1/ A look at the billionaires behind Mitt Romney - Rolling Stone lists the mega-wealthy elderly men who have given huge sums to Romney's campaign and the SuperPacs, and what they want in return. Oh yes, there is a payoff if Mitt gets in......
Presidential politics has always been a rich man's game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of megadonor whose portfolios make Mitt Romney look middle-class. "I have lots of money, and can give it legally now," Texas billionaire and top GOP moneyman Harold Simmons recently bragged to The Wall Street Journal. "Just never to Democrats."
In past elections, big donors like Simmons gave millions for advocacy groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. By law, such groups were only allowed to run issue ads – but instead they directly targeted John Kerry, drawing big fines from the Federal Elections Commission. Now, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, the wealthy can legally hand out unlimited sums to groups that openly campaign for a candidate, knowing that their "dark money" donations will be kept entirely secret. The billionaire Koch brothers, for instance, have reportedly pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama this year – but their off-the-book contributions don't appear in any FEC filings.
Even more money from megadonors is flowing into newly created Super PACs, which, unlike advocacy groups, can spend every cent they raise on direct attacks on an opponent. Under the new rules, the richest men in America are plying candidates with donations far beyond what Congress intended. "They can still give the maximum $2,500 directly to the campaign – and then turn around and give $25 million to the Super PAC," says Trevor Potter, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center. A single patron can now prop up an entire candidacy, as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson did with a $20 million donation to the Super PAC backing Newt Gingrich.
The undisputed master of Super PAC money is Mitt Romney.
2/ Dancing is a universal art form, and this is a compilation of famous dance moves - from ballet to Elvis, from Fred Astaire to the Three Stooges.....excellent......the music track is "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers.....
Five minutes of nostalgia, amazement and fun........
3/ Continuing the billionaire theme, Joseph Stiglitz wonders why the wealthy don't realise their selfishness threatens the society they live in.....greed is not good even for the greedy.
Let’s start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America has been widening for decades. We’re all aware of the fact. Yes, there are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won’t run through all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth—that is, in terms of accumulated capital and other assets. Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. (Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”
So, no: there’s little debate over the basic fact of widening inequality. The debate is over its meaning. From the right, you sometimes hear the argument made that inequality is basically a good thing: as the rich increasingly benefit, so does everyone else. This argument is false: while the rich have been growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he did a third of a century ago.
From the left, meanwhile, the widening inequality often elicits an appeal for simple justice: why should so few have so much when so many have so little? It’s not hard to see why, in a market-driven age where justice itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, some would dismiss that argument as the stuff of pious sentiment.
Put sentiment aside. There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position.
4/ A Russian amusement ride you wouldn't get me on with a cattle prod....listen to the screaming.....3 minutes.....
5/ An excellent Bill Maher where he looks at the Republican charges of Obama being a "socialist", and then asks the obvious question.....if he is such a raving Marxist, why am I not happy? A wonderful 5 minute clip to end his season, and it displays his knack for getting serious points across while making you laugh out loud.....
Which I did at the Michelle Bachmann reference....
Maher shot down claims that Obama has been racking up the government spending with statistics showing that of every president since Ronald Reagan, Obama has had the smallest annualized growth of federal spending. Or, in Maher’s words, “the black man’s is the shortest.” He pointed to Obama’s concessions and moderate actions on the financial crisis, oil drilling, and other big issues. Once again, Maher asked conservatives exactly what they mean when they claim Obama is the most radical president of all time.
“How can you guys be so unhappy with Obama when I’m so unhappy with Obama? You think you got coal in your stocking? I wanted single-payer health care, a carbon emissions bill, gun control, and legalized pot. If you get to carry around all this outrage over me getting that shit, shouldn’t I have gotten it?”
Maher also made a not-so-subtle Trayvon Martin reference by joking that Obama “could not be less threatening if he was walking home with iced tea and Skittles.”
6/ Tiger's flop shot that won him the Memorial tournament this past weekend.......wow....1 minute.....
7/ More on "What the hell is happening to Canada" environmentally, and the answer is oil - oil and money........which have purchased the Harper government and gutting environmental laws and procedures......
When President Obama postponed and then denied approval of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, Harper and tar sands oil companies became desperate fearing they can't get enough tar sands oil to market. The oil is landlocked, putting expansion plans at risk. The U.S. and Canada have all the tar sands oil they can consume, so oil companies have to get access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts where the oil can be exported to Asia, Europe and South America. Unfortunately for them, 100 First Nations have blocked the best Pacific route (the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline) and American environmental groups with the help of President Obama have blocked the best route to the Gulf (the Keystone XL pipeline).
The oil industry is getting desperate, and desperation breeds radicalism. Harper and Big Oil are desperate to cash in their wealth before fuel efficiency measures and the inevitable carbon pricing policies kill their market, so they need to disarm their opposition. To do so, Harper's government has threatened the charitable status (and thus the fundraising ability) of environmental groups who oppose tar sands, attacked them as pawns of U.S. interests, subjected them to onerous Revenue Canada reporting requirements to bog them down, and even accused them of "laundering money."
8/ A home made video of a robin's nest and footage of Mama robin sitting on the eggs, the eggs being hatched, the chicks getting fed and eventually flying off and leaving the nest.....amazing video, and actually kind of heartwarming.....3 minutes.....
9/ We love to target Fox News and rail about their blatant manipulation of the "news", but as this article in HuffPo says they are like the honey badger - they couldn't give a shit what you think......
There's an old saying that I'm a big fan of: Never try to teach a pig to sing -- it wastes your time and annoys the pig. I think of this every time I get the urge to lash out at Fox News for some irresponsible, grossly unethical thing or other that the network has done or has had the gall to broadcast under the guise of being a real news organization. My criticism, like everyone else's, won't matter one bit -- the attack will just bounce off of Roger Ailes's prodigious belly like he was Kung-Fu Panda. Not only does Fox News not fret over its many detractors and their grievances, it generally welcomes the outrage as an opportunity to once again let its pit-bullish media relations department off the chain to maul the crap out of the poor bastard with the bad sense to hassle its master. The result is always bloody and the guy who dared to take a swipe at Fox rarely comes out on top.
Ailes learned from one of the most profoundly talented bullies in all of politics so it goes without saying that he's not the kind of guy to respond, "Well, you might have a point there, my good man, but I suppose we'll just have to chalk this up to a difference of opinion," or even better, a simple "no comment," whenever somebody calls his leviathan propaganda machine out for being what it is.
10/ A "gotcha" clip where the NBA rookie of the year is made up as an old man, and then drops in on a local pick-up basketball game in New Jersey.....an amusing 5 minutes......
11/ North Carolina just passed a bill that defies science, and the legislation will not allow any state agency to tell the truth about the coming rise in sea levels.....hmmmm.......just reminds me of the wonderful saying "you may not believe in global warming, but global warming believes in you"....
How stupid can this country get.......
Some North Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise.
King Canute thought he had the power to hold back the tide (in the apocryphal legend). These all-too-real lawmakers want to go one better and mandate a formula that projects a sea level rise of at most 12 inches this century, far below what the science now projects.
A state-appointed science panel reviewed the recent literature and reported that a 1-meter (39 inch) rise is likely by 2100. Many coastal studies experts think a level of 5 to 7 feet should be used, since you typically plan for the plausible worst-case scenario, especially with expensive, long-lived infrastructure.
The 2011 report by the National Academy of Science for the U.S. Navy on the national security implications of climate change concluded:
Based on recent peer-reviewed scientific literature, the Department of the Navy should expect roughly 0.4 to 2 meters global average sealevel rise by 2100, with a most likely value of about 0.8 meter. Projections of local sea-level rise could be much larger and should be taken into account for naval planning purposes,
12/ Kina Grannis with "In Your Arms", a nice song well sung by the young lady, but look at the stop motion video special effects.......most unusual......
13/ High end real estate is doing very nicely, thank you.......this is an interesting story about Indian Creek in Miami......
IN the world of high-end real estate, it can be tough for other cities to keep up with Manhattan and Beverly Hills, with all the star power and headlines generated by 20-something heiresses paying more than $80 million apiece for trophy homes — a kind of bicoastal battle of blank-check buyers.
But don’t count out South Florida. The high-end market in Miami-Dade County may not have a Petra Ecclestone or Ekaterina Rybolovleva jetting in to spend money from her billionaire father, but its selling environment, once synonymous with bust, is seeing signs of a boom again.
Two weeks ago, a penthouse owned by Alex Birkenstock (from the German shoe company loved by the hippie crowd) sold for $25 million, a record apartment sale, to an Italian who controls an investment company. In recent days, a developer’s 10-bedroom home on the exclusive Indian Creek Island, listed for $52 million, went into contract to a foreign buyer, brokers said. The price was not disclosed.
If that deal closes, it will very likely top the post-bubble record for a residential property sale in Miami-Dade County, currently held by Edward Lampert, a hedge-fund billionaire, who bought a house on Indian Creek in March for $38.4 million, brokers said.
“Everything is kind of selling now,” said Jill Hertzberg, one half of “The Jills,” a broker duo for Coldwell Banker in Miami who are co-listing the 10-bedroom home, at 3 Indian Creek Drive, which features a “7-limo-size” garage.
“You wonder how long it will last,” Ms. Hertzberg said.
The pending sale on Indian Creek — home to Julio Iglesias and Norman Braman, a billionaire art collector and former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles — is the latest in a string of homes and lots that have sold on the island over the last three months. All of the sales have been over $10 million, and most have been by longtime residents acquiring neighboring properties.
14/ They have been advertising the hell out of "Snow White and the Huntsman", but as this review says it looks really good, an intelligent and exciting "Lord-of-the-rings-ish" movie.....
I’m not sure this counts as a spoiler of anything other than Universal’s sleek and seductive marketing campaign — which has properly emphasized crows, swords and Charlize Theron’s hair — but there are actually some dwarfs in the new movie “Snow White and the Huntsman.” The small fellows who befriend the exiled princess here are nothing like the grumpy, sneezy, dopey guys you remember from the Disney version. The actors who play them (including Ian McShane, Eddie Marsan, Ray Winstone and the great Bob Hoskins, all digitally shrunken) might otherwise have been assembled for a nasty little Cockney gangster film. These dwarfs are industrious, but they don’t whistle while they work. Their most memorable song is a haunting dirge performed at the funeral pyre of a fallen comrade. So take note: There is nothing cute about this movie.
And that feels right. There is something exciting about how seriously “Snow White and the Huntsman” takes its themes. Most of the fairy tales that have become fixtures of modern popular culture — including those, like “Snow White,”published by the Brothers Grimm in the early 19th century — emerged from the dark, violent folk landscape of early modern Europe. They are fables of innocence, but also of terror, dense with superstition and sexual anxiety. Walt Disney’s justly beloved 1937 animated feature, though it has some spooky, gothic visual touches, expelled most of the demons and turned the heroine into an emblem of chaste and cheerful domestic normalcy. Since then, Hollywood fairy tales have mainly tacked between wide-eyed romanticism and winking self-consciousness.
Good trailer.......spooky......
Todays video - a classic, Robin Williams on golf.....warning, salty language.....
Todays retiree joke
They look at each other and then go in, thinking, this is too good to be true.
The old bartender says in a voice that carries across the room, "Come on in and let me pour one for you!! What'll it be, gentlemen?"
There's a fully stocked bar, so each of the men orders a martini. In no time the bartender serves up four iced martinis-shaken, not stirred, and says, "That'll be 10 cents each, please."
The four guys stare at the bartender for a moment, then at each other. They can't believe their good luck. They pay the 40 cents, finish their martinis, and order another round.
Again, four excellent martinis are produced, with the bartender again saying, "That's 40 cents, please." They pay the 40 cents, but their curiosity gets the better of them. They've each had two martinis and haven't even spent a dollar yet.
Finally one of them says, "How can you afford to serve martinis as good as these for a dime apiece?"
"I'm a retired tailor from Phoenix," the bartender says, "and I always wanted to own a bar. Last year I hit the Lottery jackpot for $125 million and decided to open this place. Every drink costs a dime.
Wine, liquor, beer - it's all the same."
"Wow! That's some story!" one of the men says.
As the four of them sip at their martinis, they can't help noticing seven other people at the end of the bar who don't have any drinks in front of them and haven't ordered anything the whole time they've been there.
Nodding at the seven at the end of the bar, one of the men asks the bartender, "What's with them?"
The bartender says, "They're retired people from Florida. They're waiting for Happy Hour when drinks are half-price."
Todays rude British jokes
My neighbour knocked on my door at 2:30am this morning.
Can you believe that - 2:30am?!
Luckily for him I was still up playing my Bagpipes.
I sat on the train this morning opposite a stunning Thai girl.
I kept thinking to myself, please don't get an erection, please don't
The Grim Reaper came for me last night, and I beat him off with a vacuum
cleaner.
F*ck me, talk about Dyson with death....
Did you hear about the fat alcoholic transvestite?
All he wanted to do was eat, drink and be Mary.
Paddy says "Mick, I'm thinking of buying a labrador."
The operator says how do you know?
A man walks into a Welsh pub and orders a white wine spritzer.
He says "The sex is the same but the ironing is building up!
I was in bed with a blind girl last night and she said that I had the
biggest p*nis she had ever laid her hands on.
I said "You're pulling my leg"
The bar goes silent as everyone stares at him..."Where are you from?
fine until he stuck his index finger up my arse!
You sound English", "I'm from across the Severn," replies the man
nervously.
"What do you do, just across the Severn?",
"I'm a taxidermist."
"What on earth is one of those?",
"I mount animals."
"Its alright boys," shouts the barman "he's one of us".
Spent £40 on ebay last week for a p*nis enlarger.
Just opened it and some bastard's sent me a magnifying glass!
I saw a poor old lady fall over today on the ice!!
At least I presume she was poor - she only had £1.20 in her purse.
An old lady is being examined by the Dr. He asks have you ever been
bedridden?
She says yes I have and I've been table ended and backskuttled a few
times too....
Went for my routine check up today and everything seemed to be going
Do you think I should change dentists?
Todays oldies joke
