It appears I was wrong, the death of US Census worker Bill Sparkman, which I, and a number of other people was an act driven by the recent right wing anti-government hysteria.
Well, the Kentucky State Police, along with the FBI, have now ruled it to be suicide.
My condolences to his family.
While I am not a fan of Mary Landrieu, and some days actually hope that the Southern squish Dems lose their battles for reelection so that the Senate is forced to play hardball (i.e. reconciliation).
I am even less enthused about Mary Landrieu’s ongoing act Hamlet act on healthcare reform, which seems to largely involve the desire to increase Medicare subsidies to Louisiana.
That being said, Mark Halperin’s most substantive writing on this issue, and Landrieu’s position on HCR is to post this photoshop job, which has since been removed by a journalist who has secretly infiltrated the corporate offices of Time.
It is, of course a reference to the unfortunate confusion between hair gel and semen made by Carmen Diaz in the movie There’s Something about Mary.
As many of you know, Mark Halperin is this babbling idiot whom Time magazine hired to cobble together this insipid web product called “The Page,” which is designed to scam people looking for trenchant, up-to-the-minute political news into giving Time many, many unnecessary ad impressions as you follow Halperin’s teasing links to his content. That content tends to be a really dumb listicle, or a one sentence piece of pure and unadulterated banality, or, if you are really lucky, a paragraph or two of analysis that’s either so conventional as to appear slam-dunk, or so witless that it’s completely laughable and wrong.
The post about Landrieu was titled, “There’s Still Something About Mary,” for the brain dead readers of “The Page” who would not otherwise get it.
Yes, this should be a firing offense, particularly after both Beck and Limbaugh literally called her a “prostitute,” but since it’s at the expense of a woman, I’m sure that the old boy’s club of journalism will just chuckle
Katie Couric dirty dancing at an after party following her CBS News debut.
This is right up there with her colostomy videos.
Well, I think that it’s becoming clear that the reason that Barack Obama is relying on Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner and Lawrence Summers as the core of his economic team is not an accident.
Not only has his economic team been captured by Wall Street, but Barack Obama has been captured by Wall Street:
If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) last week tried to fix that, by offering an amendment in the House Financial Services Committee that would give the council an independent staff and independent source of funding. But he was forced to withdraw the amendment after it became clear that he wouldn’t get Chairman Barney Frank’s approval, said a source familiar with the committee’s deliberations.
Let’s be clear here, this council is supposed to review not just systemic risk, but also the behavior of the regulators:
As proposed by the Obama administration, the House bill calls for the council to be headed by the Treasury Secretary, who would pick his own staff from within the Treasury Department.
But not only is the council supposed to keep watch over firms and activities that pose a risk, it’s also supposed to oversee the work of other regulators in mitigating threats and supervise financial regulation as a whole, according to the bill’s language. In short, it has a mandate to watch over everything that could possibly endanger the financial system – including inaction and incompetence by regulators.
So, why are Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ so absolutely determined to place the centerpiece of his regulatory reform thoroughly under the branch of the executive designed to be a lapdog for large banking interests?
I do not think that Barack Obama is that stupid, that is clear, though while a candidate, and now President, Barack Obama has always been a bit of a cipher.
The answer, I think, lies in his background.
Barack Obama is literally Chicago School, as in the University of Chicago, where he taught for 12 years, and his first “big name” economic advisor is Austan Goolsbee, who is faculty there, and I think that Barack Obama is clearly very devoted to the idea that the government must be held back to prevent it from interfering with economic “innovation”.
Simply put, he is enthralled by the vision of Chicago School economics, as conceived by Milton Friedman and given flesh by Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan, and so he sees his primary role in economic reform to be ensuring that it is toothless and completely controlled by the large Wall Street banks.
When Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that, “The banks own the place,” he was referring to Congress, but it’s true of the White House.
They own Barack Obama too.
H/t Ted Rall.
H/t Wonkette
(on edit)
— Friedrich Nietzsche
H/t Unmutual of the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
And why 193% of Republicans thought that the numbers checked out.
You know, the one that goes, “If you make Dan Quayle your VP, then no one in their right mind will try to remove you from office for your role selling arms to Iran and diverting the proceeds to the Contras.”
Come to think of it, Ronald Reagan had a very similar policy…Thanks a lot, little Mikey Dukkakis.
In any case, I heard a leak that I hope is being motivated by the same dynamic.
I don’t know that it is, but I do know that when I heard this, I got that look on my face that my older brother says, “Looks like a cow that just stepped on its own udder.”
The leak is that the Obama administration is looking for a potential replacement for Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner have already begun.
Since the criticism of him is that he’s too close to the big banks and Wall Street, and too lenient on them as a result, the word on the street is that his replacement will be……
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon:
As support for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanes on Capitol Hill amid frustration with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is emerging as a potential replacement.
Sources tell The Post that a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country’s high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government’s mounting deficit.
Great googly moogly.
Richard is a friend of my son, and he was playing with Charlie today, and they wanted to play on the computer.
I was in the middle of doing my Sarah Palin book ad on my blog post, and they were asking why I was doing a screen shot of the image, and I explained how the ads paid me a few bucks, but they did weird stuff like this all the time.
Well, Charlie has been thoroughly indoctrinated by me and Uncle Keith (Olbermann), so he started ragging on Palin and the book, and Richard, who has similarly proper parenting joined in, and then he let fly the best review ever on Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue
The book will probably fall apart, just like the Captain Underpants ones do.
–Richard S. Age 9
While I have no knowledge of the quality of the printing and binding, this is almost certainly accurate about the book so many levels.
I think that I hurt myself laughing.
The kid has a future in stand-up comedy.
The Bishop of Providence Rhode Island has banned Patrick Kennedy from taking communion in his diocese. Suzie Madrak has the scoop at Crooks and Liars (also, you can find it at CNN):
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman’s support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.
The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal’s Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation’s most famous Roman Catholic family.
“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.
(emphasis original)
Seriously, if the Church wants to be this captured by the Republican party, perhaps the IRS should look at improper electioneering.
I would also note that the Republican party has been captured by nativist bigots, people who hate Hispanics, who are now over 2/3 of the Catholic Church, then perhaps Catholics of good conscience should find those few Bishops and Cardinals of good faith who spend their time on serving their flock, and leave those who spend their time on than lobbying on abortion and covering up for pedophile priests to their own devices.
Apologies for the poor audio quality of the vid, it’s from the Christo-Fascist CNSNews.
Yes, once again, the good folks at Google™ Adsense™ are serving up an advertisement for Sarah Palin in response to something that I posted (just the image, no link, not ever).
My disclaimers are below, but in this case, I clicked through, something that Google™ Adsense™ frowns upon if you do it routinely, to see what exactly this offer was.
Well, here is a screen-shot of the page from Newsmax:
There, is, of course, a pattern here. You have people who are rich because of dumb luck in the genetic lottery, people with names like Scaife Olin, Bradley, Coors, and Koch, who are spending huge amounts of money that they inherited from daddy, or grand daddy, or great-grand daddy on the right wing machine.
They subsidize the publisher that prints the Palin book. They subsidize the propaganda sheet that offers the book free with a 1 year subscription, or for $4.95 (plus $5.95 shipping and handling, which means that they must use a unicorn to get the book to you) with a 4 months of Newsmax free.
What does this get?
All of which adds credibility to both the book, and to the magazine, because, much like the late, unlamented New York Sun, their claim to credibility is based on circulation, and their circulation is based on paying people to take their parakeet cage liner.
In any case, back to the ads.
Please note, once again: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers who purchase those ads through Google™ Adsense™.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™, even though it would make me money, and cost them (Palin’s Publishers and Newsmax) money.
It’s only 7¼ minutes, just watch it.
Here’s a surprise: After a year of record profits for Goldman Sachs, the shareholders are demanding an increased slice of the profits:
Some of Goldman Sachs Group’s largest shareholders have asked the company to cut the size of its bonus pool and pass along more of its profits to investors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
Although the shareholders are not pushing for a huge cut, they feel that Goldman should better reward shareholders for this year’s rebound, the paper said.
One of the oddities of Wall Street is that 30 years ago, the investment banks were not publicly held companies, they were limited liability partnerships, where all the profits, at least those not reinvested in the firm (and seriously, how much capital investment does a f$#@ing investment bank need) accrued to the partners.
So in the 1980s and 1990s, they all went public, generated huge cash outs for the partners, and enormous amounts of other people’s money with which to wager, but they continued to operate as if they were still partnerships, and that all the money accrued back to them.
Well now, the shareholders are thinking that maybe they should start acting like they own the firm, which, of course, they do.
Hopefully, this is a trend, though I doubt it.
*Full disclosure: I never saw the movie, Jerry McGuire.
It looks like Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp are working together to attempt to create a walled garden around his so-called news:
Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.
The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.
However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.
There are a number of assumptions here, on both sides, which I think will kill the deal:
This is one of those things that will get a lot of ink, because, of course, the newspapers want it to work, but it won’t get much beyond that.
The 800 pound gorilla in the room is, and continues to be, that the major news outlets are driven by the demands from Wall Street to hit their numbers, which, when juxtaposed with stupid debt deals on shiny new headquarters, they have consistently made their products less attractive.
The problem is that when you cut journalism out of newspapers, all you have left is advertisements, and like I said, Craigslist® is better as a pure advertising play.
H/t Atrios.
Jon Stewart interviewing Lou Dobbs:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Nice that he changed his position, but it smacks of opportunism.
I’m calling pandering.
Michael Bennet faces a very strong challenge from the Andrew Romanoff, who is coming at him from the left, so Bennet’s statement that he would vote for healthcare reform even if it meant him losing the election is an easy one to make. (see vid)
The reality is that he was saying he might not vote for HCR for a long time, and now that he has a strong primary challenger, and he would be dead in the primary if he voted against it, suddenly he’s willing to bet his career on it.
In this case, it’s the liquid cooled 120° V-6 Adept aviation engine Adept 320T avgas/mogas engine.
I’m dubious on market success, given that it has to use gasoline, though it is automotive fuel (mogas) compatible.
The cost, and relative unavailability of the fuel is what is driving people toward small turbine and diesel engines.
I came across their web site in a strange way, they were mentioned in an ad for Autodesk® CAD products on the back cover of the ASME magazine, Mechanical Engineering, and looked at their technology.
The basic features of the engine are:
There is a relatively uneventful video of an engine run at the bottom of this post.
Washington lost to Dallas by 1 point.
Belgium, man, just Belgium!!!!!
