2011 archive
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.”
Osama bin Laden: the Resurrection 2
The Chicago Tribune provides tools for building your own wingnut conspiracy theory as to how Osama bin Laden is not dead, but is risen. A nugget:
This week’s doubters have been dubbed “deathers,” a not-subtle allusion to the birthers, who are still spinning conspiracies about the president’s origins despite all that egg on their faces. Neither group should be confused with the truthers, who reject government and media accounts of the 9/11 attacks, which were (an inside job / a government pretext for war in the Middle East).
It is a delicious read.
My friend Karen is no piker; she has the answer.
The Republican War on Women 0
If you get raped, you’d better keep a receipt.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.
What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk-Employee Cafeteria. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)
When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, May 5.
Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)
Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)
Foxy Shady (Updated) 0
Mr. Feastingonroadkill a simple description of the modus operandi of right-wing media.
Addendum, the Next Day:
Helen gives an example, ripped, as they say, from the headlines.
Thought for the Day 0
I have been feeling none of the triumphalism that seems to have greeted the killing of Osama bin Laden.
I do not regret it, not that my regrets are here or there, but celebration seems rather a wrong reaction.
I think this, from@ericfiddler on Twitter via Mr. Feastingonroadkill, encapsulates why.
Lawrence O’Donnell Is an Optimist 0
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
He’s quite wrong you know.
Republican lies never die.
Video via Bob Cesca.
Afterthought:
For that matter, they don’t even fade away.
Facebook Frolics 0
Clicking on “Don’t Like”:
The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of Facebook users in New York state under the age of 18 who had “their names or likenesses used on a Facebook feed or in an advertisement sold by Facebook Inc. without the consent of their parent or guardian.” The suit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn yesterday.
Much more at the link.
Time To Declare Victory and Come Home 0
I find the Rude One’s questions quite on point:
One last note: the Rude Pundit finds it sadly funny that, after a trillion plus dollars spent on the wars, after thousands of soldiers killed, that what it took to get Osama bin Laden was a criminal investigation and an intelligence operation followed by a quick strike. As we ponder our dead, all our dead, as we remember and make silly statements about “closure,” let us wonder what might have been for the United States had that been our approach all along.
Snakeheads 0
Every snake has a head.
If you cut off the head of Hydra, two grow back.
Snakes, not so much. Maybe one. Maybe none.
But ignoring a snake–never a good idea.
Asia Times considers the possibilities of new snakeheads.
Video via Bob Cesca.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Society 2
On this week’s Le Show, Harry Shearer interviews Bill Black, one of the men who untangled the Savings and Loan frauds in the 1990s, on the mechanisms by which the banksters corrupted the home mortgage industry and the mortgage process and crashed our economy–and why no one has gone to jail.
They examine how the pay structure for the bankster bonus babies and deregulation of mortgage banks in particular and of the securities industry in general both allowed and encouraged CEOs of banks to make the biggest bad loans they could as fast as they could, so that they could take the money and leave the mortgage investors (read: the people who bought the mortgage-backed insecurities) holding their empty bags of air.
Here are just two quotes I caught:
The anti-regulators cost 10 million Americans their jobs and 10 million others the ability to work full-time, and they did so by creating an environment that . . . was an open invitation to fraud.
The Mortgage Bankers Association is the trade association of the perps . . . . (The bankers were) looting bankruptcy for profit.
Birthers of a Notion 2
This week, Bob Garfield of On the Media inteviews James Fallows regarding President Obama’s release of his birth certificate, focusing on the role of the media in birtherism. In the process, they look back on the history of the American press, from the time of Andrew Jackson forward.
Then Bob Garfield adds a comment:
Well, first of all, no, it wouldn’t. In the Internet world, and the FOX News Channel world, the mainstream media aren’t the arbiters of what stories live or die.
But beyond that, notwithstanding the President’s digs at the press corps, the media have nothing here to be ashamed of. They didn’t seize on the birther story because they regarded it as unsettled. They did so mainly to foster evaluation of supposed presidential hopeful Donald Trump, and of elected officials who keep doubt alive by framing the President’s birth as a matter of belief, not of fact.
When Speaker of the House John Boehner says, “I take the President at his word,” that slyly leaves open the possibility that the President is lying.
So Obama shouldn’t be ridiculing the messenger here. If anything, the President owes the press a debt of gratitude. If he wants the public to distinguish a responsible leader from a carnival barker, someone has to document the barking.
I often hear and see some of my fellow lefties complain that the media should just not cover the birthers and their fantastickal and fantastically stupid, bigoted claims, since there is no news, only falsehood, there.
As much as I wish the whole birther nonsense would go away, I find these complaints disquieting, not just on abstract First Amendment grounds (and, as my two or three regular readers know, I am a First Amendment purist), but also from the knowledge that censoring them can’t stop them. If this hokum came only from a few cranks at the barbershop, it would be unreported hokum.
Instead, persons who are, by virtue (that may be the wrong word, but oh, well) of their positions are newsworthy promote the lies, both implicitly and explicitly.
Attempting to censor the lie would not make it disappear.
Rather, it would goad the rightwing lie machine into higher gear.
Follow the link to read the rest of the transcript and listen to the entire segment or listen here: