Archive for June, 2010
Break Time
The Ten Most Expensive Pieces of Celebrity Memorabilia.
The most expensive?
Incredibly, the most expensive piece of celebrity memorabilia was the 1969 Dodge Charger known as “General Lee” of The Dukes of Hazzard fame which sold on eBay for $9,900.500. (There’s a sucker born every minute.)
My fave — the memorabilia I would love to see in person (but I don’t really care to own) — is from my favorite movie of all time, The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy’s ruby slippers, which sold for $666,000:
Waterboarding Isn’t Waterboarding When We Do It
This study, released in April and conducted by four Harvard University students, is stunning and incredibly revealing as to how the “liberal media” sold its soul (and the soul of the country) while covered for George W. Bush:
The current debate over waterboarding has spawned hundreds of newspaper articles in the last two years alone. However, waterboarding has been the subject of press attention for over a century. Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture. In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.
Read the whole thing — Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media — (it’s a pdf file) here.
A Good Thing
One might ask what in the world took them so long but I guess the adage, “better late than never,” applies here: Irish Ban Deer Hunting With Hounds:
Ireland on Tuesday voted to ban the hunting of deer with hounds, a result which marks a big victory for the minority Green party, but which could see its Fianna Fáil government partners suffer a voter backlash at the general election.
Jenna Bush as “Reporter” — Watch Her and Cringe
Jenna Bush has no business being a “correspondent” for the Today Show — or any show for that matter. Watch her reporting live yesterday from Yellowstone. I’m embarrassed for her.
(But hey, amongst the ruling class, last names and connections are the only job requirements.)
God Bless the Gun Toters
Yesterday, during the confirmation hearing for Elena Kagan, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley actually insinuated that bearing arms is a God-given right. Watch the video here.
Ah, is the word “gun” found anywhere, anywhere in the Bible? I don’t think so. Not only that, the question is preposterous in another way: Kagan’s job, as a Supreme Court Justice, would be to interpret the Constitution and the laws of the land, not to second-guess what God wants.
Cartoon of the Day
Check it out here…on the state of our crappy media.
I Need a Job
Are you looking for a job — out of work for months? Feeling the devastation of what Wall Street did to the US and to the global economy? Pissed off that the big boys got a bailout but you didn’t?
Well, you know what? Republicans feel your pain. They think this financial disaster is so insignificant that it’s equivalent to an ant. Yep. An ant: John Boehner [the Republican Leader in the House] Thinks the Global Financial Crisis is “an Ant” in Terms of its Importance.
Oh, and Boehner wants you to work until you’re 70 before you retire and collect the benefits you’ve paid for all your working life — Social Security and Medicare — so we can pay for wars.
Yeah man! Vote Republican!
Pam Gorman — What Would Jesus Say About All Those Guns?
Pam Gorman, a Republican candidate for the House in Arizona, uses a whole lot of guns and shoots a whole lot of bullets in her latest campaign ad (below), during which the announcer says she’s a “conservative Christian?”
Huh?
Since when was Jesus a gun totting, Uzi shooting killer?
He was a peacemaker.
Blogging While Drunk
One thing you learn reeeeeeal fast when you have a blog is that you should never, ever post while you’re drunk. One thing people who trade in commodities should learn — reeeeeeal fast — is that you never, ever trade while drunk: Oil Broker Banned for Drunk Trading Binge:
Britain’s financial regulator has fined and banned a former broker for manipulating oil prices by buying more than 7 million barrels while on a drinking binge.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said it fined Steven Perkins, a former employee of PVM Oil Futures Ltd, 72,000 pounds ($108,000) and banned him from working in financial services for at least five years for carrying out trades without the authority of clients or his employer.
The FSA said Perkins bought huge volumes of Brent crude oil in the early hours of the morning on June 30, 2009 after drinking heavily for several days and then lied repeatedly to his employer to cover up his actions.
Yippee — Larry King Wants to Spend More Time With His Family
Larry King announced today that, after 25 years on CNN, he’s stepping down in order to have “more time for my wife and I to get to the kids’ little league games.”
(Yeah right. Larry and his wife are so happy that she attempted suicide in May.)
What I want to know is what does it say about our society that he stayed on the air for 25 years.
IMHO, he’s a bimbo.
U.S. to Accept Foreign Help in Oil Spill
Finally!
Bottom line is that BP ain’t gettin’ the job done. Why it took the administration so long to realize that they couldn’t/wouldn’t is something I’ll leave to the psychologists.
Now Republicans Are Rejecting Benefits for Veterans
Flash back to the Bush years when the Republicans were spending willy nilly. Now imagine the uproar that would have ensued had a Democrat done this “during a time of war:”
In his [faux, I might add] zeal for deficit reduction, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has objected to Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) bill to provide benefits to homeless woman veterans and homeless veterans with children.
One of the World’s Bravest Journalists
Given the sorry, sorry state of so-called journalism in the US, it’s good to know that in fact, there still are real journalists out there. Like Chouchou Namegabe, a Congolese journalist:
When Chouchou Namegabe launched a radio talk show to air the testimonies of rape survivors, she knew it would provoke outrage across Congo. And sure enough, as soon as the first interview aired, she was overwhelmed by criticism. People would yell at her on the street: “How dare you talk about sex on the airwaves?”
After all, this was a culture that didn’t even have a word for rape and had to borrow one—ubakaji—from neighboring Tanzania.
But what Namegabe didn’t anticipate was the huge outpouring of support from women who had been sexually brutalized. The day after her first show aired in 2001, three women knocked on the door of Maendeleo, the only radio station in Congo brave enough to broadcast Namegabe’s interviews with rape victims. The women were limping from pain, their eyes full of fear and tears.
What a bittersweet story. And, bravo for Namegabe.
You Have to Work Until You’re 70…Because We Have Wars to Pay For
This would be John Bohner, leader of the House Republicans:
Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.
“We need to look at the American people and explain to them that we’re broke,” Boehner said. “If you have substantial non-Social Security income while you’re retired, why are we paying you at a time when we’re broke? We just need to be honest with people.”
War takes priority over people.
Wall Street Parties Like It’s 2008
Silly me. I thought “change we can believe in” reigned in these guys in:
Wall Street Hiring Jumps Most Since 2008 as Guarantees Return
Leverage is back on Wall Street — and this time it’s the bankers who have it.
Firms are adding jobs for the first time in two years, rebuilding businesses cut during the financial crisis and offering guaranteed payouts to lure top bankers. In New York, 6,800 financial-industry positions were added from the end of February through May, the largest three-month increase since 2008.
Filed under Corporatocracy, Your Tax Dollars (bailouts are back), and We the People.
Go to School or Need a Hospital? Rand Paul Says You’re a Welfare Queen
Do your kids or grand kids go to public schools? Do your taxes include taxes for schools (yep)? Do you have a hospital in your area that you key in on in case you need emergency assistance? Well, per Rand Paul: You’re a welfare queen.
That’s right. Never mind that you pay taxes to support that school or that you — hopefully — have health insurance to pay that hospital bill — you’re a loser.
What do they want? What’s the grand plan here? That we’re all homeless, sick and illiterate, living in a park somewhere?
Chris Matthews Had a “Deep, American Objection to the Iraq War?”
Chris Matthews closed Hardball tonight with his “Let me Finish” editorial. It was about his “affection” for Robert Byrd with whom, he claimed, he shared a “deep, American objection to the Iraq war.”
Really? Who knew? If Matthews’ objection was so “deep,” why didn’t we know about it?
(Hint: He’s rewriting history. At the time, he was a war machine-supporting corporate lackey just like the rest of the MSM.)
Bigger Balls Than Glenn Beck
Next week, July 6 and 7, Rachel Maddow will air her show live from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Maddow, you go girl! Tell us what’s really going on there!
She has guts; guts that ah, say, Glenn Beckie boy doesn’t have. The most dangerous thing he does is try to figure out how to spell words he’s writing on the blackboard while criticizing everyone in sight:
Ah, that would be oligarCHY Glenn.
Plants Are Smarter Than We Think
This is fascinating:
Individually grown plants fully explored the pot by using a broad and uniform rooting distribution regardless of soil resource distributions. Plants with competitors and uniform soil nutrient distributions exhibited pronounced reductions in rooting breadth and spatial soil segregation among the competing individuals. In contrast, plants with competitors and heterogeneous soil nutrient distributions reduced their root growth only modestly, indicating that plants integrate information about both neighbor and resource distributions in determining their root behavior.
I have new respect for my houseplants and, well, for all plants.
Break Time — Restaurants With the Best Views in the World
Check out The Daily Green’s list of restaurants with the best views in the world. My faves are these two:
Albergo Lorelei et Londres, Italy
Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, Tanzania
Old People Got Theirs (Medicare) — They Still Hate Healthcare Reform
There’s a newish Gallup poll out that asks people, by age group, their reaction to the passage of the Healthcare Reform Bill. Young people love it but people 65 and older hate it:
Makes no sense. Old people have their socialized Medicare coverage but they want to deny the rest of us taking baby steps toward what they’ve got? Nice.
Fox News Takes Sarah Palin Seriously, Again
TheFoxNation is showing this graphic today, “above the fold” on its homepage:
Give it a click and you go to an article about a speech Palin gave in Texas on Saturday night during which she criticized Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil disaster. (What a surprise, huh?)
But what struck me was the graphic. The first thing I thought of was that Palin “asked for the job” as Governor of Alaska but she apparently couldn’t “buck up” or “stay in the truck,” because, as we know, she quit. So why in the heck would anyone take seriously her giving advice to Obama about bucking it up?
The answer? Faux News, obviously — knowing their audience is so stupid and so blindly loyal, they’ll never connect the dots.
The Silence of the Lambs (Democrats)
As I listen today to clips of the magnificent speech Robert Byrd gave on the eve of the invasion of Iraq (which I listened to in its entirety at the time — it brought tears to my eyes), what stands out is not only Byrd’s eloquence and wisdom, but the silence of his fellow Democrats. Greg Sargent says it well:
Putting aside the problematic aspects of Robert Byrd’s legacy, many are properly focusing on the strong and compelling case he made against the Iraq War and against Bush’s rough handling of the Constitution.
But what’s important about this aspect of Byrd’s legacy is not just what he said, but when he said it. His stance against the Iraq War came at a time when many other Democrats, cowed by Bush’s swaggering popularity, were too meek and frightened to say the same thing — even though they undoubtedly agreed with the late Senator.
Byrd’s stand against the Iraq invasion is not just a testament to his own courage. It’s also a testament to the cowardice of other members of his party at an absolutely critical moment — an epic cave that may have altered the course of history and should never be forgotten.
“For the first time in history of the Republic, the nation is considering a preemptive strike against a sovereign state. And I will not be silent!” Byrd thundered in September 2002, when war fever was gripping the nation.
The following month, the Senate overwhelmingly approved Bush’s Iraq War resolution. More Democrats joined Republicans in voting for it than voted against it, 29-21.
What’s key to remember is that Byrd castigated his fellow Democrats for caving to Bush. “We are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering the consequences, or without making any attempt to explore what steps we might take to avert conflict,” he said on one occasion.
Many Democrats who voted for the war probably agreed with Byrd but were too cowed by the country’s frenzied march to war to say so. And this may have altered the course of history.
Undoubtedly it did. And, pray tell, what did the Democrats learn from this? Nothing. They’re still scared of their own shadow.
Texas Oil Companies Trying to Roll Back California’s Clean Air Laws
My God. Haven’t oil companies brought enough death and destruction to the planet already?
The fight to protect California’s environment entered a new round yesterday when Secretary of State Deborah Bowen announced that the backers of the initiative to repeal our landmark law to combat global warming, AB 32, had qualified their dirty energy proposition for the November ballot.
[...]
The oil companies have chosen California as their battleground to crush the progress the State’s made in moving away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Californians will be their Waterloo by defeating their invidious proposition. They are a formidable foe, already spending more than $3 million to promote their measure. Eighty percent of the campaign’s money has come from oil companies, with 78 percent contributed by out-of-state donors.
Now Texas oil companies are asking California voters to for yet another bailout, freeze state clean energy and climate laws and roll back clean air standards.
The oil companies are doing the same thing the auto industry did 100 years ago in terms of destroying mass transit, as in trolley systems that were prevalent in many cities at the time
The United States Supreme Court, Inc.
When the Supreme Court sides with corporate interests, who’s protecting yours?
The GOP is a Laugh a Minute
Wow, the three days scheduled for Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing are going to be a laugh a minute if the first morning is any indication. Get this: GOP Questions Supreme Court Nominee Kagan’s Ability to be Non-Partisan. Aaaaahhhhhaaaa.
Yippee — Guns, Guns Everywhere!
Supreme Court Strikes Down Chicago Gun Law in Key Gun Rights Case:
The U.S. Supreme Court today found that the constitutional right to bear arms applies to local and state efforts to regulate guns, a ruling that could place limits on gun control laws across the country.
The 5-4 ruling could be particularly important in California, which has some of the strictest gun laws of any state. Legal experts have predicted that a ruling applying the Second Amendment to the states could open the door to a rash of legal challenges to California gun regulations, including the longstanding assault weapons ban.
Hey, yeah. Maybe their next big gun ruling will be to legalize assault weapons. Think about how great it will be when we can all carry an Uzi over our shoulder. We’ll be a lot safer then.
Good Morning
Good morning. It’s a good morning because I woke up slowly, to the sweet sound of my neighbor’s rooster crowing.
