"Listen, Mr. Cohen, if you want your ball-sack bac when you leave the studio, just let my producer know, but all of America has just witnessed you taking it up the ass."
Story and video at HuffPost.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Rachel Maddow Turns ‘Gay Therapist’ Back to Gay
SPR
Story and video at HuffPost.
Story and video at HuffPost.
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
Emmylou Harris & Spyboy covering Neil Young's 'Wrecking Ball' on Sessions at West 54th.
Thanks to TheDwightStuff.
Fear=Profit
Here's a little follow-up on Fixer's post on why gold is a bad investment now. Let Miss Becky's suckers buy it.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Beck - Not So Mellow Gold | ||||
| ||||
Investment tip ...
I'm not Warren Buffett by any means but we do okay. I don't generally offer financial advice but for the last few months, I've been seeing a lot more advertisements for gold peddlers, namely Goldline, on CNN.
Listen to me, now is not the time to buy gold. Now is the time to sell if you feel so inclined. Gold is at its highest value on record and you don't buy high. The time to buy was 5 years ago. Keep your money.
And don't take my word for it. Dave Neiwart has a post up at C&L touching on this as well.
The only "gold" you should be buying right now is Goldman-Sachs Preferred. Serious. Yeah, I know they suck as far as good corporate citizens go, but they always come up smelling like a rose and always pay dividends. Might as well take advantage of it.
But always, before you invest in anything, do extensive research and don't buy anything from anyone who solicits you. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Listen to me, now is not the time to buy gold. Now is the time to sell if you feel so inclined. Gold is at its highest value on record and you don't buy high. The time to buy was 5 years ago. Keep your money.
And don't take my word for it. Dave Neiwart has a post up at C&L touching on this as well.
...
"When people buy into the fear and flock into one thing, it's only a matter of time before it turns," said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at Chicago-based LaSalle Futures Group. Indeed, since last week's high of $1,218, gold had dropped Tuesday to $1,143, Zeman noted, adding: "I think the wheels could really come off the gold bandwagon."
...
The only "gold" you should be buying right now is Goldman-Sachs Preferred. Serious. Yeah, I know they suck as far as good corporate citizens go, but they always come up smelling like a rose and always pay dividends. Might as well take advantage of it.
But always, before you invest in anything, do extensive research and don't buy anything from anyone who solicits you. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Friday, December 11, 2009
My contribution ...
To Zappadan:
Sums up my single, dating life perfectly. I was a "crazy chick" magnet.
Back after pizza ...
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - Camarillo Brillo
Sums up my single, dating life perfectly. I was a "crazy chick" magnet.
Back after pizza ...
Sarah Palin, James Inhofe, and the Rest: Meet Christopher Clavius, Copernicus Denier:
The Rude Pundit compares anti-heliocentrists to climate change deniers. Worth a read.
It's easy to believe lies when ideology trumps reality. It follows then that if you believe it, it must be true, right?
You cannot imagine the shitstorm Nicholas Copernicus started when he stated that the sun was the center of the universe with planets revolving around it. All of a sudden, holy fuck, not only was the Earth no longer the big astronomical cheese, but the fuckin' terra firma was moving. [...]
The point here is not to mock poor Christopher Clavius for being a Jesuit tool for his German religious overlords. But one imagines that if at the time, with the wealth of the church behind him, had there been an internet and Fox "news" and a compliant media who believe that facts are mutable, Clavius would have been cited repeatedly in order to smack down that asshole Copernicus for daring to fuck with our sense of our place in the universe. And the uneducated masses, not knowing anything more than what the church told them, would have mostly agreed, "Fuck that Copernicus. What does he know?" We would still be arguing over it now, calling out Copernicus-deniers.
The Rude Pundit thought of Clavius when he read Sarah Palin's idiotic editorial in the Washington Post and then saw that she was daring to take on Al Gore over climate change. Truly, while he is not threatened possible sanction by a powerful church, it is sad to see Gore have to answer constant questions on whether or not climate change is real, to have to address every conspiracy theory that comes up, to have to talk to people as if an observed, confirmed fact is not such.
Clavius never completely gave up on geocentrism. But Galileo visited him in 1611, just before his death, and allowed him to use the telescope. Observing for himself such things as the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter, Clavius realized that what he believed about the order of the universe could not stand up to such scrutiny, and one of the last things he wrote was, "Since things are thus, astronomers ought to consider how the celestial orbs may be arranged in order to save these phenomena."
Clavius died the next year. Imagine Clavius in that moment, knowing his time was passed; knowing that everything he defended, all those centuries, all those theories, was now up for grabs; knowing - he had to - that he was wrong. The Rude Pundit would like to believe that we live among people who have the capacity for such enlightenment, but he fears that we are in an age where unbelief is, to rephrase, too convenient for truth.
It's easy to believe lies when ideology trumps reality. It follows then that if you believe it, it must be true, right?
The marijuana majority emerges
Traffic light near Fixer's house
Stephen C. Webster
According to an Angus Reid poll, 53 percent of Americans are now in favor of legalizing marijuana. A further 68 percent of respondents said that the war on drugs has been a “failure.”
If only it mattered what the people think...
Headline of the Day dos
Tea Party protesters plan ‘die-ins’ at Senate offices
Excellent! I hope they have a great turnout and I wish them great success! May they all die!
It's a race to the bottom ...
Between NY and CA ...
... for the title of the 'Most Useless Legislature in the Nation'.
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. David Paterson said Wednesday that New York has run out of cash and he's directing budget officials to reduce state aid payments to schools, local governments and nonprofit service providers until things improve.
...
"I am directing the Division of the Budget to limit payments so that we will have the cash to pay our debts at the end of December," Paterson said. "I will continue to withhold payments until this economy is leveled off."
"Now New York has run out of cash," he said. "You can't spend money that you don't have."
...
... for the title of the 'Most Useless Legislature in the Nation'.
Thanks to Mr. Mass Transit for the link.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
"...coulda had him any day..."*
*Apologies to Pancho and Lefty. For the full effect, open a new window and listen to that over and over while you read this link.
Today's 'must read' at Washington's Blog, more links at site:
Oh, they cared about him, all right. He was indispensible to their efforts. More on that later.
Yeah, letting yhe French get him simply wouldn't have done.
Simple. Without bin Laden, al Qaeda would have been done and they would not have had an excuse to invade Iraq. They needed a boogieman on the loose to keep up the fearmongering that turned this nation into compliant pussies and let them get away with the crime of the century. The neocon PNAC and the Military Industrial Complex demanded it.
Oil, money, and world domination. That quest has cost us over 5000 American lives, 40,000 wounded, God knows how many walking time bombs and lives ruined, 100,000 plus dead Iraqis, a coupla $Trillion dollars, the nation is broke and in debt up to its ass.
We have no money left, we didn't get the oil, and we're in absolutely no danger any more of ruling the world.
It's what we get for letting warmongering capitalists and right-wing ideologues install a weakling as president who would do their bidding. Karzai is corrupt for sure, but he is small potatoes compared to the previous administration.
Thanks, Georgie. You pussy asshole.
It must never happen again again, but as memory fades it probably will until we get the money out of politics. Probably not in this lifetime.
As long as this post is, there is much more at the main link. Read it and stay pissed off. Complacency kills.
Today's 'must read' at Washington's Blog, more links at site:
The top military commander in Afghanistan - Stanley McChrystal - says that getting Bin Laden is the key to defeating Al Qaeda.
Getting Bin Laden sounds fine to me. But apparently the Bush administration couldn't have cared less about him.
Oh, they cared about him, all right. He was indispensible to their efforts. More on that later.
The oldest - and second-largest - French newspaper claims that CIA agents met with Bin Laden two months before 9/11, when he was already wanted for the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Sibel Edmonds (the former FBI translator, who Department of Justice's Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible, and some of whose previous claims have been confirmed by the British press) makes similar allegations. Bear with me, the rest of this essay is less speculative. If true, then the CIA could have nabbed Bin Laden before 9/11 (my em).
On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing gave the Taliban evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in 9/11. As the Guardian writes:
The Guardian subsequently points out:
A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.
For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said.
So the U.S. could have had Bin Laden led away in handcuffs in October 2001.
According to the U.S. Senate - Bin Laden was "within the grasp" of the U.S. military in Afghanistan in December 2001, but that then-secretary of defense Rumsfeld refused to provide the soldiers necessary to capture him.
...
In addition, French soldiers allegedly say that they easily could have captured or killed Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but that the American commanders stopped them.
Yeah, letting yhe French get him simply wouldn't have done.
President Bush also shut down the CIA operation trying to capture Osama bin Laden. And let him escape in Tora Bora.
If they care about capturing the man who actually attacked us on 9/11 and killed nearly 3,000 Americans, they have a funny way of showing it.
A retired Colonel said that the U.S. could have killed Bin Laden again in 2007, but didn't:
We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it ....Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.
What did they know about bin Laden that they did not share with the public? Were they confident, for undisclosed reasons, that he posed no threat? Why are there no expressions of concern about his whereabouts?
If capturing or killing Bin Laden is so important, why didn't we do it in early 2001, or October 2001, or December 2001, or 2007?
Simple. Without bin Laden, al Qaeda would have been done and they would not have had an excuse to invade Iraq. They needed a boogieman on the loose to keep up the fearmongering that turned this nation into compliant pussies and let them get away with the crime of the century. The neocon PNAC and the Military Industrial Complex demanded it.
Oil, money, and world domination. That quest has cost us over 5000 American lives, 40,000 wounded, God knows how many walking time bombs and lives ruined, 100,000 plus dead Iraqis, a coupla $Trillion dollars, the nation is broke and in debt up to its ass.
We have no money left, we didn't get the oil, and we're in absolutely no danger any more of ruling the world.
It's what we get for letting warmongering capitalists and right-wing ideologues install a weakling as president who would do their bidding. Karzai is corrupt for sure, but he is small potatoes compared to the previous administration.
Thanks, Georgie. You pussy asshole.
It must never happen again again, but as memory fades it probably will until we get the money out of politics. Probably not in this lifetime.
As long as this post is, there is much more at the main link. Read it and stay pissed off. Complacency kills.
*!אױ גװאַלד
Mark Leibovich, NYT. Links at site.
Uh-oh. End-of-days shit. Yeah, that Mormon likes Jews all right if they'll convert any time up until the last minute. Otherwise fuck 'em.
I'm going to be sick.
Note to Hatch: Put yer money where yer mouth is. Have a bris or STFU.
Note to those of the Hebrew persuasion: Watch your backs. Better yet, run for your life from this asshole.
The canon of Hanukkah songs written by Mormon senators from Utah just got a little bigger.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a solemn-faced Republican with a soft spot for Jews and a love of Barbra Streisand, has penned a catchy holiday tune, “Eight Days of Hanukkah.”
The video was posted Tuesday night on Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish lifestyle and culture, just in time for Hanukkah.
“Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do,” Mr. Hatch said in an interview before heading to the Senate floor to debate an abortion amendment. “Mormons believe the Jewish people are the chosen people, just like the Old Testament says.”
Uh-oh. End-of-days shit. Yeah, that Mor
At one point, Mr. Hatch unbuttons his white dress shirt to expose the golden mezuzah necklace he wears every day. Mezuzahs also adorn the doorways of his homes in Washington and Utah. Mr. Hatch keeps a Torah in his Senate office.
“Not a real Torah, but sort of a mock Torah,” he said. “I feel sorry I’m not Jewish sometimes.”
I'm going to be sick.
Note to Hatch: Put yer money where yer mouth is. Have a bris or STFU.
Note to those of the Hebrew persuasion: Watch your backs. Better yet, run for your life from this asshole.
*Oy gevult!
Quote of the Day
From Deer Hunting with Jesus - Dispatches from America's Class War at the end of letters back and forth:
That's it in a nutshell.
PS: Yes there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. One has no heart and the other has no spine. But they both work for the same crime syndicate.
That's it in a nutshell.
Something good ...
Montag:
And he directs us to the USO site. Now, as a vet, I know what the USO does and it's a lot more than Bob Hope shows. Sometimes, the USO is the only slice of home a GI has for months, maybe years, at a time when he's deployed. If ya got a couple extra bucks, this is a good place to send them.
Whether it is for the 170,000 troops stuck in one of the Bush/Cheney sandtraps or any of the other thousands of US military personnel away from home and family, do something to show your support for the troops beyond a cheap, made in China bumper magnet.
...
And he directs us to the USO site. Now, as a vet, I know what the USO does and it's a lot more than Bob Hope shows. Sometimes, the USO is the only slice of home a GI has for months, maybe years, at a time when he's deployed. If ya got a couple extra bucks, this is a good place to send them.
Rufus feat. Chaka Kahn - Tell Me Something Good
Paying their share ...
Good on my British friends:
Now, I like paying taxes as much as the next guy but a big reason we have a deficit is because the very rich have all but given up paying them; that, and two wars being fought "off-the-books". After 30 years of hearing the bullshit of how taxation hurts the economy, they actually believe it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the stuff we do and take for granted has to be paid for ... sometime ... eventually.
Tell ya what, since the Christmas season is neigh upon us, buy as many things as you can. Until your credit card melts. Ten times more stuff than you can afford. And then tell your creditors that repayment isn't in your budget this year. Better yet, tell them you'll issue them a bond with a meager interest rate coming due 30 years from now. See what they say.
You like highways and bridges that don't crumble under you? You like the military to be able to respond to a threat against our nation? You like all those things you take for granted to still be there? You gotta pay taxes. You also gotta realize that making the rich and the corporations pay their fair share will not "lose jobs" or "destroy the economy". "Trickle-down economics" has been proven not to work, yet people still fall for the scare tactics.
"The Land of the Free" does not mean you don't have to pay for anything.
Britain's Labour government slapped a one-off levy on bank bonuses on Wednesday and said it would hike income tax for all but the poorest in 2011, delaying action to tackle a record deficit until after an election it is expected to lose.
...
Now, I like paying taxes as much as the next guy but a big reason we have a deficit is because the very rich have all but given up paying them; that, and two wars being fought "off-the-books". After 30 years of hearing the bullshit of how taxation hurts the economy, they actually believe it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the stuff we do and take for granted has to be paid for ... sometime ... eventually.
Tell ya what, since the Christmas season is neigh upon us, buy as many things as you can. Until your credit card melts. Ten times more stuff than you can afford. And then tell your creditors that repayment isn't in your budget this year. Better yet, tell them you'll issue them a bond with a meager interest rate coming due 30 years from now. See what they say.
You like highways and bridges that don't crumble under you? You like the military to be able to respond to a threat against our nation? You like all those things you take for granted to still be there? You gotta pay taxes. You also gotta realize that making the rich and the corporations pay their fair share will not "lose jobs" or "destroy the economy". "Trickle-down economics" has been proven not to work, yet people still fall for the scare tactics.
"The Land of the Free" does not mean you don't have to pay for anything.
Thanks to Chris for the link.
Common sense ...
Of which the Dems and their leadership seem to have abdicated (if they had any to begin with). Mr. Philadelphia (in toto):
The Dems painted themselves into a corner from Jump Street and this crap legislation is what we end up with. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.
I hope Dems in Congress take a moment or two to think about the politics of health care reform. Once it passes they will own all of it, not just the reforms. Republicans will turn every health insurance horror story in a story about how the Dems' HCR is a tremendous awful horrible failure, whether or not it has anything to do with specific reforms enacted.
All of this is my subtle way of suggesting they'd better pass something that people like and that works, because otherwise every insurance company dick move will be their fault.
The Dems painted themselves into a corner from Jump Street and this crap legislation is what we end up with. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Shoein' an' Wheezin'
Snow can be fun, and just about anything you do in it, from shovelling to skiing, is great exercise. The dogs love it.
The snow is still pretty soft and the 'shoes are sinking in about six inches with every step which I hope explains the wheezin' a little. It's good to get your heart rate up. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice so I'll go out again and take a ski pole for better balance and break some trail up to the woods. Enjoy this. I did.
Notice me snicker at about 1:17 when I got my 'shoes crossed. My prediction almost came true. Heh.
I gotta work on holding the camera more level.
The snow is still pretty soft and the 'shoes are sinking in about six inches with every step which I hope explains the wheezin' a little. It's good to get your heart rate up. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice so I'll go out again and take a ski pole for better balance and break some trail up to the woods. Enjoy this. I did.
Notice me snicker at about 1:17 when I got my 'shoes crossed. My prediction almost came true. Heh.
I gotta work on holding the camera more level.
Thanks to me.
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