The last DDD was a week ago as your scribe has been busy, so this one is longer than usual.....
For Mount Dorans - I'm attaching a picture from the "Occupy Tavares" rally yesterday which attracted about 120 people.....a beautiful cool sunny day, lots of speakers, including me - I was dragooned into giving a short speech on corporate personhood which seemed to be well received.......
Anyway for the next month DDD may be a bit sporadic.....on the road again.....
1/ Paul Krugman unveils the Republican jobs plan - allow more pollution, which will create jobs! Which it will, in the health care industry.....
Incredible BS.....the truth is they have no jobs plan and want to see the country continue to decline so Obama will get voted out....
Last month President Obama finally unveiled a serious economic stimulus plan — far short of what I’d like to see, but a step in the right direction. Republicans, predictably, have blocked it. But the new plan, combined with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, seems to have shifted the national conversation. We are, suddenly, focused on what we should have been talking about all along: jobs.
So what is the G.O.P. jobs plan? The answer, in large part, is to allow more pollution. So what you need to know is that weakening environmental regulations would do little to create jobs and would make us both poorer and sicker.
Now it would be wrong to say that all Republicans see increased pollution as the answer to unemployment. Herman Cain says that the unemployed are responsible for their own plight — a claim that, at Tuesday’s presidential debate, was met with wild applause.
Both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have, however, put weakened environmental protection at the core of their economic proposals, as have Senate Republicans. Mr. Perry has put out a specific number — 1.2 million jobs — that appears to be based on a study released by the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association, claiming favorable employment effects from removing restrictions on oil and gas extraction. The same study lies behind the claims of Senate Republicans.
But does this oil-industry-backed study actually make a serious case for weaker environmental protection as a job-creation strategy? No.
2/ Hmmm.....an interesting essay by Chris Hedges about the Occupy movement that makes a lot of sense. His main point is that the oligarchs have got so greedy and power crazed they have marginalised the traditional liberal class, which serves as a safety valve to corporate power. Not sure I agree with all of it, but he makes some great points and makes you think.....
Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do—fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”
Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.
3/ In the news this morning is that tensions are rising again between two nuclear armed states, India and Pakistan, so this clip of the ritual of closing the border in Kashmir is appropriate......they take this very seriously.....2 minutes.......
4/ Great article by Matt Taibbi telling us how the establishment forces, right and left, will try to place the Occupy movement into a traditional right/left struggle - what they don't want is a spontaneous movement that's not in the script.....
Thought provoking.....
This will be an effort to transform OWS from a populist and wholly non-partisan protest against bailouts, theft, insider trading, self-dealing, regulatory capture and the market-perverting effect of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks into something a little more familiar and less threatening, i.e. a captive "liberal" uprising that the right will use to whip up support and the Democrats will try to turn into electoral energy for 2012.
Tactically, what we'll see here will be a) people firmly on the traditional Democratic side claiming to speak for OWS, and b) people on the right-Republican side attempting to portray OWS as a puppet of well-known liberals and other Democratic interests.
On the Democratic side, we've already seen a lot of this behavior, particularly in the last week or so. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this a lot last week, talking about how Obama has already made it clear that he is "on the same side as the Wall Street protesters" and that the Democratic Party, through the DCCC (its House fundraising arm), has jumped into the fray by circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to affirm that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”(I wonder how firmly the DCCC was standing with OWS sentiment back when it was pushing for the bailouts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act).
We've similarly heard about MoveOn.org jumping into the demonstrations and attempting, seemingly, to assume leadership roles in the movement.
All of this is the flip side of the coin that has people like Breitbart trying to frame OWS as a socialist uprising and a liberal media conspiracy. The aim here is to redraw the protests along familiar battle lines.
The Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other. The rest of the traditional media won't mind that narrative either, if it can get enough "facts" to back it up. They know how to do that story and most of our political media is based upon that Crossfire paradigm of left-vs-right commentary shows and NFL Today-style team-vs-team campaign reporting.
What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington
5/ Lifetime Network, "Television for White Women", has a new game show out called "What's Wrong with Tanya" - SNL has the story.....
Lifetime original movies seem to provide an endless wealth of parody-worthy material, and SNL capitalized on that by introducing the new Lifetime Game Show, "What's Wrong With Tanya?"
Spoofing the Lifetime staple of the seemingly perfect, suburban life shattered by a teenage daughter's secrets, the game show saw Vanessa Bayer, Kristin Wiig and Anna Faris as strained mothers struggling to figure out "What's Wrong With Tanya?" Bill Hader returned as as his patented creepy game show host, also embodying the sinister, masculine threat that permeates what the sketch described as, "Television for white women."
6/ In case you have lingering doubts about the intrinsic evil of Goldman Sachs, read this story about what happened to a for-profit University Group after it was taken over by Goldman - ruthless exploitation of minorities and other students, saddling them with student loans that follow them for life.
If you know anyone who is thinking of the University of Phoenix or this one - EMC Corp., send them this article.....
They are such bastards......
Education Management Corp. was already a swiftly growing player in the lucrative world of for-profit higher education, with annual revenues topping $1 billion, but it had its sights set on industry domination. So, five years ago, the Pittsburgh company's executives agreed to sell its portfolio of more than 70 colleges to a trio of investment partnerships for $3.4 billion, securing the needed capital for an aggressive national expansion.
One of the new partners brought an outsized reputation for market savvy, deep pockets and a relentless pursuit of profits -- the Wall Street goliath, Goldman Sachs.
After the deal closed and Goldman became a partner, employees soon noticed a drastic shift in culture. Longtime admissions managers were replaced, ushering in an era in which recruiters were endlessly hounded by supervisors about hitting weekly enrollment targets. The admissions staff nearly tripled, requiring expanded floor space to accommodate a sales force of more than 2,600 across the country.
Management handed down revamped telemarketing scripts designed to prey on poor and uneducated consumers, honing in on their past mistakes in life as a ploy to convince them that college would solve all their problems, according to conversations with more than a dozen current and former Education Management Corp. employees over the past two months.
"You'd probe to find a weakness," said Brian Klein, a former admissions employee who worked for three years at Argosy University Online, one of four major colleges operated by EDMC. "You basically take all that failure and all those bad decisions, and you spin it around and put it right back in their face as guilt, to go to this shitty university and run up all of this debt."
7/ Brooke Alvarez from Onion News reports a new candidate has entered the Republican presidential race....but he's in a coma.....
8/ Look at how Disney is treating some of it's lower paid employees in their theme parks.....soon it'll be Mickey and Goofy with photo ops per hour.....
In the basements of the Disneyland and Paradise Pier hotels in Anaheim, big flat-screen monitors hang from the walls in rooms where uniformed crews do laundry. The monitors are like scoreboards, with employees' work speeds compared to one another. Workers are listed by name, so their colleagues can see who is quickest at loading pillow cases, sheets and other items into a laundry machine.
It should come as no surprise that at the happiest place on Earth, not all the employees are smiling.
It should come as no surprise that at the happiest place on Earth, not all the employees are smiling.
"I was nervous," said Barerra, who makes $11.94 an hour, "and felt that I was being controlled even more."
Measuring productivity is commonplace in the hotel industry, and manual tallies were kept in Disney hotels until last year. Disney says the electronic system, which it also uses at its Florida resort, is becoming more common at hotels, though I haven't found much evidence of that.
Employees in the Anaheim hotels are required to key in their ID when they arrive, and from then on, their production speed is displayed for all to see. For instance, the monitor might show that S. Lopez is working at an efficiency rate of 37% of expected production. The screen displays the names of several coworkers at once, with "efficiency" numbers in green for those near or above 100% of the expected pace, and red numbers for those who aren't as fast.
9/ Bill Maher with some of the anti-Occupy protest signs - the 1% fighting back....funny stuff....
Recently at Occupy Chicago, stock market tradersput signs in their windows reading, "We are the 1%,"mocking the most popular slogan of the Occupy Wall Street slogan, "We are the 99%."
On Friday night's "Real Time," Bill Maher picked up on this attempt at humor and took it a step -- or seven -- further by imagining what other protest signs the uber-rich might employ. The results range from "Save Our Trumps" to "You Can't Go Home Again -- No, Seriously, You Can't, I Just Foreclosed It.
10/ I don't know if you did, but I settled down with a cold beverage and watched the Republican debate last week or as much as I could stomach - to think this group of clowns are the best candidates one of our major political parties can come up with is more than depressing.....not a coherent thought from any of them, just dumb sound bites....
Jon Stewart dissects the spectacle....an excellent 9 minutes.....
Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul provided their usual gaffe-worthy moments and Rick Perry had the audacity to refer to Herman Cain as "brother" on several instances. But it was Mitt Romney who bore the brunt of Stewart's jokes.
Former Massachusetts Governor Romney has come under fire before for his healthcare plan, but it wasn't even the other candidates saying "Obamneycare" that made him look bad as it was discussed during the debate. According to Stewart it was his own explanation of how, even though the plan worked well in his state, he would never introduce it to the nation.
"It's a great republican idea that works great -- the people of Massachusetts love it -- But I would never do it again; it's socialism," Stewart joked.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
11/ Medicare works - it's the safety net for seniors over 65 many of whom would die much earlier without it.....but it's not meeting the real demands of the elderly today in long term care who are kept alive by machines and intrusive treatments......
If you are responsible for an elderly parent or relative, read this story with the details of the things the medical industry does to the elderly just to make money, nothing to do with their health or well being.....
HERE is the dirty little secret of health care in America for the elderly, the one group we all assume has universal coverage thanks to the 1965 Medicare law: what Medicare paid for then is no longer what recipients need or want today.
No one then envisioned the stunning advances in medicine that now keep people alive into advanced old age, often with unintended and unwelcome consequences. Indeed, scientific reports have showed the dangers, not merely the pointlessness and expense, of much of the care Medicare is providing.
Of course, some may actually want everything medical science has to offer. But overwhelmingly, I’ve concluded in a decade of studying America’s elderly, it is fee-for-service doctors and Big Pharma who stand to gain the most, and adult children, with too much emotion and too little information, driving those decisions.
In the last year alone, and this list is far from complete, here is what researchers have found both useless and harmful, according to leading medical journals:
• Feeding tubes, which can cause infections, nausea and vomiting, rarely prolong life. People with dementia often react with agitation, including pulling out the tubes, and then are either sedated or restrained.
• Abdominal and gall bladder surgery and joint replacements, for those who rank poorly on a scale that measures frailty, lead to complications, repeat hospital stays and placement in nursing homes.
• Tight glycemic control for Type 2 diabetes, present in 1 of 4 people over 65, often requires 8 to 10 years before it helps prevent blindness, kidney disease or amputations. Without enough time to reap the benefits, the elderly endure needless dietary limits and needle sticks.
Yet Medicare, which pays for all of the above, does not, except in rare instances, pay for long-term care in a supervised, safe place for frail or demented old people, or for home aides to help with shopping, transportation, bathing and using the toilet.
12/ One of my favourite music videos - Daft Punk with 'Around the World"......great choreography.....Daft Punk are a German duo making mostly electronic music....still successful....this was made in 1995.....
13/ Another report from doctors recommending kids under 2 years old shouldn't watch TV or any video images as too much viewing can stunt their learning capabilities.....duh.
The problem is the TV makes a great babysitter.....but so do grandparents folks....
Parents of infants and toddlers should limit the time their children spend in front of televisions, computers, self-described educational games and even grown-up shows playing in the background, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned on Tuesday. Video screen time provides no educational benefits for children under age 2 and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing, the group said.
14/ Good column from Scott Maxwell about the drive for casinos in Florida.......as he says, just follow the money.....
With the debate over casinos in Florida gaining steam, we have folks throwing out all sides of wild — and wildly conflicting — claims.
One side claims casinos are the jackpot that will instantly fix our economy.
The other claims big casinos could put our state on the road to ruin.
So who's right? Neither one completely.
Much like a poker player, you have to be able to spot the tells and call the bluffs. That's why I'm here today to help you cut through the malarkey with seven key facts you aren't hearing from either side.
One side claims casinos are the jackpot that will instantly fix our economy.
The other claims big casinos could put our state on the road to ruin.
So who's right? Neither one completely.
Much like a poker player, you have to be able to spot the tells and call the bluffs. That's why I'm here today to help you cut through the malarkey with seven key facts you aren't hearing from either side.
15/ An editorial from the Tampa Tribune with the point that a lot of the economic problems in Florida are directly related to the housing market.....
Orlando is under water. Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami are nearly submerged. Of the 10 worst cities in the country when the size of mortgage debt is compared with property value, five are in Florida. That puts the challenge facing this state in stark perspective.
Now where is the life preserver from President Barack Obama or Gov. Rick Scott to help drowning homeowners?
If it looks like the economic clouds are darker in Florida, they are. The state's unemployment rate remains higher than the nation's. A record number of home foreclosures are still working through the system. The go-go days of growth are long gone. Homeowners who owe more on their houses than they are worth cut their spending, which reduces consumer demand, which lowers income for businesses, which results in too little job creation to turn things around.
16/ A study from Florida Atlantic University about the expected effects of climate change on the water supplies of South Florida....it's coming folks, and sooner than you think.
Interesting article, and although the idiots in our Legislature and our corrupt Governor deny climate change is happening, local cities are already looking ahead and preparing for the effects of rising sea levels....
Even so - got a 30 year mortgage on your house in Broward? You may not have any drinking water in 20 years......
A sea-level rise of just a few inches will bring flooding to South Florida cities, contaminate sources of drinking water and lead to sharp increases in utility bills over the next 20 or 30 years, according a study released Wednesday by Florida Atlantic University.
The study found that projected sea level increases of 3 to 6 inches by 2030, due to global warming, could overwhelm flood-control systems that in many areas are more than 50 years old. The authors provided a list of steps to be taken in the coming decades, from moving drinking-water wells inland to installing more pump stations, that could help the region cope with the higher water.
The study found that projected sea level increases of 3 to 6 inches by 2030, due to global warming, could overwhelm flood-control systems that in many areas are more than 50 years old. The authors provided a list of steps to be taken in the coming decades, from moving drinking-water wells inland to installing more pump stations, that could help the region cope with the higher water.
17/ New Movie - "Margin Call" - an excellent review with praise like "masterpiece", "extraordinary filmmaking".....a wonderful cast including Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons....one to see....
That, in a way, is the message of J. C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” which does a great deal to humanize the authors — and beneficiaries — of the 2008 financial crisis. But the film, relentless in its honesty and shrewd in its insights and techniques, is unlikely to soothe the wounded pride of the actual or aspiring ruling class. It is a tale of greed, vanity, myopia and expediency that is all the more damning for its refusal to moralize.
There are no hissable villains here, no operatic speeches condemning or celebrating greed. Just a bunch of guys (and one woman, Demi Moore) in well-tailored clothes and a state of quiet panic trying to save themselves from a global catastrophe of their own making. Watching them going about their business, you don’t feel the kind of fury inspired by “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s great muckraking documentary on the origins of the financial crisis, but rather a mix of dread, disgust, pity and confusion.
And also, above all, admiration for an extraordinary feat of filmmaking. It is hard to believe that “Margin Call” is Mr. Chandor’s first feature. His formal command — his ability to imply far more than he shows or says and to orchestrate a large, complex drama out of whispers, glances and snippets of jargon — is downright awe inspiring. The movie rarely leaves the Manhattan offices of the fictional investment bank (loosely modeled on Lehman Brothers) in which it takes place and limits its action, which consists mainly of phone calls and hurried meetings, to a frenzied 24-hour period. Within that narrow frame the gears of a complex narrative mesh with ravishing clockwork precision.
“Margin Call” is a thriller, moving through ambient shadows to the anxious tempo of Nathan Larson’s hushed, anxious score. It is also a horror movie, with disaster lurking like an unseen demon outside the skyscraper windows and behind the computer screens. It is also a workplace comedy of sorts. The crackling, syncopated dialogue and the plot, full of reversals and double crosses, owe an obvious debt to David Mamet’s profane fables of deal-making machismo. Hovering over all of it is the dark romance of capital: the elegance of numbers; the kinkiness of money; the deep, rotten, erotic allure of power.
If no one in this world is patently evil, no one is innocent either.
Margin Call trailer.....very cool......
18/ Remember Mr. Bean? Rowan Atkinson stars in a new movie "Johnny English Reborn".....sounds very funny if you like clever and slow-build humour.....
Some may wonder why “Johnny English Reborn,” the sequel to the 2003 James Bond spoof, “Johnny English,” starringRowan Atkinson as a bumbling MI7 agent, was even made, seeing as the original earned a modest $28 million at the United States box office.
The short answer is that Mr. Atkinson, the brilliant British master of controlled comedy, is a global star whose two Mr. Bean movies have each grossed upward of $200 million internationally, and the original “Johnny English” a hefty $160 million.
It is also worth noting that the sequel, made with a new director, Oliver Parker (“St. Trinian’s”), is funnier and has a stronger personality than its forerunner. Mr. Atkinson’s buffoonery is sly and subtle, centered on his endlessly elastic face, especially his wide brown eyes and elevator brows that do comedic jigs.
The sad fact is that Mr. Atkinson’s brand of British lunacy, in which the humor breaks through a pose of stiff-upper-lip propriety, is too contained to excite the jaded American audience for gross-out pranks. Mr. Atkinson is never ferocious or lewd. At his most uninhibited he suggests Jim Carrey playing a refined Briton.
In its tongue-in-cheek attitude “Johnny English Reborn” harks back to the relatively polite 1960s and ’70s Bond movies to which it refers compulsively. This film is stocked with amusing spy-movie toys of which the most delightful is a voice-activated Rolls-Royce (updated from “Goldfinger”) that responds to the name Royce by speaking in a seductive woman’s purr. When instructed to “come” (double-entendre intended), the miraculous vehicle obeys by unleashing laser beams and crashing through doors. Other gadgets include a tricked-out wheelchair and a lipstick firearm.
"Johnny English Reborn" trailer.....funny.....
Todays video - what ever happened to Roadrunner?
Todays medical jokes
EMBARRASSING MEDICAL EXAMSslightly deaf female patient's anterior chest wall.
At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and
'Big breaths,' . . . I instructed.
'Yes, they used to be,' . . . replied the patient.
Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes ,
Seattle , WA
While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient,
I asked, ' How long have you been bedridden? '
After a look of complete confusion she answered . . .
' Why, not for about twenty years - when my husband was alive. '
Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson
Corvallis, OR
I was performing rounds at the hospital one morning and while checkingup on a man I asked . . . ' So how's your breakfast this morning?
' 'It's very good except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can't seem to get used to the
taste.' Bob replied..
taste.' Bob replied..
I then asked to see the jelly and Bob produced
a foil packet labeled ' KY Jelly. '
Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf,
Detroit, MI
A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room
when a young woman with purple hair styled
into a punk rocker Mohawk, sporting a variety
of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing entered . . .
It was quickly determined that
the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was
scheduled for immediate surgery...
When she was completely disrobed onthe operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had
been dyed green and above it there was a
tattoo that read . . . ' Keep off the grass. '
Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon
wrote a short note on the patient's dressing,
which said ' Sorry . . . had to mow the lawn. '
Submitted by RN no name
As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB.
I was quite embarrassed when performing female
pelvic exams...
To cover my embarrassmentout laughing and further embarrassing me.
I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly.
The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst
I looked up from my work and sheepishly said. . .
I'm sorry. Was I tickling you? '
She replied with tears running down
her cheeks from laughing so hard . . .
' No doctor, but the song you were whistling was
' I wish I was an Oscar Mayer Wiener. '
Dr. Wouldn't submit his name....
Baby's First Doctor Visit
A woman and a baby were in the doctor's examining room, waiting for the
doctor to come in for the baby's first exam
The doctor arrived, and examined the baby, checked his weight, and beinga little concerned, asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed.
'Breast-fed, ' she replied..breasts for a while in a very professional and detailed examination.
' Well, strip down to your waist, ' the doctor ordered.
She did. He pinched her nipples, pressed, kneaded, and rubbed both
is underweight. You don't have any milk. '
Motioning to her to get dressed, the doctor said, ' No wonder this baby
I know,' she said, I'm his Grandma,
But I'm glad I came...
Todays history joke
CONDOM HISTORY
An interesting piece of history!
An interesting piece of history!
In 1272, the Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea by taking the intestine out of the goat first.
Todays old person joke
The Agony of getting old
After Daylight Savings Time ended, I stopped in to visit an old friend with dyslexia and dementia.
When I walked in, he was busy covering his penis with black shoe polish.
I said to him, "You idiot! You're supposed to turn your clock back."
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