Friday, February 20, 2009

Invading Army

We need to start thinking of this economic crisis like an invading army determined to destroy our way of life. Cost is the last consideration at a time of war.

Mayor Skins Fox

WoW cool new YouTube Boarders!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Oh Please Do

HUFFINGTON POST:

BATON ROUGE, La. — A handful of Republican governors are considering turning down some money from the federal stimulus package, a move opponents say puts conservative ideology ahead of the needs of constituents struggling with record foreclosures and soaring unemployment.

FOX Being FOX

MEDIA MATTERS:

Summary: In Fox News' special, Trillion with a T, Bret Baier promoted or repeated several myths and falsehoods about President Obama and the economic recovery bill, including that some of the spending in the bill -- which Obama has now signed into law -- isn't stimulus; that the bill will lead to "the government deciding which procedures you can have and which ones you can't"; that it would prohibit any religious activity in facilities receiving money; that the Obama administration advocated cutting the defense budget by 10 percent; and that Obama admitted "there might be some pork" in the bill.

Let the Debate Begin

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A prominent private U.S. health policy group on Thursday proposed creating a major new public health program and government-operated insurance exchange as part of a plan to expand coverage and rein in health care costs.

Monday, February 16, 2009

A Deal with the Devil




"Pakistan is to impose Islamic law in a vast region of the north-west called Malakand in an attempt to placate extremists, even as President Asif Zardari warns that they are "trying to take over the state".
Pakistani Taliban militants who are in control of the Swat valley in the region announced a ceasefire tonight, reacting to the government's agreement to bring in sharia courts."

A Fish Having a Really Bad Day

Coming and Going

First we bailout their bad behavior then we pay them bonus' for bancrupting their companies and now we'll pay their higher interest rates.

Angeles Times:

"Millions of cardholders have recently received letters from the likes of Citibank, Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and American Express Co. notifying them that their interest rates are going up, in some cases to 30% if a single payment is missed"

Here's some rules we should demand of any bank or financial institution seeking bailout money.

Once you have a credit card.

  • The card company may not use any other information to decide your interest rate other then your relationship with that company. If you made a mistake in one place it should not be allowed to be used as an excuse to raise your rate with a company that has nothing to do with that mistake.

  • Mandate that every year with no missed or late payments your interest rate must be reduced

  • Cap Credit Card interst rates at <20%

Saturday Night Live on Republican Leadership

Paul Simon w/ LadySmith Black Mambazo

SPELL CHECK

You know you suck at spelling when the spell checker can't even figure out what the hell your talking about.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

DRINK!


I have been listening to politician since I was a child, forces into the longest running soap opera by investigations into a corrupt President and an Archie and Meat-head environment between my two older brothers and my father. To this day I sometimes have trouble making decisions because I come up with an argument for both sides.
One of the thing I've said about politicians in the past was that "politician rarely lie" which usually get me a wide range of responses from laughter to stunned disbelieve and yes even pity. None the less I believe it, they rarely do out and out lie. Granted they may spin it harder than a figure skater or use twisted logic that would make M.C. Escher proud but they don't often lie, under oath being the exception of course.
We are usually left in a fog of semantics. Is a reduction in future increases a cut? Depends, if it's the Pentagon democrats would say it reigning in fraud and abuse. To republican it's "gutting America's defenses.
The new breed of conservative republicans who find their roots in the get Clinton crowd seem much more prone to just blatant and demonstrable lies. It could be that the Stimulus Package has money for ACORN which we all must fear because we are always just one step away from living under a world dominated by advocates for the poor, Or, It might be that the IT money for digital medical records will put the government in charge of your health care. What makes this trend even more troubling is how easy it is for them get millions of people to believe and parrot the lies. Watch C-span's morning call in show and listen to the some of the calls that come in on the conservatives line. If it wasn't so early in the morning it would be a great drinking game. "hangs with terrorist" DRINK! "socialism" DRINK! "ACORN" DRINK! "Mouse" gets you a DOUBLE SHOT! You won't make 20 minutes. If their talking immigration I give you ten.
Then again the idea that this is new just might be where that "pity" look comes from.

Lawyer Troubles

NEWSWEEK:

"An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials"

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Where Do They Find These People?

DispatchPolitics:

"U.S. Rep. Steve Austria said he supports a scaled-down federal economic-stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.
"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."
Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.
"

SQUAT


With the Stimulus Package about to pass I guess this is my last chance to say...

This Plan needs to be bigger! 3 or more times bigger. Over the next 2 to 3 years as this plan spends out, $790 billion ain't going to mean squat to a $36 trillion economy over the same period. Even with the most generous of multiplier effect.

Here's some funding Ideas for a bigger plan:


*Cut on trillon dollars from the Pentagon budget over 10 years. The Pentagon's budget over that period would be about 6 trillion. You can't tell me that one in 6 Pentagon dollars isn't wasted. They can't even account for $2.3 trillion dollars now.


*Progressively Increase Gas taxes each year. 2 cents this year. 4 cents the next, 8 cents the following and so on. While also increasing Income tax personal exemptions to offset the progressiveness of the tax. This will force business and individuals to look ahead and plan for higher fuel prices.



Twisting that Knife

WASHINGTON POST:

"Under state and federal laws, employees who are fired for misbehavior or quit voluntarily are ineligible for unemployment compensation. When jobless claims are blocked, employers save money because their unemployment insurance rates are based on the amount of the benefits their workers collect.
As unemployment rolls swell in the recession, many workers seem surprised to find their benefits challenged, their former bosses providing testimony against them. On one recent morning in what amounts to one of Maryland's unemployment courts, employees and employers squared off at conference tables to rehash reports of bad customer service, anger management and absenteeism."

Lou Dobbs and Glen Beck Spread Lies

Media Matters: Speading Lies
Summary: During appearances on Lou Dobbs Tonight and Glenn Beck, Dobbs and Beck allowed Betsy McCaughey to advance the false claim that provisions in the economic recovery act would permit the government to control health care. In fact, the provisions she cited address establishing an electronic records system in part for the purpose of "reduc[ing] health care costs resulting from inefficiency, medical errors, inappropriate care, duplicative care, and incomplete information." It does not say that the federal government will determine what constitutes "unnecessary care."

[THC] Ghosts

I don't think you need to be a believer in something to try to figure out how it could be. An example of this would be UFO's. I've seen videos on TV or Youtube and usually 99% you can just see how it could be something else or have some other explanation. Once in a while you see a video in the daylight and you end up thinking to yourself "what the hell was that?" For those cases where something moves in an extraordinary way I think to myself how could something possibly move like that? Well in this case I had an Idea. The ship creates a envelope around itself that removes any Resistance from the surface. much like and air hockey puck moves across the table but in 3 dimensions.
Now I think I have an explanation for how what we perceive as ghosts could exist. Ghosts are present when 2 or more different strings of reality become inter-twined and connected in ways that each string would experience the other as ghosts. The points of connection can be random or fixed auditory, visual or physical moments of shared experience. For a split second you might hear a voice from another reality or the other reality might, for a second, perceive you as a dark shadow moving across the room. Maybe for a just a brief moment that chair your sitting in exists in more then one of those realities at the same time and someone else sees you rockin'.

[THC] The Human Condition. [THC] is not a series of musing about the experiences of life but about the human condition of wonderment. That place in the human mind that set us apart from the other creatures of Earth. The ability to dream and contemplate random thoughts, ideas and questions about the world around us.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Difference or Weakness

The difference between the Democrats and Republicans is the Republicans wouldn't hesitate for a second to back Dems up against the wall and say "I dare you not to vote for it"

Stewart on O'Reilly Hypocricy

Question for President Obama


If, by your own admission, the Republican are coming to the table with tired and failed theories and ideas. Then why work for a plan that incorporates those ideas at all?

Why not create the best plan to get the job done and ram it against the Republican wall a couple times and see what gives?

The Best Health Care in the World?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans with financial worries because of the ailing economy may be skipping needed prescription drugs in a wrong-headed attempt to save money, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

What is wrong-headed is that some need to choose between food or Medicine.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A Lilttle Dab Will Do Ya




"Many experts believe that, short of a vaccine, a virus-blocking substance that could be inserted in the vagina or rectum before sexual activity would be the most important tool in fighting the AIDS pandemic. Numerous topical microbicides have been tried, but none have worked, and two have actually increased the risk of infection. "

Jokes from The Vicar

Look Foward Just Not Down




"Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year. "


"The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said. "


Blame

I've always been a little suspicious of the blame being laid at the feet of home owners in foreclosure for the current global financial crisis. I could never see how an uptick, be it a large one, in foreclosures in the U.S. could bring about such a profound global collapse.
The blame being heaped on the poor is much like when the Republican were so quick to blame the American Auto Industry's decline on Unions. Never mind that Nissan just announced a cut of 20,000 or Toyota announced it first losses in decades, it's the union's fault.
I believe the most likely culprits are exotic derivatives, which you think we might have learned some important lessons when a single man brought down a centuries old bank, and the flight of institutional investor from the oil futures markets as talk of investigations and regulations were swirling around last summer. Which brought about a collapse in oil prices and financial institutions balance sheets.

Monday, February 09, 2009

All Depressions are Local


The Republican could not be more wrong, which for Republican is really saying something, in their insistance that aid to the States be cut. The battlefield of a recession or depression happens at the state and local level. It is the states that administer the programs that help people. The federal government might kick in a lot of money but it is the states that have the organisational infastructure to administer relief. Anyone who is in a desperate place will turn to their state for aid not the federal government.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Poppets

Final Farewell

Miami Herald:

"As her partner of 17 years slipped into a coma, Janice Langbehn pleaded with doctors and anyone who would listen to let her into the woman's hospital room.
Eight anguishing hours passed before Langbehn would be allowed into Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center. By then, she could only say her final farewell as a priest performed the last rites on 39-year-old Lisa Marie Pond."

Real Unemployment at 13.9%


Financial Times:



"When that amount of slack in employment is taken into account, Mr. Rosenberg found that the ‘real’ unemployment rate has actually climbed to 13.9%, an all-time high for the period he studied, and up from 13.5% in December and 11.2% a year ago. "

MISINFORMATION

Media Maters:

"On any given day during the current congressional debate over the economic recovery plan, chances are good that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity will say something false about the administration's or congressional Democrats' efforts to pass a bill. And they do not promote these falsehoods in isolation; they are often promoted concurrently with each other and with Republican members of Congress. President Obama reportedly chastised congressional Republicans for "listen[ing] to Rush Limbaugh,"

SEE WHY THEIR WRONG

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Defining Republicans

It says something about Republican that it took cuts in Education and Healthcare to get them to sign on to the Stimulus Package.

Please Don't Divorce Us.


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Parts and Labor

I've listened and participated in a lot of debates in my time and I've heard a lot of people make stupid arguments or say some stupid things but the Idea of taking the dollar value of the stimulus bill in congress and dividing it by the estimated Jobs created for a dollar per job number is something else. This is an absolutely ridiculous and useless number.
O.K. we'll spend $300,000 per job. Sounds like a real raw deal for the American Taxpayer. Only in the narrow world of conservative thinking.
What about the new bridges or new highways we get? Doesn't that number include parts and labor?

Special Message to Senator John Thune (R, SD)
Here are the Jobs Lost in the Bush Recession in terms that you might better understand. If all the unemployed people in American today where standing shoulder to shoulder it would stretch over 5400 miles

Friday, February 06, 2009

A Bigger Dick


Stop Me If You Heard this One...


When the debate on a large stimulus plan started the Republicans tried to argue that Franklin Roosevelt's stimulus spending actually made the Depression worse and it took World War II to bring us out. As usual the Republican are wrong. Roosevelt's spending was working. It was working until the fear mongering of the conservatives at the time convinced Roosevelt that he needed to cut back on spending. Which threw us back into a recession that WWII finally pulled us out.

Now flash forward to today. Along comes John McCain. John McCain has a plan of his own. What he'd like to do, other then tax cuts, is spend a bunch of money. Important money on critical infrastructure projects like roads and bridges and as soon as the Economy shows even a glimmer of life, maybe even just a little growth over like 6 months then He wants to cut off the money.


Thursday, February 05, 2009

PRESS-O-CRITS

I can't help but think that if the press had used the same kind of negitive slant to Bush's Iraq War that they are doing to Obama's Stimilus Plan there wouldn't be grave yards filled with thousands of innocent victims.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

AIDS Denialists are Dying Off

"Christine Maggiore, who gained national attention for her outspoken belief that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and her refusal to seek antiretroviral treatment for herself or her children, has died. She was 52."

"Should it be determined that Maggiore's death was related to her HIV infection, it will not mark the first time an outspoken AIDS denialist has died from the disease. San Francisco activist David Pasquarelli, who founded a denialist chapter of the group ACT UP, died of AIDS-related complications in 2004 at age 26. Michael Bellefountaine, a member of the controversial San Francisco ACT UP chapter launched by Pasquarelli, died of AIDS-related complications in May 2007 at age 41."

Need AIDS Drugs? You'll Have to Wait.

HIVPlusMag.com


The number of patients on anti-HIV drug waiting lists rose from 35 in May 2008 to 53 in November 2008, the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors reported recently. NASTAD attributes this to state budget shortfalls, the relative priority placed on the lives of people with HIV, and the growing number of people being tested for HIV and learning that they carry the virus. AIDS Drug Assistance Programs in Indiana, Montana, and Nebraska have instituted waiting lists; Idaho and Kentucky are expected to do so in March.

Deported to a Death Sentence

The Guardian

A gay Iraqi man due for deportation tomorrow has been told by the UK Border Agency to conduct his relationships "in private" on his return to Iraq, where homosexuality is punishable by death.
Campaign group Iraqi LGBT says the asylum seeker will become the seventh gay Iraqi to be returned to the country by the UK, despite the country being one of only nine in the world where homosexual people are executed.

The Case of the Gay Kiss

Houston Chronicle
SAN ANTONIO — Jessica Garcia intends to prove in court that security officers at Rolling Oaks Mall unfairly targeted her and her girlfriend when they were arrested in December on trespassing and other charges.
Garcia said the officers — a Bexar County sheriff's deputy and an employee from a private security company — began harassing them Dec. 26 because her girlfriend gave her a kiss on the cheek while sitting inside the mall on a bench.

We Got Better Things to Do

The Huffington Post


"The Senate is prepared for one of its most important votes in decades this weekend, whether to approve President Obama's economic stimulus package. Republicans are pushing back against Obama and Democrats are one vote short of the number needed to cut off debate and pass the stimulus.
Yet not all of the senators plan to show up. Three crucial lawmakers intend to be elsewhere.
John McCain, Jon Kyl and Joseph Lieberman are scheduled to travel to Munich, Germany for a conference on foreign affairs over the weekend. Democrats have so far been unable to persuade them to stay home for the vote, a senior Senate aide familiar with their travel plans said. "

Way Out There.

When Sean Hannity thinks you sounding a little out there, your way out there.

Drought, Floods and Crocodiles

And you think We got problems.


CANBERRA (Reuters) - Drought in Australia's main food growing region of the Murray-Darling river system continues, with water stores near record lows despite recent rains, the head of the government's oversight body for the system said on Wednesday.



SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australians battling major floods in the tropical state of Queensland have been warned to be on the look out for crocodiles and snakes, after a series of sightings in flooded towns, officials said Wednesday.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

What Are You, Some Kind of Boron?


"Boron is a simple atom: five protons, five or six neutrons, five electrons. It is not as ubiquitous as hydrogen. It does not, as helium does, make your voice sound like Donald Duck. It is not as famous as carbon, its neighbor to the right on the periodic table."
"Now researchers led by Dr. Oganov have added to the actual discoveries. They have found a form of boron that is nearly as hard as diamond."

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Republicans United? Not So Much.

Washington Post

"NEW YORK -- Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama's economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care."

Let's Experiment on the Children

[THC] Idea Flash:

Redirect all the money being spent on Children's Health care by Federal and State governments into Medicare. Anyone child in need of health care will be issued a Social Security Number and a Medicare Card. And not just any Medicare Card it's the Cadillac of Medicare Card. It's any doctor at any time with one set copay and to get the Doctors to play it comes with faster and higher reimbursements.


[THC] Idea Flash is an Idea so pure in it's brilliants and simplicity that the recipient is often compelled to..... man could I go for a cheese steak right now.