I just finished watching another incredibly annoying episode of Realtime. I had high hopes for it, sine Bernie Sanders was on, but it was made unbearable by the presence of loudmouth schmuck Stephen Moore, and some annoying twit from the Crappington Post Live. Neither of them would STFU when Bernie had something to say (as Bernie said at one point, “you’re loud but you’re not right”). I honestly don’t understand why Maher has Moore on. He’s always the same overbearing snide, ignorant purveyor of “free market” and rightwing talking points who refuses to shit up and let somebody else have a say.
Fortunately, after that debacle came the first episode of “Vice,” which was really good. They went to the Philippines, where elections are apparently won by whoever manages to kill the opposing candidates, and to Afghanistan where they explored suicide bombings (mostly by kids). I have to say, much as I appreciate the reporting they do, these people are nuts. No way in hell would I put myself in these situations.
You may have heard that Obama has officially decided to fuck over Social Security (and veterans’ benefits) by officially codifying the use of chained CPI in his budget proposal. Of course, his budget has no chance of passing, but, like his healthcare reform negotiating “tactics,” it means that he’ll now be forced to cave in even more. It’s not a surprise, but it is pretty annoying. No doubt they’ll raise the age for social security to 72 or something and turn Medicare into an insurance voucher system so that old people can just get sick and die and save the younger generation lots of money (they don’t realize that they’ll be old before they know it, but it’s OK as log as they can have the latest and greatest iThing).
On the bright side, he’s giving the OK (and the funding) to NASA to capture an asteroid. Yeah, we’re gonna go out and find one and bring it back to the moon, where we’ll go and walk around on it. In 2021. So, that should be fun, I guess. I’ll be 60, and looking forward to another 12 years of work before I can retire. Assuming I’m luck enough to still have a job, which is no guarantee the way things are going these days.
Oh well, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a decent day. Not super warm, but sunny. Maybe I can get to work on doing some fencing. I need something to tire me out so I can w=take a nap for a few hours this evening. Hopefully things won’t suck.
First dead pigs now 20,000 birds. Dear lord, what a disaster. All to eat meat. It’s so much easier to have a don’t eat anything that has a mother diet.
I turned off Maher when Moore started shouting that there was nothing in the SS trust fund. I guess borrowing and confiscating are synonyms. Perhaps the next time I go to the bank they can explain my account is empty as they used the money as a loan for the Kochs.
I sorta listened to Vice because I was very tired but I was curious about the section on kids as suicide bombers. I thought they said the kids were unaware of the suicide part of wearing a bomb and I wondered how the other kids were unaware of the fate of those who went before them. If that question was addressed, I missed it as I fell asleep.
They said for some, they didn’t tell them the vets had explosives. They said they had “secret documents,” and then the had remote detonators so the kids never knoew what hit them. For others they told them they had special explosives that only blew outward, so they were safe. I’m sure they probably told the other kids that once they completed their missions, they got to go to some great place.
Is Moore that smart-aleck creep with the glasses? I have it cued up to watch but all of the reviews are bad. Even before it aired I saw some negs.
Good luck tonight, pj. Yesterday was a good one for orange by The Bay. I don’t undertand why but I have a Michigan coffee mug which I put on hiatus last weekend.
Couldn’t stomach Mahr myself last night. My intrepid reporter was disappointed with Vice, saying old footage/story ideas etc. He was hoping for more….
Maher
btw, I stuck a fork in the UM mug.
This just aint right.
So I quit my job yesterday. I’m aware of someone allegedly following my former significant other around at work some time ago, and she said she had an armed escort walk her out to her car after work until she felt confident enough to not feel threaten. I took a noble route, at least I think so, to avoid any possibility of me being accused of following her at work by quitting. Of course, I lose income and possibly a tarnished reference from my employer, but I couldn’t handle being in that situation.
I wanted to marry and have a family with that girl. I may not have another relationship with someone for quite some time, maybe even years, after this.
Transfer?
It’s too late, I turned in my badge, ID, and key to the storage room. I could change shifts, but everyone at TSA knows at least rumors of us and I would hear comments about it from time to time walking through checkpoint. And she hates me and I know she doesn’t want to see me ever again. I can’t transfer because there’s nowhere for me to transfer to. She could transfer to wherever she wants having a sweet federal job, though. I worked for a measly 8 bucks an hour with no benefits.
Also, I quit because I knew she would hate me after I sent her mom a photo of her fresh cuts on her arm. I asked her mom to somehow get her help so she could stop that behavior. I know she’s of age and there may be nothing her mom can do, but I needed to try. She blocked me from sending text messages and Facebook messages, and she told me to never ever talk to or try to see her again because of telling her mom about what happened.
Now she says she cut because she couldn’t handle the stress from being talked down to at work.
I told her if she cut again I wouldn’t want to be with her.
A New Era in Political Corruption
By GAIL COLLINS
Have you ever noticed how high the bar is when it comes to getting arrested for political corruption? Really, you practically have to go around with a sign that says “Will Trade Influence for Cash.â€
I have been thinking about this because New York is having awful corruption scandals. The charges involve politicians acting in such an insanely stupid way, it shatters our longstanding confidence that taking money was the one thing they know how to do well.
We have a Democratic state senator, Malcolm Smith, under indictment for trying to buy the Republican New York City mayoral nomination. Nobody knows what he wanted with it, since Smith has no real supporters, a stupendously bad record even by State Senate standards and could not actually be elected mayor if he were running against Donald Trump’s retriever.
Prosecutors say his henchman was Councilman Daniel Halloran, a Tea Party Republican and a practitioner of Theodism, a strain of Germanic neopaganism. That may make Halloran the highest-ranking self-identified heathen in American politics, so already we have a little bit of a national spin on this saga.
Also there’s Eric Stevenson, an unremarkable assemblyman from the Bronx accused of taking bribes from some men who wanted to start adult day care centers. Among other things, he introduced legislation prohibiting anybody else from opening a similar facility anywhere in the New York City area. Even in Albany, this idea is not likely to garner much support, but it’s a tribute to the ethos of the State Capitol that people seemed prepared to believe it could happen.
According to the indictments, one Republican official from Queens frisked a briber, who was actually an undercover F.B.I. agent, to make sure he wasn’t wearing a wire. Then failed to find the wire. Then took the bribe while being recorded. This all happened at a super-secret meeting at Sparks, the steakhouse where John Gotti had Paul Castellano rubbed out. I believe there should be an unwritten rule in criminal conspiracy that you do not schedule your big payoff at the most famous gangland murder site in Manhattan.
Prosecutors say Stevenson, the Bronx assemblyman, was also worried about whether he was being taped. He expressed those concerns to a co-conspirator who was actually doing the taping.
Everybody was taping everybody! Plus these secret plots seemed to require more participants than the cast of “Game of Thrones.†All of them muttering what sounded like lines stolen from Season Two of “Bad Knockoff Sopranos.â€
“We have a system that only catches morons,†sighed a member of the State Legislature’s brave but not terribly large band of reformers.
Yeah, why didn’t these guys do things the normal way? A donation to the campaign war chest and a promise to “keep in close contact,†followed by a visit from a lobbyist with a copy of the proposed legislation?
“Most lawmakers in Congress do a lot of that stuff. They’re just more tactful in how they go about it,†said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. She recalled the recent discovery that Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey had been using his influence to try to resolve a multimillion-dollar Medicare billing dispute for a Florida ophthalmologist whose company contributed more than $700,000 toward the election of Senate Democrats, Menendez included. The senator, who is nothing if not a skilled practitioner of business as usual, is shocked, wounded and dismayed that anyone would imagine a quid pro quo.
“At least he’s expensive,†Sloan said.
Our New York gang comes pretty cheap. Although perhaps it’s heartening to realize that America is still a country so filled with promise that even the chairman of the Bronx Republican Party can dream of one day being indicted for taking a $15,000 bribe. There are hardly any Republicans in the Bronx to chair — the party leader himself, who got the job when his predecessor went to the clink, actually lives someplace in the suburbs.
One of the stranger elements to the New York story was word that a Bronx assemblyman named Nelson Castro has been wearing a wire for the feds for virtually his entire political career. He originally got into trouble when election officials noticed nine voters were registered as living with him in his one-bedroom apartment. Unable to demonstrate how all that worked out, Castro agreed to cooperate with authorities and became the F.B.I.’s own social networking system. Nobody knows yet what else showed up on the Castro tapes, but the assemblyman announced his resignation this week, expressing pride “of my accomplishments and the many benefits that I have secured on behalf of my district over the last four years.â€
So, here’s a hopeful thought: maybe you can hit a point of ethical bankruptcy where, for want of anybody else to sell out, all the plotters betray each other.
2 bad calls did it. Chicken
shitwing fowl and last minute offensive foul. :fu:Still one heckuva ‘D’. Giving MU some credit, they solved it in the 1st half and held on while losing the 2nd. I kept waiting for Michigan to call a time out at the end. 😉
🙁
One question I have, not being a big follower of college hoop, is what is the deal with inside shooting? I understand when you get near the rim against ‘cuse and an Orange roof collapses on you but there just seems to be so much getting down inside and tossing the ball up in the air willy nilly. I sure can’t be because anyone else is following up and getting the points or the rebound from what I was seeing.
I guess my Monday night is freed up now and I got an offer earlier today to see the local Orange (and Black).
I have a new business idea I probably should not be sharing. Then again, maybe we can all bee rich.
You may have heard that bees are dying at an alarming rate. Once Bayer and Monsanto and cell phone EMFs kill them all off (eliminating that pesky queen bee matriarchal hive society) someone should create swarms little miniature flying things impervious to the effects of the bee killing elements that can be purchased or contracted to go out and do all of the pollinating. I think some corporation could make some big $s on that. Wonder if there is some catching marketing/branding handle to attach to these little flying saviours of humanity? Perhaps something bee-related like ‘drone’. King corn could maybe then be able to rename/rebrand HFCS as ‘honey’. Maybe amusement parks and science museums could create ‘experiences’ so the children can learn what the stings were like.
What could go wrong? You’re welcome!
:bee: :bee: :bee: :bee:
Well, whaddya know? Scientists Develop Flying Robobees to Pollinate Flowers as Bee Populations Decline
by Timon Singh, 03/11/13
I already knew they were working on these kind of things for lethal reasons and spying and security. Monetizing bee functions and defeating matriarchal empires-priceless!
I was trying to be clever but I have no doubt that is what is happening. You notice that research is beeing done by university scientists but you can the technology will be turned over to the private sector for ‘implementation’. They’ll probably get ‘small business’ tax breaks.
:bee: :bee: :bee: :bee:
The 9th drop live feed. :yawn:
Les Blank, Filmmaker Who Captured Life and Its Eccentricities, Dies at 77
By BRUCE WEBER
Published: April 7, 2013
A friend, an idol, an inspiration.
:blues: 🙁 :gate:
Oh, gawd, pj! I am watching Real Time and it is just as bad as everyone has said. From the get go you could see Bernie was ready to explode. That Huntsman daughter was almost as bad as the other idiot.
Yeah, I had a hard time watching. I had to get up and walk away more than a few times.
See ya!
Margaret Thatcher dies aged 87
The UK’s first female prime minister changed way Britons viewed politics and economics
:growl: 👿
21 Incredibly Angry Songs About Margaret Thatcher
The former prime minister inspired bitter tunes by Elvis Costello, Morrissey, Pink Floyd, and many others.
Update: She died April 8, 2013, at age 87 — though her death was celebrated by musicians years ago.
posted on October 11, 2012 at 2:19pm EDT
Maybe it is good to leave this good riddance to bad garbage on yesterday’s new…
The Real Legacy of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Iron Lady
Battening down the hatches in anticipation of all of the fawning admiration of the Thatcher mythology that will also reinvigorate the fawning worship of the Reagan mythology. Perhaps there will be a courageous ice cream shop that will create a special Maggie Thatcher Memorial Triple Dip cone. I wouldn’t eat one because the brown would remind me of the shite she tried to feed most of the people.
I meant to say adoration.
Too bad MS isn’t still around. It could have been a good Dead Thatcher Monday.
Jim Earl
BREAKING: Annette Funicello To Be Interred In Margaret Thatcher’s Iron Vagina.
My favorite number is five, and now I’m seeing it places I wish I didn’t. My bank checking account is at 50.05, and she cut five times on her arm. I might have to change my mind about that number. Three has always been good to me. It’s odd, prime, and useful in encryption.