Saturday, September 25, 2010

Friday, September 24, 2010

Blog, what Blog?

Balloon Juice had an American Idol moment tonight. DougJ, the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice had a WWF type blogroll:
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and now seems like a good time, in light of commenter ellaesther/Emily Hauser’s recent triumphs....do you have a blog? I’d like to add all the Balloon-Juice readers’ blogs to my RSS reader, I have about a dozen so far.
I must have surfed 50-60 blogs, but most contained old posts. I added 3 to my RSS reader:

Monday, September 20, 2010

DADT or Why the Fuck You Wanna Know?

I think we are approaching this "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" thing from the wrong perspective.
Rather than repeal it, we should extend it to cover straight people, too. Here are some examples where this policy would be extremely handy:

  • Should a friendly police officer inquire as to ones degree of inebriation, "DADT, ossifer."
  • Upon arriving home, after posting bail for aforementioned inebriation, and your wife inquiring about your paycheck, "DADT, but we're eating in."
  • When the preacher asks if you'll be attending the Revival on Saturday, your regular poker night, "DADT, but let the chips fall where they may, Padre."
  • When your buddies start asking about 'roids after your bowling average jumps 43 pins, "DADT, it's all in the wrist."
  • When your senator is asked how he/she will vote on DADT, (all together, now), "DADT".

Saturday, September 18, 2010

This Is A Big F*****g Deal!

10 30 10 "Rally to Restore Sanity"



Stephen Colbert David Ippolito - "See You in Washington, Colbert!" 

 


Stewart and Colbert plan DC Rally; South Carolina plots preemptive counter-protest

William Moultrie reports on a counter demonstration at the diSCust.com:


Columbia – In an emergency conference call, a hastily assembled coalition of South Carolina’s politicians, bloggers, newspaper reporters, strategists, and inmates crafted plans to protest a newly announced rally by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
...
The Rally to Preemptively Restore Honor to South Carolina will be held on the same day as the Stewart/Colbert rally, October 30, but due to National Park Service rules about overlapping events, the South Carolina rally will begin at 4 a.m.
“We’ll be all be meeting at the corner of South Carolina Ave. and Independence Ave. and carpooling to the Lincoln Memorial,” said U.S. Senate Candidate Alvin Greene, who was asked to publicize and organize the event because of his proven method of  frugal yet effective campaigning. “We picked that location for symbolic reasons, but unfortunately we didn’t realize how far it would be to walk from there to the mall, so please call me if you’re planning on driving and you have a bus or minivan.”
...
The preliminary speaking list includes:
  • Governor Mark “Hiking the Trail” Sanford
  • Lt. Governor AndrĂ© “Don’t Feed the Poor” Bauer
  • Former Treasurer Thomas “convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine” Ravenel
  • Former State School Board chair Kristin “alleged erotic fiction author” Maguire
  • Sen. Jim “Drink the Koolaid” DeMint
  • Sen. Lindsey “Goes both ways (on political issues)” Graham
  • Rep. Joe “YOU LIE!” Wilson
  • Former Rep. Arthur “NAACP = Nat. Assn. of Retarded People” Ravenel
  • State Sen. Nikki “So transparent you see right through her” Haley
  • State Sen. Jakie “Nikki’s a raghead” Knotts
  • U.S. Senate Candidate Alvin “I did too campaign” Greene
  • Dr. George “I was trying to fix the gay kid” Rekers
  • Kaitlin “Miss Teen South Carolina” Upton
*****
Maybe we should have let them secede.

About Babies

We have lots of them around , right now. A couple of new ones, a couple of medium ones and one who is 4 going on 18. From Justin at Shit My Dad Says:


"You came out of your mom looking like shit. She thought you were beautiful. Don't know what scared me most, your looks or her judgment."

Just sayin'. My son and his wife were having a similar conversation yesterday. 
Which brings this Pete Seeger tune to mind, not for any good reason, it just does.

Friday, September 17, 2010

I'll See Y'All in D.C. 10.30.10 *** Peace Out ***

I haven't been to a rally since 1973, the "Honk If You're for Impeachment" rally. I guess this is a good occasion to stomp my feets and dance:



Stewart, Colbert: 'Rally To Restore Sanity' vs. 'March To Keep Fear Alive'

Sign up for updated info HERE

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Dude, You Have No Quran

There are still some real Murikens.




Updated 9.18.10 (ht) John Cole

Waitin' for Godot, er, Kaleb...

Grandson #3 is scheduled to land today. I wish my mama was here to see him.

Peter, Paul and Mary 1966

~ 2008

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Mark Thoma: An Economist I Can Understand

First I want to link to Mark Thomas' post at his blog, Economist's View. I don't have anything to add except this:

My Shit's Fucked Up

John Cole at Balloon Juice reminded me of this Warren Zevon tune. Thank you, John.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Excuse Me?

Based on the latest data, around 7,200 students drop out of high school each day, or about 1.3 million a year. Nationally, about 68.8 percent of students who start high school graduate four years later, but there are huge local differences. While 83 percent of the students in New Jersey graduate each year, only 41.8 percent of  Nevada's students do. ~ Newsweek


But Sharron Angle has a solution:



Where do these people come from? Evidently not the public education system.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Jefferson Thomas Dies At 67

Little do we remark the passing of giants in our midst. From The Huffington Post:


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Jefferson Thomas was fast and athletic and often played pickup basketball with white students while growing up in Little Rock in the 1950s.
But when Thomas became one of nine black students to integrate Arkansas' largest high school, many of his basketball buddies weren't happy to see him in their classes.
"One of them said, 'Well I don't mind playing basketball or football with you or anything. You guys are good at sports. Everybody knows that, but you're just not smart enough to sit next to me in the classroom,'" Thomas recalled years later.
The pioneer in school desegregation died Sunday at an extended-care living facility in Columbus, Ohio, of pancreatic cancer at age 67...

Saturday, September 4, 2010

I Feel Better Now


I just don't know what to say about this, except a free laptop is a nice incentive...but who would want a job with such a high barrier of entry? Months of training? C'mon, gimme a break. It's just a laptop.

Feedin' Time

Part of the horde. All of the cats and both dogs are either abandoned or the progeny of abandoned pets. We live in the mountains in a fairly remote location that seems to attract irresponsible scumbags who no longer have any use for their pets. We have an open farm policy and everybody eats. The rabbits and chinchillas are my brides acquisitions. It's my job to feed and doctor everyone. There are actually those rare days when I go 24 hours without being burdened with human conversation.











A Thought On Productivity


PRODUCTIVITY AND COSTS
Second Quarter 2010, Revised

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased at a 1.8 percent
annual rate during the second quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today as hours increased 3.5 percent and output
increased 1.6 percent.


From Justin at Shit My Dad Says:

"Put the rake down. I don't wanna sit around
watching you 'give it your best.' Either
stop sucking or get the fuck out of the way."

More or Less on Beck

Sally Kohn at Movement Vision Lab has initiated an ongoing, we hope, dialogue with Glen Beck, heroically challenging his inane prattle. Here is the first installment, sort of a Beck-mania primer:

The Real Lich King


E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice and Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic are in agreement that Glen Beck is the Lich King and a virulent brain eater. The Lich King thing is a WOW character that I had to have my son explain to me. He is sort of a 21st century Sauron. Though I have not hammered the Beckster here, I have no problem with their characterization, per se. I would proffer that in reality he is Saruman, merely a pale imitation. Dick Cheney is the front runner. This from Matt Yglesias.

Tony Blair confirms Dick Cheney's identity as the Lich King in his memoirs:

“He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it – Hizbollah, Hamas, etc,” Mr Blair wrote in his autobiography, A Journey. “In other words, he thought the whole world had to be made anew, and that after September 11, it had to be done by force and with urgency.”


I would point to this WaPo article by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilme;

"...today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low."
...
"Re-imagining history is a perilous exercise. Nonetheless, it seems clear that without this war, not only would America's standing in the world be higher, our economy would be stronger."


Dick Cheney is a real live Lich King, the driving force of evil in America.