Todays factoid - Ted Cruz, the world class asshole Republican Senator from Texas, made hay in his pointless 21 hour marathon speech that he has his own healthcare, and doesn't use the Congressional policy and good for him. What he didn't mention is his wife is a Senior VP of Goldman Sachs, and he is covered under her policy. Needless to say Goldman Sachs VP's get the Rolls Royce of health care......and the votes in the Senate they need......
Corrupt, and intelligently stupid.......that's Ted Cruz......
1/ Matt Taibbi with more on what the criminals on Wall Street are up to. There is a well orchestrated campaign to demonise public employees and their pensions to make it seem like there is something intrinsically wrong with working 30 years and getting a pension from your employer. The reason for the propaganda is to disguise what state and city governments are doing to the pension funds behind the scenes - as Taibbi points out some states are investing their pensioners retirement into hedge funds, with enormous fees being generated for the fund.....and "presents" for the politicians......
Our best financial investigative journalist......
Illustration by Victor Juhasz
In the final months of 2011, almost two years before the city of Detroit would shock America by declaring bankruptcy in the face of what it claimed were insurmountable pension costs, the state of Rhode Island took bold action to avert what it called its own looming pension crisis. Led by its newly elected treasurer, Gina Raimondo – an ostentatiously ambitious 42-year-old Rhodes scholar and former venture capitalist – the state declared war on public pensions, ramming through an ingenious new law slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government.
Called the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011, her plan would later be hailed as the most comprehensive pension reform ever implemented. The rap was so convincing at first that the overwhelmed local burghers of her little petri-dish state didn't even know how to react. "She's Yale, Harvard, Oxford – she worked on Wall Street," says Paul Doughty, the current president of the Providence firefighters union. "Nobody wanted to be the first to raise his hand and admit he didn't know what the fuck she was talking about."
Soon she was being talked about as a probable candidate for Rhode Island's 2014 gubernatorial race. By 2013, Raimondo had raised more than $2 million, a staggering sum for a still-undeclared candidate in a thimble-size state. Donors from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase showered her with money, with more than $247,000 coming from New York contributors alone. A shadowy organization called EngageRI, a public-advocacy group of the 501(c)4 type whose donors were shielded from public scrutiny by the infamous Citizens United decision, spent $740,000 promoting Raimondo's ideas. Within Rhode Island, there began to be whispers that Raimondo had her sights on the presidency. Even former Obama right hand and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to Rhode Island as an example to be followed in curing pension woes.
What few people knew at the time was that Raimondo's "tool kit" wasn't just meant for local consumption. The dynamic young Rhodes scholar was allowing her state to be used as a test case for the rest of the country, at the behest of powerful out-of-state financiers with dreams of pushing pension reform down the throats of taxpayers and public workers from coast to coast. One of her key supporters was billionaire former Enron executive John Arnold – a dickishly ubiquitous young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generation's Koch brothers, and who for years had been funding a nationwide campaign to slash benefits for public workers.
Nor did anyone know that part of Raimondo's strategy for saving money involved handing more than $1 billion – 14 percent of the state fund – to hedge funds, including a trio of well-known New York-based funds: Dan Loeb's Third Point Capital was given $66 million, Ken Garschina's Mason Capital got $64 million and $70 million went to Paul Singer's Elliott Management. The funds now stood collectively to be paid tens of millions in fees every single year by the already overburdened taxpayers of her ostensibly flat-broke state. Felicitously, Loeb, Garschina and Singer serve on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a prominent conservative think tank with a history of supporting benefit-slashing reforms. The institute named Raimondo its 2011 "Urban Innovator" of the year.
The state's workers, in other words, were being forced to subsidize their own political disenfranchisement, coughing up at least $200 million to members of a group that had supported anti-labor laws. Later, when Edward Siedle, a former SEC lawyer, asked Raimondo in a column for Forbes.com how much the state was paying in fees to these hedge funds, she first claimed she didn't know. Raimondo later told the Providence Journal she was contractually obliged to defer to hedge funds on the release of "proprietary" information, which immediately prompted a letter in protest from a series of freaked-out interest groups. Under pressure, the state later released some fee information, but the information was originally kept hidden, even from the workers themselves. "When I asked, I was basically hammered," says Marcia Reback, a former sixth-grade schoolteacher and retired Providence Teachers Union president who serves as the lone union rep on Rhode Island's nine-member State Investment Commission. "I couldn't get any information about the actual costs."
This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era.
2/ The best Bill Maher clip I have seen for a long time......an excellent and highly amusing five minutes......humour with a message.......
Maher: California Booming Because We Don’t Care About ‘Nonsense That Keeps Fox Up at Night
Bill Maher ended Friday night with a proud boast that California is creating the kind of “moderate liberal nation” the country as a whole really needs to be, and it’s doing so thanks to the lack of a Republican “legislative cockblock.”
Maher boasted, “We’re not just gluten-free and peanut-free and soy-free, we’re tea party-free! Yes, we can live in reality!” He tore into the “caboose part of America” that isn’t embracing the kind of change California is, saying that conservatives may love the free market and states rights, but those two things will ultimately “bend the country in California’s image as a socialist fagtopia.”
In California, Maher said, NRA stands for “nuts, racists, and assholes,” and while other states are “working with Jesus to make abortion more miserable,” California is making it easier, not to mention being more welcoming to illegal immigrants.
Maher concluded, “We can’t be worrying about the nonsense that keeps Fox News up at night.”
3/ Paul Krugman on the government shutdown, but also on the much more serious event coming on Oct. 17th - the possibility the US might default on it's debt.
This may be the way the world ends — not with a bang but with a temper tantrum.
Related
Senate Action on Health Law Moves to Brink of Shutdown(September 30, 2013)
Related in Opinion
Op-Ed Contributor: Our Outlaw President? (September 30, 2013)
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Readers’ Comments
"All the same dire warnings were issued about sequestration. ... Did it have any effect on anybody except to lower government spending? Methinks the professor doth protest too much! "Byron Allen, Houston
O.K., a temporary government shutdown — which became almost inevitable after Sunday’s House vote to provide government funding only on unacceptable conditions — wouldn’t be the end of the world. But a U.S. government default, which will happen unless Congress raises the debt ceiling soon, might cause financial catastrophe. Unfortunately, many Republicans either don’t understand this or don’t care.
Let’s talk first about the economics.
After the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996many observers concluded that such events, while clearly bad, aren’t catastrophes: essential services continue, and the result is a major nuisance but no lasting harm. That’s still partly true, but it’s important to note that the Clinton-era shutdowns took place against the background of a booming economy. Today we have a weak economy, with falling government spending one main cause of that weakness. A shutdown would amount to a further economic hit, which could become a big deal if the shutdown went on for a long time.
Still, a government shutdown looks benign compared with the possibility that Congress might refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
First of all, hitting the ceiling would force a huge, immediate spending cut, almost surely pushing America back into recession. Beyond that, failure to raise the ceiling would mean missed payments on existing U.S. government debt. And that might have terrifying consequences.
Why? Financial markets have long treated U.S. bonds as the ultimate safe asset; the assumption that America will always honor its debts is the bedrock on which the world financial system rests. In particular, Treasury bills — short-term U.S. bonds — are what investors demand when they want absolutely solid collateral against loans. Treasury bills are so essential for this role that in times of severe stress they sometimes pay slightly negative interest rates — that is, they’re treated as being better than cash.
Now suppose it became clear that U.S. bonds weren’t safe, that America couldn’t be counted on to honor its debts after all. Suddenly, the whole system would be disrupted. Maybe, if we were lucky, financial institutions would quickly cobble together alternative arrangements. But it looks quite possible that default would create a huge financial crisis, dwarfing the crisis set off by the failure of Lehman Brothers five years ago.
No sane political system would run this kind of risk. But we don’t have a sane political system; we have a system in which a substantial number of Republicans believe that they can force President Obama to cancel health reform by threatening a government shutdown, a debt default, or both, and in which Republican leaders who know better are afraid to level with the party’s delusional wing. For they are delusional, about both the economics and the politics.
On the economics: Republican radicals generally reject the scientific consensus on climate change; many of them reject the theory of evolution, too. So why expect them to believe expert warnings about the dangers of default? Sure enough, they don’t: the G.O.P. caucus contains a significant number of “default deniers,” who simply dismiss warnings about the dangers of failing to honor our debts.
4/ This is from last night's Daily Show, where Jon rakes the Republicans over the coals for trying to negotiate the law......
Very good, and the NFL analogy is so true......but look at the mainstream media clips - does biased spring to mind?
Jon Stewart opened Monday's "Daily Show" by addressing the government shutdown, and placed the blame squarely on the House Republicans for going to great lengths in their one-sided fight against Obamacare, which he mockingly called "The End of America as We Know It for Reasons No One is Able to Clearly Explain."
"You're just throwing words together," he exclaimed in response to a montage of Republicans rattling off their love of the Constitution to show their hatred of Obamacare, and then those lawmakers blasting Obama for failing to compromise. "It's a f**king law!" he said, pointing out that all three branches of government had thus far upheld the law.
He then compared the Republicans to a losing football team. "Did you see the Giants game on Sunday?" he asked. "They lost 31-7. Do you know what the Giants didn't say after that game? 'If you don't give us 25 more points by midnight on Monday, we will shut down the f**king NFL.'"
5/ Chris Hayes explains some simple and basic facts about Obamacare, illustrating his points with examples from Fox and Friend's Steve Doocy, who seems to be a complete douche.....five good minutes.....
With the opening of state health insurance mere days away, and an apocalyptic fight over de-funding Obamacare raging in Congress, attention to the Affordable Care Act is at an all-time high, while accurate information about it remains at an all-time low in certain quarters. On Friday night,All In with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes held a brief For Dummies-style tutorial for Fox & Friends‘Steve Doocy, and called out his rival for failing to do his job.
6/ As you know we watch a lot of videos here at DDD central, but I can't recall one that got to me like this one did.......a nice video.......you will like the message [which is universal, and shows the importance of kindness] unless of course you are a Republican member of Congress.......
No clues, just watch.....and by the way it's all in Thai.......three minutes.....
7/ Really, really interesting article from the Times on the differences between conservatives with a small "c" and the extremists who have taken over the Republlican Party. We all know and respect people who are conservative in our lives, and there is a real and useful role for them in keeping our society stable and functioning. But these crazies in the Tea Party aren't those people......
Fascinating story......i
THOMAS B. EDSALL September 24, 2013, 10:20 pm 629 Comments
How Did Conservatives Get This Radical?
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
Whether they did so out of conviction or fear, House Republicans bent to the will of the dominant Tea Party faction of their party and voted 228 to 1 on Sept. 20 to make continued financing of the federal government contingent on defunding the Affordable Care Act.
Whatever you think of this strategy, the tactics are radical. How can Republicans, courting a full-fledged fiscal crisis, claim to be conservative?
Peter Wehner, who held key posts in the last three Republican presidential administrations, declares that they cannot:
This is not conservatism either in terms of disposition or governing philosophy. It is, rather, the product of intemperate minds and fairly radical (and thoroughly unconservative) tendencies.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, normally a principled advocate of belligerent conservatism, argues that House Republicans are on a path to defeat: “Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots,” one editorial pointed out:
We’ve often supported backbenchers who want to push G.O.P. leaders in a better policy direction, most recently on the farm bill. But it’s something else entirely to sabotage any plan with a chance of succeeding and pretend to have “leverage” that exists only in the world of townhall applause lines and fundraising letters.
Wehner and the Journal’s editorial writers might gain insight into the collective psyche of their right flank from unexpected sources: the sociologists, psychologists and political scientists who are exploring what they see as the core differences between conservatives and liberals.
8/ This will be interesting to you if you are British or have roots in GB.....how London has become so much different than the rest of the UK, and in some quarters in the capital they think special rules should apply to them......
London Is Special, but Not That Special
Tomi Um
By KENAN MALIK
Published: September 28, 2013
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LONDON — NOT so long ago there was a beer commercial on British TV in which two pointy-headed aliens order a pint in a rural pub. “Up from London, are we?” the barman asks politely.
If the rest of Britain often views London as a planet from outer space, Londoners often view other Britons as beings trapped in a previous century. “London seems no longer part of Britain — in my view, a dreary, narrow place full of fields, boarded-up shops and cities trying to imitate London — but has developed into a semi-independent city-state.” So says Adam, a character in “The Body,” a novel by Hanif Kureishi — one of the sharpest contemporary observers of London life.
It is one of the ironies of capital cities that each acts as a symbol of its nation, and yet few are even remotely representative of it. London has always set itself apart from the rest of Britain — but political, economic and social trends are conspiring to drive that wedge deeper.
London has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. It absorbs more than half of all immigrants to Britain. In the 2011 census, 80 percent of all Britons defined themselves as “white British”; barely half that number (45 percent) did so in London. There are more black and Asian people in just one London borough, Newham, than in the whole of Scotland.
Economically, too, London is startlingly different. The capital, unlike the country as a whole, has no budget deficit: London’s public spending matches the taxes paid in the city. The average Londoner contributes 70 percent more to Britain’s national income than people in the rest of the country. While Britain’s recession has been deep and unforgiving, in London it has been relatively shallow. Between 2007 and 2011, the city’s economy grew by nearly 12.5 percent — almost twice as fast as in the rest of the country. London’s real estate is worth more than all the property of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined.
9/ And if you're from London, you will know the name Aspinall, which was the owners name of one of the high stakes casinos in the 80's and 90's.......he retired and started a game park for endangered species in part of England he owned [really rich dude]. In this video Damian Aspinall [presumably his son] goes back to Africa to meet up with a gorilla he knew in captivity.
A nice four minute video about this upper class Brit and a gorilla.......
10/ Democrats - does the thought of "Elizabeth Warren 2016" get your blood racing? If so, this story will be fascinating......
Populist Left Makes Warren Its Hot Ticket
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts at the Make Progress National Summit, a gathering of young activists in Washington.
By JONATHAN MARTIN
Published: September 29, 2013
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After Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke at a luncheon in Beverly Hills, Calif., last month, women from the audience swarmed around her, many of them asking the same question: will you run for president?
Ms. Warren’s fiery speech at the national A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention this month set off even more excitement, with some union members standing on their chairs applauding and shouting out to her. And when she joined a MoveOn.org conference call this summer to promote her student loanlegislation, 10,000 people got on the line — the liberal group’s biggest audience on any conference call in four years.
In Democratic circles, disappointment in the promise of the Obama presidency and unease over a possible restoration of the Clintons have made the senator, who was sworn in just 10 months ago, the object of huge interest and the avatar of a newly assertive, fervently populist left eager for a more confrontational approach to politics.
Ms. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in an interview that she was not interested in seeking the presidency. And despite talk of a draft movement among some activists, it is difficult to imagine her taking on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But in seizing on issues animating her party’s base — the influence of big banks, soaring student loan debt and the widening gulf between the wealthy and the working class — Ms. Warren is challenging the centrist economic approach that has been the de facto Democratic policy since President Bill Clinton and his fellow moderates took control of the party two decades ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/
11/ She's baaaaack.....Lady Gaga has a new music video "Applause", and it's a catchy song set to what looks like a raunchy drag queen show with girls in lingerie thrown in for good measure. Lady Gaga's in this mix somewhere, unmadeup or with paint on her face, and the subtitles are a new feature too....
Raucous good fun........
12/ One of Florida's Senators is Marco Rubio, and what an opportunistic scumbag he has turned out to be......great story from Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald.......
If you are a "normal" Republican this little prick doesn't represent you - he just does what the Tea Party tells him to do......
Carl Hiaasen: Americans aren’t buying what Cruz, Rubio are selling
BY CARL HIAASEN
CHIAASEN@MIAMIHERALD.COM
“You inspire me.”
Those tender words were spoken to Sen. Marco Rubio by Sen. Ted Cruz on the Senate floor last week, the same Ted Cruz who jabbered for more than 21 straight hours, infuriating leaders of his own party and edifying his national image as an egomaniacal crackpot.
Nobody outside of Texas likes Cruz except the tea party troglodytes to whom he panders.
“You inspire me,” the buffoon cooed to Rubio, a future foe in the 2016 race for the White House.
At which moment Democratic campaign strategists surely fell to their knees whispering, “Thank you, God. This is too good to be true.”
The Cruz-Rubio bromance played out on C-Span in the wee morning hours last Wednesday during Cruz’s marathon tirade against Obamacare. Florida’s junior senator popped up like a blow-dried gopher to speak for almost an hour and give Cruz a break.
Rubio’s appearance was another calculated suck-up to the right-wingers who scorned him during the immigration debate. Days earlier he had back-stabbed Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas, a gay African-American, by abruptly withdrawing his support for Thomas’ nomination to the federal bench.
Rubio claimed he’d changed his mind about Thomas’ “fitness” because of concerns about the handling of a DUI case and a rape case – though even the prosecutor in the rape case said the judge had followed the rules. (Rubio’s vast credentials in criminal trial procedure consist of an unused law degree.)
By aligning himself with Cruz, whose self-styled filibuster epitomizes the partisan paralysis in Washington, Rubio further diminished himself in the eyes of moderate Republicans who yearn for a fresh and principled voice.
13/ I haven't read this as I have reached my limit of free with this paper, but I liked the title - "Florida Deserves A Real Governor"......anyone would be better than the Skeletor......
Todays video - the diner breakfast tipping scene from "Reservoir Dogs", where Mr. Pink [Steve Buscemi] refuses to tip saying it's against his principles. Needless to say the other hoodlums get upset.......
A great piece of cinema.....
Todays legal joke
A young Law student, having failed his Law exam, goes up to his crusty old professor, who is renowned for his razor-sharp legal mind.
Student: "Sir, do you really understand everything about this subject?"
Professor: "Actually, I probably do. Otherwise I wouldn't be a professor, would I?"
Student: "OK. So I’d like to ask you a question. If you can give me the correct answer, I will accept my marks as it is. If you can't give me the correct answer, however, you'll have to give me an "A".
Professor: "Hmmmm, alright. So what’s the question?"
Student: "What is legal but not logical, logical but not legal, and neither logical nor legal?”
The professor wracks his famous brain, but just can't crack the answer. Finally he gives up and changes the student's failing mark into an "A" as agreed, and the student goes away, very pleased.
The professor continues to wrack his brain over the question all afternoon, but still can’t get the answer. So finally he calls in a group of his brightest students and tells them he has a really, really tough question to answer: "What is legal but not logical, logical but not legal, and neither logical nor legal?”
To the professor's surprise (and embarrassment), all the students immediately raise their hands.
"All right" says the professor and asks his favourite student to answer
"It's quite easy, sir" says the student "You see, you are 75 years old and married to a 30 year old woman, which is legal, but not logical. Your wife has a 22 year old lover, which is logical, but not legal. And your wife's lover failed his exam but you've just given him an "A", which is neither legal, nor logical."
Professor: "Actually, I probably do. Otherwise I wouldn't be a professor, would I?"
Student: "OK. So I’d like to ask you a question. If you can give me the correct answer, I will accept my marks as it is. If you can't give me the correct answer, however, you'll have to give me an "A".
Professor: "Hmmmm, alright. So what’s the question?"
Student: "What is legal but not logical, logical but not legal, and neither logical nor legal?”
The professor wracks his famous brain, but just can't crack the answer. Finally he gives up and changes the student's failing mark into an "A" as agreed, and the student goes away, very pleased.
The professor continues to wrack his brain over the question all afternoon, but still can’t get the answer. So finally he calls in a group of his brightest students and tells them he has a really, really tough question to answer: "What is legal but not logical, logical but not legal, and neither logical nor legal?”
To the professor's surprise (and embarrassment), all the students immediately raise their hands.
"All right" says the professor and asks his favourite student to answer
"It's quite easy, sir" says the student "You see, you are 75 years old and married to a 30 year old woman, which is legal, but not logical. Your wife has a 22 year old lover, which is logical, but not legal. And your wife's lover failed his exam but you've just given him an "A", which is neither legal, nor logical."
Todays senior jokes
Questions and Answers from AARP Forum
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Q: Where can men over the age of 60 find younger, sexy women who are interested in them?
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A: Try a bookstore, under Fiction.
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Q: What can a man do while his wife is going through menopause?
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A: Keep busy.. If you're handy with tools, you can finish the basement. When you're done, you'll have a place to live.
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Q: Someone has told me that menopause is mentioned in the bible. Is that true? Where can be found?
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A: Yes. Matthew 14:92: "And Mary rode Joseph's ass all the way to Egypt "
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Q: How can you increase the heart rate of your over 60-year-old husband?
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A: Tell him you're pregnant.
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Q: How can you avoid that terrible curse of the elderly wrinkles?
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A: Take off your glasses.
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Q: Seriously! What can I do for these Crow's feet and all those wrinkles on my face?
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A: Go braless. It will usually pull them out.
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Q: Why should 60-plus year old people use valet parking?
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A: Valets don't forget where they park your car.
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Q: Is it common for 60-plus year olds to have problems with short term memory storage?
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A: Storing memory is not a problem, Retrieving it is the problem.
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Q: As people age, do they sleep more soundly?
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A: Yes, but usually in the afternoon.
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Q: Where should 60-plus year olds look for eye glasses?
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A: On their foreheads.
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Q: What is the most common remark made by 60-plus year olds when they enter antique stores?
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A: "Gosh, I remember these!"
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SMILE, You've still got your sense of humor, RIGHT?
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Todays bonus seniors joke
The Job Interview:
Human Resources Manager: "What is your greatest
Human Resources Manager: "What is your greatest
weakness?"
Old Man: "Honesty."
Human Resources Manager: "I don't think honesty is
Old Man: "Honesty."
Human Resources Manager: "I don't think honesty is
a weakness."
Old Man: "I really don’t give a shit what you think."
Old Man: "I really don’t give a shit what you think."
Todays religious joke
A burglar broke into a house one night. He shone his flashlight around, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said, 'Jesus knows you're here.'
He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight
off, and froze.
When he heard nothing more, after a bit, he shook his head and continued.
Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard 'Jesus is watching you.'
Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice.
Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.
'Did you say that?' he hissed at the parrot.
'Yep', the parrot confessed, then squawked, 'I'm just trying to warn you that he is watching you.'
The burglar relaxed. 'Warn me, huh?Who in the world are you ?'
'Moses,' replied the bird.
'Moses?' the burglar laughed.
'What kind of people would name a bird Moses?'
'The kind of people that would name a Rottweiler Jesus.'
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