June, 2012 archive
All the News that Fits 0
The only thing that keeps this bit from being funnier is its eerie similarity to your local news:
Do Nothings 0
Truman was right.
Jubilation T. Cornball 0
I wish I could have had to opportunity to be celebrated for 60 years of being supported by the state.
Didn’t we fight a war over being rid of this?
Mr. Feastingonroadkill has his own take on the situation.
Via Raw Story.
The Austerity Myth 0
In the Guardian, Ha-Joon Chang muses on why it is so strong (emphasis added):
So, if the whole history of capitalism, and not just the experiences of the last few years, shows that the supposed remedies for today’s economic crisis are not going to work, what are our political and economic leaders doing? Perhaps they are insane – if we follow Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. But the more likely explanation is that, by pushing these policies against all evidence, our leaders are really telling us that they want to preserve – or even intensify, in areas like welfare policy – the economic system that has served them so well in the past three decades.
It is notable that the one thing the “haves” by and large are not suggesting is that they make a bigger contribution to the “have nots.”
Austerity clearly is good for others, not for themselves.
Read the rest.
The Jobbing of America 0
Dick Polman examines the scam. A nugget (emphasis added):
When the American Jobs Act was first proposed, independent economists – including Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and a top ’08 McCain adviser – said that Obama’s measure would create as many as two million new jobs. Forget it, folks. There was no way the Republicans would ever let that happen. They’re invested in rooting for misery, and working with Obama to put people back to work would mess with their electoral master plan.
Their top priority is not to forge bipartisan deals that would create jobs. On the contrary, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell articulated their top priority several years ago: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Why ease Americans’ job misery if it means that Obama might win a second term? Better to do nothing, and bank on the likelihood that most voters won’t remember the Republican intransigence that took place one year before the election.
Read the rest.
Droning On 0
On the Media considers why the disconnect between US reporting and international reporting on the Drone Wars, particularly the lack of domestic coverage of civilian deaths (emphasis added).
I love the “if I hit you, you must be guilty” reasoning.
Follow the link to read the transcript or listen to the story.
Endless War 0
Excerpt:
It’s consistent with their belief that every single problem in the world can be solved if we invade . . . .
This notion that we can kill . . . our way to security is fundamentally flawed.
Stray Thought 0
I had forgotten just how bloody annoying Windows is.
Then I set up a computer for a friend . . . .
Light Bloggery 0
Real Life.
Prize Patrol 0
New Jersey inspects boardwalk games (shooting galleries, dart and ball toss and the like) to make sure they are on the up-and-up.
One question: Who ever expected them to be on the up-and-up?
QOTD 0
Augusten Burroughs:
Have you ever watched a single abysmal YouTube cover of a song? Dreams are not alway beautiful things.
Psychology Today, June 2012, p. 29
Stray Thought, Reaganomics Dept. 0
I listen to a lot of Old Time Radio (“old time” in this context means mostly 1940s and early 1950s, not “old time” to me, but, then, I’m old), mostly because it’s fun (see the links in the sidebar).
It reminds one of the days when writers were able to tell a coherent, concise story with a beginning, middle, and end, in half an hour. (This would appear to be a lost art–not just the “beginning, middle, and end” part, but also the “coherent” part).
One of the shows I sometimes indulge in is “Casey, Crime Photographer,” which under various permutations of that name, aired for a decade.
Somewhere in the introduction, the announcer would always say,
The Anchor Hocking Glass Corporation and its 10,000 employees bring you . . . .
You cannot imagine those words today, for, to today’s employers, employees are not partners in production.
Today’s employees are the enemy, to be vanquished, despoiled, and impoverished.
Especially impoverished, so that Wall Street bonus babies can get their bonuses for “cutting costs.”
Just ask Walmart, whose business model is based on exporting jobs to China and abusing employees.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Teabags 1
In the Sacramento Bee, Vanessa Williamson tells of her talks with teabaggers. She found them well-informed about political tactics, but, when it came to actual policy, not so much.
At times, the level of misinformation in tea party circles reached conspiratorial proportions. At a tea party meeting in Massachusetts, people discussed the possibility that the “smart grid” (an electrical infrastructure improvement approximately as controversial as road repair) was in fact a plan that would give the government control over the thermostats in people’s homes. Where are these smart, educated Americans getting such terribly inaccurate information?
Where indeed? Read the rest to find out.
Conventional Wisdom 0
Tampa, Florida, strip clubs gear up for the invasion of Republican Conventioneers.
No doubt the family values of the Republican Party will doom this effort.
Also, pigs, wings.
Web customers pay a monthly membership fee for these virtual interactions. And some of them, the club says, end up coming to Tampa for a trip inside the spaceship-topped nude club on N Dale Mabry Highway where they can visit the strippers in person.
By August — just in time for the Republican National Convention — operators of Club Cam Systems plan to roll out similar ventures at two other Tampa adult clubs. Their goal: drum up thousands of dollars online while giving some of the estimated 50,000 GOP convention visitors a taste of the adult entertainment awaiting them when they arrive.
QOTD 0
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.