July, 2011 archive
“Oprah, Tool of the Anti-Christ” and Other Goodies 0
Rachel Maddow rounds up a few whack-a-doodles of the right wing:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I am hardly a fan of Oprah, but that has more to do with her unleashing Dr. Phil on an unsuspecting world than with a belief that she is a tool of the Devil.
TSA Security Theatre, Over Three Ounces Dept. 0
From El Reg:
TSA employee Nelson Santiago was spotted by a Continental Airlines employee as he was stuffing said Cupertinian foundleslab into his pants when inspecting luggage at a Florida airport.
This guy had stolen over 50 grand worth of stuff in six months, selling it over unspecified internet sales sites.
Also, fondleslab.
Pensions Pending 1
This is something that has been nagging at me for some time, but I wasn’t sure how to address it. Now a letter writer to the Philly Inquirer has saved me the trouble.
When politicians complain about the cost of retirees’ pensions, they often leave out the full term: “Unfunded pension obligations.”
It’s not the pensions. It’s the politicians who refused to plan for them, but instead have used pension funds for other purposes.
The situation with social security is similar.
Social Security isn’t broke; it’s looted, sacrificed to the fetish against taxes citizens paying for the services they demand from the government.
Dustbiters 0
Having too much fun last night to check the obits for banks, so I missed the demise of three more titans of fiscal responsibility.
These are banks no more:
Trying To Outfox Alan Grayson 0
Update: Thanks to Joe Vecchio for pointing out that I misplet “Grayson” as “Simpson.”
Representative Grayson repeatedly fails to fall for the misdirection play.
Watch the interviewer totally miss and twist the point, while portraying a philosophy of “I’ve got mine” that is rather staggering:
Via The Richmonder.
Legacies 0
What Jason330 said: Bush Beyond Thunderdome.
Facebook Frolics: Breaching the Wall 0
into another wall. (Warning: Short commercial at beginning.)
No, I’m not planning to join Google+.
I am considering Identi.ca.
Pick-Up Lines 0
Like the wolf at the bar trying to pick up the girl next to him, Mitt the Flip says whatever he thinks will work right now.
In the Chicago Trib, Steve Chapman surveys Mitt’s recent history of incantations and recantations and sums them up:
Follow the link for to see the evidence.
Mitt the Flip: There’s no there there.
The Galt and the Lamers, Competition Dept. 2
Price competition in health care: The fee hand of the market at work.
Such “trade secret” clauses are standard in the medical world and exempt from public records laws, they say. But the secrecy means that Jackson can’t compare its prices to what many other hospitals pay. That’s like a consumer going to buy a flat-screen TV and not knowing what others are paying for the same brand, said Curtis Rooney, president of the Health Industry Group Purchasing Association. “We call them gag clauses. … People can’t find out the best price.”
Free market.
Competition.
It is to laugh.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
I remember my Daddy talking about paying his poll tax. He had already passed his literacy test. He was white. That guaranteed a passing score.
President Clinton calls out the voter fraud fraud: The revival of Jim Crow voting restrictions.
Video via the Brad Blog.
Afterthought:
Why do Republicans fear voters?
App Decision 0
And one of the best subheads ever:
Apple fails to get US ‘App Store’ trademark injunction Judge backs Amazon against fruitbite cargo cult
“Fruitbite cargo cult,” indeed.
A snippet form the story:
This claim was rather undermined by Apple’s own Steve Jobs, who called Apple’s app store: “the easiest-to-use largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone”: a claim which suggests that there are other app stores and that people understand what that phrase means.
In other news, Apple is reported to be mulling plans to trademark every entry in the OED because words are used in iGadget menus.
When Too Much Is Never Enough 0
Harold Meyerson comments on the Republican Party’s intransigence and sees an unlikely parallel with another movement for which ideology trumped reality.
A snippet (emphasis added):
(snip)
When zeal runs amok, the sense of proportion suffers. Today’s Republicans remind me of some leaders of the American Communist Party whom I got to know decades ago, after they’d left the fold. “We believed in the party line, in its infallibility, so completely,” one ex-commie told me, “that we’d forget the larger strategy for the momentary tactic.” So it was with Communists of yore; so it is with Republicans today.