2010 archive
We Need Single Payer 2
What we have is just plain nuts.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Do 0
It’s helicopter unemployment: It’s just hoverin’ in the high 400Ks.
The four-week average of initial claims – a better gauge of employment trends than the volatile weekly number – rose by 5,000 to 475,500. That’s the highest rate since late November.
Deja Vu All Over Again 0
The American Civil Liberties Union had demanded that the Itawamba County school district allow senior Constance McMillen to attend with her girlfriend. A school district policy requires that dates be of the opposite sex.
Back when I was a young ‘un, a little law called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.
In my Jim Crow county, three things happened immediately.
One: Some parents organized an all-white private school. Such schools were called “seg academies.” Those students who went to the “seg academy” slowly drifted out of the lives of those of us who stayed in the public school.
Two: The public schools started to lurch unwillingly towards racial integration. Fortunately, where I grew up, the leadership recognized that racial segregation of public schools was done for and decided the only choice was to make integration work.
One black girl joined the senior class of the white high school the next year. About a dozen black girls and boys joined the junior class the year after that (my junior year). And so on.
Of course, no white kids were sent to the black high school, not for many years.
And
Three: The prom was canceled.
It remained canceled for years for fear that some little black boy might want to dance with little some white girl.
Parents are still punishing children with the parents’ hate and fear.
Unreasonable Suspicion 0
John Cole points out that what’s missing in the noisy discussion of the prisoners at Guantanamo is acknowledging that many of them are innocent.
Dead Seas 0
Acidification
(snip)
Increased acidity means that shellfish, from the tiniest to the largest species, have trouble making their shells from calcium carbonate, a victim in the changing chemistry of the oceans, the experts said.
That threat has watermen worried about future impacts on crabs, oysters, clams and other commercial stocks that grow shells or rely on small shellfish for food, said Wayne Creed, an Eastern Shore fisherman, writer and consultant.
The story goes on to point out that some climate change deniers claim that acid is good.
Apparently it is, if you like algae blooms and dead zones.
They must be taking some other kind of acid, the kind that alters reality.
Seed Money 0
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Survival Seed Bank | ||||
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Via John Cole.
We Need Single Payer 0
But almost anything would be better than what we’ve got.
Avatar 1
No, I haven’t seen it. After Klaatu’s capsule review, I don’t know whether I shall:
(All that money and) “All they could do is retell Dances with Wolves.”
Politics and Reality 1
Bloomberg:
One year after U.S stocks hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen more than 68 percent, and it’s up more than 41 percent since Obama took office. Credit spreads have narrowed. Commodity prices have surged. Housing prices have stabilized.
Sadly, it still doesn’t seem to be reaching those who need it most. Maybe it’s the lagging indicator thingee.
The End 1
On the block for scrap:
But for the last 14 years, the pride of a nation has gone nowhere, rusting away at a pier in South Philadelphia, a fading landmark seemingly destined for one last journey: to the scrapyard.
Its owner, Norwegian Cruise Line, which spends about $700,000 a year to moor and maintain the ship, appears ready to pull the plug
When any falling down junker of a building can attract hordes of “historic preservationists” to protect its existence, even though it has no claim to being “historical” other than being old, unpainted, and unmaintained, to allow this ship, holds stuffed with history, to be sold and dismembered, is a damned shame.
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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
That’s why police lock down the schools when someone is spotted carrying in the neighborhood.
The Entitlement Society, Reprise 0
Paul Myners in the Guardian:
The risk is now that their confidence has not been sufficiently dented; that they have not truly learned their lesson. And the danger with this moral hazard is that they could put us all at risk again.
This is why a central part of restoring true market discipline to the world financial system must be major reform globally to the way banks and financial firms are governed and regulated.
Meanwhile . . .
The “financial industry” has demonstrated that it is incapable of learning from experience and that, in a conflict between greed and responsibility, greed wins.
Check the history of the US in the 1800s. There was a recession depression panic almost exactly every 20 years.
The only period in US history without regular recessions depressions panics was the period during which Glass-Steagel was in effect. Sure there were ups and downs, but those were hills and dales, not mountains and canyons.
Banksters gotta be watched. Carefully. Even in their little bankster hideouts.