1/ This was last week
We have had American Marines pissing on dead bodies of terrorists they have just shot, and US soldiers burning copies of the Koran in the last month. This has given the treacherous snake Muhammed Karzai, President of Afghanistan, an excuse to order all private security firms out of the country which will make things really difficult for US companies and aid organisations in this cesspit.
WASHINGTON — The management at a company that does aid and development work for the American government knows that some of its employees in Afghanistan are keeping weapons in their rooms — and is choosing to look the other way. At another company in the same business, lawyers are examining whether the company can sue the United States Agency for International Development for material breach of contract, citing the deteriorating security in Afghanistan.
An Afghan government plan to abolish private security companies at the end of this month, along with the outbreak of anti-American demonstrations and attacks in the past month, has left the private groups that carry out most of the American-financed development work in Afghanistan scrambling to sort out their operations, imperiling billions of dollars in projects, officials say.
That, in turn, threatens a vital part of the Obama administration’s plans for Afghanistan, which envision a continuing development mission after the end of the NATO combat mission in 2014.
The recent upheaval, set off by the burning of Korans by American military personnel on Feb. 20, cast sudden doubt on nearly every facet of the American presence in Afghanistan, including a long-term strategic partnership deal.
2/ This was Sunday
An Army Staff Sgt. killed 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children......now the Taliban vows revenge......
KABUL — The Taliban vowed Monday to avenge the killing of at least 16 Afghan civilians by a rogue American soldier, and the nation’s parliament said people “have run out of patience” with foreign forces.
In protesting the killings, some Afghan lawmakers demanded that the U.S. soldier in custody be tried in an Afghan court, the latest sign that the incident could mark an adverse turning point in the deteriorating relationship between Kabul and Washington.
The radical Islamist Taliban blamed “sick-minded American savages” for the attack, in which the U.S. soldier allegedly walked off his base near a remote southern Afghan village shortly before dawn Sunday and went door to door, opening fire on civilians inside three homes. Afghan officials said at least 16 people were killed, including three women and nine children, and that some of their bodies were burned. The soldier turned himself in to U.S. military authorities upon returning to the base, called Camp Belambay.
In a statement on its Web site, the Taliban called the killings a “blood-soaked and inhumane crime” and said it would “take revenge from the invaders and the savage murderers for every single martyr.” The statement appeared to anticipate that U.S. officials would seek to portray the killer as a mentally ill soldier.
Come on Mr. President - no matter how much the military industrial complex wants this war because the boys are making billions, it's time to get out of this bottomless pit of despair and fecal matter and leave these savages to themselves.
Use this excuse......we will never, ever win.......get out now.....
3/ Now THIS is a water hazard on the golf course......holey moley.....two alligators fighting......look how close these idiots get to the gators.....4 minutes.....
4/ Paul Krugman commenting on the attacks on education from the Republicans, the party of the rich..... they don't want the middle class to succeed and are on the way to creating a genuinely two class nation - the haves, and the great mass of have nots.....
Remember, this is part of the long term plan of the oligarchs......to gut the middle class so they can pay "global economy" [Chinese] wages in this country.....
One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education. And after World War II, public support, including the G.I. Bill and a huge expansion of public universities, helped large numbers of Americans to get college degrees.
But now one of our two major political parties has taken a hard right turn against education, or at least against education that working Americans can afford. Remarkably, this new hostility to education is shared by the social conservative and economic conservative wings of the Republican coalition, now embodied in the persons of Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney.
And this comes at a time when American education is already in deep trouble.
About that hostility: Mr. Santorum made headlines by declaring that President Obama wants to expand college enrollment because colleges are “indoctrination mills” that destroy religious faith. But Mr. Romney’s response to a high school senior worried about college costs is arguably even more significant, because what he said points the way to actual policy choices that will further undermine American education.
Here’s what the candidate told the student: “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And, hopefully, you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”
Wow. So much for America’s tradition of providing student aid. And Mr. Romney’s remarks were even more callous and destructive than you may be aware, given what’s been happening lately to American higher education.
For the past couple of generations, choosing a less expensive school has generally meant going to a public university rather than a private university. But these days, public higher education is very much under siege, facing even harsher budget cuts than the rest of the public sector. Adjusted for inflation, state support for higher education has fallen 12 percent over the past five years, even as the number of students has continued to rise; in California, support is down by 20 percent.
One result has been soaring fees. Inflation-adjusted tuition at public four-year colleges has risen by more than 70 percent over the past decade. So good luck on finding that college “that has a little lower price.”
Another result is that cash-strapped educational institutions have been cutting back in areas that are expensive to teach — which also happen to be precisely the areas the economy needs. For example, public colleges in a number of states, including Florida and Texas, have eliminated entire departments in engineering and computer science.
5/ And in a related story Thomas Friedman looks at nations without oil or other natural resourses and how they have developed their education systems to produce very smart people and healthy economies.....
Read this story, and then ponder the previous article...... the dumbing down of America........
EVERY so often someone asks me: “What’s your favorite country, other than your own?”
I’ve always had the same answer: Taiwan. “Taiwan? Why Taiwan?” people ask.
Very simple: Because Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women. I always tell my friends in Taiwan: “You’re the luckiest people in the world. How did you get so lucky? You have no oil, no iron ore, no forests, no diamonds, no gold, just a few small deposits of coal and natural gas — and because of that you developed the habits and culture of honing your people’s skills, which turns out to be the most valuable and only truly renewable resource in the world today. How did you get so lucky?”
That, at least, was my gut instinct. But now we have proof.
A team from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D., has just come out with a fascinating little study mapping the correlation between performance on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, exam — which every two years tests math, science and reading comprehension skills of 15-year-olds in 65 countries — and the total earnings on natural resources as a percentage of G.D.P. for each participating country. In short, how well do your high school kids do on math compared with how much oil you pump or how many diamonds you dig?
6/ And with the dumbing down of America comment, I have to throw this story about the two stupidest states in this country, Mississippi and Alabama, and how 52% of Republican voters polled believe the President is a Muslim.....
Ask President Barack Obama about his religious affiliation, and he's a Christian. Ask Mississippi or Alabama voters, and you might find a different answer.
In the midst of tight GOP primaries in both states, Public Policy Polling (PPP) hasreleased information showing that a majority of likely GOP primary voters in the Deep South do not see Obama as a Christian. PPP's Alabama survey of 600 likely GOP primary voters found that only 14 percent consider Obama a Christian, while 45 percent said he is a Muslim and 41 percent answered that they were not sure.
A similar picture surfaced in Mississippi. Of 656 likely GOP primary voters surveyed, 12 percent said Obama was a Christian, 52 percent classified him as a Muslim, and 36 percent fell in the "not sure" category.
7/ A whole new category of jobs has been created.....see how in this comic strip from Brian McFadden......
8/ Brooke Alvarez from Onion News asks the panel if the drone attacks killing children has hurt our image abroad........of course not....... 2 minutes.......
9/ The excellent Melissa Harris-Perry with a reasoned, articulate debunk of the recent phony Obama "scandal" involving Derek Bell that aired on the idiot Sean Hannity's show.
A good three minutes.....I like her, she's spunky.......
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry took some time on her Saturday show to discuss what she called a "manufactured controversy" that erupted around President Barack Obama and former Harvard Law professor, Derrick Bell.
Harris-Perry, who referred to Bell as an extraordinary legal scholar, issued a bold defense in favor of Obama. Earlier this week, a 22-year-old video was released showing then-law student Barack Obama at a rally for Professor Bell, who passed away last year. At the rally, Bell, who was Harvard's first tenured African American law professor, spoke about his decision to take an unpaid leave of absence to protest Harvard Law School's failure to offer an African American woman a tenure-track position.
Harris-Perry harshly criticized what she called conservative media outlets who claimed that Obama was "adhering to a radical, anti-American agenda."
10/ Follow the money - if you want to find our what's really going on that's the rule, so the big news this week is that large corporations are not just pulling their ads from Rush Limbaugh's show, they are cancelling advertising on all of the hate radio stations.....
Rush Limbaugh made the right-wing talk-radio industry, and he just might break it.
Because now the fallout from the “slut” slurs against Sandra Fluke is extending to the entire political shock-jock genre.
Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).”
This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).” Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue.
Valerie Geller, an industry insider and author of Beyond Powerful Radio,confirmed the trend. “I have talked with several reps who report that they're having conversations with their clients, who are asking not to be associated with specifically polarizing controversial hosts, particularly if those hosts are ‘mean-spirited.’ While most products and services offered on these shows have strong competitors, and enjoy purchasing the exposure that many of these shows and hosts can offer, they do not wish to be ‘tarred’ with the brush of anger, or endure customer anger, or, worse, product boycotts.”
11/ So of course SNL had the Rush show as it's opener this weekend......4 funny minutes.....
It's been a rocky couple of weeks for Rush Limbaugh. Between calling a law student a "slut" and a "prostitute" for speaking in defense of contraceptive insurance coverage, and then making a decidedly unenthusiastic apology, the radio host has been dropped by most of his major advertisers.
But while a casual observer may say the situation seems almost impossible to recover from, with a little imagination things might not be so bad. Taran Killam took up his impression of Limbaugh on "Saturday Night Live" to explore the exciting world of up-and-coming business advertising, and if the current state of Limbaugh's career is any indicator, this parody may not be that far from reality in coming weeks.
12/ And Gary Trudeau in his Doonesbury comic strip had some pithy and funny commentary on the new abortion laws that some newspapers in the stupid states refused to run.....
Click on "next" for todays strip - funny as well......
13/ The publicity drums are beating relentlessly for the new movie "Hunger Games", due out March 19th......here is a new trailer for this hotly anticipated movie.....looks really good.....can't wait....
14/ This is just an amazing story which explains why credit is so tight, mortgages are tough to get and small businesses can't get loans. A lot of the money the government has allocated as part of TARP to get the economy moving has been used by the big banks to pay back their bailout money instead of lending it out and helping create jobs.....
Why hasn't the Administration done something? Because the oligarchy are running the financial sector of the government.....Geithner, and many others.....
Though lots of people grumble about the government bailing out banks in the financial crisis, we have at least taken some comfort in the idea that the government has turned a profit on that bailout.
Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves.
All told, including dividend, interest and other payments, U.S. banks have repaid the government $211.5 billion under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), the first phase of the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), according to a report Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog. That's more than the $204.9 billion the banks initially got under TARP.
$211.5 billion minus $204.9 billion equals profit, right?
But 48 percent of the banks that have repaid the CPP used money they'd gotten from other federal programs, according to the GAO report. Those programs include the Community Development Capital Initiative -- another TARP program -- and the Small Business Lending Fund, a program designed to encourage lending to small businesses. Both of those programs have more favorable borrowing terms for the banks than the original CPP.
This isn't a new issue -- The Wall Street Journal reported last October that banks were repaying TARP funds with cash earmarked for small-business loans, after the Independent Community Bankers of America lobbied for the ability to switch money "from one Treasury program to the other."
Small businesses have continued to struggle to get credit, a drag on the recovery, while banks have been using funds earmarked for lending to small businesses simply to pay back their first TARP bailout.
15/ Incredible four minute video of flying suits in China....it's a combination of scenes from Chinese life, quite beautiful countryside and cameras attached to the flyers as they free fall thousands of feet. I've put this in again as it's been recut with very cool music....
And watching this as the flyers skim rocks and trees you wonder how they did this video......
16/ The amusing Gail Collins on the contraception issue.....love her columns......
There was one brief shining moment last week when Mitt Romney appeared to be saying something sensible about sex.
“The idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I’m not going there,” he told reporters.
This was the way Republicans used to talk, oh, about a millennium or so ago. The state legislators wore nice suits and worried about bonded indebtedness and blushed if you said “pelvis.” A woman’s private plumbing? Change the topic, for lord’s sake. Now some of them appear to think about women’s sex lives 24/7, and not in a cheerful, recreational manner.
And it turned out that Romney misspoke. He apparently didn’t realize that the subject he was proposing to steer clear of was a Republican plan to allow employers to refuse to provide health care coverage for contraception if they had moral objections to birth control.
He was definitely going there! Mittworld quickly issued a retraction making it clear that Romney totally supports the idea of getting into questions of contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman. Particularly when it comes to reducing health insurance coverage.
Really, what did you expect? If Romney couldn’t even take a clear stand on Rush Limbaugh’s Slutgate, why would he say anything that forthright unless it was a total error? This is why we can’t get the dog-on-the-car-roof story straightened out. The reporters have their hands full just figuring out Mitt’s position on the biggest controversy of the last month.
17/ Do you occasionally surf through the "Real Housewives" series, and stay to watch the brainless, phony, big-boobed poseurs fake it for the cameras? It is quite hypnotic, isn't it.....
Now Disney Channel has a show "Real Housewives of Disney"......3 minutes.....funny, and by the way Lindsay Lohan is in this skit.....
Lindsay Lohan's fourth time hosting "Saturday Night Live" brought forth some memorable sketches, but perhaps none more so than "The Real Housewives of Disney."
Sure, thanks to Bravo we all know what the Real Housewives of New York, Atlanta and Beverly Hills are like (in the words of Tina Fey, "a fire in a wax museum"), but what about our favorite fictional women of privilege? What are their dinner parties and fundraisers and balls-to-the-wall brawls like? Finally, our questions are answered.
Lindsay Lohan's fourth time hosting "Saturday Night Live" brought forth some memorable sketches, but perhaps none more so than "The Real Housewives of Disney."
18/ A fascinating, behind the scenes look at how the slimeball Senator JD Alexander outfoxed USF and made them agree to setting up a 12th University in Florida, and what a disaster this is.....he's a crafty one.....
In this year’s session, both houses of the legislature were fooled by one of the oldest tricks in the book, the bait and switch.
For more than 20 years, the University of South Florida has operated a campus in Lakeland, giving thousands of students the opportunity to earn degrees from a respected accredited university. But one senator, Budget Committee Chairman J.D. Alexander, is on a mission to rid the area of USF, and immediately open an unaccredited, unknown 12th public university.
The Board of Governors, which regulates the state’s university system, passed a plan, with required benchmarks, for USF Polytech in Lakeland to earn accreditation and transform into an independent university. But the comprehensive plan wasn’t quick enough for Alexander, and he decided to speed things up by using his power in the legislature — but he ran into one big problem: immediate independence is a reckless, harmful policy decision.
Alexander’s plan for an independent Florida Polytechnic University is full of holes. The professors at the Lakeland campus will be fired or, if they’re lucky, forced to relocate. The independent university, without the connection to USF, won’t receive accreditation for years. Recruiters have to go as far as India to find students interested in the university. And the proposed campus is a dirt lot. (You can view the “campus” on a state-run webcam here.)
With so many flaws, even Florida’s legislature wouldn’t go along with the plan, but Alexander isn’t a man who gives up easily. And like a bank robber out of options, the budget chairman grabbed a hostage.
Todays video - a very strange ad.......Bear Mountain Sports.....
Todays Monastery joke
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Todays grandparent joke
Have you ever wondered what the difference is between Grandmothers and Grandfathers? Well, here it is:
There was this loving grandfather who always made a special effort to spend time with his son's family on weekends. Every Saturday morning he would take his 7-year-old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some quality time -- just him and his granddaughter.
One particular Saturday, however, he had a bad cold and really didn't feel like being up at all. He knew his granddaughter always looked forward to their drives and would be disappointed. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and said that she would take their granddaughter for the drive.
When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see her grandfather who was still in bed. "Well, did you enjoy your ride with grandma?" he asked.
There was this loving grandfather who always made a special effort to spend time with his son's family on weekends. Every Saturday morning he would take his 7-year-old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some quality time -- just him and his granddaughter.
One particular Saturday, however, he had a bad cold and really didn't feel like being up at all. He knew his granddaughter always looked forward to their drives and would be disappointed. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and said that she would take their granddaughter for the drive.
When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see her grandfather who was still in bed. "Well, did you enjoy your ride with grandma?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, Pap Paw, it was really wonderful. We didn't see a single asshole, blind bastard, dipshit or son of a bitch anywhere we went!"
Todays Italian joke
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