2012 archive
Happy Feat 0
I’m back from visiting First Daughter in Philadelphia (it was good to be back in Philly). I’ll post some pictures from the trip after I get a chance to prepare them for posting with the GIMP (I have a podcast on using the GIMP coming up at HPR).
She took me to a free art show at UPenn in which Stefan Sagmeister explores happiness. My first impression upon entering the tour was that it might be a bit self-indulgent.
It wasn’t; it was introspective, but also thought-provoking and fun, a difficult combination to achieve.
I recommend it highly. Learn more at the website.
QOTD 0
Franz Kafka, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
You Can Bank on It 1
In the Guardian, Robert Reich explains what should be obvious. In the world of international banks and banking, the odds are that American banks are vault-deep in the LIBOR interest-rate-fixing scam.
Banks that have been willing to promote dodgy mortgages, sell (in)securitized debt, and foreclose on houses without cause (to mention a just a few practices of the responsible fiscals on Wall Street) certainly wouldn’t have any qualms about fixing an interest-rate roulette wheel.
But if that assumption is wrong – if the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money we lend or repay them, bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting which they’re not sharing with the rest of us – it’s a different story altogether.
It would* amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportions – trillions of dollars that average people would otherwise have received or saved on their lending and borrowing that have been going to the bankers instead.
It would make the other abuses of trust Americans have witnessed in recent years – predatory lending, fraud, excessively risky derivative trading with commercial deposits, and cozy relationships with credit-rating agencies – look like child’s play by comparison.
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*Conditional voice. Yeah. Right.
Voyage of Self-Discovery 0
Gina Barreca offers a diagnostic quiz to help you determine “Are You Stupid.” A snippet:
Want to know what I’ve discovered? That the shape of my face is “round-ish, with some squared oval.” Also, that I am a Capricorn, mean, and probably a canary-person.
I’ve decided that what’s missing is the Test for Sheer Stupidity and I’ve decided to rectify that omission.
Follow the link. Take the quiz.
QOTD 0
Lena Horne, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way.
Ezra Klein Finds an Honest Republican 0
Excerpt:
A few examples, back in October 2010, Major Garrett of “The National Journal” sat down with McConnell to talk about what Republicans would do if they took back Congress in the fall. McConnell didn`t Garrett he wanted compromise or a new tone or a renewed spirit of cooperation and partnership or any of the warm and fluffy things you tend to hear politicians say.
No, he told Garrett, quote, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Ouch.
So partisan, sure, but honest. If that would have been all you knew about the Republican Party, you could have predicted the last two years in Congress almost perfectly.
“Outside Agitators” 0
Those who would speak truth to power (and, more to the point, truth about the powerful) are frequently called “agitators” by those with the power.
The truth often causes persons to get agitated. That’s why the powerful don’t like it.
Reagonomics on the Ground 0
The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The San Jose Mercury-News has the figures:
But top wage earners have seen their paychecks soar by 26 percent over the same period when adjusted for inflation. That’s widened the gap between those on the top and bottom of the workforce.
A decade ago, the average wages of those in the lowest income categories were 66 percent below the average pay of the workers perched on the highest rungs of the income ladder. But 10 years later, the divide has reached 73 percent.
Over There 0
Writing at Asia Times, Nan Levinson explores the toll of war and America’s ambivalence to her own victims, the victims that are her own, the soldiers:
Read the rest and remind yourself: It may be the old lie who lie, but it’s the young who die.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
Dick Polman dissects the falsehoods of the Republican “mandate is a tax” mantra. A nugget:
But, every so often, a lie is so shamelessly brazen that it behooves us to bemoan it. Witness the Republican talking point du jour, about how President Obama has supposedly slapped a humongous tax hike on the middle class, thanks to his health-reform provision that requires most Americans to buy health coverage.
Follow the link for the post mortem.
Stray attack of the rational(e):
Upholding something under the “taxing power” does not ipso facto make it a tax. Apparently it does make it a talking point.
QOTD 0
Charles Kuralt, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
Always Lower Prices Practices
0
Translation:
“I came to the United States on an H-2B guestworker visa from my home in Tamaulipas, Mexico. I work in a small town in Louisiana with other guestworkers, peeling crawfish for a company called C.J.’s Seafood, which sells 85% of its products to Walmart. Our boss forces us to work up to 24 hours at a time with no overtime pay. No matter how fast we work, they scream and curse at us to make us work faster. Our supervisor threatens to beat us with a shovel to stop us from taking breaks. We live in trailers across from the boss’s house, and we’re under surveillance all the time. The supervisors come into our trailers without warning, and they threaten to fire us if we leave after 9 p.m. The supervisor also locked us in the plant so we couldn’t take breaks. We want to work. We need to support our families. But we also want to be treated like human beings”
Sign the petition.
Via Contradict Me.