April, 2016 archive
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Jackie does a capsule history of the Republican southern strategy and, along the way, she decodes de code.
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
“If You Can’t Google It, It Must Not Be” 0
Remember the University of California at Davis campus cop who egregiously pepper-sprayed a group of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors a couple of years ago?
Well, UC-Davis doesn’t want you to, so it tried to make it go away. The Sacramento Bee has the documents:
The payments were made as the university was trying to boost its image online and were among several contracts issued following the pepper-spray incident.
Some payments were made in hopes of improving the results computer users obtained when searching for information about the university or Katehi, results that one consultant labeled “venomous rhetoric about UC Davis and the chancellor.”
Much more at the link.
By the by, if you follow the link in the first sentence, the money does not appear to have been well-spent.
Asides:
Because I pay attention to stuff like this, I know that the most common technique used by the outfits that promise to cleanse your on-line reputation is not to make bad stuff go away, because they can’t. It’s to fabricate promulgate a bunch of good stuff, hoping that it pushes the bad stuff off the first page of search results, because most persons don’t look beyond the first page.
Also, remember that, with rhetoric, “venomous” and “accurate” are independent variables.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 2
Surround your offspring with politeness.
Officer Colendula Green said a woman was waiting to be seen about 9:30 a.m. at Merit Health Central Medical Center when she went to a vending machine with her daughter, Green said. The woman dropped her purse and a gun inside went off, Green said.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still under 300k.
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly claims numbers, decreased to 265,000 last week from 266,500.
The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits fell by 18,000 to 2.17 million in the week ended April 2, the lowest since the period ended Oct. 17. The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits held at 1.6 percent. These data are reported with a one-week lag.
The four-week average of continuing claims dropped to 2.18 million, the lowest since November 2000.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Shorter John Cole: General Sherman was correct.
The Old Shell Game 0
Reporter shows how easily a shell company can be created in Delaware.
Via C&L, which also provides more detail.
Tax Relief 0
My tax returns are done and mailed and I won’t have to use MS Windows again for another year.*
Afterthought:
If Microsoft succeeds in foisting Windows 10, Spyware Edition, on me, I’m buying a Mac just to do my taxes.
__________________
*Commercial manufacturers of tax return software support only Windows and MacOS. Excellent FOSS accounting software exists, but not tax prep software.
“Because the Bible Tells Me So” 2
Tony Norman looks into his spam folder and explores emails from those who exhort him to base his voted on “Christian values.” What he finds troubles him.
Here’s a bit:
On the other hand, American Christians have the unambiguous example of a penniless, itinerant rabbi who exalted the poor, denounced the rich, healed the sick, embraced society’s outcasts and modeled a new way of relating to women, tax collectors, children, foreigners, religious authorities, lepers and those in prison.
None of these biblical values, as far as I can tell, is supported in the rhetoric of either Mr. Cruz or Mr. Trump. Both candidates embrace the politics of fear, the demonization of undocumented immigrants, rabid suspicion of foreigners, the expansion of the military for the sake of national pride, an unregulated economy that allows market forces to determine what’s best, a society where being armed with as many guns as one’s pride allows is the norm, a denial of environmental responsibility and a social ethic that exalts the rich while brutalizing the poor.
It has been my experience that those who most loudly proclaim their “Christianity” are the least to be trusted with anything. Trust them, and you end up hoisted on their Elmer Gantry.
Republican Family Values 0
Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up:
