2012 archive
Congress Issa Contemptible 0
The Booman sums up the performance.
The chances had to be about zero. They started accusing Holder of being a racist before he got his parking assignment at the DOJ. Go to Google and type in “Eric Holder racist” and you get 2,470,000 results. Type in “George Wallace racist” and you get 400,000.
The Southern Strategy is alive and well growing.
The Rich Are Different from You and Me 0
PoliticalProf:
Median US income, 2011: $51,000.
Tax deductions Anne Romney took in 2011 for care and upkeep of her horse, Rafalca, who is now going to the Olympics in dressage: $77,000.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
(snip)
The four-week moving average increased to 386,250, the highest since the week ended Dec. 3, from 382,750.
Last week included the 12th of the month, which coincides with the period the Labor Department uses in its survey of employers to calculate monthly payroll growth. The four-week average for the May survey week was about 10,000 lower, indicating little progress this month. The employment report for June will be released on July 6.
Bloomberg thinks that the big news is that the decrease was less than their “experts” expected.
They left out the part about their experts almost always being wrong–sometimes high, sometimes low, but almost always wrong.
Getting the Most out of Your iJunk 0
Don’t worry about translating. Just watch.
H/T Susan for the link.
QOTD 0
Roger Ebert, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn’t.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Job prospects for process servers are looking up:
The recording of deed-of-trust assignments in Colorado–the ownership rights of mortgages and the ability to foreclose on them–has more than doubled in the first five months of the year compared with the same period last year, The Denver Post has found.
Driving while Brown 0
Excerpt:
The President’s not supposed to do anything in an election year, yet alone the right thing.
The “One-Drop” Rule 0
Hearsay, the local NPR affiliate’s own news and analysis show, takes a look at the history of racial categories. If you don’t know this stuff, you should; it illuminates today’s events. From the website:
Follow the link to listen.
Facebook Frolics, De Agony of Defriend 1
At Psychology Today, Susan Krauss Whitbourne considers the unfriended:
It goes on (and on) with the comfortable assumption that Facebook somehow matters more than ice cream.
I can almost imagine things like this being written about MySpace seven years ago, as least about the teen set who were so enthralled by blinking lights and flashing icons.
I know persons whose world seems to be limited to Facebook; if you aren’t using Facebook, you barely exist for them. Trying to get their attention outside of the Facebook bubble is–er–quite an effort.
I suggest that, rather than investigating the horrible trauma of the unfriended, the writer research the irony of the Facebook bubble–how a server farm so big can create individual worlds so small.
Lord, please give me more important things to worry about than being “unfriended” by a Facebook “friend.”
Everybody Must Get Fracked 0
Facing South reports on a veteran of fracking:
Tillman spent much of his time in office fighting to regulate the gas companies, which transformed his once-quiet community into a noisy, polluted industrial center. He finally moved away last year after his two young sons began waking in the middle of the night with severe nosebleeds that the family believes were related to toxic air emissions from the drilling operations.
Before Tillman left, he offered to rent his home to a gas company executive so they could see what it was like to live in the industry’s midst.
“None took me up on it,” he says.
Read the rest.
The First 100 Minutes 0
At Philly dot com, Daniel Deagler envisions the first day of Mitt the Flip’s administration.
A snippet:
Romney: That’s exactly right. Who knows more about America’s energy needs than its largest oil company?
Aide: Sir, traditionally, a person holds that job. Exxon is a corporation.
Romney: Corporations are people, my friend. And this administration will not tolerate discrimination against people just because they happen to be corporations.
QOTD 0
Adam Smith, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
In Which Wall Street Meets Sherwood Forest 1
The corrupt moneychangers feared the wilds of Sherwood Forest and the men in tights of Lincoln Green.
Because Robin Hood was waiting.
Nurses, healthcare and community activists were in the hallways ready to send him and the rest of his Wall Street gang a message: it’s time to pay up for the damage you have done to our communities and our nation.
This week, the Robin Hood campaign, which has exploded across the world, took a major step forward in the US with a stepped-up campaign that included visits by Robin Hood and his merry men and women to JP Morgan branches across the country, and scores of other actions.
The Orwellian Logic of the Surveillance State 0
From the “If I Told You I’d Have To Kill You” Dept.
Nonestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
More fancy footwork at the link.
Mitt the Flip’s Bad Carma 3
Afterthought;
It occurs to me that Mitt the Flip has made so much of his money flipping companies into bankruptcy that he thinks it’s a good thing.