Thanksgiving Redux

No posts for today. Thanksgiving Part 2 with the family.

And just the Godfather, the sequel will be just as good.

Mangia!

Wal-Mart Kills

I avoid Wal-Mart for political and moral reasons, not to mention the cretins who shop there. You may want to avoid because you may die.

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

Apparently, while emergency crews worked furiously to save the store clerk's life, shoppers just kept coming, as if the scene was little more than an inconvenient obstacle between them and low-priced merchandise.

Is cheap shit from China worth it? If it's not the lead paint in the toothpaste or tainted baby formula, it's the stores that stock their garbage that will kill you.

What cheap shit were they in danger of selling out of?

Win-Win Bankruptcy Reform

As banks are asking for billions to stay afloat, they are not cutting deals for the small homeowner.

Bankruptcy judge in the Washington Post:

"Homeowners are the only ones who cannot modify the terms of their secured debts in bankruptcy. Corporate America flocks to bankruptcy courts to do precisely this -- to restructure and reamortize loans whose conditions they find onerous or can no longer meet. Airlines are still flying and auto parts makers still operating because they have used this powerful tool of the bankruptcy process. Lehman Brothers will surely invoke it. But when the bankruptcy code was adopted in 1979, the mortgage industry persuaded Congress that its market was so tightly regulated and conservatively run that it should be exempted from the general bankruptcy rules permitting modification."

With so many homes being foreclosed on, is it better to let homeowners adjust what they owe based on what the house is really worth in bankruptcy courts?

"Such a solution would have been better for everyone. Obviously, it would have been good for the homeowner and the community in which she lives. Instead of another abandoned house tied up in foreclosure, her residence would be owned by a taxpaying citizen. More important, it would have been good for the lender. Whatever unknown mortgage syndicates hold pieces of this loan, they are never going to get their 14 percent return. Instead, the total recovery will be limited to the proceeds from a foreclosure sale in a depressed market."

The modifications as stated in the article "would elegantly separate those homeowners who desperately need to stay in their homes and have sufficient incomes to make reasonable payments from those investors who bet on lax regulation, easy credit and an appreciating market in buying residential properties."

This approach goes against America's somewhat vindictive nature of "getting what you deserve" and will be a test of how far we have come as a society. Bush and Co changed the bankruptcy laws in favor of the banks and credit cards, it's time we change it back in our favor now that they've been bailed out with taxpayer money.

Source: WaPo

Consumption In America: All Gain, All Pain

Reminds me of the spoof 5-minute abs commercial. America has been eating and doing 2-minute abs. NYT op-ed on our addiction to consumption and what we might change and learn from it

It’s game over for the American consumer. Inflation-adjusted personal consumption expenditures are on track for rare back-to-back quarterly declines in the second half of 2008 at a 3.5 percent average annual rate. There are only four other instances since 1950 when real consumer demand has fallen for two quarters in a row. This is the first occasion when declines in both quarters will have exceeded 3 percent. The current consumption plunge is without precedent in the modern era.

The good news is that lines should be short for today’s “first shopping day” of the holiday season. The bad news is more daunting: rising unemployment, weakening incomes, falling home values, a declining stock market, record household debt and a horrific credit crunch. But there is a deeper, potentially positive, meaning to all this: Consumers are now abandoning the asset-dependent spending and saving strategies they embraced during the bubbles of the past dozen years and moving back to more prudent income-based lifestyles

Bush's spend and borrow mantra is the only thing that trickled down in his 8 years. The sense of sacrifice we as a country ignored and denied is catching up with us. It's now our time to be fiscally responsible and mean it.

Source: NYT

"He's Just Not That Into You" Trailer (VIDEO)

Looks like a rental. Scarlett Johansson skinny dipping scene?

"getting rejected by 7 different technologies is exhausting"

Study: Narcissistic Personalities On The Rise

You're so vain, you probably think this post is about you.

Are we more vain these day? Too much self-esteem? YouTube's slogan is "Broadcast yourself", Time magazine declared that the 2006 Person of the Year was "You" complete with a mirror on the cover.

There are studies on this, believe it or not. Some say yes, some say not so much.

A blogger known as the Last Psychiatrist favors the more damning study, which found that scores by college students on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory have risen 13 percent since 1980; that two thirds of students in 2006 scored higher on the survey than students in 1980; and (ouch!) that the 2006 students were no less narcissistic than 200 celebrities profiled in yet another recent study.

What do the studies say is the consequence, for instance, of all this narcissism among our kids?

"A trend among college students toward "hooking up" rather than...relationships;"

81% of students thought " getting rich was among their generations most important goals" (rich is the new porn);

51% said it was getting famous

Not the craziest data ever. The studies say Narcissism doesn't mean you're bad, though, just that you think you're the main character in your own movie. Maybe that movie is about a woman who works for a non-profit but manages to date the President. [In defense, crime is down; volunteerism is up.]

So the consequences are debatable, the cause is more illusive:

I don't know what caused those kids to be more narcissistic than the 80s kids, but I do know what happened to those 90s kids after college: they became adults. And they became the custodians of the world, and, they demanded entertainment that suited them. Music, movies, internet, technology-- all that was aimed at them, not the next group of college kids. Unfortunately for the next college kids, there was nothing else to watch. The 30 year old in 2000 wanted to watch Survivor and The Bachelor, so everyone had to watch Survivor and The Bachelor, and it's changed cognition: even kids who have never watched those shows still uses the phrase "voted off" and "immunity."

And the 35 year old in 2005 became a parent, and that parent wanted school vouchers and great healthcare, but also lower taxes and to be able to eat out at restaurants once a week. ('The kids are with my mother.") Those parents want easy credit and a bigger house.

The study concludes:

"This trend is going to continue, frankly, until we either have a major recession, war, or my generation dies."

Do all three have to happen at the same time? We have 2 of the 3.

Source: The Last Psychiatrist

Obama Ready On Day One

All those lame skeptics can return back to their Drudge homepage for further instructions. Ready on day one. Feel it.

"John Podesta, the head of the transition team, told Bloomberg News that the cabinet selections will be "virtually" complete by Christmas."

And:

"Obama, who is further along in making key appointments than any of his recent predecessors were at this point in the transition period, is expected to announce his national security team next week."

Practically doing Bush's job 2 months early.

Source: The Washington Monthly

Doonesbury On Palin

Comics that conservatives could learn from. They need a lot of pictures, not so great with the words and fancy book learnin'.



Source: Andrew Sullivan

Obama Family Matters

Conservative writer Kathleen Parker has been distancing herself from the Right the past few weeks. Although she may be losing friends in her base, I think this is a sign of conservatism post-Bush.

"George Bush's "bring 'em on" cowboy style worked for about half the American people and about 5 percent of the globe. By comparison, Obama's style resonates with about 90 percent of the world"

And more to the point, she notes how Obama will have an effect on America's minorities:

Obama's example could have society-altering effects, especially in the African American community. By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.

Conservatives insist, correctly, that culture matters. Many liberals think so, too, by the way. Why, some liberals even stay married their entire lives to the same person and raise children to do the same.

You want Ward Cleaver? Meet Barack Obama. Michelle is June Cleaver with a law degree. Family values don't get more traditional than those of the Obamas, who ooze marital bliss and whose adorable daughters make feminist cynics want to bake cookies and learn to smock.

Though we may perish of boredom, the Obamas may do more to elevate the American family than all the pro-marriage initiatives conceived by those who claim to speak for the deity.

Obama leads by example, personal responsibility, educational ambition and smart public diplomacy. That is Presidential change that will effect today and generations to come.

Source: WaPo

Chris Matthews To Run For Senate

Philadelphia native Chris Matthews throws his hat into the ring in his homestate for 2010 elections.

FiveThirtyEight's Sean Quinn reports that MSNBC host Chris Matthews is, in fact, running for Senate in Pennsylvania as a Democrat. Arlen Specter, the aging Republican incumbent, will be 80 if he chooses to run for re-election.

In a state that got rid of Rick Santorum and his ilk a few years ago and is decidedly blue now, it makes sense for Tweety and his ego to make a run.

Source: HuffPo

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving.

Not much to do but eat, drink and be thankful for all the little things.

Obama

ThinkProgress added 17 more things to ne thankful for:

We’re thankful we’ll soon have a president who will hit the ground running instead of a president who is running the country into the ground.

We’re thankful that Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are demonstrating every night how strong and intelligent progressive voices can be successful on TV.

We’re thankful we live in a center-left America rather than “Hannity’s America.”

We’re thankful John McCain has more time to spend in the houses he owns…even if he can’t remember them all.

We’re thankful Sarah Palin has more time to watch over Russia and warn us in case Vladimir Putin ever “rears his head.”

We’re thankful that we’re moving closer towards a complete withdrawal from Iraq.

We’re thankful for the thousands of protesters who took to the streets across America to push for marriage equality.

We’re not thankful for neo-McCarthys, neo-Hoovers, neo-Nazis, and neocons.

We’re thankful for Tina Fey.

We’re thankful to be liberal hacks.

We’re not thankful for hack operatives burrowing into career civil service jobs.

We’re more thankful for Vice President Joe Biden and “Morning Joe” than Joe Lieberman and “Joe the Plumber.”

We’re thankful that our troops will be able to get the education they so richly deserve.

We’re thankful for the “Mustache of Justice,” “Rahmbo,” “Axe,” and “Skippy.”

We’re thankful that reality still has a liberal bias.

We’re thankful that there are only 54 days left until the end of the George W. Bush presidency.

We’re thankful for the progressive mandate to govern.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Joe Klein: Bush - Overweening Arrogance And Paralytic Incompetence

Joe Klein on Bush:

By mid-November, with the financial crisis growing worse by the day, it had become obvious that one President was no longer enough (at least not the President we had). So, in the days before Thanksgiving, Obama began to move — if not to take charge outright, then at least to preview what things will be like when he does take over in January....

That we have slightly more than one President for the moment is mostly a consequence of the extraordinary economic times. Even if George Washington were the incumbent, the markets would want to know what John Adams was planning to do after his Inauguration. And yet this final humiliation seems particularly appropriate for George W. Bush. At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks....

[H]is ridiculous, preening appearance in a flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier beneath the "Mission Accomplished" sign. The flight-suit image is one of the two defining moments of the Bush failure. The other is the photo of Bush staring out the window of Air Force One, helplessly viewing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles — overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence....

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

Source: Time

Rachel Maddow: Be Thankful For The End Of BushCo

Rachel Maddow on the end of BushCo and a look back on resignations, indictments, scandals and other things to be thankful for.

Bush Eats Crow

Taj Hotel In Flames

Historic Taj Hotel in flames. Shocking.



Source: CNN

Always The US Angle

Interesting to see the US news like CNN and MSNBC jump through hoops to put an American angle on these attacks in India. How the targets were Western is the over-riding theme.

That and tying anything muslim, a la Kashmir-Pakistan, to al-Qaeda. Trying to tie Al-Qaeda to the attacks, using "al-Qaeda-like" to describe everything. The luxury hotels attacked are described as "used by US travelers", always mentioning that US citizens were targeted. So, by association America has, yet again, been attacked by al-Qaeda.

And there's always the "could this happen in your town?" angle they try to put you in the middle on the horror.

I'm sure the Right is typing out their "How Obama will be tested" even as Bush hides out in the White House basement.

Maybe this is between Pakistan and India and has nothing to do with us.

Hannity Wusses Out On Filling Colmes Role

Does college drop-out Sean Hannity have the balls to partner with a big-league liberal now that Alan Colmes has left the show? Some suggestionss would be Ed Schultz, Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes, and Al Franken (if he loses) as good replacement candidates to withstand Hannity and his ego for the daily hour-long show.

Does Fox want to balance the show? Word is Hannity will go solo. Wuss. Part wimp, part puss.

The left-and-right model of Fox political comment on the air will probably become right and even more lunatic right.

Source: NYT

Mumbai Unhinged: 78 Dead

CHAOS! A city under siege, multiple attacks, 2 hostage situations.

Targeting British and US citizens!

MUMBAI, India — A top state officials says at least 40 people have been killed and 100 have been injured when gunmen opened fire on a crowded Mumbai train station, luxury hotels and a restaurant popular with tourists.

UPDATE: 78 dead, 200 injured
UPDATE 2: Deccan Mujahedeen claim responsibility

Not a good day to call the Dell helpline phone center.



Source: AP

Obama's Pre-Inauguration Press Conferences To Outnumber Bush's Total First Term

Obama is clearly using the press like no other President. He's given 3 press conferences this week alone and he's not even sworn in. Open and transparent seems to be the message. Letting the American people know what is going on and how he plans to work things out. That's leadership. That's change.

How do we know? Compare.

Bush held just 17 solo news conferences during his first four years in office, the lowest total of any first term president since Dwight Eisenhower formally launched on-the-record briefings with reporters back in 1953. By comparison, President Bill Clinton held 44 solo news conferences during his first four years in office, Bush 41 held 84, and President Ronald Reagan held 26, according to statistics compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University.

Source: Google

Bailout: Word Of The Year

via Boston Herald:

The word “bailout,” which shot to prominence amid the financial meltdown, was looked up so often at Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary that the publisher says it was an easy choice for its 2008 Word of the Year.

Last year’s winning word was “W00t,” spelled with two zeros and used by online game players to express triumph or happiness.

A year earlier, “truthiness” topped the list after it was coined by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert.

Source: Boston Herald

South Africa: AIDS Policy Led To 365,000 Deaths

South Africa, so much to answer for. So sad when a leader can have such a negative effect on his people, particularly the young.

via NYT:

A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.

The Harvard study concluded that the policies grew out of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it.

AmericaBlog has some strong words that I concur with:

"I've felt for years that someone should have gone in and forcibly removed this man from office by any means necessary. When the leader of a nation basically denies the existence of AIDS - the idiot still believes this crap - he is committing genocide. Mbeki's health minister proposed using garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as a treatment for AIDS - that moron was removed from office only two months ago when Mbeki was forced out of his job. The world should have come together and removed Mbeki a long ago. He is no better than the apartheid masters he replaced. And anyone who aided and abetted this man in the South African government should be thrown in jail. I'm sorry, but he prematurely murdered 365,000 people. The man is a pig. He ought to be in jail. He ought to be with the 365,000 people he killed."

What was the upside in denying the facts? It wasn't money. It was not kickbacks from some pharmaceutical company. You just stood and stared as your people died.

The good news is that Barbara Hogan has been put in charge as health minister by the new president, Kgalema Motlanthe. “I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying,” Ms. Hogan, an A.N.C. stalwart who was imprisoned for a decade during the anti-apartheid struggle, said in a recent interview. “The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa.”

Source: NYT

Americans' Food Stamp Use Nears All-Time High

The number of Americans on food stamps may exceed 30 million for the first time this month, putting a spotlight on hunger during a period of increasing unemployment and rising food prices. “Economists say an increase in food stamp benefits would help the economy overall by concentrating relief on those most likely to spend the money quickly.”

"We soon will have the most food stamps recipients in the history of our country," said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a D.C.-based anti-hunger policy organization. "If the economic forecasts come true, we're likely to see the most hunger that we've seen since the 1981 recession and maybe since the 1960s, when these programs were established."



30 million is approximately 10% of our population. And the sad thing is that food stamps, originally intended to supplement a family’s food budget, nowadays is far more likely to be the family’s entire food budget. The policies of the past 8 years have only made this worse. Thanks, George.

Source: WaPo

Obama: Change "Comes From Me"

I could never in a million years see Bush giving a press conference like this, let alone three days in a row. Democracy has returned.

At this segment, a reporter, Ed Henry, asks a tired right wing talking point “What do you say to your supporters looking for change?" to which Obama dismantles the conventional wisdom "Clinton retread" of the day:

"It would be surprising if I selected a Treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration because that would mean the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever. And I suspect you would be troubled and the American people would be troubled if I selected a Treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council…who had no experience whatsoever."

So yeah, you may recognize the names, but you have to “combine experience with fresh thinking.” Obama nails it:

"But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job — is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure that my team is implementing it."

Check it:



Lazy journalism and dull logic implies that if you worked for Clinton, you must want to keep his 1992-2000 policies alive. Not the case. These appointees work for Obama.

And unlike Republicans who leave office to run corporations, then come back into politics to reap the rewards and make serious money off their connections, these appointees are mostly still in government working for the people.

The buck stops with Barack. Ed Henry, consider another job.

Source: ThinkProgress

Thank YOU, Sarah Palin

via 23/6:

"Thank You, Governor Palin" done right.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Source: 23/6

Obama Plans to Name Volcker

"President" Obama pland to name former Fed Chair Paul Volcker to lead a new White House economic advisory committee.

Mr. Volcker, 81, has been providing Mr. Obama advice on the economy for months. After briefly considering him for Treasury secretary, Mr. Obama instead asked Mr. Volcker to lead the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a panel comprised of officials from a variety of business sectors. The group is tasked with providing Mr. Obama advice for how to jumpstart the economy and stabilize the financial markets.

If there is any economy left after the Bush Administration, Obama has quite the team.

Source: NYT

Vatican Can Be Sued For Priest Sex Abuse

Just in time for the Christmas season:

A US appeals court has ruled that the Vatican can be sued for the sex abuse committed by US priests.

This is just the start of it. The ruling was called "very incremental" and noted it does not establish whether Vatican policy contributed to the allegations of thousands of incidents abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.

"We're miles away from liability," the report said.

The ruling was hailed as a potential breakthrough by abuse victims. Over 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse have come forward in the United States alone.

Source: ThinkProgress

Facebook Group: Stop "YMCA" at Yankee Stadium

Best new group I've seen on Facebook:

Stop the 6th inning grounds crew from doing the "YMCA" dance. It's about 10 years past tolerable.

You can add the ridiculously kitsch techno "Cotton Eye Joe" and the Kate Smith version of "God Bless America", too. Totally out of context at a New York sports event.

Leave it at the old stadium.

Source: Facebook

The Numbers Game

For those "unions killed the Auto Industry" debates that are bound to pop up during these bailout talks, keep this in mind:

The average Ford worker makes $50,000 a year without overtime.

Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally made $28 million for four months on the job in 2006.

Conservatives love to point out the unions are bad. Management can be worse.

Peter Schiff On The Bail-Outs

Peter Schiff was able to predict the housing bubble and economic misery we are in years ago. I like his no non-sense approach to swallowing bad tasting medicine. He thinks the bail-outs only prolong the inevitable:

"So for the same reasons that Washington should not bail out General Motors, the world should not bailout America. Like GM, our economy is in desperate need of a restructuring. Spending must be replaced with savings, and consumption with production. The service sector must shrink and manufacturing must expand to fill the void. The dollar must fall, wages in America must be brought down to a competitive level, and hopefully government spending and burdensome regulation can be reduced.

This transformation will not be fun, but it is necessary. Our standard of living must decline to reflect years of reckless consumption and the disintegration of our industrial base. Only by swallowing this tough medicine now will our sick economy ever recover. By accepting a lower standard of living today, we will eventually be rewarded with a higher one tomorrow."

Ouch! Spoken like a true politician.

Source: Peter Schiff

Bush Pardons Big Turkey

via The Onion:

Better pardon him quick before Cheney gets a shot off.


In Thanksgiving Tradition, Bush Pardons Scooter Libby In Giant Turkey Costume

Source: The Onion

What Is A Trillion?

To give some perspective, at a dollar a second:

Million $ = about two weeks
Billion $ = about 31 years
Trillion $ = about 31,688 years

The Cost Of Doing Bail-Outs

Barry Ritholz calculates that the various government bailouts under way amount to $4.6165 trillion dollars. To put it in context, he shows the cost of some other government expenditures you might have heard of:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

What would be the cost of doing nothing? Impossible to tell but much more in suffering. Also to be fair, much of the bailout is a "loan", whereas some of these costs like the war on Iraq are "raw expenditures" with no repayment.

Source: BoingBoing

Gas Reaching 2004 Prices: Why Were They So High?

This is a reflective post, I don't have any answers, per se, but I do have questions.

It's great that gasoline prises are falling across the country these day, we can all use a break.

I know demand is falling, which if you kept supply constant [which is theory and not possible] that would explain the fall in price. So the same oil is coming out the ground, being processed the same way, but it's much cheaper now because purely demand has peaked? Were talking a 50% drop in price. You have to ask yourself why oil was allowed to get up to $145 per barrel if it did not really reflect the true cost?

Unregulated commodities markets? Horrible foreign policy under Bush? Fear? It will be one of the many Bush legacies, or Bush Tax, that we will figure out in the coming months.

Some other Bush legacies to investigate: the evisceration of the American middle class and the collapse of the world economy.

Democrat Or Porn Star: Moustache Edition

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Source: 23/6

Daily Show: Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits

The answer to the "Thank you, Sarah Palin" ad this week. [NOTE: Seems to be a problem with Comedy Central videos today, check back]

More Sex Does Not Mean Better Sex

The title is so misleading, Why Are Christians Having Better Sex Than the Rest of Us?

So a mega-church pastor in Texas told his miscreants congregants to have sex every day for a week. [Will the control issues of the church ever stop?]

Libido pygmy Tucker Carlson, the poster boy for faux Country Club machismo and perennial show cancelee, writes an article claiming that Christians and Evangelicals who have sex more often must be having better sex. Let's not confuse quantity and quality. And let's not confuse your wife for meth-fueled sodomy with male prostitutes, Ted Haggard.

If you need your pastor to to tell you to have more sex with your wife, chances your marriage is beyond stale, you have about 50 extra pounds and you find your spouse at best tolerable are pretty good. I'm envisioning all the "Bubbas" and "Sissys" in that Texas congregation, in their light blue jumpsuits and massive belt buckles, awkwardly giggling at their better half, thinking "I have to hit that? Jeez! When are the 'Boys on?".

Just like in high school or college, it's always the guys not getting laid putting out the "I have sex all the time" vibes to over-compensate.

Conservatives getting sex advice from pastors and Tucker, classic. The "more sex" meme is really their thinly veiled message of "have more babies, stay in the church, gives us more money". Cynical, but true.

Source: Daily Beast

Snoop and Martha Get You "Ready Up" For Thanksgiving

Make some "Crack-a-lackin" mashed potatoes with fellow lawbreakers Snoop Dogg and the unflappable Martha Stewart. It's all hood. Something tells me those sunglasses are handy.



From Martha's blog:

[He] taught me some of his very own language called Snoop-guistics. He and his posse add ‘izzles’ onto the ends of words. It’s kind of a code, or a way of communicating so that others won’t know what they’re talking about. Example: fo shizzle is how they say, for sure. Snoop Dogg also shared:

* Crack-a-lackin – means get something poppin
* Chuuuch – means take God everywhere you go and everything will be all right
* All hood – means good
* Ball til ya fall – get as much money as you can before you die

The Return Of FEMA

Before Bush, FEMA was a "model of efficiency and effectiveness". Then Bush and his ownership neocon buddies gutted such agencies, stripped its leadership of cabinet-level status and put unqualified horse trainers in charge. It was their heartless and calculated attempt at trying to shrink the Government, as conservative tax-meister Grover Norquist would say, so it "was small enough to drown in a bathtub". Thanks, guys. You won, the Gulf States didn't.

Good news is that the national joke that is FEMA is getting an overhaul with Barack Oabma in charge

"First off, the likely plan is to break off the agency from the Department of Homeland Security, a move that by itself would help restore the pride that folks at FEMA felt when it was an independent agency.

Second, there's increasing talk that former director James Lee Witt, who took over the then-troubled agency at the start of the Clinton administration and left it eight years later with a much-enhanced reputation, is coming back from retirement to run FEMA for six months to a year, to whip it into shape."

Next step would be to get the Department of Homeland Security an overhaul.

Just think how different Katrina would have been with anyone but Bush in charge?

Source: WaPo

Obama's "Change" Ripples in Arab Online Media

via boingboing:

It seems like an appropriate enough cartoon. The depiction of the president elect Barack Obama with the US flag behind him and the bubble quoting Obama as saying the change has come to Washington. Looking up to the Obama depiction was an excited Egyptian woman congratulating the African American senator, reminding him not to forget that people around the world have been hoping and praying for his success. This was followed by the Arabic phrase uqbal inna, meaning "may the same [change] happen to us".

According to the opposition weekly Sawt al Umma, the cartoon appearing the leading Egyptian daily Al Ahram, caused a sense of an emergency among the Egyptian leadership. The independent weekly stated that 150,000 copies of the paper's first edition were quickly removed from the streets and destroyed and the "troublesome" phrase disappeared from future prints that day

Our military can out gun and destroy with the best of them, but our democracy is the real power and the Obama victory has sent a ripple around the world.



Source: BoingBoing

Netroots vs Rightroots

Why are left-leaning blogs better? Why can't the Right address a problem post-1980 without Uncle Ronnie to hold their hands? Outside the Beltway's James Joyner argues the other day that, despite his conservative beliefs, he finds "most of the best analytical blogs are on the center-left".

"Part of the reason I'm drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election. There's almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts. If we read about those issues at all, they're framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office: Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education! Government IS the problem!

While traditionalist grand theory is still valuable and worth discussion, it doesn't work as a blanket response to micro-level issues. And defining conservatism solely by "What would Reagan do?" is a political non-starter in a world that simply looks much different than in did twenty-eight years ago. It would be as if Reagan constantly droned on about the evils of Harry Truman. Time marches on. Debates must, too, in order to be interesting.

So, where are the right-of-center counterparts to Yglesias, Klein, and company?"

Well said. The Right are busy worrying about Obama being sworn in using a Koran and other non-issues, all the while ignoring Global Climate Change or skyrocketing income inequality. Even worse, claiming they don't exist.

What is comes down to is the Left do not get Talking Points from a central source. The ideas and causes covered are always up for debate, no ideology with a set uniformity and conformity that we all must agree on. It's not a redundant extension of a mass mailing machinery.

That being said, the Right deserves everything they get. The beating they took in the last elections should have rang some bells, but it didn't.

Source: Steve Benen

Bin Laden's Driver: Is That A Job?

All this talk of Bin Laden's convicted driver being sent to Yemen has me thinking. This is the top guy Bush has prosecuted in his "war on terror"? What kind of roads and how much of a job is it to be Bin Laden's driver? What's next? Bin Laden's sushi chef?

Indonesia's Papua Plans To Tag AIDS Sufferers

I don't like where this is heading:

JAYAPURA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia's Papua province is set to pass a bylaw that requires some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips in a bid to prevent them infecting others, a lawmaker said on Saturday.

Under the bylaw, which has caused uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown "actively sexual behavior" could be implanted with a microchip to monitor their activity, lawmaker John Manangsang said.

"It's a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will be received by monitoring authorities," Manangsang said.

If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty, he said without elaborating.

It always starts off with a minority group, a voiceless weak target and it grows from there. Not to be an alarmist but Radio Frequency ID [RFID] tagging in people is already happening here. Mostly old people and young people. Google it.

Source: Reuters

Obama Bright Appointees Make Bush's Look Even More Dim

Bruce Bartlett compares the Bush years and how horrible his appointees were with the competence of Barack Obama's team:

"So far, I am very impressed. Larry Summers at the NEC is brilliant. Tim Geithner at Treasury inspires confidence. Peter Orszag at OMB tells me that we will get honest numbers on which to base policy for a change. And Christina Romer at the CEA puts one of the nation’s top experts on the Great Depression at close hand.

This group has made me realize just how poor Bush’s appointments in recent years have been in the economic area. When slavish political loyalty is apparently the only requirement for a Bush Administration job, and demonstrable competence barely counts at all, it doesn’t tend to attract the best and the brightest. When on those rare occasions, Bush managed to get someone who is competent, there is no evidence that he paid the slightest attention to them, preferring instead the counsel of “Mayberry Machiavellis,” as former White House adviser John DiIulio called them. No wonder we are in the mess we are in."

via Matthew Yglesias:

Ask yourself, amid this massive economic crisis, who runs Bush's National Economic Council[NEC] now? You'd think his name would be in the headlines. It is run by a guy named Keith Hennessey. He's a complete nobody. Before he ran the NEC, he was the deputy. Before that, he was on Trent Lott’s staff. He has a master’s degree and it’s not in economics. The stature gap with a Lawrence Summers is enormous.

Source: Bruce Bartlett

Poverty On The Rise

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has a new report on the likely effects of the recession on poverty. As you might expect, it blows:

"Goldman Sachs projects that the unemployment rate will rise to 9 percent by the fourth quarter of 2009 (the firm has increased its forecast for the unemployment rate a couple of times in the last month). If this holds true and the increase in poverty relative to the increase in unemployment is within the range of the last three recessions, the number of poor Americans will rise by 7.5-10.3 million, the number of poor children will rise by 2.6-3.3 million, and the number of children in deep poverty will climb by 1.5-2.0 million.

Already there are signs that the recession is hitting low-income Americans hard. Between September 2006 and October 2008, the unemployment rate for workers age 25 and over who lack a high school diploma -- a heavily low-income group -- increased from 6.3 percent to 10.3 percent. Yet low-income workers who lose their jobs are less likely to qualify for unemployment benefits than higher-income workers, due to eligibility rules in place in many states that deny benefits to individuals who worked part time or did not earn enough over a "base period" that often excludes workers' most recent employment.

As another sign that poverty is now climbing rapidly, food stamp caseloads have increased dramatically in recent months, rising by 2.6 million people or 9.6 percent between August 2007 and August 2008, the latest month for which data are available. In 25 states, at least one in every five children is receiving food stamps. Because monthly food stamp caseload data are available long before the official Census poverty data for the prior calendar year, rising food stamp caseloads are the best early warning sign of growing poverty.

Furthermore, the nation's basic cash assistance safety net for very poor people who are jobless is much weaker and less well equipped to meet the challenges that a serious economic downturn poses than it was in previous major recessions."

It's time to focus on helping the less fortunate. The Government helps the Wall Street and Banking crowd and it makes headlines. That's taxpayer money chasing down bad investments.

It's time that money went to unemployment, food stamps and rental assistance and starts making the same headlines. That has real effects on people instantly.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Krugman Finally Meets Bush

AWWWWWWWk-ward.

Nobel Prize winner and NYT writer Paul Krugman meets George Bush today with fellow winners. Without Bush's blunders and horrendous policy, Krugman would have had no one to rail against so he sort of owes him. Oh! the irony.

Bush has never agreed to a NYT interview throughout his Presidency.

Hardball: Moran And Armey

Jim Moran and Dick Armey on Hardball today discussing our crises de jour and the consequences.

"The market needs to discipline some people"

The Financial Services sector did not create or manufacture any products or goods. They created wealth by borrowing on other people's money.

On China being our largest lender:

"China has a financial guillotine".

Mormons On Marriage: Major Balls

How do Mormons have the balls to stumble out of their podunk dustbowl towns with their 5 wives in tow to tell people in the real world about marriage? They have some pretty unique views that no one else, repeat, no one else, follows regarding marriage.

What Happened To Oliver Willis?

His site is down. The Redskins won, he can't be depressed about that.

Quote Of The Day: The Economist

On Obama's Economic Team:

"Ah, glorious, glorious competence. How we've missed you."

Source: HuffPo

Citi Bailout: Free Mets Tickets?

Do we get free Met tickets as part of this massive Citi bailout? What an ominous start for Citi Field. The Mets are doomed for a third straight season.

Struggling Citibank just sealed a multi-billion-dollar emergency “backstop” deal with the U.S. government. The financial behemoth, suffering with billions in bad mortgage-related assets on its books, recently shed 53,000 workers and saw its stock price lose over half its value. Yet it’s in a 20-year contract to pay the New York Mets $400 million to name the team’s new stadium Citi Field.

A couple of weeks ago Citi was trying to buy Wachovia?

Bernanke: Anatomy Of A Meltdown

Not the thing to read on a Monday, or if you own anything, or want to think about the future:

The most serious charge against Bernanke and Paulson is that their response to the crisis has been ad hoc and contradictory: they rescued Bear Stearns but allowed Lehman Brothers to fail; for months, they dismissed the danger from the subprime crisis and then suddenly announced that it was grave enough to justify a huge bailout; they said they needed seven hundred billion dollars to buy up distressed mortgage securities and then, in October, used the money to purchase stock in banks instead. Summing up the widespread frustration with Bernanke, Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington, told me, “He was behind the curve at every stage of the story. He didn’t see the housing bubble until after it burst. Until as late as this summer, he downplayed all the risks involved. In terms of policy, he has not presented a clear view. On a number of occasions, he has pointed in one direction and then turned around and acted differently. I would be surprised if Obama wanted to reappoint him when his term ends”—in January, 2010.

Yay!

Source: The New Yorker

Hannity And Colmes Split Up

via Politico:

Fox News announced that after 12 years, Alan Colmes will be leaving the top-rated "Hannity & Colmes" at the end of the year.

“I approached Bill Shine (FNC’s Senior Vice President of Programming) earlier this year about wanting to move on after 12 years to develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network," Colmes said in a statement. "Although it’s bittersweet to leave one of the longest marriages on cable news, I’m proud that both Sean (Hannity) and I remained unharmed after sitting side by side, night after night for so many years.”

It sucks, and is shallow, to say, that in comparison with the douche college dropout blockhead Hannity, "the face" of liberal politics on Fox was pretty hurtin'.



Source:

Obama Introduces His Economic Team

Watch: Obama announces his economic team:



Watch: Obama answers questions from press:



via HuffPo:

Obama made his comments as he unveiled the top members of his economic team, beginning with New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner to be his treasury secretary. Geithner, 47, is a veteran of financial crises at home and overseas and has worked closely with the Bush administration in recent months.

Obama chose Lawrence Summers as director of his National Economic Council. Summers was treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton.

Obama said his newly minted economic team offered "sound judgment and fresh thinking" at a time of economic peril.

He expressed confidence the nation would weather the crisis "because we've done it before."

Obama also announced two other members of his economic team in the making. He named Christina Romer as chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, and Melody Barnes as director of his White House Domestic Policy Council.

Obama's principal theme was urgency.

Peter Schiff Schools CNBC

Peter Schiff, the guy who totally predicted the current economic crisis and was mocked for it by Fox News, has some bad news: the dollar will collapse.

"The world has learned a valuable message, don't lend America anymore money"

Get schooled by the master.



Source:

Prosecute Our Own War Crimes? Do We Or Don't We

One thing that will dog the Bush Administration after they have left office will be their torture techniques and International war crimes they committed. How hard will the Obama Administration push for prosecutions or transparency?

Matt Yglesias writes:

"I think it’s important to draw a distinction between simply declining to engage in war crimes prosecutions as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, and actually taking prosecution off the table. The latter should be done, if at all, only in exchange for confessions, expressions of remorse, and cooperation with investigations. The former is probably the better part of wisdom for now, but many of the perpetrators can be expected to live for decades and absent something like a real Truth and Reconciliation Commission the door should be left open to doing something down the road if circumstances change. I don’t think it’s even remotely acceptable to just give a full retrospective stamp of approval on everything that was done during the Bush years merely because that might be the most convenient way to build legislative support for Obama’s domestic agenda."

America needs to hear the truth, people need to held accountable. At the least, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like they had in post-WWII Germany and post-Apartheid South Africa. As much as I'd like to see Cheney and Rumsfeld is jail, given that Washington DC is overrun with "Good Germans" who either enabled Bush’s acts, or averted their eyes when they happened, I doubt any domestic war crimes prosecutions will get off the ground. But Internationally? I have hope.

And for perpetrators living for decades sans truth, does Cheney's black heart have that luck?

Add this stooge to the List, architect of torture and defender of the legality of torturing children, John Yoo.



Source: Matthew Yglesias

Projection: Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes

Election wunderkind Nate Silver believes Al Franken will eke out a narrow, 27-vote win when all is said and done.

Source: fivethirtyeight.com

Obama's Cabinet: Competence Over Ideology

via ThinkProgress:

Hailing Obama’s cabinet selections, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos added, “We have not seen this kind of combination of star power, brain power, and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes.” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell added that Obama’s “all-star cabinet” is comprised of the “smartest people he can find.”

Competence over ideology. Quality over congruence. Discussion over division. Educated strength over monolithic power.

And for those on the Right who complain about not enough Republicans or bipartisanship, most of time the "smartest people he can find" may turn out to be Democrats.

Source: ABC

Maddow's Success: Studies 8 Hours A Day

On the heels of my previous post on Bush not liking to do homework or study issues, we have his academic opposite, Rachel Maddow. Her résumé is impressive: she studied public policy at Stanford before winning a Rhodes scholarship to undertake a Ph.D. in political science.

For Maddow, the job never really stops. She regularly works 16-hour days, only eating once she has finished. She often has just one large meal at 2 a.m., purchased from street vendors. [Executive producer Bill] Wolff says she “simply wants to be excellent.” Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, attributes her success to a certain “magic,” and to her application: “She comes in every day and studies for eight hours. I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they come in to television and cable news, which is a really intense, competitive area, is to not work hard. This is not for the soft of heart. It’s intense.”

Her MSNBC ratings have doubled and she regularly wins her time slot.

Source: Newsweek

Last Secrets of the Bush Administration

A must read on Bush, secrecy, and how he and his Republican legal goons changed the rules:

"It was about the new president and vice president, and the kind of government they intended to run. Bill Clinton’s White House had been relatively obliging in matters of secrecy, handing over millions of pages of documents—down to the White House Christmas card list—when Congress demanded them. Things would be different under Bush."

The time has come to investigate:

"We still do not know how intelligence operatives, acting in the name of the United States, have interrogated suspected terrorists, and how they are interrogating them now. We do not know how many Americans’ phone calls and e-mails were scanned by the National Security Agency. We do not know—although we can guess—who ordered the firings of the U.S. attorneys who didn’t comply with the Bush administration’s political agenda, and we do not know who may have been wrongly prosecuted by those who did. There are large gaps in our understanding of the backstories to everything from pre-war intelligence in Iraq to the censoring of scientific opinion at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. And those are the things we know we don’t know—there are also what Donald Rumsfeld might call the unknown unknowns."

The article goes on to name a few key actions that will take us much of the distance between what we know and what we need to know.

Source: The Washington Monthly

Woodward: Bush Does Not Debate, Getting Briefed, Doing Homework

Excellent post at ThinkProgress:

The Chris Matthews Show had Bob Woodward on discussing the differences between Obama and Bush. In a nutshell, Obama is intellectually curious, Bush is not [ and his right wing authoritarian cult worshippers admire his degree of anti-intellectualism].

Asked by Matthews to explain why Bush “shows little intellectual curiosity,” Woodward said it was essentially because Bush “doesn’t like homework”:

WOODWARD: "I think he’s impatient. I think, my summation: He doesn’t like homework. And homework means reading or getting briefed or having a debate. And part of the presidency, part of governing, particularly in this area, is homework, homework, homework."

A commenter points out:

"Bush is a classic wet brained, dry drunk. Always on edge - “impatient” - with too many destroyed brain cells, feeling sorry for himself because he can’t drink anymore, yet always thinking about having another drink.

The type of guy you wouldn’t hire to even mow your lawn because he’d f*** it up or leave before it was completed.

How we survived him being president (so far….) is simply amazing."

Source: ThinkProgress