2011 archive
Dustbiters 0
I got caught up in shell scripting last night. I checked for responsible fiscals after COB EST, but not after COB CST and later.
Turns out the FDIC recognized more of our banking community for their fiduciary acumen.
Bank no more on
Facebook Frolics 0
Facebood Street View:
The page belongs to Alger Street in Brockton, a stretch of potholed, pitted asphalt that has crushed tires, shattered shock absorbers, and rattled the teeth of drivers for years, if not decades.
On Little Cat Feet 0
Fog over the beachfront, yesterday, mid-afternoon.
The Atlantic is out there somewhere . . . .
H/T Susan for the pic.
“Hey, Bub. Yeah, You, ovah Dere. Wanna Buy a State?” 0
In Wingnut World, there is no such thing as “the public good” if there’s a quick buck to be made.
Forget the “public trough.”
They’re planning to make make off with the whole water system and fence it to their cronies, who like most fences, will pay only a pittance for the goods:
The budget bill also plans to tear down the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS). This is not New Jersey, where a succession of corrupt governments have underfunded (read: stolen) the state pension system in order to shift resources to pay for budget shortfalls in general revenues caused by tax breaks for the rich. The WRS is one of the nation’s most stable, well-funded and best-managed pension systems. Although Wisconsin is not a big state, the WRS has amassed $75bn in reserves, and pays out handsome pensions to its public retirees, without needing new public subsidy. The Walker bill has language providing for tearing down this system, raiding its assets to pay for further tax cuts for the rich (especially property owners), and then throwing Wall Street a meaty bone as public employees would be shifted to 401k plans handled by money managers on commission.
In a separate proposal, Governor Walker would start privatising the University of Wisconsin’s two flagship doctorate-granting campuses. Ironically, the land grant universities – of which Wisconsin has long been among the best – were created by protectionist 19th-century Republicans as an alternative approach to British free-market doctrine, which dominated the prestigious and largely anglophile Ivy League universities. These universities, like their German counterparts, taught a new economic policy of state management and public enterprise that formed the basis for subsequent US and German development. Walker would kill off this tradition, and return intellectual production to the highest bidder.
Clone Me, Dr. Memory 0
Bergman and Ossman have a podcast.
Facebook Frolics 0
(snip)
The social networking site blocked her page and removed the image because it said it broke its rules on nudity.
Ms Tullett said she had only intended to offer encouragement to fellow breast cancer sufferers.
“It was to show other women that after such an ordeal you can come out of it with your dignity and your womanhood again, and that it’s not all frightening,” she said.
I suspect that she should have known better. There’s nothing like pictures of real people to make other people get all stupid.
I’m beginning to think that life would be saner if we were willing to admit that real people look like real people from head to toe and dispense with the coyness.
Not likely to happen, though.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Not good, not terrible.
More at the link.
Well, That Didn’t Take Long 0
Last week, I wondered how long it would before Wisconsin Republicans abandoned all pretense of democracy and staged a coup.
Answer: Five days.
I haven’t yet been able to watch this all the way through.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Today’s Republican Party cares not for governance nor for the polity. It cares only for the power to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Video via Balloon Juice.