Phew - the Conventions are over, so now we get to watch attack ads for two months.....wow......anyway this DDD is highlights and funny stuff from the Dem. convention.....
Bill "Big Dawg" Clinton's speech at the Democratic Convention was riveting, and actually remarkable in this age of soundbites.....he quoted facts, and numbers.......three related stories for you.......
1/ Paul Krugman looks at the policy statements from Clinton on the economy, and finds them substantially true......good article......
Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention was a remarkable combination of pretty serious wonkishness — has there ever been a convention speech with that much policy detail? — and memorable zingers. Perhaps the best of those zingers was his sarcastic summary of the Republican case for denying President Obama re-election: “We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”
Great line. But is the mess really getting cleaned up?
The answer, I would argue, is yes. The next four years are likely to be much better than the last four years — unless misguided policies create another mess.
In saying this, I’m not making excuses for the past. Job growth has been much slower and unemployment much higher than it should have been, even given the mess Mr. Obama inherited. More on that later. But, first, let’s look at what has been accomplished.
On Inauguration Day 2009, the U.S. economy faced three main problems. First, and most pressing, there was a crisis in the financial system, with many of the crucial channels of credit frozen; we were, in effect, suffering the 21st-century version of the bank runs that brought on the Great Depression. Second, the economy was taking a major hit from the collapse of a gigantic housing bubble. Third, consumer spending was being held down by high levels of household debt, much of which had been run up during the Bush-era bubble.
2/ Jon Stewart with a funny look at the Clinton speech......6 minutes, better than usual with a couple of LOL moments.....
On Thursday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart had a lot of new DNC material to work with, and for once he was pretty satisfied with what he saw. Sure, Bill Clinton's speech may have run for about an hour (and cut into some NFL action people were hoping to tune into), but it introduced one gleaming element that made it all worthwhile in Stewart's eyes: facts.
Unlike speakers who came before him and talked about things like "hope" and "leadership," Clinton broke out the big guns and brought actual statistics and percentages to the crowd.
"Oh, ratios: mathematical parameters from which to extrapolate results," Stewart cooed.
But while the former President's introduction of arithmetic and fact-knowing into the election season was more than welcome, the "Daily Show" host couldn't help but wonder what it means that we're all so refreshed by their presence.
3/ Politico has put together the 15 best lines from the Clinton speech.....and there were some great zingers.....5 minutes of a virtuoso performance from the former President.....
Former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday night delivered a very long speech filled with off-script riffs that thrilled the Charlotte crowd. Here’s POLITICO’s round-up of Clinton’s 15 memorable lines from his address at the Democratic National Convention:
4/ An excellent Bill Maher......8 minutes.....I love this guy.......
On this week's "Real Time," Bill Maher had a new rule for just about everyone. From Clint Eastwood's chair, to Julian Castro's adorable daughter -- no one was off limits.
But his final rule was the crown jewel. It requires President Obama to appoint Bill Clinton to head the EPA if re-elected, and we're not going to tell you why (but it's great).
5/ Bob Herbert was a columnist for the Times, and now is at Demos, a think tank. Here are his thoughts on bringing back a strong middle class......a very good article that will make you think........
This is not a temporary cyclical downturn destined to be followed by a robust recovery. Globalization, labor-saving technological advancements and the decline of labor unions has fundamentally changed the nature of work in the United States. Without bold new initiatives the American economy will be unable to come anywhere close to creating enough decent jobs to sustain a healthy middle class and substantially reduce the number of people living in poverty.
Sixty percent of the jobs destroyed since the start of the Great Recession were middle-income positions. Most of the job growth since then has been in low-wage occupations. As the Demos report notes, "The Department of Labor projects that over the coming decade the largest job growth will be in currently low-paying occupations such as home health aides, food service workers, and retail salespeople." That is not the stuff of which the American Dream is made.
The suffering from the employment crisis in the U.S. has been immense and must be brought to an end. The Demos proposal calls for a number of new or expanded initiatives, including:
- The establishment of a temporary 21st century version of the WPA public jobs program. That would ease the plight of those hardest hit by the employment crisis.
- A much larger commitment to public investment in infrastructure, such as roads, rail lines, seaports and electrical transmission; and increased investments in the newest clean energy technologies, and in scientific research and development. Such investments would lead to substantial job creation and help make the U.S. far more competitive in the years and decades to come.
- A concerted national effort to reconstitute the labor movement so that working Americans are again able to band together to halt exploitation and effectively negotiate pay raises and benefits.
This is not pie in the sky. America's proudest creation in the early post-World War II decades was its vast middle class. It did not spring spontaneously into being, like magic. The process was helped enormously by a wide range of public policy decisions that, among other things, established a highly progressive tax code, guaranteed the right of workers to join a union and bargain collectively, made massive infrastructure investments, and offered extensive public support for education, including higher education.
The decline of the middle class was also the result of public policy choices, only this time they were geared to overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthy. Today's downward mobility can only be reversed by a range of new choices consciously aimed at helping working Americans regain their financial footing. Demos's report can be an important guide to that process. The goal is a fairer, more economically just and equitable America.
6/ Jimmy Kimmel's "Unnecessary Censorship is quite amusing.....here is the Democratic convention version.....1 minute........
7/ Oh lordy, the things your scribe does to keep you informed, dear readers - this week wallowing in the sewage of American summer TV - a new reality show that follows a family of Georgia rednecks is pulling in huge ratings, so we took a look at some commentary on it.......
Honey Boo Boo Kimmel - Jimmy Kimmel with a one minute montage of Honey Boo Boo, an introduction to the family.....themed like a British travel documentary.....
An astonishing fact - Honey Boo Boo beat the Fox News coverage of the Republican Convention......how stupid is the American public? Pretty dumb if they watch this shit......or is it just hypnotic disgust? Dunno......
There is no stopping "Honey Boo Boo."
First, she conquered "Toddler and Tiaras," when she coined the phrase "Honey Boo Boo Child." Now, Alana Thompson and her family have conquered the Republican National Convention.
The ratings for TLC's increasingly popular show, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,"skyrocketed Thursday night for the show's fourth episode, pulling in almost 3 million viewers in the 10 p.m. slot, according to Nielsen via the Hollywood Reporter.
THR went on to report that TLC's "Honey Boo Boo" topped even the RNC in the ratings:
Honey Boo Boo Badger - Randall put the dialogue from the Honey Badger clip over videos of this horrid family, and it's amazing how well it fits - 1 1/2 minutes.....
8/ Although this is a few years old it still resonates - when a Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan he is taken from a military base along Highway 101, and people come out to salute the fallen soldier.
Brian Williams reports on our nice neighbor to the north......and then think of the tradition in the US in Iraq and Afghanistan - the Bush administration wouldn't even let pictures be taken of the bodies....it was a secret, something the government was ashamed of......
Canada still has troops in the Afghan shithole, but as trainers......
9/ Drought update - although Hurricane Isaac brought some relief to parts of the midwest, most was untouched by rain. The drought continues, and crops have been severely affected. Food prices are expected to rise and keep on rising......get ready folks......
It affects our food prices, but it's the poor countries that are going to be screwed......
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The worst drought in decades is expected, over the next few months, to continue choking a large area of the Plains and Rockies that missed the soggy remnants of Hurricane Isaac, according to the National Weather Service’s Seasonal Drought Outlook released on Thursday morning.
But those lingering rain bands from the hurricane did provide welcome moisture to the Midwestern states that were previously the epicenter of the drought, soaking states like Missouri, Illinois and Indiana with two to six inches of rain, the Agriculture Department’s United States Drought Monitor reported also on Thursday morning. Most of Missouri has been downgraded from being in exceptional or extreme drought to being in severe drought. Almost all of Illinois and Indiana are now in the severe or moderate category.
But the drought’s severity was upgraded through much of the Central and Southern Plains — an area that stretches from southern South Dakota to northern Texas and has been suffering from triple-digit temperatures as well as lack of rain. Parts of South Dakota fell into exceptional drought, and that categorization expanded in large parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebras
Forecasters say that this region is moving to a climatologically drier time of the year, meaning that the drought will likely intensify in the coming months.
Overall, 62.89 percent of the continental United States remained in moderate to exceptional drought, an improvement of less than a half a percent from last week, according to the Drought Monitor.
All this has meant that, despite the heavy downpours of Hurricane Isaac, the desiccated regions of the country still had ponds too shallow to water cattle, fields too dusty for feeding and crops beyond the point of salvage.
10/ A classic Jon Stewart, where he skewers Fox News' coverage of the GOP and the Democratic convention......never have the anchors at Fox looked so stupid......an excellent five minutes.....
11/ Climate change, something that hasn't penetrated the hard heads of conservatives. Mitt Romney doubled down on his denial of the planet warming today, so there you are - half the country is in denial........
Here is the reality - Bill McKibben sums up this summer globally.......we are screwed folks.......
A Summer of Extremes
Signifies the New Normal
This summer has seen record heat waves and wildfires in the U.S, the worst flooding in Beijing’s modern history, and droughts that devastated the U.S. corn crop and led India to set up “refugee camps” for livestock. These extreme events were not freak occurrences — this is how the earth works now.
by bill mckibbenJust as the baseball season now stretches nearly into November, and the National Football League keeps adding games, so the summer season is in danger of extending on both ends, a kind of megalomaniac power grab fueled by the carbon pouring into the atmosphere.
In fact, you could argue that the North American summer actually started two days before the official end of winter this year, when the town of Winner, South Dakota turned in a 94-degree temperature reading. It was part of that wild July-in-March heat wave that stretched across two-thirds of the country, a stretch of weather so bizarre that historian Christopher Burt called it “probably the most extraordinary anomalous heat event” that the nation has ever seen. International Falls, “the icebox of the nation,” broke its heat records 10 straight days, and Chicago nine. In Traverse City, Michigan, on March 21, the record high was 87 degrees. But the low was 62 degrees, which was 4 degrees higher than the previous record high. The technical word for that is, insane.
And it wasn’t just the U.S. — new March records were set everywhere from Perth to Reykjavik, not to mention (this is the gun on the wall in Act One) Summit Station at the top of the Greenland Ice Cap.
12/ Lawrence Anthony was the elephant whisperer of South Africa, and loved and protected the elephants of Zululand all of his life. He became famous when his books about the elephants became international bestsellers. When he died, his family said two herds of elephants came to his house, stayed for two days like they were paying homage to the man, and then left. It's a beautiful story, and shows the intelligence of these great animals......
I have Snoped this story, and it may be true....it's in Wikipedia.....
For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”
For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died? Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend. He is the author of three books, Babylon Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer.
13/ Following on from this wonderful story, the Times tells us how elephants in Africa are being poached and slaughtered for their ivory tusks by poachers and even units of some African armies of the more unstable and corrupt states. The problem is the Chinese middle class loves ivory, and the price has gone through the roof.
The demand is there, and the supply is the elephants of Africa who are being decimated.......aren't we humans a great species?
Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits
The Ivory Wars: Heavily armed platoons of rangers at Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo wage war against elephant poachers.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: September 3, 2012 566 Comments
- GOOGLE+
- SHARE
- SINGLE PAGE
- REPRINTS
GARAMBA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — In 30 years of fighting poachers, Paul Onyango had never seen anything like this. Twenty-two dead elephants, including several very young ones, clumped together on the open savanna, many killed by a single bullet to the top of the head.
The Price of Ivory
This is the first installment in a series of articles that will explore how the surge in poaching of African elephants both feeds off and fuels instability on the continent.
Multimedia
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
There were no tracks leading away, no sign that the poachers had stalked their prey from the ground. The tusks had been hacked away, but none of the meat — and subsistence poachers almost always carve themselves a little meat for the long walk home.
Several days later, in early April, the Garamba National Park guards spotted a Ugandan military helicopter flying very low over the park, on an unauthorized flight, but they said it abruptly turned around after being detected. Park officials, scientists and the Congolese authorities now believe that the Ugandan military — one of the Pentagon’s closest partners in Africa — killed the 22 elephants from a helicopter and spirited away more than a million dollars’ worth of ivory.
“They were good shots, very good shots,” said Mr. Onyango, Garamba’s chief ranger. “They even shot the babies. Why? It was like they came here to destroy everything.”
Africa is in the midst of an epic elephant slaughter. Conservation groups say poachers are wiping out tens of thousands of elephants a year, more than at any time in the previous two decades, with the underground ivory trade becoming increasingly militarized.
Like blood diamonds from Sierra Leone or plundered minerals from Congo, ivory, it seems, is the latest conflict resource in Africa, dragged out of remote battle zones, easily converted into cash and now fueling conflicts across the continent.
Some of Africa’s most notorious armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Shabab and Darfur’s janjaweed, are hunting down elephants and using the tusks to buy weapons and sustain their mayhem. Organized crime syndicates are linking up with them to move the ivory around the world, exploiting turbulent states, porous borders and corrupt officials from sub-Saharan Africa to China, law enforcement officials say.
But it is not just outlaws cashing in. Members of some of the African armies that the American government trains and supports with millions of taxpayer dollars — like the Ugandan military, the Congolese Army and newly independent South Sudan’s military — have been implicated in poaching elephants and dealing in ivory.
Congolese soldiers are often arrested for it. South Sudanese forces frequently battle wildlife rangers. Interpol, the international police network, is now helping to investigate the mass elephant killings in the Garamba park, trying to match DNA samples from the animals’ skulls to a large shipment of tusks, marked “household goods,” recently seized at a Ugandan airport.
14/ Tom Tomorrow has some thoughts on the abortion issue......and so do extraterrestrial Republicans......click on the comic to enlarge it........
15/ Rick Scott's Florida, where if you are poor, down on your luck, older or unemployed the State could give a shit if you live or die........
Here's what happens if you lose your job, need unemployment insurance you have paid into and you don't have a computer and internet access.......
* Florida among most tight-fisted states for compensation
* New rules put premium on computer access for the jobless
* Labor Department investigating complaints about state
By Tom Brown
MIAMI, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Times look set to get tougher for the unemployed in Florida and the grim outlook has nothing to do with Friday's bleak U.S. jobs report.
It's because Florida is doubling down on revised procedures, introduced last year under Republican Governor Rick Scott, that workers' rights groups say have made it more difficult for Floridians to access unemployment benefits.
The state, already saddled with what critics describe as an increasingly frayed social safety net, ranks among the stingiest in the country when it comes to providing jobless benefits for the unemployed.
The changes under Scott include an online-only application process, since the option of applying for compensation by telephone has been eliminated. And there is also a requirement that applicants complete a 45-question online exam that tests reading, math and research skills.
The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating the changes, based on a complaint filed in May by the National Employment Law Project and Florida Legal Services.
But new rules, from the agency that runs the state's unemployment insurance system, could soon make life even more difficult for unemployed Floridians without easy access to a computer.
James Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, said the rules will require anyone registering for work or unemployment benefits to provide the state and their employers with an individual private e-mail address.
* New rules put premium on computer access for the jobless
* Labor Department investigating complaints about state
By Tom Brown
MIAMI, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Times look set to get tougher for the unemployed in Florida and the grim outlook has nothing to do with Friday's bleak U.S. jobs report.
It's because Florida is doubling down on revised procedures, introduced last year under Republican Governor Rick Scott, that workers' rights groups say have made it more difficult for Floridians to access unemployment benefits.
The state, already saddled with what critics describe as an increasingly frayed social safety net, ranks among the stingiest in the country when it comes to providing jobless benefits for the unemployed.
The changes under Scott include an online-only application process, since the option of applying for compensation by telephone has been eliminated. And there is also a requirement that applicants complete a 45-question online exam that tests reading, math and research skills.
The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating the changes, based on a complaint filed in May by the National Employment Law Project and Florida Legal Services.
But new rules, from the agency that runs the state's unemployment insurance system, could soon make life even more difficult for unemployed Floridians without easy access to a computer.
James Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, said the rules will require anyone registering for work or unemployment benefits to provide the state and their employers with an individual private e-mail address.
16/ A Lake County story from Lauren Ritchie in the Orlando Sentinel........it's about mud from Lake Apopka, and how a friend of Senator Carey Baker has got a contract to dredge mud from the lake at 20 times the cost of dredging it.......
What gets me is why aren't the Tea Party Republicans going crazy about this corrupt misuse of public funds? Isn't this a prime example of the Gumment wasting money? Or is Carey Baker immune? It's bought and sold Florida........
By the way this asshole has ousted longtime Property Appraiser Ed Havill in the primary, to Carey Baker is your new go-to person if you want your taxes dropped. Just make sure you have a "friendly" attorney.........
On the Winter Garden side of Lake Apopka, the nasty muck around the boat ramp will be dredged in the spring and the spoils pumped to public property on the north shore, where they'll dry to become an organic cap, keeping pesticides in the soil from killing birds.
Cost: less than $11 a cubic yard.
On the Ocoee side of Lake Apopka, a Lake County company will begin dredging the muck around the Magnolia Park boat ramp this fall. Then the company, which features former state Sen. Carey Baker in its brochures and on its advisory board, will use experimental technology to squish the water out and stuff the remains into giant bags that look like sausages. Theoretically, they'll stay anchored in the water around the ramp to protect the dredged area.
Cost: about $225 a cubic yard.
Huh?
The astute reader by now will have done the math revealing that one dredging project is costing 20 times more per cubic yard than the other. In all, about $2.25 million of state money is expected to be funneled to the Lake company, Clean to Green, without any bidding.
How did that happen?
The answer is about as clear as Lake Apopka, once the sport-fishing capital of Florida but now a polluted muck hole. It's especially puzzling because the pipeline for the cheaper project goes right by the site of the more expensive dig, and state environmental officials say they'd love to have that extra muck for the cap on the north shore.
The University of Florida professor supervising the more costly project at Magnolia Park said the price tag is higher because the use of the big bags, called geotubes, and the process of taking the water out of the muck are both experimental in this situation.
This isn't a dredging project. Rather, it's research, said Dan Canfield, who is also director of the university's Lakewatch program.
He said it came down through the bureaucracy not to take bids. Instead, his mission was to test Clean to Green's technology, he said.
"Being a government employee, it's difficult to understand business some days," Canfield said.
So, how did Clean to Green get the two original contracts totaling about $1.1 million to put on the demonstration project?
Did Baker shepherd the project through the Legislature for his old high-school chum, the president of Clean to Green?
Part 1
Part 2
Todays video - be a careful and considerate golfer!
Todays guy jokes.....
Todays religious joke
The Pope just finished a tour of the East Coast and was taking a limousine to the airport. Since he'd never driven a limo, he asked the chauffeur if he could drive for a while. The reluctant chauffeur pulled over along the roadside, climbed into the back of the limo, and the Pope took the wheel.
The Pope then merged onto the highway and accelerated to over 90 mph to see what the limo could do. Suddenly, the Pope noticed the blue light of the State Patrol in his side mirror, so he pulled over.
The trooper approached the limo, peered in through the windows, then said, "Just a moment please, I need to call in." The trooper called in and explained to the chief that he had a very important person pulled over for speeding. "How do I handle this, chief?" asked the trooper.
"Is it the Governor?" questioned the chief.
"No! This guy is even more important!"
"Is it the President?" asked the chief.
"No! Even more important!"
"Well, who the heck is it?" screamed the chief.
"I don't know, sir," replied the trooper, "but he's got the Pope as his chauffeur."
Todays golf joke
A Golfer accidentally overturned his cart.
Elizabeth, a real golfer who lived in a villa on the
golf course heard the noise and yelled over to him.
"Hey, are you okay, what's your name?"
"Willis," he replied.
"Willis forget your troubles. Come to my villa,
rest up and I'll help you get the cart up later."
"That's mighty nice of you," Willis answered,
"but I don't think my wife would like it."
"Aw come on," Elizabeth insisted.
She was very pretty and persuasive.
"Willis forget your troubles. Come to my villa,
rest up and I'll help you get the cart up later."
"That's mighty nice of you," Willis answered,
"but I don't think my wife would like it."
"Aw come on," Elizabeth insisted.
She was very pretty and persuasive.
"Well okay," Willis finally agreed,
And added, "but my wife won't like it."
After a hearty drink AND driving and putting lessons, Willis thanked his host.
"I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be real upset."
"Don't be foolish!” Elizabeth said with a smile , she won’t know anything. By the way, where is she?"
"Under the cart!"
And added, "but my wife won't like it."
After a hearty drink AND driving and putting lessons, Willis thanked his host.
"I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be real upset."
"Don't be foolish!” Elizabeth said with a smile , she won’t know anything. By the way, where is she?"
"Under the cart!"
No comments:
Post a Comment