Rush Holt has proposed eliminating the tax cap on social security, which would keep the fund solvent until the sun burns down to a cinder.
You won’t hear this from Corey Booker, because he is owned by Wall Street, who is determined to get their hands on this money, so that they can generate fees.
Link.
While it was clear from her statements later in life, she was aggressively anti-Zionist, it should be noted that this was not her journalistic beat.
On her beat, the White House, she was a pain in the ass to 10 successive administrations, which is what a reporter assigned to the White House is supposed to do.
Remember when I complained about ruining my shirt by leaving an uncapped pen in my pocket?
My dad, who follows my blog, sent me a bunch of dark colored shirts, including a black dress shirt.
Without thinking, I put on the black shirt today, and also grabbed a pair of black slacks.
I got comments on my style sense from about 5 people at work, the best being, “Johnny Cashing it today?”
I think that this is the closest that I have ever been to being fashionable in my life.
It has been reported that Britain’s biggest welfare family is expecting their first child.
Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, is reportedly in labo(u)r.
To quote George Washington, “Let there be no Kings.”
Americans should not be following this news with baited breath.
I can’t wait to hear what Vonners, my (small R) republican British friend has to day about this.
Posted via mobile.
After all, the market solves everything, so the sale of the UK’s primary blood plasma supplier to Bain Capital should work out just fine:
The Government was tonight accused of gambling with the UK’s blood supply by selling the state-owned NHS plasma supplier to a US private equity firm.
The Department of Health overlooked several healthcare or pharmaceutical firms and at least one blood plasma specialist before choosing to sell an 80 per cent stake in Plasma Resources UK to Bain Capital, the company co-founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in a £230m deal. The Government will retain a 20 per stake and a share of potential future profits.
PRUK has annual sales of around £110m and consists of two companies: it employs 200 people at Bio Products Laboratory (BPL) in Elstree, Hertfordshire, and more than 1,000 at DCI Biologicals Inc in the US. DCI collects plasma from American donors and sends it to BPL where it is separated into blood proteins, clotting factors and albumin for supply to NHS hospitals in the treatment of immune deficiencies, neurological diseases, and haemophilia.
Considering the damage caused in the US because the American Red Cross (under the direction of Liddy Dole) and big pharma, both of whom resisted 100% testing for years,and killed tens of thousands of hemophiliacs in the United States, and many times that world wide, this does not fill em with confidence about the UK blood supply.
Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Rome, was arrested in Panama on an Italian warrant after he was convicted in absentia for kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and sending him to Egypt to be tortured.
Less than 24 hours later, he was on his way back to the United States, free from any legal jeopardy:
Former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, who was convicted in Italy of kidnapping an Egyptian Muslim cleric and recently arrested in Panama, is headed back to the United States, a State Department spokeswoman said on Friday.
“It is my understanding that he is in fact either en route or back in the United States,” said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman.
So he’ll probably never face trial for this.
In an interview, he invoked the good German defense:
He was quoted as telling Il Giornale newspaper in 2009 that he was not guilty and was carrying out orders from his superiors.
Just following orders. I thought that Nuremberg settled this matter. This is not supposed to be a valid defense.
But don’t worry, he has already suffered great punishment:
Also in that interview, he said he had wanted to stay in Italy but his retirement villa with vineyards had been seized to cover court costs.
Compare this to what is looking at Edward Snowden.
Note also the case of Posada Carriles, who blow up a civilian airliner, but lives in safety in the United States.
We had the 10th credit union failure last Monday, Taupa Lithuanian Credit Union, the rate of bank and credit union failures certainly have been slowing down.
A band called Junior Doctor.
They are doing an (I kid you not) living room tour, which is why out looks like they are playing in a living room.
We drive across the Bay Bridge to Stevenville.
Good music, and the bass player/keyboardist (Davey Hoogerwerf) was particularly impressive. His bass playing was insane.
Because of the limitations of playing in a living room, the drummer, Jarrod Kearney, played a Cajón, the box like instrument that he is sitting on.
Mark Hartman does lead vocals and rhythm guitar.
It was (obviously) a very intimate setting.
Natalie got a compliment on her song writing (she had shared some songs with then a few weeks back via Facebook). This had her going “SQUEEE!” All the easy home.
Charlie got himself filmed by the band members once they saw his mad (Rubik’s) cube skills.
It was a good time for all, though there was a 45 minute hangup on the Bay Bridge going home because of an accident.
Posted via mobile.
(Yiddish for engagement party)
This is my nephew and his betrothed.
Posted via mobile.
He has nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize as a way for the Nobel committee to atone for giving the aware do Obama:
In his letter addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Stefan Svallfors praised Snowden for his“heroic effort at great personal cost.” He stated that by revealing the existence and the scale of the US surveillance programs, Snowden showed “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.”
“This example is important because since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 has been clear that the slogan ‘I was just following orders’ is never claimed as an excuse for acts contrary to human rights and freedoms,” Professor Svallfors wrote.
He emphasized that the decision to award the 2013 prize to Edward Snowden would also “help to save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award US President Barack Obama 2009 award.”
Not being George W. Bush is an insufficient reason to give someone a f%$#ing Nobel f%$#ing Peace prize.
So, a judge rules that guards grabbing the genitals of Guantánamo prisoners who want to talk to their lawyers is interfering with their right to counsel, so they are appealing:
A federal appeals court is allowing Guantánamo guards to resume searching detainees’ genitals on their way to and from legal meetings while the Obama administration challenges a federal judge’s ruling that the searches unfairly impede attorney-client interaction.
The order Wednesday by a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit capped 24 hours of legal wrangling: The Justice Department asked a New York lawyer to let guards search her client’s genital area, the lawyer refused and the Southern Command’s top general joined the fray with a sworn declaration that a federal judge got it wrong.
Groin searches aren’t intended to prevent legal meetings, said Southcom’s Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, noting that his Guantánamo soldiers similarly search captives meeting with Red Cross delegates.
Past practice of shaking a captive’s trousers to see if “nails, shanks, ragged scraps of metal” fall out “posed an unacceptable risk to the safety and security of detainees and guards,” Kelly said.
Last week, detainee lawyers persuaded U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth that the invasive searches, adopted amid a widespread hunger strike, were discouraging some of Guantánamo’s 166 captives from voluntarily leaving their cells for meetings with their lawyers. Lamberth ordered the guards to stop it, and resume the practice of physically shaking the waistband of the pants of a prisoner to see if any contraband comes out.
………
In his ruling last week, Lamberth concluded that the motivation for the searches was not to enhance security but to deter the detainees’ access to attorneys by implementing search procedures that are “religiously and culturally abhorrent” to devout Muslims.
Lamberth’s ruling had sought to reset the search procedures to an era before Latif’s death. The judge noted that there was no proof that Latif hid the drugs in his genital area.………
In London, detainee attorney Crider, who works for a non-profit law firm Reprieve, called the refusal to follow Lamberth’s order “contempt of court, pure and simple. Why is it suddenly essential for the government to grope my clients in a way that been off-limits for years?”
I’m beginning to think that the Bush/Cheney regime of overt lawlessness is preferable to the protestations by Obama and His Evil Minions™ that they “respect” the rule of law and due process.
Where is the outrage?
Dear George Zimmerman,
For the rest of your life you are now going to feel what its like to be a black man in America.
You will feel people stare at you. Judging you for what you think are unfair reasons. You will lose out on getting jobs for something you feel is outside of your control. You will believe yourself to be an upstanding citizen and wonder why people choose to not see that.
People will cross the street when they see you coming. They will call you hurtful names. It will drive you so insane some days that you’ll want to scream at the top of your lungs. But you will have to wake up the next day, put on firm look and push through life.
I bet you never thought that by shooting a black male you’d end up inheriting all of his struggles.
Enjoy your “freedom.”
Sincerely,
A black male who could’ve been Trayvon Martin
From his Facebook page.
So, Michelle Bachmann is under investigation for campaign finance violations, one of her staff has been charged in petty thefts in other Congressional offices, and now its been revealed that aa Conservative Christian group mailed vibrator to Michele Bachmann:
.Hundreds of pages of email and text message correspondence made public last week shed new light on the infighting and organizational disarray that have plagued America’s leading conservative Christian political consulting firm in recent months.
As BuzzFeed reported in June, the Columbus-based Strategy Group for Media — which has represented dozens of tea party and religious right Republicans, including Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich — has been mired in lawsuits and internal tumult since last spring, when seven of the firm’s managers staged a religious intervention with their CEO, Rex Elsass. After the managers made their demands in a dramatic meeting that culminated with them laying hands on their boss and praying for his soul, Elsass fired three of his top lieutenants, including his longtime protégé and Strategy Group President Nick Everhart.
The series of emails and text messages, made public on the Franklin County Court website in the ongoing lawsuit between Everhart and Strategy Group, adds further detail to that meeting, and shows the extent to which the company’s managers were worried about Elsass’ psychological and spiritual health. They also reveal potentially embarrassing anecdotes for the company, including one incident in which an executive said Elsass accidentally mailed a “female pleasure machine” to Rep. Michele Bachmann.
………
And an email thread from May 29 — after the three managers were fired — featured Strategy Group’s former voter-contact consultant P.J. Wenzel making reference to Elsass sending “female pleasure machines” to Bachmann. The emails don’t elaborate on the incident, but one person familiar with the story told BuzzFeed that Elsass had intended to give Bachmann a vibrating head massager to help alleviate her migraines, and that the employee he sent to buy the gift accidentally purchased something that more closely resembled a sex toy — and sent it to her office.
Tyler said the item in question was purchased at Brookstone and was not a sex toy, but he declined to provide further information about the product. (Brookstone announced in 2011 that it had begun selling “pleasure objects.”)
The person familiar with the story said the firm successfully retrieved the gift before Bachmann could open it.
Seriously, have you noticed that when a political figure’s career is in a death spiral, that there suddenly emerge a plethora of stories that are even weirder than before?
By this benchmark, I think that Michelle Bachmann will be sent to Gitmo.
No one could tell the difference, except that Pat is a more interesting writer.
So, it’s OK to stalk a black boy in a hoodie because he’s a black boy in a hoodie, just like when he said that it was OK for jewelers to refuse to allow black people into their stores.
He also decided that the Polanski child rape was no big deal, basically because he likes Chinatown. (I would note that there are legitimate issues of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, which are serious issues, but Cohen, and the almost as awful Anne Applebaum, are just horrible human beings.)
I do not understand why Cohen is not sweeping floors for a living.
The hosts of Comedy Central both unload with both barrels
Colbert
Oliver:
A well deserved smackdown of a state that seem determined to elevate Carl Hiassen from novelist to documentarian.
There have been rumors of a corruption investigation f Representative Michelle Bachmann for some time. Well, now a senior staffer of hers has been arrested for petty thefts from other Congressional offices.
Have you ever noticed that just before a political figure is frog marched out of the building in handcuffs, their staff starts getting busted for the weirdest crap?
Well, it looks like Bachmann is on the hit parade:
That’s Javier Sanchez back in June of this year with his then-boss, Michele Bachmann. [Not bothering with the picture here] They’re headed for a closed briefing on the NSA disclosures. Javier Sanchez was a high-level legislative director for Michele Bachmann, assisting her with issues such as immigration reform, the farm bill, and her oxymoronic assignment to the House Intelligence Committee.
On July 11, Mr. Sanchez was arrested on charges that he burglarized several offices belonging to other House members. From news reports, it appears that some thefts took place back in 2012 and others in 2013.
It has been noted that, “Sanchez has been charged with Theft II,” which is for amounts less than $1000.00.
If this is the indicator that I think that it is, then Michelle Bachmann is toast.
Seeing as how Levin is one of the most intelligence agency friendly Senators, so the fact that he is subtly suggesting that DNI Clapper be fired is a significant thing:
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Tuesday that he was “troubled” by the testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and was unsure how Clapper could be held accountable.
………
The testimony prompted criticism from lawmakers and led to some calls for his resignation over the false testimony.
Levin said he wouldn’t go that far but suggested that the only way Clapper could be held accountable was if President Obama fired him.
“I’m troubled by that testimony, obviously,” Levin said at a breakfast roundtable hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.
“How do you hold him accountable? I guess the only way to do that would be for the president to, somehow or other, fire him,” Levin added. “I think he’s made it clear that he regrets saying what he said. I don’t want to call on the president to fire him, although I’m troubled by this.”
Actually, the distinguished gentleman from Michigan does want Clapper fired, he would not have brought it up, and then dismissed the suggestion, if he did not want Clapper gone.
White supremacy: the idea that some black men must be killed with impunity to keep society at large safe. http://t.co/t6eK1WzL3D
— The Nation (@thenation) July 14, 2013
It is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av, and a small subset of the nasty bits of Jewish history follows:
Excuse me while I find something sturdy to cover my head with.