Sunday, October 30, 2011

Davids Daily Dose - Monday October 31st

1/  An excellent and thoughtful article from Glenn Greenwald in Mother Jones on why ordinary citizens are rising up and protesting the system - because it no longer perceived as fair. The oligarchy have exempted themselves from the legal system, while for the rest of us even trivial crimes are harshly punished with draconian prison sentences....

One of the best analyses of the reasons behind the Occupy movement I have yet seen - not too long, and very intelligent.....
As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding—indeed, an integral part of it.
Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noahdescribed the process:
During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth—the "seven fat years" and the "long boom." Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1 percent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 percent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.


















2/  On the same theme, Bill Maher's New Rules looks at the attitudes pushed by the right towards the protesters......funny as usual....about 3 minutes......

Looked like a good show - he had Rachael Maddow and Thomas Friedman on the panel.....


















3/  Hope you had a good Halloween - I know the people in this house certainly did....incredible light show, rivals some of the Christmas lights we used to see.....cool song too.....3 minutes.....

















4/  Tom Tomorrow's view of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the reaction from the Banksters.....funny....

















5/  Matt Taibbi has a vision - Rick Perry's America, and it is the most corrupt, evil place you can possibly imagine based on what he's done to Texas. Taibbi does these in depth looks at politicians better than anyone - you may remember the piece he did on Michelle Bachmann a few months ago, but Perry is worse, much worse.

This is required reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in politics, because even though Perry has made a fool of himself over and over [see #7!] he has so much money you can't count him out. And the primary voters he is appealing to are also a little crazed, so they'll forgive anything.

A frightening place, this America of ours......

But this is America, remember, where one should never underestimate shallow. And Rick Perry brings shallow to a new level. He is very gifted in that regard. He could be the Adolf Hitler of shallow.
Perry's campaign is still struggling to recover from the kind of spectacular, submarine-at-crush-depth collapse seldom seen before in the history of presidential politics. The governor went from presumptive front-runner to stammering talk-show punch line seemingly in the speed of a single tweet, rightly blasted for being too incompetent even to hold his own in televised debates with a half-bright pizza salesman like Herman Cain and a goggle-eyed megachurch Joan of Arc like Michele Bachmann. But such superficial criticisms of his weirdly erratic campaign demeanor don't even begin to get at the root of why we should all be terrified of Perry and what he represents. After all, you have to go pretty far to stand out as a whore and a sellout when you come from a state that has produced such luminaries in the history of political corruption as LBJ, Karl Rove and George W. Bush. But Rick Perry has managed to set a scary new low in the annals of opportunism, turning Texas into a swamp of political incest and backroom dealing on a scale not often seen this side of the Congo or Sierra Leone.
In an era when there's exponentially more money in politics than we've ever seen before, Perry is the candidate who is exponentially more willing than we've ever seen before to whore himself out for that money.

















6/  How to get girls to lose weight.....clever and amusing.....90 seconds.......
















7/  Rick Perry gives a speech with some highly unusual moments.......watch this eight minute performance and judge for yourself if he is either 1/ drunk 2/ on weed or 3/ some other chemical......amazing.....and this clown may be in the running for the presidency....


















8/  We're living in a bubble - and Charles Blow explains the reality of how the US rates in the things that really matter vs the rest of the Western world....

Be sure to look at the chart.....and yeay, out of 31 countries we're ahead of Mexico and Turkey!!!! USA, USA, USA.......

We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall.
We have not taken care of the least among us. We have allowed a revolting level of income inequality to develop. We have watched as millions of our fellow countrymen have fallen into poverty. And we have done a poor job of educating our children and now threaten to leave them a country that is a shell of its former self. We should be ashamed.
Poor policies and poor choices have led to exceedingly poor outcomes. Our societal chickens have come home to roost.
This was underscored in a report released on Thursday by the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation of Germany entitled “Social Justice in the OECD — How Do the Member States Compare?” It analyzed some metrics of basic fairness and equality among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and ranked America among the ones at the bottom.
I could write (and have written) ad nauseam about our woeful state, but it might be more powerful to see it for yourself. So here are some of the sad datafrom the report.

















9/  Jon Stewart is at his best when he is nailing the media, and this is a good one......a Koch Brothers funded foundation has concluded climate change is real....yes the Koch Brothers!! 

But the media ignored this story, especially Fox News.....

Given the media circus that was Climategate, Stewart was shocked to learn that a study done by a noted climate change skeptic AND funded by Tea Party oil tycoons the Koch brothers which intended to disprove global warming recently reaffirmed the science behind it. What shocked him even more? How little coverage the findings, printed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, received compared to that of McDonald's "McRib."


















10/  The latest hot boy band The Wanted, with "I'm Glad you Came".......interesting video because it's a good example of an envy lifestyle genre, shot in Ibiza, girls in bikinis, dance clubs, fast yachts and cute boys occasionally lipsynching the song, all put together in one second cuts.....don't let an ADD kid see this clip....

Hmmmm....maybe I'm overthinking this.....












11/  Which of the big banks in America is the worst? Take your pick......Gary Rivlin analyses the big four and Goldman Sachs.....

Wonder why Occupy Wall Street is so angry with Bank of America and its brethren? Gary Rivlin names and shames the worst big banks.

If the Occupy Wall Street protesters want to target a single big bank, which should they choose?
The decision wouldn’t be easy, given the bad behavior of the country’s biggest brand-name banks. We look at the country’s four largest—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—and throw in Goldman Sachs, a natural target of any protest. Here’s a taste of the deadliest sins committed by the banks, followed by a full account of all the gory details at each bank. Warning: It isn’t pretty


















12/  If you haven't heard of this - it's coming, the latest conservative and Fox News talking point calling for more taxes on the poor. The mantra is 50% of Americans pay no taxes.....duh - they don't earn enough in this third world country to reach the tax threshold - they're poor.

After the Occupy Tavares we attended a week ago a group of us sat down to have an adult beverage afterwards, and the waitress after hearing us chat about the 99% came out with "well I'm one of the 53 percenters, and I work three jobs"......which stunned us all.....the Fox propaganda works and even waitresses that have to work three jobs to keep going blame the poor. And she will willingly vote against her own economic interests

It's what the Republicans and their masters the oligarchy are good at - divide and conquer, keep the stupids fighting amongst themselves, demonize a minority - it used to be Mexicans, now it's the poor.....


WASHINGTON -- The nation's ongoing economic downturn has sparked an odd response from a growing number of conservative and Republican leaders: a desire to blame the unfortunate and a demand for the poor to pay more.
With the economy in its deepest crater since the Great Depression and the GOP pushed by the aggressively anti-tax Tea Party, the call to have the middle and working classes help the rich has reached levels not heard since Reagan-era attacks on the mythical "welfare queens."
It's most often expressed in the growing complaint that about half the nation's households pay no federal income tax -- an accurate figure that varies from 46 percent to 51 percent, depending on which set of statistics are being used.




















13/  Lewis Black has a unique delivery style which you either love or hate - I personally find him really funny, so here he is with a 4 minute segment from the Daily Show.....

Back in Black - Indoctrinating America's Children

Lewis Black considers Occupy Wall Street's family sleepover, Mike Huckabee's kids' time-travel show and "Sesame Street"'s starving puppets.


http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-25-2011/back-in-black---indoctrinating-america-s-children
















14/  The nastiest, most evil corporation in America is at it again - Wal-Mart is cutting the already pathetic health care benefits they offer again to preserve their profits. They are smelling Republican victory in 2012.....

 So...... what happens if a Republican wins in 2012 and Obamacare is repealed? What's the plan? Die quickly?

After trying to mollify its critics in recent years by offering better health care benefits to its employees, Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff.

Citing rising costs, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, told its employees this week that all future part-time employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will no longer qualify for any of the company’shealth insurance plans.
In addition, any new employees who average 24 hours to 33 hours a week will no longer be able to include a spouse as part of their health care plan, although children can still be covered.
This is a big shift from just a few years ago when Wal-Mart expanded coverage for employees and their families after facing criticism because so many of its 1.4 million workers could not afford or did not qualify for coverage — rendering many of them eligible for Medicaid.









Todays video - Halloween Stripper.....how'd they do that?








Todays golfer joke

Golfer Kills Wife
Verne was teeing off from the men's tee.  On his downswing, he realized that his wife, Joy, was teeing up on the woman's tee directly in front of him.  Unable to stop his swing, he nailed it, and hit her directly in the temple, killing her instantly.
 
A few days later, Verne got a call from the coroner regarding her autopsy.
 
Coroner: "Verne, your wife seemed to have died from blunt force-trauma to the head. You said you hit a golf ball and hit her in the temple, is that correct?"
 
Verne: "Yes, sir, that's correct."
 
Coroner: "Well, inexplicably I found a golf ball wedged up her ass."
 
Verne: "Was it a Titleist 3?"
 
Coroner: "Yes, it was."
 
Verne: "That was my mulligan."
 
 









Todays political joke

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate. Nothing is moving.
Suddenly, a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"
 
"Terrorists have kidnapped Congress, and are asking for a $10 million dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and set them on fire.  We are going from car to car, taking up a collection."
 
"How much is everyone giving, on average?" the driver asks.
 
The man replies, "About a gallon."
 






Todays blond joke



Bob walked into a sports bar around 9:58 PM. 
He sat down next to a blonde at the bar 
And stared up at the TV.

The 10 PM news was coming on. 
The news crew was covering the story 
Of a man on the ledge of a large building 
Preparing to jump.




The blonde looked at Bob and said, 
"Do you think he'll jump?"

Bob said, 
"You know, I bet he'll jump."

The blonde replied, 
"Well, I bet he won't."

Bob placed a $20 bill on the bar and said, 
"You're on!"


Just as the blonde placed her money on the bar, 
The guy on the ledge 
Did a swan dive off the building, 
Falling to his death.

The blonde was very upset, 
But willingly handed her $20 to Bob. 
"Fair's fair. Here's your money."


Bob replied, 
"I can't take your money. 
I saw this earlier on the 5 PM news, 
So I knew he would jump."

The blonde replied, 
"I did, too, 
But I didn't think he'd do it again."

Bob took the money.
 
 

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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Davids Daily Dose - Wednesday October 26th

The first article by Frank Rich is excellent.......





1/  What is the true significance of the Occupy movement? What are the implications, and where is it going? To get the background and the real story we have brilliant journalists like Frank Rich, who make complex subjects clear and understandable......
A wonderful article titled "The Class War has Begun".....highly recommended....

D
uring the death throes of Herbert Hoover’s presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over—alone, in groups, with families—until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River’s fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army—for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didn’t want to wait any longer for their pre–New Deal entitlement—especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist “Radio Priest” who became a phenomenon for railing against “greedy bankers and financiers,”framed Washington’s double standard this way: “If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to the soldiers?
The echoes of our own Great Recession do not end there. Both parties were alarmed by this motley assemblage and its political rallies; the Secret Service infiltrated its ranks to root out radicals. But a good Communist was hard to find. The men were mostly middle-class, patriotic Americans. They kept their improvised hovels clean and maintained small gardens. Even so, good behavior by the Bonus Army did not prevent the U.S. Army’s hotheaded chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, from summoning an overwhelming force to evict it from Pennsylvania Avenue late that July. After assaulting the veterans and thousands of onlookers with tear gas, ­MacArthur’s troops crossed the bridge and burned down the encampment. The general had acted against Hoover’s wishes, but the president expressed satisfaction afterward that the government had dispatched “a mob”—albeit at the cost of killing two of the demonstrators. The public had another take. When graphic newsreels of the riotous mêlée fanned out to the nation’s movie theaters, audiences booed MacArthur and his troops, not the men down on their luck. Even the mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the Hope diamond and wife of the proprietor of the Washington Post, professed solidarity with the “mob” that had occupied the nation’s capital.

















2/  Keith Olbermann interviews Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, who is arguably the best dressed person yet arrested at the Occupy Wall Street demos, and she articulately explains how important it is to keep your First Amendment rights active, and how it's clear over the last 30 years these rights have been whittled away.......smart, savvy lady....pretty too.....














3/  Remember the song "fly like an eagle"? You will like this 2 minute video then......paragliding with hawks.....amazing.....
















4/  The collapse of the Euro isn't going away, and Paul Krugman explains why.....the European oligarchs are even more doctrinaire than ours......they should make Krugman Treasury Secretary - he would do a better job than that corrupt bastard Geithner.....

If it weren’t so tragic, the current European crisis would be funny, in a gallows-humor sort of way. For as one rescue plan after another falls flat, Europe’s Very Serious People — who are, if such a thing is possible, even more pompous and self-regarding than their American counterparts — just keep looking more and more ridiculous.

Well, at this point, Greece, where the crisis began, is no more than a grim sideshow. The clear and present danger comes instead from a sort of bank run on Italy, the euro area’s third-largest economy. Investors, fearing a possible default, are demanding high interest rates on Italian debt. And these high interest rates, by raising the burden of debt service, make default more likely.
It’s a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To save the euro, this threat must be contained. But how? The answer has to involve creating a fund that can, if necessary, lend Italy (and Spain, which is also under threat) enough money that it doesn’t need to borrow at those high rates. Such a fund probably wouldn’t have to be used, since its mere existence should put an end to the cycle of fear. But the potential for really large-scale lending, certainly more than a trillion euros’ worth, has to be there.
And here’s the problem: All the various proposals for creating such a fund ultimately require backing from major European governments, whose promises to investors must be credible for the plan to work. Yet Italy is one of those major governments; it can’t achieve a rescue by lending money to itself. And France, the euro area’s second-biggest economy, has been looking shaky lately, raising fears that creation of a large rescue fund, by in effect adding to French debt, could simply have the effect of adding France to the list of crisis countries. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
You see what I mean about the situation being funny in a gallows-humor fashion? What makes the story really painful is the fact that none of this had to happen.




















5/  Why support the Occupy movement? Here are some good reasons in this well made video, including clips from Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson and many others.....4 minutes....










6/  Tom Tomorrow with his take on the way the media treat the Occupy movement....or is it Fox News.......or all of the McNewses.......















7/  And our final look at the Occupy protests with Matt Taibbi, who dissects the right wing claims of class warfare. It's not that the 99% resent the rich, it's we have finally realised they are rich because they cheat. Us all.

Excellent article....

That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.
All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes, things like:


















8/  A major prize awaits you if you can guess what this ad is about........a little spooky too.........


















9/  Obama says all troops will be out of iraq by the end of the year, and the usual suspects on the right say he's failed. Jon Stewart evicerates Senators McCain and Graham with glee.....one of his better shows ......

Last Friday President Obama announced the U.S. will be withdrawing from Iraq by the end of the year.So, you can imagine what Jon Stewart's biggest segment was about on his Monday night return to "The Daily Show."
Turning his "Mess O'Potamia" segment to the more appropriately named "End O'Potamia," Stewart rejoiced at the notion that we will be out of Iraq by 2012. What he didn't understand was how Republicans such as MItt Romney and Michele Bachmann could criticize the President's announcement. Not just because it's a good thing, but because it was former President George W. Bush who set the benchmark for withdrawal with the Iraqi people years ago. Why doesn't the GOP acknowledge this















10/  Parents! [and grandparents].......want your little darling to grow up smarter? Follow at least a few of these simple rules and the beast will be a top achiever. But the #1 thing NOT to do is the first rule.....

Want a little Einstein around the house? There’s no single best recipe, but studies prove that keeping TV out of the nursery, shelling out for music lessons, breastfeeding, having a big library, and withholding cookies are just a few ways to boost your child’s chances of success.

What makes a genius? Even experts argue over whether IQ, EQ, executive function, and/or academic achievement matters most. Nature? Nurture? The role of genetics in intelligence—i.e., the extent to which our smarts are inherited—has long been an academic war zone. What can raise your child’s chances? Cello lessons, French lessons, and juggling.
















11/  "Mrs Brown gets a Bikini Wax"......a classic British comedy skit, and if you aren't laughing by the end of this you must belong to the Tea Party.....or you're Michelle Bachmann.....
















12/  Scott Maxwell documents how the next Speaker of the Florida House has, in one year, sold himself to a corporation and made a lot of money.....

Two years ago, State Rep. Chris Dorworth was in a heap of financial trouble.
His Lake Mary mansion was facing foreclosure. And aside from the stuff in his house, his only other assets were $40,000 in cash and a Chrysler Pacifica.His sole income — a legislative salary of $2,600 a month — wasn't nearly enough to cover his monthly mortgage payments of about $10,000. Nor had he been able to satisfy a $1.35 million legal judgment against him from a failed business venture.

In short: Things were very bleak for the Republican legislator.

But the next year, things got much better for Dorworth.

Early in 2010, his GOP peers voted for him to become a future speaker of the House — widely viewed as the second-most-powerful position in the state after the governor.

And, according to recently filed papers, Dorworth went from having hardly any assets in 2009 to having a big one: a $713,000 stake in an out-of-state corporation that paid him $72,000 cash — in 2010.

How did he come into the money? Well, Dorworth won't say.

And that's troubling — especially because a trail of records reveals that his newly listed company and income have ties to other public officials and developments across Central Florida.
















13/  The lovely Katy Perry with one of her early videos "Hot and Cold", where some idiot is unsure about whether he should marry her.....quite funny, lively.....
















14/  Have you tried to renew your Florida drivers license recently? A nightmare...all in the name of Al Queda. The state of Florida wants to be absolutely positive you aren't a terrorist,  even though you are in your 60's and have had a drivers license since you were 17......

However this BS might change, because one of our politicians had to go through this degrading treatment....poor diddums.....

Florida lawmaker seeks to modify Real ID requirements for driver's licenses

By Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau

Requiring piles of paperwork goes too far, a state senator says.

TALLAHASSEE - Greg Evers had heard people complain about how hard it is to renew your driver's license in Florida, but it didn't really hit home until he did it himself.
He was shocked at the records he had to provide: his birth certificate, Social Security card and two documents proving his address.
"The lady behind the counter lives down the road and knows exactly who I am and knows exactly where I live," Evers said. "This has just gone a little too far."
Evers had come face-to-face with the federal Real ID law, which Florida enacted in 2010 to combat identity theft and prevent illegal immigrants and terrorists from getting official state ID cards.
Now Evers, a Republican state senator from Crestview, has filed a bill to eliminate many of the law's requirements.

















Todays video - regular readers can tell I love this video......excellent.....the best seatbelt ad ever made.....











Todays farmer joke

Skinny Dipping 
An elderly man in Texas had owned a large farm for several years.... 
He had a large pond in the back. 
It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while and look it over. 
He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit.

As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. 
As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. 
He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. 
One of the women shouted to him, 'we're not coming out until you leave!' 
The old man frowned, 'I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked.' 
Holding the bucket up he said, 'I'm here to feed the alligator.' 

Some old men can still think fast!
 
 




Todays short joke
The Worlds Shortest Psychiatric Joke
A man walks into a psychiatrist's office wearing only underwear made of Saran Wrap.
The psychiatrist says, Well, I can clearly see your nuts.






Todays talking dog joke

A man was driving around the back woods of  Montana, and saw a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style  house: "Talking Dog For Sale."He knocked on the door; and the owner appeared, telling him the dog is in the backyard.

The man walked into the backyard, and saw a nice-looking Labrador retriever sitting there.
"You talk?" he asked.


"Yep," the Lab replied. 

After the man recovered from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he said "So,  what's your story?" 

 
The Lab looked up and said, "Well, I
 discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA.

In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping." 

"I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. 


But the jetting around really tired me out,
and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so
I decided to settle down. 

I signed up for a job
at the airport to do some undercover security,
wandering near suspicious characters and
listening in. 

I uncovered some incredible 
dealings and was awarded a batch of medals.
I got married, had a  mess of puppies; and
now I'm just retired." 

The man was amazed. He returned to the owner, and asked what he wanted for the dog. 

"Ten dollars," the owner replied.

"Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on
earth are you selling him so cheap?" 

"Because he's a liar. He's never been out of
the yard."
 
 
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