May, 2011 archive
Dustbiters 0
And the FDIC starts its weekly trip to the West Coast, smiting banksters along the way:
Aside: Cocoa Beach always makes me think of I Dream of Jeanie. Guess the magic’s gone out . . . .
Torturous Reasoning 0
The recent attempts on the part of the wingnut right to claim that torture had a role in tracking Osama bin Laden, fraudulent though they are, leads me to wonder this:
It’s skeevy.
(Update: Typo corrected.)
Twits on Twitter 0
. . . except in Kent County, Delaware:
New provisions would bar workers from posting materials on or off the job that disparage co-workers, disclose confidential information or “reflect unfavorably” on county government, unless rated as a “legitimate matter of public concern.” The same proposals also would create a “duty to report inappropriate use of social media by co-workers or supervisors.”
Delaware’s other county and state governments already aggressively use social media as communications tools and tolerate limited worker use of public systems for private postings. From the moment he took office, Gov. Jack Markell has made heavy use of everything from blogging, to flickr, to YouTube.
Two thoughts:
- This sounds like overreach as regards personal behavior at home.
- What are the county fathers and mothers afraid of?
Early Polling 0
Andy Borowitz reports:
Full poll results at the link.
De-Pulped 0
How long has it been since you’ve looked something up in a phone book? I think I’ve done it twice in the past three years, and both times it was Yellow Pages. Think of the landfill space this will save:
Verizon will notify customers about how to request printed versions of the phone book through press releases and inserts in their bills, company spokesman Harry Mitchell told the Citizen.
Print directories containing business and government white pages, customer information pages and the yellow pages will continue to be delivered to all customers.
I can’t find a link, but my reading indicates that most of the opposition to this has come from companies that print phone books. They even tried claiming that it abridged their freedom of speech (apparently, speech is now spelled i-n-v-o-i-c-e).
Springtime in Paris . . . 0
. . . Paris, Texas, that is, is apparently not so great, especially if you are not-white.
Whether or not the story is true is yet to be determined, but I have been reading Field long enough to know that he does his homework and does not speak lightly.
If you find the story appalling, it is because it is.
If you find the story unbelievable, it is because you don’t know your history.
Down the Tubes 0
Er, yeah.
Disappointingly, the story does not explain the nature of the defect.
Ha-Ha-Ha-HA-Ha 2
This is to be the best lead (yes, it’s “lead,” not “lede,” for Pete’s sake–it “leads” you to read the rest) I have seen in a long time:
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Bad week in Black Rock:
Even before last week, claims had drifted up, raising concern the improvement in the labor market has stalled. Employers added 185,000 workers to payrolls in April, fewer than in the prior month, and the unemployment rate held at 8.8 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show tomorrow.
Cutting taxes for the rich so they can store more money in the Cayman Islands is no doubt the best way to maintain this trend.
Swampwater 0
Ashcroft, ethics, and the con-artists formerly known as Blackwater.
A match made in–well, somewhere.
Giddy-Up Giddy-Up 409 Whoops!
3
I got no license to drive the 409 on the 405. Better stay home.
Dick Destiny explains how licentious outsourcing led to unlicensed California drivers.
It’s a mind-boggling tale of how pathetic public-private partnership phleeces the polity.
Aside:
And, by the way, what’s with this “the” stuff in how Californians address their highways? Never figured that out.
Nobody east of the Donner Pass would say, for example, “the 95” or “the 80.”