Your scribe is heading off for three weeks to a place where there may, or may not, be an internet connection, so this may be the last DDD for a while.....
1/ The lessons from the Wisconsin recall election couldn't be clearer for Democrats - fight, lie and cheat like the other side does........here is an excellent analysis of how the Dems screwed themselves and Wisconsin by playing it safe.....
Another article that should be read by every progressive.......and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz......
How Republicans Cheat Democrats - and Democrats Cheat Themselves
POSTED: June 12, 2:53 PM ET | By Rick Perlstein
The volume of explanation for why Republican Scott Walker won and Democrat Tom Barrett lost last week's Wisconsin recall election has been overwhelming, which is as it should be: This was a very, very important election.
Some have pointed out that it is only natural that Walker won when his side outspent the opposition by a ratio of eight, or ten, or twelve times to one (there is no definitive figure, which is precisely the problem: our new campaign finance universe deliberately makes it hard to keep track of all the money). A blunt reader of Talking Points memo points out that this was a recall election aimed at preserving public employee unions, but public employee unions simply are not popular. Yet that explanation runs up against the fact that last year in Ohio, a state equally as purplish as Wisconsin, voters crushed their reactionary governor's attempt to pass the same sort of anti-union law there, by a vote of 61 percent to 39. In Ohio, where the law allows for statutory repeal, pro-union forces were able to strike while the iron was hot, just months after the offending act's passage; in Wisconsin, where there is no statutory repeal, the law dictated that voters had to wait almost a year after the passage of the law to vote to recall their governor – meaning the problem was short attention spans and simple legal mechanics.
All good, sound, analysis – but my best explanation goes deeper, and says much more not just about Wisconsin, but about the entire structure of our political firmament: how Democrats do business, how Republicans do business, and how the world works as a result. My story is symbolized by the Election Day Slap....
2/ Rachael Maddow with a fascinating look at the Romney campaign, and how the Mittster and his owners are using all of the failed candidates on the stump, leading into a discussion with Frank Rich in the second half of the segment on how President Obama should immediately go negative and "nuke 'em", which is most interesting put together with #1 as a strategy for the Democrats.
It seems the Obama strategists don't get it - they are up against a German Panzer division, and insist on using the mounted cavalry........the Charge of the Light Brigade all over again......
Do David Plouffe and Wasserman-Schultz ever watch TV?
3/ Steve Frayne - amazing British magician performing on the Thames and on the streets of London.....4 minutes......
4/ And continuing the theme of political failure on the left, a Times analysis on what will happen when the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] - the country will celebrate because the administration has done an abysmal job explaining the act, and allowed the big money and the conservatives to generate negativity about the ACA to the point where even people with no coverage want the ACA gone......
I find myself thinking these idiots have no clue about what will happen.......chaos in the health insurance market and millions and millions more people uninsured.....
Here's some advice for the President - grow a pair for healthcare - when the Supremes strike it down, campaign on a "Medicare For All" platform.......
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Erika Losse is precisely the kind of person President Obama’s signature health care law is intended to help. She has no health insurance. She relies on her mother to buy her a yearly checkup as a Christmas gift, and she pays out of her own pocket for the rest of her medical care, including $1,250 for a recent ultrasound.
But Ms. Losse, 33, a part-time worker at a bagel shop, is no fan of the law, which will require millions of uninsured Americans like herself to get health coverage by 2014. Never mind that Ms. Losse, who makes less than $35,000 a year, would probably qualify for subsidized insurance under the law.
“I’m positive I can’t afford it,” she said.
A Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the health care law is expected any day now, but even if the Obama administration wins in the nation’s highest court, most evidence suggests it has lost miserably in the court of public opinion. National polls have consistently found the health care law has far more enemies than friends, including a recent New York Times/CBS News pollthat found more than two-thirds of Americans hope the court will overturn some or all of it.
“The Democrats have done a very poor job of selling the program,” said Gary Schiff, 65, a retired teacher and businessman here. “All you hear about it now is the Republicans saying what’s wrong with it: that it’s socialism, that it’s going to bankrupt the country. I’ll give them credit; they’re great at framing the debate.”
That success may stem in large part from more than $200 million in advertising spending by an array of conservative groups, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($27 million) to Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS ($18 million), which includes the billionaire Sheldon Adelson among its donors, and the American Action Network ($9 million), founded by Fred V. Malek, an investor and prominent Republican fund-raiser.
In all, about $235 million has been spent on ads attacking the law since its passage in March 2010, according to a recent survey by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. Only $69 million has been spent on advertising supporting it. Just $700,000 of that comes from the Obama campaign, and none of its ads mentioning the law are currently being broadcast, said Elizabeth Wilner, vice president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. “It explains, in a nutshell, why polling shows attitudes about the law to be at best mixed,” she said.
5/ SNL with a classic sketch - "It's Almost Pizza!" One minute.......with Kristen Wiig......very funny......
International version.......
6/ Every now and then a writer will reveal a "truth" to us that is clarity itself, a flash of revelation .....maybe that's a little OTT but read the first few lines of Gail Collin's column this week and see if you get the same feeling......
Our biggest political division is the war between the empty places and the crowded places.
It’s natural. People who live in crowded places tend to appreciate government. It’s the thing that sets boundaries on public behavior, protects them from burglars and cleans the streets. If anything, they’d like it to do more. (That pothole’s been there for a year!) The people who live in empty places don’t see the point. If a burglar decides to break in, that’s what they’ve got guns for. Other folks don’t get in their way because their way is really, really remote. Who needs government? It just makes trouble and costs money.
The Tea Party is so Empty Places. Do you remember that Tea Party rally in Washington last year over the budget crisis? (That would be the spring budget crisis as opposed to the many other seasonal versions.) “Nobody wants the government to shut down,” began Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, diplomatically. “Yes we do!” cried voices from the crowd.
The Empty Theory made a lot of sense when the country was full of isolated farms, but it lost its mojo when the farmland filled up with suburbs and we elected a long series of presidents who were, to one degree or another, Modified Crowded. But now Empty is making a comeback, less an expression of physical reality than a state of mind.
7/ Most interesting little quiz - see which candidate for President YOU align with......quite subtle too, as they have included a strength meter on every question......
8/ Good story by Thomas Frank on how being a swing state means reams of money for the local media as candidates fight it out with attack ads.....but then he goes into a fascinating discussion of the implications for our politics when money equals speech, when billionaires own the politicians.....
Long, thoughtful article from the author of "Whats the Matter With Kansas"......
While visiting Kansas City last December, I read a local newspaper story lamenting the gradual transformation of Missouri into a reliably Republican citadel—a red state, as we like to say. In the past, I read, Missouri had been different from its more partisan neighbors. It had been a “bellwether” state that “reflected national trends,” rather than delivering votes for any particular party. But now all that was over, and I assumed the article would go on to mourn the death of judicious public reason—the tradition of giving rival arguments a hearing and testing them with that famous “Show Me” skepticism.
I was wrong. Forget the death of open-mindedness. What was actually being mourned that day in the Kansas City Star was a possible loss of advertising revenue by the state’s TV stations. If Missouri was no longer a battleground state, then the two parties and their various backers would no longer fight their expensive electronic war over the airwaves between St. Louie and St. Joe, and “spending on TV ads in the state [would] plummet.”
This was the concern, not some airy nonsense about ideology or polarization. That would have been a mere matter of opinion, while this was so hard and so real it came with a price tag. Here is what Missouri’s creeping Kansification was going to cost: in the last election cycle, the national candidates and their allied PACs blew almost $21 million on advertising in the state. Given Missouri’s tilt to the right, every last penny of a similar windfall might be lost. Even worse: Missourians had squandered their battleground status just before what promises to be the biggest-spending political year ever. As the paper noted, campaign expenditures are predicted to skyrocket between now and November.
Thanks to their own ideological stubbornness, Missourians—or, more accurately, Missouri broadcasters—will now miss out on all that. The Starreassured readers that the hammer blows inflicted on their local FCC license holders “would not be fatal.” Yet the ultimate lesson was clear: political conviction comes at a high cost. Unemployment in Missouri stands at 8 percent, and like other Midwestern states, it has been hemorrhaging jobs and industries for decades. Now it has gone and turned away the one bonanza that even loser states, as long as they remain appropriately fickle, have a shot at winning: campaign finance.
9/ Conan's "Triumph the Comic Insult Dog" visits a Chicago eatery famous for it's insults, after Jack Mcbrayer of 30 Rock fame retreats under a barrage of abuse.....quite an amusing 7 minutes.....
Weiner's Circle, the famous Chicago eatery, is notable for two things: Its rude vendors, and in a distant second, its hot dogs. But it may have finally met its match. Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
Conan O'Brien wrapped up his week of Chicago shows by sending a couple correspondents to Weiner's Circle, and the results could not have been more satisfying. First, he sent out "the nicest, most polite person" that Conan knows, Jack McBrayer. The "30 Rock" star appeared earlier this week for a homecoming of sorts, as he started his comedy career in The Windy City when he was a part of the famed Second City comedy troupe.
But McBrayer's friendly nature got the best of him, and he had to bring in back-up. And the rude, cursing women of the hot dog stand had no idea what they were in for.
As soon as Triumph shows up, it's a throwdown for the ages. Insults, slapping and eventually a friendly joining of forces. You're going to want to be sure to watch this one.
10/ A pretty good summary of what Monsanto is up to, poisoning us all and buying off the regulators, Congress and even Whole Foods Markets.....
We are in deep trouble in the food supply......
Monsanto’s history is one steeped with controversial products, deadly consequences, massive cover ups, political slight of hand, and culminates as a modern day plague on humanity, a plague that is about to peak to biblical proportions. Created in 1901, the company started producing its first form of poison, the artificial sweetener saccharin. The rise in use of saccharin really began 70 years later. Monsanto had plenty of time for a realistic and long term study on the impact of saccharin on human health. Instead, Monsanto learned how to finagle political support and grow its empire despite the growing consensus that saccharin caused cancer.
No surprise then that the company continued on a path of controversy. Here’s a bullet point history.
• Contributed to the research on uranium, for the Manhattan Project, during WWII.
• Operated a nuclear facility for the U.S. government until the late 1980s.
• Top manufacturer of synthetic fibers, plastics and polystyrene (EPA’s 5th ranked chemical production that generates the most hazardous waste).
• A top 10 US chemical company.
• Agriculture pesticides producer.
• Herbicide producer - herbicides 2,4,5-T, Agent Orange, Lasso, and DDT.
• Agent Orange (used in Vietnam), had the highest levels of dioxin and contaminated more than 3 million civilians and servicemen of which only partial compensation awarded.
• Nearly 500,000 Vietnamese children were born deformed and never compensated.
• Lasso was banned in USA, so weed killer “Roundup” is launched in 1976.
• A major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which generated many law suits and environmental cleanups
• $180 million settlement for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange
• Fined $1.2 million for concealing the discharge of contaminated waste water
• Ordered to pay $41.1 million due to hazardous waste dumping
• Paid $600 million in settlement claims to more than 20,000 Anniston residents in Abernathy v. United States Link here.
• Produced GM cattle drug, bovine growth hormone (called rBGH or rBST)
• Acquiring seed companies from the 1990’s and forward.
• Monsanto Filed 144 lawsuits against struggling farmers and settled out of court with 700 farmers, for reportedly violating seed patents. A full time staff of 75 Monsanto employees investigates patent infringement. They are dedicated solely to finding farms that have been contaminated by their unwanted seed. As of 2007, Monsanto was awarded in 57 recorded judgments against farmers a total of $21,583,431.99. Monsanto vs. Farmers click here.
No surprise then that the company continued on a path of controversy. Here’s a bullet point history.
• Contributed to the research on uranium, for the Manhattan Project, during WWII.
• Operated a nuclear facility for the U.S. government until the late 1980s.
• Top manufacturer of synthetic fibers, plastics and polystyrene (EPA’s 5th ranked chemical production that generates the most hazardous waste).
• A top 10 US chemical company.
• Agriculture pesticides producer.
• Herbicide producer - herbicides 2,4,5-T, Agent Orange, Lasso, and DDT.
• Agent Orange (used in Vietnam), had the highest levels of dioxin and contaminated more than 3 million civilians and servicemen of which only partial compensation awarded.
• Nearly 500,000 Vietnamese children were born deformed and never compensated.
• Lasso was banned in USA, so weed killer “Roundup” is launched in 1976.
• A major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which generated many law suits and environmental cleanups
• $180 million settlement for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange
• Fined $1.2 million for concealing the discharge of contaminated waste water
• Ordered to pay $41.1 million due to hazardous waste dumping
• Paid $600 million in settlement claims to more than 20,000 Anniston residents in Abernathy v. United States Link here.
• Produced GM cattle drug, bovine growth hormone (called rBGH or rBST)
• Acquiring seed companies from the 1990’s and forward.
• Monsanto Filed 144 lawsuits against struggling farmers and settled out of court with 700 farmers, for reportedly violating seed patents. A full time staff of 75 Monsanto employees investigates patent infringement. They are dedicated solely to finding farms that have been contaminated by their unwanted seed. As of 2007, Monsanto was awarded in 57 recorded judgments against farmers a total of $21,583,431.99. Monsanto vs. Farmers click here.
11/ Icona Pop sing "I Love It" - a Swedish girl duo, a hard driving dance song with a "we're so young and cool" video with it......video is fun, song is a little repetitive......Europop......
12/ Our Monsanto tale goes hand in hand with this story, how environmental protections have been gutted by Congress in the last two years, and if Romney gets in look out......
Global temperatures are rising, violent weather is increasing, chemicals in the air, food supply and water have led to soaring rates of allergies, asthma, certain cancers, hormone disruption, male infertility. Forest lands are vanishing at unprecedented rates, vast dead zones are spreading in the world’s oceans, we are running out of non-renewable fossil fuels. Everyone knows that we are facing an unprecedented environmental crisis-- right?
Wrong. This news seems never to have gotten to America’s Republican legislators. In the face of these huge and escalating threats, the GOP majority over the last year has voted no fewer than 247 times (nearly once a day for every day the House was in session) to weaken environmental protections that have been in place for decades and to defeat needed legislation.
This according to a report released on Monday by Representatives Henry Waxman, a member the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Edward Markey a member of the Committee on Natural Resources. They have called the 112th Congress the most anti-environment ever. Here is how Waxman and Markey break down this dismal record.
13/ Anyone who has ever worked in a large corporation knows how important it is for the organization's IT platforms to be coordinated and standardised, so all of the systems can talk to each other. Well Floriduh, under Rick Scott our asshole Governor, has just abolished Florida's systems department.....
We are governed by corrupt morons....
For the second time in less than a decade, Florida is preparing to do without a standalone agency that deals with technology throughout state government.
The Agency for Enterprise Information Technology was a 16-person unit that helped set standards for technology purchasing and information security under the supervision of the governor and cabinet.
The Legislature this session passed HB 5011, which would have replaced AEIT with an Office of State Technology. Gov. Rick Scott vetoed the bill, though, so the agency still exists but will have no funding when the new fiscal year begins July 1. Many of its employees, including former stateChief Information Officer David Taylor, have already begun moving to other agencies.
Rep. Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, said that studying some of the state's technology initiatives -- including an effort to switch most of state government to a single e-mail system -- led her to conclude AEIT "in its current state was ill-suited to provide the statewide vision and oversight needed for certain enterprise information technology projects."
According to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, Florida is now the only state in the country without a standalone state CIO or similar position that can guide decision-making across different agencies.
This is the second time a state technology agency has met this fate. In 2005 Gov. Jeb Bush vetoedSB 1494, an effort by the Legislature to eliminate what was then a larger State Technology Office. Bush had worked to create the office to avoid unnecessary duplication in the high-tech purchases made by state agencies, but he acknowledged in his veto message that "its efforts have been slow to gain acceptance."
The Agency for Enterprise Information Technology was a 16-person unit that helped set standards for technology purchasing and information security under the supervision of the governor and cabinet.
The Legislature this session passed HB 5011, which would have replaced AEIT with an Office of State Technology. Gov. Rick Scott vetoed the bill, though, so the agency still exists but will have no funding when the new fiscal year begins July 1. Many of its employees, including former stateChief Information Officer David Taylor, have already begun moving to other agencies.
Rep. Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, said that studying some of the state's technology initiatives -- including an effort to switch most of state government to a single e-mail system -- led her to conclude AEIT "in its current state was ill-suited to provide the statewide vision and oversight needed for certain enterprise information technology projects."
According to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, Florida is now the only state in the country without a standalone state CIO or similar position that can guide decision-making across different agencies.
This is the second time a state technology agency has met this fate. In 2005 Gov. Jeb Bush vetoedSB 1494, an effort by the Legislature to eliminate what was then a larger State Technology Office. Bush had worked to create the office to avoid unnecessary duplication in the high-tech purchases made by state agencies, but he acknowledged in his veto message that "its efforts have been slow to gain acceptance."
14/ Good news for Android fans - Samsung has come out with a new phone that's better than an I-phone in some ways......
Wow. When Samsung wants to win, it doesn’t kid around.
Stuart Goldenberg
Its new flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S III, is teeming with features aimed at humiliating theiPhone. It’s like a boxer entering the ring with ceramic body armor and semiautomatic weapons.
The question is, Does it all work together to create a masterpiece? Or is it a heap of chaotic spaghetti?
The Galaxy S III is available from all four major carriers in the United States — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile ($200 for the model with 16 gigabytes of storage, with a two-year contract). It runs on each carrier’s fastest data network — 4G LTE, for example.
The first thing to know: This phone is huge. Its 4.8-inch screen is a broad canvas for photos, movies, maps and Web pages. But you can’t have a big screen without a big body, and this one is more VHS cassette than postage stamp. It’s the old trade-off: A big phone is better when you’re using it, but a small one is better when you’re carrying it.
Still, once Samsung decided to incorporate a Jumbotron, its designers did a spectacular job designing a case around it. The back is glossy plastic (white or dark blue), rounded at all edges and corners. It’s superthin — 0.34 inches, even thinner than the iPhone — and feels glorious; when you’re nervous, you can rub it like a worry stone.
Samsung may not call it a Retina display, but the screen actually has more pixels than the iPhone’s, 1,280 by 720 pixels versus 960 by 640. It’s nearly as sharp, too: 306 pixels per inch instead of 326. It’s an Amoled screen: bright, vivid and relatively energy-efficient.
15/ "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" has to be one of the best movie titles ever, but this review is only fair.....lots of "Matrix" type ultraviolence, but not too much narrative and acting. But if you like chomper movies, this is for you......
“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” is such a smashing title it’s too bad someone had to spoil things by making a movie to go with it. Then again, a big-screen version of Seth Grahame-Smith’s comic novel was doubtless inevitable, given the delectable absurdity of the 16th president of the United States’ going all Buffy on a vamp army, splitting heads like rails. That sounds funny, and for a while it plays like head-exploding gangbusters on screen, particularly when the young Mr. Lincoln (a solid Benjamin Walker), in his grasshopper stage, begins learning how to swing a silver-tipped ax like a kung fu master. (As the great man said: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”)
..............................
Mr. Bekmambetov has a knack for screen carnage and he has plenty to work with in “Abraham Lincoln,” which gives him untold bodies with which to paint the screen red. (The intentionally drab, at times duo-chromatic palette dulls the colorful spray.) Outside of Nazis and zombies or, better yet, Nazi zombies, nothing says easily disposable villains like slave-trading vampires. And there is, no question, something satisfying — as the pleasure of the story’s pop conceit hits your deep historical outrage — about watching Lincoln decapitate a slave-trading ghoul, at least the first few dozen times. If only Mr. Bekmambetov had a strong sense of narrative rhythm and proportion, and as great a commitment to life as he does to death and all the ways bodies can be digitally pulverized.
AL- VH trailer......cool stuff with an axe.......
Todays videos - a compilation of the very funny "Trunk Monkey" commercials, some new ones too.......
Todays inspirational joke
Recently I was asked to play in a golf tournament.
At first I said, 'Naaahhh!'
Then they said to me 'Come on, it's for handicapped and blind kids.'
Then I thought...
Shit...I could win this...
At first I said, 'Naaahhh!'
Then they said to me 'Come on, it's for handicapped and blind kids.'
Then I thought...
Shit...I could win this...
Todays senior golf joke
Beverly is 90 years old. She's played golf every day since her
retirement 25 years ago.
retirement 25 years ago.
One day she arrives home looking sad.
"That's it," she tells her husband, Gus, "I'm giving up golf. My
eyesight has become so bad that once I hit the ball I can't see where
it went."
Her husband makes her a cup of tea, and says, "Why don't you take me
with you and give it one more try."
"That's no good" sighs Beverly, "you're a hundred and three. You can't
help."
"I may be a hundred and three", says Gus, "but my eyesight is perfect."
So the next day Beverly heads off to the golf course with her Gus. She
tees up, takes a mighty swing and squints down the fairway.
She turns to the husband and says, "Did you see the ball?"
"Of course I did!" replied Gus, "I have perfect eyesight".
"Where did it go?" says Beverly.
"I don't remember."
"That's it," she tells her husband, Gus, "I'm giving up golf. My
eyesight has become so bad that once I hit the ball I can't see where
it went."
Her husband makes her a cup of tea, and says, "Why don't you take me
with you and give it one more try."
"That's no good" sighs Beverly, "you're a hundred and three. You can't
help."
"I may be a hundred and three", says Gus, "but my eyesight is perfect."
So the next day Beverly heads off to the golf course with her Gus. She
tees up, takes a mighty swing and squints down the fairway.
She turns to the husband and says, "Did you see the ball?"
"Of course I did!" replied Gus, "I have perfect eyesight".
"Where did it go?" says Beverly.
"I don't remember."
Todays neighbourly joke
This is my neighbour: She's single... She lives right across the street. I can see her house from my living room. I watched as she got home from work this evening. I was surprised when she walked across the street and up my driveway. She knocked on my door... I rushed to open it. She looks at me, and says, "I just got home, and I am so horny! I have this strong urge to have a good time, get drunk, and make love all night long! Are you busy tonight?" I immediately replied, "Nope, I'm free... I have no plans at all!" Then she said, "Good! In that case, could you watch my dog?" It's no fun being old...... Todays final senior joke |
There was a bit of confusion at the store this morning. When I was ready
to pay for my groceries, the cashier said, "Strip down, facing me."
Making a mental note to complain to my congressman about Homeland Security
running amok, I did just as she had instructed.
When the hysterical shrieking and alarms finally subsided,
I found out that she was referring to my credit card.
I have been asked to shop elsewhere in the future.
They need to make their instructions to us seniors a little clearer!
ear Democratic Party leaders,