1/ My my my, what an illuminating article.....in case you are wondering why Washington is obsessed with the deficit and cuts to social programs that will gut the safety nets for ordinary Americans, it's because the 1% think these issues are the most important. And they set the political agenda....
This is the first recent news story in a major newspaper [Los Angeles Times] that says how the oligarchy really thinks about our major issues, and how powerful they are...
Over the last two years, President Obama and Congress
So why did policymakers focus so intently on the deficit issue? One reason may be that the small minority that saw the deficit as the nation's priority had more clout than the majority that didn't.
We recently conducted a survey of top wealth-holders (with an average net worth of $14 million) in the Chicago area, one of the first studies to systematically examine the political attitudes of wealthy Americans. Our research found that the biggest concern of this top 1% of wealth-holders was curbing budget deficits and government spending. When surveyed, they ranked those things as priorities three times as often as they did unemployment — and far more often than any other issue.
If the concerns of the wealthy carry special weight in government — as an increasing body of social scientific evidence suggests — such extreme differences between their views and those of other Americans could significantly skew policy away from what a majority of the country would prefer. Our Survey of Economically Successful Americans was an attempt to begin to shed light on both the viewpoints and the political reach of the very wealthy.
While we had no way to measure directly the political influence of those surveyed, they did report themselves to be highly active politically.
2/ One of the stories most of us ignore is anything to do with secrets, data or privacy issues.....ho hum, I've got nothing to hide or my life is so boring why would the gumment be interested in my life......
Well yes, we are boring as individuals but this is how you control a country, by manipulating the masses [Fox News] and making sure anyone who can make a difference is known, and on a list.....
Matt Taibbi cares, and has some most interesting thoughts on the subject....
I went yesterday to a screening of We Steal Secrets, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney's brilliant new documentary about Wikileaks. The movie is beautiful and profound, an incredible story that's about many things all at once, including the incredible Shakespearean narrative that is the life of Julian Assange, a free-information radical who has become an uncompromising guarder of secrets.
I'll do a full review in a few months, when We Steal Secrets comes out, but I bring it up now because the whole issue of secrets and how we keep them is increasingly in the news, to the point where I think we're headed for a major confrontation between the government and the public over the issue, one bigger in scale than even the Wikileaks episode.
We've seen the battle lines forming for years now. It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line.
This is true not only in the case of Wikileaks – and especially the real subject of Gibney's film, Private Bradley Manning, who in an incredible act of institutional vengeance is being charged with aiding the enemy (among other crimes) and could, theoretically, receive a death sentence.
There's also the horrific case of Aaron Swartz, a genius who helped create the technology behind Reddit at the age of 14, who earlier this year hanged himself after the government threatened him with 35 years in jail for downloading a bunch of academic documents from an MIT server. Then there's the case of Sergey Aleynikov, the Russian computer programmer who allegedly stole the High-Frequency Trading program belonging to Goldman, Sachs (Aleynikov worked at Goldman), a program which prosecutors in open court admitted could, "in the wrong hands," be used to "manipulate markets."
Aleynikov spent a year in jail awaiting trial, was convicted, had his sentence overturned, was freed, and has since been re-arrested by a government seemingly determined to make an example out of him.
3/ Funny man Jimmy Fallon with his "worst tweets ever" series, this one about the worst bets you have ever made......3 minutes.....
Jimmy Fallon knows how to get people to share the most cringeworthy stories on Twitter, and his latest "Late Night" hashtag game definitely did the trick.
On Thursday night's show, Fallon recited some of the funniest tweets he found after launching the hashtag #WorstBetEver the night before.
4/ We are constantly being told the US is becoming self sufficient in energy, with natural gas and expanded oil fields leading the way....so why isn't the price of gas coming down?
The answer is simple - the only entities that benefit from the increased production of fossil fuels are the energy corporations, because all of the excess oil/gas goes to countries like China.....and so will the oil that will soon be coming through the Keystone Pipeline - straight to China.
You? Me? Just cogs in the Exxon/BP/Shell/Chevron global money machine.....
NEW YORK -- The U.S. is increasing its oil production faster than ever and U.S. drivers are guzzling less gas. But you'd never know it from the price at the pump.
The national average price of gasoline is $3.69 per gallon and it is forecast to creep higher and could approach $4 by May. For the year, prices are forecast to average $3.55 per gallon, slightly lower than last year's record average of $3.63.
"I just don't get it," says Steve Laffoon, 61, a part-time mental health worker, who recently paid $3.59 per gallon to fill up in St. Louis.
U.S. oil output rose 14 percent to 6.5 million barrels per day last year -- a record increase -- and the nation is forecast to overtake Saudi Arabia by 2020 as the world's largest crude oil producer. At the same time, U.S. gasoline demand has fallen to 8.7 million barrels a day, its lowest level since 2001, as people switch to more fuel efficient cars.
So is the high price of gasoline a signal that markets aren't working properly?
Not at all, experts say. The laws of supply and demand are working, just not in the way U.S. drivers want them to.
U.S. drivers are competing with drivers worldwide for every gallon of gasoline. As the developing economies of Asia and Latin America expand, their energy consumption is rising, which puts pressure on fuel supplies and prices everywhere else.
The U.S. still consumes more oil than any other country, but demand is weak and imports are falling. That leaves China, which overtook the U.S. late last year as the world's largest oil importer, as the single biggest influence on global demand for fuels. China's consumption has risen 28 percent in five years, to 10.2 million barrels per day last year.
5/ The latest Australian pop sensation - Iggy Azalea with her latest "Work".......quite a slutty video, with the Iggster in multiple costume changes, each one skimpier than the next......
Horrible song, nasty edgy voice but this is what "the young" are watching....
Oh well, you can't like everything...........
6/ Frank Rich with his wisdom on the week in politics......Iraq was in the news last week, being the 10th anniversary of the invasion.....
Good commentary on the RNC report, and some of his thoughts on the case before the Supreme Court this week, gay marriage.......
Baghdad, IRAQ: TO GO WITH AFP STORIES ON ANNIVERSARY OF THE FALL OF BAGHDAD: (FILES) A US Marine covers the face of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's statue with the US flag in Baghdad's al-Fardous square 09 April 2003. The world was stunned when iconic images of US marines and Iraqis pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein flashed across television screens. The toppling of the statue was immediately seized on as symbolising the overthrow of one of the world's most notorious despots. But four years later, some Iraqis say the symbol has turned into a sign of the brutal violence that has devastated their country. The square and its surroundings have changed dramatically since the launch of the invasion in March 2003. AFP PHOTO/Ramzi HAIDAR (Photo credit should read RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images)
Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: what the Iraq War has wrought, Reince Priebus's GOP rebranding report, and Rob Portman's convenient gay-marriage reversal.
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In The Greatest Story Ever Sold, written after the war's “Mission Accomplished” phase, you called the conflict a catastrophe “that might have been averted.” Looking back on it now, what surprised you most about how the war unfolded? And what do you think its most lasting impact on America will be?
If there’s one opinion shared by the war’s critics and cheerleaders, it would be their shock in discovering the Bush administration’s utter incompetence in executing its own ambitions. Given that Bush and Cheney professed to believe that Saddam Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction, why did they assume the mission would be a cakewalk and have no Plan B for a protracted fight, let alone a multiyear occupation? (The answer can’t be that it’s all Donald Rumsfeld’s fault.) Then again, given the Bush team’s utter ignorance of the country it was invading, perhaps every element of this fiasco was foretold.
7/ "A Day Made Of Glass", a puff piece from Corning Glass.......this purports to be the way we will be living at some unspecified time in the future, and the way things are going the 5% of rich Americans may well be organising their lives like this, going to their executive jobs where they direct the 95% of the country [peasant labour] to projects that will make them even more money.....
Sorry about the bitterness....it's really very cool.....5 fascinating minutes.....
8/ You may have read Cyprus is having a monetary crisis, but you haven't heard why. Cyprus has been EU a tax haven for wealthy foreigners, mainly Russians, for many years and of course their banks went mad as usual with these rich bastards.....
Paul Krugman explains what went wrong.....
A couple of years ago, the journalist Nicholas Shaxson published a fascinating, chilling book titled “Treasure Islands,” which explained how international tax havens — which are also, as the author pointed out, “secrecy jurisdictions” where many rules don’t apply — undermine economies around the world. Not only do they bleed revenues from cash-strapped governments and enable corruption; they distort the flow of capital, helping to feed ever-bigger financial crises.
One question Mr. Shaxson didn’t get into much, however, is what happens when a secrecy jurisdiction itself goes bust. That’s the story of Cyprus right now. And whatever the outcome for Cyprus itself (hint: it’s not likely to be happy), the Cyprus mess shows just how unreformed the world banking system remains, almost five years after the global financial crisis began.
So, about Cyprus: You might wonder why anyone cares about a tiny nation with an economy not much bigger than that of metropolitan Scranton, Pa. Cyprus is, however, a member of the euro zone, so events there could trigger contagion (for example, bank runs) in larger nations. And there’s something else: While the Cypriot economy may be tiny, it’s a surprisingly large financial player, with a banking sector four or five times as big as you might expect given the size of its economy.
Why are Cypriot banks so big? Because the country is a tax haven where corporations and wealthy foreigners stash their money. Officially, 37 percent of the deposits in Cypriot banks come from nonresidents; the true number, once you take into account wealthy expatriates and people who are only nominally resident in Cyprus, is surely much higher. Basically, Cyprus is a place where people, especially but not only Russians, hide their wealth from both the taxmen and the regulators. Whatever gloss you put on it, it’s basically about money-laundering.
9/ Don't often watch pet videos on Youtube as most of them are way too gooey, but here is one with satire and bite......very good.
"Why cats are smarter than dogs".....an enjoyable and amusing three minutes............
10/ The Chinese of course realise how their economic boom has enriched the country, but degraded the environment to the point that it affects everyday life......but it's like Washington - entrenched interests make sure nothing happens.
It's kind of reassuring, isn't it? Even the efficient Chinese have a screwed up political system and the local equivalent of Exxon Mobil that stops anything from improving......not good omens for the planet......
We are so screwed.....
As Pollution Worsens in China, Solutions Succumb to Infighting
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
Smog veiled the China Central Television Building in Beijing last week. Air pollution hit record levels in north China last month.
By EDWARD WONG
Published: March 21, 2013 174 Comments
BEIJING — China’s state leadership transition has taken place this month against an ominous backdrop. More than 16,000 dead pigs have been found floating in rivers that provide drinking water to Shanghai. A haze akin to volcanic fumes cloaked the capital, causing convulsive coughing and obscuring the portrait of Mao Zedong on the gate to the Forbidden City.
So severe are China’s environmental woes, especially the noxious air, that top government officials have been forced to openly acknowledge them. Fu Ying, the spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress, said she checked for smog every morning after opening her curtains and kept at home face masks for her daughter and herself. Li Keqiang, the new prime minister, said the air pollution had made him “quite upset” and vowed to “show even greater resolve and make more vigorous efforts” to clean it up.
What the leaders neglect to say is that infighting within the government bureaucracy is one of the biggest obstacles to enacting stronger environmental policies. Even as some officials push for tighter restrictions on pollutants, state-owned enterprises — especially China’s oil and power companies — have been putting profits ahead of health in working to outflank new rules, according to government data and interviews with people involved in policy negotiations.
For instance, even though trucks and buses crisscrossing China are far worse for the environment than any other vehicles, the oil companies have delayed for years an improvement in the diesel fuel those vehicles burn. As a result, the sulfur levels of diesel in China are at least 23 times that of the United States. As for power companies, the three biggest ones in the country are all repeat violators of government restrictions on emissions from coal-burning plants; offending power plants are found across the country, from Inner Mongolia to the southwest metropolis of Chongqin
11/ Rachel Maddow gives us in 7 minutes a summary of why half the country is politically stupid.....we are talking about Fox News watchers, of course. The occasion was President Obama's visit to Israel, and the coverage it got on the major news networks.
If you are a Fox watcher, look at this and I hope you realise they lie to you all the time......it's blatant.....
On Thursday night in the Jerusalem residence of Israeli President Shimon Peres, American President Barack Obama received the Medal of Distinction, the highest honor that Israel’s government can award a civilian (and also a hunk of hardware that looks like it could be murder on the ole sciatica). As Rachel Maddownoted on Thursday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, however, only some cable news viewers got to see that ceremony live: all of the cable news viewers who weren’t watching Fox News.
One of the most important functions that a news program can perform, and perhaps the most basic, is to inform the viewer. While technically a so-called “opinion” program, this short segment of The Rachel Maddow show was packed with information. For example, I already knew that Republican deity and former President Ronald Reagan never visited Israel, nor did George H.W. Bush, and that George W. Bush didn’t make the trip until late in his second term. However, I did not know that the Medal of Distinction/Dothraki Battle Shield was the highest honor the Israeli government can give to a civilian, or that President Obama is the only U.S. President ever to receive it. Information.
12/ Yes it's sponsored by Red Bull, and yes it's selectively edited, but look at these lunatics on mountain bikes!
Eeeeek.....3 minutes.....
13/ Regular readers of DDD hopefully by now should be buying organic everything, because it seems every week there are stories about how Big Ag is poisoning us all......
But as this article says there's organic, and there's organic. Don't buy anything grown in China......
Thanks to corporate loopholes and profit-driven manufacturers, it’s harder than ever to really know what you are putting into your body — or perhaps even more importantly the mouths of your children. That said, it is possible to make sure you’re getting what is not just labeled organic and shipped from a contaminated facility in China, but actually high quality.
It’s these companies that will soon be put out of business as consumers begin to care about not only what they’re eating, but who and what they’re supporting. In the past we have seen excellent charts created, such as the one created by professor Phillip H. Howard out of Michigan State University, that details how this actually works on a realistic scale. As you can see from the graphic below, many familiar corporate food giants actually have bought up or created many ‘health’ food companies in order to soak up some of the profits from the rapidly expanding market of organic food items:
Phony Organics from China?
Granted, some of these items under the subsidiary companies are certified organic in the United States and are definitely of higher quality than processed non-organic junk. That said, some companies are showing their entire hands by failing to actually care about the health concerns of aware individuals and are instead going as far as China to get fake ‘organic’ products that have been found to contain large amounts of contamination.
14/ Tom Cruise is starring in a scifi movie "Oblivion", in theaters April 19th.......
We've been disappointed before when you think a film will be excellent, and doesn't quite make it - remember "Prometheus"?
I really, really hope the movie is as good as this trailer
15/ Excellent story about the pond scum we have representing us in Tallahassee, and how they don't care what you want.....or care about.....or think.....
Good reporting from the Tampa Bay Times.
Somewhere along the line, they stopped caring what you think.
They would never admit this. In fact, they often spout the opposite.
But it's hard to come to any other conclusion when you consider how legislators in Florida consistently ignore the voices of those they supposedly serve.
You think that's overstated?
Let's start with the Quinnipiac poll released last week. This well-respected, independent polling service revealed that 91 percent of Floridians favor universal background checks for gun purchases. Among actual gun owners, it was 88 percent.
To put that in context, I'm not sure you can get 90 percent of Floridians to agree that April should follow March on the calendar.
So it's safe to say there is overwhelming evidence that lawmakers should be looking into this idea of universal background checks.
Yet what has our Legislature done? Next to nothing.
A bill on this topic was introduced weeks ago and hasn't even gotten enough traction for a committee hearing. Which is not so different from last year. Or the year before.
"It's almost like, at times, Tallahassee legislators and the executive branch are living in their own little world,'' said Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. "They're not hearing what people back home are asking them to do.''
Not convinced? Then consider Medicaid expansion.
Two different polls conducted in February showed about 62 percent of Florida residents were in favor of expansion. An amendment on the ballot in November also indicated a majority of residents supported the Affordable Care Act.
Even Gov. Rick Scott, one of the nation's loudest critics of Obamacare, looked at the polls and understood the need to support Medicaid expansion.
Yet legislators in the House and Senate voted against it. Instead they have taken it upon themselves to find some alternative form of health insurance.
16/ Mount Dorans - we now have a Waffle House [normally nicknamed Awful House] that just opened, and a friend, a connoisseur of the Waffle House schtick, took his digestive tract in his hands and went there for breakfast - this is his [amusing] report.....
Our kids/grandkids are in town this week, and they took me out for breakfast at the Waffle House this morning on the way down to Disney.
My overall ratings are as follows:
Food: A
Spectacle: C-
Realism (i.e. the Waffle-House-ish-ness of the experience): D
The food was delivered incredibly quickly and was perfectly prepared. The waffles were crispy and tasty and almost souffle-like in their eggy brilliance -- could be the best waffles I've ever eaten. They held their own beautifully and didn't get soggy when slathered in pancake syrup. The eggs were perky and the bacon was crisp. The menu was standard Waffle House diner fare -- lots of variety, very reasonable price. All things considered, the food was too good to be realistic -- there was obviously something afoot.
The restrooms were similarly fraudulent: spotless, clean smelling, and laid out so that the excess hand soap dripped off into a place where you wouldn't slip; the air-driven hand driver similarly blew the water off your hands like a tornado and deposited it on the floor in a location where it would be difficult to trip on slick flooring. There was no grafiti on the walls, no paper or residue on the floor.
Service was prompt, attentive, and polite. The service staff was numerous [too numerous!] and very well trained and drilled in getting folks greeted and served. There were no raucous interactions, spilled food, or broken china and the floors and tables were not in the least sticky, -- definitely signs that this Waffle House has not matured. There was even a sign on the very clean window at the air lock which forms the entrance indicating what the customers should expect from The Waffle House Experience (their capitalization, not mine) and it provided a phone number to call in the event of complaints.
Clearly, a fraud is being perpetrated in our fair city.
The truth became even more evident as we spoke with our server, who had been brought down from South Carolina to help in bring the store online and training up their staff: obviously a ringer. After some clever interrogation, we wrung out of her that she had been with Waffle House for a number of years and was a pro: cooking, cleaning, and serving simultaneously obviously were no challenge to her.
She pointed to a semi-clueless-looking throng of uniformed trainees who were observing the goings-on and being instructed in how a Waffle House should operate. It turns out that the folks actually working the diner were all seasoned professionals, and they had many (I counted at least 10) folks in the back room being schooled on how it's done.
So there it is... In a couple of weeks we should probably try it after the REAL Mount Dora staff takes over, when the place has had a chance to begin to approach its true potential.
Your humble reporter,
Todays video - lads....one for you. Motor Trend takes a look at GraveDigger, a monster truck......aahhhoooogah.......
Todays rules of life jokes
Rules to remember* SIMPLE TRUTH 1Lovers help each other undress before sex.
However after sex, they always dress ontheir own.Moral of the story: In life, noone helps you once you're screwed.
* SIMPLE TRUTH 2When a lady is pregnant, all her friendstouch the stomach and say, "Congrats".But none of them come and touch theman's penis and say, "Good job".Moral of the story: "Hard work is never appreciated."FIVE RULES TO REMEMBER IN LIFE1. Money cannot buy happiness, but it's morecomfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.2. Forgive your enemy,but remember the asshole's name.3. If you help someone when they're in trouble, theywill remember you when they're in trouble again.4. Many people are alive only becauseit's illegal to shoot them.5. Alcohol does not solve any problems,but then neither does milk.
Bonus:
Condoms don't guarantee safe sex.A friend of mine was wearing one, whenhe was shot by the woman's husband.
Todays Apple joke
Apple Computer announced today that it has developed
a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music
in women's breast implants.
The iTit will cost between $499.00 and $699.00
depending on speaker size.
This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women
a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music
in women's breast implants.
The iTit will cost between $499.00 and $699.00
depending on speaker size.
This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women
have always complained about men staring at their tits
and not listening to them.
and not listening to them.
Todays Catholic joke
Four Catholic men and a Catholic woman were having coffee in St. Peter's Square.
The first Catholic man tells his friends,
"My son is a priest. When he walks into a room, everyone calls him 'Father'."
The second Catholic man chirps,
"My son is a Bishop. When he walks into a room people call him 'Your Grace'."
The third Catholic gent says,
"My son is a Cardinal. When he enters a room everyone bows their head and says 'Your Eminence'."
The fourth Catholic man says very proudly,
"My son is the Pope. When he walks into a room people call him 'Your Holiness'."
Since the lone Catholic woman was sipping her coffee in silence, the four men give her a subtle, "Well....?"
She proudly replies, "I have a daughter,
Slim, tall, 38D bust, 24" waist and 36" hips.
When she walks into a room, people say,
"Jesus !".
The first Catholic man tells his friends,
"My son is a priest. When he walks into a room, everyone calls him 'Father'."
The second Catholic man chirps,
"My son is a Bishop. When he walks into a room people call him 'Your Grace'."
The third Catholic gent says,
"My son is a Cardinal. When he enters a room everyone bows their head and says 'Your Eminence'."
The fourth Catholic man says very proudly,
"My son is the Pope. When he walks into a room people call him 'Your Holiness'."
Since the lone Catholic woman was sipping her coffee in silence, the four men give her a subtle, "Well....?"
She proudly replies, "I have a daughter,
Slim, tall, 38D bust, 24" waist and 36" hips.
When she walks into a room, people say,
"Jesus !".
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