Have a look at #5 - excellent.....
1/ Naomi Wolf writes about why the political class is reacting violently to the Occupy movement - one of their demands is to stop members of Congress from enriching themselves on the stock market by using inside information.....and Congressmen of both parties are pissed.....
US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, andpenned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
2/ Very good Jon Stewart, where he ties all of the pepper spray incidents together......funny.....good to see him again as the Daily Show isn't available online outside the US......
3/ We had "Black Friday" last week, and according to reports there was record spending at stores across the country. But there were problems - violence at WalMarts including a woman who pepper-sprayed her fellow shoppers to keep them away from her bargains.......
Thinking back at our series of "People of Walmart" pictures I wouldn't get in the way of any of those freaks......
Violence erupted overnight during Black Friday shopping as at least 24 people were injured in a series of incidents, including nine at Walmart stores in the US.
The violence included a California shopper who was shot during a failed robbery attempt, a fight over $1.88 towels, a trampled girl in western Michigan, a police officer who used pepper spray to quell a crowd, and a pepper-spraying shopper who injured 20 people in her haste to keep other people away from the merchandise she wanted to buy.
Among the incidents:
In Fruitport Township, authorities say a teenage girl was trampled at a western Michigan Walmart store and suffered minor injuries after getting caught in a rush to a sale in the electronics department.
The Muskegon Chronicle reports the girl was taken to a local hospital this morning. Fruitport Township Supervisor Brian Werschem says the girl was knocked down and stepped on several times in the store near Muskegon.
In Los Angeles, authorities said a woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries.
4/ And in case you haven't seen it here is the WalMart commercial for their Christmas sales with the customer as a babbling, drooling moron....hmmmm.....30 seconds......
5/ But there is a serious side to this frenzy of shopping - this is a four minute video made last year about the Black Friday craziness, and when you look at it now you realise the filmmakers saw the future.......
It's called "The Madness of a Lost Society"......
6/ And of course when there's a sociological trend, Onion News is there.......aunts and stepdads line up for presents for relatives they barely know.....funny...1 minute....
7/ And to complete this shopping theme, here is "Christmas in Heaven" from Monty Python.....this is the finale of their brilliant movie "The Meaning of Life", complete with smarmy lounge singer and dancers wearing fake boobs..........2 minutes of funny awfulness.....
8/ One of the many sensible things in the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] was mandating that insurance companies cover birth control without a co-payment starting next year, but Roman Catholic Bishops are complaining and the White House is considering caving.....
You know, the same Bishops that covered up rampant pedophelia in the priesthood for decades.....
And of course Obama won't give in to conservative pressure, would he? Naaaa........
In August, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, announced new rules that included contraceptives for women in the package of preventive health care services that all insurers must cover without a deductible or co-payment beginning next year.
The policy follows the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. It will help drive down the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion by making birth control more accessible.
It was distressing but came as no surprise that the new rules prompted protests from Roman Catholic bishops and other church leaders. What is surprising, and even more distressing, is that the White House is considering caving to their call for an expansive exemption that would cover employees of hospitals, universities, charitable organizations and other entities that are associated with religious organizations but serve the general public and benefit from public money.
9/ Bruno Mars - "It Will Rain" - teen hearthrob Mars with a broken heart/ classy girl/ enthnic boy video.....he's got both great hair and an excellent voice, which seems to be a winning combination.....and a hat.....
10/ We know, or at least are aware that up to 50 million people live in poverty in this country, but new data shows the numbers of poor and near poor are double that - 100 million Americans are close to destitute, one paycheck away from disaster.....
WASHINGTON — They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.
Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.
When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line.
11/ Republican candidates travel through time to the Jurassic era to try to change the present....Tom Tomorrow on this dubious strategy.............
12/ November Fails - It's the end of another month, and time for a compilation of things dumb people get up to, and fail at......not for the sensitive as a lot of these people get hurt......
It's important to occasionally pause and take stock of the things that haven't quite worked out the way they were intended; and if those things could result in hilariously uncomfortable accidents that happen to other people, so much the better.
So once again, we take a look at the greatest fails of the last month. As far as we know, all of these people are alive and well... and hopefully, a little wiser.
13/ Hmmmm....fascinating article from the NYT giving a bio of Elizabeth Warren, but it also explains that although she certainly means well, if and when she gets into the Senate the inertia and the system will crush her and all of her supporters will be disillusioned....again......
Is this a subtle way of the Times doing the establishment's work? Don't forget the White House hates Warren.......
On the campaign trail in Massachusetts last month with the Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, I bore witness to acts of extreme giddiness: a 20-year-old student jumping up and down, exclaiming, “Oh, my God, I am obsessed with her”; a third-year law student of Warren’s comparing her to a superhero (“Wonder Woman wishes she could be Professor Warren”); a man stopping Warren on the street and introducing himself as the guy who recently passed her a mash note on a plane (“I was hitting on you,” he said).
Warren has been something of a left-wing idol for a couple of years now. While heading Congressional oversight of TARP, she more than anyone asked tough questions about what, exactly, was done with all that bank bailout money. And on her subsequent mission to create theConsumer Financial Protection Bureau — which was designed to enforce long-ignored rules meant to protect consumers entering into everything from credit-card agreements to mortgages — Warren became a regular guest of Bill Maher’s and Jon Stewart’s, and both went weak for the straight-talking professor. Stewart told her he wanted to make out.
But this fall, at exactly the time our economic forecasts started souring again and Barack Obama appeared to be at his most ineffectual, Warren’s entrance into the race for Ted Kennedy’s old seat turned her from a cult-hero crusader into something far bigger.
14/ Own a home is the USA?
Own a house in the suburbs or a new development?
Own any property at all?
Then this will interest you.....it won't make you happy, but you will definitely be interested......
DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.
By now, nearly five years after the housing crash, most Americans understand that a mortgage meltdown was the catalyst for the Great Recession, facilitated by underregulation of finance and reckless risk-taking. Less understood is the divergence between center cities and inner-ring suburbs on one hand, and the suburban fringe on the other.
It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.
In the late 1990s, high-end outer suburbs contained most of the expensive housing in the United States, as measured by price per square foot, according to data I analyzed from the Zillow real estate database. Today, the most expensive housing is in the high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of the center city and inner suburbs.
15/ A four minute interview with Richard Fain, Chairman of Royal Caribbean where he explains that although RCCL is under economic pressure in the US they are maintaining profitability by sourcing more non-US passengers.....I suppose this isn't like shipping American jobs overseas but kind of the same principle - the US market is declining, so expand into Europe and China.....doing what large corporations do......
Ahead of the busy travel season, The Daily Ticker caught up with chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Richard Fain on Celebrity Cruises newest fleet member, Celebrity Silhouette. Even in these tough economic times, the company has been able to maintain growth and solid bookings.
In the most recent quarter Royal Caribbean beat analysts expectations and reported a 14% rise in net income year-over-year. Ticket sales increased to $1.73 billion from $1.52 billion and onboard revenue sales rose $47.6 million to $587.7 million.
Fain tells us that the outlook for 2012 bookings remains "strong." But the company lowered earning expectations for the rest of this year due to fuel costs and the strengthening dollar.
Surviving Economic Headwinds on the High Seas
16/ We are the one percent! Finally our masters deign to speak to us........
By the way "thank you Great One for sharing your thoughts" is the correct answer to anything they might have to say to you, a peasant..........
We, too, have mobilized.
We come from near and far, by any means necessary, some on private jets, others on extremely large private jets.
But you will not find us sleeping in a park and waiting in line at a Burger King to urinate. Have you heard of Mustique? Because that’s where we have mobilized. Don’t bother trying to Google Earth us, though, because we have proprietary military software that prevents you from doing so.
Our numbers may be smaller than those demonstrating in New York and other cities, but we are still a movement, coalesced around a cause, sleeping two and sometimes three people to a villa.
Perhaps you are wondering what our cause is. Perhaps you’re wondering why we, the richest people on the planet, have come together. Perhaps you’re curious whether what we’re undertaking couldn’t technically be called a vacation. These are all good questions.
We’re angry. We’re angry at something we’re calling “imagined frustration.” By this we mean that, except for Congress, the White House, banks, major lobbyists, and the editorial boards of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, no one is listening to us. And we’re tired of it.
17/ Fancy yourself as a "foodie"? This might be a good show for you - Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel.......
It’s childish and mean, and it’s also illustrative of why Mr. Bourdain remains the best of the Americans abroad on TV: the professional voyagers, concentrated on the Travel Channel but also popping up in places like the Food Network and PBS, who have largely taken over the role travel and food writers once held in feeding our appetite for vicarious exoticism.
In “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” which was nominated for four Emmys this year in its seventh season (it lost for best nonfiction series to “American Masters” on PBS), and in his new series, “The Layover,” which begins Monday night on the Travel Channel, one of his accomplishments is to pay attention to the actual experience of travel — the getting to and from. His nighttime cab ride, which comes in the opening minutes of the “Layover” premiere, is not just an occasion for a cheap joke at Ms. Brown’s expense but also an honest illustration of what it’s like to disembark after a marathon flight, greasy, groggy, grouchy and hungry to boot.
This attention to the prosaic, something other hosts gloss over in their desire to focus, simply, cheaply and shallowly, on the weird or wonderful attributes of their destinations, is part of Mr. Bourdain’s larger television persona: smart, profane and sarcastic but, most important, real.
Todays video - Fun in the Snow......
Todays drunk joke
A man and his wife were awakened at 3:00 am by a loud pounding on the door.
The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.
"Not a chance," says the husband, "it is 3:00 in the morning!"
He slams the door and returns to bed.
"Who was that?" asked his wife.
"Just some drunk guy asking for a push," he answers.
"Did you help him?" she asks.
"No, I did not, it's 3am in the morning and it's bloody pouring rain out there!"
"Well, you have a short memory," says his wife. "Can't you remember about three months ago when we broke down, and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself! God loves drunk people too you know."
The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pouring rain.
He calls out into the dark, "Hello, are you still there?"
"Yes," comes back the answer.
"Do you still need a push?" calls out the husband.
"Yes, please!" comes the reply from the dark.
"Where are you?" asks the husband.
"Over here on the swing," replied the drunk..
Todays Post Office joke
There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses. One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God with no actual address. He thought he should open it to see what it was about. The letter read:
Dear God,
I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had "$100" in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension payment.
Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with, have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?
Sincerely, Edna
The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few dollars. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected $96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman. The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends. Christmas came and went. A few days later, another letter came from the same old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened. It read:
Dear God,
How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift. By the way, there was $4 missing. I think it might have been those bastards at the post office.
Sincerely, Edna
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