This Minnesota><New York thing is getting old.
Not an April Fool’s joke (yet)
Leave a Comment
Monthly Archives: March 2009
A late post three hours in the making
Listening to NPR in the car I had a sudden violent urge to maim the Talk of the Nation announcer (it makes no difference which one) for laughing when Ted Koppel said that Social Security was no more guaranteed than GM’s pensions. (See also the NYTimes giving a free op-ed to a friend of Rick Wagoner’s).
Speaking as someone who finds it truly amazing that Gross Pointe hasn’t been burned to the ground yet by angry out-of-work Detroiters, this was a store-for-later-reference item. Just like when Chris Farrell and all the Saturday morning NPR money show people laughed contemptuously last fall when callers asked what happened to all the money that used to be in the stock market. (“What part of ‘gone’ don’t they understand, Chris?”)
Mick is now playing at being conciliatory me, finding solace in a Salon article about the economy even as I listen to the radio dumbfounded by a media that seems sincerely clueless as to the bottom line. The bottom line is this motherfuckers: pay out 100% on Social Security or plan on retiring to a foreign country far from the smouldering ruins of the former United States of America.
If Boomers don’t find Social Security waiting for them as promised, some of those 47 billion guns residing in this country will be put to use, and Villagers shouldn’t assume for one frickin’ moment that the National Guard will be on their side.
When did our privileged fucks start thinking stolen pensions are just a joke? The late ’60s were about revolution, not putting our heads together because the establishment wasn’t into compromise. We came close again in the early ’80s, closer than most people realize. A revolution doesn’t take a two-thirds vote or even 51%. A revolution just takes a few thousand people with guns, some other weapons and a clue what do with them and suddenly you’ve got some serious shit on your hands.
It doesn’t have to be the hard right or the hard left, but between those two factions there’s no shortage of people who know how to shut down the system. Give it a couple more months and if the Villagers and their enabling media don’t figure out it’s time to STFU or die, nasty shit will start up.
It won’t be from hungry people, or people tired of living without electricity. It will come from people who are tired of being laughed at, tired of being told that their spokesperson is some jerkwad plumber’s helper from the Doücheburg province of Ohio. People who don’t think their local media cares about their issues. People who think the entire world has turned against them and, to the extent that it’s devolving into a dog eat dog world, they’re right.
I’d like Obama to succeed, but I won’t cry if some morning I wake up and the power’s off and in the distance I see columns of smoke coming from all directions.
What Obama cannot make whole, others might just burn down.
That’s the bottom line.
This shit ain’t funny and the media whores need to bury that nervous laughter where the mics don’t go.
—™—
Chris Cillizza on Sarah Palin.
Palin’s Deceptions has a new post up, but it looks like they’re hunkering down for the long haul now, analyzing teenagers’ Facebook entries and doing interminable guessing as they slowly keep gathering the evidence that will eventually form a noose suitable for a GILF.
Still more from TBogg.
—™—
From The Daily Glean:
St. Paul’s plan to block alleged gang members from Cinco de Mayo gets lots of press, even if it isn’t the greatest ad for the fest. The city claims the Sureno 13 gang is the fastest-growing in the city, notes KARE’s John Croman, and identified 10 people who can’t associate with each other in the West Side area. The PiPress’ Dave Orrick is dubious, noting the seven adults lack extensive criminal histories (three others are juveniles). The ACLU says the move violates freedom of assembly; Croman notes lefty DFLers disagree. MPR’s Brandt Williams says a judge will hear arguments April 24.
But they’ll probably get away with it because the only political organization in this country to the right of the Republican party on civil liberties is the DFL. It takes a very special kind of fascist person to waive due process, and both parties are jampacked with exactly that kind of mentality.
Robo call me if you disagree.
—™—
Pennsylvania’s Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. just had his political future handed back to him on a spike by a federal judge.
Maybe in the future this ambulatory clusterfuck will refrain from filing child porn charges against teens who photograph themselves.
But I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we can get this D.A. to stop touching himself at work.
—™—
Home growing tips via TBogg.
—™—
I’m not sure I understand why the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on a $150 million judgment against Philip Morris, but my first guess would be that the justices have all managed to clean the tobacco stocks out of their personal portfolios.
—™—
I’ll just go with Scott Horton’s headline on this one: Cheney’s Snuff Squad.
—™—
Some states will drop a restraining order on a guy just because (MA). Others just let your ex-husband murder your children because who can tell in these things (IL)?
In this one matter I’m willing to be a moderate as both extremes seem to be heavily into the FAIL.
—™—
Can we just agree on one thing?
If you don’t pay taxes and you have any kind of income north of six digits annually, twenty years isn’t too long to spend in prison.
If shower room rapes are good enough for pot dealers, don’t you think it’s past time we tried imprisoning our tax cheats?
Name me one argument used to keep our drug laws intact that doesn’t apply to tax cheats. Because in case you hadn’t noticed, all the scumbags who got their tax burden lowered through trickery, just went on to employing more and more trickery.
Off with their heads and yes, you can take that literally if you like.
—™—
Wyatt Mason doesn’t use the word hermeneutics, but that’s what he’s talking about when he writes about “close reading.”
I don’t need a movie critic to tell me if a movie’s good or bad, but a good movie critic knows better than I do why a movie sucks (or works).
Not sure why Mason got so ticked about someone who thought they could “review” a work and then pass it off as criticism, but Mason’s right: criticism is about more than your feelings, and yes, you do have to show your work when you turn in your critique.
In other close readings, be warned that black hat websites are googlebombing the net trying to lure suckers into downloading tax forms from malware sites. If you’re on a PC don’t even think about clicking on any tax site you don’t trust absolutely.
—™—
Tied up with a client today but rather than skip over the usual links, here they are batched by blog:
BALLOON JUICE (at times easily the slowest loading blog I link to is absolutely completely dead today, not a glimmer of life in a dozen attempts to load the site — BJ, now 100% worse than FDL for excruciatingly slow page loads)(finally loaded only an hour after my first attempt):
The notion that Republicans are good, upstanding God-fearing Amurkins while Democrats are left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers plays an important role in America’s official political discourse.
John Cole on the Wagoner freak out
HULLABALOO:
dday on Villagers sharpening their knives as they contemplate our Social Security
Tristero on Cheney and Digby on the sergeant who’s getting 35 years for thinking he was Cheney too
Digby on the ongoing train wreck that is California
FIREDOGLAKE:
Blue Texan on a sighting of what could be the world’s most massive display of cognitive dissonance ever
Jane echoing my theme du jour:
As Kagro notes, looks like there’s another bullshit swing at the “Social Security’s in crisis” theme in today’s Washington Post. You know what? Good. We tried hard to stop Social Security from being cut when its head was on the chopping block last time, but I don’t think I’d do it again. If they want to cut Social Security benefits, let ‘em. As Glenn Greenwald says, there’s not enough anger out there — not by a long shot.
If they think they can get away with cutting Social Security benefits right now, let ‘em. Maybe it’s just what we need.
Poor? Fuck you!
Bush EEOC violated its own rules
Emptywheel on why Wagoner got fired
MnINDY:
Equal marriage dies in MN lege because DFL hasn’t been in Democratic hands for decades now, and gay marriage just isn’t working for the corporate types or the rural yahoos (and the gutless “liberals” won’t put anything up for a vote unless they’re guaranteed victory in advance)
Schmelzer on our totally altered absolutely non-binding right to sue (maybe)
New sitcom might just be the parody we’ve all been waiting for
Demko on fighting back [bonus pic]
Chris Steller on the latest national press corps Bachmann WTFing
DAILY KOS:
Kos doesn’t mince words when it comes to his 2006 BFF, Jack Murtha (I was a little less enthusiastic then, and not as much in a hurry to convict now)
DemFromCT on Health Care Tuesday
Jed Lewison on Fox’s Ministry of Information
COUNTY FAIR (mostly video links):
Limbaugh quotes Rand on slaves and masters
The Red Scare Index (I haven’t been linking to this but simply put it’s a list of how often major news media mention socialism, communism or Marxism, and Fox News wins every day)
When the Khmer Rouge do it, it’s torture
Limbaugh: “We are Venezuela in the early years” (I wish!)
Two of the unhinged step back from the abyss and ask Malkin, WTF?
Boehlert on Kurtz on Kurtz (Jamison Foser with more on Howie the Whore)
Hannity, Hannity, Hannity (Chindrool Incorporated)
—™—
Very small hail just now and then it let up, followed by light rain.
Better than the snow (long gone) we started with this morning. This is “Iowa weather.” Thanks to global warming the shitty weather I lived through in Des Moines in the ’70s has moved north to the Twin Cities.
Canada — you’re next.
But are they Zombie Frankenegros?
Nothing like a link in from Mike Finnegan to improve my notorious mood(s). That and posting while listening to piano jazz this morning gave a nasty Monday a churchy sorta vibe. Finding an extra six hundred readers in the stats took the edge off a damp and mostly gray day.
Listening to some NPR jackass do a segment on sports marketing that was essentially a long infomercial for one of the more ethically challenged forms of blaxploitation erased the bonus readership glow and if I weren’t moked sup right now I’d probably e bpissed.
Yet my good mood persists. Checking the “junk” folder on Mail helped.
I have no spam and I think it’s about time to share my secret with you. This isn’t a freebie thing, my solution will cost you money. And I don’t guarantee you won’t get spam, just that it will be completely controllable by the service that hosts your new domain.
Yep, you need to register a domain. You can’t use an old one because the key to this is to never use the domain other than for email. I’m not sure how long I’ve been doing this now, but it’s been at least three years and I have yet to get a single junk email on this account. Bear in mind that I also don’t use this account for online shopping, leaving comments, or any other cyber activity. I use gmail for that stuff. This is a domain just for personal email, and that’s all it’s for. Think about it. You too could be the proud owner of the email address mail@fuckspam1.com. Ivant2suckyourdick@belafructose.com is also available, as is groommypits@lilytomlinshair.com and goatselikkin@copraphragtastic.com.
Not to mention livingwithmyaunt@itsnotsarahpalinsbaby.com or gimmetongue@joebidensbigmouth.com. If you have trouble coming up with a unique domain name, I’ve got plentymoreofthem.com
I’m also amazed that none of my friends on PCs have gotten virused into giving up their email addresses in recent years. In years past I was constantly getting plague-mail from clients and friends. Except for the client who recently Nigerianed my gmail account from London, I haven’t seen much spam for a while (other than the 1000/month my gmail account filters). I guess having a PC means you either get smarter about that stuff or your online life dies. Or you get email dysfunction or modem’s disease or something.
)|(
Here are all the links I found since my last post. Twice picked, peeled and depitted:
Election tomorrow in upstate New York and the 9/11 ads are running tonight! (Because all Democrats heart Osama bin Laden and want to have his burqa-wearing babies)
Boston Globe rats out Charles E.F. Millard big time
Freaky deaky, enraged, spastic frankenegros in the comments at Newsbusters
Dougie Feith put on notice to get himself a “very good lawyer” [Feith was the "W" of White House advisers. And without dwelling on the past, let's just say Feith wasn't cast as the talking end of Mr. Ed in the school play.]
HTF has Elliot Abrams remained at large this long?
Is mass murder no longer newsworthy? (just to be clear I’m talking dead Americans here, not some dirty stinking furriners)
File under shit to do after the economy stops giving birth to black holes
After we’re really in charge this shit will stop, right? Or will this just keep playing itself out until the average guy’s sperm kills bacteria, viruses and ova on sight? [Why that shit keeps happening]
Being a weenie really is part of the business plan
This will live on like George Washington’s cherry tree
But it will take some work to keeps stories like this one alive (frankenegros indeed)
I’m not saying this isn’t a good idea, but how exactly is it that police now have the right to ban specific groups of people from public events?
I’d love to vote for someone for Mayor of St. Paul who doesn’t robocall me, but so far I’m not liking the choices, Ng uh
Yet another chapter of Pigs in Space! [When last we left Mick he had a Wege-like rage-on in progress....]
Posted for emetic purposes only [•]
Former presidents, royalty, televangelists and now even deposed newspaper columnists do the public circuit
Food and lowering (prices)
Here’s a picture I took of the strip mall across the street at 12:05 today, Monday, March 30. Note where the cars are all parked. The empty right end of the parking lot is where you park to go to Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery. The left end is where you park for the crappy Vietnamese restaurant or the gas station/convenience store. (How crappy? They use processed chicken rolls [tubes] for their stir fry!)
Over the past year or so smart restauranteurs have been holding the line on prices, if not making cuts. Asian restaurants were, by and large, among the smarter ones. Bruegger’s met the challenge of a failing economy by 1) pushing non-bagel sandwiches and soups, 2) raising all their prices, 3) flogging phony overpriced coffee drinks.
I think this very typical picture of their parking lot at lunchtime speaks directly to the succeess of their customer-gouging prices and clueless menu changes. Yes, even as I type this it’s closer to 12:30 and the right end of the lot is getting fuller, but there’s also a lot of foot traffic from the right to the left end of the mall, so maybe Bruegger’s execs should give their upscale strategy another think through.
Single pray-er
Hot on the heels of the annual spring readership drop off, lots of blogs are light on posts this morning as even bloggers emerge from their caves to blink at the sun and marvel at little hints of greenery emerging from beneath the moldy scum left by expiring snowbanks.
Only I remain true to my troth, wedded to my screen all weekend, successfully remaining pantless all day/night Sunday. Life is for people who can’t afford broadband.
|
Rex watched a vapid computer virus story on 60 Minutes last night. I saw it too and his take is whatever young people say now when they mean right on. (And anymore I’m not sure Rex knows either, Sorgatz having gotten considerably older over the years).
Real publications publish whether it’s spring outside or whatever. In These Times has a pair of good reads, David Moberg on CEO compensation, and Joel Bleifuss on two words I never thought I’d see in the same headline: Israel and divestment. Granted, lefties have all the ability to impact Israel’s economy that righteous teenagers enjoy when they decide to boycott Colonial Penn for ripping off seniors on life insurance, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless.
|
Glenn Smith skips the tedious debate over making America the Beautiful the new national anthem in lieu of the unsingable Star Spangled Banner, and suggest we go with some truth in advertising and begin warbling Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Sixteen Tons before ball games. A nation heavily in debt could do worse.
|
Is California proof that the GOoP is reform-proof? Should genuine conservatives give up on the Party of Lincoln and work to make Libertarians a little less um, head-up-their-ass-tastic? And when will California get around to passing a law forbidding their schools from buying any science textbooks authorized by the Texas School Board? In return maybe Texas could retaliate by pledging not to buy any Bibles endorsed by the Marin County Democratic Central Committee.
|
Sometimes it helps your argument if you don’t mention what it is you’re talking about. In fact, this would be a helpful strategy for certain bloggers as well.
Sometimes the more you know, the dumber teh dumb gets.
|
Google is partnering with music companies to promote free music downloads in China. Apparently what’s considered theft everywhere else is simply good marketing when it comes to the world’s biggest repository of consumers. [While in nearby Korea the government is about to blow up the world's most successful internet system in a chuckleheaded display of corporatist fealty.]
RIAA apparently wasn’t bluffing when they said they were changing strategies. Still, just to play it safe, I don’t think I’ll be uploading any Britney boots [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] under my own name anytime soon. [Btw, when Pepsi does that, it's called an ad. When I do it, pederasty vigilantes send me e-warnings because sane people know fetish gear on jailbait when they see it.]
|
This is the guy some folks were pushing for veep?
|
Financial industry bashing:
Simon Johnson in The Atlantic [long]
PW on budget reconciliation [short]
Eric Boehlert on Krugman/Newsweek [just right]
|
Deep thoughts:
Funny people pick up on funny words
You can’t be too careful who you pray with (God doesn’t approve of praying with the uncool kids)
WWIII would of course be the most appropriate response level in matters as grave as this
|
Good things:
Josh on Kindle (best user review I’ve seen)
Intelligence exists independent of superstition
|
Listening to lots of live Brad Mehldau and Keith Jarrett this morning and yes, jazz piano can get quite classical sounding at times.
[cue young people grumbling about old people and jazz]
Fuck the Strib & the investors they’re sucking up to
After raising seventeen kinds of hell each and every time the Strib, PiPress or MPR mentioned Michael Brodkorb without putting his activities/quotes in the context of his Republican campaign involvements, the local news outlets finally, grudgingly, began to put mentions of Brodkorb’s party paychecks into their stories.
Now Dusty Trice is doing EXACTLY WHAT BRODKORB DID and the Strib’s first mention of a story from Dusty mentions his Franken employment in the subhead. Worse, instead of focusing on the story (Republican hypocrite with TWO DWIs sponsoring DWI crackdown measure) Jim Foti (probably with the assistance of his heavy-handed editors) goes on to mention Trice three times by name (and once by description), and Franken twice.
The new standard is so noted and duly recorded. All future references of Michael “[Goddamned fucking] Minnesota Democrats Exposed” Brodkorb will now be accompanied by the names of politicians he worked for (Norm Coleman, Mark Kennedy, etc.), right?
Right?
And seriously dudes, clean up your comments. The misanthropy is thick enough in there to cut with a spoon (they don’t let you have knives when you’re writing from an institution).
Again, keywords on this are John Thune, bloggers, local newspapers made fools of.
({•})
Like buddy Vick and his wife right now, or my youngest brother and his family a week ago, Jon Tevlin went to Mexico and somehow failed to run into the drug war. (Strip searches on this side of the border don’t count.)
I drove through the jungles of the Yucatan and the scariest thing I saw was an unhinged child named Connor who insisted on diving off the swim-up bar in Cancun.
The WoD words are getting scarier and scarier as the clock runs out on the civil liberties nazis and their fucking Abu Ghraib-trained drug-sniffing dogs. Tevlin does get serious, but in a serious way that reveals the real problems plaguing Mexico:
“The border area is not really Mexico or the U.S. It is a political, economic and social distortion of the two countries caused by the corruption and violence,” said an American living in Mexico, who blamed political expediency — and the failure to honestly discuss legalizing drugs — on both sides of the border.
Legalizing drugs would save lives, but our drug warriors like their Mexicans like they like their hippies — dead.
({•})
Today’s NYTimes:
Paul Krugman on America the Tarnished
Lurid details about a successful Democratic lobbyist [yes, we need stories like this one, but how long since the Times mentioned Abramoff? (until this article, that is, not unlike the DOJ blind-eye-for-Republican-corruption investigators turned loose on Dems)]
A big sloppy blowjob of an article on Glenn Beck (Will Bunch’s rebuttal here)
An editorial on our overcrowded prisons (in which Republicans are demographically underrepresented)
Today’s Washington Post:
Obama pushes GM head out, markets crash (fear of accountability)
U.S. soldier convicted for executing four Iraqis
Post reluctantly acknowledges growing support for normalization of Cuban relations
Howie the Whore on Fox (don’t worry, he drags in Maddow and Olbermann to keep everything fair and balanced)
Chicago Tribune:
Child suicides (one 10-year-old and two 11-year-olds in the last year)
“Cell phones make people walk stupid”
A decent article on writing effective resumes (but do not EVER use a functional format, don’t be afraid to crowd in more information [two pages IS OK] and remember that half of all advice offered is absolutely inapplicable and/or moronic)
Dawn Turner Trice on the passing of a black historian
Leftover links from the weekend:
Seymour Hersh says O ended Israel’s throttling of Gaza
PUMA rears its ugly, er, um, yeah
Sam Pizzigati on hedgefund management compensation
Des Moines Register:
Homeless man injured in shanty fire
Four-year wait for mental health services in Des Moines
({•)}
Goatse item dividers courtesy of Ikea. (Because Swedes have no clue as to what’s appropriate for a family-oriented shopping & nature tips blog like Norwegianity.)
Sunday afternoon pipe cleaning
Accidentally closed one of my RSS folders and didn’t notice I was backlogged on several feeds. It’s not easy to build up 100 unread Waxy links, but here are the best of what I hadn’t already seen elsewhere:
SelfControl: Mac software that locks you out of your email and other addictive apps
Painting yourself having sex with all the POTUSes
Proof that the first net gen is now older than dirt
Satanic game remix lets you go Repus Oiram
Norwegianity, of course, comes to you from MTMsota
The best caper story you’ve read in months
I wish I’d seen this video before downloading the album last night
Apparently Twilight smelled for reasons completely unknown to me
More links (swiped from other bloggers):
Branded community works (brilliant!)
A quick recap on how that capitalism thing is working out
Revisiting the KBR money pit
Mad Dog Blog explains Twitter to the three remaining people who are fuzzy on the concept
Local review of the Brother Ali tour
Steny Hoyer, Howard Berman, Ike Skelton, Silvestre Reyes, Henry Waxman, Gary Ackerman, and Robert Wexler — all in the bag for Israel
True stories from Lake Wobegon County (name change pending)
The first blogger on our new dark age
Downbarring (barloading?)
And a friggin’ PSA (because I promised):
And more just because:
Transcript of the relevant portions of the BJ deposition
Will the RNC decide that Norm is too kazeminy-active for them?
On the local front yet another DFLer shows her true colors by trying to lower minimum wage for tipped workers. If this kind of crap is part of the DFL’s big tent, it’s no wonder Minnesota gets by without a meaningful opposition party. Like a hermaphroditic toy store owner, the DFL is whatever it needs to be to keep those campaign donations rolling in.
Sawed up for parts
Everything’s happening at SXSW, including the unveiling of the latest in scare talk about music downloads. This thing of ours is now called “the Darknet.” Ooooooh — scary!
Long story short, the record companies haven’t died yet, and insist on holding everyone else hostage as they do a long, hammy farewell in which they invoke your mother, her apple pie, all the times they had sex with your mom’s apple pie, the American way of having sex with apple pie, the perils of instant gratification (free pie) and endless choice (lots of free pie). The latter two being the pies in the ointment.
“Social networks always start in anarchy,” said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America. But he warns that if property rights aren’t respected and laws are being broken, the government will have to crack down and impose a new form of Web “tyranny.”
When the government starts putting the screws on rogue Internet traffickers, “You won’t be able to get on the network unless you have total identification,” including finger-printing and complete background information, Carnes asserted.
The anonymity afforded by the Internet “deprives [songwriters] of the ability to make a living,” he said. “We’re on the frontier of this issue. How we solve it will define the future of democracy.”
Indeed, in Carnes’ vision of Web Apocalypse, the government will be enlisted to preserve copyright law with the type of Draconian measures reserved for police states.
BOO!
I told you so.
[Btw, Rick Carnes is NOT work safe — unless you work in a gay adult bookstore]
|\¬…_
Former Laura Bush flack Andrew Malcolm cheerfully rounds up some clerical wankers and then wallows in some vintage religious intolerance.
More strong talk from a religion that didn’t illegalize abortion until 1869 when Pope Pius IX suddenly decided to reverse 1800 years of Catholic precedent as the church went from ignoring abortion to making it a mortal sin punishable by excommunication. Which would be just fine but even then they refuse to shut the fuck up about it.
I guess when you fail at every other task Christ gave you (ending war, fighting poverty, promoting social justice, eradicating famine, et al), all that’s left is terrorizing poor women and teenaged girls into complete and total submission. (Funny how grace is for the [straight] guys, but women are expected to play by Sha’ria rules.)
Read Digby on Compromise.
|\¬…_
Hot on the heels of DiFi’s egregious straddle, the L.A. Times regurgitates some lies and calls for card check to be defeated.
Because what’s the fun in having money if everyone gets to have some?
This bill does NOT take away the secret ballot. The L.A. Times knows that, but repeats the lie because it’s all they’ve got. All this bill does is ensure that employers and employees are playing by the same rules. Employers don’t need an election to decertify a union, and the unions want the same rules for the certification process.
Or employers could give up card check decertifications. I’m cool either way, but if you go the latter route you have to hold new elections for all the unions that have been decertified by this out of balance process.
|\¬…_
Worried about Afghanistan? Don’t be. As it stands you barely have enough time to bone up on Pakistan before that Bushbomb goes off like an unmonitored volcano.
|\¬…_
Is the appropriate response to bad banking behavior citizen action? AKA a run on the banks?
If it brings about nationalization, I’m all for it. All economic evil flows from letting banks make money from manipulating money. A bank should be a quiet place, not a greasily managed neon signaged racino with L*I*V*E • M*O*D*E*L*S and private rooms.
Actually, I’m all for any mass actions that would send a strong signal to Congress that they’re off-course. When the cops seize the loot from a hold up and return it to the bank, it’s not called “redistribution of wealth.”
Could we pretty please try to return some of the stolen money now? Please? Or do we have to take down the Bank of America to prove we’re serious?
|\¬…_
No Congressional investigation into the Aristide coup yet, but more media attention to the wretched conditions in Haiti won’t hurt.
|\¬…_
GOoPers acting out.
|\¬…_
Small towns paying the piper for GOoPer follies.
|\¬…_
Libertarian payback. (They’re not all in the bag for GOoPerism.)
|\¬…_
Al Giordano is my canary in the Obama mines. Judging by Al’s latest post, I’d say Obama understands he was overly flippant and that part of his long-term social agenda just got a leg up.
Government that locks up its citizens for petty offenses is not government that inspires unity. Our country cannot be strong again until our right hand stops trying to saw off our left hand.
United we stand, sawed up for parts we won’t get anything done which is, I guess, the whole point of the rightwing divide and argue approach to problem solving. Banding together to fight mutual problems? Well, OK — but only so long as everyone’s white.
|\¬…_
When the guy who shot you is unconditionally released from jail with an apology, does that mean you have to give back the Medal of Valor you got for knocking his door down and terrorizing his family?
When the cops apologize to someone who never played in the NFL, you know they must have done something wrong.
|\¬…_
Fox News, riding shotgun for Arctic Cat’s favorite GILF.
|\¬…_
Spain: fighting for freedom long after we fell down on the job.
|\¬…_
Is Gaza ready for non-violent resistance? And can Israel’s rabid rabbis encourage the IDF to hold its fire in the face of non-violence?
I suspect the Middle East is about to get its own Tiananmen Square.
|\¬…_
Larry Kudlow left speechless by Sheila Bair.
|\¬…_
Because six major media cartels is too many.
|\¬…_
Shit. Wasn’t fast enough with the camera and missed getting a shot of the first tall bike of spring. Not to be confused with the last tall bike of winter, the mass rides of summer or the costumed ride bys of fall.
Settle instead for a last laugh.
Snarkcore Moldovenesc
The UpTake tweets that volunteers and Guard personnel filled over 3 million sandbags in just 7 days up in the Red River Valley. Had the private sector been in charge this would have required at least half a dozen executive vice presidents, an overcompensated CEO, and lots and lots of bonuses.
Isn’t it funny how you never hear people talking about the pre-eminent unsurpassed parasuperlative mega gobsmacked brilliance of the ever resourceful always more efficient paradigm-enhancing gods of capitalistic virtue — the private sector — anymore?
One of my tests for Obama will be how he handles natural disasters. I won’t be impressed if he finds it necessary to fly over the flooding. When it comes to Mother Nature, senior executives should stay very far away as they just get in the way. (see Bush, George W.)
•=—·—=•
Banks get away with underpaying tellers because banks have elaborate security systems and keep a very tight handle on their cash on hand. Casinos have the same issues but compensate by creating phenomenal tipping opportunities that make the jobs more lucrative (and they also have Death Star level security technologies employed).
So it’s not surprising that the state lottery people, the folks responsible for targeting gambling ads to the lower and middle classes, totally fucking nailed five dirtbag losers in the lottery’s first ever compliance check.
Undercover agents would ask clerks to verify the specially constructed crossword game scratch-offs as winners. The prizes ranged from $7,000 to $21,000.
“Our goal was to find out how people would handle those tickets, and what instructions they would give,” said John Willems, director of alcohol and gambling enforcement for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, which had agents help with the sting.
Lottery tickets worth more than $600 must be verified and cashed in at lottery headquarters — which is what the clerks were supposed to tell the undercover agents. But a few are accused of saying the tickets were losers and offering to toss them. Those clerks then tried pocketing the winnings by cashing the tickets at lottery headquarters themselves, sometimes by using an accomplice.
Fewer than 3 percent of the clerks involved in the sting violated the law.
Five retail clerks getting paid less than $10 an hour in a part-time setting with no benefits and lousy working conditions took the bait.
The people responsible for promoting gambling among the state’s poor and struggling must be very, very proud of themselves. Welcome to life in Minnesota under Gov. BridgeFAIL. You can play it straight if you like, but sooner or later they’ll find the right bait and your ass will end up in jail.
Next up: the BCI goes trawling for hookers in a trailer park with some fishing line and a hundred dollar bill.
But if you get caught taking $5,000 suits from Iranian businessmen, it’s either a misunderstanding or, as a last high priced legal resort, entrapment. This country exists for the convenience of good people only, and no, you don’t get to help decide who’s good or bad.
•=—·—=•
Opinuendo seems to have been cleaning up their act a bit of late, but this bothered me:
Last weekend, speaking to a conservative station in the Twin Cities, Bachmann was encouraging people to attend an event aimed at fighting “cap-and-trade”‘ approaches to addressing global warming. She argued that these proposals will greatly reduce the U.S. standard of living, and she added: “The science indicates that human activity is not the cause of all of this global warming, and that, in fact, nature is the cause, with solar flares, etcetera.”
Of the meeting, she said: “I am going to have materials for them when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on the issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and we the people are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.”
The heck with bipartisanship. Viva la revolución!
They give their corporatist agenda away every time. Congresswoman Bachmann is by any reckoning a counter-revolutionary. Saluting her as a Cuban/Banana Republican revolutionary is bullshit propaganda from the rightwing weenies who write Opinuendo. They slap down their out-of-line own by calling them out as lefties.
Yes, in their opinuendo I’m sure that’s as nasty an insult as they can come up with, but it’s still a double slam on both the right and the left from the smirking frat boy logicians at the PiPress. The worst part? I doubt they even realized what they were doing, so unconscious is the spin that governs their weltanschnauurk.
•=—·—=•
Jim Tedisco must be in deep, deep shit in the race to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in upstate New York because the NYTimes just dumped AIG on Scott Murphy’s head.
The NYTimes’ political skullduggery would be much easier to take if only the braindead right didn’t keep squawking about how liberal the newspaper of Ross Douthat is.
The NYTimes also gives a full airing to Israel’s claims that their own soldiers are lying about war crimes in Gaza.
Israel is pushing back against accusations of civilian abuse in its Gaza war, asserting that an overwhelming majority of its soldiers acted honorably and that the account of a killing of a woman and her two children appears to be an urban myth spread by troops who did not witness it.
Officers are stepping forward, some at the urging of the top command, others on their own, offering numerous accounts of having held their fire out of concern for civilians, helping Palestinians in need and punishing improper soldier behavior.
“I’m not saying that nothing bad happened,” Bentzi Gruber, a colonel in the reserves and deputy commander of the armored division, said in an interview. “I heard about cases where people shot where they shouldn’t have shot and destroyed houses where they shouldn’t have destroyed houses. But the proportion and effort and directions we gave to our soldiers were entirely in the opposite direction.”
Because the officers (CEOs) are always in charge, and they’re totally focused on following all the rules all the time.
Always, with liberty and justice for all. Amen.
•=—·—=•
How can you tell when an award-winning high school experiences an influx of urban values? A. They bring in the drug-sniffing dogs.
Because in New Jersey you don’t strip search the rich kids. And because the local wingnuts were getting out of control:
On Jan. 9 a local minister, the Rev. Darryl L. George, 58, of Short Hills, was arrested at the school along with two of his sons, accused of attacking a Millburn High student in a school parking lot. Some witnesses said the victim, an 18-year-old senior who received minor injuries, was hit with a baseball bat. That encounter resulted in assault charges against the minister and his older son, and the suspension of his 15-year-old son, a student at the school.
Most of the article cites drinking and not drugs. You can always count on the bourgeoisie to police themselves and turn in their own kids if need be. How else can you possibly maintain your property values in these trying times?
•=—·—=•
Strategies for improving producer-to-consumer relationships, de-emphasizing the middle men.
It’s past time farmers pulled their reactionary heads out of their traditional asses and did this kind of outreach. And given some time and a positive response, we might start seeing rural rednecked signs replaced by webcams and a better appreciation for their ultimate customers.
American farmers have been in bed with corporate America for a good hundred years now, and still they can’t seem to make the connection between their price support Depends™ and the assfucking they get everytime they sell their crops.
•=—·—=•
Only in America do we allow race horses to die with more dignity than we afford human beings.
•=—·—=•
The thing that grates most about the Bushies is that even when their bagmen were totally flagrante, no one could do a damned thing about it because the DOJ and their state-based cronies sat on everything.
Again, much of the reason why Obama hasn’t charged forward on many issues is because our government is riddled with bitter enders, Bushies who’ve burrowed deep within our judiciary system so they can sandbag and obstruct any efforts at rooting out corruption.
If these judges are not convicted and sentenced to death, then that’s all the proof we need that the death penalty is culturally biased and unConstitutional. What these men did was in no way morally distinguishable from the buying and selling of human chattel.
Then again, maybe they thought this was the preferred way to go — given the truly old school traditions regarding juveniles.
•=—·—=•
Prop 8 financier Howard Ahmanson just switched political parties, and is taking his wealth with him. And no, this is definitely not a good thing for Dems.
The money that used to fund their ass clowns will now fund ours. I’m sure Evan Bayh will appreciate the campaign donations.
•=—·—=•
Losing both of these guys would not upset me in the slightest.
Seriously, how in the fuck did Chris Dodd manage to charm so many Kossacks? Paired with Joe Lieberman the two had a perfect record of voting against Democrats’ interests (what Chris was OK with Joe opposed, and vice versa).
Nothing about our coddling of Wall Street was OK. Wall Street does not build, manufacture, erect or create anything except money traps for the unwary. Their friends are not our friends.
•=—·—=•
Study: Stem cell treatment effective in heart patients.
Amazing. The things you learn once the people who didn’t want you to know this stuff are run out of office. The pool of people potentially impacted by stem cell research just grew exponentially. This genie is never getting back into the bottle.
•=—·—=•
What others twitter about us:
TBogg is likewise amused.
More seriously, why boomers are twittering.
•=—·—=•
Incredible, really. It’s like they can’t stop dickrolling themselves.
(linked because it’s a sucker’s click and yes, my stats will tell me how many clicks that one gets)
•=—·—=•
Sorry, I can’t tell if this is make up or Chuck’s whacky sense of humor in play. He tweeted that this was real and happened while he was doing a shoot in an alley. If so he was lucky.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
•=—·—=•
More common sense that surely will have to be denounced, or maybe just sniggered at by our Moderate in Chief.
•=—·—=•
You’re darned right I’m sprouting wood right now. It’s not every day I get to mention Sarah Palin and Scientology in the same sentence!
And Audrey’s finally updated Palin’s Deceptions, but it’s mostly a post about posts to come.
•=—·—=•
Another blog that’s been quiet for a while popped back up this week to let everyone know there’s more legal stuff coming in the matter of reclaiming WCAL for its original listener base (this is the classical college station acquired by MPR for their modern rock format “commercial” station).
In a sane radio market where Clear Channel didn’t own half the stations, The Current would be a going concern on the right end of the dial. They do NOT belong on the left end of the dial. Nothing about this station is left end of the dial from their totally commercial play list to their DJ patter.
The Current is sitting on bandwidth reserved for bluegrass, classical music, and quality jazz. The Current plays none of that, and MPR’s classical station offers only a sliver of jazz, no bluegrass, and the kind of sliced and diced classical that drives purists nuts.
I don’t care that everything’s moving online, the airwaves belong to the public and we need to take them back.
Fuck modern rock, a puerile, derivative format with all the grace, charm and class of a special ed marching band. (There’s a reason why they don’t have a Special Olympics version of American Idol, and it’s related to why Simon Le Bon doesn’t clog up late night TV with infomercials for The Best of The ’80s, know what I’m saying?).
I like to think of the ’80s as a musical retraining period in which American musicians were busy learning on-the-job how to use polyrhythms in lieu of incessant high hat ricky-ticking.
•=—·—=•
If the other generations had half a clue, they’d hold all us Boomers down and they’d tattoo that on our foreheads as a permanent reminder.
Ours was the generation that did EVERY drug and then tried them again mixed with alcohol. Isn’t it time we stopped punishing the kids for our wild oats?
Oh, and a fast jury deliberation acquitted Kansas’s Dr. Tiller in record time. I guess this means Kansas teens can continue to behave like teenagers have throughout history instead of conforming to the make believe TV sitcom zeitgeist of the ’50s.
•=—·—=•
From the Captain Morgan tent at the Fiscal Responsibility Home and Garden show at the Dome.
•=—·—=•
At this particular moment? Zdob Si Zdub playing Spoiled by People from their Hardcore Moldovenesc album.
This is the kind of music Ted Nugent fans would be listening to if Ted Nugent were still Ted Nugent and not the spokesweenie for the NRA.
And yes, the parking lot across the street is jammed full of Tibetans celebrating Serf Liberation Day. More power to them literally speaking. Me? I’m just hoping my recent online issues aren’t connected to this.
Fuck China and the Mao they rode in on.
Vulgar mutterings
It’s Saturday, so it’s not surprising the Strib is dumping a story critical of John Kline into the mix this morning. What is surprising is that Nasser Kazeminy’s denials of allegations made by Deep Marine’s former CFO was slipped into today’s paper instead of being held for the Sunday edition.
Then again, a story in which your buddy denies criminal allegations maybe isn’t what Norm Coleman wants to read about in his Sunday paper.
·—=•=—·
I don’t travel much, but I travel enough to know that I feel safer in the Twin Cities than I do in Milwaukee, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland or Cincinnati. But part of the Republican canon is to whine about our unsafe streets.
And it’s true, if you run around downtown freaking out everytime you hear language common to urban spaces, I guess maybe urban settings can be a little scary. And scary — to Republicans — means votes. And that’s why every solution Mitch Pearlstein has, is a solution that further dehumanizes and shackles the poor who, by and large, owe their poverty to the policies of people like Mitch Pearlstein.
If the Republican-enabled cycle of American urban poverty were any more perfect, we’d call it Gaza. And, as with Gaza (or as the IDF calls it: the Killing Pens), Pearlstein’s solution is somewhat sketchy.
[T]he downtown business community [has] voluntarily [taxed] itself an additional $6.5 million to create a Downtown Improvement District, modeled after similar, privately led antinuisance and sprucing-up initiatives in New York and other cities. And there’s a public-private Downtown Minneapolis Safe Zone Collaborative.
Mr. Pearlstein conveniently forgets to explain what either of these things are. And that’s very convenient to Mr. Pearlstein’s arguments about civility because these are authoritarian measures. In some aspects candy assed (better snow removal downtown), but in most regards this is about further coordination of private security downtown. Currently there are 13 private security officers downtown for each and every cop, and these measures are about improved coordination between cops and security companies.
In June of 2005, SafeZone partnered with the City Attorneys office for an expanded prosecution program with the goal of increasing community sense of safety.
In other words, they’ve been trying to turn downtown into the Mall of America, a tightly controlled quasi-private space that exists for the benefit of shoppers, bar hoppers, tourists, business people and merchants.
No, you won’t see any admission of that agenda, but you also won’t see any acknowledgment that all these problems (vulgarity?!) could be fixed with more cops. But more cops is a tax thing, and cops won’t always thump someone just because.
If Pearlstein weren’t up to no good, he would have used his op-ed to push these initiatives. He didn’t. Instead he pushed a largely imaginary problem. Is downtown a little profane? Fuck yes. Given the times, why wouldn’t it be?
And fuck the RoboCop private security initiatives. The cop union should be watching this shit very closely as we all know privatizing never means a pay boost, and there are no private security folks getting cop wages in Minnesota.
PEOPLE WANDERING DOWNTOWN MUTTERING VULGARITIES IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THERE IS NO MEANINGFUL EMPLOYMENT FOR THE LOWER CLASSES. FUCKING THESE PEOPLE OVER FOR BEING POOR IS WHAT REPUBLICANISM IS ALL ABOUT. USING PRIVATE COPS IS CHEAPER AND LESS LEGALLY RESTRICTIVE.
Fuck this shit, and the horse it rode in on. And never trust anyone who pushes shit by talking about the problem, not their solution.
And a very big FUCK YOU to ANY private security cop who ever tries to say anything to me when I’m standing on a City of Minneapolis sidewalk. Because that’s what this is really about: gradually expanding the powers of private security personnel until they’re making arrests and regulating the movements of people who are on public property.
·—=•=—·
Early list today, more posts later as the spirit(s) move me.
chopped sweet radish
galanga
dried black fungus mushrooms
chili paste in soy oil
sweet mangos
Because it wouldn’t be Pad Thai without the radish, Tom Yum without the galanga, and you’ve got to have the chili paste in soy oil to make what passes for ketchup among Indian diners.
