(Image via ChannelSTv.com)

This would be Robert Zoellick, a 1%-er if ever there was one:

The head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, is about to step down after a 5-year term.

That means he can say what he really thinks.

Here, via the Daily Mail, is what he really thinks about what’s going on in Europe and the global financial markets:

• financial markets face a rerun of the Great Panic of 2008.

• It’s ‘far from clear that eurozone leaders have steeled themselves’ for the looming  catastrophe amid fears of a Greek exit from the single currency and meltdown in Spain.

• ‘Events in Greece could trigger financial fright in Spain, Italy and across the eurozone. The summer of 2012 offers an eerie echo of 2008…. ‘If Greece leaves the eurozone, the contagion is impossible to predict, just as Lehman had unexpected consequences.’

• ‘There will not be time for meetings of finance ministers to discuss the outlook and debate the politics…. ‘In panicked markets, investors flee to safe assets, sparking other flames.’

• More…

Faster than a speeding bullet, the bill to create a Superman license plate has passed the Ohio House and now moves on to the Ohio Senate.

State Rep. Bill Patmon (D-Cleveland) said H.B. 339 was unanimously passed out of committee in early March, and has continued movement through the legislature.

Patmon, who introduced H.B. 339, provided sponsor testimony on the bill to honor the creators of Superman with Superman-themed Ohio license plates.

“This legislation is, and always has been, about heroism, support, strength and caring for our fellow man, woman or child,” Patmon said, of the recently passed bill.

More…

 

Massive, shameful, media fail.

See a larger, more easily read version of the chart here.

They’ve lost their way.  The D.C. media, i.e., the people who are supposed to dig into what the powers that be are doing, stand with Honeywell and against Elk, and they treat Elk like a lepper:

(Via.)

Exactly.  The “liberal media” doesn’t provide any context, as in FACTS.   It’s just he-said-she-said.

Billionaires have done some unbelievable things to make more money and/or to keep every single cent they can.  Take Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle:

(Image via Wikipedia)

Software billionaire Larry Ellison is one of the richest men in America. By 2010, he had accumulated a net worth of $27 billion – enough to allow him to spend about $51 million a week or $303,000 an hour — without even digging into his principal. Nevertheless, in 2008, he contested the tax bill on his 23-acre California estate, and was awarded a $3 million refund, which had to be paid by school boards and municipalities. The Portola Valley School District in northern California repaid him some $250,000, the cost of hiring three or four new teachers. The refund was yet more pocket money for Ellison – enough to increase his spending that week from $303,000 to $321,000 per hour.

Aye yie yie.  What an a**hole.

 

Speaking of getting active – it works! Occupy Buffalo protestors on Thursday convinced their city to end its business ties with JP Morgan Chase – and move $45 million out of the Wall Street giant and into a local bank – First Niagara Financial Group. As the Buffalo city comptroller said about the move: “Not only will the funds earn more interest with First Niagara, a major local employer headquartered in Buffalo, but it also sends a crystal-clear message to JPMorgan Chase that the City of Buffalo is not happy with their business practices.” One of the great successes of the Occupy movement since it began this year is convincing Americans, businesses, and entire cities to move hundreds of millions of dollars out of Wall Street banks and into local banks. Let’s keep it up.

Bravo to Occupy Buffalo.  Good work people!

(Image via BusinessInsider.com)

More…

As Ted Kennedy once said, “WHEN DOES THE GREED END?”

I’m not sure I’d want to be in charge of running the the world. Not sure I could handle the responsibility, because I’d care.

The people who run the world don’t.

(Via.)

Here are two of my favorites:

Phyllis Siegel, 76, left, and Connie Kopelov, 84, both of New York, embrace after becoming the first same-sex couple to get married at the Manhattan City Clerk’s office in 2011. (Getty Images / Stan Honda)

A French civilian cries in despair as Nazis occupy Paris during World War II. (Via: iconicphotos.wordpress.com)

See the rest of them at the link above.

Nonfarm payroll employment changed little in May (+69,000), and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
…
The civilian labor force participation rate increased in May by 0.2 percentage point to 63.8 percent, offsetting a decline of the same amount in April. The employment-population ratio edged up to 58.6 percent in May.
…
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised from +154,000 to +143,000, and the change for April was revised from +115,000 to +77,000.

More…

Hey, I have an idea.  Let’s lay off a whole bunch of government workers.  Maybe that’ll help.

(Image via TheChickenCenter.com)

Newark city officials are scrambling to keep the doors open on their water treatment plant after funds for the facility, which treats 80 million gallons of water for 500,000 residents in and around Newark, run out today.

According to a letter from the State Comptroller’s office, Mayor Cory Booker’s administration botched an application with the state earlier this year for a three-year, professional services contract to treat the water. City officials wanted to give the $16 million contract to the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation without public bidding or a public hearing.

The comptroller’s office said no.

“The city has failed to submit any documentation demonstrating that it has satisfied the mandatory legal requirements to award this contract to the NWCDC,” said comptroller attorney Robert Shane, referring to the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation, which runs the city’s water supply and treatment facility.

Following the February letter from the Comptroller, the city instituted an emergency contract to keep the plant open for three months. That contract runs out today, but city officials say not to worry.

“The City is taking the necessary steps to ensure that water treatment continues,” Newark business administrator Julien Neals said in an email to The Star-Ledger, adding that facility employees and city hall staffers “are working together to extend the service. The residents can be assured that water treatment will continue without interruption.”

More…

What are we?  Udupi?

Here is Udupi:

Democrats, having cozied up to corporations almost as much as Republicans, have backed themselves into a corner when it comes to illustrating the differences between the parties.  They can’t do it:

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ended up defending Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday during TV appearances in which the Democratic politician was supposed to be serving as a surrogate for President Barack Obama. Patrick, who has a history of ethically questionable connections to financial firms, applauded Boston-based Bain Capital, implicitly criticizing the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s record at the private equity firm.

Patrick is the second Obama surrogate with strong ties to the financial industry to defend Bain, following in the footsteps of Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, who ignited a week of outrage from Democratic Party strategists for describing the Obama campaign’s slams against Romney’s Bain work as “nauseating.”

Patrick, who followed Romney as governor of the Bay State, praised Bain in two separate TV appearances on Thursday.

“I’ve got a lot of friends there,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” calling Bain “a perfectly fine company” with “a role to play in the private economy.”

“I think the Bain strategy has been distorted in some of the public discussions,” said Patrick. “I think the issue isn’t about Bain. I think it’s about whether [Romney has] accomplished, in either his public or private life, the kinds of things he wants to accomplish for the United States.”

The governor reiterated his position on CNN’s “Starting Point,” declaring, “It’s never been about Bain.”

More…

Given what Deval said today (and his corporate-ass-kissing past (read the rest of the article)) and what Cory Booker said last week, will this be the year the two parties essentially merge, unable to point to significant differences because their aren’t all that many and because they’re both in bed with the corporatocracy?

It’s looking like it.

(Image via BoulderBcycle.com)

Boulder B-cycle is our community’s nonprofit bike-sharing system. B-cycles are magic bikes that are always ready to ride, where and when you need them. When you want to cruise to happy hour, run errands, or take a refreshing spin along the Boulder Creek Path, B-cycles are there for you. Choose from 24-hour or 7-day access or Annual Membership and take an unlimited number of trips during your access period! Keep all your trips under one hour and you’ll never pay any usage fees.

More…

It’s a great program.  Everyone loves it, especially tourists.

Writing about D.C.’s bike-share program in the Washington Times, I can tell Charles Hurt would hate Boulder’s B-cycle as much as he hates the bike share program in his own town:

Unlike Sarah Palin or Tina Fey, or whoever it was, I really can see Russia from my front porch. Or, at least, I can see broken-down socialism.

That is because across the street from my house on Capitol Hill is a loud, clanging “Capital Bikeshare” docking station. It is one of the locking ports for those fat, red communal bicycles you see peddled all over town by commune enthusiasts. (Say that fast, and it sounds like you are saying “commun-ists.”)

[...]

For the urban environmental warrior (who, curiously, chooses to live in a densely populated concrete city), the benefits of the communal bike program are endless.

Having people pedal around on these bikes, they say, means fewer people riding pollution-emitting city buses and fewer cars clogging the roads. And healthy riders means less of a burden on socialized medicine. These people get very excited talking about all the upsides.

Oh, and the smugness with which these pedaling heroes pump away! I have seen proud drivers of Priuses look away in shame as they ease by in their bio-electric and sometimes spontaneously combustible vehicles.

This communal bike program is a success from their tingling toes through their throbbing hearts all the way to bright, gleaming faces. It makes them feel so good!

But of course, there are problems and rather than offer solutions, Hurt whines like a little kid:

So, what happens is, these noble warriors ride their bikes to work in the morning, only to discover that so has everybody else. And all the docking stations are filled up. So they have to wander around in search of a place to dock their bike so they can get to work.

This leads to another problem where all the bikes end up in a concentration of places. So at the end of the day, a belching environment-killing truck must come around and redistribute the bikes.

More…

You get the idea.

Those poor, sour wingers.  They’re having a terrible time as they’re pulled, kicking and screaming, into a future they so desperately want to keep from happening.

Today we’re proud to unveil Politwoops, the only comprehensive collection of deleted tweets by U.S. politicians. From minor typos to major gaffes, Politwoops is now there to offer a searchable window into what they hoped you didn’t see.

The project follows the official Twitter accounts of members of Congress, President Obama and the slew of presidential candidates to track whenever they delete a Tweet and record the elapsed time before removal. The growing collection of more than 3,000 tweets in the past six months includes screenshots of included links and has individual pages for each politician. The Politwoops archive serves as an illuminating rough draft of how politicians and campaigns hone their social media messaging and amend their record. The collection includes previously-reported episodes like Senator Chuck Grassley’s hacked account and other deletions that slipped by unnoticed, like Representative Jeff Miller tweeting a link to a Facebook poll asking, “Was Obama born in the United States?”

I scrolled through two or three pages on Politiwoops (love the name) and what struck me was that none of the deleted tweets were particularly offensive or potentially embarrassing, such as containing misspellings or profanity.  But I can see how if one spent enough time on the site patterns would begin to emerge.

Anyway, I just thought I’d let you all know, Politiwoops is out there. Fun place to spend some time on a very (very) rainy day.

(Image via khsb.com)

The pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas says President Barack Obama has gone too far in supporting same sex marriage and it’s time for the U.S. government to begin killing gay men and lesbians.

“Terrorists are dangerous, the economy is a real and present danger,” Pastor Curtis Knapp told his congregation on Sunday. “But there is simply nothing other than the holocaust of the unborn which imperils the safety of our country or places our people in jeopardy as does the leader of the Western world publicly raising his fist at the heavens and declaring that the bedrock institution of society, ordained of God and meant to be protected by the state, is little more than a convention of convenience with the children of Sodom to transform the meaning of something, which is precious to Jesus Christ, and a living picture of his love for the church into a legally protected justification for perversion and a vehicle of hatred aimed directly at that love.”

Knapp went on to read from Leviticus 20: “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.”

“They should be put to death,” Knapp declared. “‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ — I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.”

Listen to Paster Knapp talk about the “Curse of Homosexuality” here.

I refer to Knapp as the American Taliban not in jest.  The Taliban kills homosexuals too.

The single greatest threat to the climate comes from burning coal but despite this a whole new fleet of dirty coal-fired power stations are on the verge of being built in the UK (the first for 30 years). The snow globe was designed for Ctrl.Alt.Shift in anticipation of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

(Image: WeAreDorothy.com)

(Image: WeAreDorothy.com)

(Via.)

(Image via the Texas Tribune)

An Oklahoma mother brought her daughter to a local hospital after she was raped only to be turned away and refused help by a doctor, purportedly because the hospital lacked the staff to properly process the victim’s claims and injuries. Welcome to the reality of processing sexual assault crimes in GOP-land.

(Image via @TheYoungTurks on Twitter)

(Image via @TheYoungTurks on Twitter)

(Image via TheYoungTurks on Twitter)

You get what you pay for.

Then again.  Maybe not:

(Image via Serta.com)

Maybe what he’s really thinking about is drumming up business.

France Moves to Cap Executive Pay at State [Funded] Firms

France’s new government will flesh out plans to cap the pay of top executives at state-controlled companies by mid-June, laying down a marker in a Europe-wide debate fuelled by waves of austerity and rising unemployment.

Elected this month promising to curb the privileges enjoyed by France’s wealthy and powerful, Socialist President Francois Hollande pledged during campaigning to limit senior executives’ salaries [paid by taxpayer's money] to a maximum of 20 times that of their lowest-paid employee.

The tax dollars French citizens are paying are funding these “state” firms so no question about it.  Executives shouldn’t reap huge salaries paid for by tax dollars.  A no brainer imho.  I mean, let’s cap the executive pay of defense contractors wo suck off of the boob of the U.S. tax payer.  The scary –yikes! –  Socialism can be a good thing.

North Carolina Republicans Protecting Home Builders — Want to Hide Climate Change-Induced Sea Rise From Buyers

Ah yes.  Republicans.  Always looking for a way to protect the corporatocracy and to rip We the People off:

North Carolina science people have determined that coastal sea levels are expected to rise 1 meter [3.28 feet] by 2100 — far more than they’ve traditionally risen, due to the expected impacts of climate change. But developers in 20 coastal counties, see, have determined that such a rise would be bad for development prospects. So they’ve lobbied the state to lower that forecast to only 15 inches instead, because why not? Fifteen’s a nice number. Arbitrary, sure, but can’t the scientists just shut up already?

The difference between 3.28 feet and 15 inches isn’t all that much right?  [Yikes!] So hey, WTF.  Everyone involved will be dead and buried (w/millions passed on to their ALEC-member-kids who will control the world my neighbor’s 3-year-old boy will live in.)

It’s Casserole Night in Canada

The sound of casseroles, or banging on pots and pans, has become a common sound of Montreal’s nightlife for the past week or so.

Tonight, the sound is spreading to the rest of the nation as protesters in over 60 cities across Quebec and Canada (and some international locations like Brussels, London and Madison, WA). Organizers want to emulate Quebec’s casseroles movement, which has its roots in the Chilean cacerolazos, anti-goverment protests in the 1970s and ’80s. Tonight’s Facebook page humourously dubs the event “Casseroles Night in Canada.”

The movement in Montreal was sparked by the ongoing opposition to tuition fee hikes and the introduction of Bill 78. Protesters gather on neighbourhood street corners during the evening, clanging pots, pans, and anything else they can grab, and march all over Montreal. Supporters along the way join in by making noise from their balconies, front doors and windows.

One of the things Canadians are protesting is a new law — designed to quash protests (crazy gets normalized) — requiring them to submit a map outlining their protest route eight hours in advance.

This is the map they submitted last Wednesday:

Thumbs up casserole people oh, and if I were you, I wouldn’t buy a home on the Florida coast.

Enjoy.

(Via.)

(Image via London2012.com)

Upon returning to the United States after two weeks amidst London’s pre-Olympic terrain, I have some final thoughts that I hope the International Olympic Committee and the UK’s Tory Prime Minister David Cameron take to heart. …  Your games are in trouble because the people who actually have to live in London alongside the Olympiad are mad as hell. And it’s only May.

[...]

There is scant discussion that these London games could come in at ten times their proposed 2005 budgetas well, causing another “debt crisis” that will be taken from the hides—not to mention the pensions—of the UK’s workers. At several events involving trade union workers and bureaucrats, the message was repeated to me over and over: when the Olympics are over, the gloves will come off.

In other words, faced with the pressures of austerity and recession, Cameron and company are cooling their jets until the Olympics are over and then they will try to do their level best to disembowel the unions and further cut taxes for the wealthy. Why wait until after the Olympics? Because Cameron needs the unions’ cooperation to make sure that the games come off on time and on schedule. They need to make sure the unions don’t take strike action or join the demonstrations planned for July 28, the first Saturday of the games. This is why they agreed to sizable bonuses for London’s subway workers. Anything to make sure that the Olympics show London, and more critically David Cameron, in the best possible light.

Alexander Wolff, the great journalist from Sports Illustrated, is stationed in London and wrote this week, “Every time I come to England I’m struck by how the lowbrow mingles with the high.” But in London the “lowbrow” are angry and the “highbrow” are scared. They mingle only in the shared sense that a storm is coming to the British Isles. The summer will be filled with games. But an epic fall awaits.

The whole article is so good I’m having difficulty distilling it down to a few cut and pasted paragraphs.  It isn’t all that long.  I recommend reading the whole thing, here.

One guess as to who the bleach-bottle bimbo is.

This guy:

And as usual, Rich rips Mitt a new one:

Romney appeared at a fund-raiser in Vegas last night with Trump as host. Is Mitt going to end up regretting this association?

There’s been no better cost-benefit analysis than that from George Will, who, in his now famous Sunday morning fulmination said: “The benefit — what voter is going to vote for him because he is seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious.” To spell out the costs in the Trump case, I’d start with the fact that (1) Romney once again brandished his default mode as a coward, running away from the press before the Trump fund-raising event to duck embarrassing questions; it was a resonant replay of his disappearing act during the Limbaugh assault on Sandra Fluke. That he cowered from Trump queries on the same day he was urging increased U.S. bellicosity toward Assad in Syria undercuts any Romney pretense to “leadership”; (2) Romney again revealed his tone-deafness to the America where the hoi polloi live; he really does seem to think that Trump is an A-list celebrity who could serve as the right’s answer to George Clooney, when in fact Trump’s status is roughly that of Bristol Palin during her heyday on Dancing with the Stars; (3) It hands the Democrats another golden opportunity to make an ad mashing up Romney’s “I like being able to fire people” with Trump’s “You’re fired!”; (4) If you will fly to Vegas for a one-night-stand with a bleach-bottle bimbo, you look as if you will do anything for money.

Exactly.  (I still can’t believe Mitt’s doing as well as he is in the polls.)

This morning on “fair and balanced” Fox and Friends, Fox aired an Obama attack ad which opened with the phrase, “Fox and Friends Presents…”

Watch it here.

This crosses a huge line.  When an organization that bills itself as a “fair and balanced news” channel starts producing its own political ads, it’s time to pull the plug on the use of the words “fair and balanced” and “news.”

With just days until the Komen Global Race for the Cure in the District, registration is way down compared to last year, and it’s in part because of the controversy that surrounded the charity’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

In 2011, 40,000 people converged on Washington as part of the annual charity run and walk, raising $5 million for clinics across the nation.

However, this weekend’s race will fall short of last year’s numbers, and its not alone. Races in cities such as Seattle, Richmond and Fort Worth have seen their numbers drop by, on average, one-third. In D.C., 25,000 people have registered for this year’s race.

A row emerged this past February when the Komen for the Cure announced it was pulling grants to Planned Parenthood for breast exams. The organization reversed its decision quickly.

More…

But if Republicans want to take us back to the 50′s and 60′s (my brother and I were there), this is where we’d want to be:

(Image via TripAdvisor.com)

But get a load of this:

More than a year has passed since that devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. Nearly 16,000 people were killed as entire towns were swept away. Boats, cars, and homes became islands of debris floating toward the West Coast, and some of it has started washing up on Montague Island in Alaska.

At the mouth of Prince William Sound, there are bottles and barrels, spray cans, fishing gear and worries about toxic chemicals. The Japanese writing on this fuel canister says Danger.

“We can clean this up given the resources, but it’s gonna be a four-, five-, six-year process,” said Chris Pallister, president of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a group that tries to keep wilderness beaches free of trash.

Pallister said things like building insulation from Japan can be found along the Alaska coast, “and I mean there’s boatload after boatload after boatload of that up and down the shoreline.”

By 2013, it’s estimated as much as 1.5 million tons of wreckage from the tsunami could reach the West Coast from Alaska all the way to California.

More…

I lived in Laguna Beach for about three months when I was in the sixth grade before my parents moved a few miles inland to Orange. Believe you me, if roofs and cars and “boatload after boatload” of radioactive contaminated stuff washes up there, this brouhaha about bluefin tuna will evaporate.

After all, we’re talkin’ OC, home of the 1%-ers, as in Mitt’s lil’ ol beach house.

Trash a blue collar fisherman’s fishing ground in Alaska? No biggie. Trash the 1%-ers beaches?  That’s an emergency.

President Barack Obama’s administration appears set to notify the U.S. Congress of plans to arm a fleet of Italian MQ-9 Reaper drones, a step that may spur a wider spread of remotely piloted hunter-killer aircraft.

The administration could move ahead within two weeks on the proposal to let Italy join Britain in deploying U.S. drones with weapons such as laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles, American officials said.

Italy has a fleet of six Reapers. The sale of the technology to arm them, including bomb racks and “weaponization” kits costing up to $17 million, would help the United States redistribute the burden of its global military operations as the Pentagon’s budget is being squeezed by deficit-reduction requirements.

More…

So touching isn’t it (think of all the jobs!) that the Military Industrial Complex has found a new toy to sell to the world and that President Obama is acting as its Salesman in Chief?

The Nobel Peace Prize huh?

And about the Pentagon’s budget being “squeezed;” what a joke.

Filed under: Wars ]]> http://sayitaintsoalready.com/2012/05/29/why-was-obama-awarded-the-nobel-peace-prize-again/feed/ 2 melaniekillingervowell US Military Spending 3-24-12 http://sayitaintsoalready.com/2012/05/29/what-if-men-could-get-pregnant/ http://sayitaintsoalready.com/2012/05/29/what-if-men-could-get-pregnant/#comments Tue, 29 May 2012 20:02:25 +0000 Say It Ain't So Already http://sayitaintsoalready.com/?p=51715 ]]> I’m all for this!  Enough with putting it all on the woman:

The Standard Examiner reports that a local doctor in Utah has written three-page proposal to fine every father who impregnates a woman or girl, saying the fee — and the subsequent penalties — ensures, “No boy would dare have sex without wearing three condoms.”

The consequences?

• Restrict elective abortion to the first 16 weeks.
• Require DNA testing to determine paternity of all out-of-wedlock children, even aborted.
• Require the father to establish a $50,000 trust fund to care for any out-of-wedlock child, even if adopted. If the child is aborted, the fund is used for sex education.
• If the father can’t pay, he joins the military and uses his enlistment bonus and salary to pay.
• No man can avoid paternity claiming “she seduced me,” or that she claimed she was on the pill, had her tubes tied, whatever.
• Man under 18? His parents are responsible.