2010 archive
To Beck or Not To Beck 0
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Conservative Libertarian | ||||
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Some while ago, I accompanied my friend to the optometrist.
He had Glenn Beck on his telly vision in the waiting room.
I had to leave and wait outside. The dumbness and hate were beyond my capacity for endurance.
And there are persons who think his politics are sane. God help us all.
Video via TPM.
Nothing Makes Food Taste Better Than “Free” 0
But this is just macabre: Crashing funerals for the food.
We Need Single Payer 0
We have rationing. It’s not rationing based on need or any rational measure; it’s rationing based on demand for country-club memberships.
(snip)
Health care reform legislation pending before Congress would not restructure that system, although it could provide more transparency.
The whole article is worth a read.
A related story points out that health insurance premiums have doubled in the last ten years.
The quality of health care sure hasn’t doubled in the last ten years.
Afterthought:
Profiting from misery–>miserable profits.
The system is broken.
True Colors 0
Why am I not surprised?
When a party practices the politics of hate, hate is the harvest.
I’m too disgusted to write any more.
Old Time Radio Can Be Embarrassing 0
Embarrassing because it mirrors the way we were.
I was listening to an episode of The Man Called X here (just to be clear, the show was before my time–not much before my time, but still before my time).
The episode is set in the Congo (called the “Belgian Congo” when I was young, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
The “native miners” are not showing up for work (turns out that the “native miners” are being duped by duplicitous white men, because, being natives who are Not White, they are incapable of thinking for themselves) and Ken Thurston, “the Man Called X,” delivers this line:
“No matter how much you offered them in trinkets and money, they wouldn’t come back?”
Trinkets and money.
It is not a very flattering mirror, is it?
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
That’s why there was an event to educate girls about the dangers of firearms in Wilmington:
Dustbiters 0
Regulators continued rounding up the small fry (that’s why it’s called “small Fryday”).
Reports are that the Mr. Bigs are still at large, larger, largest.
But you can’t bank on these folks any more.
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State Bank of Aurora, Aurora, Minnesota
First Lowndes Bank, Fort Deposit, Alabama
Bank of Hiawassee, Hiawassee, Georgia
Appalachian Community Bank, Ellijay, Georgia
Advanta Bank Corp., Draper, Utah
Keeping up with the our Financial Geniuses does get tiresome.
Bracket Fever 0
I lost interest in college basketball when the Carolina Four-Corner was effectively banned by the introduction of a shot-clock and, in the intervening period, have become skilled in tuning out much ado over not much of anything sports coverage in March.
It is with sadness that I note that the ex-local rag has decided to extend brackets to beers. I have no interest to lose in that.
Brackets are for holding up shelves.
Now, if they wish to bracket cheap relatively inexpensive Scots whiskey, maybe I’ll pay attention. I’m a common sewer of cheap relatively inexpensive Scots whiskey.
Scam Alert 0
Scammers are pretending to represent Publishers’ Clearing House’s Prize Patrol, taking advantage of the psychological truth that, when confronted with the possibility of already having won, persons’ brains stop working.
May the Farce Be with You 0
Oh, my.
Greater Wingnuttery, Life under the Regency Dept. 0
Satire, but it’s reasoning is so eerily pseudo-academic (in a scholastical sense) as to read like true wingnuttery.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
So you’re driving down the street and some clown cuts you off. Then he decides to really cut you off.
I wonder whether the gun came from a police department:
In fact, the mentally disturbed man, anti-government terrorist and conspiracy theorist who attacked the Pentagon on March 4th of this year wounding two guards before being killed by return fire, John Patrick Bedell used a weapon he purchased at a gun show in Las Vegas to commit his heinous crime, a gun the Memphis police had sold to a local gun dealer.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Jobless figures stay in the same ballpark.
(I am in the final paroxysm of packing up my old house and helping Goodwill make its donation quotient. Yesterday I hit some kind of exhaustion wall and ended up playing Tetris for two hours while ignoring the rest of the world–well, most of the rest of the world, and missed the news.)
Life under the Regency 0
When the kids hit the streets because they don’t know enough to get a job, accompanied by retired teachers whose pensions have been shafted . . . .
The impact would have been more than a billion dollars if legislators hadn’t also cut the amount the state and localities have to contribute to teachers’ retirement plans, he said.
at least they will be able to relieve themselves.
Eighteen facilities closed in July 2009 and the final facility – the Interstate 66 West Manassas Welcome Center – closed in September in an effort to save $9 million annually as the agency grapples with a $4.6 billion revenue shortfall over the next six years.
A pissoir in the hand is worth a physics class in the bush.
Aside: My mother retired after two decades of teaching in Virginia (she went back to work after my brother and I reached high school). The pension check she gets is not very much at all.
If that and social security were all she had, she’d be on the street.
The blatherings of right-wingers who would have the citizenry believe that public employees get some kind of gold-plated retirement are gold-plated nonsense.
Happy Sort of Birthday to Me 2
The blog is going on five (in August), but two years ago I registered the domain name of pineviewfarm.net.