1/ The latest Republican obsession is food stamps....and most of these hypocrites call themselves Christians while inflicting evil on the poor and their children.
Excellent column from Paul Krugman.......
Like many observers, I usually read reports about political goings-on with a sort of weary cynicism. Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won’t cut it; it’s time to get really angry instead. So it is with the ugly, destructive war against food stamps.
The food stamp program — which these days actually uses debit cards, and is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — tries to provide modest but crucial aid to families in need. And the evidence is crystal clear both that the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients really need the help, and that the program is highly successful at reducing “food insecurity,” in which families go hungry at least some of the time.
Food stamps have played an especially useful — indeed, almost heroic — role in recent years. In fact, they have done triple duty.
First, as millions of workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own, many families turned to food stamps to help them get by — and while food aid is no substitute for a good job, it did significantly mitigate their misery. Food stamps were especially helpful to children who would otherwise be living in extreme poverty, defined as an income less than half the official poverty line.
But there’s more. Why is our economy depressed? Because many players in the economy slashed spending at the same time, while relatively few players were willing to spend more. And because the economy is not like an individual household — your spending is my income, my spending is your income — the result was a general fall in incomes and plunge in employment. We desperately needed (and still need) public policies to promote higher spending on a temporary basis — and the expansion of food stamps, which helps families living on the edge and let them spend more on other necessities, is just such a policy.
2/ And following on from this disgusting story, Chris Hayes spells out how four Republican lawmakers make themselves look stupid over and over again......seven minutes.....
One thing that has been consistently compelling about All In with Chris Hayes has been the host’s commentary segments. On Friday night’s show, host Chris Hayes pulled out a new wrench from the toolkit, trading the restrained emotional edge that has marked his most compelling rants for gleeful invective. Running down a laundry list of recent GOP offenses, Hayes repeatedly, happily, and mock-apologetically branded Republicans as “jackasses.”
3/ You need a bit of light relief after watching those Republican assholes ......
What are "the young" listening to? This crap - Icona Pop with "I Love It'.....two average looking Swedish girls with repetitive Eurotrash music and a silly video......
Oh well......
4/ A long and in-depth story from the Times analysing why health care costs are so high in this country, and it's a very revealing article. This is what good investigative journalism looks like folks......
Open the link and look at the headline......for some reason it goes weird when I do it.....
MERRICK, N.Y. — Deirdre Yapalater’s recent colonoscopyat a surgical center near her home here on Long Island went smoothly: she was whisked from pre-op to an operating room where a gastroenterologist, assisted by an anesthesiologist and a nurse, performed the routine cancerscreening procedure in less than an hour. The test, which found nothing worrisome, racked up what is likely her most expensive medical bill of the year: $6,385.
That is fairly typical: in Keene, N.H., Matt Meyer’s colonoscopy was billed at $7,563.56. Maggie Christ of Chappaqua, N.Y., received $9,142.84 in bills for the procedure. In Durham, N.C., the charges for Curtiss Devereux came to $19,438, which included a polyp removal. While their insurers negotiated down the price, the final tab for each test was more than $3,500.
“Could that be right?” said Ms. Yapalater, stunned by charges on the statement on her dining room table. Although her insurer covered the procedure and she paid nothing, her health care costs still bite: Her premium payments jumped 10 percent last year, and rising co-payments and deductibles are straining the finances of her middle-class family, with its mission-style house in the suburbs and two S.U.V.’s parked outside. “You keep thinking it’s free,” she said. “We call it free, but of course it’s not.”
In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000. That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.
Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies, Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system. They are typically prescribed more expensive procedures and tests than people in other countries, no matter if those nations operate a private or national health system. A list of drug, scan and procedure prices compiled by the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurers, found that the United States came out the most costly in all 21 categories — and often by a huge margin.
Americans pay, on average, about four times as much for a hip replacement as patients in Switzerland or France and more than three times as much for aCaesarean section as those in New Zealand or Britain. The average price for Nasonex, a common nasal spray for allergies, is $108 in the United Statescompared with $21 in Spain. The costs of hospital stays here are about triple those in other developed countries, even though they last no longer, according to a recent report by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that studies health policy.
5/ An excellent Bill Maher "New Rules" segment - as always he is witty, but with a serious point in this one - how can President Obama be so bad on pot......an excellent five minutes.....
“Pot is the new gay marriage,” Bill Maher said at the start of his New Rule segment Friday night, “and by that I mean it’s the next civil rights issue that needs to fall.”
Maher pointed out that gay rights groups pushed ahead with their movement despite its unpopularity, forcing it onto the agenda, but questioned whether Democrats would do the same with marijuana legalization.
“If Republicans were smart,” Maher said, “they would steal marijuana from the Democrats as a freedom issue. Of course they’re not smart so they won’t. Because they’re squares living in a Reefer Madness cartoon, a cartoon where millions of Americans are still trapped in a no-man’s land where a pot dispensary can sell you weed if you have a ‘card’ that you got from a ‘doctor’ who certifies that you have a ‘disease’—which is just Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for pot smokers.”
6/ News bloopers - I confess I didn't find this very funny....it was mildly amusing, but I couldn't really appreciate it a lot because I never watch local news......so if you do, enjoy.....about 10 minutes....
This May, the news was filled with Freudian slips, inappropriate anchors, hiccuping weathermen and reporters pushing people off boats. Oh, and some actual news coverage, occasionally.
But let's forget about that for a moment. Watch a very thorough supercut of May 2013's funniest news bloopers above, including some very off-the-wall interviews and even a weather report lead by Jack Black and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D.
7/ Frank Rich with his weekly commentary on the news of the day....
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: Obama calls for a new terrorism strategy, Michele Bachmann announces her exit, and Anthony Weiner gets back into the fray.
In his major foreign policy address last week, President Obama announced narrowed guidelines for drone strikes, asked Congress to close the Guatanamo Bay detention center, and called for an end to the country's perpetual war against terrorism. The Times editorial board called the speech "the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks." Did you see it as a major turning point as well?
Only actions, of course, will determine whether it’s just words we want to hear or the start of a much-awaited deaccession of the Bush-Cheney national security state. We don’t know what, if any, actual limitations will be placed on the post-9/11 executive’s power to take any lethal action he (or, come 2016, possibly she) wants in the name of battling terror. What’s notable is how little this speech satisfied either the left or the right. “Obama talks like a comparative religion professor and acts like a Blackwater executive,” tweeted Eli Lake of the Daily Beast. Those in the neocon bunker, led by the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the reliably hysterical Lindsey Graham, accused President Obama of returning to “a pre-9/11 mentality” and of basically waving the white flag of surrender to Islamic extremists.(This is the same crowd whose post-9/11 ideal of a secretary of Homeland Security was Bernie Kerik, just released from prison this week.) But Boston and Benghazi notwithstanding, most Americans are not panicked about the war on terror right now, which means that the president does have an opening to carry out some of the reforms he talked about so eloquently last week.
Only actions, of course, will determine whether it’s just words we want to hear or the start of a much-awaited deaccession of the Bush-Cheney national security state. We don’t know what, if any, actual limitations will be placed on the post-9/11 executive’s power to take any lethal action he (or, come 2016, possibly she) wants in the name of battling terror. What’s notable is how little this speech satisfied either the left or the right. “Obama talks like a comparative religion professor and acts like a Blackwater executive,” tweeted Eli Lake of the Daily Beast. Those in the neocon bunker, led by the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the reliably hysterical Lindsey Graham, accused President Obama of returning to “a pre-9/11 mentality” and of basically waving the white flag of surrender to Islamic extremists.(This is the same crowd whose post-9/11 ideal of a secretary of Homeland Security was Bernie Kerik, just released from prison this week.) But Boston and Benghazi notwithstanding, most Americans are not panicked about the war on terror right now, which means that the president does have an opening to carry out some of the reforms he talked about so eloquently last week.
Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann announced early this morning that she won't seek reelection. Bachmann was a standard bearer of the GOP's tea-party wing. But she barely eked out reelection, faced a tough fight in 2014, and is under federal investigation for campaign finance violations in her short-lived presidential campaign. Does Bachmann's exit surprise you?
Say this for Bachmann: She did learn to look into the right camera in her eight-minute-plus announcement this morning, and she did last longer in the House than Sarah Palin did as Alaska’s governor.
8/ Love this story - the Daily Currant published this delicious satire of the beastly Ann Coulter walking out of the new Star Trek movie, saying "there were too many minorities".....it's an amusing story, and actually quite believable........
And the piece fooled a lot of people who should have known better.......
After having successfully fooled the Washington Post, Boston.com, Breitbart.com, and the Drudge Report with its “satirical” news stories, you’d think most people would realize by now that The Daily Currant is a fake news website that mocks conservative personalities with fake articles about them doing openly racist or buffoonish things in public. But just as many people (including active congressmen) still don’t know that The Onion is fake news, it seems as though much of the Internet is still stuck falling for the Currant’s parodies as well.
“Ann Coulter Walks Out of Star Trek, Claims ‘Too Many Minorities’” reads the site’s headline from Thursday afternoon. The article describes in detail how the conservative columnist “walked out” of a premiere of Star Trek: Into Darkness because the film included “too many minorities.”
By creating fake dialogue with Coulter lamenting to radio host Sean Hannity that the movie’s only white characters were Soviets or Jews, the Currant creates what some might easily interpret as a “realistic” situation for the conservative commentator. And, of course, it is successful in duping those who don’t understand the site’s background or have strongly-held beliefs that Coulter is a racist.
Grammy-winning musician and producer Questlove got in on the action, tweeting the story without comment:
9/ Ever flown on Spirit Airlines? I have....they had a special $29 fare from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale, so I took it one way. It was OK, but I had no luggage and it was only a 30 minute flight. I can't imagine suffering through a long one......
Anyway - interesting story from the Business section of the Times.......
The Frills Are Few. The Fees Are Not.
Moris Moreno for The New York Times
The Spirit Airlines counter at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. Spirit leads the American airline industry in charging its customers fees.
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: May 31, 2013
There is a joke in the airline business that you could make money giving out free beer and charging a fee for the bathroom.
Multimedia
Moris Moreno for The New York Times
Workers unloading passenger baggage from a Spirit Airlines jet at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.
No one has tried that — at least not yet — but one small airline has led the way in the United States when it comes to passenger fees: Spirit Airlines, the no-frills carrier that prides itself for offering the lowest fares, then charging passengers for everything else.
Need an agent to print out a boarding pass at the airport? That’s $10. Want some water? That’s $3. Rolling a bag on board? The tag costs $35 from home and $50 at the airport. In all, there are about 70 fees enumerated in dizzying detail on Spirit’s Web site for customers to navigate.
To the millions of travelers flying on vacation this summer, the fees can be infuriating, but Spirit makes no apologies. In an age of consolidation in the airline industry, Spirit, with about 1 percent of the nation’s passenger traffic, has managed to succeed by going it alone, scraping for every dollar and scrimping on every cost.
“Spirit does everything it can to make or save a buck,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Hudson Crossing. “To its credit, Spirit doesn’t promise passengers that they’ll be coddled. Its customer service standards are terrible, and the airline’s actions have shown it doesn’t care about being liked or respected.”
10/ Guys - time for our International collection of April fails from TwisterNederland- 10 minutes of pain, drunks, idiot youth and just unlucky lads.....lots of hospital visits in this one......
Also new are the motorcycle videos.....
11/ Here's a controversial story.....a respected British neuroscientist thinks extreme religion is a sign of looniness......
Ever seen a documentary of a Pentacostal church service in action? I rest my case......
Kathleen Taylor, Neuroscientist, Says Religious Fundamentalism Could Be Treated As A Mental Illness
The Huffington Post | By Meredith Bennett-SmithPosted: 05/31/2013 12:21 pm EDT | Updated: 05/31/2013 12:59 pm EDT
An Oxford University researcher and author specializing in neuroscience has suggested that one day religious fundamentalism may be treated as a curable mental illness.
Kathleen Taylor, who describes herself as a "science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics," made the suggestion during a presentation on brain research at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday.
In response to a question about the future of neuroscience, Taylor said that "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated," The Times of London notes.
“Someone who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance," Taylor said. “In many ways it could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage."
The author went on to say she wasn't just referring to the "obvious candidates like radical Islam," but also meant such beliefs as the idea that beating children is acceptable.
12/ A very amusing 4 minute video from the BBC - talking animals, and boy are they funny.....
A clever little film......
13/ A depressing story from the Orlando Sentinel - there are no environmentalists on any of the Florida Water Management Districts, our Governor has got rid of all of them leaving the management of our water resources to reps from Big Ag and developers.
Makes you think, doesn't it? The Federal government doesn't care about the environment, with no action on climate change on the horizon and the Keystone Pipeline is a done deal....they are just waiting til the furore dies down.
One of our major political parties, Republicans at all levels, are actively opposed to the environment. They see nature as something to be exploited.
None of the red states, including Florida, care about conservation - they would pave the Everglades if they could get away with it, and if there was ever a place where solar panels should be encouraged it's here. But there's no incentive to install them - any tax breaks etc were killed by a combination of FPL lobbyists [would cut their profits] and developers, whining that it would put up their costs.
So why should we as individuals give a good goddamn? There's nothing we can do that will make a difference if local, state and federal authorities won't act.
I suppose we will have to wait till Fox News gets behind it, because all of the stupids watch and believe their anti-environment propaganda and keep voting in the wrong people.....
Unless the great unwashed mass of Americans with IQ's under 100 wake up sometime soon, we're screwed folks......
For the first time in nearly three decades, none of the Florida's water-management agencies — which are supposed to safeguard the state's wetlands, rivers and aquifers — has a board member who is an environmentalist.
Environmental activists are troubled because the boards are dominated by representatives of agribusiness, real estate and development industries.
"It is indeed a concern that there are no environmental representatives on any of the boards, when other interest groups are adequately and sometimes abundantly represented," said Rae Ann Wessel, policy director at the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation. "Because Florida's economy depends on its unique environment."
Gov. Rick Scott recently chose not to reappoint for a second term on the governing board of the St. Johns River Water Management District a University of Florida water-law expert known for his environmental advocacy.
It was the latest move by the governor to make the state's water-management agencies smaller, weaker and, now, less environmentally minded; none of the five water districts' combined 49 board seats is filled by someone readily identifiable as an active environmentalist.
14/ Book review
"The Unwinding", by George Packer. A story of America the way it is now.......
If you were to take apart George Packer’s ambitious new book, “The Unwinding,” as if it were a car’s engine, and spread the parts across your garage, you’d essentially be looking at 5 large pieces and 10 small ones — the nuts and bolts and cotter pins.
The large pieces are profiles: portraits of a Reagan Republican turned biodiesel entrepreneur; a thoughtful and disappointed longtime Joe Biden staffer; a female factory worker in Youngstown, Ohio, who becomes a community organizer; Peter Thiel, the libertarian Silicon Valley venture capitalist; and, finally, the City of Tampa in Florida, which had problems before the foreclosure crisis and seems like hell on earth now.
The small pieces are critical riffs, often acidic, on especially influential Americans of the past few decades. I’ll list them here in reverse order of Mr. Packer’s esteem for what each has brought to the commonweal: Sam Walton, Newt Gingrich, Robert E. Rubin, Andrew Breitbart, Colin L. Powell, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, Alice Waters, Raymond Carver and Elizabeth Warren.
Some of the large pieces, which are chopped up and welded onto the rest in roughly 20-page blocks, began as articles in The New Yorker, where Mr. Packer is a staff writer. Other material is new.
It is Mr. Packer’s achievement in “The Unwinding” that these pieces, freshly shuffled and assembled, have speed and power to burn. This book hums — with sorrow, with outrage and with compassion for those who are caught in the gears of America’s increasingly complicated (and increasingly poorly calibrated) financial machinery.
“The Unwinding” begins like a horror novel, which in some regards it is. “No one can say when the unwinding began,” Mr. Packer writes, “when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way.”
This is the end of the book review.......I am definitely buying it.......
At one point in “The Unwinding” we meet a talented reporter in Florida who is writing about the foreclosure mess. This reporter, we read, “believed that there were two kinds of journalists — the ones who told stories, and the ones who uncovered wrongdoing.”
Mr. Packer is both, and he’s written something close to a nonfiction masterpiece.
Todays video - Beavers building a dam........yes, really - it's quite interesting!
Todays Fortune Teller joke
In a dark and hazy room, peering into a crystal ball, the Mystic delivered grave news:
"There's no easy way to tell you this, so I'll just be blunt. Prepare yourself to be a widow. Your husband will die a violent and horrible death this year."
Visibly shaken, Laura stared at the woman's lined face, then at the single flickering candle, then down at her hands.
She took a few deep breaths to compose herself - and to stop her mind racing. She simply had to know.
She met the Fortune Teller's gaze, steadied her voice and asked, "And will I be acquitted?"
Todays Polish joke
A Polish man moved to the USA and married an American girl.
Although his English was far from perfect, they got along very well.
But one day he rushed into a lawyer's office and asked him if he could
Arrange a divorce for him.
Arrange a divorce for him.
The lawyer said that getting a divorce would depend on the
Circumstances, and asked him the following questions:
Have you any grounds?
Yes, an acre and half and nice little home.
No, I mean what is the foundation of this case?
It made of concrete.
I don't think you understand.
Does either of you have a real grudge?
No, we have carport, and not need one.
I mean what are your relations like?
All my relations still in Poland .
Is there any infidelity in your marriage?
We have hi-fidelity stereo and good DVD player.
Does your wife beat you up?
No, I always up before her.
Is your wife a nagger?
No, she white.
Why do you want this divorce?
She going to kill me.
What makes you think that?
I got proof.
What kind of proof?
She going to poison me.
She buy a bottle at drugstore and put on shelf in bathroom.
I can read English pretty good, and it say:
Circumstances, and asked him the following questions:
Have you any grounds?
Yes, an acre and half and nice little home.
No, I mean what is the foundation of this case?
It made of concrete.
I don't think you understand.
Does either of you have a real grudge?
No, we have carport, and not need one.
I mean what are your relations like?
All my relations still in Poland .
Is there any infidelity in your marriage?
We have hi-fidelity stereo and good DVD player.
Does your wife beat you up?
No, I always up before her.
Is your wife a nagger?
No, she white.
Why do you want this divorce?
She going to kill me.
What makes you think that?
I got proof.
What kind of proof?
She going to poison me.
She buy a bottle at drugstore and put on shelf in bathroom.
I can read English pretty good, and it say:
Todays animal joke
The Talking Centipede
A single guy decided life would be more fun if he had a pet.
So he went to the pet store and told the owner that he wanted to buy an unusual pet.
After some discussion, he finally bought a talking centipede, which came in a little white box to use for his house.
He took the box back home, found a good spot for the box, and decided he would start off by taking his new pet to the pub for a drink with him.
So he asked the centipedein the box,
"Would you like to go down the pub with me today? We will have a good time."
But there was no answer from his new pet.
This bothered him a bit, but he waited a few minutes and then asked again,
"How about going down the pub with me ?"
But again, there was no answer from his new friend and pet. So he waited a few minutes more, thinking about the situation.
The guy decided to invite the centipede one last time.
This time he
put his face up against the centipede's box and shouted,"Hey, in there! Would you like to go to
the pub with me?.....
This time,
a little voice
came out of the box,
"I heard you the first time!
I 'm putting my ******* shoes on!"
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