2010 archive
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
All the Easter Bunnies have been laid off:
Initial jobless applications increased by 18,000 to 460,000 in the week ended April 3, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The week leading up to Easter and the two weeks that follow are traditionally a “volatile time” for claims, a Labor Department analyst said, making it difficult to discern the underlying trend in applications.
The details are rather irrelevant. It’s still in the high 400,000s.
At least it’s holding steady.
They Just Like the Idea of Blowing Stuff Up 0
Republican foreign policy in a nutshell.
Open Letter, Tea Bag Dept. 1
Apparently, this is making the rounds in email forwarding land. It hasn’t landed here yet; I have it via DelawareLiberal:
We had eight yearsof Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad!
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative had her cover blown simply for contradicting Dick Cheney.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq .
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no.
AND NOW YOU’RE MAD !
Heh.
Monopoly Games 0
Read how AT&T tried to take over the broadcast waves in 1922.
Think net neutrality.
AT&T story via GNC.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
“Honest, Occifer, it just suddenly went off all on its ownsome. I don’t know what it was thinking.”
Clip Joint 2
Then he cleaned their teeth with Rustoleum, no doubt.
Stupid Car Tricks 1
They are running in to anything that is not moving.
Pacman 0
“Liberty Now” is designed to “support the efforts of Ken Cuccinelli in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and to elect Republicans to non-federal offices in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” according to a filing made by the organization with the IRS last month.
(snip)
“Ken was a Tea Partier before there was a Tea Party,” one Virginia Republican told the New York Times.
Kook-kook-ka-choo.
“Soul Default Swaps” 0
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Say Anything | ||||
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Via TPM, which has a montage of McCain’s McMavericky statements.
Griffins?!? 0
The effort to name a new mascot had come down to a pug, griffin, phoenix, wren and king and queen.
This is hardly a Glorious Evolution. Oranges would have been a better choice.
K9 Rations 0
Not really sure what I think of this, except that the judges probably made the only legally permissible ruling:
A three-judge Commonwealth Court panel upheld a Department of Public Welfare determination that the dog was ineligible because he is not human.
(snip)
Douris, 55, of Newtown, is a disabled and unemployed veteran who lives alone and relies on the dog to pull his wheelchair and fetch items.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Firearms do have a way of going off, even at the Easter Parade:
(snip)
A woman who called 911 after the shooting told the dispatcher she shot her niece. The woman does not give her name. The woman says in the 911 call that she got a gun to prove a point during an argument and the weapon went off.
Life under the Regency, Reviving the Past Dept. (Updated) (Updated Again) 2
This is embarrassing:
Republican governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore issued similar proclamations. But in 2002, Warner broke with their action, calling such proclamations, a “lightning rod” that does not help bridge divisions between whites and blacks in Virginia.
One of my ancestors was a General in the CSA. Several others wore the grey. I honor my ancestors.
I do not honor the lost cause.
They lost and it is good that they lost.
Certainly, some of the persons who fought wearing the grey were honorable men by the lights of their times.
That was then. We–well, some of us–have learned much since then.
It was not an honorable cause, whatever Robert E. Lee or Henry Alexander Wise may have thought at the time.
Honoring the lost cause honors racism, bigotry, and slavery.
Those who honor it say more about themselves than they do about the lost cause.
It is time to stop honoring the lost cause, to stop honoring racism, bigotry, and slavery, even as we may still treasure the memory of our ancestors.
News story via Balloon Juice.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
The Regent and the UDC.
Addendum-De-Dum-Dum:
The Regent misunremembered that whole slavery thingee.
Coming out the Other Side 0
An ex-skinhead speaks Wednesday for Peace Week at Old Dominion University:
Leyden thinks there is a direct link between the election of the nation’s first African American president and the recent proliferation of hate groups. Another factor, he says, is the sour economy.
(snip)
Moreover, Leyden said, he is enough of an optimist to believe that humans are evolving as moral beings.
More on Peace Week here.
The Hand that Heals 0
Or not.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Inethical Basterds | ||||
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Via TPM.