December, 2011 archive
A Newt Is a Small Lizard . . . 0
. . . and a small newt is an eft.
Therefore, if there is a newt about, you have already been efted.
H/T Susan for the thought.
(Misplet word corrected.)
Republican Donations 0
Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
High Finance for Dummies 0
Atrios explains how credit default swaps work.
Swampwater, Hiding in Plain Site Dept. 0
TPM:
The company formerly known as Blackwater is now the company formerly known as Xe.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the security contractor is announcing it’s switched its name to Academi, all part of an effort to be more “boring.”
The Phony War on Christmas 0
Looks like Christmas is winning, at least in Colorado.
Some members of Evergreen’s Jewish community aren’t ready to end the debate because a large tree, adjacent to the community’s popular hub, remains adorned with Christmas lights.
The colored lights on a tree are not considered by the governing bodies to be religiously affiliated.
Despite all the hoo-ha about the “commercialization of Christmas,” only a fool or a liar can claim with a straight face that Christmas trees aren’t “religiously affiliated.”
When that claim is used to justify disrespect to another religion, it sort of rules out “fool.”
Was it in Matthew or Luke that Jesus said, “Be nasty to your neighbors”?
Furrfu.
The Phony War on Christmas, Up Perryscope Dept. 0
The Rick Perry hate machine tried to drum up religious strife this week with a perfectly vile ad. (See a delicious, if somewhat extremely tasteless, response to it here), provoking prodigious punditry. Two columns caught my eye.
At the Chicago Trib, Steve Chapman, who’s normally sane, falls into the trap and tries to gin up justification for saying that President Obama is conducting a war on religion. Here’s a bit:
The first instance arose after passage of his health care overhaul, when the Department of Health and Human Services ordered that all insurance plans cover contraceptives and sterilization for women, with no copayment. The mandate means many Americans would have to be complicit in something their faith forbids.
The reasoning is absurd; it’s a canon-lawyerly smokescreen for advocating that those who oppose contraception should be empowered to impose their beliefs on those who do not. The stated purpose of insurance is to “insure” (after paying for executives’ country club memberships, of course), not to proselytize nor to penalize customers for indulging in legal, victim-less, a generally-accepted behavior.
Mike Littwin, at the Denver Post, gets to heart of the meaning of the Perry ad. Here’s a snippet:
(snip)
If you really want to talk presidential politics and religion, you have to start with Mitt Romney and Mormonism. It was a prominent Perry endorser, Robert Jeffress, who said Mormonism was a “cult.” Perry said he disagreed about the cult thing but that he wouldn’t disown the pastor’s endorsement.
And so here’s the irony: The politician who makes a fake cry about so-called religious intolerance is the one actually encouraging it.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
The benefits of foreclosures are oft understated. They can create and fund entire departments full of jobs. The Denver Post reports:
The public trustee system has generated huge profits by charging the public more than what’s needed to actually run its offices, according to financial documents provided by several counties and reviewed by The Denver Post.
What’s more, each trustee office has generated so much money that it has a bank account set aside with enough funds to maintain the office for a whole year — salaries included — in the unlikely event that not a single foreclosure gets filed.
More examples of lien largesse at the link.
Picking Pockets Any Way They Can, Have Cake Eat It Too Dept. 0
Depreciation is an economic and accounting concept that allows businesses to spread out the cost of a durable asset, such as a bulldozer, over time for tax and accounting purposes.
Delmarva Power wants to turn it into real money.
The meters provide Delmarva with remote access to meters, eliminating the need for readers to physically visit the meters to read them. It also allows the utility to check remotely if a home or business is receiving power, as it did during Hurricane Irene. That means earlier notice of outages.
The installation cost the utility $72 million, and Delmarva reports much of that was offset by savings, such as by no longer using meter readers. In Delmarva’s $31.8 million PSC rate case, the utility said it would only seek $174,000 immediately.
But in the filing, Delmarva also asked the PSC to create a process that would later allow them to recoup what is currently estimated as $39 million associated with the meters, over 15 years.
(snip)
Of Delmarva’s $39 million proposed charge to ratepayers, $26.5 million is to reimburse the company for the lost value of the old meters, which company officials said had not been fully depreciated.
So they upgrade the meters to save money, then want the customers to pay for the old meters because the old meters cost money when they were purchased Lord knows how many years ago and still have a value on paper.
Give them the kewpie doll for creative corporate conniving.
The Republican War on Science 0
Little Ricky Santorum takes it public.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
When your sweetheart breaks up with you, remember to treat those who were not involved in the relationship with utmost courtesy:
QOTD 0
Abigail Adams, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
Burn, Baby, Burn 0
Thomm Hartmann tangles with rightwing bloviators about several issues; watch the clash of fact and propaganda. The description from the website:
Heather Cirmo, Conservative Strategist & Neil McCabe, Human Events Online joins Thom Hartmann. Why are firefighters watching homes burn down in Tennessee? I’ll ask my panel of Conservatives if this is what a Libertarian Paradise looks like in tonight’s Lone Liberal Rumble.
PC, Right Wing Style 0
An offering from Unqualified Offerings:
(snip)
“You liberals will tolerate everything, but you won’t tolerate intolerance Har Har Har!” chortles the conservative, thinking he got in a total zinger.
When one’s politics are based on being hate-full, one desires respect for the hating.
