Moloch Matters
The iPad iPod [#$@! iBranding!] was charging so I listened to some NPR money show this morning while running errands. Sound Money or Moloch Matters — one of those shows, I can’t tell them apart.
Two women were busy lying about the estate tax and yes they did tell the enormous lie about farmers being impacted by the estate tax. FUCKING LIARS! Farmers and small businesses are exempt to the tune of $3 million. How big a farm is $3 million worth?
One Iowa farm just sold for the unheard of price of just over $8,000 an acre. That’s still a 375-acre farm, or more than half a square mile. In Iowa, that’s a good-sized spread and it’s uncommon to find a farmer who owns that much land outright. Most spend their lives paying down their debt so as to leave as little debt as possible to the next generation. Farmers need some protection, but from the greedy speculators who drive up land prices, not from inheritance laws.
And no, I don’t think NPR should get Helen Thomas’ seat at White House press conferences. Not until they get back into the business of reporting news instead of mangling it and spoonfeeding it to us. They only cover the Zionist side of the Middle East, and the Wall Street side of finance. They are perfectly dreadful stewards of the public airwaves.
More about money:
Bob Herbert on fucking over your employees
Andrea Brandolini notices that the countries with the most regressive attitudes about wealth all speak English as their first language
No prison time for execs who lied about $40 billion in debt
Dave Johnson on borrowing to invest
China begins laying track for Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway (somehow I think this will do more for their economy than our corpos are doing by sitting on their cash reserves)
Reagan Republican says Obama should recess appoint Elizabeth Warren
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Big Tent Democrat, Digby and others are linking to this Atrio post, but I thought this subsequent one on women and children was pretty special too.
Some days the clarity of vision thing kicks into overdrive. Most days it doesn’t.
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Sweet. Katherine Kersten’s Christianist op-ed on missionaries in Morocco last week (published late on a Saturday afternoon) has earned a blistering rebuttal from the Moroccan Ambassador.
To claim, as Kersten’s column does, that our country is harassing Christians is particularly upsetting in its disregard for the reality in Morocco today. Every year, millions of Christians visit our country, and tens of thousands live there. All are welcome and are free to practice their faith in our local churches, with no problems.
Freedom of worship is guaranteed by Morocco’s Constitution, and extended equally to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Morocco has a long history of religious tolerance based on an understanding that freedom to practice one’s religion also means respecting others’ rights not to abandon theirs. To maintain this balance, Moroccan law clearly prohibits proselytizing by any religious group, including Muslims.
That’s a good law. You have no more right to shove your religion in my face than I have to make you look at my porn collection. People are entitled to their own space, an ideological comfort zone, if you will. Missionaries have always been on the sick and twisted end of proselytizing. Look, here’s some medicine and food but first . . . a word from our sponsor!
As usual, when a country says fuck that shit, the Kerstens and Robertsons take offense. They refuse to acknowledge that the missionaries are the offending parties. You play by the local rules or you don’t go there. Period. There are lots of nude beaches in the world but tourists from those places don’t go to San Diego or Coney Island and take off all their clothes. They respect our customs more than we respect theirs.
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The lying liars:
Breitbart admits his clip was out of context
Again, why Breitbart isn’t a journalist or anything like one
Tea party comix (no one on the left draws that badly except this guy, and he’s dead, R.I.P.)
Israel: starting wars they expect us to finish for them
Fuck Diane Feinstein, and not in any way she might enjoy (the only time these establishment freaks ever mention kids is when they’re using them to take away the rights of adults) (Digby with another reason to hate Feinstein)
The Mexican drug cartel raid on Laredo that never ever happened
Milbank on Beck (Media Matters on Milbank on Beck) (Beck excusifying himself) (more from Neiwert)
No one likes the ADL’s squishy logic on the Ground Zero mosque [more from Rachel Slajda]
Palin tells Wyoming GOoPers who to vote for
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The truthful truthsayers:
More from Hamsher on legalization
Michael Anthony Green freed after 27 years for a rape he didn’t do
Tim Rutten on the hysterical right
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Gryphen’s got a week’s worth of Doonesbury’s Sarah Palin doll strips.
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MN:
Wolcott on TBogg on the politics of Pawlentyism
Apparently WTF also stands for Where’s The Funding? (who knew?)
MnGOoPers just can’t stop playing games with numbers
MnSpeak/Secrets of the City for sale (Brauer couches this just right, all you’re really buying is some templates — the rest of the assets are all virtual)
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Tom Vilsack wasn’t just a jerk for firing Shirley Sherrod. It appears Vilsack may be the Gov. BridgeFail of Iowa, although in his case former Gov. FloodgateFail would be more accurate.
And in other news from the Midwest, FUCK NEBRASKANS for electing and re-electing this douchebag.
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Etc.:
Bushies against Rick Perry (it’s a Karl Rove thing)
Copyright assholes steal web code from another copyright website (not that software code should be copyrightable or patentable)
Penguin Books turns 75 (yesterday)
Using science to scam the experts
Wind-powered cart goes faster than the wind
WINston has a Buckethead video for anyone who loves to see a guitar get shredded (part of the Axis of Laswell)
Ellen talks with Gladys from Austin
Miss Iowa throws out first pitch at Nationals game
New mast going up later today. Minnesota’s new moved up primary is only eleven days away and it’s definitely yard sign season.
How magnanimous of Breitbart to admit that the clip was out of context two weeks *after* it had done its damage. Amzing that a guy like this has any credibility.
Is the new masthead an endorsement?
I’m with you on Nebraska and Ben Nelson. But speaking of Blue Dogs, have you heard that Tarryl Clark will probably join them if she somehow manages to get elected?
The new mast is as close to an endorsement as I come, although it was difficult for me to overcome my automatic loathing of anyone blessed by the DFL apparatchiks.
I never understood those who thought Tarryl Clark was somehow magically better than Maureen Reed. It’s a Blue Dog district at best, and I don’t understand why fuckability was the tie breaker.
The FDL article failed to explain WHY DiFi is so het up about pot brownies and Prop 19. Which corporate lobby is she protecting? Privatized prisons? Big Pharma? Liquor distillers?