1/ The JOBS Act passed last week, and you may remember Matt Taibbi had a few choice words to say on the way this bill opens up the stock market to the next bubble....
There were some comments that Taibbi was unfair, and this was not the President's fault - it was a Republican bill, and Obama just signed it. Read this follow-up - this went through three key committees in the Administration, and all of the groups, filled with Wall Street appointees, pushed some of the worst parts of the bill. And the White House put pressure on Democrats to pass this awful act......
The financial oligarchy owns the government, both parties, and they get what they want with minimal publicity. Noone else in the media pointed out what Matt Taibbi says here....some muttering, but no serious reporting.....
The corruption in Washington is really, really deep......
A number of people, many of them enthusiastic supporters of President Obama, wrote in to complain about my last piece about the JOBS Act. The gist of many of these letters was that the new deregulatory law could in no way be described as "Obama's JOBS Act."
"This was a Republican bill, birthed by Eric Cantor in the House, and driven by overwhelming Republican support," wrote in one emailer. "All Obama did was sign it. It’s totally dishonest to call it an Obama bill."
Okay, let’s talk about that. But first, a quick note on the bill itself, since I think some people misunderstand the objection to the bill.
No one is arguing that America's regulatory framework isn’t convoluted and imperfect, or that raising money for small companies hasn’t been a severe pain in the ass for quite some time. Undoubtedly this new law will make it easier for new firms to attract startup capital and go public, both good things.
But this bill accomplishes those things at the cost of slashing investor protections to a degree that isn’t just unnecessary, but stone-cold crazy. It includes ideas that just ten or fifteen years ago were conclusively proven to result in wide-scale fraud.
For instance, if this bill is supposedly about increasing access to capital for small businesses, why do we also need to repeal the conflict-of-interest ban on bank analysts talking up startup firms in an attempt to gain their investment banking business? Wasn’t it just ten minutes ago that Eliot Spitzer had to drag the entire financial services industry into court for pumping up worthless stocks in order to get their business?
2/ A Doonesbury sequence that started Monday, and click on "next" to see the following strip.....it's his take on the pathetic, spineless media reporting from Afghanistan.....
Go back to this tomorrow for the ending......
Breaking news today [Thursday] - another sequence of pictures has surfaced with drunk US Marines partying amid severed arms, heads and legs of blown up terrorists.....and of course the Afghanis are again outraged.......rightly - body parts?
3/ Simon Johnston with how the big banks blowing up the economy and having the bailout balloon our debt may have doomed Medicare......
If you are interested in the economy and/or your future health, this article is for you......
The world’s largest banks have been accused of many things in recent years, including taking excessive risk in the run-up to 2008, doing great damage to the American economy by blowing themselves up and then working hard to resist any sensible notions of financial reform.
All of this is true, but it misses what is likely to be the most profound negative impact of the banks’ behavior on most Americans. The banks’ actions led directly to an increase in government debt, which in turn has made the reduction of that debt by “cutting runaway spending” a centerpiece of the Republican presidential campaign to date.
As a result of this pressure, Medicare now stands on the brink of being eliminated as a viable form of social insurance. Yet the executives who lead these banks – and the politicians with whom they work closely – will not be held accountable this election season.
How is this possible? The economic mechanism through which a bank-led financial crisis has a broader adverse fiscal impact is straightforward. The recession that deepened sharply in 2008 implied a deep loss of tax revenue, mostly because people lost their jobs. Lower revenue means larger government deficits, particularly when the government also provides unemployment insurance. This deficit implies a surge in government annual borrowing and in its stock of debt.
..............................
Few people want to engage with this issue in a substantive way. The right is focused on not raising tax revenue. The left wants to protect Medicare and Social Security but for the most part does not discuss the details of how this can be done while limiting debt relative to G.D.P. over the next two decades.This is a tactical mistake, opening those on the left to charges of fiscal irresponsibility. In fact, it was the administration of George W. Bush that oversaw big tax cuts, two foreign wars and a runaway banking system.
Part of the problem is that the Obama administration saved the failing big banks in 2009 and then defended them against being broken up in 2010 – the president’s top advisers consistently asserted that we need highly leveraged and very large financial institutions, irrespective of the damage they cause.
It will be very hard for the president to change his narrative at this point.
And it may be too late; many in the center have become enamored of Mr. Ryan, who also appeals to the Republican base and may even become Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate. Certainly his ideas are likely to become a prominent part of the Republican platform for the general election.
In financial crises, it is people at the bottom of income distribution who end up being hurt; most of the rich do fine. When I made this point in “The Quiet Coup” in April 2009, some commentators shrugged off the comparison of the United States and emerging markets that had experienced crises, such as Russia or Indonesia or Brazil.
Surely, they argued, the United States had a much stronger democracy. But while the precise mechanism differs across countries, the link from financial elite misbehavior to squeezing the lower half of society is present everywhere. In the United States, it most likely will take the form of ending Medicare.
To many people, the financial crisis of 2008 seems but a distant memory. If you kept your job or found another, you might feel that the adverse consequences are behind you.
That would be a mistake. The worst is yet to come. When you are 85 and cannot afford decent health care, think about the banks.4/ Mitt Romney is busy travelling back through time to eliminate more liberal versions of himself......Onion News has the story.....2 minutes of amusement......
You may get the commercial for VEEP, a new HBO show with Julia Louis-Dreyfus which looks pretty good.....
5/ An International peace group went to Israel to protest their treatment of Palestinians, and this 3 minute viral video shows an israeli Army officer smashing his rifle in a Danish protesters face....
JERUSALEM — A senior Israeli military officer's seemingly unprovoked assault against an unarmed pro-Palestinian activist drew sharp condemnations Monday, raising questions in Israel over whether the country's heavy-handed approach to nonviolent protesters was exaggerated and causing damage to Israel's image.
The assault, captured on video and featured in all major newspapers and TV broadcasts, follows Israel's high-profile interception at its main airport of dozens of international activists who had planned a solidarity mission with Palestinians in the West Bank. Adding to the sense that Israel may have gone too far, officials said Tuesday that nearly 500 people were erroneously blocked from visiting.
6/ A funny SNL clip with Seth Myers, Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen.......Garth and Kat are a singing[?] duo.....and this is the last time they will perform as Wiig is leaving SNL this season.....enjoy.....5 minutes.....
7/ And since Kat mentions "Battleship" [the movie] in the skit, here's the trailer for it, coming in May........if you liked "Transformers", you'll like this one.....
But how a Navy battleship can bring down an alien warship kind of suspends disbelief.....but it's a movie, with lots of cool special effects and stuff "blowing up good, real good".....
8/ Not often commentary on a music video brings down the full force of the right wing Fox attack machine, but Naomi Wolf dared to draw some analogies about Katy Perry's new video with the military's need to make the Marines more attractive to women......
Interesting, and she must have hit a nerve with her article......
The video is at the beginning of the Guardian story......watch it first......
Who knew that an opinion about pop music video could get Fox News so worked up? Recently, I wrote that I was appalled by Katy Perry's new video for the No 1 hit song, "Part of Me". In it, the narrative has the singer discover a boyfriend's infidelity; she responds to this by cutting her hair and – heading for basic training to become a Marine.
The creepy parts of the video, in my mind, are many: girl power is represented as what Perry accomplishes in the rigors of basic training. Feminine impulses toward romantic revenge are depicted as rightly channeled into getting armed and being shipped to some mystery Afghanistan-like set overseas, locked and loaded. Trade in your bad boyfriend for a hot AK-47!
The whole videography of the scenes at Camp Pendleton – in which Perry crawls through an imaginary minefield, trains underwater, learns she can do the impossible, etc – is straight out of Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units.
There is something else about the video: it feels … like an ad; specifically, a focus-grouped, consumer-tested ad to attract more women to join the Marines. Real artistic productions, whether bad or good, are messier, quirkier, more subjective. I am familiar with the way political ads get researched and filmed (it was part of what I advised on in my time as a political consultant), and this looks like a political ad put together by DC PR insiders – like, say, the Pentagon communications team – after expensive market research has been done. In political advertising, every single image and message is focus group tested. I would bet that someone did some research on the hypothetical of a marriage or relationship breakup as a catalyst for women's military enlistment, given an economy in which the military offers low-income women some of the few options for advancement in a context in which a breadwinner may have decamped.
So I wrote that I felt that this was a piece of "war propaganda" and that, if Perry had received money or message guidance directly from the military to make the video, she should disclose that information.
9/ And also in the Guardian a story that I found most distressing, having worked in the cruise industry - the Star Princess allegedly passed by a fishing boat in distress.....some passengers birdwatching saw a fishing boat off the coast of Panama in trouble, reported it to the crew and nothing was done....two weeks later they picked up the boat with two of the three fishermen dead.....
SOLAS regulations mandate that ships in distress take priority over everything......but maybe the Princess Captain was late to the next port......
Carnival Corp. is having it's issues recently.....
The cruise line operator Carnival Corporation has launched an internal investigation after passengers claimed one of its ships ignored pleas to rescue three fishermen they spotted adrift in the Pacific ocean.
The story of the Panamanian teenage hotel worker who survived for 28 days adrift "in a 10-foot boat" made headlines around the world last month. His two friends died of dehydration before the boat was eventually rescued near the Galapagos Islands.
But now it has emerged that a cruise ship travelling from Ecuador to Costa Rica passed near the path of their fishing boat, the Fifty Cents, which was allegedly spotted in apparent distress by three birdwatchers on board. The passengers claim they alerted the crew of the Star Princess, but it failed to stop.
The Star Princess is owned by Princess cruise lines, part of Carnival, the owner of the Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the Italian coast in January.
Later on the night of 10 March, Oropeces Betancourt, 24, died of dehydration. The youngest fisherman, Fernando Osorio, 16, died on 15 March suffering from dehydration, sunburn and heat stroke. Another nine days elapsed before Adrian Vasquez, 18, was finally saved from his ordeal, having had to push his friends' bodies overboard.
One of the three passengers who claims to have spotted the small fibreglass boat, Judy Meredith, 65, from Bend, Oregon, told the Guardian: "Finding out later that the Fifty Cents continued at sea for over two more weeks was horrific news. And two of the men died and both could have lived, had the cruise ship responded to our urgent request."
10/ A DDD favourite music video - ATB with "Could You Believe", with a German stalker, young lesbians, pillowfights and a really catchy song........what more could you possibly want......Mantovani?
11/ A piece in the Times for the ladies.....a womans story about having an abortion when noone called you a slut.......very moving.....
TWO weeks ago, a bomb went off outside a Wisconsin abortion center. In recent years, several states have passed or tried to pass laws requiring women seeking legal, constitutionally protected procedures to first undergo medical examinations. A young woman has been called a slut after testifying in favor of insurance coverage for contraceptive care. These are but a few of the stories about attacks on a woman’s right to choose.
It wasn’t always like this.
This is a story of how it used to be:
It’s 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade. I’m 38, I have four sons — the oldest is 17, the youngest is turning 12. I’m at school, getting a B.A., and I’m loving it.
I’m about two and a half months pregnant.
I don’t want this child.
12/ A GIF is a very short video loop.......and here are 10 funny ones......will take you 2 minutes.....love the first Tina Fey one.....
13/ A list of 6 ways the Republicans have changed Florida .......
The 'Gunshine State': 6 Awful GOP Laws That May Harm Florida Forever
Florida Republicans bring gun mayhem, Jim Crow, teacher firings, insurance industry payoffs and misogyny to the Sunshine State.
April 11, 2012 |
While millions of residents and visitors are working on their tans, shady politics are prospering in the Sunshine State. What residents are now learning is that the negative impact of the work of the Republican-dominated legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott will haunt them for years to come.
Most of the new measures were approved over the past 12 months, but as we are all learning, seven-year-old legislation is causing excessive pain, heartbreak and anger in 2012.
14/ Very cool video of an eagle trying to pick up a dead [?] out of the water, failing and swimming for shore instead......2 minutes.....
15/ Lauren Ritchie with an excellent article on The Villages, which is a whitebread enclave in the middle of nowhere under the iron grip of the developer......
Very interesting.......Mary - feel like moving? I want a golf cart with a Rolls Royce front.....
The U.S. Census Bureau has named The Villages retirement community and surrounding Sumter County as the second fastest-growing "micro" population in the U.S., with a 4.6 percent increase between 2010 and 2011.
That's hardly a surprise, but what weird company the age-restricted community has on that list, and what strange things the list says about America today.
Let's take a look.
And then there's our very own Villages, an overgrown social experiment destined to be studied in future years by Ph.D. candidates.
The Villages bills itself as "America's Friendliest Hometown" but is in truth the fanciful creation of a developer who continues to guide the lifestyle and future of the community of nearly 97,000 people.
Towns such as Dunn and Heber have histories — families who built up the communities and have deep roots and lifetime stakes in their success. Those towns have demographics that mirror real life everywhere — some folks are poor, some wealthy; many households are families, but some are singles or couples, and all races are represented.
The Villages, too, is brimming with "history," and markers detail events in the area, dating back to the Spanish explorers of the late 1700s.
Unfortunately, it is all made up — a twist of quirky tidbits from developer H. Gary Morse's Detroit-based family combined with a heap of imagination. Apparently, telling potential buyers that The Villages used to be a cow pasture isn't very alluring.
In truth, The Villages is a huge city of people who nearly all are 55 or older. Those under 19 cannot live in The Villages at all. In an all-Villages ZIP code, 98 percent of the residents are white.
The fake history and limited demographics are a clue to the real Villages: It is a chimera that is controlled by the iron grip of the developer.
So what makes it attractive? The key lies in two factors: first, no children; second, more activities than can be dreamed of.
16/ I'm tired of writing about the disgusting, slimy piece of rat excrement that is our Governor, but he keeps doing evil shit.....he just vetoed a bi-partisan bill that would let a very few non-violent drug offenders [weed] out of jail........must be his ties to CCA [Corrections Corp. of America], who are lobbying for more prison time for everything.......good for business.....
Gov. Rick Scott loves to zap the so-called “turkeys” he sees lurking in the state budget. Last year, with considerable flourish, he exercised his line-item veto on a long list of what he characterized as “short-sighted, frivolous, wasteful spending.”
Frivolous pursuits included $500,000 for the Dan Marino Foundation Vocational School for disabled kids, $430,295 to feed old folks hot meals at the Allapattah Community Center, $12 million for homeless veterans, $3.25 million for the Wounded Warrior Project, $500,000 for a rural health clinic in Apopka and $1.9 million to screen newborns for immunodeficiency disease.
But last week, our great bird hunter, the fearless (some would say heartless) eliminator of budget minutiae, shrugged off a $2.2 billion turkey.
He vetoed HB 177 that would alter the state’s infamously tough sentencing law to allow a limited number of non-violent drug offenders to leave prison and enter a drug treatment program after serving half, rather than the compulsory 85 percent of their prison sentence.
The bill, sponsored Republican Ellyn Bogdanoff in the Senate and Democrat Ari Porth in the House, had been a remarkable work of bi-partisanship in an era not noted for such cooperation. The measure was approved by unanimous vote in the Senate, 112 to 4 in the House. For good reason. While liberals decry the wasted human potential that comes with locking up petty druggies for years, conservatives rail about the corresponding waste of taxpayer money.
Todays video - not actually a video, but a radio show with one of the funniest prank calls ever......very, very good.....
Todays collection of blonde jokes......
Blondes Are The Best!!!
A blonde & her husband are lying in bed
listening to the next door neighbor's dog..
It has been in the backyard barking for hours & hours.
The blonde jumps up out of bed and says,
"I've had enough of this".
She goes downstairs.
The blonde finally comes back up to bed
and her husband says, "The dog is still barking,
what have you been doing?"
The blonde says,
"I put the dog in our backyard,
let's see how THEY like it! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Two Blondes With Hammers...
Lynn & Judy were doing some carpenter work
on a Habitat for Humanity House.
Lynn was nailing down house siding,
would reach into her nail
pouch, pull out a nail & either toss it
over her shoulder or nail it in.
Judy, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, '
Why are you throwing those nails away?'
Lynn explained, 'When I pull a nail out of my pouch,
about half of them have the head on the wrong end
& I throw them away.'
Judy got completely upset & yelled,
'You moron! Those nails aren't defective!
They're for the other side of the house!' ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A blonde & her husband are lying in bed
listening to the next door neighbor's dog..
It has been in the backyard barking for hours & hours.
The blonde jumps up out of bed and says,
"I've had enough of this".
She goes downstairs.
The blonde finally comes back up to bed
and her husband says, "The dog is still barking,
what have you been doing?"
The blonde says,
"I put the dog in our backyard,
let's see how THEY like it! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Two Blondes With Hammers...
Lynn & Judy were doing some carpenter work
on a Habitat for Humanity House.
Lynn was nailing down house siding,
would reach into her nail
pouch, pull out a nail & either toss it
over her shoulder or nail it in.
Judy, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, '
Why are you throwing those nails away?'
Lynn explained, 'When I pull a nail out of my pouch,
about half of them have the head on the wrong end
& I throw them away.'
Judy got completely upset & yelled,
'You moron! Those nails aren't defective!
They're for the other side of the house!' ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Did you hear about the two blondes
who froze to death in a drive-in movie?
They had gone to see 'Closed for the Winter'
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A blonde was driving home after a game & got caught in a really bad
hailstorm.. Her car was covered with dents, so the next day she took it
To a repair shop. The shop owner saw that she was a blonde, so he
decided to have some fun... He told her to go home and blow into the
tail pipe really hard, & all the dents would pop out.
So, the blonde went home, got down on her hands & knees & started
blowing into her tailpipe.. Nothing happened.. So she blew a little
harder, & still nothing happened.
Her blonde roommate saw her & asked, 'What are you doing?' The first
blonde told her how the repairman had instructed her to blow into the
tail pipe in order to get all the dents to pop out.
The roommate rolled her eyes & said, 'Uh, like hello!
You need to roll up the windows first.'
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A blonde was shopping at Target &
came across a shiny silver thermos.
She was quite fascinated by it, so she picked it up & took
it to the clerk to ask what it was.
The clerk said, 'Why, that's a thermos.....
It keeps hot things hot, And cold things cold.'
'Wow, said the blonde, 'that's amazing....I'm going to buy it!'
So she Bought the thermos & took it to work the next day.
Her boss saw it on her desk. 'What's that,' he asked?
'Why, that's a thermos.....
It keeps hot things hot & cold things cold,' she replied..
Her boss inquired, 'What do you have in it?'
The blond replied.....
'Two popsicles & some coffee.'
+++++++++++++
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST
A blonde goes into work one morning crying her eyes out.
Her boss asked sympathetically, 'What's the matter?'
The blonde replies,
'Early this morning I got a phone call saying that
my mother had passed away.'
Her boss inquired, 'What do you have in it?'
The blond replied.....
'Two popsicles & some coffee.'
+++++++++++++
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST
A blonde goes into work one morning crying her eyes out.
Her boss asked sympathetically, 'What's the matter?'
The blonde replies,
'Early this morning I got a phone call saying that
my mother had passed away.'
The boss, feeling sorry for her, says,
'Why don't you go home for the
day? Take the day off to relax & rest.'
'Thanks, but I'd be better off here.
I need to keep my mind off it &
I have the best chance of doing that here.'
The boss agrees & allows the blonde to work as usual.
A couple of hours pass & the boss decides to check on the blonde.
He looks out from his office & sees the blonde crying hysterically..
'What's so bad now? Are you gonna be okay?' he asks.
'No!' exclaims the blonde.
'I just received a horrible call from my
sister. Her mother died, too!'
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