1/ Many of you may have seen a movie from the 90's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" starring Matt Damon, and in this very good essay Richard Eskow compares Mitt Romey to the character in the movie......
If you are interested in politics this will amuse you......
We tend to over-emphasize personalities in our politics especially in presidential campaigns. It matters who's president, of course, but our national elections are the product of much larger economic and social forces. They're increasingly dominated by a few financial powerhouses, and those who win them are then subjected to the intense gravitational pull of economic forces before even taking office.
The individuals running for president should be seen as the symptoms, as well as the causes, of larger events. Obama the Candidate was the product of social and economic yearnings which he shrewdly exploited. Bush the Candidate used larger forces in a shrewd way, too. He won and kept office by cleverly manipulating the corporate media, and by exploiting a network of relationships that extended from the boardrooms of Corporate America to the cloakroom of the United States Supreme Court.
To get lost in personalities during campaign season is to reduce all our elections to the presidential race and the presidential race to a reality show: America's Next Top President.
Having said all that: Man, can you believe that Mitt Romney?
2/ The running of the bulls is a Spanish tradition, but this 2 minute clip shows how violent it can get with the bulls stomping a few of the runners....and some bystanders as well......
Note - most of them get up after the bull has had his fun.........
3/ Very good story from the Guardian about the trillions being hoarded by corporations instead of being invested in the economy.....but why invest if there is no demand.......
There is a proposal being pushed by Democrats to raise the minimum wage, which would have the immediate effect of creating demand because the working poor who get these rates of pay spend all of it.....but this makes waaaaaaay too much sense for the Republicans to let it happen.....
As it does every month, Friday's jobs report is expected to underscore the desperate need for job creation in America.
This time around, it would be refreshing if the pundit-political class considered a radical but obvious idea: tapping the multitrillion-dollar stockpiles of corporate cash currently sitting on the sidelines and benefiting no one. Compulsive hoarding is unhealthy for individuals. It's even worse for whole economies.
The sorry facts are these: job growth is still half of what is needed to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, more than 14% of the US workforce is unemployed, underemployed or discouraged from looking for work. The numbers for July aren't expected to budge much. Absent a massive inflow of tax dollars, jobs aren't going to come from the public sector. State and local governments are broke, and the fight over federal deficits has turned into an all-out war in Congress.
Even as the need for fresh ideas and action becomes more urgent, politicians stake out tired and familiar ground each month. President Obama's response to poor-if-slightly-improving numbers is to acknowledge that job creation isn't where it needs to be, but will eventually limp back to health. Mitt Romney says the numbers are catastrophic, and if only the US cut taxes for corporations and the rich, and busted unions, we'd open the floodgates to millions of jobs.
In fact, both approaches only cause more harm – the former because many long-term unemployed are leaving the workforce for good, and the latter because it's a transfer of wealth to people and companies that will hoard money, not spend it.
The only thing that will bring jobs back is more consumer demand. Demand comes from middle and working-class people spending money. That becomes a lot harder when you don't have a job, are afraid of losing the one you have, or are earning less than you used to for the same work. America's middle and lower classes are tapped out. Despite rising productivity, labour's share of the national income in the US has dropped to the lowest point in recorded history.
4/ Jon Stewart in full sarcasm mode.......a funny segment where he looks at the Chick-Fil-A gay issue......and a Taco Bell employee who allegedly pissed in some nachos...... seven minutes......
5/ A funny Gail Collins column from the Times - this one is about the primaries and how some of the Republican hopefuls are staking out some very strange positions......
Missouri Republicans have just nominated a Senate candidate who appears to believe that the government’s college student loan program is the equivalent of Stage 3 cancer. Actually, he said “the Stage 3 cancer of socialism,” which is perhaps not the exact same thing. But I believe you get the idea.
This was a week after Texas Republicans nominated a Senate candidate who is worried about protecting the world’s golf courses from the United Nations. Republicans, I think you need to get a grip.
Meanwhile, the most cheerful place this side of Disney World is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the Democratic incumbent, was regarded as the political equivalent of roadkill until the Republicans picked Representative Todd Akin for her opponent. Now, the McCaskill campaign is doing a happy dance while Akin will be trying to explain that he thinks student loans are cancerous only when they come from the government rather than private industry.
This is not the kind of argument you really want to be having on your big primary win day. Also, Akin not only wants to keep the government out of the student loan business, his past votes suggest he also wants to see it steer clear of school lunches.
Before the primary, McCaskill ran an allegedly anti-Akin ad that cynics saw as an actual attempt to propel him to the front of the pack. It failed to mention the congressman’s principled opposition to the national School Breakfast Program, but instead denounced him as “too conservative” and an enemy of Planned Parenthood. Honestly, if you wanted to drive Tea Party voters to the polls, it was the next best thing to hiring a bus.
The Tea Party is once again giving Democrats a new lease on life.
6/ For my fellow movie buffs that feel the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy are in the top 20 of the best movies ever made, this trailer will fill you with anticipation - "The Hobbit" trailer......coming in December.......
7/ We will need to brace ourselves for the consequences of the drought in the Midwest that has decimated the corn crop of 2012, but the main effects will be felt in poor countries around the world......and this is just the beginning of climate change related impacts on our food supply.......
Welcome to the uncertain future........
The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s countiesdesignated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, willboost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.
This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.
Food -- affordable food -- is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry. In the United States, food represents only about 13% of the average household budget, a relatively small share, so a boost in food prices in 2013 will probably not prove overly taxing for most middle- and upper-income families. It could, however, produce considerable hardship for poor and unemployed Americans with limited resources. “You are talking about a real bite out of family budgets,” commented Ernie Gross, an agricultural economist at Omaha’s Creighton University. This could add to the discontent already evident in depressed and high-unemployment areas, perhaps prompting an intensified backlash against incumbent politicians and other forms of dissent and unrest.
It is in the international arena, however, that the Great Drought is likely to have its most devastating effects. Because so many nations depend on grain imports from the U.S. to supplement their own harvests, and because intense drought and floods are damaging crops elsewhere as well, food supplies are expected to shrink and prices to rise across the planet. “What happens to the U.S. supply has immense impact around the world,” says Robert Thompson, a food expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. As the crops most affected by the drought, corn and soybeans, disappear from world markets, he noted, the price of all grains, including wheat, is likely to soar, causing immense hardship to those who already have trouble affording enough food to feed their families.
The Hunger Games, 2007-2011
8/ The history of the world in two minutes.......nicely done compilation of images.......from creation to today......not suitable to anyone prone to epilepsy......
9/ Want to know why you rarely see any intelligent discussion of campaign finance on TV news? Because the main beneficiaries from the Citizens United influx of cash are the media companies.....duh....follow the money trail.......
More and more the best reporting on the corruption in our country is from independent magazines like Rolling Stone......
Candidates may raise the unprecedented sums of political cash being funneled through Super PACs this year, and media strategists may decide how to spend them – but the people who actually wind up pocketing much of the money are America's television broadcasters. Since the Supreme Court voided limits on political donations in Citizens United, more money than ever is being devoted to negative TV ads. Industry analysts predict that upwards of $3 billion will be spent on political advertising this year – a surge of more than $500 million over 2008.
"Election season has turned into Black Friday for broadcasters," says Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, which fights for transparency in elections. "It's just a huge bonanza."
While TV stations are required by law to offer discounted airtime to politicians, Super PACs have to pay market rates. With these outside groups expected to buy more than half the ads benefiting the Romney campaign, the increased competition to place ads in battleground states only serves to drive up the price. In a key market like Columbus, Ohio, where campaign spots are already airing at a record pace, the ad buys are expected to exceed the haul from 2008, when political ads made up half of all TV spots purchased during the final week of the election.
In essence, broadcasters are now profiteering from a vicious circle of corruption: Politicians are beholden to big donors because campaigns are so expensive, and campaigns are so expensive because they're fought through television ads. The more cash that chases limited airtime, the more the ads will cost, and the more politicians must lean on deep-pocketed patrons. In short, the dirtier the system, the better for the bottom line at TV stations and cable systems. According to an analysis by Moody's, political ads are expected to account for as much as seven cents of every dollar broadcasters earn over the full two-year election cycle for 2012.
10/ The latest music video from the beautiful Katy Perry "I'm Wide Awake" is extraordinary - hard to describe, but it's a mixture of "Alice in Wonderland" and "True Blood", with a dash of Guillermo Del Toro's fantasy epic "Into the Labyrinth".........great song, with a wonderful hook.....amazing what you can do with a huuuge budget......
11/ Another excellent article on the Republican enclave just north of us - The Villages. It's a thoughtful discussion of the implications of what the Villages represents - a demographic train wreck that is slowly unfolding, and what it means to the state and the country, and it isn't all good news......
A very good story from HuffPost Business that should be read by the scum in the Legislatures in Tallahassee.....but won't be, because we have the worst governance in the country starting with our asshole Governor......
Retired submarine captain Don Hahnfeldt wouldn't put it this way, but eight years ago he came to Florida to die.
"We moved 30 times over my career and when I got here my wife said there wouldn't be 31," he says, gunning his Navy-themed golf cart around the Villages, the world's largest retirement community.
Hahnfeldt is hardly alone. Legions of seniors have joined him at the Villages and the development, which grew out of cow pastures about an hour north of Orlando, is basically a sleep-away camp for old people who want to chill out but not necessarily slow down. Covering 23,000 acres and home to 88,000 people, it boasts 513 holes of golf, 85 restaurants, 63 swimming pools, 14 medical centers and the largest softball league in the world.
It is also a bit Twilight Zone: the development's scale and isolation make it feel more like a colony than a community. Almost everyone is old, almost everyone drives a golf cart — they outnumber cabs in New York City by a factor of four — and almost everyone is white. But retirees of Hahnfeldt's generation, who are reshaping notions of what it means to be old, say that it sure beats the life they left behind.
“Wake up, eat breakfast, read the newspaper and it’s only 8 a.m. and you wonder what you are going to do the rest of the day,” Hahnfeldt, 68, says of retired life elsewhere. Here, he plays golf, serves on a hospital board and gets to freak out visiting reporters on high-speed golf cart tours. “It’s like Disneyworld for adults,” he says more than once.
12/ Watching the Olympics? Got used to the boring NBC commentators? Here is an Irish sports reporter talking about ocean racing......funny.....
It's confession time now. Although we love watching the Olympics on TV, we really don't have a clue about the rules or what's supposed to be going on in some of these sports. The worst offender? Sailing!
So we were more than a little tickled to stumble across this hilarious spoof Irish sailing commentary from Fran Higgins - via The Huffington Post - in which he says many of the things we've been secretly thinking over the past few days.
Our favourite bits? Well, no offence to Olympic champion Ben Ainslie, but we love it when the commentator refers to sailing as "essentially a very, very boring sport indeed".
He also questions the human rights records of some of the competing nations - and claims to have spotted Steven Spielberg and Tim Henman on board one of the yachts.
13/ Occasionally there is some good environmental news in this country, which has turned hostile to all things green especially if nature is standing in the way of a corporation hellbent on exploiting something pristine.....
In Washington state a river is being restored to it's original channels, with two dams being dismantled......yeay.....
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — You come to the big green heart of the American rain forest because you want to be far, far away from the dead-eyed young man with dyed red hair and the thumping chatter about what’s wrong with a country in which 16,000 lives are taken every year in violent homicide.
Each murder is inexplicable in its own way, so you look for something restorative and reliable in a park holding trees that were living when Thomas Jefferson puttered around Monticello.
It doesn’t take long to find a miracle in the newly released Elwha River, focus of the largest dam removal project in American history — the Berlin Wall of environmental restoration. When wrecking crews started whacking away at the Elwha Dam last September, it was projected to take two, or even three years to bring it down.
14/ A rare Carl Hiaasen humorous column in the Miami Herald - he has found examples of emails Governor Scott forgot to delete........very good indeed.......
An absolutely true news item: To erase the perception that it was censoring public records, the office of Gov. Rick Scott has announced it will no longer delete unflattering correspondence from the governor’s official email account.
Dear Rick,
We received your inquiry about a possible stage appearance with Gov. Romney during his upcoming campaign swing through Florida. Unfortunately, Mitt has a very tight schedule and it’s unlikely he’ll have time to be seen with you.
Perhaps after the election you can come visit him at the White House, or at least take the tour. Meanwhile, keep up your good work in the Sunshine State, and try not to get discouraged by those scary low poll numbers!
Warmest regards,
Dear Gov. Scott,
I’m a huge supporter of your plan to drug-test state workers and welfare recipients. Wouldn’t it be a neat idea to do the same thing to all the delegates at the Republican National convention this month in Tampa?
What a golden opportunity for the GOP to set a moral example for the whole country, while also showcasing your own unique priorities as governor.
I just happen to own a company that sells urine-sampling kits online for $24.95, but for you we’ll make it an even 20 bucks apiece. What do you say?
Todays video - time for the chest waxing scene from "The 40 Year Old Virgin", and legend has it it was done in one take and it's Carrell's real chest hair .......one for the guys......
Todays golf joke
The Reverend Francis Norton woke up Sunday morning and realizing it was an
exceptionally beautiful and sunny early spring day, decided he just had to
play golf. So he told the Associate Pastor that he was feeling sick and
convinced him to say mass for him that day. As soon as the Associate Pastor
left the room, Father Norton headed out of town to a golf course about
forty miles away. This way he knew he wouldn't accidentally meet anyone he
knew from his Parish.
Setting up on the first tee, he was alone. After all, it was Sunday morning
and everyone else was in church! At about this time, Saint Peter leaned
over to the Lord while looking down from the heavens and exclaimed, "You're
not going to let him get away with this, are you?" The Lord sighed, and
said, "No, I guess not."
Just then Father Norton hit the ball and it shot straight towards the pin,
dropping just short of it, rolled up and fell into the hole. IT WAS A
420 YARD HOLE IN ONE! St. Peter was astonished. He looked at the Lord and
asked, "Why did you let him do that?" The Lord smiled and replied, "Who's
he going to tell?"
exceptionally beautiful and sunny early spring day, decided he just had to
play golf. So he told the Associate Pastor that he was feeling sick and
convinced him to say mass for him that day. As soon as the Associate Pastor
left the room, Father Norton headed out of town to a golf course about
forty miles away. This way he knew he wouldn't accidentally meet anyone he
knew from his Parish.
Setting up on the first tee, he was alone. After all, it was Sunday morning
and everyone else was in church! At about this time, Saint Peter leaned
over to the Lord while looking down from the heavens and exclaimed, "You're
not going to let him get away with this, are you?" The Lord sighed, and
said, "No, I guess not."
Just then Father Norton hit the ball and it shot straight towards the pin,
dropping just short of it, rolled up and fell into the hole. IT WAS A
420 YARD HOLE IN ONE! St. Peter was astonished. He looked at the Lord and
asked, "Why did you let him do that?" The Lord smiled and replied, "Who's
he going to tell?"
Todays God joke
A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they drew pictures. Occasionally,
she would walk around the room to see each child's work.
“What are you drawing?” she asked one little girl who was working diligently at her desk.
The girl replied, “I'm drawing God.”
The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.”
The little girl replied, “They will in a minute.”
Todays hangover joke
Dan wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company's Christmas Party.
Dan is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.
Dan had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, was a single red rose!!
Dan is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.
Dan had to force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, was a single red rose!!
Dan sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean; so is the rest of the house.
He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.
Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick:
"Honey, breakfast is on the stove. I left early to get groceries to make you your favourite dinner tonight.
I love you, darling! Love, Jillian"
He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.
Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick:
"Honey, breakfast is on the stove. I left early to get groceries to make you your favourite dinner tonight.
I love you, darling! Love, Jillian"
He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, steaming hot coffee, and the morning newspaper.
His 16 year old son is also at the table, eating. Dan asks, "Son... what happened last night?"
"Well, you came home after 3 a.m., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door."
Confused, he asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me??"
His son replies, "Oh THAT... Mum dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed...."Leave me alone, I'm married!!"
His 16 year old son is also at the table, eating. Dan asks, "Son... what happened last night?"
"Well, you came home after 3 a.m., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door."
Confused, he asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me??"
His son replies, "Oh THAT... Mum dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed...."Leave me alone, I'm married!!"
Hot Breakfast £4.20
Two Aspirins £.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time. .. PRICELESS
Two Aspirins £.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time. .. PRICELESS
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