric Nissan Leaf, a raft of Fords in various stages of development and an electric sedan that Tesla will soon begin selling — it may well be the most hyped American automobile since Lee Iacocca rolled out the Chrysler minivan. Begun four years ago, and championed by the legendary auto executive Bob Lutz, the Volt project managed to survive G.M.’s descent into bankruptcy, and emerge as the company’s great, shining hope, a symbol of what American car manufacturers could accomplish. Or so it’s been claimed.
Cars like the Leaf and the original Tesla — a Roadster that cost more than $100,000 — are “pure” electric vehicles powered solely by their batteries. Classic hybrids like the Toyota Prius use a battery as a kind of add-on, to boost the gas mileage of a combustion engine. The Volt, however, is engineered differently. As long as the battery has juice, the car acts like an electric vehicle. When the battery dies, the combustion engine takes over, and it becomes an old-fashioned gas-consuming car. Once you recharge the battery, electricity takes over again.
The experience of driving it meshes with the way we think about using a car. There is no need to plan ahead, for instance, to make sure the car won’t run out of battery life before we can recharge it. And the gas engine eliminates the dreaded “range anxiety” that prevents most people from embracing an electric vehicle. Indeed, G.M. likes to call the Volt an “extended range vehicle.” Motor Trend, the car enthusiasts’ bible, was so impressed that it named the Volt its 2011 car of the year.
The Volt went on sale last December. But because Chevrolet has been so cautious in rolling it out — dealers in only seven states have gotten cars so far, with fewer than 2,500 sold — it can sometimes seem like the world’s most publicized invisible car. (A bigger rollout is planned for next year.) Which is why I asked G.M. if I could test-drive it over the Memorial Day holiday. I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about.
For four days, I drove it around town, used it to pick up the groceries, took it to visit friends. Sometimes, when I walked out of a store, someone would be standing next to “my” Volt, wanting to ask me questions about it. Though I am no automotive expert, I was pleasantly surprised by the car’s power, pickup and handling. “People think it’s going to be a dorkmobile,” said Mr. Lutz, who retired last year. “But it’s fun to drive.”
7/ The Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Austin Texas!!
A movie chain that means what it says.....read the story, then watch the 2 minute video they show in the theater before every movie....funny.....
When Tim League, the chief executive of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a movie chain based in Austin, received an irate voice mail message from a young woman recently, he did not want to change her opinion.
He wanted to publicize it.
The caller had been ejected from a movie for texting, violating a prohibition against using mobile devices underscored in videos shown before movies, and Mr. League decided that the phone message was fodder for yet another public service announcement.
“At the Alamo Drafthouse, we have a simple rule: If you talk or text during a movie, we kick you out,” says screen text that begins the resulting video, which currently is being shown at theaters and was posted to YouTube on June 3. “What follows is an actual voice mail a customer left us after being kicked out.”
8/ Wow - bet this story will shock you.....it says one of the biggest power drains in your house is the cable box on top of your TV, as much as your refrigerator or more....
Atop TV Sets, a Power Drain That Runs Nonstop
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: June 25, 2011
Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
A new study has found that some home entertainment systems eat more energy than refrigerators or central air-conditioning systems.
Multimedia
There are 160 million so-called set-top boxes in the United States, one for every two people, and that number is rising. Many homes now have one or more basic cable boxes as well as add-on DVRs, or digital video recorders, which use 40 percent more power than the set-top box.
One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.
These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. The recent study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States — and that 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. That is more power than the state of Maryland uses over 12 months.
“People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,” said John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission who is now with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation. “Companies say it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.”
The perpetually “powered on” state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Fixes exist, but they are not currently being mandated or deployed in the United States, critics say.
9/ Rick Scott's flunkies have shut down a government website that allowed you to compare insurance rates.....hmmmm.....I wonder why.....maybe the insurance lobby didn't like it?
State officials have quietly pulled the plug on a consumer-friendly website that was the sole resource for homeowners comparison shopping for the best property insurance rates.
Though they differ on the reason for taking down the site, spokesmen for Gov. Rick Scott and Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty say shopandcomparerates.com was temporarily unplugged this spring for "updates and enhancements."
It has remained offline ever since.
State officials promise they will restore the comparison shopping tool soon, but they would not say when.
"We don't have a specific date set for that at this time," said Lane Wright, the governor's press secretary.
Former Gov. Charlie Crist started the site in 2007 amid a campaign to pressure insurance companies to lower their rates.
10/ Ever watched a train wreck? Enjoy it?
Then here's Britney Spears with her new video "I Wanna Go".......just fascinating how bad a song it is and how slutty she looks and acts....has to be a parody....4 minutes......
11/ So our wonderful Governor has a brother he doesn't talk much about........
I know, I know, it's nasty gossip and every family has a black sheep brother-in-law or a granny locked in the attic with powerful meds, but it's reassuring to know even this paragon of fiscal virtue has a sibling problem.....mind you the article doesn't sound like the Rickster is sending him money.....
Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill that requires all people seeking welfare take mandatory drug tests. Interestingly, it turns out Scott has a younger brother who receives welfare and seems to have a history of drug charges.
A joint effort by our sister papers New Times Broward-Palm Beach and the Dallas Observer shows that 54-year-old Roger Scott lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment in Dallas, Texas. He doesn't work and lives off social security checks. A Roger Scott with the same birthday and personal information has been charged with numerous crimes, including drug possession.
A joint effort by our sister papers New Times Broward-Palm Beach and the Dallas Observer shows that 54-year-old Roger Scott lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment in Dallas, Texas. He doesn't work and lives off social security checks. A Roger Scott with the same birthday and personal information has been charged with numerous crimes, including drug possession.
12/ Movie review - "Bad Teacher" with Cameron Diaz.......sounds like a hoot....good review....
When the Teacher Gets High Marks in the Raunchy and the Profane
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: June 23, 2011
In “Bad Teacher,” a breezily crude comedy about unladylike pleasures like guzzling booze, swearing at children and being mean because, well, you can be, Cameron Diaz taps into her inner thug. It’s a beautiful thing. A performer with a gift for light comedy and a comically ductile face that can work in fascinating counterpart to her rocking hot body (as her character would say), Ms. Diaz has found her down-and-dirty element in the kind of broad comedy that threatens to get ugly and more or less succeeds on that threat.
More About This Movie
Written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, and directed by Jake Kasdan, the movie is high-concept low comedy and as pared down as a haiku: a beautiful woman, without an apparent conscience, wreaks havoc. There’s no hint of how nasty Ms. Diaz, or rather her character, Elizabeth, can be when you first see her tucked into a dreary field of other middle-school teachers, standing out like a yellow rose. With thorns.
It’s the last day of class and she’s out of there forever, peeling out in a sports car that takes her right back home to the meal ticket she calls her fiancé. But before she can cash that ticket he’s gone, leaving her stranded and forced back into teaching, a profession for which she’s so constitutionally unsuited it borders on the criminal.
Nothing she does really crosses the line except getting stoned at school and maybe bouncing a ball off the heads of students who don’t answer her questions correctly. There’s also the black bra that she whips off in inappropriate and possibly illegal circumstances along with the airline-size bottles of hooch she keeps tucked in her classroom desk. About all she doesn’t do wrong is sleep with her students, though that may be because she’s too busy narrowing her sights on the only prospect in view, a new teacher, Scott (Justin Timberlake), a bore with family money who wears bowties without irony. So she smiles, battles a rival, Amy (Lucy Punch), and ignores a more suitable love interest, Russell (Jason Segel).
That more or less takes care of the story though there’s more for your pleasure, notably an entertaining, smartly cast crew of professional funnymen like John Michael Higgins, as a principal with a dolphin fetish, and Thomas Lennon, as a school official who becomes a bump in the road that Elizabeth flattens.
Todays video - the Bill Clinton Library from SNL
Todays family jokes.....
Alas, where has all our innocence gone?
While I sat in the reception area
of my doctor's office, a woman rolled an elderly man
in a wheelchair into the room. As she went
to the receptionist's desk, the man sat there, alone
and silent. Just as I was thinking I should make
small talk with him, a little boy slipped off
his mother's lap and walked over to
the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the
man's, he said, I know how you feel. My
mom makes me ride in the stroller too..'
*****
As I was nursing
my baby, my cousin's six-year-old
daughter, Krissy, came into the room.
Never having seen anyone breast feed
before, she was intrigued and full of all
kinds of questions about what I was doing.
After mulling over my answers, she remarked,
'My mom has some of those, but I don't think she knows how to use them..'
*****
Out bicycling
one day with my eight-year-old
granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little
wistful. 'In ten years,' I said, 'you'll want
to be with your friends and you won't go
walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do
now. Carolyn shrugged. 'In ten years you'll be
too old to do all those things anyway.'
******
Working as a pediatric
nurse, I had the difficult assignment
of giving immunization shots to children..
One day, I entered the examining room to give
four-year-old Lizzie her needle. 'No, no, no!' she
screamed. 'Lizzie,' scolded her mother, 'that's
not polite behavior.' With that, the girl
yelled even louder, 'No, thank you! No, thank
you!
******
On the way back from a Cub
Scout meeting, my grandson innocently said to my son,
'Dad, I know babies come from mommies' tummies, but
how do they get there in the first place?' After my
son hemmed and hawed awhile, my grandson finally
spoke up in disgust, 'You don't have to make
up something, Dad. It's okay if you don't
know the answer.'
*****
Just before I
was deployed to Iraq , I sat my eight-year-old
son down and broke the news to him. 'I'm
going to be away for a long time,' I told
him. 'I'm going to Iraq .' 'Why?' he
asked. 'Don't you know there's a war going
on over there?'
*****
Paul Newman
founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for
children stricken with cancer, AIDS, and blood
diseases. One afternoon, he and is wife,
Joanne Woodward, stopped by to have lunch with
the kids. A counselor at a nearby
table, suspecting the young patients
wouldn't know Newman was a famous movie star,
explained, That's the man who made this camp
possible. Maybe you've seen his picture on
his salad dressing bottle?' Blank
stares. 'Well, you've probably seen his face on
his lemonade carton.' An eight-year-old girl
perked up. 'How long was he missing?'
*****
... and my personal favorite ...God's Problem Now:
His wife's graveside service was just barely finished, when there was a
massive clap of thunder, followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning, accompanied
by even more thunder rumbling in the distance. The little old man looked at
the pastor and calmly said, "Well, she's there."
While I sat in the reception area
of my doctor's office, a woman rolled an elderly man
in a wheelchair into the room. As she went
to the receptionist's desk, the man sat there, alone
and silent. Just as I was thinking I should make
small talk with him, a little boy slipped off
his mother's lap and walked over to
the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the
man's, he said, I know how you feel. My
mom makes me ride in the stroller too..'
*****
As I was nursing
my baby, my cousin's six-year-old
daughter, Krissy, came into the room.
Never having seen anyone breast feed
before, she was intrigued and full of all
kinds of questions about what I was doing.
After mulling over my answers, she remarked,
'My mom has some of those, but I don't think she knows how to use them..'
*****
Out bicycling
one day with my eight-year-old
granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little
wistful. 'In ten years,' I said, 'you'll want
to be with your friends and you won't go
walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do
now. Carolyn shrugged. 'In ten years you'll be
too old to do all those things anyway.'
******
Working as a pediatric
nurse, I had the difficult assignment
of giving immunization shots to children..
One day, I entered the examining room to give
four-year-old Lizzie her needle. 'No, no, no!' she
screamed. 'Lizzie,' scolded her mother, 'that's
not polite behavior.' With that, the girl
yelled even louder, 'No, thank you! No, thank
you!
******
On the way back from a Cub
Scout meeting, my grandson innocently said to my son,
'Dad, I know babies come from mommies' tummies, but
how do they get there in the first place?' After my
son hemmed and hawed awhile, my grandson finally
spoke up in disgust, 'You don't have to make
up something, Dad. It's okay if you don't
know the answer.'
*****
Just before I
was deployed to Iraq , I sat my eight-year-old
son down and broke the news to him. 'I'm
going to be away for a long time,' I told
him. 'I'm going to Iraq .' 'Why?' he
asked. 'Don't you know there's a war going
on over there?'
*****
Paul Newman
founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for
children stricken with cancer, AIDS, and blood
diseases. One afternoon, he and is wife,
Joanne Woodward, stopped by to have lunch with
the kids. A counselor at a nearby
table, suspecting the young patients
wouldn't know Newman was a famous movie star,
explained, That's the man who made this camp
possible. Maybe you've seen his picture on
his salad dressing bottle?' Blank
stares. 'Well, you've probably seen his face on
his lemonade carton.' An eight-year-old girl
perked up. 'How long was he missing?'
*****
... and my personal favorite ...God's Problem Now:
His wife's graveside service was just barely finished, when there was a
massive clap of thunder, followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning, accompanied
by even more thunder rumbling in the distance. The little old man looked at
the pastor and calmly said, "Well, she's there."
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