Top 10 Herman Cain Pickup Lines

Last night, it was reported in Politico and elsewhere that frontrunning Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain had allegedly sexually harassed two women who'd worked under him at the National Restaurant Association. The Cain campaign vigorously denies the allegations despite being ignorant about an undisclosed payout that also came with a nondisclosure agreement. Among the allegations were the tactics that Mr. Cain used to harass the women. What were they?

10) "Take me to bed, bitch, and you won't have to wait 30 minutes!"

9) "Let's go up to my place so I can explain my 69-69-69 tax plan to ya."

8) "I'm up for anything, honey, except cunnilingus. I don't do anchovies."

7) "Sweetheart, I'm so good in bed, even Mark Block has to have a cigarette afterwards."

6) "I bet you never been Cained by a Georgia blacksnake before."

5) "Bitch, I'll make you an offer you can't refuse!"

4) "I'm Cain if you're Able, baby."

3) "Baby, I got me a pumpernickle bread stick you'll wanna tell your mama about!"

2) "I bet you never had white sauce like mine!"

1) "I got a riddle, baby: What do me and a Godfather's pizza have in common? We're both hot and come in a box!"

Ricky Retardo, the Piece of Hot Dog in the Esophagus of America

There are different ways to interpret this speech that easily rivals the worst days Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain ever had on the campaign trail:

There's the hypothesis that, just for shits and giggles, some practical joker in Perry's campaign hid his meds or slipped him a mickey just before this speech in New Hampshire last night. There's another that Perry somehow fell into a wormhole that ejaculated him out like a noxious ball of rancid semen into some alternate dimension in which right wing talking points reigned supreme (Oh, wait, we all fell into that alternate dimension. Never mind.).

My personal favorite is that this wasn't a campaign speech at all but an AA intervention and somewhere on the way, and overcome by grief by yet another World Series failure, Perry fell off the wagon. During the intervention, he was then possessed by the spirit of a conservative 13 year-old girl who happened to be in a giddy mood.

Really, that's the only way to fully explain Perry's performance in New Hampshire where he gushed about the state's motto of "Live free or die" and how Texans love apocalyptic bumper sticker slogans like that. He mentioned the "death tax" and how he would love to see that die before anyone. This is an edited video designed to make Perry look stupid (challenging as that would be, I know) but it comprises almost a third of his 25 minute-long speech. I mean, how much fucking context do you need?

He gestured, gesticulated and genuflected like a Pope with Parkinson's and ADHD, giggled and essentially did everything but put his index finger under his chin and curtsey before the Republican power brokers in attendance. I've always been an atheist but after reviewing Perry's performance last night, I started believing in God again and began my newfound faith by thanking Him for not making him my governor.

It's no wonder that Perry has all but decided to abandon the Republican campaign debate circuit in the reality series based on the DSM IV. He's using the tried-and-untrue Republican tactic, the Homer Simpson line, "Stupid (insert any noun or verb)!" when his ineptitude is called out by bloggers and the MSM. Palin had decided to essentially go into Mama Grizzly hibernation after her train wreck of an interview with Katie Couric (which was all her fault, doncha know?).

And when the strait jacket models of the GOP can make you look like some aging porno star who'd been pummeled senseless and dropped off by your captors at the front door of the debate, your entire body save for your penis tightly wrapped in duct tape, you know your campaign is sucking wind.

There's really not much to add to this campaign speech except to say if I was a Lone Star resident, this and the World Series would make me want to leave that national embarrassment aka Texas and take out a time share in Hell. And while anklebiters like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann are merely cat hairs in the public eye, Rick Perry is the semi-chewed piece of hot dog in the nation's esophagus. And, despite his 6% support, I've a sick feeling Perry won't be fading away any time soon. After all, if I'd said before this summer that Michele Bachmann then Herman Cain would be leading in the GOP polls, you'd have thought I was as crazy as them.

Therefore, Rick Perry proves that we're going to be in some need of political Heimlich maneuvering before the GOP convention next summer.

What if I Say That'll We'll Never Surrender?

Instead of Radiohead, maybe we should send Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters to every occupied city in America, which is to say all of them, and maybe they can blast the riot police away like they did four years years ago in their "The Pretender" video. The top and third pictures were taken at Occupy Denver yesterday and the third one, if it isn't an iconic photo of police brutality and repression, ought to be. That cop pointing a gun at the photographer comes screaming straight out of everyone's most paranoid Orwellian nightmares.


With few exceptions, such as the police in Albany who defied Gov. Andrew Cuomo's and the Albany mayor's orders to arrest the protesters, the police who inexplicably defend the Powers That Be from peaceful protesters who are putting everything on the line for them and everyone else, have been justifiably given a collective black eye. This is no truer than in Oakland, where Scott Olsen, an Iraq War hero and former Marine, was almost killed by Oakland police (or one of the other law enforcement bodies assisting them) who fired indiscriminately and point blank into a crowd of Occupy Oakland protesters. Olsen's now out of danger but his troubles are just beginning since the tear gas canister that was shot into his face may have left him with permanent brain damage.

Jean Quan, the city's mayor, has proven to be just as clueless and inept as Rudy Giuliani had proven to be on September 11th. Quan had sided with the protesters in a carefully choreographed photo and PR op before siccing the Oakland police on them later that night (while she flew to the White House far from the scene of the crime), only to side with the protesters again when Scott Olsen was almost killed and certain people had a problem with that. Then she threw her new police chief and city manager under the bus by absolving herself of all responsibility. Then in a written address, she belatedly took responsibility. The rookie Quan also said that she'd love to meet with the Occupy Oakland crowd but was confused as to who their leader was.

Yes, she actually said that.

But Quan has proven to a symbol of the cluelessness of all leaders at the federal, state and municipal level. Until Occupy Oakland began setting up its tents mere feet from City Hall, Quan had enjoyed a reputation as "a progressive activist." But she's sending out mixed signals to the protesters and the police by agreeing not to evict them (for now) while promising to honor guidelines such as a ten o'clock curfew and a ban on tents in public areas.

Quan doesn't get it and neither do a lot of other leaders on both sides of the political spectrum. Quan, as with Michael Bloomberg and many other city, state and federal leaders, just don't understand that camping on public property while protesting corporate greed and political corruption is exactly what the Occupy movement is all about.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and its countless incarnations and analogs all over the world have proven to be quite an effective touchstone that tests the true mettle and allegiances of leaders across the political spectrum. And, almost without exception, even the so-called progressives such as Jean Quan have failed miserably.

This near-complete breakdown to address the concerns of the 99% (who are really just the other 1%, as Stan Banos at Reciprocity Failure informs us) betrays just how corrupt the political system truly is and how readily it seeks to address the peaceful exercise of first amendment rights with police thuggery not seen since the civil rights and antiwar protests of the 60's. The Occupy Movement reveals in the most vivid way the true allegiances of city, state and national leaders when their corporate benefactors are challenged and called on their unconscionable greed and arrogance. Who will they ultimately side with? What will they do if the protesters say that they'll never surrender?

Leaders such as Jean Quan have given us their answer.

Trick or Treat

Here in the northeast, it's all trick after the horrific nor'Easter that blew through here yesterday. The $2750 I shelled out for a generator that feeds an auxiliary pan feels like a bargain right now as the house slowly warms up from a low of 57 this morning. Next up...get the water heater going, shower up, and then go in search of food. It seems I now live in Maine without ever moving there. (Posted via Droid.)

Restaurant Arras, Sydney

It's back. The Restaurant Arras petits fours platter has always created a frisson of excitement.

Back too are newly weds Adam and Lovaine Humphrey, relocating Restaurant Arras from Walsh Bay to Clarence Street in the city, opening in the former digs of Becasse (and before that, Edna's Table).


Restaurant Arras decor
The interior has undergone a complete makeover. Gone are the Swarovski

Why Occupying Wall St. Should Be Only Phase One

In light of Bank of America's CEO Brian Moynihan being "incensed" at mere verbal criticism of his bank stealing homes that don't belong to it, Wall Street has nothing to complain about. In light of the peaceful, genteel but largely symbolic occupation of Wall Street, they could have fared much worse. They could have gotten a taste of what Iraq and Afghanistan have received from American and coalition forces during their respective occupations. Imagine how incensed these coddled, jiggling plutocrats would've been at the wholesale slaughter of their own and their families and neighbors in the Adirondacks, the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard, their palatial mansions turned into smoking rubble amidst a carnage consisting of human body parts and nine irons.

No, all things considered, they're getting off quite easily thus far. There are, however, several important distinctions between the "occupation" of Wall Street and our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan: Wall Street is guilty of very real crimes against humanity including countless acts of terrorism, including laundering money for Mexican drug cartels.

Big Finance muckraker Greg Palast, however, has uncovered the real reason behind Goldman Sachs withdrawing their $5000 to commemorate a small community bank's 25th anniversary and the implications behind this story are much, much more chilling. This is how Palast breaks it down:

In 2008, the US Treasury handed Goldman Sachs a check for $10bn from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (Tarp), the bailout funds given to desperate commercial banks. A few eyebrows were raised: Goldman was not desperate, and it certainly was not a commercial bank. Yet – abracadabra! – Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson transformed investment bank Goldman into a commercial bank overnight. (Paulson's prior post was chairman of Goldman Sachs. Just saying.)

But there was a catch: Goldman would have to return a chunk of the public's billions in the form of loans for low-income customers and members of its "community", as required by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. Problem: Goldman has, it seems, no low-income customers, nor a "community". Goldman was directed to find poor people and a community and hand over some cash.

That's right. Hank Paulson, ex Goldman CEO, after his "former" employer experienced a very rare and mild loss in that quarter, decided to engage in a little semantics to give Goldman $10 billion it neither needed nor even wanted. Despite the fact that Goldman Sachs was and still is an investment firm with no real bank accounts to offer and no branches, Paulson was bound and determined to force down the bottomless throats of one of the most successful Wall Street firms in American history $10 billion to "level the playing field." (To give you an idea of how desperately they needed the money, Goldman paid back their slice of the TARP bailout, with interest, in the least amount of time.)

But, as Palast says, with the rechristening came new mandated guidelines, namely that Goldman Sachs and any other bailed out bank had to give something back to the community under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 (Thank you, President Carter). The problem was, Goldman Sachs not only didn't have any account holders, they didn't have any poor customers so they had to go slumming.

That's when they set their sights on the Lower East Side Peoples Credit Union. The $5000 they'd recently yanked back on a string like the high finance pranksters that they are was not a generous donation to reward a small people-owned bank for their community service but the smallest possible token gesture toward discharging an onerous federally-mandated obligation.

Then the shit hit the fan when Blankfein's boys discovered to their corporate mortification that their five large was going to be used to fete Occupy Wall Street, their unsworn enemy that they'd otherwise officially ignored. They threatened Lower East Side Peoples bank with a lawsuit if they didn't hand back the $5000. Peoples refused so Goldman simply took back the money, anyway, and demanded their names be taken off any literature and invitations for the November 3rd event (Jamie Dimon's dimwits at Citigroup followed suit).

Goldman Sach's legal obligation to the community is something in the neighborhood of ten figures yet despite their pretenses of philanthropy, they've been doling out the money in dribs and drabs. Now they're using these tiny sums of money in order to wrest political control of the Wall Street debate back to their side. Potentially, this could have a very chilling effect on community activism in the future. If you need to have it summed up for you, here it is:

Goldman Sachs and other banks are using your taxpayer dollars to make and keep control of political speech. Again, this is not their money, but ours and they're using it against us. So how do we wrest back control of that debate? Well, as Occupy Wall Street suggests, you can start by removing your money from the big Wall Street banks and putting them in credit unions and small community banks.

Problem:

To combat a run on the big Wall Street banks, there's a national movement where if you try to close out your account, you'll be falsely imprisoned and arrested on the spot. Yes, Occupy Wall Street's best way to literally physically occupy Wall Street is simply to try to take out their money.

The thing one has to most love about Lower East Side Peoples Credit Union and those like them is that they're not merely encouraging low income residents to take their business to them: They want their community-based financial template to become the new norm that replaces the sociopathic, world-eating banks on Wall Street. It's a subdued albeit vitally important revolution that Wall Street is scared shitless will actually succeed: A paradigm shift in which banking will not be solely dedicated to printing money on the fly but one in which the community's needs will be paramount, including reasonable student and home loans that empower those who wish to elevate their status in life.

There are hundreds of billions at stake here and people like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein are all too well aware of that.

So the occupation should only be the beginning. When we occupied Iraq, Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority essentially destroyed the Iraqi economy by making Iraq far less competitive in the global marketplace by fiddle fucking with tariffs, throwing people out of work by the hundreds of thousands and essentially co-opting their biggest export: Oil. We crippled the Iraqi economy in order to enrich defense contractors, petroleum giants and, yes, Wall Street banks.

This particular paradigm shift would be immensely more humane, geared not to impoverishing the common working man but empowering him, in making higher education and quality housing more accessible and affordable and making less usurious loans that the big banks refuse to make with their TARP blood money.

And an empowered proletariat with actual options is the last thing that Wall Street wants.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Catherine of Aragon is saying, "NOW you decide this?"

Having a penis is no longer mandatory to be first in line for the British monarchy:

Centuries of British royal discrimination came to an end Friday after Commonwealth leaders agreed to drop rules that give sons precedence as heir to the throne and bar anyone in line for the crown from marrying a Roman Catholic.

The 16 countries that have Queen Elizabeth as their monarch agreed to the changes put forward by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had called the rules of succession outdated.

"The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man, or that a future monarch can marry someone of any faith except a Catholic, this way of thinking is at odds with the modern countries that we've all become," Cameron told reporters.

The agreement came on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit presided over by the Queen in the remote west Australian city of Perth.

Current succession rules dating back to 1688 and 1700 were designed to ensure a Protestant monarchy, and bar anyone in line to the throne from marrying a Catholic.

Only a Catholic link is barred. There are no restrictions on marrying members of other religions or atheists.

The rules have their roots in a turbulent period of English history dating back to Henry VIII's break with Rome in the mid- 16th century. The laws were imposed at a time when Catholics were seen as a threat to the state.

Funny...here in the US they only think that way about Muslims.

But seriously....this is being touted as some kind of Giant Way Forward for Great Britain? Have they stopped to think that this whole business of monarchy is itself an anachronism?

This is why baseball is poetry

No sport played professionally in America bears the literary and poetic burden of baseball. You'll never see soft-focus movies about football, Brian's Song notwithstanding. The Natural wasn't a movie about Michael Jordan. No one will ever make a tennis movie called Court of Dreams. The right-wing may conjure up images of the 1950s in its longing for a return to the past, but their image is a false one. It doesn't take into account the desperate isolution of women in suburbia, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the drab and predictable lives of the men in the gray flannel suits. It's baseball that carries the mythology of America. Ken Burns created twelve hours of soft-focus reverence about the Greater Meanings of Baseball.

There have been endless musings about why this is, from the pastoral green field reminding us of our agrarian past to the great George Carlin's immortal comparison of baseball and football:



But damn it if baseball doesn't live up to all this burden of Norman Rockellian mythology.

This month saw the 25th anniversary of what is known among Mets fans as "Game Six." We don't need any further explanation about what "Game Six" means, though I, being the iconoclast that I am, have always preferred the grit and determination of game six of the NLCS that year, which went for sixteen grueling innings, the first eight scoreless for the Mets, who tied it in the ninth and again in the fourteenth, then finally won in grand style in the bottom of the sixteenth when Kevin Bass struck out. That will always be the most memorable game for me, right up there with the 19-Inning July 4 Marathon Of 1985, which saw Mr. Brilliant and I get home from watching the Macy's fireworks, watch a few innings, go to sleep around midnight, and wake up with the TV on a few hours later to Steve Zabriskie saying, "If you're just tuning in, write and tell us why"; and Tom Gorman giving up a fat one to Braves relief pitcher Rick Camp (lifetime batting average: 0.30) in the 18th before the Mets finally won in the 19th.

I thought on the anniversary that I really should write about this momentous anniversary, but frankly, with the Mets in the kind of disarray in which they find themselves now, the less I think about the Mets the better.

1986 is long gone; the Mets' glory days are long past. Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are graying and thickening. Lenny Dykstra had a spectacular fall from the financial high life and this week pleaded no contest on car theft charges. But the family of Gary Carter, who is being treated for malgnant brain tumors, is reporting that his tumors have shrunk almost 75% since initial detection and 10% since his last scan and Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson becoming the Bobby Thompson and Ralph Branca of the latter half of the 20th century, so it seems that perhaps it's time for another World Series to deliver a similar kind of drama.

When one's own team isn't participating, it's hard to get up much enthusiasm for the World Series. I might pay more attention if the Giants were playing, just because Tim Lincecum is cool. But my loathing for anything Texas not named "Molly Ivins" or "Ann Richards" is so complete that I had to toss my lot in with the Cardinals. I owed them that much after they defeated the hated Phillies in the NLDS. Then I stuck with them in the NLCS, if only because the Brewers were from Wisconsin, Scott Walker is governor of Wisconsin, and it just works that way.

This year the Cardinals were the wild card team, having edged out the hated Atlanta Braves in the last week of the season (giving Mets fans a scintilla of schadenfreude), and wild card teams are not supposed to make it this far. It isn't as if the Cardinals have made it look easy, especially after manager Tony LaRussa couldn't even get a call to the bullpen right in Game 5. But if you're a Mets fan, and an aficionado of the Goofy Game, you have to admire the work of art that the Cards put in last night, which forced a Game 7 tonight -- the first one since 2002. The Cardinals NOT being the Mets, however, it only took eleven innings to tie the game twice and win, not nineteen.

Go Cards.

Show your solidarity

If you'd like to send a get well card or message to Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran currently recovering from an attack by Oakland police, you can send it to:

U.S.M.C. Scott Olsen
c/o Highland Hospital
1411 East 31st Street
Oakland, CA 94602

You know you have some blank notepaper still stowed away somewhere....

It's Show Time, Folks!

(Tip o' the tinfoil hat to your server, Jill Hussein.)

Just thought ya'll would be interested in hearing a podcast of a telephone interview I just did with Anastassia Smorodinskaya of The Daily National that's been immortalized as a podcast. Why TDN wanted my opinion on anything is anyone's guess because these people aren't some rinky-dink organization. The founder, TJ Walker, for instance, is a Reuters correspondent and Mike Bako, their sports correspondent, has had his work profiled on CNN, CBS and Slate.com. I apologize in advance for the sound quality. It was done over a cell phone but if you listen vewy vewy cwosewy, you'll get the gist.

Ana wants this to be a weekly feature, btw.

Oh fer God's sake....

Actual headline at Foxnews.com:



I'm with Zandar on this one:

...whenever the right pulls out ACORN to try to discredit anything, they have automatically lost the argument.

Random Thoughts

What the hell kind of country are we living in when a guy survives two tours of duty in Iraq where they told him he was fighting for our freedom -- and then is critically wounded by cops when he returns home because he was simply engaging in his right to peacably assemble to seek redress for grievances from his government?

Can we please stop this talk about how rich people are rich people because they work harder than the rest of us? Seriously...who is the last person, other than Steve Jobs, that you can think of who started out in a working class family and through smarts and hard work became part of the 1%? Most small businesses limp along, one bad year away from folding. (Link is to NYT)

I thought Lawrence O'Donnell was going to go full-out Howard Beale for a minute there.

Sue me, but I'm Team Rachel. (No, I'm not talking about that one. I'm talking about this one. The show is awful but this kid is sensational. Too bad they won't let her be the blues singer that she really is.)

Howard Dean is not the best argument for Grecian Formula.

Why am I not surprised?

But don't let this interfere with shaming and discriminating against the overweight. After all, the diet industry creates jobs! (NYT link)

Is it wrong to buy the Steve Jobs biography in hard copy instead of reading it on an iPad?

If an Iraq war veteran can be shot in the head by police with a tear gas canister, what do you think can happen to YOU?

There's only one group being violent here, and it isn't the Occupy protesters in Oakland, California.

It's sad that Occupy protesters have been pointing out that police whose union is under siege by Tea Party governors are serving their corporate masters instead of acting in solidarity with those who are out there in the streets calling attention to the plight of police officers and fire fighters and teachers, as much as they are calling attention to the massive tossing in the garbage of the American middle class.

What does it say when a young man inspired to serve his country survives two tours of enemy fire and then comes home to be gravely injured by law enforcement in his own country?

Teabaggers are always talking about how they revere the Constitution. They talk all the time about the Second Amendment. But in their loathing for the Occupy movement, they forget the first one:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Scott Olsen thought he was going to Iraq to defend the U.S. and its Constitution. How wrong he was.

Olsen's roommate spoke with Keith Olbermann last night:

The Election Crashers

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)



“Even if an alcoholic is powerless over alcohol once it enters his body, he still makes a choice to drink. And, even if someone is attracted to a person of the same sex, he or she still makes a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same gender.” - Rick Perry, Fed Up

Many of us haven't even bought our obligatory Halloween candy, yet, and the 2012 GOP presidential field is already beginning to look like something that only Pirandello could have imagined. It's a Theater of the Absurd extravaganza that we can call Eight Characters in Search of an Offer. And the scariest part of all this Republican playacting is that one of them, by virtue of some half-hearted default that'd catapulted John McCain's pasty ass to the top of the heap in '08, has to win the Republican nomination.

But to employ a more contemporary and accessible context, the Republican wannabes are more like the political version of the Wedding Crashers. Wedding crashers typically are the most genteel moochers outside of Wall Street, looking not for potential marriage partners but free food, champagne and maybe some pussy on the side. The forced and overbearing ambiance of romance is lost on them. They're just there to eat cake and have it, too.

The Republicans in this Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World race, Willard, Herman and the rest, have proven to be so inept, clueless and just plain ludicrous as they pander to one extreme element or the other that one must conclude that if Obama gets re-elected by others outside of his own cultish base it'll also be victory by default. The disaffection with the Republican alternative that had gotten him elected President of the United States will get him re-elected.

And if he does, it'll be without the support of what is plainly a diluted Democratic Congress. In the last three or four Congresses, every noteworthy liberal Democrat on the Hill has been muzzled either by getting voted out (Max Cleland, Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold), death (Paul Wellstone and Ted Kennedy), resigning for greener pastures and later disgrace (John Edwards) or inexplicable silence (Barbara Boxer and John Conyers).

Herman Cain, a lunatic that only another pathetic lunatic from Smegma, Tennessee choking back his own bile-engorged racism could possibly find appealing, is certainly the strangest bird in the coop. Cain is a man who, thus far, has won just a Florida straw poll, derived his 9-9-9 tax plan from Sim City and the strangest campaign ads since Mike Gravel (including one featuring Fox B actor Nick Searcy who also thought it was a good idea to get people to vote for Cain by playing himself, a snotty, temperamental B actor who's incapable of remembering a two-word line such as "Get real.").

Cain has another ad that's out in which Cain Chief of Staff Mark Block calmly tells us why Herman Cain is the best alternative to Willard Romney then sucks on a cigarette as if in post-coital bliss, thereby making everyone forget about Cain and his alleged message.

Cain is leading every Republican contender by four points, garnering 25% support throughout Crazy Base World. One keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, which will be the day that Cain says to his staff, "OK, you all realize this is a joke campaign to fill my lonely hours, right? I mean, c'mon, I'm just Herman Cain, bitches! I ran a pizza company, for Christ's sake!"

The other Republicans are hardly any more appetizing, with real heartfelt appeal grudgingly given to bottom tier candidates Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman not for a strong message or real solutions but a conspicuous lack of shithouse rat-on-fire insanity (They could each adopt as a campaign slogan, "The Unbearable Lightness of Bugshit Craziness"). On the other end of the spectrum was last month's flavor of the day Rick "Gov. Goodhair" Perry, who wasted no time whatsoever immolating his campaign barely 24 hours after announcing his candidacy by suggesting we should execute Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Then there's the pesky issues of owning stock in a porno distributor, literally praying for rain to no effect and his questionable taste in hunting lodges.

Michele Bachmann, Jim Jones in drag and desperately looking for a cult, is saddled with a closeted husband whose antigay clinic received $137,000 in Medicaid dollars to Pray teh Gay Away and is willing to give women their choice regarding light bulbs but not their uteri. And don't even get me started on Rick "Please Stop Googling Me" Santorum and Mitt Romney, the world's scariest and most dangerous game show host and the only man alive who by conspicuous relief can give polymer organic appeal.

Until a couple of months ago, it was impossible to imagine that Sarah Palin could upstage at least half of these contenders in terms of erudition, articulateness, polish and a grasp of the issues but here we are.

Into this autocoprophagic melee steps Barack Obama, a man with identical approval and disapproval ratings according to the new NY Times-CBS poll (46 each, although the latest Rasmussen results shows only 19% polled "strongly approve" of the job the President is doing, with just a 43% total approval rating.).

If Barack Obama pulls off his re-election bid, he'll be the only President elected to two terms based on little else but fear of the opposition rather than actual achievement. Even though the nation is erupting in anti-government and anti-corruption outrage at its employers Wall Street, Obama has done nothing but give brief lip service to #OccupyWallStreet in spite of the fact that it's no longer a national phenomenon but a global one and unforgivably insulted the #OWS protesters by saying they were no different than the Tea Baggers.

Obama simply doesn't get it since his own tepid jobs plan (which would've emulated what's being done in Georgia, i.e. making poor unemployed work for corporations for free) got shot down faster than John McCain over Hanoi by the minority Senate Republicans who, amazingly, have even fewer ideas than the White House regarding job creation save for "Cut taxes!"

It would be a crying shame if we gave ourselves another four more years of this because we wanted to stretch out for another 48 months what is virtually inevitable: The Republican wet dream of hurling us back to the 19th century.

Steersons King Street Wharf, Sydney

Let's face it. Sydney can be a bit of a meat market. But hey, if we're talking about steak, then who's complaining? The menu at Steersons Steakhouse reads like a matchmaking site for carnivores, providing detail on the origin of each candidate, its breeding credentials, prior diet and minimum weight. Oh if only it was always this easy...


Inside Steersons at King St Wharf

We arrive at

It's a big club...and you ain't in it.

I will post this as many times as it takes:



Yesterday Rick Perry unveiled his so-called "flat tax plan", offering up the twin pillars of temptation for the uneducated: simplicity and the false promise of "job creation" -- as if those who head up corporations are going to magically, out of the goodness of their hearts, "create jobs" if we just give them enough money; if we just make them RICH ENOUGH. How rich that is remains to be seen, but we've been shoveling money into CEO pockets for thirty years now and they don't yet seem to be rich enough -- if in fact the trickle-down doctrine worked, which of course we know it doesn't.

Rick Perry is at six percent in the polls right now, so perhaps even discussing his tax plan is a moot point. But Republican voters have already shown themselves to be a fickle lot, easily tempted by Teh Shiny at any given moment. And Perry is a huckster, a snake-oil salesmen dangling promises of jobs and income tax filing that a ten-year-old can do and a cushy retirement brought to you by the same people who almost brought us to global economic collapse three years ago. His "plan" is the bastard child of Ronald Reagan and Steve Forbes, and it's designed to do one thing: tempt the stupid with the promise of easier April 15ths and the false promise of a better lot through the further enrichment of the already-wealthy. It's snake oil, and we will see in the next few weeks if Republican voters -- and the pundits who have shown themselves to be equally fickle -- buy it.

The ugly underbelly of Perry's speech (which you can read here) is the demonization of what he calls "The Federal nanny state", with its misogynistic undertones. In Rick Perry's world, those in need of help -- the elderly, the sick, those affected by natural disasters who DON'T live in Texas, the poor, the unemployed -- deserve our contempt, not our help. Because in Rick Perry's world, reaching for a brass ring that is systematically out of reach because there are no public schools, no nutrition programs, no Head Start, nothing to help move the children of tomorrow out of poverty or keep the middle class kids of today from sliding into it, is what has to be done in order to keep the rabble from realizing what the 1% has done, is doing, and will continue to do to them.

Rick Perry's plan, as does Herman Cain's plan, is designed to give that top 1% MORE. It reminds me of that ad a couple of years ago, I think it was for big-screen TVs, and the guy is standing there in the electronics store as the voice of Freddy Mercury shouts:

I want it all
I want it all
I want it all.....and I want it now!

Here's what the 1% has gained since Americans started believing Ronald Reagan that if you Just Give The Rich ENOUGH, they will piss silver dollars and gold coins upon you (NYT link):

The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt.

In addition, the report said, government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income.

“The equalizing effect of federal taxes was smaller” in 2007 than in 1979, as “the composition of federal revenues shifted away from progressive income taxes to less-progressive payroll taxes,” the budget office said.


[snip]

The report found that higher-income households got a larger share of the pie, while other households got smaller shares.

Specifically the report made these points:

¶ The share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent of the population more than doubled, climbing to 17 percent in 2007 from nearly 8 percent in 1979.

¶ The most affluent fifth of the population received 53 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 1979. In other words, the after-tax income of the most affluent fifth exceeded the income of the other four-fifths of the population.

¶ People in the lowest fifth of the population received about 5 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, down from 7 percent in 1979.

¶ People in the middle three-fifths of the population saw their shares of after-tax income decline by 2 to 3 percentage points from 1979 to 2007.

George Carlin was right in 2005. They want it all. They want it all and they want it now...and what little you have, they're going to take it. Your pension? Gone. Now you have a 401(k) that pays fees to Wall Street banks out of your money, and you sit there while a man lies dying of pancreatic cancer in California at the age of 56 and all you can think of is how his death is going to affect your retirement. That statement you get every year that tells you how much you're likely to get from Social Security in retirement? Just shred it. Because you're going to get bupkis. You'll get bupkis because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. Whether you're a baby boomer, Gen-Xer, Gen-Yer, millennial or Brownie scout -- forget it. Because you're getting bupkis. You'll get bupkis because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. A permanent job with benefits? Forget it, you're getting (if you're lucky) a contract job that pays half of what you used to make. Because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. Good public schools for your kids? Forget it. In the very near future you'll have to pay to send your kids to school. There's no money for schools because THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW. Clean air to breathe instead of vaporized mercury? Forget it. We have to dismantle the EPA becase THEY WANT IT ALL AND THEY WANT IT NOW.

They'll promise you that this anal rape with a red-hot poker they're delivering to you will give you a shot at their club...that you too can someday join them in that top 1%. But there's a reason it's the top 1%. It's a big club....and you ain't in it.

And you will never, ever, ever be.

Rick Perry will, though. Because he's aiming for a position where he can give them what they want.

All of it.

Rick Perry is starting to make George W. Bush look like Stephen Hawking by comparison

Just when you thought Rick Perry couldn't seem any dumber, he comes up with this gem in PARADE, the throwaway rag chock full of ads for cheap slippers and "Amish-made" electric heater enclosers that comes with your Sunday newspaper:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.
I don’t know. Have I?

You don’t believe what’s been released?
I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?That came up.

And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.

And you said?I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

Now I know that PARADE is hardly the reading of people with significant amounts of gray matter in their crania, and I know that it's taken seriously by exactly the kind of people who buy reverse mortgages from Fred Thompson on late-night TV, but for Lynn Sherr, who used to be an actual journalist, to bring up the birther issue is even more beyond the pale than for Rick Perry to leave the door open. I mean seriously, is he afraid he might lose the Orly Taitz vote?

Oh wait....never mind.

Libya: The Flaming Bag of Dogshit Left on the Stoop of the World

That's exactly what other world leaders have been acting like since Qaddafi was essentially lynched by his own people. Those who had no problem whatsoever in being photographed with him just in the last couple of years are now doing what all statesmen (i.e. experts in the highest level of cowardice) do when one of their own falls into extreme disfavor and support no longer is politically or economically expedient: Distance themselves from him and to denounce him.

They're like a group of kids who all conspired to set fire to a flaming bag of dog shit on the stoop of the world, ran away and then retroactively blamed the one who got nabbed: Muammer Qaddafi.

These statesmen include


Sen. John McCain, who promised to get weapons and upgrades for Qaddafi, according to Wikileaks...




...which isn't at all reminiscent of another completely, non-similar situation from the 80's...


...world's oldest whoremeister Silvio Berlusconi, seen above with Gaddafi just last year, who recently said of Qaddafi's execution, "Sic transit gloria mundi", Latin for, "I told the prick his days were numbered", obviously during a party he'd held for Qaddafi late August of last year.


President Obama hailed the lynching of Qaddafi as a foreign policy success (although, to be fair to the incumbent President, Mr. Obama was at least more serious and proactive about Qaddafi than another President I can name.).

And Republicans such Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley and, ironically, John McCain, have all chimed in to hail the good news and to say that Britain and France deserve most of the credit, despite ready evidence to the contrary, which almost made Jon Stewart's head explode.

What was lost on Jon Stewart, or what he'd chosen to ignore, was the fact that the Republicans were merely parroting what the Obama administration said just five months ago when it, too, downplayed America's involvement in Libya, which at the time was widely viewed as yet another example of American, imperialistic, cockwanding adventurism that lasted not "days not weeks", as Obama promised Congressional leaders last March 18th, but months.

It goes without saying the Republicans have their own agenda and are bound and determined not to give the president any credit for anything even if he rips off his business suit, flies into outer space in his Superman costume and singlehandedly deflects a meteor screaming toward earth. But the Republicans were, technically, merely repeating what the loathed and reviled Obama administration had said this past spring. Yet anyone with one eye knows that the "rebels" wouldn't have had a chance at taking Tripoli and other key Qaddafi strongholds were it not for the countless hundreds of American unmanned drone strikes that also killed scores of Libyan civilians. In fact, it was a US Predator drone and a French warplane that strafed and destroyed Qaddafi's convoy just an hour before he was dragged from a drain pipe and killed.

It's curious that Republicans now aren't accusing Obama of violating the War Powers Act by not getting Congressional approval for Operation Odyssey Dawn. Also noticeably absent is the fact that the rebels who've taken over the Libyan government in a blood-soaked coup are largely comprised of the same insurgents who were killing our troops in Iraq in 2007. Also noticeably absent is the fact that these rebels who've taken over the Libyan government did so out of a frenzy of Islamic extremism that will surely set back womens' rights at least 800-900 years. (In fact, some would call it the return of Sharia law but, hey, as long as it affects only dark woman in countries 10,000 miles away, what's a little Sharia law among friends, eh?).

What's also lost on Jon Stewart is that when people we ordinarily laugh at, clowns like John Bolton, raise the concern of what'll replace Qaddafi's four decade-long rule, it's a very legitimate one. Because, after all, when our foreign policy is so short-sighted that we prop up regimes that we later have to decimate under a false flag (Like, say, Iraq and Libya), it augurs that we ought to look further into the future before fiddle fucking with the affairs of the Arab League.

The Abercrombie, Broadway, Chippendale

Is there such a thing as too much fried? Nay, I say. If it can be dipped in batter, then go ahead and deep-fry that baby.

And that's just the way the folk behind the Abercrombie Hotel feel, too. First they gave us the deep-fried Gaytime. Now they've unleashed the joys of deep-fried pizza and Twinkies to the Sydney masses.


Fries with mayo and gravy $7

We make the mistake of presuming 

I wish someone would explain the right-wing obsession with women's reproductive systems

It's sort of like their obsession with gay sex, you know? Ask a homophobe why he hates gays so much and he'll say, "I just don't like thinking about how they have sex." Do YOU spend time thinking about how gay people have sex? I don't. I don't spend time thinking about how straight people have sex either. Do you look at a couple holding hands on the subway platform and think about them having sex? I don't. What is this obsession with other people's sex lives? It's one thing if you're writing a novel and you're writing a sex scene. But this automatic trip that the right-wing brain seems to make from the visual cue of a couple of any sort in any context, directly to their bedroom, just seems weird to me.

I can understand if you really and truly believe that abortion is the murder of a human being. I don't agree with you, because until a healthy baby can breathe on its own, it's essentially a parasite. And I don't agree with you because I don't believe there is ever a time when a woman should be regarded as nothing but a vessel, an incubator, a mindless, unfeeling, unimportant housing for a life form deemed by religious or government fiat to be more important than she is. But at least I can understand where you're coming from. But it rarely seems to be that simple, because all too often, such sentiments are accompanied by the Rhetoric of Punishment: "She went and got herself pregnant" (which is my personal favorite). "She made her bed, let her lie in it." "She shoulda kept her legs closed." For all that we live in a nation soaked with pornography, often viewed furtively by the very same people who decry the sex lives of others; there's still this strange obsession on the right with the ladyparts of women.

For decades I've been saying that once they get Roe v. Wade overturned, they're going to go for Griswold v. Connecticut. But the fetophiles (or vagophobes, if you prefer) have realized that you don't need the Supreme Court to take us back to a time when evil sluts got their just punishment in the form of the "sacred life-affirming gift" of unwanted pregnancy. With a number of states, most recently Mississippi, trying to enact laws that would declare a fertilized egg to be a person, with all rights thereof, the forms of birth control most women use would become illegal.

Thoee ignorant of the basic processes of how pregnancy occurs tend to be aquishy about what "conception" means, and toss it around to mean a variety of things. In medical terms, a pregnancy does not take place until a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. So "implantation" would seem to be a more medically correct definition under right-wing dogma of when human life begins. But sometimes the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube, and an ectopic pregnancy results, which must be removed. The NIH is unequivocal about this: "Ectopic pregnancies cannot continue to birth." Ectopic pregnancy creates a serious conundrum for those who consider themselves to be "pro-life", because as soon as you allow for removal, you've created a loophole in the absolutist view that there are NO EXCEPTIONS.

the other night, Rachel Maddow explained the basics of How Pregnancy Happens, and what it means for contraception, for those who forgot sixth grade health class:



Mitt Romney, who's a bit squishy himself on just about everything, thought he could just say "Life begins at conception" and be done with it. But those who want to declare a fertilized egg to be the same as a person know exactly what they're doing, and just like those like Mitt Romney, who want to remain a bit squishy on the matter, they aren't thinking of the implications. The first implication is that ALL methods of contraception, other than condoms and diaphragms, become by definition illegal, since all others have at least some hormonal action, and to one degree or another prevent implantation.

In 2010, the Guttmacher Institute cited a figure of 89% as the percentage of women using birth control in this country. That's just about nine in ten women who do not wish to become pregnant at any given time who use birth control. Some of them are even pro-life. Others would probably never have an abortion if they became pregnant, even if they're pro-choice. ALL of them use birth control because they don't want abortion to even be an issue for them.

But the fear and loathing of women and their sexuality becomes evident and manifest the minute you bring birth control into the equation, and there's no better example of this than Mr. Frothy himself, Rick Santorum. Here's a video (via ThinkProgress) in which Santorum talks about the "dangers of birth control" and says:

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be”:

SANTORUM: [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.

And Rick Santorum thinks it's HIS job to MANDATE that you think of sex exactly the way he does, and practice accordingly. But I wonder if his view extends to men also, or just to women. Stephen over at Addicting Info wonders too:

But here’s a question I’d like to ask the former senator. If sex is just for procreation, does that mean Santorum has only had sex eight times in his life? That’s not exactly a healthy sexual relationship with the woman he’s married to. Perhaps they secretly use contraceptives? Some may think these questions are an invasion of Santorum’s privacy. But as long as Santorum continues to violate the private sex lives of millions of women and men across the country, we have the right to ask questions about his own. Fair is fair, right Rick?

And I would also ask if he demands that men think of sex as only for procreation too. Does he think men should be prepared to provide financial support for the children they help to conceive? Or does he too blame women who "got themselves pregnant"?

UPDATE: If Jim DeMint has his way, this post will become illegal as well.

Let's Unleash Joe Roman

(Special thanks to Jill, your server, for introducing me to Kickstarter by way of Salon.com.)

WTF is Joe Roman? He's the antihero in a trilogy I've been working on since last year and I decided to launch a project on Kickstarter, which is essentially a patronage site. Here's how it works in a nutshell:

Go to the proposal page and pledge what you can if you choose. In 60 days, if I meet my fundraising goal (in this case, $5000), you will not be billed for your pledge and I will not receive a penny before the 60 days are up. If I make $4999 after 60 days, tough shit. I get nothing and you get billed nothing.

But if I do, my ultimate goal to get a CreateSpace physical edition printed up and distributed of each of the Roman trilogy. Btw, if you look on the right side of the page, you'll note my rewards program including all sorts of little goodies I'll throw in for a specified pledge. So take a looksee and be sure to check out my brilliant promotional video that shows off all my telegenic glory (/snark).

Gaddafi family photo album photo de famille al kadhafi

Regarder la video de la famille de kadhafi
la video des fille et fils de mouamer al kadhafi
la video des images de al kadhafi family en ligne gratuit

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Mots-clés
gaddafi, Gaddafi family photo album, qaddafi, family, tripoli, benghazi, libya, libyan

Mouammar Kadhafi est mort en Video et photos

Fin de partie pour Kadhafi. Le Conseil national de transition libyen (CNT) a d'abord annoncé ce jeudi matin la capture du « Guide » après six semaines de cavale, avant d'annoncer sa mort, lors de la chute de Syrte, sa ville natale.

C'est Abdel Hakim Majid, un chef militaire du CNT, qui a fait cette
annonce. Les premières informations indiquaient que Kadhafi avait été simplement blessé aux deux jambes. Le dirigeant du CNT a indiqué que Kadhafi avait succombé à ses blessures.

Dans la soirée, le CNT a annoncé que Kadhafi était mort en combattant, alors que les ex-rebelles donnaient l'assaut aux canalisation dans lesquelles il avait trouvé refuge. Une explication a posteriori qui tente de faire oublir les scènes peu glorieuses de lynchage d'un Kadhafi blessé mais vivant qui apparaissent sur les vidéos amateur tournées jeudi matin.

Majid a également indiqué que le corps de l'ancien dirigeant avait été emmené, « pour des raisons de sécurité », à Misrata, dans un endroit tenu secret.

Au cours de l'opération de Syrte, les forces du CNT ont capturé plusieurs dignitaires de l'ancien régime, dont le porte parole du pouvoir pendant toute la crise, Moussa Ibrahim, visage familier des écrans de télévision du monde entier


D'après plusieurs sources, l'ex-dictateur et ses hommes auraient alors trouvé refuge dans une conduite d'évacuations des eaux usées. Voir la photo ci-dessous :

Mouammar Kadhafi est mort en video

Mazel tov, you crazy kids!

Best. Marriage. Proposal. Ever.:



I don't know about you, but that warmed the cockles of my cynical little heart.

Nothing Like Keeping it in the Family

It's no surprise that neither the astoundingly corrupt Wall Street and equally corrupt NYPD and Mayor's office decided to set up a spy base of operations so close to Ground Zero without getting any input from the public, without apprising us, or setting up any oversight committee whatsoever. And that's a shame, too, because the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center is paid for with $150,000,000 in taxpayer dollars.

Here's a Ron Jeremy-class money shot from the Truth-Out reporter, Pam Martens:

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

It goes on to say that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly's goons will also be using biometric software to scan the faces of anyone walking within this vast electronic, 24/7 dragnet. Not only that, the justly-paranoid Wall Street will also be making note of any license plate numbers they see on their turf, sort of like the way the FBI was writing down license plate numbers at the wedding in the opening scene of The Godfather.

This means entities such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup (which just paid $285,000,000 in bribes to the SEC to shut them up after they made a civil complaint) and other crooks get to spy on the protesters and any dissident activity at Zuccotti Park. It's a crowning irony that the NYPD will be more prone to see the violence committed by its own people rather than violence on the part of protesters.

This is the price we pay for rising up against corporate interests and exercising our constitutional rights to free speech, of the press, to peacefully assemble, in rising up in the face of absurdly provable lawlessness that has victimized the American taxpayer and consumer for decades. Now we find out we're footing the fucking bill so these sociopaths and fascists can spy on us.

But, wait, it gets even better, folks. Martens made a great over-the-shoulder grab with this gem about the author of the guidelines for this surveillance center:

According to Commissioner Kelly in public remarks, the privacy guidelines were written by Jessica Tisch, the Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning for the NYPD who has played a significant role in developing the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. In 2006, Tisch was 25 years old and still working on her law degree and MBA at Harvard, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times.

So, can someone please explain to me how a 20-something college student with obviously no training in counter-terrorism (which ought to be the bailiwick of the federal gov't and not the NYPD) got to write a policy that essentially excludes the NYPD and Wall Street from any kind of oversight or repercussions for violating the peoples' civil liberties? Oh, that's how...

Tisch is a friend to the Mayor’s daughter, Emma; her mother, Meryl, is a family friend to the Mayor. Tisch is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch who built the Loews Corporation. Her father, James Tisch, is now the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until 2013 representing the public’s interest.

Nothing like nepotism and keeping it in the (crime) family that insists on self-dealing to protect its interests eliminating any oversight and using the tax money siphoned from the very same people on whom they're now spying. To go to show you how stupendously corrupt and supine the NYPD is, when Goldman Sachs began engineering this surveillance center six years ago with New York City authorities, being able to sit side-by-side with 5 figure a year-earning NYPD cops (plus many tens of millions on tax abatements on furniture and construction materials) was a deal-breaker.

The audacity of these cocksuckers to spy on law-abiding citizens when they themselves are the targets of at least 51 probes into fraud and malfeasance is literally breathtaking. They're more crooked than an Ebola virus yet they're spying on us, with our money and doing so with the secret collusion of the NYPD and Bloomberg's office.

It's also a crowning irony that this spy center, as I'd mentioned above, is so close to Ground Zero, the site of the most massive terrorist attack on US soil. What were we saying a few years ago about the terrorists hating us for our freedoms? It seems that al Qaeda's ideological brethren on Wall Street are the ones who hate us for our freedoms, too, among them freedom of speech, of the press and to peacefully assemble.

Get Up, Stand Up

Please watch this all the way to the end, where John Oliver makes a very important point.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Like it or not, we are not the 1%. To support the protesters, we can send donations of money orders, food, clothing and other supplies to:

The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038

We can also donate money directly at the Occupy WePay site. We're all broke, but every little bit helps. The Occupation has changed the conversation from deeply stupid and destructive deficit reduction to jobs plans, which will benefit each and every one of us. It rained in New York last night. If we can't go to stand up for each other, maybe the least we can ask of ourselves is pocket change for a cup of coffee and a clean, dry pair of socks for a protester.

Someone in the media needs to ask Rick Perry about this

If Barack Obama had to answer for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and explain his association with him, then Rick Perry has to answer for this guy:



(h/t this, via DCap)

Everything that's wrong with the shareholder model of corporate money in one article

The latest about Apple stock:

Apple today reported revenue of $28.27B for the fourth quarter and $6.62B in net profit ($7.05 per diluted share). These numbers compare quite favorably to $20.34B and $4.31B ($4.64 per diluted share) for the same quarter last year.

Gross margins for Apple during Q4 were 40.3 percent.

During the quarter, Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones (21 percent growth year-over-year), 11.12 million iPads (166 percent growth), 4.89 million Mac computers (26 percent growth), and 6.62 million iPods (27 percent decline)

[snip]

Despite the good news coming out Cupertino today, investors weren't too terribly impressed. Analysts were expecting revenue of $29.69B and earnings per share of $7.39. They also expected quarterly iPhones sales to be in the 18 million to 20 million range.

Apple shares are down over $26 in after hours trading.

Wall Street analysts are like the Critical Parent of the Transactional Analysis model developed by Eric Berne in the 1950's: No matter how well you perform, they always want to know why you didn't do better.

Another reason to love internet memes

Nothing will ever beat I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions as far as I'm concerned, but this is all kinds of win.

Blogrolling In Our Time

Grab a blueberry scone and say hello to amigoingsomeplace. After all, we old crones gotta stick together.

Sepia, Sydney

It really did look like a shard of glass, sinking in on itself  as though it had buckled from the heat of an inferno. We didn't know what it was as we snapped off pieces to eat, admiring its sleek surface, its amber brilliance and the bubbles trapped within.

Salt. And vinegar. And hints of chilli that was later revealed to be sansho pepper. The edible artwork prompts conversation around the

Don't be a Pepper

Remember the good old days, when the adorable David Naughton urged us to join him in being a Pepper?



Times have changed, and with over 14 million Americans out of work, many of them men who now wonder if they will ever work again, and if they don't, just who they are, concern about masculinity is at an all-time high. Enter Dr. Pepper, with a 10-calorie drink that they're marketing specifically to men, because 0-calorie questionable-tasting soft drinks sweetened with poison just aren't macho enough for them. No more wussy-ass song and dance guys who looked like the cast of Glee long before Glee was even a gleam in Fox's eye. No, in the new Land of Pepper, ten calories = one penis:


But this ad isn't the worst of it. The worst is the "10 Man-Ments" that are part of the ad campaign. Apparently you have to "Like" it on Facebook to get to it, so we'll let Chicagoist reveal it for you.

The intrepid Amanda ventured into the fetid swamp of male anxiety so you don't have to:

Obviously, Dr. Pepper rolled out this campaign before there was a mass shooting that left 8 dead, in which the murderer was apparently motivated to get revenge on his ex-wife over not getting his way in a custody battle. But if they'd done a little market research, they would have been able to predict the reaction from the very same misogynists they hope will buy up their soda. David Futrelle gathered some at Man Boobz. The theme of the comments he collected was, "Children are the property of men who create them all by themselves by ejacualating into incubators we call "women", and when you're done with your incubator, she shouldn't be able to get custody over your child-property, no matter what a judge says. And anyone who disagrees only has themselves to blame if they get shot in the face."  A sample:

E]nough of this type of offensive action might just start making women and their supporters* think twice, especially if they also become targets. (* Divorce attorneys, child services workers and counselors, family court judges, and other enabling cogs in the feminist legal system)......

Essentially men need to tell feminism to shut the fuck up, give it a vigorous slap across the face thus reminding it who is the biological superior, then order it back into the kitchen/bedroom.......

What options other than overt acts of physical violence are there for a man to deal with a shrew ex and corrupt family court system?....

Most men will just lay down and be resigned to the state-enforced kidnapping and extortion plot, but some are made of tougher stuff and for you to whine about this dead ex-wife or that is inconsequential and no loss to humanity.

I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened.

In case you were wondering what's going on in the mind of the Tea Party male who's blaming everyone else for his troubles, there you go.

I'm quite sure that when the "creative" and the account guys at Deutsch, Inc. (the ad agency that perpetrated this monstrosity) got together in a room, they imagined themselves to be Don and Pete and Roger and Kenny and Paul in the halcyon days before that kiljoy Peggy got all uppity on them. It would not surprise me if the Mad Men ethos permeates today's ad agencies, as the denizens therein, many of them not around during those days when ad guys, not finance guys, were the masters of the universe, try to capture those long-lost times.

If the name "Deutsch" sounds familiar to you, it's because yes, it's THAT Deutsch -- Donny Deutsch, most familiar to political junkies as the guy on Morning Schmoe who obviously gets up in the morning and thinks that because he looks a little bit like Jon Stewart, if he just combs his hair the same way people will think he IS Jon Stewart. Here's a classic Donny Deutsch moment, which tells you everything you need to know about him:



That's just what Occupy Wall Street needs -- for a bunch of kids to get killed. Yeah, that's the ticket. you can't BUY that kind of publicity. Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone who in this day and age creates an ad that's nothing more than a retooling of this:

Making having a period a crime

There are times when I wish Abraham Lincoln had just said "Don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha."

Mississippi is about to vote on an amendment to its state constitution to bestow personhood on fertilized eggs:

A national effort to put abortion bans into state constitutions is looking for its first victory next month in Mississippi, where voters are being asked to approve an amendment declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Supporters hope the so-called personhood initiative will succeed in a Bible Belt state that already has some of the nation's toughest abortion regulations and only a single clinic where the procedures are performed.

The initiative is endorsed by both candidates in a governor's race that's being decided the same day. While Mississippi is the only state with such an amendment on the ballot this fall, efforts are under way to put the question to voters in at least four other states in 2012.

[snip]

"We feel like the docs and the patients are getting caught in the middle of a war between the anti-abortion folks and the pro-choice folks," said Dr. Wayne Slocum of Tupelo, head of the Mississippi section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group that opposes the initiative.

It's one thing to declare that human life begins at implantation of a fertilized egg, since that's when a pregnancy actually begins. That too has its problems, because of the possibility of making miscarriage a criminal, or even capital, offense (something the state of Georgia has already considered).

The American College of Obstetricans and Gynecologists has stated unequivocally that pregnancy does not occur intil a fertilized egg is implanted, and that up to 1/3 to 1/2 of fertilized eggs never implant. These then dissolve and become part of the so-called "products of menstruation."

Of course science and medicine have absolutely no place in the misogynist dogma of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. What's imiportant is that the evil sluts who won't keep their legs closed must be punished by bearing a child -- and those who harbor that 1/3 to 1/2 of eggs that never implant must be investigated, and perhaps criminally charged, if they have a period.

There's only one way to deal with this, and that is for women of reproductive age to start sending their used sanitary products to the Mississippi statehouse, along with letters asking if legislators of that state plan to examine every woman's menstrual fluid in a futile search for dissolved fertilized eggs....or if they just plan to jail every woman who ever has her period on the grounds that she might have "murdered" a fertilized egg.

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