1/ Paul Krugman with another excellent column - this time on Social Security and Medicare. The numbers are starting to look better, driving the Republicans into a frenzy because in Medicare's case Obamacare is beginning to lower costs......
Read this for the truth, because you won't get this perspective from TV news.......
Last month the Congressional Budget Office released its much-anticipated projections
Still, we can always count on the baby boomers to deliver disaster, can’t we? Doesn’t the rising tide of retirees mean that Social Security and Medicare are doomed unless we radically change those programs now now now?
Maybe not.
To be fair, the reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees released Friday do suggest that America’s retirement system needs some significant work. The ratio of Americans over 65 to those of working age will rise inexorably over the decades ahead, and this will translate into rising spending on Social Security and Medicare as a share of national income.
But the numbers aren’t nearly as overwhelming as you might have imagined, given the usual rhetoric. And if you look under the hood, the data suggest that we can, if we choose, maintain social insurance as we know it with only modest adjustments.
Start with Social Security. The retirement program’s trustees do foresee rising spending as the population ages, with total payments rising from 5.1 percent of G.D.P. now to 6.2 percent in 2035, at which point they stabilize. This means, by the way, that all the talk of Social Security going “bankrupt” is nonsense; even if nothing at all is done, the system will be able to pay most of its scheduled benefits as far as the eye can see.
2/ Sometimes cartoons capture the reality better than words......
Is the economy recovering? Brian McFadden from the Times.....
The government going after journalists? Naaaa.........Tom Tomorrow in the Daily Kos.....
3/ I missed this Jon Stewart segment when it came out, but it's still relevant today - in this six minute clip he wonders how the "Monsanto Protection Act" made it through Congress......and you won't believe it either.
One of our best political commentators is a comedian.......
4/ Whew - don't piss off Bill Maher! He takes the Ronald Reagan myth apart, and calls him "the original teabagger". An excellent piece of political commentary, with jokes.
Again - another comedian who is one of our best political reporters......4 minutes.....
Bill Maher differed with a consensus found on both sides of the aisle that Ronald Reagan would not be welcomed in the modern Republican party, saying that actually, Reagan would be quite welcome in the 21st century GOP because he was the forebear of a lot of the tea party philosophy. Maher called Reagan the “original pitchman for batshit,” and proceeded to tear apart the idea that Reagan was a moderate who liberals like President Obama could publicly admire.
Maher acknowledged that Reagan “did a few things today’s GOP would not like,” but aside from that, he basically wrote the playbook for the modern Republican party. He said Reagan was very much in line with the tea party on racial issues, always talking about the hypothetical “Chicago Woman,” declaring, “Reagan just made shit up.”
5/ The band Daft Punk is insane, or at least that's the conclusion you come to after watching this video "Harder Better Faster Stronger". Of course if you appreciate clever and unconventional creative types you could say this is kind of cool.......bikinis are nice too.....
They have a new CD out this week, so they are back in the news.....musicians love this duo, always pushing the edge......
6/ Ladies - can someone explain to me why women in these stupid states keep voting Republican? This story is horrifying, and yes Mississippi is probably the stupidest red state, narrowly beating out Oklahoma, but read this and think about the implications. Old white men deciding your health choices.....
Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages
PeJo/Shutterstock
On March 14, 2009, 31 weeks into her pregnancy, Nina Buckhalter gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. She named the child Hayley Jade. Two months later, a grand jury in Lamar County, Mississippi, indicted Buckhalter for manslaughter, claiming that the then-29-year-old woman "did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, kill Hayley Jade Buckhalter, a human being, by culpable negligence."
The district attorney argued that methamphetamine detected in Buckhalter's system caused Hayley Jade's death. The state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the case on April 2, is expected to rule soon on whether the prosecution can move forward.
Mississippi's manslaughter laws were not intended to apply in cases of stillbirths and miscarriages. Four times between 1998 through 2002, Mississippi lawmakers rejected proposals that would have set specific penalties for damaging a fetus by using illegal drugs during pregnancy. But Mississippi prosecutors say that two other state laws allow them to charge Buckhalter. One defines of manslaughter as the "killing of a human being, by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another"; another includes "an unborn child at every stage of gestation from conception until live birth" in the state's definition of human beings.
7/ I know I don't watch local TV news, but this 2 minute clip is funny for the sheer level of bitchiness.......calm down ladies.......
Meet CBS Philly’s Nicole Brewer and Carol Erickson. Brewer is a news anchor and Erickson is a meteorologist.
Together, they bring you the news and the weather — and what appears to be a boatload of passive aggressive behavior.
Just watch the following video montage and try to tell us these two women aren’t taking subtle jabs at each other:
http://www.theblaze.com/
8/ By now some of you are thinking "where does this idiot who writes DDD get off calling Republican states stupid?" Read this boyo......
I just don't get it....it's like institutional suicide, and by the way this includes Florida.....
SAT MAY 25, 2013 AT 11:52 AM PDT
Red states rejecting Obamacare Medicaid expansion need it most
From the beginning, the defining irony of the never-ending debate over Obamacare is this: health care is worst in those states where Republicans poll best. The map of the states with the worst health care systems largely mirrors GOP strongholds in the electoral college. Red state residents are generally the unhealthiest and more likely than their blue state cousins to be uninsured. Nevertheless, the New York Times reminded readers on Friday, Republican governors and legislators are rejecting the ACA's expansion of Medicaid that could bring health insurance to millions more of their residents.
As Robert Pear reported, "The refusal by about half the states to expand Medicaid will leave millions of poor people ineligible for government-subsidized health insurance under President Obama's health care law even as many others with higher incomes receive federal subsidies to buy insurance." The cruel ironies don't end there:
Starting next month, the administration and its allies will conduct a nationwide campaign encouraging Americans to take advantage of new high-quality affordable insurance options. But those options will be unavailable to some of the neediest people in states like Texas, Florida, Kansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia, which are refusing to expand Medicaid.More than half of all people without health insurance live in states that are not planning to expand Medicaid.
As you'll see below, the impact of that rejection is staggering.
9/ Eeeeeeewwww...........a disgusting picture was posted on Taco Bell's Facebook page of an employee licking taco shells......it went viral of course and made the national news - ABC clip below. However none of the stories mentioned the horrible, unhealthy food you get at a TB.
A group of us went to a movie a couple of months ago and were going to eat before the film, but were running a little late so only had time for something quick. We went to a Taco Bell and ordered some nice sounding items, but NONE of us could eat the inedible slop they served........it wasn't food.
See the lickiness for yourself.....and if you want the most appalling culinary experience of your life go to Taco Bell.....
10/ Five reasons why Charlie Crist won't run for Governor.......
If you are interested in politics, this is a fascinating article......good insights, logical and persuasive and now I know why Bill Nelson's name keeps being floated out there for Governor, and why Nan Rich [who?] is still campaigning.
This is why.....
Five Reasons Charlie Crist Will Not Run For Governor
By Terrence McCoy Tue., Jun. 4 2013 at 9:08 AM
Categories: Politics, If You Can Call It That
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According to "Democratic sources closely watching the race," and "operatives familiar with [Crist's] thinking" and "allies" and "sources in and outside the Crist camp" and "a third source familiar with Crist's thinking," Politico says Charlie Crist is all but certain to run for governor.
How they came to such a definitive answer: A few e-mails from some guys who claim to know Crist. And, pow! THE NEWS IS BORN.
Not quite.
Everyone and their mom has been saying Charlie Crist will run for governor. (Hell, even we did, writing a 5,500-word cover story on Crist's likely run.)
We got to know the guy pretty well. And it's unclear what "camp," in fact, Politico is referring to. Crist doesn't have a "camp." Crist's right hand man, Jim Greer, is in jail and the rest of the gang abandoned him years ago after he fled the Republican party in 2010.
11/ Stephen Colbert with a rousing defense of Monsanto and their genetically modified zombie wheat.....3 minutes, most amusing......
Stephen Colbert has solved the zombie wheat mystery: After it scrapped its GMO wheat program a decade ago, Monsanto, “another defenseless multinational,” destroyed all tested material. Then, just to be sure no one would find it, “they buried that wheat in the middle of a field.”
For its part, Monsanto recently suggested in an Associated Press story (not the realm of satire) that GMO activists could have been behind the mysterious crop. “We’re considering all options and that’s certainly one of the options,” Robb Fraley, the company’s chief technology officer, said of the possibility of sabotage.
12/ I referred in the previous DDD to Florida's and specifically our Governor's record on the environment - look what he signed into law this week! What a certified, double dealing piece of human waste this scumbag asshole is......
Gov. Rick Scott has signed HB 999, a bill so detested by a host of environmental groups that they brought in former Sen. Bob Graham to try in vain to stop it.
Scott's action Thursday disappointed environmental advocates but did not surprise them, said Estus Whitfield of the Florida Conservation Coalition. He predicted it might hurt Scott at the ballot box when he seeks re-election in 2014.
"I don't think it's any feather in his cap," said Whitfield, who worked as an aide to four governors, both Democratic and Republican. "I think the general public is getting tired of seeing the environment sold down the river."
The bill that Scott signed into law contains more than a dozen provisions, including:
• Blocking the Florida Wildlife Federation from suing to overturn a controversial decision by Scott and the Cabinet to grant 30-year leases to 31,000 acres of the state's Everglades property to two major sugar companies.
• Preventing water management districts from cutting back groundwater pumping by any entity that builds a desalination plant to increase its potential water supply. "I don't think we should be tying the hands of the water management districts to better promote conservation of water," Graham said.
• Speeding up the permitting for natural gas pipelines that originate in other states, such as the new 700-mile one from Alabama that's being planned by Florida Power & Light.
• Forbidding cities from asking an applicant more than three times for additional information before approving development permits.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jimmy Patronis, R-Panama City, who regularly files anti-regulation bills that are strongly supported by various industry groups.
"I can't say enough good things about him," Frank Matthews, who lobbies on behalf of developers, phosphate miners, boat manufacturers, sugar growers, power companies and a garbage company, said in an interview last month. "He couldn't be more accommodating."
13/ Wow - David Letterman is known for being laid back, but here he goes on an epic 2 minute rant about oil and gas companies.....yeay Dave!!!
Late Show host David Letterman went on an epic anti-fracking rant Wednesday evening, calling out “greedy oil and gas companies” for ”injecting highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals” into the ground.
He’s the latest celebrity to take issue with the boom in hydraulic fracturing that’s been used to extract hydrocarbons from shale rock. Recently, John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon went on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” to promote their siteArtistsAgainstFracking.com
14/ Water wars will be the next big area of conflict globally as well as in this country, but did you know Florida and Georgia already had a water war? And Florida lost?
Thought not.....anyway one of the consequences is that if you like Apalachicola Bay oysters, you are out of luck......
A Fight Over Water, and to Save a Way of Life
Michael Spooneybarger for The New York Times
An oysterman on Apalachicola Bay, where a dwindling supply of water from two rivers that start in Georgia is contributing to a decline in the oyster population. More Photos »
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: June 2, 2013
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APALACHICOLA, Fla. — If these were ordinary times, Leroy Shiver would be scissoring his heavy tongs along the shallows of Apalachicola Bay and hauling up bushels of oysters for hours on end.
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Michael Spooneybarger for The New York Times
Leroy and Janice Shiver shoveled piles of oyster shells off their boat into the bay. “This bay would be filled with boats,” said Mr. Shiver, 36, whose father and grandfather also fished along this stretch of the Florida Panhandle. “There used to be oysters everywhere in here, and now there is none.” More Photos »
Instead, in a task requiring equal doses of patience and hope, Mr. Shiver shoveled piles of dried oyster shells off his boat into the bay. A long line of oystermen and oysterwomen in boats alongside him also joined in the shell dump, a government-sanctioned, last-ditch attempt to revive the decimated oyster industry in Apalachicola. Under the right circumstances, baby oysters should attach to the shells and grow.
“This bay would be filled with boats,” said Mr. Shiver, 36, whose father and grandfather plunged nets, set traps and dipped tongs into the water along this stretch of the Florida Panhandle. “There used to be oysters everywhere in here, and now there is none.”
In a budding ecological crisis, the oyster population has drastically declined in Apalachicola Bay, one of the country’s major estuaries and the cradle of Florida’s prized oyster industry.
The fishery’s collapse, which began last summer and has stretched into this year, is the most blatant sign yet of the bay’s vulnerability in the face of decades of dwindling flow from two rivers originating in Georgia. For 23 years now, Georgia, Alabama and Florida have waged a classic upstream-downstream water war, with Alabama and Florida coming out on the losing end of a long court battle in 2011.
Oyster overharvesting in the bay after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which largely missed this area, worsened the situation, as did persistent drought.
But researchers found this year that the lack of fresh water had made it nearly impossible for the bay to bounce back as it typically does after stressful events. Last year, the Apalachicola River reached its lowest level and stayed there for nine months, a record.
While the oysters face the most immediate threat, environmentalists and lawmakers said the diminished flow has other far-reaching consequences on Apalachicola’s $6.6 million seafood industry. It could affect some of Florida’s most popular catches, including grouper, snapper, blue crab and shrimp, which early on feed and grow in the estuary’s perfectly calibrated mixing bowl of salt water and fresh water.
15/ A short article, but an illustration of the power of money and the greed of our politicians......
A banner year for Big Sugar billionaires ...
What a blessed year if you love Big Sugar. The Obama White House is pinned down by an IRS scandal involving heightened scrutiny of tea party entities -- funded by large corporate interests, mainly -- while Marco Rubio, US Senator and tea party favorite doles out the biggest subsidy / gift in the Farm Bill. It happened in the US Senate just the other day. Big Sugar billionaires were popping the Dom.
The sugar subsidy extracts profits for billionaires and helps poison people, poison the Everglades, and poison democracy.
Then there is the Tallahassee give-away to Big Sugar. The legislative session Big Sugar got what it wanted on several important fronts: all point in the direction of a status quo that imposes minimal penalty on the industry for its pollution of the Everglades. Moreover, while Florida environmentalists were making gut-wrenching compromises in order to avert the worst of what the sugar lobby set in motion, Big Sugar's lawyers were busily probing every available avenue to weaken protections required by federal law.
On this political pool table, every bank shot by environmentalists is against a curved surface. Every bank shot by Big Sugar is guided by magnets straight into the pocket. That's the power of money.
The sugar subsidy extracts profits for billionaires and helps poison people, poison the Everglades, and poison democracy.
Then there is the Tallahassee give-away to Big Sugar. The legislative session Big Sugar got what it wanted on several important fronts: all point in the direction of a status quo that imposes minimal penalty on the industry for its pollution of the Everglades. Moreover, while Florida environmentalists were making gut-wrenching compromises in order to avert the worst of what the sugar lobby set in motion, Big Sugar's lawyers were busily probing every available avenue to weaken protections required by federal law.
On this political pool table, every bank shot by environmentalists is against a curved surface. Every bank shot by Big Sugar is guided by magnets straight into the pocket. That's the power of money.
16/ This looks like a really interesting movie...."Shadow Dancer", a British film about the troubles in Northern Ireland in the 90's.....Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough....
In the prologue of James Marsh’s taut, somber conspiracy thriller “Shadow Dancer,” the 12-year-old Collette McVeigh (Maria Laird), idly stringing beads into a necklace, ignores her father’s request to go out and buy cigarettes. It is 1973 in Belfast, and the city is a powder keg. Her younger brother goes instead, and is shot to death outside the house in cross-fire between British and Irish Republican Army forces. As the McVeigh home erupts in anguished chaos, the father casts a recriminatory glare at Collette, who is guilt-stricken.
The story leaps ahead to London in 1993, when talks have begun over a peace settlement for Northern Ireland. In a tense, wordless sequence, Collette (Andrea Riseborough), now a single mother and a fervent member of the I.R.A., leaves a bomb on the stairs of a subway station and makes an elaborate underground escape to the street, where she is arrested by MI5 agents who have been tracking her every move.
Interrogated in a hotel room by an officer named Mac (Clive Owen), Collette is given an ultimatum. She faces 25 years in prison and separation from her young son unless she agrees to return to Belfast and inform on her two brothers, Gerry (Aidan Gillen) and Connor (Domhnall Gleeson), both I.R.A. operatives. Mac also has photographs suggesting that an I.R.A. bullet, not a British shot, had killed her brother 20 years earlier. After initially resisting, she reluctantly agrees to report to him at clandestine seaside meetings in Belfast. The title of the film is the name of a secret MI5 file on the McVeigh family that is withheld from Mac.
Mr. Marsh, who directed the celebrated documentaries “Man on Wire” and “Project Nim”and the middle film of the “Red Riding” television trilogy, directed “Shadow Dancer” from a screenplay by Tom Bradby, the author of the novel on which the film is based and a television correspondent in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. The movie takes no political positions. With an icy detachment, it peers through the fog of war and examines the slippery military intelligence on both sides to portray a world steeped in secrecy, deception and paranoia.
Wow - even the trailer is chilling......
Todays video - The Other 100 Best Movie Insults - a follow up to the original. The clips come fast and furious, but anyone who is vaguely interested in movies should be able to name 40 or 50 of the titles.....some of the most descriptive and imaginative insults ever.....
Warning - bad language in most segments....and I mean really bad language. Not for the workplace.....
Did I mention bad language?
Todays brave man jokes [apologies in advance ladies]
How do you turn a fox into an elephant?
Marry It!
What is the difference between a battery and a woman?
A battery has a positive side.
Why is the space between a woman's breasts and her hips called a waist?
Because you could easily fit another pair in there..
How do you make 5 pounds of fat look good?
Put a nipple on it.
Why do women fake orgasms ?
Because they think men care.
What do you say to a woman with 2 black eyes?
Nothing, she's been told twice already.
If your wife keeps coming out of the kitchen to nag at you, what have you done wrong?
Made her chain too longWhy is a Laundromat a really bad place to pick up a woman?
Because a woman who can't even afford a washing machine will probably never be able to support you.
Why do women have smaller feet than men?
It's one of those 'evolutionary things' that allows them to stand closer to the kitchen sink.
Why do men pass gas more than women?
Because women can't shut up long enough to build up the required pressure.
If your dog is barking at the back door and your wife is yelling at the front door, who do you let in first ?
The dog, of course. He'll shut up once you let him in.
Scientists have discovered a food that diminishes a woman's sex drive by 90%..
It's called a Wedding Cake.
Why do men die before their wives?
They want to.
Send this to a few good men who need a laugh and to the select few women who don't own a gun.
Todays married life joke
Husband takes the wife to a disco.
There's a guy on the dance floor living it large - break dancing, moon walking, back flips, the works.
The wife turns to her husband and says: "See that guy?
25 years ago he proposed to me and I turned him down."
Husband says: "Looks like he's still celebrating!!!
Todays Welsh joke
Ventriloquist visiting Wales walks into a small village and sees a local sitting on his porch patting his dog. He figures he'll have a little fun, so he says to the Welshman.'Hiya, mind if I talk to your dog?'
Villager: 'The dog doesn't talk, you stupid English *****.Ventriloquist: 'Hello dog, how's it going mate?'
Dog: 'Yeah, doing all right.'
Welshman: (look of extreme shock)
Ventriloquist: 'Is this villager your owner?' (pointing at the villager)
Dog: 'Yep.'
Ventriloquist: 'How does he treat you?'
Dog: 'Yeah, real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food and takes me to the lake once a week to play.'
Welshman: (look of utter disbelief)
Ventriloquist: 'Mind if I talk to your horse?'
Welshman: 'Uh, the horse doesn't talk either... I think.'
Ventriloquist: 'Hey horse, how's it going?'
Horse: 'Cool.'
Welshman: (absolutely dumbfounded)
Ventriloquist: 'Is this your owner?' (Pointing at the villager)
Horse: 'Yep.
Ventriloquist: 'How does he treat you?'
Horse: 'Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly, brushes me down often and keeps me in the shed to protect me from the elements.'
Welshman: (total look of amazement)
Ventriloquist: 'Mind if I talk to your sheep?'
Welshman: (in a panic) 'The sheep's a liar......!!....
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