November, 2012 archive
Is the Crazy Train Losing Passengers? 0
Rachel Maddow wonders whether the Republican Party is jettisoning its crazies. The relevant part starts about at about the 4:26 mark, following a summary of the big stories of the week.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Jettisoning?
Nah. Just putting them back on the shelf for a while.
Via Raw Story.
Junque Sales 0
Buried in a larger story about small stockholder protests over Target’s opening on Thanksgiving Day:
It’s a competition to see who can bamboozle you out of your bucks the soonest.
Dammit, if I’m staying up past midnight, it’s gonna be to go to some place a damn sight more interesting than some coookie-cutter department store.
Metamorphosis 2
From the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the recommended retoolings for the Republicans:
Shorter version: Become Democrats.
Ain’t gonna happen. At least no time soon.
Retooling the message means retooling the party; otherwise, you get something like “compassionate conservatism,” an empty phrase, a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, signifying nothing.
The party base is too deeply invested in the hatin’ and party poobahs are too deeply beholdin’ to wingnut welfare.
Facebook Frolics 0
(snip)
The sales information that advertisers receive is anonymous, said Baser. “You would see the number of people who bought shoes,” he said, using the example of an online shoe retailer. But marketers would not be able to get information that could identify the people, he added.
Remember that, when you drill back far enough, at some point the information is no longer anonymous. Facebook knows who clicked what. In fact, with their persistent cookies, they can know even if you are not logged in to Facebook.
A Scandal from the Snuggery? 0
Chauncey Devega has an unexpected take on the Petraeus-Broadwell-Allen-Kelley brouhaha.
I haven’t figured out how far up his cheek he had his tongue when he wrote it, but it’s far more plausible than the Republicans’ lame attempts to gin up a link to Libya.
Giving Schools the Business 0
One of the recurring strategies in the campaign to sell out off public resources is to argue that the target of the day “should be run like a business.”
This tactic is especially popular when the target is not like a business in any way and often serves as a cover for reducing the pay and benefits of the (usually relatively low-paid) persons employed in that endeavor, while increasing the pay of executives and consultants feeding at trough while the endeavor is made more “business-like.”*
Thomas Zachek skewers this strategy as it is applied to schools. A nugget:
What private-sector job does teaching really correspond to? Teachers don’t do what doctors or lawyers do. Or salesmen, middle managers or roofers. Trying to educate a room full of children or teens just is not like other pursuits. (Sometimes I think a teacher’s job is most like a cross between a standup comic and a lion tamer.)
Name me five occupations in the business world that expect the level of education and preparation we expect from teachers, with similar workloads and responsibilities, for similar pay. Heck, name one.
Read the rest.
_______________________
*Overpaid CEOs and consultants at the trough are often the most “business-like” attributes of the products of the “run like a business” crew.
IOKIYAR 0
Watch Soledad O’Brien reduce hack Republican Congressman to incoherent doubletalk over Republican attempts to gin up a scandal over Susan Rice and Benghazi:
He’s a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Same like Michelle Bachman.
Via ABL.
Mommy and Poppy 0
She got her baby back five days later the “county realized its mistake.”
I used to have family in Lawrence County. The hospital’s actions do not surprise me at all.
It’s one of those places that puts the “be” in “nighted.”
The “Secesh” 2
Tony Norman tries to figure out the Neo-Confederates:
Americans love guns and religion, but we’re complete agnostics when it comes to history.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the second year of the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in our history, but that doesn’t mean secession should ever be off the table as far as a minority of bitter voters are concerned.
Without any sense of irony that comes with even a cursory reading of history, hundreds of thousands of Americans recently flooded the Obama White House with “We, the People” petitions requesting permission for their states to “amicably secede” from the Union.
“A Kingdom of Love and Light . . .” 0
Love thy neighbor.
Shana Cihak says her 17-year-old son, Lennon, was not allowed to participate in the religious rite of passage at Assumption Church in Barnesville last month after posting a Facebook picture of himself holding a political sign that he changed to oppose the constitutional amendment. The proposed measure to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota was defeated Nov. 6.
Life in the Benghazi Bubble 0
Rachel Maddow explores John McCain’s and Republicans’ efforts to gin up a scandal over Benghazi:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Via Raw Story.
A Friedman Unit’s Worth of Word Salad 0
Matt Taibbi invites his readers to rewrite a Thomas Friedman column in one paragraph.
The results are–well, just see for yourselves.
Dustbiters 0
Georgia builds its lead as the nexus of nixed banks.
has left town.
Afterthought:
With a solid name like “Hometown Community Bank,” what could possibly have gone wrong?
After all, isn’t “branding” all that matters?
Off the Halftracks 4
Daniel Ruth on the Generals–he doesn’t say anything new, but it’s a fun read.
Long after the cameras are folded up in front of the Declasse Doyenne’s underwater mansion on Bayshore Boulevard, we are still left to wonder just how did David Petraeus and John Allen find themselves transformed in the time it takes to unsnap a bra or hit the send button from bold, visionary military figures to General Halftrack chasing Miss Buxley around?
Then there’s this:
Fowl Water 0
This ain’t chicken feed. Just started out that way:
The lead lawyer for the Waterkeeper Alliance told Judge William M. Nickerson that water samples taken on and around Alan and Kristin Hudson’s 293-acre farm near Berlin offer “very compelling” evidence that waste from their two chicken houses was getting into nearby ditches, which ultimately drain to the Chesapeake Bay. Levels of disease-causing bacteria and other pollutants were “off the chart,” said Jane F. Barrett, director of the University of Maryland environmental law clinic, which is representing the environmental group.
Defense lawyers claim that it’s all conjecture, there’s no proof, no one saw anything, yadda-yadda-yadda you know the drill.
A question for you: Ever driven by a chicken factory farm on a hot summer day?
