samedi 31 janvier 2009
Mario mushroom cake and an R2D2 cake
Do you love Super Mario?Veruca Salt made not one, but two character birthday cakes last weekend. Pocahontas wanted a Super Mario mushroom cake, the special 1Up power up mushroom that gives you an extra life extra power/health in everyone's favourite childhood video game. [Thanks to fushmush and FFichiban for the correction]This cake was reasonably easy to construct - butter cake cut to size and
It's Blogroll Amnesty Remembrance Weekend!!
This weekend I'll be prowling the toobz in search of bloggery from those who usually get even less traffic than Your Humble Blogger. But while it's not strictly in the spirit of Blogroll Amnesty Day because Jon Swift is partnering with Skippy and Blue Gal in manning the keg taps for this weekend-long bacchanalia of poking He Who Must Not Be Named with a sharp stick, you simply have to read the inimitable Mr. Swift on how Rush Limbaugh gives Republicans hope again.
(And oh yeah. Go Cardinals. Not because I have anything in particular against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but because I like underdogs and because I think it's important to remember this weekend the family of Pat Tillman, and how hard they fought for truth.)
(And oh yeah. Go Cardinals. Not because I have anything in particular against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but because I like underdogs and because I think it's important to remember this weekend the family of Pat Tillman, and how hard they fought for truth.)
vendredi 30 janvier 2009
When motherhood to the eighth power stops being the focus of worship
I've been noting with interest the change in coverage of the California Octoplets and their mother over the last few days. On Wednesday morning, all the morning chirp shows recruited other parents of large numbers of multiples to kvell over the still-unusual birth and muse on what's involved in doing diapers for five or more babies at the same time. Up until yesterday, the media meme on this birth was that it was a wonderful thing, a blessing, a miracle. Because everyone loves babies, right? Isn't that the weapon that the fetophile forces in this country use, even to the point of suggesting that Barack Obama's mother would have aborted him if she could have in an ad that a Catholic group actually wanted to run during the Super Bowl? After all, it's all about the BayBeez, isn't it?
Well, yes -- until the mother turns out to already have six children, be apparently unmarried, living with her parents who have already declared bankruptcy in a two- or three-bedroom house -- and as the "waf-err theen meent" topper, is apprently an Iraqi.
That sound you hear is that of wingnuts' heads exploding. For what do you do when you're a pro-fetus conservatives who thinks we should turn Iraq into a sheet of glass when presented with something like this?
As the story has evolved into the kind of case of colossally bad judgment that seems only to be the focus of media wrath when it's committed by a woman (as opposed to, oh, say, executives in the entire financial industry), isn't it funny how our fertility-worshipping culture, which gives people like Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar their own TV show, chokes on that very same baby worship when the mother is deemed to be "unworthy." And isn't it funny how the very same people who want women who DON'T want to continue their pregnancies to be forced to do so, whether they can afford to raise a child are not, are all up in arms because this woman got fertility treatments she didn't "deserve" and chose not to "selectively reduce" -- because she doesn't fit their model of a nice, white, affluent, Christian, married, madonna. If there was ever a test case of the folly of the fetus-worshippers, it's this one.
Of course the issue is one of the "W" word -- welfare -- because a family in this situation, which appears to be this woman, her parents, and now fourteen kids -- is likely to not earn enough to support this clown car full of screeching rugrats. It's an incredible stroke of luck for the beleaguered financial community. This woman is like manna from heaven for the Wall Street guys with hundred dollar bills of taxpayer money sticking out of their stuffed pockets. She's the perfect storm of focal point rage for displaced workers and others who are these days finding themselves sliding down the socioeconomic ski slope towards destitution and homelessness. What better symbol for people who don't want to think too much about the guys who have been robbing them blind for the last eight years, and continue to do so by using taxpayer money to enrich themselves and their highest-paid cronies, than someone they can brand as simultaneously a welfare slut and a terrorist? Some guys have ALL the luck.
As for me, I don't quite know what I think, other than "Is she out of her freaking mind?" Of course, I never wanted children so it's difficult for me to understand what would make someone with six kids have eight more in the attempt to have seven. My gut tells me it's none of my damn business. My head tells me that part of being pro-choice is to respect the choice to bear eight implanted embryos. And every fiber of my being says "Thank God it isn't me."
Well, yes -- until the mother turns out to already have six children, be apparently unmarried, living with her parents who have already declared bankruptcy in a two- or three-bedroom house -- and as the "waf-err theen meent" topper, is apprently an Iraqi.
That sound you hear is that of wingnuts' heads exploding. For what do you do when you're a pro-fetus conservatives who thinks we should turn Iraq into a sheet of glass when presented with something like this?
As the story has evolved into the kind of case of colossally bad judgment that seems only to be the focus of media wrath when it's committed by a woman (as opposed to, oh, say, executives in the entire financial industry), isn't it funny how our fertility-worshipping culture, which gives people like Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar their own TV show, chokes on that very same baby worship when the mother is deemed to be "unworthy." And isn't it funny how the very same people who want women who DON'T want to continue their pregnancies to be forced to do so, whether they can afford to raise a child are not, are all up in arms because this woman got fertility treatments she didn't "deserve" and chose not to "selectively reduce" -- because she doesn't fit their model of a nice, white, affluent, Christian, married, madonna. If there was ever a test case of the folly of the fetus-worshippers, it's this one.
Of course the issue is one of the "W" word -- welfare -- because a family in this situation, which appears to be this woman, her parents, and now fourteen kids -- is likely to not earn enough to support this clown car full of screeching rugrats. It's an incredible stroke of luck for the beleaguered financial community. This woman is like manna from heaven for the Wall Street guys with hundred dollar bills of taxpayer money sticking out of their stuffed pockets. She's the perfect storm of focal point rage for displaced workers and others who are these days finding themselves sliding down the socioeconomic ski slope towards destitution and homelessness. What better symbol for people who don't want to think too much about the guys who have been robbing them blind for the last eight years, and continue to do so by using taxpayer money to enrich themselves and their highest-paid cronies, than someone they can brand as simultaneously a welfare slut and a terrorist? Some guys have ALL the luck.
As for me, I don't quite know what I think, other than "Is she out of her freaking mind?" Of course, I never wanted children so it's difficult for me to understand what would make someone with six kids have eight more in the attempt to have seven. My gut tells me it's none of my damn business. My head tells me that part of being pro-choice is to respect the choice to bear eight implanted embryos. And every fiber of my being says "Thank God it isn't me."
Maple walnut bread
I haven't always been confident with yeast. The thought of working with something that's alive, that grows, that expands, that could die if not treated carefully, it a petrifying thought for someone who has a reputation for being an accidental assassin when it comes to tending herbs and pot plants.But yeast is sturdier than you'd think. All it requires is time and a little TLC.It was Not Quite
Welcome to the America of the Future!!!!!
In the mid-1980's, I got my first exposure to the PC. It started with a Wang word processing terminal, which for someone like me, who had once made extra money typing manuscripts for my then-employer on the IBM Selectric in the office, represented a quantum leap in convenience and typing speed. I was typing when you had to backspace, put a piece of chalk-backed tape behind the carriage, and retype the letter, to make a correction. So for me, the mere fact of the correcting Selectric was such a leap, let alone a word processing terminal. This behemoth took up half my cubicle, and files were saved in 8" floppy disks, back when a floppy disk really was floppy. This beast was replaced after a couple of years with an IBM AT, which boasted a huge 256K of memory and a 20MB hard drive. And that was how I become interested in IT.
My boss at the time loved to talk tech, and I loved to catalog shop. One day in around 1985 we were talking about technology and the Home Shopping Channel, and I mentioned how I could envision a day when instead of the nattering nimrods of Home Shopping on TV, a catalog would come into your house on a VHS tape, and you'd be able to order from that tape via a remote -- right through your cable TV. No telephone, no mail, no having to deal with a salesperson.
I do this sometimes. One day in the summer of 2007 I was talking with a co-worker who was complaining about how her son was shlepping around about 50 pounds of books every day in school. This segued about the high cost of college textbooks, and found myself describing an electronic device that would address the resistance people have to books. It would be about the size of a book, and be hinged like a notebook PC. It would have a screen on both sides, and a hard drive or flash memory. You would download books via a USB cable for a set fee, which would include updates. The device would have a thumb-button on each side which would "turn pages" forward and back. These pages would display on the two screens, so that the user interface would be exactly like a book. A student would then just carry this device around.
Three months later, Amazon.com introduced the Kindle.
I really have to learn how to act on these brainstorms I get.
But I'm not the only one who does this. The San Francisco Examiner envisioned today's internet newspapers even earlier than I envisioned clunky ordering of crap from a VHS tape through your cable system:
It's easy to laugh at the acoustic coupler that was required for a modem then, just as it's easy to laugh when I describe how in the early 1980's you had to wrap a piece of special paper around a cylinder, dial a number, put the phone receiver into an acoustic coupler and then wait 20 minutes while the cylinder spun and a needle-like thing etched an image onto it -- the Exxon Qwip early fax machine. But the people at the Examiner knew they were on to something as far back as 1981.
(h/t)
My boss at the time loved to talk tech, and I loved to catalog shop. One day in around 1985 we were talking about technology and the Home Shopping Channel, and I mentioned how I could envision a day when instead of the nattering nimrods of Home Shopping on TV, a catalog would come into your house on a VHS tape, and you'd be able to order from that tape via a remote -- right through your cable TV. No telephone, no mail, no having to deal with a salesperson.
I do this sometimes. One day in the summer of 2007 I was talking with a co-worker who was complaining about how her son was shlepping around about 50 pounds of books every day in school. This segued about the high cost of college textbooks, and found myself describing an electronic device that would address the resistance people have to books. It would be about the size of a book, and be hinged like a notebook PC. It would have a screen on both sides, and a hard drive or flash memory. You would download books via a USB cable for a set fee, which would include updates. The device would have a thumb-button on each side which would "turn pages" forward and back. These pages would display on the two screens, so that the user interface would be exactly like a book. A student would then just carry this device around.
Three months later, Amazon.com introduced the Kindle.
I really have to learn how to act on these brainstorms I get.
But I'm not the only one who does this. The San Francisco Examiner envisioned today's internet newspapers even earlier than I envisioned clunky ordering of crap from a VHS tape through your cable system:
It's easy to laugh at the acoustic coupler that was required for a modem then, just as it's easy to laugh when I describe how in the early 1980's you had to wrap a piece of special paper around a cylinder, dial a number, put the phone receiver into an acoustic coupler and then wait 20 minutes while the cylinder spun and a needle-like thing etched an image onto it -- the Exxon Qwip early fax machine. But the people at the Examiner knew they were on to something as far back as 1981.
(h/t)
Now can we stop the 24 x 7 coverage of him?
Now that Rod Blagojevic has been removed from office, can we please stop the relentless 24 x7 coverage of this clown? I realize that he seems to wear a live animal on his head and I suppose that some people find him entertaining. But enough is enough already.
The "Can't You See That Man Is a Ni--" House vote
Michael Lind argues that the House vote by Republicans and Southern Blue Dog Democrats against the stimulus package was less about ideology or any sense of fsical responsibility than it was yet another example of the South still fighting the Civil War:
If Lind is right, and I suspect he is, then Barack Obama is in for one hell of a rough ride for the next four years. Because if the South is still bound and determined to fight the Civil War, and the talking heads of the media are going to put the entire onus of "bipartisanship" on a president whose very existence in his post is an affront to everything the Dixiecrats and Republifederate Party believe in, this bunch has already shown ever since Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the Presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964, that they're not having any of it.
On Wednesday, January 28, 2009, President Barack Obama’s $819 billion stimulus plan passed the House of Representatives, despite the solid opposition of the Confederates.
By the Confederates I mean the Republican Party and their allies among Southern conservative Democrats. The battle in Washington is not between liberals and conservatives; it is between the Union and the South.
The Republican Party that voted unanimously against the stimulus bill is, in essence, the party of the former Confederacy. In the House of Representatives, there is not a single Republican representative from New England. In the U.S. Senate, there is not a single Republican from the Pacific Coast.
The Republican congressional delegation is disproportionately Southern. Half of the four congressional leaders of the Republican Party are Southerners: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia). (Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl is from Arizona and House Minority Leader John Boehner is a relic of the dying Midwestern wing of the GOP). The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mike Duncan, is from Kentucky. Half of the candidates for the RNC chairmanship are Southerners: Duncan himself, Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, and Chip Saltsman, former chairman of the Republican Party of Tennessee. (The other three are Michael Steele of Maryland, Ken Blackwell of Ohio and, Saul Anuzis of Michigan.) If you think most GOP spokesmen on TV seem to speak with a drawl, you’re not imagining things.
In addition, a majority of the 11 House Democrats who voted against the stimulus bill are Southerners or from states that border the South: Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith, both of Alabama; Gene Taylor, of Mississippi; Heath Shuler, of North Carolina; Jim Cooper, of Tennessee; Allen Boyd, Jr., of Florida; Frank M. Kratovil, of Maryland; and Brad Ellsworth, of Indiana. (The other three are Walt Minnick of Idaho, John Peterson and Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.) Congressman Boyd, a prominent Blue Dog Democrat, was the only Democrat to support President Bush’s bill to partly privatize Social Security, which he co-sponsored. Appropriately, his 2nd Congressional District in the Florida Panhandle near Georgia and Alabama includes Dixie and Calhoun counties.
Do you see a pattern here?
The vote about the stimulus package was not about economics. It was about nullification. It was the bipartisan Confederacy sending a message to the rest of America, stricken by the greatest crisis since the Depression. That message? DROP DEAD.
Those who think that the Democrats could have won over more Republicans by making more concessions do not understand the neo-Confederate/Dixiecrat mentality. There was no one to bargain with on the other side. The Republiconfederate “alternative”—a joke of a bill consisting almost entirely of tax cuts—would not be taken seriously by any mainstream conservative economist. It was pure provocation.
If Lind is right, and I suspect he is, then Barack Obama is in for one hell of a rough ride for the next four years. Because if the South is still bound and determined to fight the Civil War, and the talking heads of the media are going to put the entire onus of "bipartisanship" on a president whose very existence in his post is an affront to everything the Dixiecrats and Republifederate Party believe in, this bunch has already shown ever since Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the Presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964, that they're not having any of it.
jeudi 29 janvier 2009
Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless
Tonight we take a peek at Republican crybaby Eric Cantor:
Of course what Cantor means by "bipartisan" is "Give us everything we want."
Here's what I have to say to YOU, Mr. Cantor...but only because Skippy already posted what I wanted to originally:
House Republicans are reacting strongly to reports that the White House plans a political onslaught to pressure Republicans into supporting the stimulus package and to punish those who don't.
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will soon issue a statement contending that Obama's promise to "put an end to petty politics" is "threatened" as the White House and their allies "are making political threats rather than crafting a bipartisan economic stimulus plan."
Of course what Cantor means by "bipartisan" is "Give us everything we want."
Here's what I have to say to YOU, Mr. Cantor...but only because Skippy already posted what I wanted to originally:
Sign of the times
Marc Maron and Brendan McDonald encounter a line outside a job fair in New York City:
Sort of reminds you of this...
....doesn't it?
Sort of reminds you of this...
....doesn't it?
Weirdest. Interview. Ever.
This has to be the strangest interview ever seen on the Colbert Report:
Not least because Paul McCartney now looks like Paul McCartney in old age makeup.
Not least because Paul McCartney now looks like Paul McCartney in old age makeup.
Prize giveaway #8: A $200 dinner voucher for two from Ocean Room, Sydney
Grab Your Fork is celebrating 1,000 posts this week and you're invited to the party! This is the final day of a week-long competition frenzy, and it's concluding with a bang!It's lucky prize number eight, and the winner will be very lucky indeed. The final prize has been kindly donated by Raita Noda, owner and head chef at Ocean Room.PRIZE #8: A $200 dinner voucher for two at Ocean Room, SydneyIf
Here's the extent to which Republicans will go to block anything Obama wants
They're blocking a bill that would delay the switch over to digital TV transmission -- a delay requested because word of the transmission still hasn't gotten out to those who might need it most -- those still receiving their signals via antenna:
Maybe someone needs to tell the Republicans that Rachel Maddow's show is on CABLE, and they won't be blocking anyone from watching it by blocking this bill.
Defying President Obama (as well as Democrats in Congress and pretty much anyone with an intelligent, informed position on the issue), House Republicans today defeated a bill that would have postponed the transition to digital TV until June.Preparations for the switch to digital -- now scheduled to take place on February 17th -- have been beset with problems, including such poor publicity by the FCC that millions don't even realize the transition is set to happen.
To make matters worse, earlier this month the Commerce Department ran out of funding for coupons subsidizing digital converter boxes, prompting then-President-elect Obama to publicly back the delay.
The end result of this general incompetence? According to the AP, less than a month before the mandated switch:
The Nielsen Co. estimates more than 6.5 million U.S. households that rely on analog television sets to pick up over-the-air broadcast signals still are not prepared for the transition.
As consumer rights and media reform groups point out, the poor, rural and elderly will be disproportionately affected.
But what's a few million households without access to television -- including emergency transmissions -- when Republicans can stick it to Obama? As Reuters reports, House Republicans inexplicably decided to blame the President for the bill's failure.
Maybe someone needs to tell the Republicans that Rachel Maddow's show is on CABLE, and they won't be blocking anyone from watching it by blocking this bill.
We're glad we're not your wife too, Dick Armey
Time for another I Am Spartacus moment?
The relevant exchange is 9:42 in.
Did you ever play the Ed McMahon game? That was a game that a friend once told me about, usually played at parties of all women (like the ugly gift exchange party I attended last weekend), where you're given two names of men, one of whom is Ed McMahon, and asked to decide which one you would have sex with. If you pick Ed McMahon, you're eliminated. I think if the choice were Dick Armey or Ed McMahon, I'd have to pick McMahon.
The relevant exchange is 9:42 in.
Did you ever play the Ed McMahon game? That was a game that a friend once told me about, usually played at parties of all women (like the ugly gift exchange party I attended last weekend), where you're given two names of men, one of whom is Ed McMahon, and asked to decide which one you would have sex with. If you pick Ed McMahon, you're eliminated. I think if the choice were Dick Armey or Ed McMahon, I'd have to pick McMahon.
Nouriel Roubini talk, you listen
Because he's been right about every damn thing so far.
Here's Roubini, yesterday:
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
You know that "bad bank" we've heard about, the one that would offload all the toxic loans from the banking system? Roubini says it's not enough:
Sweden? Isn't that SOCIALIST???? Far better to let the whole damn economy go into the crapper than let anything that might smack of an ideology that's dead anyway clean up the mess.
Here's Roubini, yesterday:
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
You know that "bad bank" we've heard about, the one that would offload all the toxic loans from the banking system? Roubini says it's not enough:
US and global stocks are still likely to fall because the corporate and economic news will be worse than expected, Nouriel Roubini, RGE Monitor Chairman, told CNBC.
Investors will be hit by the realization that many banks are bankrupt, that companies will have to rein in debt and sell assets and that emerging markets may get into trouble, Roubini said.
"I think that there's a 20 percent downside risk to US and global equities," Roubini told "Squawk Box Europe."
The transmission mechanism oiling the wheels of the banking system is broken, he said, adding that "banks are getting the money and they are hoarding it, they're not lending it," because they expect higher losses.
[snip]
From CNBC: "The US Banking System is Insolvent": Dr. Doom
That was the opinion of economist Nouriel Roubini, of RGE Monitor, who was one of the first people to predict the housing crisis, speaking to "Squawk Box Europe" this morning.
Expected losses of about $2 trillion exceed bank capital of about $1.5 trillion, Roubini said.
Roubini had earlier said that total financial system losses could hit $3.6 trillion.
And "schemes" to just buy so-called toxic assets may not work, because the "risk is it's going to take too much time to resolve the problem," he added.
Instead Sweden's plan of nationalizing all insolvent banks, cleaning them up and then selling off the good assets to the private sector could be a better option, he said.
Sweden? Isn't that SOCIALIST???? Far better to let the whole damn economy go into the crapper than let anything that might smack of an ideology that's dead anyway clean up the mess.
Dear President Obama: So how's that "doing away with the politics of the past" working for ya?
It was a nice try. Really. I give you credit for trying. And maybe you had to, what with Chris Matthews still obsessing about contraceptives and all even after they were yanked from the stimulus bill (and whose idea was it to put a red flag like that in front of the Republican bulls, anyway?).
But Bob Herbert was right this week when he asked why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. Why indeed. Why does anyone on earth think the GOP has any credibility, when they've spent the last eight years rubberstamping the worst presidency in this nation's history -- and showing signs that they want to continue every aspect of it in perpetuity. Why on earth would you give any credibility to people who really are taking their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, who is the REAL head of the Republican Party? Are you aware that while Limbaugh is being paid $50 million a year through 2016, Clear Channel, the company that gave him that astounding contract, is laying off people right and left? While Randi Rhodes was in Washington covering your inauguration, 30 people at her affiliate in Tampa and many others were laid off so that Limbaugh could be paid. And his minions are the people you're trying to get on board a stimulus plan designed to create jobs? Do you you see maybe a little bit of irony there? Perhaps soo, as the Mooselini of Alaska, who is already breathing down your neck for 2012 might say.
Did you honestly believe that they would put the nation's interest before that of their party? When in the last three decades have they ever done that? I mean, this is a party that impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob, but that wanted Eric Holder to pledge not to investigate and if warranted, prosecute Bush Administration officials for wrongdoing in the most breathtaking attempt yet to codify the IOKIYAR rule into actual written practice.
This is a party so steeped in cronyism and greed and racism and plutocracy and its own corrupt and discredited ideology that it has become their religion. And like a fundamentalist Christian standing firm against opening his mind to the possibility that the earth is more than 6000 years old, they simply will not budge on their doctrine, no matter how discredited it is.
So now you have made the gesture. You made an effort to include them. And for your trouble you got absolutely no Republican votes in the House. It's going to be worse for you in the Senate, where the REAL Republican blowhards reside.
Now I don't know if this stimulus package will accomplish anything. I'm inclined to agree with Krugman, who looks at the Bush tax cuts and sees the mess we're in anyway, and doesn't think a few thousand in tax cuts will stop the hemorrhaging of jobs that's going on, nor will it stimulate any spending among the middle class, who will tend to take 500 or 1000 bucks and sock it into the bank. Mr. Brilliant thinks it's already too late and it's time to put your head between your knees and kiss your ass and the life you've always known goodbye, because it's all going to shit no matter what we do (and thanks for nothing, Mr. Bush and the Congress that enabled him for eight years). But in trying to placate the Republicans, you may very well have crippled your first effort to try to do something about what's going on out here.
But now that you've made Scarborough and Matthews and Bob Schieffer and David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell and George Snuffleupagus happy by reaching out to Republicans, perhaps now you can start doing what you know is the right thing to do, and let the greedy bastards and their media apologists screech all they want to.
As you so succinctly said last week (and someone ought to work this up in cross-stitch to hang on the Oval Office wall): "I won." Because it's clear you need that reminder every single day.
But Bob Herbert was right this week when he asked why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. Why indeed. Why does anyone on earth think the GOP has any credibility, when they've spent the last eight years rubberstamping the worst presidency in this nation's history -- and showing signs that they want to continue every aspect of it in perpetuity. Why on earth would you give any credibility to people who really are taking their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, who is the REAL head of the Republican Party? Are you aware that while Limbaugh is being paid $50 million a year through 2016, Clear Channel, the company that gave him that astounding contract, is laying off people right and left? While Randi Rhodes was in Washington covering your inauguration, 30 people at her affiliate in Tampa and many others were laid off so that Limbaugh could be paid. And his minions are the people you're trying to get on board a stimulus plan designed to create jobs? Do you you see maybe a little bit of irony there? Perhaps soo, as the Mooselini of Alaska, who is already breathing down your neck for 2012 might say.
Did you honestly believe that they would put the nation's interest before that of their party? When in the last three decades have they ever done that? I mean, this is a party that impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob, but that wanted Eric Holder to pledge not to investigate and if warranted, prosecute Bush Administration officials for wrongdoing in the most breathtaking attempt yet to codify the IOKIYAR rule into actual written practice.
This is a party so steeped in cronyism and greed and racism and plutocracy and its own corrupt and discredited ideology that it has become their religion. And like a fundamentalist Christian standing firm against opening his mind to the possibility that the earth is more than 6000 years old, they simply will not budge on their doctrine, no matter how discredited it is.
So now you have made the gesture. You made an effort to include them. And for your trouble you got absolutely no Republican votes in the House. It's going to be worse for you in the Senate, where the REAL Republican blowhards reside.
Now I don't know if this stimulus package will accomplish anything. I'm inclined to agree with Krugman, who looks at the Bush tax cuts and sees the mess we're in anyway, and doesn't think a few thousand in tax cuts will stop the hemorrhaging of jobs that's going on, nor will it stimulate any spending among the middle class, who will tend to take 500 or 1000 bucks and sock it into the bank. Mr. Brilliant thinks it's already too late and it's time to put your head between your knees and kiss your ass and the life you've always known goodbye, because it's all going to shit no matter what we do (and thanks for nothing, Mr. Bush and the Congress that enabled him for eight years). But in trying to placate the Republicans, you may very well have crippled your first effort to try to do something about what's going on out here.
But now that you've made Scarborough and Matthews and Bob Schieffer and David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell and George Snuffleupagus happy by reaching out to Republicans, perhaps now you can start doing what you know is the right thing to do, and let the greedy bastards and their media apologists screech all they want to.
As you so succinctly said last week (and someone ought to work this up in cross-stitch to hang on the Oval Office wall): "I won." Because it's clear you need that reminder every single day.
mercredi 28 janvier 2009
Prize giveaways #6 and #7: $50 home delivery vouchers from Menulog
Grab Your Fork is celebrating 1,000 posts this week and you're invited to the party! This is the fourth day of a week-long competition frenzy. Don't forget to check back here Friday lunchtime for the final prize worth $200!Today's competition is brought to you by Menulog, and it's ideal for anyone who has ever sighed at the thought of having to cook dinner.PRIZES #6 and #7: A $50 home delivery
Prize giveaway #5: A gift pack from SWEETNESS The Patisserie
Grab Your Fork is celebrating 1,000 posts this week and you're invited to the party! This is the third day of a week-long competition frenzy and it's perfect for all the sweet tooths.Today's competition is brought to you by SWEETNESS The Patisserie, the stall that is usually over-run with fanatic customers at the Pyrmont Good Living Growers Markets, desperate to stock up on Gena's award-winning
Chinese New Year dinner
Do you like pig?We love pigs, especially ones that come with crackling. Thin bubbling shards of crisp crunchy shattering crackling that cannot be eaten quietly. That's the kind of pig I love.One of three queues at Emperor's Garden on Chinese New Years EveIt was Chinese New Years Eve on Sunday, and you could feel the excitement in the air in Chinatown, particularly at Emperor's Garden BBQ House
Forget Super Bowl Sunday, this is OUR holiday
Monday, February 5, is the second anniversary of blogroll amnesty & blogroll bloodbath anniversary remembrance day!
The festivities will be going on all weekend. So while others are clogging their arteries with fried wings and fried cheese and pizza, we'll be adding a few previously undiscovered bloggers to our blogroll.
Why do these people still have jobs?
We know how it is. When we work, we have to produce. We have performance reviews, regular feedback, and we certainly hear about it when we screw up.
But run a bank into the ground, and you get to keep your job:
I'd like to ask something of the people dreaming of a Palin/Wurtzelbacher ticket in 2012: Would you mind looking up the ladder at the people who are really screwing you over and stop looking down the ladder while these people pick your pockets?
But run a bank into the ground, and you get to keep your job:
It's one of the ironies of the U.S. financial bailout: The banking executives now managing billions in taxpayer money are the same ones who oversaw the industry's near collapse.
At banks receiving federal bailout money, nearly nine of every 10 of the most senior executives from 2006 are still on the job, according to an Associated Press analysis of regulatory and company documents.
Even top executives whose banks made such risky loans they imperiled the economy have been largely spared any threat to their jobs. Less fortunate are more than 100,000 bank employees laid off during a two-year stretch when industry unemployment nearly tripled, bank stocks plummeted and credit dried up.
"The same people at the top are still there, the same people who made the decisions causing a lot of our financial crisis," said Rebecca Trevino of Louisville, Ky., a mother of three who was laid off from her job as a Bank of America training coordinator in October. "But that's what tends to happen in leadership. The people at the top, there's always some other place to lay blame."
It's hardly a surprise that workers and managers experience a recession differently. What's new is that taxpayers are now shareholders in the nation's bailed-out banks, yet they lack the usual shareholder power to question management decisions or demand house-cleaning in the executive suites.
[snip]
But the financial bailout has forced no such consequences. AP's review of the more than 200 publicly traded banks that received bailout money found that about 87 percent of the top three executives in 2006 — typically the chief executive, operating and financial officers — are still on the job.
And that number is deceptively low, since those few executives who left their jobs often did so because they retired — or died. Several stayed on as directors or in consulting positions.
I'd like to ask something of the people dreaming of a Palin/Wurtzelbacher ticket in 2012: Would you mind looking up the ladder at the people who are really screwing you over and stop looking down the ladder while these people pick your pockets?
mardi 27 janvier 2009
Signs of the times
Oh, goody -- the Christofascist Zombie Brigade has got their war on. How much of a scumbag do you have to be to imply that Barack Obama's mother would have aborted him had it been legal?
Why do I have the sense that we are going to see more stories like this one?
If there's one thing that makes conservatives happier than thinking about evil women who won't keep their legs closed and how gay people have sex, it's the opportunity to obsess about Bill Clinton again. Now how about we take a look at the Saudi impact on the Bush family finances?
What the hell kind of country do we live in when a 93-year-old World War II veteran is allowed to freeze to death in his own home while Citibank doesn't get it that spending $50 million of taxpayer bailout money on a new corporate jet is really bad form until the Obama administration reminds them?
How can we miss you if you won't go the hell away?
Sometimes you have to just let the baby cry it out.
Second. Best. Headline. Ever. (The other white meat.)
Happy 50th Birthday, Keith Olbermann! May I suggest the TWO year AARP membership? Seriously, I'm glad he's 50. Maybe now all that "He's really a Gen-Xer" crap will stop.
64 years ago, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated. Ex-Nazi and current Pope Benedict commemorates the anniversary by reinstating a Holocaust-denying bishop. Kind of makes you realize why the Israelis are so fucking paranoid, doesn't it?
Maybe a repentant sinner is the best kind of convert.
Why do I have the sense that we are going to see more stories like this one?
If there's one thing that makes conservatives happier than thinking about evil women who won't keep their legs closed and how gay people have sex, it's the opportunity to obsess about Bill Clinton again. Now how about we take a look at the Saudi impact on the Bush family finances?
What the hell kind of country do we live in when a 93-year-old World War II veteran is allowed to freeze to death in his own home while Citibank doesn't get it that spending $50 million of taxpayer bailout money on a new corporate jet is really bad form until the Obama administration reminds them?
How can we miss you if you won't go the hell away?
Sometimes you have to just let the baby cry it out.
Second. Best. Headline. Ever. (The other white meat.)
Happy 50th Birthday, Keith Olbermann! May I suggest the TWO year AARP membership? Seriously, I'm glad he's 50. Maybe now all that "He's really a Gen-Xer" crap will stop.
64 years ago, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated. Ex-Nazi and current Pope Benedict commemorates the anniversary by reinstating a Holocaust-denying bishop. Kind of makes you realize why the Israelis are so fucking paranoid, doesn't it?
Maybe a repentant sinner is the best kind of convert.
"Loyal but principled opposition.'
Mere hours after Barack Obama won the presidency and 72,000,000 Americans showed their best O faces, House and Senate Republicans were already issuing communiqués from their bunkers. Several of them, while making a pretense of welcoming the new executive branch, vowed to put up “loyal but principled opposition.”
Now let’s ignore for the moment the laughable assumption that today’s Republicans would actually have a prayer of recognizing much less appreciating anything even remotely akin to a principle and concentrate, instead, on the word “loyal.”
“Loyal but principled opposition” could be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways. But however you interpret it, it’s become a cliché in political circles that’s as common as “reaching across the aisle” or “culture of corruption.” We tend to hear it every four years or so, especially from Republicans when they’re in the minority when faced with an incoming Democratic administration.
It’s still amazing to me that not one journalist or major blogger on either side or any in between has ever analyzed the obviously true meaning of that word when used in this context.
“Loyal” in this instance obviously means loyal to the party, putting the needs of the country, a state or a district, at best, a distant second. And even a distant second is optimistic when one considers that the needs of We the People are woefully matched up against those of corporations, large special interest groups and the shock troops known as lobbyists that are deployed on Capitol Hill in a neverending human wave.
Indeed, in today’s entrenched corruption, it’s virtually impossible to divine which priorities are more paramount- their party’s ideology or the transient and longterm interests of well-moneyed lobbyists. Or is there even a difference?
Whatever your conclusion, one fact remains hidden in plain sight: Republicans will unhesitatingly put the skids on the most progressive and necessary legislation since it tends to trump their laissez faire, scorched earth mantra whether it’s driven by bribe money, party ideology or just plain, pig-head stupidity, meanness and/or stubbornness.
Even before President Obama’s inauguration, Republicans were playing immature tit-for-tat games such as, “If you block Roland Burris, we’ll block Al Franken” and “If Holder doesn’t promise to not go after our war criminals, we’ll block his nomination”, as if seating elected and appointed officials is just the political version of Hollywood Squares.
If President Obama is smart, he’ll learn from this. Four years in the US Senate plus seven more in the Illinois legislature should’ve been more than enough to educate him in the futility of reaching across the aisle to most Republicans. His calls for bipartisanship could be genuine and he really is that naïve, Or, it could be a political ploy and he’s giving the GOP one chance and one chance only before they chop his hand off. Then he would be justified in saying, “Fuck you, you had your chance.” With 59 seats under Democratic / Independent control in the Senate, it’s not as if the Republicans are in much of a bargaining position.
The phrase “loyal but principled” opposition used to be interpreted thusly: A loyalty to the Constitution and/or one’s personal ideology when confronting those in power.
Only a naïf would continue to define this phrase in such a way, especially considering the shenanigans we’ve seen from the likes of Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Dennis Hastert and other Republican crooks. Just as Eric Holder ought to lie to the minority Republicans (who still think they’re in charge) on the Judiciary Committee and tell them whatever they want to hear then do his damned job prosecuting war criminals, Barack Obama should do the same thing to Republicans who were already circling their diminished wagon train hours after he won the election.
“Sure, I’ll reach across the aisle and include you in the legislative process. But the minute I see a machete come out, all bets are off and you're back at the kiddie table.”
Then they can explain to their constituency why they haven’t voted on anything that could conceivably do this country the good that it deserves and needs. Let them see how far the hollowed-out phrase “loyal but principled opposition” gets them on election day when it only translates to more unemployment, deeper debt and more foreclosures.
Prize giveaway #4: Kei's Kitchen cooking class
Grab Your Fork is celebrating 1,000 posts this week and you're invited to the party! Yesterday's competition has spread like wildfire - seems like a lot of you want to win a Global knife, with 68 entries received already! The demand for the digital scales and the cupcake carrier isn't too far behind either.Today's competition is brought to you by Kei's Kitchen, a mother and daughter team whom you
Doesn't he know that diamonds are mined by exploited children?
At the very least, our good friend jurassicpork ought to caption his diamond elephant photo with the Magrittean "Ce n'est pas un éléphant." But perhaps he does, but his "guestblogger" Mike Flannigan does not. And besides, it's a minor quibble, especially when we get the blogging equivalent of a big, gooey hot fudge sundae with glazed peanuts on top:
Assclowns of theWeek Year #75: Diamond Jubilee Inauguration Edition
Grab a spoon, click over, and enjoy.
Assclowns of the
Grab a spoon, click over, and enjoy.
Dear Bob Herbert: You have to even ask?
I think you already know the answer to this:
Why indeed.
Actually, now that I think about it, that will be one good thing when the entire electrical grid goes dark and we're back to lighting candles at night: people like Chris Matthews and Noron O'Donnell and the entire cast of the sitcom that is Fox News will no longer be piped into our homes. I myself am looking forward to long evenings of Scrabble.
What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?
[snip]
Maybe the Republicans don’t think there is an emergency. After all, it was Phil Gramm, John McCain’s economic guru, who told us last summer that the pain was all in our heads, that this was a “mental recession.”
The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.
The Republican answer to this turmoil?
Tax cuts.
They need to go into rehab.
The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare.
Why indeed.
Actually, now that I think about it, that will be one good thing when the entire electrical grid goes dark and we're back to lighting candles at night: people like Chris Matthews and Noron O'Donnell and the entire cast of the sitcom that is Fox News will no longer be piped into our homes. I myself am looking forward to long evenings of Scrabble.
You don't actually expect him to show up, do you?
John Conyers sends another sternly worded subpoena:
I'd love to believe that with a new president and additional seats in the House, this won't be just more pissing in the wind. But since Rove is highly unlikely to answer this subpoena, it'll be interesting to see if Conyers is finally, at long last, prepared to put some teeth into his efforts.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove on Monday to testify about the Bush administration's firing of nine U.S. attorneys and its prosecution of a former Democratic governor.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said the ongoing legal battle to get Rove and other former Bush administration aides to testify may have success with a new president in the White House.
Former President George W. Bush upheld Rove and two other senior aides who asserted they did not have to testify before Congress about their actions in the White House.
The legal dispute between the executive and legislative branches of government is before a federal appeals court.
Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, did not return phone messages seeking comment.
The subpoena commanded Rove to appear on Feb. 2 for a deposition on the U.S. attorney firings and the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a special prosecutor in September to investigate whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges in the firings of the U.S. attorneys.
The inquiry followed the recommendation of internal Justice Department investigators who concluded that, despite administration denials, political considerations played a part in the firings of as many as four of the federal prosecutors. Conyers wants to know what role Rove played in the dismissals.
I'd love to believe that with a new president and additional seats in the House, this won't be just more pissing in the wind. But since Rove is highly unlikely to answer this subpoena, it'll be interesting to see if Conyers is finally, at long last, prepared to put some teeth into his efforts.
lundi 26 janvier 2009
Bloodbath
The National Republican Congressional Committee's web site still says "he U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong."
Meanwhile, back in consensus reality:
Think about what's going to happen WHEN we hit 9% stated unemployment (which will be about 15% when taking into account those who have given up or are scraping together an income of sorts with multiple part-time jobs) -- and there's no money to even pay unemployment benefits. We are headed to Great Depression II -- Electric Bugaloo, folks, and I'm not sure that even a stimulus package is going to do more than just cushion the blow just a bit. And we are ill-equipped as a nation to deal with it, after nearly a generation of supply-side politicians starting with Ronald Reagan saying you can cut taxes, raise spending, and balance the budget, or that you can fight two wars for free because oil revenues will pay for it -- and households creating a corollary of "You can buy anything you want by using your home equity, which will always increase in perpetuity." I wonder how a generation of kids raised on clothes from Abercrombie and Hollister, who have never had to so much as share a bathroom with a sibling; and who have known nothing but prosperity, are going to cope with what's coming.
Meanwhile, with even the mighty Microsoft announcing layoffs, you'd think that H-1B visas would become a nonissue, at least for the time being. But you'd be wrong:
Kind of makes you wonder what "some" means, doesn't it? Two? Three? Half? Or are tech companies going to use this Depression as an excuse to jettison American workers permanently so that if things ever get better they are ready to gear up with an all H-1B workforce?
It's rare that a Republican in the Senate does something worth applauding, but in this case Charles Grassley deserves praise (and phone calls to his office) for his efforts on behalf of an American workforce that is ready, willing, and able to work, but is held at bay by corporations in search of ever more elusive profits who still, even after showing thousands of people the gate and taking their security badges, see lower-paid H-1B workers as their key to renewed profitability.
Meanwhile, back in consensus reality:
Home Depot, Caterpillar, Sprint Nextel and at least eight other companies announced on Monday they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the United States and around the world — a gloomy start to the workweek for employees anxious about holding their own as the economy sinks. Caterpillar, the maker of heavy equipment, is slashing its payrolls by 16 percent. Texas Instruments said late in the day that it would eliminate 3,400 jobs, or 12 percent of its work force.
Jobs began disappearing in home building and mortgage operations early in the recession, then across finance and banking more generally. Now the ax is falling across large swaths of manufacturing, retailing and information technology, taking out workers from New York to Seattle. Just last week, Microsoft announced its first significant job cuts ever.
Because companies like Microsoft have invested in their workers’ skills and knowledge, they usually delay major work force reductions as long as they can. But with orders for new products and services drying up and financing tight, employers are looking to shrink their costs drastically and are slashing their payrolls, anticipating a protracted decline for business in 2009.
Monday’s parade of negative news comes after months of announcements from other prominent companies like Citigroup, General Electric, Nokia and Harley-Davidson. As part of its acquisition of Wyeth, Pfizer said it would cut the combined workforce by 19,500 employees.
On Wednesday, the tally of mass layoffs for December will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Already, the bureau says the United States economy has shed 2.55 million jobs since the recession began, pushing the unemployment rate up to 7.2 percent last month.
The latest round of job cuts — and the additional rounds likely to come as these move through the economy — mean more pain ahead for states as unemployment insurance claims rise and deplete state budgets.
Congress has proposed setting aside $43 billion to assist the states and to provide for new and current recipients of unemployment checks. That money is intended to increase the weekly benefit amounts; to extend how long people can collect payments; to cover more types of workers, like part-timers; and to help states distribute benefits more quickly.
It is based largely on an estimate that the unemployment rate will rise to 8 to 9 percent this year even with a stimulus package, according to the proposal summary from the House Appropriations Committee. But if unemployment soars into double digits, as some economists expect, the financing may not be enough.
“The economy is deteriorating at a faster clip than even the most dreary forecasts had expected,” said Joseph Brusuelas, an economist who, bucking the current job market trend, will soon start a new job at Moody’s Economy.com. “At the current trend, $43 billion will not be sufficient should we breach 9 percent unemployment and maybe reach into the double digits.”
Think about what's going to happen WHEN we hit 9% stated unemployment (which will be about 15% when taking into account those who have given up or are scraping together an income of sorts with multiple part-time jobs) -- and there's no money to even pay unemployment benefits. We are headed to Great Depression II -- Electric Bugaloo, folks, and I'm not sure that even a stimulus package is going to do more than just cushion the blow just a bit. And we are ill-equipped as a nation to deal with it, after nearly a generation of supply-side politicians starting with Ronald Reagan saying you can cut taxes, raise spending, and balance the budget, or that you can fight two wars for free because oil revenues will pay for it -- and households creating a corollary of "You can buy anything you want by using your home equity, which will always increase in perpetuity." I wonder how a generation of kids raised on clothes from Abercrombie and Hollister, who have never had to so much as share a bathroom with a sibling; and who have known nothing but prosperity, are going to cope with what's coming.
Meanwhile, with even the mighty Microsoft announcing layoffs, you'd think that H-1B visas would become a nonissue, at least for the time being. But you'd be wrong:
The Black Monday announcement of more than 71,000 jobs lost is a stunner. Today it was Texas Instruments and Sprint Nextel adding their names to the listof tech companies handing out pink slips. Tomorrow? Anybody's guess.
In uncertain times, the only sure bet is that Congress is going to come under renewed pressure to revisit its practice of granting temporary visas to foreign workers. Already, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is pressing Microsoft to give Americans priority over foreigners working in this country with H-1Bs.
"My point is that during a layoff, companies should not be retaining H-1B or other work visa program employees over qualified American workers," Grassley wrote on Friday after Microsoft announced its first across-the-board layoffs. "Our immigration policy is not intended to harm the American work force. I encourage Microsoft to ensure that Americans are given priority in job retention. Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times."
Microsoft said Monday it had no plans to change its position on H-1Bs.
Last year, when Bill Gates appeared before Congress, BusinessWeek reported that Microsoft had received 959 visa petition approvals, roughly "one fifth as many as Infosys (Technologies, the top participant), while Intel got 369."
[snip]
When it reported its quarterly earnings last week, Microsoft announced plans to fire about 5,000 employees. A spokesman said that some of the employees let go held H-1B visas but declined to get more specific.
Intel, which last week announced plans to close two plants in the U.S., similarly said that layoffs resulting from the economic slowdown would not factor into the company's H-1B plans.
Kind of makes you wonder what "some" means, doesn't it? Two? Three? Half? Or are tech companies going to use this Depression as an excuse to jettison American workers permanently so that if things ever get better they are ready to gear up with an all H-1B workforce?
It's rare that a Republican in the Senate does something worth applauding, but in this case Charles Grassley deserves praise (and phone calls to his office) for his efforts on behalf of an American workforce that is ready, willing, and able to work, but is held at bay by corporations in search of ever more elusive profits who still, even after showing thousands of people the gate and taking their security badges, see lower-paid H-1B workers as their key to renewed profitability.
Now let's see just how far Obama's "I won" stance goes
While I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of stones Barack Obama has shown in dealing with the Republican obstructionists in Congress, who subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh doctrine of "It's better for the nation's economy to completely collapse than for Obama to succeed", I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of the stimulus package. It's bad enough that the package contains far too much in yet MORE tax cuts for the wealthy, put in as a gesture to placate conservatives for whom compromise is a dirty word, but the more the package is tinkered with in order to please John Boehner, the less effective it's likely to be. This is the first real test of Obama's much-lauded "bipartisanship", and what worries me is that in the end he's going to please nobody.
Paul Krugman, who has been critical of the amount devoted to tax cuts in this package, is softening his tone somewhat, perhaps so as not to give the Republicans any more clout. Today he gives a point-by-point rebuttal to John Boehner's vapors about the plan:
...and he goes on to do just that. Read and study, my friends, because you WILL hear these around the water cooler and you WILL see these in letters in your local newspaper.
ThinkProgress has put together a compilation of what Obama's dinner companions have had to say:
You remember the night he dined with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol a few days before the inauguration, right? Krauthammer wrote a column a day or so later claiming that Barack Obama's policies were in fact a vindication of George W. Bush, and I haven't had the heart to read the others.
As Steve at Last Chance Democracy Caf´ says, Obama gave peace a chance, and now it's time for the kickass part of bipartisanship:
There is no such thing as bipartisanship when one party utterly refuses to compromise. We've seen where massive tax cuts for the wealthy gets us. We've seen where trickle-down economics -- that notion that if you just pack enough cash into the gaping maws of greedy bastards, they'll buy enough stuff to make up for the fact that the middle class doesn't exist anymore. I'm sorry, but not even John Thain (and of course Limbaugh is defending him, citing his $1.2 million office redecoration as an example of economic stimulus) can make up for the middle class' impact on the economy.
It's funny how George W. Bush's promises of being a compassionate conservative were completely ignored by the media once he was actually elected, but the same media -- you know, the ones wingnuts insist on believing is "liberal" just because Rachel Maddow has five hours a week on the teevee -- that admired George Bush's "guts" and "strength" are using Obama's promises to include Republicans as a cudgel against him, and against this plan. I mean, Paul Krugman can't be EVERYWHERE to knock down the gotcha idiocy of the nattering class.
We've seen what massive tax cuts for the wealthy do. We've seen the results of allowing the haves and the have-mores to stuff their pockets and wait for a few singles to trickle out of those pockets in our direction. If Americans wanted more of this, they would have elected John McCain and a Republican Congress. We didn't. So it's time for John Boehner and his peculiar obsession with contraceptives to shut the hell up. If the Obama plan doesn't work, they can bitch during the 2010 midterms.
Paul Krugman, who has been critical of the amount devoted to tax cuts in this package, is softening his tone somewhat, perhaps so as not to give the Republicans any more clout. Today he gives a point-by-point rebuttal to John Boehner's vapors about the plan:
Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”
But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.
...and he goes on to do just that. Read and study, my friends, because you WILL hear these around the water cooler and you WILL see these in letters in your local newspaper.
ThinkProgress has put together a compilation of what Obama's dinner companions have had to say:
You remember the night he dined with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol a few days before the inauguration, right? Krauthammer wrote a column a day or so later claiming that Barack Obama's policies were in fact a vindication of George W. Bush, and I haven't had the heart to read the others.
As Steve at Last Chance Democracy Caf´ says, Obama gave peace a chance, and now it's time for the kickass part of bipartisanship:
There’s no denying that Obama tried; his initial stimulus package seemed designed as much to placate Republicans, as to please Democrats. His hope seemed to be that he could buy a little right wing love by putting way too much of the proposal’s spending into (relatively ineffective as stimulus) tax cuts, instead of public spending.
But congressional Republicans are having none of it. They may not have much actual power left, but that doesn’t seem to have put them in a mood to compromise. Either send up a pure George W. Bush-style tax cut package, they insist, or they’ll vote against the bill.The major media, speaking right on cue, is spinning this as a test of Obama’s commitment to bipartisanship. I suppose they think that makes for a better story than the truth of Republican obstructionism. To these media “elites” the question now is whether Obama will be a good little post partisan president by giving GOP representatives everything they want, or an evil partisan politician (because he stands by his own principles as well as what might actually work).
So exactly what is it that the GOP wants?
This from The New York Times:“Right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all of the spending in this package, we don’t think it’s going to work,” the House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And so if it’s the plan that I see today, put me down in the no column.”
While the plan can potentially pass the Democratic-dominated House without Republican support, it will continue to face opposition when it comes before the Senate, said Senator John McCain of Arizona, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.” At least two Republicans will need to approve the bill for a filibuster-proof majority vote of 60.
Senator McCain, who lost the presidential election to Mr. Obama in November, said that he planned to vote no unless the bill were changed.
So what sort of proposal will McCain and his defeated brethren support? From the same Times article:“We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes,” Mr. McCain said. “We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s extend and even expand Bush’s tax giveaways to the rich. I mean, that’s worked out real well for us so far, hasn’t it?
There’s no mystery about what’s going on here, of course. The GOP smells blood. What Obama intended as an extended hand they took as evidence of a weak spine: they’re starting to think — or at least to hope — they can push him around, at least a little. For what it’s worth, I strongly suspect they’re wrong. Underestimating Barack Obama’s political skill has generally proven to be a mistake. But Obama’s the only person who can prove it, and the way he can prove it, of course, is by pushing a strong stimulus package, reflecting Democratic Party values, through Congress.
The message would be unmistakable: if Republicans want to participate in the formation of future legislation in good faith, his door is open. But pure obstructionism will not be tolerated.
There is no such thing as bipartisanship when one party utterly refuses to compromise. We've seen where massive tax cuts for the wealthy gets us. We've seen where trickle-down economics -- that notion that if you just pack enough cash into the gaping maws of greedy bastards, they'll buy enough stuff to make up for the fact that the middle class doesn't exist anymore. I'm sorry, but not even John Thain (and of course Limbaugh is defending him, citing his $1.2 million office redecoration as an example of economic stimulus) can make up for the middle class' impact on the economy.
It's funny how George W. Bush's promises of being a compassionate conservative were completely ignored by the media once he was actually elected, but the same media -- you know, the ones wingnuts insist on believing is "liberal" just because Rachel Maddow has five hours a week on the teevee -- that admired George Bush's "guts" and "strength" are using Obama's promises to include Republicans as a cudgel against him, and against this plan. I mean, Paul Krugman can't be EVERYWHERE to knock down the gotcha idiocy of the nattering class.
We've seen what massive tax cuts for the wealthy do. We've seen the results of allowing the haves and the have-mores to stuff their pockets and wait for a few singles to trickle out of those pockets in our direction. If Americans wanted more of this, they would have elected John McCain and a Republican Congress. We didn't. So it's time for John Boehner and his peculiar obsession with contraceptives to shut the hell up. If the Obama plan doesn't work, they can bitch during the 2010 midterms.
Grab Your Fork reaches 1,000 posts - with a week of competitions to celebrate!
Congratulations dear reader. You are officially reading the 1,000th post by Grab Your Fork.It's been almost five years of feasting and what a delicious ride it's been. Having a blog has prompted me to explore all of Sydney, to embrace its multicultural flavours, to support local producers and to share it all with you.Not only have I relished the perfect justification to eat 'just a little bit
dimanche 25 janvier 2009
Drink up!!
Another large hazelnut coffee with milk for me, please:
The January issue of ‘The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease’ features a study of long-term coffee drinking and its effect on age-related dementia. The findings suggest drinking coffee today keeps dementia away.
A collaborative team of researchers from Sweden and Denmark enrolled 2,000 adults in the study 21 years ago. Participants self-reported their dietary habits, including their daily coffee consumption. After over two decades, more than 70% of the participants could be tracked for follow-up evaluations. That the research team could find 1,409 now-middle-aged participants out of the original 2,000 is considered an unusually high number.
During those 21 years, 61 people developed dementia. Of those 61, 48 developed Alzheimer’s disease.
After evaluating the effects of many health and socioeconomic factors, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol counts, the research team concluded the participants who drank between three and five cups of coffee a day were 65% less likely to develop dementia than those who drank less. Drinking even more than five cups a day was also associated with a reduced risk of developing dementia but the number of participants drinking this much coffee was too small to be statistically significant.
While not advocating someone start drinking coffee as a preventive measure, Dr. Miia Kivipelto, associate professor of neurology at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, suggests the following factors may be involved:
* Previous studies have found drinking coffee decreases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a disease that raises the risk of dementia.
* Animal studies have shown that caffeine reduces formation of amyloid plaques in the brain. These plaques are a distinguishing characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.
* Coffee may be a bloodstream-protecting antioxidant that protects the vascular system enough to reduce the likelihood of dementia.
The only thing I'm going to miss about the Bush years
Get Your War On is now officially retired.
Say goodnight, Gracie. Sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good.
(h/t: Skippy)
Say goodnight, Gracie. Sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good.
(h/t: Skippy)
Sunday cooking blogging
There's very little to like about winter in New Jersey, and this year there's even less to like. So far winter in New Jersey has consisted this season of gray, gray, snow, gray, freezing rain, gray, gray, wintry mix, gray, gray, peep of sunshine, more snow, more freezing rain, gray. I'm not one for Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I'm starting to feel that if I have to wake up to one more fucking gray sky I'm going to just pack it in and go to bed until opening day of the baseball season.
Of course this is not an option, nor do I even really want that as a state of affairs, because I thankfully have this thing called a job. It's even a job that I like (although if you're a programmer at the company that makes the system I work on, and you're reading this, can't you PLEASE put out a version where we can write our own damn edits instead of this point and click stuff? I know you wanted to set it up so non-programmers could write edits, but some of us who cut our teeth on C want to "roll our own", as it were). So this winter has put me into this weird fugue state of wanting to prostrate myself before the Goddess and thank Her for allowing me to be laid off at just the right time to luck into this new job where they do stuff like set up viewing rooms to watch the inauguration even though I'm sure they would have preferred that the election go the other way, and where it is assumed that I am competent and have a brain in my head instead of the way it used to be, where I was the Designated Department Shithead who hadn't had a real development project for the last two years and hoping She forgives me for those mornings when I get out of bed and say, "Fuck! Pitch dark AGAIN???"
But one thing I do enjoy doing on a cold day like today, where it'll be a miracle if it gets out of the teens, is to cook something hot and savory that will fill up the house with the smell of Great Stuff Cooking. And what better to cook, when we just had chili a week ago, than a nice pot of soup. And who better to consult on a morning when the first thing I saw when I turned on the computer and went to Buzzflash was "Time to Steamroll the Obstructionist Law-Breaking Republicans in the Senate: 'Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have asked Eric Holder to make a commitment, before he is even confirmed, that he will not prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their involvement in acts of torture during the last administration.'" but The Angry Chef, a.k.a. -- yes, you guessed it -- the B@B patron saint of comedy, Marc Maron.
This is a soup that has five of the mainstays of life in it: onions, garlic, beans, pasta, and pig -- the latter in the form of pancetta, an Italian bacon that had me say to Mr. Brilliant last night as we scrambled around the A&P looking for all the ingredients, "This fucking soup had better be worth paying twelve bucks for bacon" This kind of expression of seething resentment put me in exactly the right frame of mind to cook a creation of the angry chef, so after I finish this post, I'm going to start chopping. Because after all, how bad can anything be if it has bacon in it, even if you get fancy and call it pancetta? Even chocolate.
I'm glad for the video instructions for making this soup, which you can find in sequence here, here, and here, because it means I don't have to spend time artistically arranging ingredients the way I did for the Traditional Thanksgiving Pastitso Dinner. I am making a few changes, though, because in the vain search through the A&P for red onions (I ended up buying a big Spanish onion instead, figuring that with the one red onion I have in the house, it should turn out OK) I forgot to get the cabbage, which is OK because Mr. Brilliant isn't overly fond of cabbage. So if the soup needs more STUFF in it, I'll toss in another can of canellini beans or more pasta or some frozen spinach. Or all three.
Stay tuned. It's not soup yet.
Of course this is not an option, nor do I even really want that as a state of affairs, because I thankfully have this thing called a job. It's even a job that I like (although if you're a programmer at the company that makes the system I work on, and you're reading this, can't you PLEASE put out a version where we can write our own damn edits instead of this point and click stuff? I know you wanted to set it up so non-programmers could write edits, but some of us who cut our teeth on C want to "roll our own", as it were). So this winter has put me into this weird fugue state of wanting to prostrate myself before the Goddess and thank Her for allowing me to be laid off at just the right time to luck into this new job where they do stuff like set up viewing rooms to watch the inauguration even though I'm sure they would have preferred that the election go the other way, and where it is assumed that I am competent and have a brain in my head instead of the way it used to be, where I was the Designated Department Shithead who hadn't had a real development project for the last two years and hoping She forgives me for those mornings when I get out of bed and say, "Fuck! Pitch dark AGAIN???"
But one thing I do enjoy doing on a cold day like today, where it'll be a miracle if it gets out of the teens, is to cook something hot and savory that will fill up the house with the smell of Great Stuff Cooking. And what better to cook, when we just had chili a week ago, than a nice pot of soup. And who better to consult on a morning when the first thing I saw when I turned on the computer and went to Buzzflash was "Time to Steamroll the Obstructionist Law-Breaking Republicans in the Senate: 'Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have asked Eric Holder to make a commitment, before he is even confirmed, that he will not prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their involvement in acts of torture during the last administration.'" but The Angry Chef, a.k.a. -- yes, you guessed it -- the B@B patron saint of comedy, Marc Maron.
This is a soup that has five of the mainstays of life in it: onions, garlic, beans, pasta, and pig -- the latter in the form of pancetta, an Italian bacon that had me say to Mr. Brilliant last night as we scrambled around the A&P looking for all the ingredients, "This fucking soup had better be worth paying twelve bucks for bacon" This kind of expression of seething resentment put me in exactly the right frame of mind to cook a creation of the angry chef, so after I finish this post, I'm going to start chopping. Because after all, how bad can anything be if it has bacon in it, even if you get fancy and call it pancetta? Even chocolate.
I'm glad for the video instructions for making this soup, which you can find in sequence here, here, and here, because it means I don't have to spend time artistically arranging ingredients the way I did for the Traditional Thanksgiving Pastitso Dinner. I am making a few changes, though, because in the vain search through the A&P for red onions (I ended up buying a big Spanish onion instead, figuring that with the one red onion I have in the house, it should turn out OK) I forgot to get the cabbage, which is OK because Mr. Brilliant isn't overly fond of cabbage. So if the soup needs more STUFF in it, I'll toss in another can of canellini beans or more pasta or some frozen spinach. Or all three.
Stay tuned. It's not soup yet.
samedi 24 janvier 2009
A Vietnamese engagement party
I feel like I'm back in Vietnam, even though I'm in a household in Sydney's inner west. It's not just the round folding tables covered with plastic tablecloths, the bottles of soft drink waiting on each table, or the collection of plastic stools. It's the fact that there are five tables of ten set up in the living room and the tantalising smells of seafood and hot oil coming from the
The Grand Old Delusion Party
It isn't just Bush and McCain who were delusional.
National Republican Campaign Committee's web site:
I shit you not.
(h/t)
National Republican Campaign Committee's web site:
Thanks to Republican economic policies, the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong.
I shit you not.
(h/t)
If you have never watched Break Room Live, watch this one
Here we go again, plugging the neurotic Jewish comedian and his ever-patient sidekick. But if you have never watched Break Room Live, you simply HAVE to go here and watch the show from January 23. Don't let Maron's whining in the opener drive you away, because this one's a goodie: fantastic packaging specifically for Break Room Live from the Just Coffee Co-op, a fun clip from the National Geographic channel show about Air Force One from Barack Obama's first ride on the Presidential jet, sounding just as gee-whiz and dorky as a seven-year-old, and Maron & Seder's own inimitable take on this Fox affiliate gaffe about the Obamas' affection for each other.
Because even if Barack Obama doesn't provide much comedy fodder over the next four years, it's reassuring to know that the Botoxed Chirping Idiots on local news channels will, as they bring on anthropologists to study the mating habits of the American Black President.
Because even if Barack Obama doesn't provide much comedy fodder over the next four years, it's reassuring to know that the Botoxed Chirping Idiots on local news channels will, as they bring on anthropologists to study the mating habits of the American Black President.
Dear President Obama:
I apologize.
There, I said it, which is more than your predecessor did about all of the horrors he perpetrated upon his country.
But you can hardly blame me. After all, look at how ineffectual our party has been for the last eight years. Look at how frightened our party leaders in Congress have been, what with Harry Reid's whining that he doesn't have a majority so he can't try to fight, even if it's just for principle and to get opposition into the public record. Even after the Democrats won the midterm elections in 2006, he whined that he doesn't have a filibuster-proof majority. Never once did he consider that perhaps allowing the Republicans to filibuster everything might be a good idea in painting them as the party of obstruction. Look at what our party, led by YOUR chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, did to Howard Dean in 2004, because Rahmmy believed that John Kerry the war hero would be a better candidate. Do you think Howard Dean would have sat by and let a bunch of chickenhawks call him a wuss? I think not. And now even you have decided that with Dean's strategy having finally reached fruition in getting you to the White House, you've put a guy in charge of the DNC who seems to already be getting wobbly on the 50-state strategy.
And as for you, well, you're the one who had Joe Lieberman as your Senatorial mentor when you first went to Washington. It's all well and good to talk about reaching across the aisle. Tip O'Neill used to do it all the time. But today's Republicans aren't like the Republicans of the 1960's. They've purged as many moderates as they could out of the party, and now it's run by people like John Weepers Boehner and David Diapers Vitter and John Cornyn -- mean-spirited, hypocritical, greedy bastards who seem to truly believe that God has chosen them to purge the country of that pesky middle class. And likely as not, reaching across the aisle to them means you'll pull back a well-gnawed, bloody stump.
So with your history, you can't really blame me for looking at the gestures you made towards the Republicans -- throwing everyone who sweated blood to get you elected under the bus in favor of these assholes and guys like Rick Warren; leaving the Bushite Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense; talking about compromise with people for whom compromise is a dirty word. Oh, I know there were people at Daily Kos talking about how it was all a head fake, that you knew what you were doing and that you were simply reaching out to the Republicans, knowing full well what they would do, and then after giving them a chance to work with you, you would pummel them into the ground. But let's face it -- there are those over there who were as messianic about you as the Twenty-Seven Percenters STILL are about George W. Bush. And mindless worship is no more attractive or intellegent when it comes from our side.
But ever since noon on Tuesday, it seems that this is no longer just a funny lolphoto:
SOMEONE in our party has needed to do this for a long time:
Closing Gitmo. Rescinding the global gag rule. A pay freeze on the highest paid staffers. Overturning Bush's sealing of presidential records. Reviewing detainee policy. White House staff ethics pledge. And now saying what has been obvious ever since the Clinton administration, that Republicans should stop taking their marching orders from a drug-addicted radio talk show host?
Somebody pinch me.
There, I said it, which is more than your predecessor did about all of the horrors he perpetrated upon his country.
But you can hardly blame me. After all, look at how ineffectual our party has been for the last eight years. Look at how frightened our party leaders in Congress have been, what with Harry Reid's whining that he doesn't have a majority so he can't try to fight, even if it's just for principle and to get opposition into the public record. Even after the Democrats won the midterm elections in 2006, he whined that he doesn't have a filibuster-proof majority. Never once did he consider that perhaps allowing the Republicans to filibuster everything might be a good idea in painting them as the party of obstruction. Look at what our party, led by YOUR chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, did to Howard Dean in 2004, because Rahmmy believed that John Kerry the war hero would be a better candidate. Do you think Howard Dean would have sat by and let a bunch of chickenhawks call him a wuss? I think not. And now even you have decided that with Dean's strategy having finally reached fruition in getting you to the White House, you've put a guy in charge of the DNC who seems to already be getting wobbly on the 50-state strategy.
And as for you, well, you're the one who had Joe Lieberman as your Senatorial mentor when you first went to Washington. It's all well and good to talk about reaching across the aisle. Tip O'Neill used to do it all the time. But today's Republicans aren't like the Republicans of the 1960's. They've purged as many moderates as they could out of the party, and now it's run by people like John Weepers Boehner and David Diapers Vitter and John Cornyn -- mean-spirited, hypocritical, greedy bastards who seem to truly believe that God has chosen them to purge the country of that pesky middle class. And likely as not, reaching across the aisle to them means you'll pull back a well-gnawed, bloody stump.
So with your history, you can't really blame me for looking at the gestures you made towards the Republicans -- throwing everyone who sweated blood to get you elected under the bus in favor of these assholes and guys like Rick Warren; leaving the Bushite Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense; talking about compromise with people for whom compromise is a dirty word. Oh, I know there were people at Daily Kos talking about how it was all a head fake, that you knew what you were doing and that you were simply reaching out to the Republicans, knowing full well what they would do, and then after giving them a chance to work with you, you would pummel them into the ground. But let's face it -- there are those over there who were as messianic about you as the Twenty-Seven Percenters STILL are about George W. Bush. And mindless worship is no more attractive or intellegent when it comes from our side.
But ever since noon on Tuesday, it seems that this is no longer just a funny lolphoto:
SOMEONE in our party has needed to do this for a long time:
President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.
"There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats," the official said. "We shouldn't let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done."
Closing Gitmo. Rescinding the global gag rule. A pay freeze on the highest paid staffers. Overturning Bush's sealing of presidential records. Reviewing detainee policy. White House staff ethics pledge. And now saying what has been obvious ever since the Clinton administration, that Republicans should stop taking their marching orders from a drug-addicted radio talk show host?
Somebody pinch me.
vendredi 23 janvier 2009
Remember when Republicans were the "Law and Order" party?
Now I guess "Law and Order" only refers to a TV show starring Fred Thompson. Now they practically want to codify the IOKIYAR Rule into law:
There go what few specks of moral authority the Bigoted Old Southern White Hypocritical Man Party had left.
Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. Attorney and Attorney General for Rhode Island, today sharply criticized the argument some Republican members of the Committee are making for delaying a vote on the nomination of Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder:
"Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have asked Eric Holder to make a commitment, before he is even confirmed, that he will not prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their involvement in acts of torture during the last administration.
"Anyone familiar with the criminal justice system - especially those with experience as prosecutors or judges - should know that a prosecutor should make no determination about who to prosecute before he or she has all the facts, and particularly not in response to legislative pressure.
"After all we have recently been through at the Department of Justice, I would hope and expect that upon calm reflection, no one on our Committee would expect the Attorney General of the United States to make prosecutive decisions based on legislative pressure."
There go what few specks of moral authority the Bigoted Old Southern White Hypocritical Man Party had left.
Jon Stewart takes on Chicken Little
I know that I am an adherent to the Size Acceptance/Health at Any Size doctrine, but in Rush Limbaugh's case I'm willing to make an exception. He really has put on a few tons, hasn't he?
(h/t)
"I won"
I guess somebody reminded him.
Politico:
Now before the wingnuts get their panties in a twist -- that Obama is meeting with Republicans is one hell of a lot more consideration than Bush and Boehner and the rest of the Bigoted Old White Men Party ever gave the Democrats when they were the minority party.
Politico:
President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who's in charge of these negotiations. "I won," Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package. They also raised red flags about a refundable tax credit that returns money to those who don’t pay income taxes, the sources said.
The Republicans stressed that they want to include more middle class tax cuts in the package, citing their proposal to cut the two lowest tax rates — 15 percent and 10 percent — to ten percent and five percent, rather than issue the refundable credit Obama wants.
At another point in the meeting, sources said Obama told the group: “This is a grave situation facing the country.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama would hold another economic meeting in the White House Saturday for a "broader group."
After Friday's meeting, Democratic and Republican leaders publicly wrangled over the developing stimulus plan.
But perhaps taking a cue from Obama’s “I won” line when Democrats were asked if they were concerned about Republicans blocking the package, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had a swift one-word answer: “No.”
Now before the wingnuts get their panties in a twist -- that Obama is meeting with Republicans is one hell of a lot more consideration than Bush and Boehner and the rest of the Bigoted Old White Men Party ever gave the Democrats when they were the minority party.
Food Blog Awards - GYF only 5 votes off the lead
Voting polls close in less than 24 hours and Grab Your Fork is currently running 2nd in Best Blog City, at this minute only 5 points off the lead.VOTE NOW if you think Grab Your Fork deserves to win Best Food Blog - City.Polls close at 12 noon Sunday 25 January 2009 (Sydney-time).Thank you for your support!
Best. Headline. Ever.
Would that John McCain had the same self-awareness:
(h/t)
Castro says he doubts he'll be lucid in 4 years
(h/t)
Watch for Limbaugh and Hannity to turn this into an Obama scandal
Not even Yitzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma can play in 20-degree weather:
That's because you don't listen to Limbaugh and Hannity, Ms. Florman. Because they live in a world where it's OK to take American kids into war based on lies, it's OK to conduct mass surveillance of all Americans' electronic activities, focusing particularly on journalists. It's OK to wreck the economy, it's OK to shovel $700 billion of taxpayer money into the pockets of guys like John Thain. But Yitzhak Perlman not wanting to risk one of his priceless instruments in the cold? THAT, Ms. Florman, is a scandal in Sean Hannity's America.
Wait for it. Watch for it. You know it's coming.
The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.
The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own).
“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.
Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its likelihood the day before.
The network said it sent a note to pool members saying that the use of recordings in the musical numbers was possible. Inaugural musical performances are routinely recorded ahead of time for just such an eventuality, Ms. Florman said. The Marine Band and choruses, which performed throughout the ceremony, did not use a recording, she said.
“It’s not something we would announce, but it’s not something we would try to hide,” Ms. Florman said. “Frankly, it would never have occurred to me to announce it. The fact they were forced to perform to tape because of the weather did not seem relevant, nor would we want to draw attention away from what we believed the news is, that we were having a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next.”
That's because you don't listen to Limbaugh and Hannity, Ms. Florman. Because they live in a world where it's OK to take American kids into war based on lies, it's OK to conduct mass surveillance of all Americans' electronic activities, focusing particularly on journalists. It's OK to wreck the economy, it's OK to shovel $700 billion of taxpayer money into the pockets of guys like John Thain. But Yitzhak Perlman not wanting to risk one of his priceless instruments in the cold? THAT, Ms. Florman, is a scandal in Sean Hannity's America.
Wait for it. Watch for it. You know it's coming.
The last Bush Administration "surge"
It's jobless claims:
If there is any good to come out of all this, it's that at least so far, Americans seem to have awakened from the infantile state into which George W. Bush encouraged us to wallow for eight years and recognize that we didn't get here in 100 days and we're not going to get out of it in 100 days. And with the exception of Rush Limbaugh and his hate radio compatriots, who get paid based on the amount of hatred he can rouse out of Americans' financial misery, most Americans are willing to have some patience and see how the situation shakes out. Amazing what happens when a president asks us to be grownups instead of telling us to go shopping and stuff ourselves with candy while he, Big Daddy, takes care of keeping the boogeyman away (but don't get too confident in him, he can't control you unless you're scared all the time).
I'm less convinced than some that Obama is going to be able to fix this mess; not because he's not up to the job, because he is. I'm just not convinced it can be fixed.
The number of U.S. workers lining up for state jobless benefits surged last week and home building slumped to a record low in December, data showed on Thursday, as the economy's downward spiral accelerated.
The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s is forcing companies to slash jobs, creating a vicious cycle for an economy mired in a year-long recession.
This was the first major set of grim economic data to greet President Barack Obama, who took office on Tuesday, and analysts said it underlined the need for swift government action to heal the fractured economy.
The White House said Obama was working to implement a rescue plan quickly, but believed the economic climate could still worsen before getting better.
"The young, new administration woke up to a pounding economic hangover. It's a hangover that will likely last for some time since no one yet knows how to deal with it," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton, New Jersey.
Adding to the ranks of unemployed, technology giant Microsoft Corp announced the largest job cuts in its history on Thursday, laying off up to 5,000. Chipmaker Intel Corp and chemical company Huntsman Corp also announced thousands of job cuts this week.
First-time applications for state jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 589,000 in the week ended January 17 from 527,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.
This was the highest number since a matching reading in the week of December 20 and exceeded analysts' forecasts of a rise to 540,000 new claims. The last time claims were higher was in 1982, when they notched a weekly rise of 612,000.
Underscoring the deterioration in the labor market, the number of people remaining on jobless rolls after drawing an initial week of aid jumped 97,000 to 4.61 million in the week ended January 10.
If there is any good to come out of all this, it's that at least so far, Americans seem to have awakened from the infantile state into which George W. Bush encouraged us to wallow for eight years and recognize that we didn't get here in 100 days and we're not going to get out of it in 100 days. And with the exception of Rush Limbaugh and his hate radio compatriots, who get paid based on the amount of hatred he can rouse out of Americans' financial misery, most Americans are willing to have some patience and see how the situation shakes out. Amazing what happens when a president asks us to be grownups instead of telling us to go shopping and stuff ourselves with candy while he, Big Daddy, takes care of keeping the boogeyman away (but don't get too confident in him, he can't control you unless you're scared all the time).
I'm less convinced than some that Obama is going to be able to fix this mess; not because he's not up to the job, because he is. I'm just not convinced it can be fixed.
A giant "Eff You" to bumblin' John Roberts
Yesterday Congress struck a blow against pay discrimination, undoing a pet cause of the Bush Administration -- and of the Roberts court -- by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act:
This isn't a difficult-to-define case of trying to assess work of equal value; this is a case of a woman being paid significantly less for doing THE SAME JOB as men. The insult in the law that was upheld in the Ledbetter decision was that it was somehow incumbent on the worker to try to dig out the pay scales and find out what everyone else was making within the first 180 days of being hired, and that if you didn't immediately start out in an adversarial position with a new employer, it was tough noogies for you.
For the record, the Republicans who crossed over were Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Arlen Specter. No male Republicans other than Specter voted for this bill, and no Democrats crossed to the Dark Side, which means that all but one of the thirty-five Republican men in the Senate believes that paying women less than men for EXACTLY THE SAME JOB is perfectly OK. I wonder, then, how they expect these women to feed the babies that Republicans want to force them to have?
The Senate approved landmark worker rights legislation Thursday that will make it easier for those who think they have endured pay discrimination to seek legal help. The vote was 61-36.
The House approved a similar measure Jan. 9, three days after the 111th Congress convened. Because the Senate made modest changes in the House version, the House must pass it again. Once it does, as is assured, this will be one of the first bills that President Barack Obama signs into law.
This culminates a two-year effort, mostly by Democrats, that made one-time tire plant supervisor Lilly Ledbetter a civil rights icon and a political star.
The legislation overrides a May 2007 Supreme Court ruling that Ledbetter, a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. employee in Gadsden, Ala., couldn’t sue her employer for pay discrimination because she didn’t file suit within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory act.
“It set us back 40 years in our fight for equal opportunity in the workplace,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Ledbetter roamed the Capitol’s halls Thursday, explaining to lawmakers and reporters that she was unaware of the pay disparity during most of the 19 years she worked at Goodyear.
“Pay levels were a big secret,” she said, “but an anonymous person left a note in my mailbox at work one day, comparing my pay to that of three male managers — and that’s when I knew I’d been the victim of pay discrimination.”
This isn't a difficult-to-define case of trying to assess work of equal value; this is a case of a woman being paid significantly less for doing THE SAME JOB as men. The insult in the law that was upheld in the Ledbetter decision was that it was somehow incumbent on the worker to try to dig out the pay scales and find out what everyone else was making within the first 180 days of being hired, and that if you didn't immediately start out in an adversarial position with a new employer, it was tough noogies for you.
For the record, the Republicans who crossed over were Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Arlen Specter. No male Republicans other than Specter voted for this bill, and no Democrats crossed to the Dark Side, which means that all but one of the thirty-five Republican men in the Senate believes that paying women less than men for EXACTLY THE SAME JOB is perfectly OK. I wonder, then, how they expect these women to feed the babies that Republicans want to force them to have?
jeudi 22 janvier 2009
George W. Bush's America is alive and well
I definitely like what I see so far. Whether it's the revocation of George W. Bush's executive order 13233, which sealed just about all presidential records, or the plan to close Guantanamo Bay in a year, in just two days Barack Obama has made very, very clear that there's a new sheriff in town, and this one doesn't regard the Constitution as "just a goddamn piece of paper."
However, you do not live for eight years led by a man whose stock in trade was hate and fear and loathing and have it just disappear just because the titular head of bigots and crazies has gone back to Texas, as evidenced by what one Obama supporter endured last Sunday:
This is the fruit of the Atwater/Rove axis of campaigning. This is the fruit of the Willie Horton ad and Ronald Reagan's myth of the welfare queen in the Cadillac. This is the result of nearly thirty years of Republicans pointing the attentions of the working and middle classes down the socioeconomic ladder while fatcats like John Thain rob them blind. This is the fruit of Sarah Palin's all-white rallies where she screeches about "The real America."
Think about the ruins of Pam Graf's house. Think of the family photos she no longer has. Perhaps there was jewelry or china that was her grandmother's that she no longer has. Think about it -- a woman burnt out of her house because she wanted to go join 1.8 million other people in celebrating the inauguration of a new president who just happens to be black.
Then think about some of the things you've heard out of Republican mouths for the last three decades, and do the math.
Because while people in theory on the same side as I am are blasting me as akin to a racist simply because I simply don't share Aretha Franklin's personal taste in millinery, ACTUAL racists are burning down the homes of people who are guilty of nothing other than enjoying the fact that we now have a president who can construct a coherent English sentence.
However, you do not live for eight years led by a man whose stock in trade was hate and fear and loathing and have it just disappear just because the titular head of bigots and crazies has gone back to Texas, as evidenced by what one Obama supporter endured last Sunday:
In the unseasonable cold of a clear January morning, Forsyth County mother of three and ardent Barack Obama supporter Pam Graf was sifting through the charred, hellish remains of what was once her home on Lanier Drive.
Graf's home had been burned to the ground. No one was in the home at the time of the blaze. Graf said her three children had been sent to stay with their father while she driving to attend the presidential inauguration.
Her trip to witness Obama make history taking the oath of office was cut short midway to Washington, D.C. Instead she returned to meet with county fire investigators and insurance providers. Now she's just trying to decide where to go from here.
In a time of jubilation for a large percentage of the country, Graf is stunned by the apparent hatred to which she has been subjected.
"I can't even make out the rooms," she said. "It's like everything collapsed into the basement. It looks like a bomb went off."
Graf's home burned down early Jan. 18 in what authorities are calling a "suspicious fire." Most shocking to Graf, and to some of the citizens of the county, state and nation at large, was graffiti the apparent arsonist left on scene.
Spray painted on the fence around the home it said, "Beware [expletive deleted] your black boy will die."
While Forsyth County fire investigators refuse to comment on the nature of the statement, Graf, who moved to north Forsyth from Dover, Del., three years ago, said there's little doubt as to its meaning.
"I do not think they were targeting me personally," she said. "It seems obvious that this is a direct result of my support of the president. They don't support the president, so they attack me. I'm a very easy target for someone's racial hatred."
This is the fruit of the Atwater/Rove axis of campaigning. This is the fruit of the Willie Horton ad and Ronald Reagan's myth of the welfare queen in the Cadillac. This is the result of nearly thirty years of Republicans pointing the attentions of the working and middle classes down the socioeconomic ladder while fatcats like John Thain rob them blind. This is the fruit of Sarah Palin's all-white rallies where she screeches about "The real America."
Think about the ruins of Pam Graf's house. Think of the family photos she no longer has. Perhaps there was jewelry or china that was her grandmother's that she no longer has. Think about it -- a woman burnt out of her house because she wanted to go join 1.8 million other people in celebrating the inauguration of a new president who just happens to be black.
Then think about some of the things you've heard out of Republican mouths for the last three decades, and do the math.
Because while people in theory on the same side as I am are blasting me as akin to a racist simply because I simply don't share Aretha Franklin's personal taste in millinery, ACTUAL racists are burning down the homes of people who are guilty of nothing other than enjoying the fact that we now have a president who can construct a coherent English sentence.
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