I saw this today at Echidne - you have to watch it!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
From the Department of: Move Fool!
So cnnmoney.com has a story today on the 100 best companies to work for, searching New Mexico returns only one line:
There are no Best Companies to Work For based in this state.I guess that says it all.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Washington Post's Mensa Invitational 2008
Here are the winners of this year's Washington Post's Mensa Invitational which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.My favorite:
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
From the Department of You Can't Make This Shit Up!
Disgraced pastor Haggard facing new sex allegations:
The church agreed to pay the man in exchange for his pledges not to talk publicly about the relationship, Boyd said, referring to a settlement reached by the man's lawyer and the church's insurance company. Under the settlement, the church provided the man money to pay his college tuition, moving expenses and counseling, Boyd said.
"This was compassionate assistance. It was to help him move forward, not a settlement to keep him quiet," said Boyd, senior pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
A Day Late
It appears the Huties failed to recognize the 15-Year Anniversary of the "Whack Heard Round The World" in a timely manner. Props to the Kwan!
Change That Isn't...Well...Change
h/t to amberglow (poster at Corrente)
I still stand by my prediction though; he'll be our best Republican President evah! I did join change.gov today so I could vote on the priority list that when completed and presented will probably be ignored. Currently legalizing marijuana is leading, as if.
Kaine Heads Group Offering Donors Access to Governors (Kaine is a fucking asshole but compared to the other choice Virginians - I am a native Virginian - had, he was the lesser of 2 evils. Heard that before?)
Obama Intends to Keep FDIC's Bair at Agency... Kaine, 50, is the chairman of the Southern Governors’ Association, a group that raises money from tobacco, oil, energy and pharmaceutical companies in exchange for access to governors and other state officials.
The donors include more than 60 associations, trade groups and companies, including tobacco giants Altria Group Inc. and Lorillard Tobacco Company, Pfizer Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. Participants in the group’s Corporate Affiliates Program also include mortgage lender Freddie Mac, which was taken over by the federal government last year, and General Motors Corp., which is among automakers being rescued by the government.
Kaine’s continuing involvement with the SGA as Democratic National Committee chief may raise questions for Obama, who targeted special interests during his campaign, vowing to end their “days of setting the agenda in Washington.”
“If Tim Kaine is going to be the head of the DNC, given Obama’s rhetoric in the past, Mr. Kaine will have to either change the rules of the SGA or step down as chairman, because the policies of the SGA appear inconsistent with Obama’s,” Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Washington-based watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Seat With DNC
“Money paid to the SGA so you could have a seat with Tim Kaine would also get you a seat with the head of the DNC,” Sloan said.
Kaine’s press secretary, Gordon Hickey, said the governor plans to retain the SGA chairmanship when he takes over as DNC chairman Jan. 21, ...
The Obama administration intends to keep Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair in her post, Democrat officials said Wednesday.The Man in the Middle
Ms. Bair, a Republican who is one of the most influential figures in the government's response to the financial crisis, was nominated to run the FDIC by President George W. Bush in 2006. She has won praise from congressional Democrats for her aggressive push to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. But she has emerged as a controversial figure during the banking crisis, occasionally clashing with the White House, Treasury Department, and Federal Reserve over the government's response.
... Schumer’s political acuity is increasingly guiding Senate Democrats. The new president—until recently, one of them—seems to be listening, too. This is significant because Schumer is steering toward a slightly different spot from the one Democrats have traditionally aimed for. He attributes his success these past four years to a small but critical insight into the nature of the American middle class: namely, that it is more affluent and doesn’t want the same things from government as does the “middle class” as normally conceived by politicians, policy makers, and academics. Schumer sees this group as the key to the electoral balance of power, and believes he has figured out how to reach it. The composition of the Senate is a strong indicator that he may be on to
something.
...As one of the principal architects of that effort, Schumer would appear well qualified to judge what Democrats should do next. What would a Schumer-worthy agenda look like? For starters, it would be determinedly practical, tightly focused on the needs of the real middle class. It would account for the popular mood, taking care to lean slightly against liberal orthodoxy and the interest groups that enforce it. Emphasis would fall less on providing a safety net and more on helping people get ahead—with a house, a college degree, a comfortable retirement. To maintain solidarity with regular folks, it would feature the occasional, well-chosen populist crusade. And so it would look a lot like Schumer’s own career. ...
Monday, January 5, 2009
It Couldn't Have Happened To A Nicer Guy!
Sometimes assholes do get their just dessert.
In other good news: Al Franken Wins!
Updated to add video (albeit from the hackalicious, blowhard, lie and gossip mongering woman- haters at TPM):
Hutieville hearts Al Franken!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Friday, December 26, 2008
The House That Jack Built
Sending you off to read this has finally inspired me to post. Read it now.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Yippee! We Get Republicans Either Way!
I know, I know, Mr. Obama, I'm an idiot. It was partisan politics that got us here NOT Republican policies. We just need to be nicer to them and let them have their way and all will be fine.
Now in the following, I would say to Sirota: I TOLD YOU SO! I also wonder when Obama ever described himself as a progressive Democrat, anyone? From this:
David Sirota (1:55 pm EST): Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) delivered Democrats' election-day message this morning on Fox News. Officially speaking for the Obama campaign, McCaskill told Fox that Barack Obama's first order of business as president is to appease Republicans and start filling his cabinet with them.
I'm not making this up. Here's the key exchange:
FOX: If [Obama] wins tonight, what do you expect to happen Wednesday, Thursday, Friday from a President-elect Obama?
MCCASKILL: He will surprise America how quickly he will try to reach out to the millions of people who are voting for John McCain today -- and the milions of people who have questions about his leadership. He'll want to reassure them, and he'll want to find Republicans to work with him in his cabinet.
FOX: You don't predict it's going to be "we have a mandate, we're going to govern from the left"? You think it's going to be more of a bipartisan let's sort of heal and bring everbody together?
MCCASKILL: He will pleasantly surprise everyone who votes for John McCain today.
Ummm...what about the millions of people who, ya know, voted for Obama? Don't we count for something? I mean McCaskill's statement is really not encouraging for the millions of voters who are supporting Obama because he's a self-described progressive Democrat. And while McCaskill's message is shrouded in the argot of conciliation, it's not merely a conciliatory statement -- it's a partisan and ideological one.
McCaskill is channeling the "Center-Right Nation" meme we've been seeing through the whole media in the lead up to this election. Again, no matter how big Obama may win in this ideologically polarized race, no matter how many polls show America is a fundamentally progressive nation on major issues, we are told that the only responsible and Serious thing to do is for a President Obama to govern as a mainstream corporate Republican.
What this analysis fails to consider -- or deliberately ignores -- is that the entire "center" has shifted. So while I agree with Joan that there's no conceptual problem with an Obama presidency being populated by "centrists," there is a conceptual problem if those "centrists" aren't actually in the center of American public opinion. That is, if these "centrists" are actually corporatists whose free market fundamentalism on economic issues is well to the right of public opinion.
Sure, Democrats seem poised to make gains in "red" states and "red" districts. But as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) displayed so well in his silly and stupid declaration about the Patriot Act in 2006 -- many of these "red" states and "red" districts are incredibly progressive in supporting strong privacy/civil liberties protections and opposing corporate-written trade policies championed by so-called "centrist" Democrats and Republicans alike. Come on out here to the traditionally "red" swaths of Colorado or Montana, and try running for office bragging about NAFTA or the Patriot Act -- ie. D.C.'s definition of "centrism" -- and you better get ready to get crushed at the polls.
I would say I was surprised that McCaskill decided to use her role as Democrats' election-day spokesperson to insist that a Democratic win will prioritize the very Republican governance that has become so unpopular. But then, I've been around this crap for too long to be surprised.
It seems no matter how hated George W. Bush and the Republican Party are in the country at large, no matter how an election may pivot on that hatred, the political Establishment of both parties is ideologically loyal to conservative corporatism. Indeed, that is the power of money -- the power of the hostile takeover, if you will. And that means the uprising that this election season has stoked will need to become all the more intense starting tomorrow if we are to make sure a (hopefully) President-elect Obama doesn't spend the first days after the election constructing another conservative Presidency -- only this time, building it with bricks and mortar marked "progressive."
Monday, November 3, 2008
Dewey Defeats Truman!
Not likely. Obama won when Wall Street collapsed. But should the unfathomable occur, I think this British journalist is on to something in this, he says:
Now British polls are properly and carefully weighted, taking account of what is known as the spiral of silence – the tendency of voters for the less fashionable party to keep their intentions to themselves. British pollsters weight their results to allow for these shy voters. US pollsters do not.
I would go on to say when you create an environment this hostile to the opposition, not just opposition party, but anyone opposed to Obama, many will simply keep their feelings to themselves. Then there is the race factor tauted as the Bradley effect, assuming racists will not reveal their racism to pollsters, but what about the non-racists who are opposed for other reasons who know they will be labeled racist anyway? I suspect these are the voters that skewed the polls in the unlikely event the polls could be so wrong that Obama loses - those who are not racist and didn't want the racist label and the uncool - meaning those not supporting Obama, is there anything less cool in today's pop culture? Could there be more uncool people out there than we realize expressing views suppressed for months once in the privacy of their voting booth? Anything's possible, I don't see it happening.
I do still have in the back of my mind when the DNC, the media, the left and the right were all campaigning vehemently against Clinton in the primary and he was outspending her 4 and 5 to 1, he still couldn't beat her.
Of course, there are the Secretaries of State in his favor, but I will feel no differently about Democrats fudging results than I did about the Republicans doing it, I suppose this sentiment alone could explain a lot of why I am currently so estranged from my party. Truth and fairness first, votes count, if I'm unhappy with the outcome so be it, but until the people's voices are heard, I have nothing to be upset about except the fraudulent process.
You Have to Admire Lambert
For never letting us forget who was behind the plan to save the billionaires, homeowners be damned. My answer to his headline is no, but I would like nothing more than to be wrong.
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