A double dose of Krugman this week....two excellent columns......as an observation Paul Krugman is one of the few journalists that realise we are living in an oligarchy.....
And #11 is relevant to us all......
1/ If you aren't outraged by this story you should be. In this column Krugman details the fact that the top 25 hedge fund managers made almost a billion dollars each in 2013, because of the tax loophole noone can seem to close. Their "earnings" are taxed at 15%, and their lobbyists have purchased Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, to keep it that way.
Note - the biggest hedge fund whore is Senator Charles Schumer, [D] from Connecticut.......
Institutional Investor’s latest “rich list” in its Alpha magazine, its survey of the 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers, is out — and it turns out that these guys make a lot of money. Surprise!
Yet before we dismiss the report as nothing new, let’s think about what it means that these 25 men (yes, they’re all men) made a combined $21 billion in 2013. In particular, let’s think about how their good fortune refutes several popular myths about income inequality in America.
First, modern inequality isn’t about graduates. It’s about oligarchs. Apologists for soaring inequality almost always try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent. Instead of talking about the 1 percent or the 0.1 percent, they talk about the rising incomes of college graduates, or maybe the top 5 percent. The goal of this misdirection is to soften the picture, to make it seem as if we’re talking about ordinary white-collar professionals who get ahead through education and hard work.
But many Americans are well-educated and work hard. For example, schoolteachers. Yet they don’t get the big bucks. Last year, those 25 hedge fund managers made more than twice as much as all the kindergarten teachers in America combined. And, no, it wasn’t always thus: The vast gulf that now exists between the upper-middle-class and the truly rich didn’t emerge until the Reagan years.
Second, ignore the rhetoric about “job creators” and all that. Conservatives want you to believe that the big rewards in modern America go to innovators and entrepreneurs, people who build businesses and push technology forward. But that’s not what those hedge fund managers do for a living; they’re in the business of financial speculation, which John Maynard Keynes characterized as “anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.” Or since they make much of their income from fees, they’re actually in the business of convincing other people that they can anticipate average opinion about average
2/ It's Mothers Day today, so of course Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton were on SNL to give two "moms" best wishes.....but it didn't take long to get evil......four amusing minutes.....
SNL kicked things off tonight by celebrating Mothers Day with Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, who in no way are bitter and jealous towards each other in any way. Clinton, for example, has no interest in being Mother of the Year this year. But she’s considering a run for the position. You know, at some point. Maybe.
And Clinton’s was totally not bitter that she tried to get health care passed, but the Obamas actually managed to get it done. She tried bragging that she was dealing with global crises while Michelle was trying to “make a chubby kid eat an apple!” But you know, no big deal or anything.
Yep. Totally no bitterness there.
3/ This Krugman column is important because I don't think we understand the blind hatred, the rage that is bubbling out there in right wingnutland. They will say anything, do anything, lie constantly to bring down the President to please their masters in the oligarchy. Look at the nonsense that is going on this week with the Benghazi hearings - they are desperate to find a scandal.....
This story is about the ACA.....
Last week, House Republicans released a deliberately misleadingreport on the status of health reform, crudely rigging the numbers to sustain the illusion of failure in the face of unexpected success. Are you shocked?
You aren’t, but you should be. Mainstream politicians didn’t always try to advance their agenda through lies, damned lies and — in this case — bogus statistics. And the fact that this has become standard operating procedure for a major party bodes ill for America’s future.
About that report: The really big policy news of 2014, at least so far, is the spectacular recovery of the Affordable Care Act from its stumbling start, thanks to an extraordinary late surge that took enrollment beyond early projections. The age mix of enrollees hasimproved; insurance companies are broadly satisfied with the risk pool. Multiple independent surveys confirm that the percentage of Americans without health insurance has already declined substantially, and there’s every reason to believe that over the next two years the act will meet its overall goals, except in states that refuse to expand Medicaid.
This is a problem for Republicans, who have bet the ranch on the proposition that health reform is an unfixable failure. “Nobody can make Obamacare work,” declared Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, a couple of weeks ago (when it was already obvious that it was working pretty well). How can they respond to good news?
Well, they could graciously admit that they were wrong, and offer constructive suggestions about how to make the law work even better. Oh, sorry — I forgot that I wasn’t writing jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
No, they have in fact continued to do what they’ve been doing ever since the news on Obamacare started turning positive: sling as much mud as possible at health reform, in the hope that some of it sticks. Premiums were soaring, they declared, when they have actually come in below projections. Millions of people were losing coverage, they insisted, when the great bulk of those whose policies were canceled simply replaced them with new policies. The Obama administration was cooking the books, they cried (projection, anyone?). And, of course, they keep peddling horror stories about people suffering terribly from Obamacare, not one of which has actually withstood scrutiny.
Now comes the latest claim — that many of the people who signed up for insurance aren’t actually paying their premiums. Obviously this claim is part of a continuing pattern. It also, however, involves a change in tactics. Previous attacks on Obamacare were pretty much fact-free; this time the claim was backed by an actual survey purporting to show that a third of enrollees hadn’t paid their first premium.
But the survey was rigged.
4/ Joel McHale from the White House Correspondents Dinner.......I thought it was hit and miss, a little vicious at times, and pushing the edges of political humour......but overall a pretty good 21 minutes if you like political "insider" jokes............
Joel McHale followed up President Obama‘s White House Correspondents Dinner speech with a hilarious speech of his own, roasting President Obama and Chris Christie, as well as literally everyone running for president in 2016. McHale opened by describing Obama in a “Paul Ryan” sort of way: “yet another inner-city minority relying on the federal government to feed and house your family.”
McHale praised Obama as “definitely in the top 50″ presidents of all-time and got in some biting health care jokes, but also went after his rivals and compared the Kardashians to Republicans because “they’re always trying to screw black people.”
McHale mocked all the 2016 contenders, from Joe Biden (“one heartbeat away from no one taking him seriously as president”) to Hillary Clinton to Chris Christie, who was on the receiving end of both fat jokes and bridge jokes. McHale even went into a full-on parody of Christie’s long-winded BridgeGate explanations.
But McHale also got in some shots at the media, with CNN getting the brunt of the jokes in particular. Early on in the speech, he said, “100 years ago, CNN was only searching for the Wright brothers plane.” Later on, he explained that CNN has been “desperately searching for something they’ve been missing for months: their dignity.” (It was at this moment the C-SPAN camera chose to focus in on a noticeably emotionless Wolf Blitzer.)
5/ The always excellent Frank Rich with his weekly column.....only two subjects today, but one is climate change and the Republican denial it exists....
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: the GOP continues to deny climate change, White House report be damned; and Monica Lewinsky writes about her infamous affair with Bill Clinton.
The White House released an exhaustive and ominous report on climate change this week that attributed a host of destructive weather patterns to rising temperatures and stated “climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present." Meanwhile, House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith dubbed the report "a political document intended to frighten Americans.” What do you make of the report? And what would it take for most in the Republican Party to accept the reality and urgency of climate change?
The report confirms in no uncertain terms what sentient Americans already knew, but that doesn’t mean it will break the political gridlock that has doomed any serious national mobilization to address the crisis. Of all the crazy things in our politics, few are more self-immolating than the persistence of climate change as a partisan issue. A founding father of modern environmental activism was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, but his legacy is no more honored in today’s GOP than Lincoln’s. You’d think that the speed and perils of global warming would be settled fact, given all the catastrophic signs that Americans can see with their own eyes. But on the right, climate-change denial has become a proxy for a whole smorgasbord of powerful ideological imperatives: opposition to governmental regulation; resistance to taxation (especially of such Republican sugar daddies as the coal, oil, and gas industries); class resentment of intellectual elites in academia and Prius-driving Hollywood; and, in some quarters, rejection of any kind of science that dares undermine the supremacy of God as the primary actor in all Earthly activity.
It’s a pipe dream to think the Republican Party is going to shift on this any time soon.
6/ We don't often get to describe a music video as charming, but this one is. The lovely Anna Kendrick [Up In The Air and many other movies] with "When I'm Gone", sung to the music of "Cups". It's set in a diner, and very cleverly done......the song is hypnotic, she has a passable voice and this one really gets to you.....a NICE video.....
7/ A most interesting article about the Ukraine, but with a focus on how our media completely swallows the official line about who are the good guys and who are the bad. The truth is always more complex than we get on the news, more nuanced, and Ukraine is a classic example of American foreign policy at it's worst.......a very revealing story.
Bottom line - whatever the media reports about things that happen globally, it's probably the BS the gumment wants you to believe......and this is the bit of the gumment that does the bidding of the global corporations.
This is where the true corruption is - whatever our foreign policy is, it 's going to benefit one of the oligarchs.....
John McCain, Barack Obama, Samantha Power (Credit: AP/Chris Usher/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Eduardo Munoz/Salon)
Ukraine comes full circle. In six months, a troubled but intact nation is now pulled to pieces. Vasyl Krutov, the general in charge of what the provisional government in Kiev insists on calling its “anti-terror” military campaign in the east and south, acknowledged over the weekend that the country is “essentially at war.”
Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, had to go in February because of the violence that had erupted in Independence Square, scene of demonstrations since the previous November. We still do not know who was responsible for the shootings used to justify the Yankuovych coup, but we know this: The provos who took his place are now doing the shooting — killing their countrymen, reclassified as terrorists, by the score.
Samantha Power, the most tendentious hypocrite in the Obama administration (and the competition is keen), defends these murderers thusly: “Their response is reasonable, it is proportional, and frankly it is what any one of our countries would have done in the face of this threat,” Power said in the Security Council at the weekend.
Does this remind you of anything? It should. Is this not a replay of the Egyptian catastrophe? An elected leader trying to hold a nation together on its own terms is deposed, what follows is magnitudes worse than anything the deposed leader ever dreamed of, and the army is turned loose on those it is supposed to defend. The Americans, having backed the putschists from the shadows, tell you, “No, that was not a putsch you just watched. It only looked like one. The elected guy was replaced violently by the unelected in the service of a democratic restoration. And there will be another election, under the auspices of the unelected, to confirm all this as best.”
For its speed and sheer wastage, Ukraine’s arriving fate is astonishing. It is a spectacle.
And this is the one good thing about the Ukraine calamity: The anatomy of it is all there, spectacularly. I cannot recall a moment so revelatory. Very little is hidden, even as much was meant to be. Precisely the effort to hide things is in plain sight. Pay attention and there are some things to learn, primarily about ourselves.
8/ A send-up of thriller movies and TV shows.......a lad says he doesn't like a Beyonce song, and is hunted down like a dog.......a parody by SNL, and quite well done with a surprise in the middle.....three minutes.....
Conventional wisdom suggests that Beyoncé is the best thing ever and if you dare question that in any way, hellfire will rain down upon you in the blink of an eye. SNL satirized all the Beyoncé love in a fake movie trailer about a secret government agency that will destroy the life of anyone who dares to say what no man should: eh, Beyoncé’s not that great.
The protagonist, played by host Andrew Garfield, finds himself on the run from the titular “Beygency,” and even gets some surprise help from two people fans of a certain Fox thriller would be thrilled to see back on television.
Because as the trailer explains, you would have to be a “friggin’ idiot” to think that Beyoncé is anything other than a goddess on earth sent to deliver heavenly music to the masses.
9/ Last weekend "60 Minutes" did a story on the oldest old, people in their 90's. There is an ongoing scientific study in California of how people age and who is prone to Alzheimers and dementia, and the results will surprise you.
If you are in your 50's or 60's you should watch this.....it's exceptionally well done, the oldies are charming and it's VERY interesting......two segments - 10 and 11 minutes, and they have important life lessons for us all.
Click on the "Living in the 90's" box on the right......parts one and two......
It's always been a dream of mankind to live forever. Since the start of the 20th century, we have increased life expectancy in this country by a remarkable 30 years -- from just 49 in 1900, to almost 79 today. And more and more of us are making it into that group we all hope -- and kinda dread -- joining, the over 90 crowd, affectionately dubbed "the oldest old."
Men and women above the age of 90 are now the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. Yet very little is known about the oldest old, since until recently, there were so few of them. So what determines which of us will make it past age 90? What kind of shape we'll be in if we do? And what can we do now to up our odds? Finding out is the goal of a groundbreaking research study known as "90+."
10/ The best Jon Stewart of the week, and he tears into Fox News for the faux outrage over Benghazi about why other media aren't outraged too.....a very good one, two parts - 5 minutes and 3 minutes.....
Jon Stewart is exasperated with Fox News getting outraged about why no one else is outraged enough about Benghazi. Not because he doesn’t think there’s no scandal, but because he’s just sick and tired of Fox News’ “hypocritical outrage and sanctimony” on the issue.
Stewart recalled plenty of examples in the Bush administration of intelligence failures on par with or worse than Benghazi. And time and again, Fox News downplayed these scandals and/or blamed the media for scandalizing them in the first place.
Stewart highlighted Iraq as the prime example of this, and explained to Fox that people aren’t as outraged as them about Benghazi because “everybody in this country has seen this movie before, only that movie was on an IMAX.”
11/ As you know a major report was just issued on climate change, with the conclusion it's here, and affecting you. As I type this, I just thought if you get your news from TV you probably haven't heard of this major story.......
So start again - as you may or may not know, there was a very important report just issued......
The 12 things the Obama administration wants you to know about climate change
By John Upton
Shutterstock
Climate change is affecting you, right now. Yeah, you.
That’s the message from the Obama administration today. “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” says the latest National Climate Assessment, published by the White House. Every few years, by law, the federal government is required to publish such a report; this is the third and most comprehensive one put out. It’s a hefty catalogue of changes underway in America’s climate and weather — and of the changes we can expect to experience as greenhouse gases continue to turn the world into a more exotic and less welcoming place.
“Summers are longer and hotter, and extended periods of unusual heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced,” the report says. “Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours. People are seeing changes in the length and severity of seasonal allergies, the plant varieties that thrive in their gardens, and the kinds of birds they see in any particular month in their neighborhoods.”
The report is somewhat similar to the assessments published once or twice a decade by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Except that this report’s focus is solely on the U.S. And, unlike the IPCC reports, this one is actually a pleasure to look at – replete with graphics, animated gifs, and an easy-to-read website for those who would prefer to not slog through a huge .pdf or printed report.
The report divides climate impacts into 10 geographical regions: Northeast, Southeast and the Caribbean, Midwest,Great Plains, Southwest, Northwest,
12/ I mentioned this was a major report - it breaks down the projections per region, and this is the "Southeast and the Caribbean" section......if you live in Florida open it, have a look if you have any curiosity about what's coming down the pike in the next decades. And remember, this is a conservative document, science based and all provable with data because the science has to be attack-proof. Indeed the right wing media have largely ignored this report, hoping it will go away.....
The effects of CC the scientists state are the least that will happen.....the timeline may well be quicker because of the acceleration of the processes, which can't be proven yet.....
The report is somewhat similar to the assessments published once or twice a decade by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Except that this report’s focus is solely on the U.S. And, unlike the IPCC reports, this one is actually a pleasure to look at – replete with graphics, animated gifs, and an easy-to-read website for those who would prefer to not slog through a huge .pdf or printed report.
Conclusion - sea level is rising, it's going to get hotter, and water is a major issue......
13/ Whatever you think of Bill Maher, he's got the courage of his convictions. In this four minute segment he defends Donald Sterling's right to privacy.....a serious Maher, and he makes a good case......
For his last “New Rule” of the night on Friday, Bill Maher used a recent column about Cliven Bundyand Donald Sterling by The Washington Post’sKathleen Parker to stand up for privacy and the Fourth Amendment. If the Sterling case taught us anything, Maher said, it’s that “there’s a force out there just as powerful as Big Brother: Big Girlfriend.”
“If you don’t want your words broadcast in the public square, don’t say them,” Parker wrote in her column published last week, adding, “Such potential exposure forces us to more carefully select our words and edit our thoughts. This isn’t only a matter of survival but is essential to civilization. Speaking one’s mind isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be, as any well-balanced person reading the comments section quickly concludes.”
“Always editing? I’d rather be a Mormon,” Maher responded. “And that’s what we’d all be: Mitt Romney. I would listen to 100 horrific Cliven Bundy rants if that was the price of living in a world where I could also hear interesting and funny people talk without a filter.”
As for the idea that people won’t miss speaking their minds, Maher said, “I’ll miss it. I’ll miss it a lot. And for the record, speaking my mind is absolutely everything it’s cracked up to be.”
“Who wants to live in a world where the only right to privacy is inside your head?” Maher asked. “That’s what like in East Germany was like.”
“If I want to sit in my living room and say I think The Little Mermaid is hot and I want to bang her, or I don’t like watching two men kiss, or I think tattoos look terrible on black people, I should be able to, even if you think it makes me an asshole,” Maher concluded. “Now, do I really believe those things? I’m not telling you because you’re not in my living room!”
14/ More "Awkward Family Photos", billed as "Walmart called, your photos are done". There's an old British expression which sums up this collection..... "there's now't so queer as folk"......
15/ We have almost completely moved on from the old remedies our grandparents used to treat minor ailments, and one of the reasons is of course corporate greed. There's no profit in using, for example, baking soda to treat a cold....according to this article baking soda won't cure a cold, it just makes it milder and shorter in length.......actually nothing cures a cold, but if you can mitigate the effects that's a big win.
Interesting stuff.......and look at the other uses it has, all for about $1 a box. But this is part of the problem, isn't it. We are conditioned to have faith in expensive solutions to problems.....we don't value [almost] free answers.
My theory - it it works, try it......
Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is a staple in many homes for baking and cleaning purposes – but there's a good chance you're not taking full advantage of all that baking soda has to offer.For instance, did you know there's a whole gamut of medicinal uses for baking soda, such as safely removing splinters from your fingers, or just brushing your teeth?It rates right up there with hydrogen peroxide as one of the most inexpensive and safe health tools around (you can buy an entire box of baking soda for about $1), so it makes sense to learn all you can about the many, many uses of baking soda.
In their booklet "Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Medical Uses," published in 1924, Dr. Volney S. Cheney recounts his clinical successes with sodium bicarbonate in treating cold and flu:2
"In 1918 and 1919 while fighting the 'flu' with the U. S. Public Health Service it was brought to my attention that rarely anyone who had been thoroughly alkalinized with bicarbonate of soda contracted the disease, and those who did contract it, if alkalinized early, would invariably have mild attacks.I have since that time treated all cases of 'cold,' influenza and LaGripe by first giving generous doses of bicarbonate of soda, and in many, many instances within 36 hours the symptoms would have entirely abated.Further, within my own household, before Woman's Clubs and Parent-Teachers' Associations, I have advocated the use of bicarbonate of soda as a preventive for 'colds,' with the result that now many reports are coming in stating that those who took 'soda' were not affected, while nearly everyone around them had the 'flu.'
Todays video - a new comedian from the South - Ron White, with a two minute commentary on his new wife......
Todays farming joke
PEPPERMINT
I recently spent $6,500 on a young registered Black Angus bull.
I put him out with the herd but he just ate grass and wouldn't even look at a cow.
I was beginning to think I had paid more for that bull than he was worth.
Anyhow, I had the Vet come and have a look at him.
He said the bull was very healthy, but possibly just a little young, so he gave me some pills to feed him once per day.
The bull started to service the cows within two days, all my cows!
He even broke through the fence and bred with all of my neighbor's cows!
He's like a machine!
I don't know what was in the pills the Vet gave him ............
But they kind of taste like peppermint.
Todays English language lesson
You think English is easy?
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture..
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Todays religion joke
A Priest and a Rabbi were sitting next to each other on an airplane. After a while, the Priest turned to the Rabbi and asked,
"Is it still a requirement of your faith that you not eat pork?"
The Rabbi responded, "Yes, that is still one of our laws."
The Priest then asked, "Have you ever eaten pork?"
To which the Rabbi replied, "Yes, on one occasion I did succumb to temptation and tasted a ham sandwich."
The Priest nodded in understanding and went on with his reading.
A while later, the Rabbi spoke up and asked the Priest, "Father, is it still a requirement of your church that you remain celibate?"
The Priest replied, "Yes, that is still very much a part of our faith."
The Rabbi then asked him, "Father, have you ever fallen to the temptations of the flesh?"
The Priest replied, "Yes, Rabbi, on one occasion I was weak and broke my faith."
The Rabbi nodded understandingly and remained silent, thinking, for about five minutes.
Finally, the Rabbi said, "Beats the shit out of a ham sandwich, doesn't it?"
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