2012 archive
Kangaroo Kourts 0
Having an incompetent attorneys is like having no attorney.
Indeed, it may be worse. There is an appearance of fairness.
Mitt the Flip Sings “Gimme Shelters” 0
Robyn Blumner tries to follow the money and finds the trail disappears into the Bermuda Taxangle:
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
In a shocking decision, a Georgia court rules that banks must follow the law:
State law was modified in 2008 to require that foreclosure notices and legal advertisements include the name and contact information of the mortgage owner and of organizations that could negotiate a modification, short sale or other relief on lender’s behalf.
“A debtor has a right to know which entity has the authority to foreclose, and there should be no confusion about the identity of that entity. The practical ramifications are troubling if it were otherwise,” the court majority agreed in its opinion.
This may be the end of the economy as we know it.
Oh whatever shall we do?
Dustbiters 0
I got caught up in making cauliflower with caper sauce last night and forgot to check the bank obits. No longer with us are
Georgia maintains its lead as the graveyard of bankster grifters.
Giving Windows the Reboot 0
My friend recently got a Windows 7 computer.
She is moving slowly from her XP box to it, as she has XP tailored to her taste and isn’t eager to learn about all the changes Microsoft makes with every new version to convince you it’s something new (kind of the way car makers in the 1950s moved the chrome around with every new model year).
So it’s been sitting over there (——————>) all week doing nothing.
Apparently, it can’t deal with that. It is demanding a reboot, just because it can.
Maybe it wants its electrons stroked or something.
My old Slackware webserver, long since retired, was once up for 156 days without a reboot.
One of the members of my LUG discovered a Linux server at his work that had been running without a reboot for over three years. I say “discovered” because it was so trouble-free that the staff had forgotten about it.
And this Windows box, which has been sitting there doing nothing, now wants a reboot I guess because it’s bored because no one has taken it out to play.
It must take a lot of expertise to write code this crappy.
Words fail me.
Full Disclosure:
I’ve never gotten a message like this on my Windows 7 box, but it’s usually booted into Wubi.
Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus 0
making sure sick people go bankrupt because of crushing medical bills voting against the tyranny of the Affordable Care Act.
He does the arithmetic and points out that House Republicans have voted to repeal it almost once a week.
Those folks just don’t get this whole tyranny thing. We’re talking about legislation passed in 2009 by the House and Senate, signed by the president and upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. You call that democracy? Smells like tyranny to me.
According to CBS News, the House has spent at least 80 hours, or two full work weeks, on the repeal effort. It costs taxpayers about $24 million a week to operate the House, according to the Congressional Research Service.
So that would mean these 33 votes have cost us about $50 million. Money well spent, I’d say.
Read the rest. Really. It is delightful.
Scene on the Philly Streets 0
Ectoplasm in the hotel elevator*:
A sloop on auxiliary power passes under the Ben Franklin Bridge:
Romney’s Bain 0
Door number one? Or door number two?
The Galt and the Lamers, Dog Whistles Dept. 0
In a typically long, tighly-reasonsed post, Chauncey Devega suggests a strategic rationale for Randian rhetoric. Here are a couple of nuggets, but, really, read the whole thing:
Attitudes about the State, “big government,” and taxes are closely tied to racial animus and hostility. These are dog whistles and code words for white conservatives which enable them to talk about “lazy” black and brown people. Without exception, these appeals are rarely, if ever, centered on how the white middle class is subsidized by the submerged state.
(major snippage)
Since the 1960s, the face of poverty in America has been African American. As such, “black” poverty and “black” degeneracy will be repeated themes in Romney’s Ayn Rand-like campaign language of “productive citizens,” “job creators,” and “lazy” “parasites.”
Facebook Frolics, Lotus Call You Back 0
At the San Jose Mercury-News, Mike Cassidy considers the case of a yoga instructor contracted to Facebook who was fired for giving someone a dirty look for using a cell phone during yoga class. According to her boss, she had been warned that cell phones are sacrosanct in Silicon Valley.
Cassidy comments:
Whether you view yoga as an integral aspect of a spiritual experience, as in its Hindu roots, or as a form of fitness regimen to release the “relaxation response,” as in the Western spin, it is difficult to see how cell phones contribute to mindfulness and meditation.
Click to read the rest.
The (Job) Creationism Myth 0
Noz nails it.
Whenever I hear a member of the punditocracy use the phrase “job creators” (with Capital Letters in the Pronunciation, awe and reverence in the tone), I can tell you exactly what will come next, word for word before I hear it.
I can, but I don’t. Because you also have heard it all before.
Copywrongs 0
The United States Olympic Committee has issued a cease and desist order to Olympic Gyro in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market (where we nearly ate last Sunday, by the way, but we went to the Indian place instead).
The restaurant has used that name for three decades (that is, more than seven Olympiads).
A Greek restaurant can’t name itself after the mountain that was home to the Greek gods and has been a symbol of Greece for three millenia (as if someone is likely to confuse a sandwich shop in the corner of a converted railroad terminal with the quadrennial athletic carnival and sideshow).
This is stupid and evil.
I’m done with the Olympics.
They have turned into a marketing scam that makes a NASCAR driver’s suit look like a model of tasteful restraint.
As Harry Shearer says whenever he reports on news of the Olympics:
The Olympics.
It’s a movement.
And everyone needs one, every day.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Job prospects for process servers are looking up:
Another 6,952 homes started the foreclosure process in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, RealtyTrac data showed. That’s a 27 percent increase from June 2011 when initial filings of foreclosure in the seven counties totaled 5,485. The number declined from May 2012, when 7,595 homes entered foreclosure.
The Entitlement Society 1
Ably represented by Mitt the Flip, as Robin Wells comments at the Guardian. A nugget (emphasis added):
If this research is accurate (as it seems to be, replicated in various ways by several researches), the synergies between it, the increasing concentration of wealth and the Citizens United ruling, have striking implications for the future of the Republican party. As Newt Gingrich, the uber-southern politician, plaintively explained how he lost the Republican primary: “Romney had 16 billionaires. I had only one.” The domination by the super-wealthy means that Republicans not only have no interest in the welfare of the rest of the 99.9%, they have no understanding of why this is a problem. The noblesse oblige days of the old money, such as the Bushes, the Kennedys and the Roosevelts are long gone, replaced by the new mega-money of hedge funds, corporate raiders and global industrialists.
