March, 2012 archive
QOTD 0
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
And I Thought Karaoke Was So Aughts 0
Instead it’s gone to the national lookalike chains:
Spill Here, Spill Now, Dine Later 0
Facing South reports on Buccaneer Petroleum’s contributions to the food chain:
Research by faculty and students at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. found crude oil from the 2010 spill in zooplankton (photo), small animals that play a critical role in the aquatic food web.
It will make that pink slime just slide right down.
Twits on Twitter 0
The return of the Anonymous twits.
QOTD 0
Luther Burbank, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best to at least rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Just what exactly are the resale prospects for a repo church:
The real-estate information company CoStar Group looked at five years of distressed church sales and found only a handful of foreclosures nationwide prior to 2008, when the number jumped to 24. In 2009, the figure was 67.
CoStar Group spokeswoman Angela Brown said the market saw a big spike in 2010 with 135 churches sold after a lender-initiated foreclosure. In 2011, there were 138 such sales.
The states with the highest percentages of forced church sales often were those with some of the worst home-foreclosure rates, including California, Florida and Michigan.
Driving while Black 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., considers the killing of Trayvon Martin, who was shot by a “neighborhood watch” vigilante while walking from a 7-11 to his father’s house. The neighborhood watcher found hims suspicious. Mr. Pitts asks:
American Taliban 0
Robyn Blumner is uneasy:
Read the rest.
Rhetoric, Reality, Morality, Venality 0
RTAmerican considers the strange confluence between the Bible Belt and XXX websites.
It’s an eerie echo of the old alliance between the “Baptists and the bootleggers.”
QOTD 0
Daniel Kahneman, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
We’re not aware of changing our minds even when we do change our minds. and most people, after they change their minds, reconstruct their past opinion — they believe they always thought that.
Driving while Brown 0
Now they are hatin’ at the NCAAs:
Translation: We Mississippians belong here. Do you?
He lives in Miami now, but Rodriguez was born in Puerto Rico, which makes him an American citizen. They taught this when I was in school in Mississippi, but now there’s another, sinister message being pushed throughout the Southern states. Namely that people with Spanish-derived names and swarthy looks should be presumed outsiders. They must be made to prove their right to be here.
(snip the President of USM’s apology)
Saunders calls the incident isolated. Perhaps it is. But the chant arose the same day the Mississippi House passed a bill that will make life for anybody named Rodriguez or Ramos or Torres or Escovedo decidedly more difficult. Is that a coincidence? Or are the children taking cues from the adults?
It is unquestionably true that the xenophobia fostered by wingnut politicians has given bigots the green light. Why do they do it? Because hate sells.
Read the rest.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Tony Norman points out the genius of the voter fraud fraud.
It’s easy to dress that wolf up in sheep’s clothing.
None of the requirements for a photo ID will be impossible to meet, but it will make voting inconvenient. While the Republicans aren’t erecting literal barriers to voting, they can’t say with a straight face that they aren’t introducing an element of unprecedented Election Day hassle. That is the point.
In a nation already cursed with low turnouts, there is a fiendish elegance to voter ID laws. It’s a tactic exclusively designed to reduce the number of Democratic voters, who will be discouraged by long lines in their precincts caused by the new screening procedures.
Click to read the rest.
Dis Coarse Discourse, Tearing the Veil from Republican Vile 0
I live in a time in which Republicans consider vicariously sticking things up women a legitimate function of the state.
Words fail me.
Sauce for the Goose 0
Sally Kalson gives a gander to the ganders:
It takes two to tango, as they say, but only one gets pregnant, or called a “slut,” or is subjected to so much punitive legislation — most of it authored by men who would faint en masse at the prospect of going through labor and delivery.
Read the rest, if only to delight in her proposed pledge of male chastity.
Naked Bunch 0
Oh, my.
One suspects that this tactic was doomed to failure from the git-go.
After being turned away at 10:14 a.m., police say the group returned again at 11:07 a.m. and then again at 12:55 p.m.
During the last visit, police say, the group disrobed in the parking lot and began singing religious hymns and prayers.
All this played out in front of students, some of them shooting of the family (sic), still naked with arms inter-locked inside of their van.
School certainly has changed.
QOTD 0
Solomon Ibn Gabirol:
If you want to keep something concealed from your enemy, don’t disclose it to your friend.
Aside:
Doubly true in Facebook world.
