Hell, I'm willing to destroy a once-great company for a THIRD of that.

A week ago I wrote about how the crony boardroom appointment of the loathsome Meg Whitman to the CEO chair at Hewlett-Packard demonstrates everything that's wrong with American corporations and their business practice of being of the Board of Directors, by the Board of Directors, and for the Board of Directors.

But that picture wasn't quite complete. Now it is (NYT link):

Just last week, Léo Apotheker was shown the door after a tumultuous 11-month run atop Hewlett-Packard. His reward? $13.2 million in cash and stock severance, in addition to a sign-on package worth about $10 million, according to a corporate filing on Thursday.

But Apotheker isn't the only one cashing out big-time after doing a shitty job:

At the end of August, Robert P. Kelly was handed severance worth $17.2 million in cash and stock when he was ousted as chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon after clashing with board members and senior managers. A few days later, Carol A. Bartz took home nearly $10 million from Yahoo after being fired from the troubled search giant.

A hallmark of the gilded era of just a few short years ago, the eye-popping severance package continues to thrive in spite of the measures put in place in the wake of the financial crisis to crack down on excessive pay.

Critics have long complained about outsize compensation packages that dwarf ordinary workers’ paychecks, but they voice particular ire over pay-for-failure. Much of Wall Street and corporate America has shifted a bigger portion of pay into longer-term stock awards and established policies to claw back bonuses. And while fuller disclosure of exit packages several years ago has helped ratchet down the size of the biggest severance deals, efforts by shareholders and regulators to further restrict payouts have had less success.

“We repeatedly see companies’ assets go out the door to reward failure,” said Scott Zdrazil, the director of corporate governance for Amalgamated Bank’s $11 billion Longview Fund, a labor-affiliated investment fund that sought to tighten the restrictions on severance plans at three oil companies last year. “Investors are frustrated that boards haven’t prevented such windfalls.”

Investors are chumps too, just like the rest of us. They think that because they own stock, that the meme about "maximizing shareholder value" applies to their holdings. The only shareholders that matter to these boards are themselves.

Blogrolling In Our Time

Say hello to the damn fine rantin' that is Elizabitchez. Even if they WILl hate me for being one of those people who wants Occupy Wall Street to have some kind of a goal.

I guess I'm just getting old

Last night Mr. Brilliant and I were talking about whether we should plan to go into the city this weekend and at least for a few hours join the Occupy Wall Street protest, and I realized that I haven't written a single word about it, which makes me not much better than the very mainstream media that has been all but ignoring them (other than MSNBC during prime time). I do support their cause, however, while the media's job seems to be to belittle it and belittle the protest itself, aside from a few brave souls like Lawrence O'Donnell, whose evening ratings against MSNBC's now-nemesis Keith Olbermann are good enough that he can get away with something like this (and as I understand it, he doesn't need the money and could walk away and be just fine at any time):



After living through the last five decades, I guess I've just become disillusioned about the power of street protests. Part of it is that I get irritated with the kind of unfocused, every-fringe-group aspect of them. Of course this is just part of the herding-cats aspect of the left, but yes, I do get tired of seeing "Free Mumia!" signs at every single protest about everything. And don't tell me white liberals don't care about black men on Death Row; witness the attention paid to the Troy Davis case. But when a protest is to try to stop a war, or to call attention to the way Wall Street is sucking what little the middle class has left into their own pockets after causing a near-collapse of the global economy and continuing to enrich themselves, after not one of them has gone to jail or even have to answer questions, the stakes are too high to turn it into an all-purpose litany of, OK, I'll say it, tired-sounding lefty slogans.

Yes, we still believe in ending sexism and racism, and we hate corporatism and fascism and greed, and we still oppose the death penalty. But when a half million of us marched in 2002 to try to stop a war that WE knew was based on lies, it wasn't about racism, sexism, OR the death penalty. It was a cry for recognition by the American people that we were being lied to and THEIR children would be the ones to die. When thousands of people march against a war, or gather on Wall Street and in cities across the country, to provide a counter-voice to the right-wing meme that the wealthy are being persecuted by lazy unemployed people, I just want these protests to focus on that and keep the puppets and the peripheral issue signs out of it, and to be able to talk about what the protest is about without using the words "corporatism" and "greed" and "revolution" and instead cite the many concrete examples that are right out there for the having of how the guys in those buildings have screwed Americans seven ways to Sunday. Yes, you need short, succinct talking points. And yes, I use "corporatism" as a blog tag. But I'm largely preaching to the converted here; I'm not out there sleeping in a park and trying to get the attention of people who roll their eyes at things like this:



I know that this method of communicating is because the protesters are not allowed to have microphones. And my old lefty heart still soars when I watch the passion and the idealism of these people, but at the same time it depresses me, because I hear a lot of buzzwords of the left in what these people are saying and I know that you could plaster this all over every television station in the country and the people in the red states who are blaming immigrants and gays and the black man in the White House would tune it right out. The word "Revolution" spoken by people in Hoverounds, or by guys with NRA hats, is not a threatening word to them. That word spoken by someone who is Black, or Latino, or who looks like what John Cole described yesterday as

.. a bunch of trustafarian nitwits who should be braiding hair and drinking wheat beer in the parking lot of a Phish concert, weaving in a few bong hits and a couple games of hacky-sack. We’re just making it too easy for Wall Street and the money boys if this collection of motley fools is the opposition. It’s so fucking depressing.

...just isn't going to resonate with the guy who lost his manufacturing job three years ago, the bank is foreclosing on his house, and he's blaming Mexicans.

I don't know what the answer is. I keep thinking back to the image of the 1960 lunch counter sit ins. This is Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond, after leaving the first lunch counter sit-in, in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960:



They are wearing suits and ties and tailored overcoats.

Here are demonstrators at the March on Washington, in August 1963:



They are wearing suits and dresses and look as if they are coming back from church.

I can't say for certain that the suits and ties and dresses made the world pay attention, but when the anti-war marches of the 1960's have caused conservative America and the media to regard anyone marching against injustice as dirty fucking hippies, images of what often looks like an attempt to relive the original Woodstock festival, and still doesn't seem to have a clear message and a clear goal, make it hard to see this as working.

I hope I'm wrong.

UPDATE: Go read this post at Reddit. (via Tom in the comments).

Azuma Kushiyaki: Sugar Hit 2011

Throw away your belts, I say. You won't need them in October which is now synonymous with the Crave Sydney International Food Festival.

There'll be countless fooding events happening all over Sydney during the coming month. One of the most popular features is always the Sugar Hit, a chance to enjoy a special late night dessert at participating restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels.


Crab roll

I, Asshole

If NJ Governor Chris Christie ever decides to stop the Sarah Palin political cock-teasing and throw his Mickey Mouse cap in the ring, I have the perfect idea for his campaign song: Denis Leary's, "I'm an Asshole."

Christie's speech a couple of nights ago at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, reverently covered by Roger Ailes' propaganda arm for the GOP Fox News, set the Twitterverse in flames or convulsed it in laughter, depending on your political stripe. It was full of sound and subdued fury, signifying nothing but this message: "I am not running." Oh, that and Reagan smashing PATCO was a good thing.

It's real easy to think of Chris Christie as an unfunny version of Ralph Kramden with Tourette Syndrome. He's become, in the perennially-fixed Republican hub of the political universe, this general election cycle's Fred Thompson. Thompson, you may remember, made people like Chris Matthews swoon just imagining the smell of Aqua Velva wafting from his neck wattles. Thompson provided a wrinkled but glittering Hollywood backdrop to a field of Republican pretenders who were hardly more palatable then than they are now. He was like some still virile, grandfatherly type who lived next door, the Clint Eastwood character in Gran Torino that the bored, desperate housewives on the block wanted but couldn't have.

Then Fred finally lurched into their bedrooms and fell asleep during the act of love and the fantasy was over.

But it may be too much of an oversimplification to look at Christie as 2012's answer to Fred Thompson, a man who nearly pulled Lunesta from every pharmacy the night he announced his candidacy on the Jay Leno show. Christie, in a literally and figuratively larger than life way, is more dynamic to Republicans than Thompson ever was on or off the silver screen.

Christie, for some as yet maddeningly elusive reason, has the ability or talent to basically tell people to go fuck themselves and to then brag about it by having his staffers post the results on Youtube. For most politicians (and yes, I'm looking in your direction, George Allen), these videos would be deal-breakers. But Christie is the Teflon Governor and no insult that he deals to public schoolteachers, their union or anyone else that gives him attitude ever sticks to him.

Maybe it's his James Gandolfini arrogance, his ability to warm the cockles of the Republican heart everyone who wistfully thinks of Tony Soprano, America's most beloved mass murderer. Perhaps they live vicariously through Christie's ability to tell his critics to go to hell when they challenge his most absurd pronouncements.

Short of comedians, the world's other class of people who get paid handsomely to be laughed at, no one likes to be laughed at while they're speaking. Christie views it as a sign of disrespect but what seems to elude him is that perhaps his critics laugh at him while he's speaking because they simply can't help themselves.

After all, this is the same guy who took a helicopter to his son's baseball game then drove in a limousine for the 100 yards between the chopper and the diamond. This is a guy who hobnobbed with Mickey and Minnie while his state was buried in snow. This is a guy who called teacher's unions "thugs".

And Christie's very hypothetical appeal to the Republican base, if anything, underscores the dissatisfaction that Republican voters feel with the current crop of psychopaths, some of them holdovers from the last crop of psychopaths (Romney, Santorum, Paul).

And, to anyone with even semi-functional synapses, Republicans swooning over Christie while daydreaming that he may be a plus-sized Reagan is itself worth guffawing over.

I Know Dick

Behold a real closer.

That's the late Dick Radatz, the first great closer in MLB, the kind of guy you'd feel comfortable putting into a bases loaded, no out situation against the Yankees with Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris on deck. The kind of guy who was so cocksure of himself he'd say to the starter on the mound, "Pop open a cold one for me. I'll be right back."

Then he'd do it. And if you needed him to pitch three or more innings for a rulebook save, you'd get it. Radatz would routinely pitch anywhere from 120-160 innings a year and would rack up more strikeouts than most starters nowadays get in 32-36 starts. And "the Monster" didn't demand through his agent $12,000,000 a year to do it, either.

There was no choking as with the pretender on the mound in Baltimore last night, one who reminded us that sometimes curses aren't broken, after all, but just temporarily diverted.


You know, this John Lithgow-looking loser who time and again toward crunch time couldn't keep a lead against some of the worst teams the major leagues had to offer.

And, thanks largely to Jonathan Papelbon, it was just like old times again and Pap joined the ghosts of Denny Galehouse, Jim Burton, Mike Torrez, Bob Stanley, Calvin Schiraldi, Tim Wakefield, and, yes, even the great Pedro Martinez.

They couldn't just let us walk away and write them off when they began the most titanic September slide since the '64 Phillies or the '78 Red Sox. No, they had to lead us on just long enough by barely coaxing out an 8-7 win the night before from a roster creaking with injuries, incipient old age and inexperience. It was a teaser of a team so close to falling apart, our little center fielder and leadoff hitter had to come to the rescue again and our backstop was a guy who'd never had a major league start at that position because our everyday and backup catchers were sidelined with injuries.

Papelbon almost blew that save, as well, but managed to keep the tying run from scoring and the romance was alive for another day, a pathological wallflower bereft of all social graces trying to crash the hall to become the belle of the ball.

And then, the inevitable happened. The champagne was ordered, we began filling out our dance cards and the Boston City Police Department was eagerly loading their guns in the interests of crowd control.

To add more of a Three Penny Opera dimension to this spectacle, the Red Sox depended on the division champion New York Yankees, who had zero incentive to win their last game of the year and essentially fielded a team made up almost entirely of Trenton and Columbus minor leaguers who couldn't even hit Karen Carpenter's weight let alone their own, to get us into the postseason.

A Mark Texeira grand slam in the early innings at the Trop made it 5-0 Yankees and when the lead went to 7-0 with the Sox ahead 3-2 against a last place team playing for naught but some misplaced pride, it looked as if we wouldn't have to go to Tampa Bay, after all. Either Michigan or Texas it was. Either way, no way would we be going home. We were going on a postseason-long honeymoon.

And then Papelbon happened and, suddenly, after being in first place half the year, we finished third.

Just his third blown save of the year, it couldn't've come at a worse time. And this past September, Papelbon and much of the pitching staff pitched as if they hated their fans and took sadistic enjoyment out of tormenting us as had their forbears in seasons past. Even Pap's reliable setup guy, Dan Bard, began training his 101 mph flamethrower on the Red Sox dugout. Maybe someone should call the DC police to see if his best friend disappeared again.

As the old saying goes, "The sons of bitches killed our fathers, now they're coming after us." Go buy a poster of Dick Radatz in between basilisk stares and Irish jigs, Johnny boy, hang it up in a prominent place in your home, study it long and hard, try to derive some inspiration from looking at a real closer who did the job when it counted the most.

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: All Aboard for Crazytown edition

I'm starting to be sorry I stopped subscribing to Esquire, a magazine I'd been reading literally since I was a child of about eight. (When you grow up in a household that has notepads featuring a Jules Feiffer Herb Gardner* cartoon of a guy sitting at a desk with a plaque reading "I am so smart I make myself sick", you do things like that when you're eight. You are also addicted to The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and you have no idea yet that what you are is a Geek, but that's besides the point.) Because we're opening today with the joyful news of Charles Pierce's new political blog at Esquire, to which we're going to link as soon as we're done with this post...which is kind of an Around the Blogroll, a Big Blue Smurf post, and a Blogrolling in our time post.

I was going to link to this one, but what the hell. Just go pick one. Any one. They aer positively Driftglassian in their awesomeness.

And speaking of the Driftman, who has a lovely new banner image over at his place, when you put Drifty and Hunter S. Thompson together, you get some damn fine readin'.

Blue Girl and I were thinking sort of along the same lines today.

Bustednuckles has a new job and is off to a very strange start.

Batocchio celebrates Banned Books Week.

Andy Ostroy thinks Chris Christie, or as he's affectionately called in New Jersey, "Christie Kreem", is going to throw his hat in the ring.

OMG, I'd never get a lick of work done.

Ramona: Yes, kids, there really IS still a religious test in American politics.

G'night, all!

*Thanks to The New York Crank for the correction. It's always fun when others are familiar with my obscure childhood pop culture references. The image I was talking about is available on eBay in coaster form, here.

This is the problem, right here

"America's best reality show" -- that's the subheading of Newsweek's cover story this week about the race for the Republican presidential nomination. As Chris Christie continues his will-he-or-won't-he fan dance and Michele Bachmann continues to spout whatever batshit crazy pops into her head and the right wing pundit/money axis works frantically to dismantle the Perry Monster that they themselves created, it's perhaps tempting to write about this contest the way you would musings about whether Coach or Ozzy will be able to stay in the game, and whether the producers will be able to keep a lid on the clearly psychopathic Brandon Hantz before he rapes and machete-murders the Evil Temptress Mikaylah for having the audacity to wear a bikini in the south Pacific and make his Christian wee-wee tingle.

But this is what it's become, hasn't it? In a contest that's seen one freak after another throw a hat into the ring, it's tempting to liken them to some of the worst characters on reality television. The problem with so-called "serious journalists" treating it that way (and it's questionable whether anyone writing for the Daily Beastified Newsweek can still be considered a serious journalist) is that in the sheer freakshowiness of it all, it's easy to forget that the office being sought is that of the most powerful leader in the world -- a leader of a country and a world that is currently dealing with huge problems with which it requires both mind and guts to deal. When you turn this into Survivor: Reagan Library or Real Rich Guys of the Texas Oilfields or D.C. Idol, it's all to easy for some nitwit to end up with a job that's confounded far greater men than any of these lunatics currently running on the GOP side. Reality TV is for media whores. When we put the fate of the nation into people like this, we accelerate our already alarmingly fast pace down to oblivion.

The forgotten American victims of the Bush wars

And so they are starting to trickle home, these men and women, many of whom enlisted in the military after the 9/11 attacks with the purest of motives -- what they believed to be a fight to both avenge the attacks and to dismantle the groups that made such an attack possible. Those missing legs, arms, and eyes come home as soon as they are well enough to travel after injury. But sometimes there are invisible injuries that are just as serious, and they are coming home to a country whose government offers little to help them, and nothing to help the forgotten new victims of these wars -- the people who love them and now care for them, who, in this Ron Paul paradise in which our veterans live, they have to rely on private organizations (NYT link):

Since Mr. Marcum came back in 2008 from two tours in Iraq with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, his wife has quit her job as a teacher to care for him. She has watched their life savings drain away. And she has had to adjust to an entirely new relationship with her husband, who faces a range of debilitating problems including short-term memory loss and difficulties with impulse control and anger.

“The biggest loss is the loss of the man I married,” Ms. Marcum said, describing her husband now as disconnected on the best days, violent on the worst ones. “His body’s here, but his mind is not here anymore. I see glimpses of him, but he’s not who he was.”

Ms. Marcum has joined a growing community of spouses, parents and partners who, confronted with damaged loved ones returning from war who can no longer do for themselves, drop most everything in their own lives to care for them. Jobs, hobbies, friends, even parental obligations to young children fall by the wayside. Families go through savings and older parents dip into retirement funds.

Even as they grieve over a family member’s injuries, they struggle to adjust to new routines and reconfigured relationships.

The new lives take a searing toll. Many of the caregivers report feeling anxious, depressed or exhausted. They gain weight and experience health problems. On their now-frequent trips to the pharmacy, they increasingly have to pick up prescriptions for themselves as well.

While taking comfort that their loved ones came home at all, they question whether they can endure the potential strain of years, or even decades, of care.

“I’ve packed my bags, I’ve called my parents and said I’m coming home,” said Andrea Sawyer, whose husband has been suicidal since returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder. “But I don’t. I haven’t ever physically walked out of the house.”

Those attending to the most severely wounded must help their spouses or adult children with the most basic daily functions. Others, like Ms. Marcum, act as safety monitors, keeping loved ones from putting themselves in danger. They drive them to endless medical appointments and administer complicated medication regimens.

One of the most frustrating aspects of life now, they say, is the bureaucracy they face at the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, from problems with the scheduling of medical appointments to being bounced around among different branches of the system, forcing them to become navigators and advocates for their loved ones.

A variety of care services are offered to the severely injured. But many family members do not want their loved ones in nursing homes and find home health services often unsatisfactory or unavailable.

Despite Ms. Marcum’s cheerful manner and easy laugh, she has started taking antidepressants and an anti-anxiety medication when needed. She has developed hypertension, takes steroids for a bronchial ailment that may be stress related and wears braces to relieve a jaw problem.

“I just saw all of my dreams kind of vanishing,” she said.

Over the past few years, advocacy organizations like the Wounded Warrior Project lobbied Congress to enact a law providing direct financial compensation and other benefits to family caregivers of service members. In 2010 they succeeded, and by mid-September, the veterans agency had approved 1,222 applications, with average monthly stipends of $1,600 to $1,800. Caregivers can also receive health insurance and counseling.

“We know it doesn’t replace full lost income,” said Deborah Amdur, who oversees caregiver support for the agency. “It’s really a recognition of the kinds of sacrifices that are being made.”

Read the linked article, and then think about recent Republican rhetoric about lazy people who don't work, and about how we simply cannot ask the people whose interests these men and women went to protect, to pay even one thin dime more towards their care, and about how the needy should depend on charity instead of the government. What kind of a country are we that we would let these people get away with rhetoric like this, let alone seriously consider them as presidential timber? How can we be proud of a country that uses its young men and women like this and then brings them home and throws them on the trash heap of history while at the same time using the threat of terrorism to justify continued military spending on everything BUT the care of those who actually fight? Where is the yellow ribbon magnet crowd now? Why aren't they clamoring for better care for these people?

Mario Tokyo Pizza, Strathfield

Bulgogi pizza

Forget about the pineapple on pizza debate. Mario Tokyo throws all the pizza rules out the window with toppings like strips of sweet bulgogi beef and potato wedges. For this month's Time Out Sydney column I headed to Strathfield to check it out.


Eat This...Bulgogi pizza

WHAT IS IT?
Bulgogi pizza ($15.90) is what you get when Korea and Italy collide in the kitchen. Start with

OOH, Shiny!

During the last few weeks, as we've watched first Michele Bachmann anointed by the Washington punditocracy as Palin-with-a-brain, and then watch them fall in (and quickly out of) love with yet another dimwitted Texas governor in cowboy boots, it's struck me just how much this presidential race on the GOP side really IS, as Jon Stewart so accurately said last week, a race for the mayoralty of Pundittown.

It's not that the press falling in love with someone else every five minutes is anything new; we saw it in 2004 when Howard Dean made the cover of Newsweek when he was surging, and once it looked like he could actually win the thing, they covered a a rally he held after the Iowa caucuses in which he was trying to lift the spirits of his dispirited campaign workers and conveniently turned the volume down on the crowd noise to make him look like a madman. We certainly saw in in 2008, where the choice of a wife of a former president with whom their relationship was already tumultuous, and a black freshman Senator, for the Democratic nomination, had them so confounded they didn't know what to do. We also saw it when the guy they've been in love with for years, John McCain, selected an attractive bubblebrain to be the potential backup to a septuagenarian cancer survivor.

But this year the fickleness of the punditocracy has reached the point of ridiculousness, because whom they love can turn on a dime, and often on a daily basis. And this year, for some reason, they're like teenaged boys with a double standard -- they love their chosen one until he puts out (i.e. declares candidacy) and then suddenly the one they pursued for so long doesn't look so good anymre. As long as Rick Perry wasn't running, he was the Coveted One. Then after he declared, the press covered his cammpaign with the fervor of a fifteen-year-old who's still huffing the euphoria of those first few nights in the back seat of a car...until Perry offered up the equivalent of a fart during sex, and then suddenly the Pursued and Won One became just another failed candidate.

So now, as has happened before whenever the punditocracy gets restless, their attention turns to New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, which is striking only because they seem to have skipped over the logical next choice for their affections, Herman Cain, who trounced all others in the Florida straw poll last weekend. After all, if Michele Bachmann became Chuck Todd's next choice for the presidency after winning the Iowa straw poll, who shouldn't Herman Cain get some lovin' after even MORE decisively winning Florida's straw poll? Gee, I wonder why....

So off they go, chubby-chasing Chris Christie. What they forget is that as recently as June, Christie's approval rating in the state where we actually have to deal with him was just 43%:

Respondents objected to a variety of Christie’s policies, with 65% opposing his cuts in education spending, 58% opposing his removal of a surcharge on the state’s highest earners, and 51% opposing the cancellation of a planned tunnel to New York.

Christie’s favorability rating is now at 43%, while teachers, whom he tussled with on benefits and pay, are at 76%. “Teachers I know got laid off because of him,” said one respondent. “He’s not in favor of the average working person.” That view seemed pervasive: 68% believed Christie stands with the business community, while just 22% said he sides with “ordinary New Jerseyans.”

Now he's up at 54%, which these days is a perfectly fine rating, but still means that almost half the state doesn't like what he's doing. The Star-Ledger may think that Christie's tough stands with the unions accounts for his popularity, but as a denizen of New Jersey, I can tell you that the improvement in his ratings can be attributed to just six words, uttered as Hurricane Irene was approaching our coastline: "Get the hell off the beach." There isn't a person in this state who didn't applaud him for cutting right to the chase. He also gained respect from even those of us who disagree with him when he had the guts to call someone who was asking about protection from sharia law "crazy." These are Christie-the-regular-guy at his best. The problem is that the flip side of Christie-the-regular-guy is Christie-the-bully and Christie-the-hothead. Everyone seems to have forgotten that while he did a great job before and after the hurricane, he kind of HAD to, since he was off on vacation during last winter's blizzard.

Like George W. Bush, this is a guy who charges full speed ahead, certain of the correctness of every move he makes, every word that comes out of his mouth. But it's one thing to tell people who think it'd be fun to stand in the pounding surf during the hurricane not to be assholes. It's quite another when someone with a complete lack of internal word filter is handling delicate discussions with, oh, say, Pakistan.

There is video after video after video of Chris Christie saying he's not ready ot be persident. We agree. But the siren song of GOP apparatchiks who embraced the Teabag Monster and now are completely unable to control it, and the flowers-and-candy being offered by a smitten Washington punditocracy, may be impossible for him to resist. So I suspect he will run, and he'll have a joyful few first dates, until he farts. Then they'll find another girl about whom to fantasize.

Big Dick Goes to Canadian Pedophile Central

(Many tips o' the tinfoil hat to Michael Collins.)

It's true. No need to blink or rub your eyes at that headline. At 5:30 this afternoon, Dick Cheney is going to 915 West Hastings St., the address of the Vancouver Club to pimp his new book, Yeah, I Waterboarded Innocent Brown People and If You Don't Like it, You Can Suck My Big, Withered Dick.

Now, to my Yank readers, Vancouver's just a clean, civilized city that's the home to the hapless but lovable losers who went down in flames in Game 7 of the last Stanley Cup and the place where loves blooms on the streets amid chaos (or maybe not). And you'd be partially right.

And Cheney is going to be speaking today at an alleged hotbed that features to its most discreet members kidnapping, pedophilia, torture and possibly murder. It may surprise you (or maybe not) that our big Dick Cheney is going to be squarely in the middle of all that in the interests of book sales. And it may even be that Cheney himself is blissfully unaware of the Vancouver Club's sordid history and that delivering a speech at this house of depravity and torture is yet another in a string of coincidences that follows Republicans like Pigpen's dust cloud.

Or it could be that Cheney doesn't give a rat's ass where and how he makes his money.

Canadian attorney Gail Davidson has issued a plea (.pdf file) to the highest levels of the Canadian government asking that Dick Cheney be barred from the country on the basis of having committed, by her reckoning, 269 war crimes, some of which Cheney freely admits to in his book. Cheney's appearance in Vancouver BC even has its own Facebook page that calls for his arrest.

The story, typically, has been strenuously ignored by the worthless American corporate MSM but even many of the bloggers who've written about Cheney's upcoming speech failed to connect this to the other big dot, which is that the Vancouver Club has been the subject of the liveliest interest of attorneys, former police officials and journalists for quite a long time, 17 years, to be more precise.


Their website, naturally, doesn't give the slightest hint of its sordid history that includes two Canadian Supreme Court judges, police officials, church lawyers, businessmen and politicians. In fact, the index page looks like the gay edition of a Brooks Brothers catalog featuring the kind of smarmy, yuppie up-and-comers modeling its American Psycho line that only John Aravosis would love. Funny how it fails to mention the aboriginal children they keep in the dungeons below.

Yeah, there's that, eh?

It all began with another Canadian attorney named Jack Cram who'd entered a lawsuit in April of 1994 naming two Supreme Court judges for their alleged complicity in this pedophile ring that operates openly right in the middle of squeaky clean downtown Vancouver. Despite two of the judges being disbarred, Cram was "arrested, drugged and jailed", while the evidence (including incriminating photographs) against the Vancouver Club and the jurists was stolen. In other words, they gave him the Susan Lindauer treatment.

Amazingly, despite these two child-molesting judges having been disbarred, they threatened a lawsuit against two papers that attempted their own investigations.

More recently, Kevin Annett, an investigator with the IHRAAM, was and still is allegedly made the focus of a COINTELPRO smear campaign carried out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and even aboriginal agents obviously to discourage him from further investigation.

Hm. There's that aboriginal connection again. What's with the aborigines?

2. Aboriginal children have been a prime target of the Vancouver Club pedophile ring, which involves senior judges, church lawyers, businessmen and politicians. To quote Jack Cram's statement in the BC Supreme Court on April 26, 1994, "Indian children go into the Vancouver Club and are never seen again." As recently as the summer of 2009, aboriginal children have been observed being taken against their will into the rear entrance of the Vancouver Club at 915 West Hastings street from the Squamish Indian reserve in North Vancouver, during the hours of 1 and 3 am.

Then there's this, from the United Nations:

4. A United Nations conference on child trafficking, held in Vancouver in September, 1999, confirmed in its summary report that Vancouver is one of three cities in the world where "organized child prostitution and trafficking operates with unofficial police and judicial protection ... including at the elite Vancouver Club."

Yeah, that must've gone over well considering that conference took place in their city.

The website given to me by Michael Collins and for which I've provided a link is just the tippy tip of the iceberg. If you want more background on the Vancouver Club, their child molesting ring and the people with whom they're figuratively in bed, read these horrific accounts provided through videotaped depositions.

When you see what's been going on in Vancouver, BC for the last half century and longer, you'll naturally bridge that gap and form the same conclusions I have. I won't name names, of course, but the initials are MKULTRA.

By coincidence, I'm furiously engaged in drafting out a novel about this very same thing. In fact, I'd shown a chapter to Michael Collins and Susan Lindauer and Collins thought the link to Exopolitics would interest me. Yeah, you could say that. And what I've been reading since last night puts even my potent imagination to shame. Educate yourself. Follow the links I've provided. Find more on your own. No time? Make it. This is some heavy duty shit. Rich fucks, buddies and supporters of Dick Cheney, are kidnapping, molesting, torturing, brainwashing and possibly even murdering children with the complicity and protection of NORAD, the RCMP, the Vancouver PD, the highest judiciaries, Canadian MPs and others.

Now, doesn't it just make you wanna bust your buttons knowing that our big Dick is going to be swaying in the middle of that moral cesspool?

(More on this. Much, much more.)

Cafe Ish, Surry Hills

Where can you find a cheap lunch in Sydney? Frugal is not a dirty word at Cafe Ish, which celebrates Tight Ass Tuesdays with ten eleven dishes for only ten dollars.

This cosy corner cafe bar makes a point of mixing up Japanese flavours with Australian native ingredients. Here you'll find crocodile coated in Panko crumbs and covered in Japanese curry; potato and fetta mochi with Davidson plum

We Need a Guilt Project

The last GOP presidential debate, the chemical lynching of Troy Davis and frequent references to Barry Schechter's Innocence Project gave me a great idea that I don't believe anyone's ever considered, certainly nobody in the Justice Department:

What we need is a Guilt Project.

Schechter's ongoing Innocence Project, which has gotten over 100 convictions overturned and literally dozens released from Death Row, is certainly a necessary counterbalance to what has to be the worst, most capricious, money-driven and corrupt criminal justice system in the history of the galaxy.

But why stop there? Why not continue that train of thought on the other side of the legal spectrum and start going after the guilty? That's a novel concept, one that I believe will catch on if enough thought is paid to it.

That way, the wealthy will no longer be insulated from comeuppance at the hands of We the People as We the People are expected to when we break the law on much smaller scales. We would need to rethink our entire concept of jurisprudence, I'm sure. We would need to actually investigate the world-devouring crimes that happen Monday-Friday on Wall Street and Capitol Hill, use people called "attorneys" to file something we can call, I don't know, "lawsuits".

Here's an even more radical concept: Making the punishment fit the crime, although, given the sheer scope and scale of the crimes that occur on Wall Street and Washington, DC, such penalties would require the sadistic imaginations of the Marquis de Sade, Tourqemada and Lucifer combined.

This Guilt Project would require at some point the reluctant but necessary participation of the Eric Holder Justice Department that has inexplicably dropped more investigations and lawsuits than bars of soap in a Greenwich Village bathhouse.

That way, when we put these Republican cocksuckers on notice, we will not see so much of:

Presidential and Senate elections getting brazenly stolen every four years through voter intimidation, vote-caging, electronic ballot-stuffing and the like.

Illegal wars being waged against countries that were no threat to us and had no complicity in 9/11.

Hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars being siphoned from the Treasury to stuff into the bottomless pockets of war profiteers such as the VPOTUS's former employer through cost plus, no-bid contracts funneled through the same VPOTUS's office.


Hundreds of billions more taxpayer dollars being siphoned from the Treasury to stuff into the bottomless pockets of Wall Street sociopaths who spit in Congress's eye when asked tepid questions about why and how they cost millions of honest, hardworking Americans their jobs, pensions, 401(k) plans and homes.

Professional Republican Senate candidates who live off campaign contributions then get million dollar book deals for whiny pieces of shit they didn't even write at the expense of real writers who lead honest lives.

War crimes punishable by death, including the mass murder of hundreds of thousands, the torture of countless thousands more, detention and displacement of said indigenous people and not caring enough about the collateral damage to "do body counts."

The open bribery between lobbyists and lawmakers that's currently going unprosecuted because we've changed the word from "bribery" and "kickbacks" to "campaign contributions."

The all but official creation of the fourth branch of government or third chamber of Congress called K Street.

Think of the possibilities if we but actually start enforcing the law through this Guilt Project. Of course, once word got around that we as a nation started getting serious about enforcing the rule of law again, every scumbag that's ever committed a crime will flee to their billion dollar private ocean liners and seeking refuge on Peter Thiel's little Dr. No getaway. That would create a collapse in an economy and political infrastructure that's based completely on the rickety legs of fraud and grand larceny.

But, really, isn't knocking down the current system worth a period of anarchy in order to see some justice served to the most deserving of it? As the lady once said, "Sometimes, the best remedy is to break everything."

Best Google Doodle Ever

If you haven't seen Google's special interactive Jim Henson 75th Birthday Commemoration doodle, go try it out now while it's still up.

Here is the story behind it:

Things I've Learned From Reading Blogs

#1 in a series:

That it is dangerous to a dog if he gets an erection that lasts longer than 20 minutes.

This public service message was brought to you courtesy of TBogg.

Proof that Republicans simply cannot check their own impulses

This answer from Rick Santorum to a question from a gay soldier serving in Iraq tells us more about Rick Santorum than he realizes:



Most bloggers are emphasizing how the audience boos a man who is SERVING HIS COUNTRY, but for me the more interesting part of this exchange is that the soldier is talking about sexual orientation, but Santorum answers a question that wasn't even asked about sexual activity.

I'm straight. That is my sexual orientation. That doesn't mean I'm having sex all the time. I have friends who are gay. They have jobs, kids, hobbies, pets, they participate in their communities, they work for a living. Some gay people in America are soldiers. This does not mean that THEY are having sex constantly either.

That Rick Santorum can't seem to get that through his head tells us a lot about Republican sex scandals, and about why they feel they have to control the behavior of everyone else. It's because they are simply unable to control their own impulsivity, and they can't imagine how anyone else can.

Everything that's wrong with American corporations, right here

We have three HP computers -- a laptop, a "tablet PC" with a swivel screen that pre-dates the iPad, and a kickass desktop that we bought a few months ago. HP makes nice machines, and we switched to that brand when Dell quality started to go downhill a few years ago.

I don't know if we'll be buying any moe HPs, though, because the people who run the company and its board of directors are among the biggest bunch of nincompoops ever to disgrace a boardroom:

Hewlett-Packard Co named former eBay Inc Chief Executive Meg Whitman its president and CEO, replacing the harshly criticized Leo Apotheker in a bid to restore investor confidence in the iconic Silicon Valley company.

The decision was made without a formal CEO search and piled renewed criticism on the board, which investors have blamed -- at least in part -- for the storied company's recent missteps.

Chairman Ray Lane, who becomes Executive Chairman with a mandate to help Whitman run a sprawling $120 billion empire with over 300,000 employees, tried to assure disillusioned investors by saying HP is making a fresh start with a new CEO and -- crucially -- a virtually revamped board of directors.

Lane vowed that the days of board dysfunction -- the wire-tapping scandal, the firing of Mark Hurd after a sexual harassment probe, and the hiring of Apotheker -- were over.

The board works well together, he said.

"It's amazing how they challenge the management team, challenge each other," Lane said in an interview. "They are smart, they bring great insight to the table and I think we make good decisions."

Analysts had speculated that Apotheker's departure might presage a backtracking on major decisions taken during his 11-month term and announced -- back to back in haphazard fashion -- on August 18. But HP reassured investors on a conference call the board will not reverse course.

"I don't think we ought to be going back in history. This board did not select Leo. This is not the board that was around for pretexting," Lane said, referring to the scandal in which HP hired investigators who impersonated its board members and journalists to obtain their phone records.

"This is not the board that fired Mark Hurd," he noted. "We are embarrassed about the communications of decisions that could have been done much better. But we carefully considered the decisions made. It is our operating execution that needs to improve."

Whitman, an Internet retail expert with a mixed track record, is not an obvious choice to revive HP, analysts said. The failed California gubernatorial candidate transformed eBay from a few dozen employees in 1998 into a global Internet retail powerhouse, but the final years of her reign were marked by sputtering growth, intensifying Wall Street criticism and a string of unwise acquisitions, including of Skype.

She has been an HP director about eight months. While her elevation surprised many with its seeming hastiness -- for the second time, internal candidates such as enterprise chief David Donatelli were passed over -- Apotheker's ejection had been a matter of time.

He becomes the third straight HP CEO shown the door.

Apotheker certainly seems to be a moron, what with his recent public musings that HP might sell off its personal computer business. But Meg Whitman, who received praise and accolades from turning eBay from a smallish business where you could buy and sell your stuff to other people who would actually pay you if you were selling, and send the goods if you were buying, into a massive free-for-all, where people can hijack your user ID and there is no way that you have to close the account if you owe them fifty cents in old seller fees and no way to pay the fifty cents in seller fees because they need a credit card to do it for all that they own PayPal and they will not accept a payment of less than a dollar, and then if you make a payment of a dollar they won't close your account because you have a credit balance, plans to continue Apotheker's strategies, perhaps because she doesn't know what the hell she's doing either. (Yes, this is a run-on sentence, and yes, this is a true story, and yes, this is my experience with eBay.) What did the Board do, draw straws among themselves to see who would be the new CEO?

This hasty, bonehead move has does not impress the people who actually know something about technology -- not Wall Street analysts who worship before the altar of star power, but in the tech circles, about how a once-great company is being run.

If the Board had wanted to use the Crony Method to choose a new CEO, here are some of their other members: Netscape founder and Mosaic inventor Marc Andreesen; former Verizon president Larry Babbio; and current HP Chairman and former Oracle president Ray Lane.

Looks like our next notebook PC will be a Mac.

Bling Bling Dumpling, Broadway Ultimo

It was the name that drew us in. Bling Bling Dumpling? How could we refuse? The former site of Dim Sum House has undergone only a modest makeover. Most noticeable is the striking black signage out the front, complete with an image of a huge sparkling diamond - guaranteed to draw in the crowds!


Takeaway dumplings

A display case of cooked dumplings is a clever marketing ploy for passing

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

You'd think that, with the Pope, a former President of the United States and ex Director of the FBI taking up your cause, enough serious doubt would've been raised to at least stay the execution last night of Troy Davis. But then again, I'm speaking of a nation that doesn't exist, one guided and ruled by rational thought, one in which authorities would rather err on the side of life.

But Georgia did what Georgia does and took the heat off Texas, Utah, Kansas, Arizona, South Carolina, Wisconsin and other states that have embarrassed us before the world. After issuing a brief reprieve that bought Troy Davis four hours and eight minutes of life, the SCOTUS allowed the execution to proceed without dissent and the machine had its way and executed an innocent man.

If even the Willingham case didn't qualify as the Holy Grail for which death penalty opponents have been searching, the case of Troy Davis, a man convicted and executed on purely circumstantial evidence, will surely prove to be it. The Supreme Court set the bar absurdly high: Davis's attorneys were required to prove beyond a doubt that he was innocent whereas the state court had to prove guilt beyond a doubt.

Obviously, the prosecution didn't do that but the 12 amateurs in the jury box saw things differently. Now three of them had come forward to say, "If I knew then what I know now..." Seven of the nine witnesses who claimed they saw Davis shoot Officer MacPhail three times had since recanted. And a man admitted while drunk at a party two years ago that he was the shooter.

The police authorities, so desperate to convict Davis and tie him to the scene of the crime, falsified ballistics evidence and claimed the shell casings at the murder scene were fired from the same gun in another crime for which Davis had already been convicted.

Yes, in the United States of America, men and women can and have paid the ultimate price for racism, political zealotry and just plain stupidity, arrogance and a pathological dread of admitting that a tragic mistake had been made. People get convicted all the time on circumstantial evidence, which is really just a fancy legal phrase for elevated coincidence (and sometimes just plain coincidence).

I wasn't this ashamed to be an American even right after we'd invaded Iraq and, before that, Afghanistan. Yet the always backward state of Georgia managed to make me feel more ashamed to be an American, and reluctant to admit that it's part of our nation. I have Georgia on my Mind, namely fantasizing about replacing it with Guam or Puerto Rico or maybe a barren sandbar imported from Dubai.

Anything, God, but a state in which the Board of Paroles and Pardons is as stupid as the one in Texas and is unmoved by curiosity in light of all the troubling questions and reversals regarding Davis's case. Anything but a state in which the Governor, a Tea Bagger psychopath named Nathan Deal, is trying to ram through a proposal whereby a person can be sentenced to death by a mere majority of jurors instead of a unanimous vote.

When a man gets three stays of execution and a reprieve after spending 20 years on Death Row, obviously the machine isn't running smoothly. And despite Davis getting off the hook almost as many times as Dick Cheney, despite the recantations and reversals, the plainly falsified evidence, Georgia is a deep southern state in which a black man was nonetheless executed for killing a white man. Try though they might, there's no way the Georgia penal authorities will ever wipe away the picture that that paints: That of a chemical lynching.

Troy Davis paid the ultimate price for living in a state and in a country where the system takes the place of human thought, mercy and compassion, a system in which the unstoppable machine grinds to its bloody conclusion when even the Governor and the President of the United States don't even qualify as fail safe measures.

Troy Davis' execution at 11:08 last night is now being looked at as the greatest blow to anti capital punishment factions in years but in time, when Davis's innocence is finally established beyond a reasonable doubt, when they catch the real guy and have to execute him, too, for MacPhail's murder, it'll prove to be a very potent weapon

Thursday Elizabeth Warren blogging

What Mika said: "She's fabulous, can we start that way?"

Yes we can:

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: State-Sanctioned Murder and Other Reasons to Despair edition

What does one even say about a country that seems perfectly OK with actively ending the life of an in-all-likelihood innocent man; one that professes to be pro-life but will not listen to anything that might change its already-made-up mind?

Oh. Right. The Tea Party drives the agenda these days, I almost forgot.

Tom B at They Gave Us a Republic asks, "How did we beget a generation of people who war for money, cheer at the number of people Rick Perry has condemned to death, shout out that people without insurance should simply be allowed to die, spew racial and religious hatred as if it were mainstream thought, put likely innocent (black) people to death while letting likely guilty (white) people go free or... who would deny their neighbors basic help in times of catastrophe and the myriad other examples of hatefulness, selfishness and greed we see on open display today unless there's something in it for them?"

Driftglass revisits Billy Budd.

Driscoll at Addicting Info on The Party of Death.

While we're being death-centered, how about a look at William Saletan's article about how Rick Perry's End-times "support" for Israel is a big gift wrapped package handed with a smile over to Islamic extremists.

Jess has had it with America.

A-1, first-class We Are Screwed rantin' from DCap.

Elizabeth Warren tells it like it is

We knew she was awesome. But she's awesome AND the kind of Democrat who can frame an argument in plain, simple language:



Like what you just saw? You know what to do.

What the hell kind of country are we?

I haven't posted much about the impending execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, though my dear friend Tata has stepped up to the plate both here and elsewhere. Perhaps it makes me a bad liberal that I haven't chosen the death penalty as one of my major causes. It probably does, because sometimes these cases seem like so much background noise in the larger picture of the Siege on America that's taking place when a mean-spirited Republican Party controls the debate and a weak, feckless Democratic Party allows them to do so. But yes, I admit to a certain amout of annoyance when every time progressives take to the streets, the A.N.S.W.E.R folks are out there with their "Free Mumia!" signs. So call me a bad liberal, I can take it.

However, in the aftermath of the spectacle of American citizens cheering a Texas governor and possible future president having executed 234 people during his term so far, and when we KNOW that one of them was innocent, and we also know that said Texas governor loses no sleep over it, we have to start paying attention.

Troy Davis was convicted in 1991 of the 1989 murder of Savannah, Georgia police officer Marc MacPhail on far less physical evidence than a Florida jury just recently used to acquit Casey Anthony. Many witnesses have come forward and said that their testimony was coerced by Savannah police. When a trial is tainted, such as Davis' was (NYT editorial), and as Cameron Todd Willingham's was in Texas, we owe it to OURSELVES, let alone to the person being sent to his death, to re-evaluate and make sure we have the right guy. Unfortunately, the Georgia Board of Parole and Prisons has thought differently.

The reason this matters now is that the America of Republicans is starting to take shape, and it is an ugly one indeed. It is an America in which angry people frightened about their futures applaud a man who boasts about the number of people in his state who have received the death penalty. It is an America in which it is better to see two or ten or a hundred innocent men be put to death by the state than to risk one guilty one receiving clemency. It is an America in which Republicans would rather a million children to go hungry than for one child to receive a meal to which he is not entitled because his mother makes fifty cents more than the cutoff for aid. It is an America in which the elderly should live in poverty rather than people who have more money than they can spend in 100 lifetimes pay one penny more in taxes.

It may be the state of Georgia that's putting Troy Davis to death today, and we can delude ourselves that it can't happen in OUR state, or it can't happen to US. But unless you are a Republican politician, or a multimillionaire who has paid for the government we have today, it CAN happen to you. And so can poverty and lack of a job and lack of access to health care. It is all part of the same toxic cloud currently hanging over our nation.

Further evidence that the American Dream is dead

With even in-state college costs running over $100,000 just to get one child through to a bachelor's degree, college is already difficult, if not impossible, for most American families. The ripple effects can be felt in every school budget, where increasing amounts are spent on school sports rather than academics, because sports are where the scholarship money is. Without scholarship money and loans that saddle young graduates with the equivalent of a mortgage before they even land their first job, fewer children of the non-wealthy will be able to go to college.

And now more colleges are making certain that they can't (NYT link):

More than half of the admissions officers at public research universities, and more than a third at four-year colleges said that they had been working harder in the past year to recruit students who need no financial aid and can pay full price, according to the survey of 462 admissions directors and enrollment managers conducted in August and early September.

Similarly, 22 percent of the admissions officials at four-year institutions said the financial downturn had led them to pay more attention in their decision to applicants’ ability to pay.

“As institutional pressures mount, between the decreased state funding, the pressure to raise a college’s profile, and the pressure to admit certain students, we’re seeing a fundamental change in the admissions process,” said David A. Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Where many of the older admissions professionals came in through the institution and saw it as an ethically centered counseling role, there’s now a different dynamic that places a lot more emphasis on marketing.”

In the survey, 10 percent of the admissions directors at four-year colleges — and almost 20 percent at private liberal-arts schools — said that the full-pay students they were admitting, on average, had lower grades and test scores than other admitted applicants.

But they are not the only ones with an edge: the admissions officers said they admitted minority students, athletes, veterans, children of alumni, international students and, for the sake of gender balance, men, with lesser credentials, too.

At many colleges and universities, the survey found, whom you know does matter. More than a quarter of the admissions directors said they had felt pressure from senior-level administrators to admit certain applicants, and almost a quarter got pressure from trustees or development officers.

And so another nail is hammered into the coffin of the American middle class.

American Sweatshop

Yes, Amazon.com is really convenient and you can buy just about anything there and the Kindle is really cool. But can good progressives continue to buy from them after reading this:

Elmer Goris spent a year working in Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where books, CDs and various other products are packed and shipped to customers who order from the world's largest online retailer.

The 34-year-old Allentown resident, who has worked in warehouses for more than 10 years, said he quit in July because he was frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime. Working conditions at the warehouse got worse earlier this year, especially during summer heat waves when heat in the warehouse soared above 100 degrees, he said.

He got light-headed, he said, and his legs cramped, symptoms he never experienced in previous warehouse jobs. One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers.

[snip]

Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it's like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.

Only one of the employees interviewed described it as a good place to work.

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse sounds like a Republican dream facility -- low-paid workers in unhealthy conditions. Just like the women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, before those pesky unions and "job-killing workplace safety regulations" were adopted. And yet this is what the American workplace is becoming once again -- a place where desperate people go to be mistreated day after day after day, with no hope of advancement, no hope of ever achieving the American Dream, living lives that are nasty, brutal, and short as they try desperately to survive....because if they don't, other equally desperate people will line up to do it.

You want to talk about class warfare? This is where it is -- in places like Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where the Thirty Years War against the middle class and the working poor is coming to fruition.

The MSNBC Alumni Association

The Current TV lineup is starting to take shape, with another MSNBC alum joining up:

Cenk Uygur, the television and Web show host who left MSNBC in a messy public separation this summer, is joining MSNBC’s fledgling competitor, Current TV.

Starting sometime in the fourth quarter of the year, Mr. Uygur will host a show called “The Young Turks” at 7 p.m., serving as the lead-in for “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” the 8 p.m. liberal newscast that had its premiere on Current three months ago.

The move is the first by Current since it hired David Bohrman, a prominent former CNN executive, as the new head of programming and production last month. Current has been seeking like-minded programs to surround Mr. Olbermann’s in an effort to create a rival to the stable of liberal shows on the cable news channel MSNBC.

MSNBC’s 7 p.m. time slot is currently filled by replays of “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” an hour of political talk that is first shown at 5 p.m. MSNBC had no comment about Mr. Uygur’s hiring.

Is it my imagination, or has Rachel Maddow been even more awesomely geeky than usual recently? I suppose being a network's major star, combined with having a place to go if they lose their nerve and decide once again that Alan Keyes Is Making Sense is a great idea to bring in those oh-so-desirable teabagger viewers, gives one a great sense of freedom. And for the viewers, it gives us an even larger assortment of quality news/opinion programming. This is all good news in the age of the DVR.

So....with one web program moving to Current, how about this one being next?

How many thousands of people who thought they didn't know any gay people now know they do?

Kudos to this young man for sharing this phone call with the world...and kudos to his dad for being awesome:

Recipe: Salted Peanut Butter, Pretzel and Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

 

This cookies should come with a warning: one cookie is never enough. Combining salted peanuts, pretzels and dark chocolate would have been a madcap idea once upon a time, but now it seems like everyone is on the salty and sweet bandwagon. With good reason. It's deliriously good.

There's something intriguing about the way salty and sweet play off against each other. The sweetness of a dessert

News Blackout

A few dozen people put on costumes and show up at politicians' Town Hall meetings and the media decide it's a mass movement.

Over 60,000 people demonstrate against Wall Street in New York City, and it's completely ignored.



Maybe it's because our demonstrations have a sense of fun and goofiness and we don't talk about guns and killing people who don't agree.

This morning I thought I'd died and gone to smart heaven

Four walls can barely contain this much smart

If you think you've seen Chris Hayes all over the place the last few weeks, it's because you have. Over the last year, Hayes has been doing the Rachel Maddow Training Path gig of subbing for as many MSNBC hosts as possible. When he first started appearing on television, Hayes was a walking argument against drinking too much of the Official Coffee of Morning Schmoe, but as he's become more comfortable in front of the camera, his overcaffeinated bounciness has largely been tamed into a kind of youthful puppylike enthusiasm -- or at least it was until MSNBC gave him his own show, which premiered yesterday morning at the ungodly hour of 7 AM, and today at the almost as ungodly hour of 8 AM.

It's really kind of disingenuous for MSNBC to on the one hand recognize just how ferociously smart (and yeah, ok, cute) Hayes is, clearly want to flog the show enough to make even Joey "Dead Intern" Scarborough have a REAL progressive on as a guest instead of calling that unctuous tool Mark Halperin one; and on the other hand bury him at a time when almost no one in his target audience is awake yet. But if you are one of our younger readers, and you don't yet have a DVR, get one. Or watch online. But even if you are older than the target audience, which I am, it's really worth your while to get up early and see what a Sunday morning news talk show can be when it's NOT completely populated by Beltway dinosaurs who have been spouting the same relentlessly wrong and misguided conventional wisdom for decades. I mean seriously -- does anyone still actually care what George Will says, or Cokie Roberts, or Doris Kearns Goodwin? It would be one thing if these people were using a lifetime of observation of Washington to provide insight and perspective into what's going on today. But if you've watched what Driftglass so charmingly and accurately calls the Mouse Circus lately, you've no doubt wanted to stick an icepick in your own eye and lobotomize yourself just to make Teh Moronic Platitudes stop.

It's clear that unlike conventional Sunday gasbag shows, which parade out the same Republicans week after week, followed by a panel of irrelevances primly having the vapors over President Obama daring to question his Republican Overlords, Up with Chris Hayes (a title which both snarks at and embraces Hayes' chirpy, bouncy overcaffeinated chipmunk persona) is going to be light on guests, perhaps because there are few political figures who are going to be willing to put on full makeup and go into a studio for a 7 AM live interview with a guy who sounds like he's been up all night drinking Starbucks and fueled by the tray of pastries prominently displayed on the interview table, still has another six hours in him. Still, Hayes managed to score an interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for his debut show, which was followed on Sunday by an expression of frustration to his special guest and BFF Rachel Maddow (who was resplendently geeky in full Nerdy McNerdlington regalia) at how you can't get these people to say anything beyond their talking points.

The panel looks like it's going to consist of a few young think-tankers and high-end bloggers, one libertarian-leaning conservative, and a token Old Guy. Saturday's panel consisted of the ubiquitous MSNBC correspondent/HuffPo political blogger Alex Wagner, liberal comic John Fugelsang, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, and American Conservative blogger Michael Dougherty. Sunday's panel included the equally overcaffeinated frequent Real Time with Bill Maher guest Reihan Salam, the aforementioned Rachel Maddow, New York Times correspondent and former Salon writer Rebecca Traister, and Pam Spaulding lookalike Heather McGhee of Demos. The Old Guy role was played today by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY-8) who surprisingly didn't seem at all out of place, perhaps because he is not among the gasbags to be invited to the Mouse Circus.

There's a ridiculous amount of content packed into these four hours of weekend television, which often seem paced as if they are running at 78rpm in a 33-1/3 rpm genre. But especially when you watch Chris Hayes banter with Rachel Maddow and his young panel, it makes you remember what intelligent political discourse used to look like, before Sally Quinn came along and conducted the unholy marriage between Washington politicians and the journalists who cover them. And as a special bonus? The show is executive-produced by original Morning Sedition producer Jonathan "Smartypants" Larsen.

Watch. Enjoy. You just might explode from an excess of smart:

Menya Oiden, Sydney

If you don't know what kushiage is, then take a seat, loosen your belt and let me explain. It's all about bite-sized nibbles of meat, vegetables and seafood, jammed on a skewer, dipped in batter and panko breadcrumbs and then deep-fried until all your dreams come true.

Kushiage is one of the major drawcards at Menya Oiden, a new opening in Skyview Plaza next door to its sister outlet Menya

This is what "Let him die" looks like

This needs no further comment from me:



(via)

I suppose I'm at the age where I had better get used to news like this

There's no good news for Democrats ANYWHERE.

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy has died:

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, suffered a heart attack and died late Friday evening, sources confirm to ABC News. She was 51.

In 2002, Kara Kennedy, the oldest daughter of Ted and Joan Kennedy, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

With her father’s help, she found a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who removed a portion of her lung as part of the treatment. Five years later, her mother told the Boston Globe that Kennedy was cancer free and was running five miles a day.

“My daughter was my best friend,” Joan Kennedy said today. “She stayed with me all summer long in Hyannisport. … We had a wonderful summer together.

“She was beloved by everybody who knew her. She was beloved by all of her cousins,” she said. “So many people have been calling me today and it makes me feel good to know how much everybody loved her.”

In August 2009, Kennedy gave a touching reading of Psalm 72 at her father’s funeral at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston.

Ted Kennedy often prayed at Our Lady in 2003 while his daughter was being treated for lung cancer at the nearby hospital.

Kara Anne Kennedy was born February 27, 1960. She has two siblings, Teddy Jr. and Patrick, the former congressman.

She was a graduate of Tufts University and was a producer for VSA arts, a non profit organization founded by her aunt Jean Kennedy Smith.

She was also on the board for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome along with her cousin William Kennedy Smith.

Previously she was a producer for the television program Evening Magazine at WBZ-TV in Boston.

She was married to Michael Allen, a professional sailor, in 1990 and they had two children, Grace and Max.

Kara Kennedy was one of the rare people who survives for more than five years after being treated for lung cancer. Word is that she died suddenly at a Washington-area health club. A heart attack is suspected.

And Eleanor Mondale, daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale, has died at the same age. Mondale had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2005, which recurred in 2008.

It's one thing to look at data from clinical trials of cancer treatments to try to solve a system problem. It's quite another when you realize that this data is about actual, living people. And a double-whammy like this makes us realize what a long way we are from combating this disease.

What does the U.S. look like if the Tea (Republican) Party wins?

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about the Obama Administration's political people thinking that they know best in the face of all evidence that their boss' presidency is crumbling around him is how vulnerable we all are to this Administration's blind hubris.

Ian Milhiser at Center for American Progress writes about what this country will look like under Tea Party doctrine, and even Americans who support the Tea Party now will be in for a very rude and unpleasant awakening when they see what it looks like:

In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.

At least, that’s what would happen if the Tea Party succeeds in its effort to reimagine the Constitution as an antigovernment manifesto. While the House of Representatives pushes Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out Medicare, numerous members of Congress, a least one Supreme Court justice, and the governor of America’s second-largest state now proudly declare that most of the progress of the last century violates the Constitution.

It is difficult to count how many essential laws would simply cease to exist if the Tea Party won its battle to reshape our founding document, but a short list includes:

• Social Security and Medicare
  
• Medicaid, children's health insurance, and other health care programs
  
• All federal education programs
  
• All federal antipoverty programs
  
• Federal disaster relief
  
• Federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs
  
• Child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections
  
• Federal civil rights laws
  Indeed, as this paper explains, many state lawmakers even embrace a discredited constitutional doctrine that threatens the union itself.
  

What’s at stake

The Tea Party imagines a constitution focused entirely upon the Tenth Amendment, which provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—which is why their narrow vision of the nation’s power is often referred to as “tentherism.” In layman’s terms, the Tenth Amendment is simply a reminder that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations—and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress’s authority.

Social Security? Gone. Medicare? Gone. Medicaid? Gone. Education? Subject to the whims of communities, some of which will send a generation of children out in a world of technological advancement believing that a giant man in the sky created the world in six days and refusing all evidence to the contrary. E coli in your child's hamburger and salmonella in his lettuce and unregulated pesticide residue in the tomato slice?? All A-OK in Tea Party America. Hurricane destroy yourself? It's your own fault for not living in a stronger house. You're on your own. You don't get your paycheck this week? Tough luck. Neighbor leaving threatening letters in your mailbox because he doesn't like people of your religion or race or sexual orientation? Too bad, you have no federal protection, and if the local police hate you too, you are shit out of luck.

That's Tea Party America -- a mean-spirited, venal, hateful, place of raw social Darwinism; a highly ironic condition given the penchant of Teabaggers to call themselves "Chritians" -- so-called Christians who have obviously never read the Sermon on the Mount.

And yet here we are, with a Republican frontrunner who makes George W. Bush look like Mother Teresa by comparison, and an incumbent Democratic president and a campaign team who utterly refuse to look at how dispirited the people who voted for him are. And so it is highly likely that on January 20, 2013, we will be living in a nation that even those who profess to support the Tea Party agenda won't even recognize. And it will be too late.

So here we are, those of us still living in the reality-based community, with a choice of voting for an inept, out-of-touch president who has sold us out to the Republicans at every turn, or a very dangerous theocratic sociopath. Just how dangerous remains to be seen.

ACORN no longer even exists, but why let facts get in the way of a good metaphor for the "N" word?

All you have to do is say "ACORN!" and wingnuts go into a frenzy:

A non-existent organization that previously helped poor people "destroy the country" by voting could get up $15 billion in taxpayer money under Obama's jobs bill, according to conservative columnist Matthew Vadum.

Vadum, who previously wrote that it was "profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country," writes that a draft version of the jobs bill "makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding."

"Section 261 of the bill provides $15 billion for 'Project Rebuild.' Grants would be given to 'qualified nonprofit organizations, businesses or consortia of eligible entities for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed-upon properties and for the stabilization of affected neighborhoods,'" Vadum writes.

"Radical groups like ACORN won't get the whole $15 billion, though, because they will have to compete with state and local governments for the money," he continues.

This is all, of course, contingent upon the fact that ACORN exists. Which it doesn't.

Nevertheless, be on the lookout, says Vadum. "Like the T-1000 in "Terminator 2" ACORN can be slowed down but it will just continue to regroup under different names, and operate out of the same offices," reads the caption on the photo in his story.

One can only imagine what they do when the oak trees start dropping their squirrel food in the fall.