November, 2009 archive
Drinking Liberally 1
I made it to the Philly Drinking Liberally for the first time in a couple of months. Some of my friends were there; some were out of town. It was good seeing those who were there and, oddly enough, good missing those who were out of town. Even though some were missing, the fellowship was not.
Now to investigate Liberallies in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
Barrel. Bottom. 2
One knows that the Newsweek issue about Sarah Palin must be really bad when even diehard carpet chewing liberals are complaining that it’s disrespectful and sexist.
Afterthought: I gave up on Time and Newsweek a long time ago and U. S. News and World Report even a longer time ago. All they are good for is passing time in the dentist’s waiting room.
Well. Not even that. I have internet on my cellphone.
Chamber of Chutzpah 0
Fact Check dot org deconstructs the ravings of the Chamber of Commerce against health care reform. Follow the link for the full analysis:
Or would it help small business and encourage economic growth, as claimed in an ad sponsored by a big labor union and other supporters of federal efforts to expand health insurance coverage?
Who’s right? Will jobs be lost as businesses are required to cover their employees? Or will the economy, and jobs picture, brighten as almost all Americans acquire health insurance?
The truth is the House legislation would likely have a “small” effect on jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. A RAND Corp. expert says the job loss would be “quite minimal.” A third estimate puts the job loss at several hundred thousand low-wage jobs, or well under one-half of 1 percent of all jobs. Furthermore, the bill doesn’t kick in until the year 2013, and by then the economy is expected to be much improved, with unemployment down to 5.8 percent according to CBO’s projections.
It is all about their country club memberships.
Playing the Float 0
Yesterday’s Fresh Air looks at private equity firms.
The only difference between these folks and the three-card monte guys is the cost of their suits.
From the website:
Now burdened with debt, many of those companies owned by private equity firms are in danger of defaulting. In a new book, Kosman writes that it’s likely half of the 3,188 American companies bought by private equity firms between 2000 and 2008 could collapse. His book is called The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis.
Follow the link to listen to the show or read the transcript here.
Growing Self-Awareness, Horse’s Mouth Dept. 0
From a “Recovering Republican”:
(snip)
Strangest of all, I developed a finger-wagging puritan bent, which made absolutely no sense for a 20-year-old guy who was getting laid and intoxicated on a steady basis. I blamed “the anti-family Left” for encouraging couples to divorce and youngsters to fornicate, as if liberals were all conspiring together to destroy the traditional family, as if liberal states do not have lower rates of divorce and teen pregnancy than their conservative counterparts. My hypocrisy is mystifying in retrospect — why would I bash sexual liberation while having sloppy drunken unmarried sex whenever possible? — but perhaps conservative politicians such as John Ensign, Mark Sanford, David Vitter, Larry Craig and Newt Gingrich can explain.
“Dick Cheney with Lipstick” 0
A golden oldie from Eileen Davis.
Republicans: She Must Have Asked for It 0
Another installment of the Republican serial, Business Can Do No Wrong:
Oh, yeah, about those family values thingees? They are for the rest of us.
Via Delaware Liberal.
Wonderful 0
Amber waves of grain.
While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry.
Fox. Henhouse. 0
Brad Friedman in the Guardian:
He goes on the point out, as have others, that videos don’t edit themselves and that Hannity’s claim that the error was “inadvertent” is–what’s the word?–laughably preposterous.
Ignorance Rampant: The Anti-Vaccine Crowd and H1N1 0
Over at Scientific Blogging, the Rubyologist tees off on the anti-vaccine zealots:
The fact that the purported thimerosal-autism link has been completely disproven, has not stopped the anti-vax ideologues. If the science does not support using single dose vials with reduced amounts of preservative, why did we decide to forgo use of mutli-dose vials, which can be produced and distributed more efficiently? May I suggest fear?
In a country that likes to bill itself as the most techologically advanced (it isn’t), the willingness of Americans to embrace and perpetrate fear based on ignorance and lies is quite astounding.
Metafloor 0
This seems to be a fitting metaphor for the acumen of those financial geniuses who get paid for performance attendance:
Deutsche Bank, the resort’s owner since it foreclosed on developer Ian Bruce Eichner last year, requires 24-hour pumps and containment walls after workers hit an aquifer below the Nevada desert floor. It’s another challenge for a project whose delays and redesigns have sparked lawsuits from condominium buyers and sales agents amid record declines in Las Vegas’s gambling revenue, home prices and hotel-room bookings.
Ya know, I bet that somewhere nearby was a geologist–who doesn’t get bonuses for geologing–who knew about that aquifer and was just waiting to be asked . . . .
But it’s become pretty clear that you can’t tell Masters of the Universe anything. Those bonuses confirm their conviction that they are always right, that they are never wrong.
Pah!
Justice Is Not the Fog 0
It doesn’t come on little cat feet. Nor does it hide behind the torturer’s hood and snivel in the corners in fear.
It comes only in the clear light of day.
Scotch in the Rocks 0
If God hae wanted there to be water in it, he’d hae put water in it:
The McKinlay and Co whisky was found buried under a hut built and used during Shackleton’s unsuccessful South Pole expedition between 1907 and 1909.
Watching Ova Ya 0
And then pouncing:
(snip)
But here’s the thing: Cohen, for all his youthful foibles, was a savvy enough consumer that he had already taken the very step the Fed says all bank customers deserve. After an earlier taste of penalty fees, Cohen had opted out of Wachovia Bank’s system of routinely covering overdrafts at $35 a pop.
There are some complications to the story which I won’t go into to, including a transfer into his account that wasn’t credited until the next day; considering the timing of the transfer, I think the timing of the credit was quite reasonable.
But here’s the kicker:
(Benjamin’s father–ed.) Alan Cohen says he spent at least an hour on the phone with Wachovia representatives, trying to understand the system and express his dismay at the charges.
“They’re barely able, if at all, to explain what happened,” Alan Cohen says.
Full disclosure: I bank at the same bank covered in the story and have received only satisfactory service ever since they gobbled up my preceding bank as long as I have been associated with them.
I almost never use my debit card for anything other than ATM withdrawals and deposits. When I see persons using a debit card to buy an $.89 cup of coffee and a $.50 newspaper, I wonder, “How the hell do they ever keep their checkbooks straight?”
I guess the answer is, “They can’t.”
A Hood over Their Eyes 0
Frank Rich in the Toimes on the murders at Fort Hood:
(major snippage)
Perhaps those on the right are correct about Hasan, and he is just one cog in an apocalyptic jihadist plot that has infiltrated our armed forces. If so, then they have an obligation to explain how pouring more troops into Afghanistan would have stopped Hasan from plotting in Killeen. Don’t hold your breath. If we have learned anything concrete so far from the massacre at Fort Hood, it’s that our hawks, for all their certitude, are as utterly confused as the rest of us about who it is we’re fighting in Afghanistan and to what end.
Frankly, I think the issue is much simpler than does Mr. Rich. It is not confusion of policy.
It is that there is a contingent of the US population for whom war–that is, killing people–is the preferred, indeed, the only course of action in all cases, whether it is Crime in the Streets or Those People over There. They think it is quick, clean, and final, when it is none of those things.
As long as the children of others do the killing.
An Rx for Compromise 0
“Fact-Free Conspiracy, Hollow Patriotism, and Public Religiosity” 0
Return of Beyond the Palin Meets the Factcheckers 0
The Associated Press documents the lies in her book.
Okay, let’s be kind. Delusions.
Liar or nutcase? Nutcase liar? Lying nutcase? Inquiring minds want to know.
AP link via the Booman.
