July, 2012 archive
Bachmann Smearer Overdrive (Updated) 0
Addendum, Later That Same Day:
Dick Polman considers the reaction. A nugget:
Banksters in Training 0
In the San Jose Mercury-News, Victor Dorff describes what he considers a new attitude amongst his students: that cheating is just part of the game.
A nugget:
He goes on to wonder how to combat the cheaters.
Mr. Dorff misses the point.
The students are demonstrating that they can learn from their betters, using proven tactics to master their universe.
They aren’t just copying the answers.
They are copying the success strategies of the rich, the influential, the revered, the kowtowed-to.
The Wall Street.
Twits on Twitter 0
Nerdcore twits:
If you are not quite sure what nerdcore is, Dual Core is probably the best example (warning: the rap is good; the recording isn’t).
QOTD 0
Arthur Ashe, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
A. P. Ticker’s Scrapple News 0
Scrapple, you will recall, is made from the bits that didn’t make the cut for sausage.
Warning: Good taste shortage (in the video, not in scrapple, at least, not in Habersett brand scrapple; Rapa brand wouldn’t make the cut for Habersett, but that’s another issue).
George Zimmerman: “To God Be the Glory” 3
What is it about whack jobs and God?
Emphasis added.
Toward the end of the hourlong interview, however, Zimmerman backtracked on that statement.
“I do wish there was something, anything I could have done that wouldn’t have put me in a position where I would have had to take a life,” he said. “I do want to tell everyone I’m sorry that this happened. I hate to think that because of this incident, because of my actions, it has polarized, divided America. I’m truly sorry.”
Perhaps he could have started by not stalking the innocent black kid.
I think I shall be ill.
Afterthought:
Note the linguistic passive voice framing which implies that somehow Zimmerman had nothing whatsoever to do with actually pulling the damn trigger.
Sounds like a corporate press release.
Zimmerman’s tale of what happened doesn’t pass the WTF! test.
AfterAfterthought:
Chauncey Devega finds the lesson of the interview:
(snip)
This is the source of their love for Zimmerman, and sincere rage at his arrest and prosecution. If anything, the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman should have just been a minor inconvenience for all involved–except of course the victim, his family, and community. He is just a black anyway, so what’s the big deal? They die everyday in America and no one cares either way.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Have fun in the summer, but, please, do so politely.
A few minutes later, police received a call about shots fired in the first block of Cummings Avenue. Upon officers’ arrival, they found three homes and vehicle parked in front of one of the homes had been shot multiple times, Price said.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
(snip)
Estimates for first-time claims ranged from 350,000 to 390,000 in the Bloomberg News survey of 47 economists. The Labor Department initially reported the prior week’s applications at 350,000.
It’s called “shutdown” and happens every year in the late summer.
Also, Bloomberg’s experts continue their pattern of not being the persons to ask for help help in picking the ponies.
Aside:
Look, I know it would be extraordinarily difficult to predict next week’s figures with accuracy. On a percentage basis, they aren’t off by much.
That’s not why I keep harping on this. Given how difficult the prediction would be, why the heck does Bloomberg make such a big deal about the numbers missing their touts’ predictions? Their experts’ failure, low or high, is almost always in the first one or two paragraphs of the story.
One wonders whether maybe Vinnie or The Snake is running numbers based on Bloomberg’s “experts.”
Droning On 0
Remote-control robotic death from the skies.
According to Robot’s Rules of Order, he was hit by drone. Therefore he was ipso facto an “enemy combatant.”
If the drone has missed, he would not have been a combatant.
It’s the best catch there is.
QOTD 0
Bill Cosby, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Sigmund Freud once said, ‘What do women want?’ The only thing I have learned in fifty-two years is that women want men to stop asking dumb questions like that.
Praised with Faint Damns 0
I don’t think the old boy thought through the implications of his remark. From TPM:
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Keeping old folks from the polls:
Out of 44,861 active Philadelphia voters 80 or older, more than one in four, a total of 12,313, do not have photo ID from the state Department of Transportation – either a driver’s license or a nondriver ID. Those figures are based on an Inquirer analysis using computer data developed by PennDot and the Pennsylvania Department of State, which is responsible for state elections.
Among active Philadelphia voters – those who have voted at least once in the last four years – the state counted about 136,000 whose names and birth dates did not match those with PennDot IDs. Overall, that number is 15.6 percent of the city’s active registered voters, about 874,000.
But among older voters, the percentage without PennDot ID increases – to 19.5 percent among voters aged 65 to 79, and 27.4 percent among voters 80 and older.
Much more at the link.
Remember that these laws are not about protecting the integrity of elections.
They are about protecting the incumbency of Republicans, who know that a healthy voter turnout is inimical to them and to the interests of their corporate masters.
Facebook Frolics 0
No doubt this will work out well:
(snip)
Once it’s live, Facebook users will need to agree to let Facebook access their information, which will be used to prefill their name and date of birth in the voter registration form. Users will still need to provide a driver’s license or state ID number to continue.
Facebook, natch, is renowned for the security and respect with which it treats its users’ data.
