February, 2011 archive
Big Bad John 0
Bad at this job, and, in true Republican fashion, just making stuff up.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The particulars of the indictment start at approximately the 4:30 mark.
Fifteen second commercial at the beginning.
Via Steve Benen, who has commentary if you aren’t in the mood for video.
QOTD 0
John Barrymore,from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
Turnabout 0
One can only hope . . . .
When Wells Fargo still didn’t respond, Rodgers got a $1,000 default judgment against it for failing to answer his formal questions, as required by a federal law called the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.
And when the mortgage company didn’t pay – does something sound familiar? – Rodgers turned to Philadelphia’s sheriff.
The result: At least for the moment, the contents of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, 1341 N. Delaware Ave., are scheduled for sheriff’s sale on March 4 to satisfy the judgment and pay about $200 for court and sheriff’s costs.
It’s not a foreclosure issue and the homeowner has enough resources to take on the bank.
The bank has been trying to force him to buy a much more expensive homeowner’s policy than the one he had before, a “replacement-value” policy rather than the standard market-value policy.
The purpose of the insurance requirement in a mortgage is to hold the bank harmless in case the house burns down. The bank has no reason to force the homeowner to buy more, unless they are also in the insur–but I speculate, just like a bankster, with no idea of what’s actually going on, just like a bankster. I’m just not too big to fail.
Read the full story at the link.
Battery Misdemeanor 0
This was under a cover behind the engine against the firewall. I had to pry the cover loose with a screwdriver.
My friend’s battery would not have gotten like this if Toyota did not like to hide components from view, like some kind of mechanic’s Rubik’s cube. (I had a friend who told me of having to remove the battery from a Toyota so he could replace a headlamp. I’ve heard even worse about changing spark plugs.)
If she could have seen the battery, she would have kept it clean.
Yesterday, I cleaned it up and jumped the car, but the battery is over five years old and didn’t hold a charge through the night, so I trotted out to get a new one this morning. At the store, the clerk dragged out the battery and started to ring it up, along with something else.
“What’s that?” asked I.
“That’s your replacement kit.” (What means this “replacement kit”? The battery is the replacement.)
“What’s in it?”
Turned out that it was two flat rubber washers to fit on the terminals between the leads and the battery case and a packet of brake grease for coating the terminals against corrosion.
Now Vaseline works as well as brake grease and is a damned sight cheaper and the two rubber washers–well, given that the terminals are slightly flared at the base, the leads won’t touch the battery case in any event.
She was trying to sell me about a two bit’s worth of useless stuff, over-priced to 18 bits, as if it were a goes-without-saying necessity.
And I bet they get away with it more often than not.
I waved her off. “I don’t need that.”
Finding the Missing Link 0
The beckless search for truth:
Via TPM.
Spitball’s Old News 0
The only thing new about this is the confession:
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.
I remember reading that he got the name “Curveball” because intelligence types thought that was what he was throwing.
Bushies believed him because they wanted war more than they wanted truth.
Jeopardy 0
I’m rooting for Watson.
Watson, by the way, runs Linux.
Watson is made up of ninety IBM POWER 750 servers, 16 Terabytes of memory, and 4 Terabytes of clustered storage. Davidian sontinued, “This is enclosed in ten racks including the servers, networking, shared disk system, and cluster controllers. These ninety POWER 750 servers have four POWER7 processors, each with eight cores. IBM Watson has a total of 2880 POWER7 cores.”
Domestic Economy 0
Or, How To Bargain about Anything.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Pay Later, and Later, and Later, and Later . . . 0
“Wake up, America, you are being lied to. The beaches are not clean; they are not safe . . . .”
The Nation has more. An excerpt (emphasis added):
Perhaps not coincidentally, the most outspoken scientists doing this research come from Florida and Georgia, coastal states that have so far managed to avoid offshore drilling. Their universities are far less beholden to Big Oil than, say, Louisiana State University, which has received tens of millions from the oil giants. Again and again these scientists have used their independence to correct the official record about how much oil is actually out there, and what it is doing under the waves.
Video via Steven D.
Even a Blind Pig Finds an Acorn Once in a While 0
The Teabaggers get one right correct.
Facebook Frolics 0
Pillows of the community:
In tutus, gorilla suits and pajamas, they came by car, bike and train, some with pillows strapped to their backs. They lined up on opposing sidewalks, then with the blow of a whistle, charged one another. They met in the middle in a fluffy frenzy.
“A panda just hit me!” one pillow-wielding man called out as the crowd of revelers, hemmed in by park benches, smacked each other from behind, above and beside.
Realpolitik Comes Back To Haunt 0
In the Guardian, Gary Younge explores the interplay of Western realpolitik and Egyptian real politics. A nugget (emphasis added to highlight a well-turned phrase):
(snip)
While the west has been wrongfooted, its ability to influence events has not been extinguished. Mubarak’s departure was a massive achievement. However, revolution demands not only the upending of the old order but the establishment of a new one. Removing a man is one thing; transforming a system is quite another.
Obligatory GRAMMY Post 0
Who cares?
Day in Court 0
Shirley Sherrod sues Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart claims it infringes on his Constitutional right to lie and/or promulgate lies.
All snark aside, the United States is facing a political movement fueled by lies. It’s called “Republicanism.”
Without the lies, there would be no movement.
It would be gratifying to see the liars brought to heel.
Unlikely, but gratifying.
We Need Single Payer 0
Stringfield, 31, had been laid off in October from her job as a retail manager at an Exxon-Mobil station. Her health coverage ended on Dec. 31, and she wasn’t able to immediately find insurance she could afford on her unemployment check.
Sitting at her kitchen table in Chesapeake recently with Katelyn and 3-year-old Brianna, Stringfield could only shake her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” she said. “I could care less about me.”
This lady was able to get insurance for her daughter through the state.
Many cannot. Later in the same article:
Most children without coverage live in households with income less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level but with at least one adult working, according to a report from the foundation. More than 50 percent are white, and about 26 percent are black. All but a few are U.S. citizens.
