She was standin' alone/Over by the jukebox....

Sign o' the Times:Mom-n-Pop Win Retail War?

There’s been a passionate debate in our little hamlet over the past few years about the influence of so-called “big box” stores on the retail business in quaint little San Luis Obispo, CA. Larger retailers require vastly more square footage than “Mom-and-Pop” stores and so are necessarily located on the outskirts of town. Slow-growthers contend such sprawling commercial development ultimately hurts smaller, locally-owned businesses by drawing shoppers away from the city’s commercial core. The other side says the sales tax revenue generated by these behemoths is vital to the city’s financial health.

Intuitively, the argument about the negative effects of commercial sprawl would appear to have some merit, but let’s look at what’s actually happened over just the past few months: For the most part, downtown SLO continues to bustle with activity. Shoppers, tourists, college kids, sightseers, movie-goers, gawkers, transients and business people all populate the city’s sidewalks, parks, coffee shops, restaurants and retail outlets. There appear to be few vacancies and those that do come up are soon filled.

Meanwhile, out in the malls: Circuit City, Linens and Things, Mervyn’s, Albertson’s and Gottschalks have all gone bust, closing their doors (or soon to do so), putting hundreds of people out of work and taking all that sales tax revenue with them. That’s well over 200,000 square feet of vacant commercial space. At this point, Sears (yes venerable old Sears) is the last remaining “department store” in the city of SLO. So much for the big box experiment, yet another sign of Americans' tendency to do everything to excess.

Lance Armstrong's X-ray: He's so screwed.

Now that's what I call a broken collarbone.

Ever Wonder?

Where they came up with the new Pepsi logo?

Hell Bent for Leather

Never let it be said the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles, CA can't pull in the big time entertainment...

Favorite Current Movie Title Translation

El Mas Rapido y el Furioso

Cain't Even Afford to Die

John Rich was the country music tool who played that embarrassingly bad Raisin' McCain song at the Republican National Convention, but I do believe this tune captures the sadness and desperation of so many working class heroes in today's America.

Word to the Wise

As goes General Motors, so goes the nation.

F'd-up Wingnut Sign of the Day

Always best to watch yer Ps and Qs when yer accusin' somebody else of incompetnce incomtenence incompitense ...not being competent. How long do you think dipshit spent making that sign?

Message to AIG

We broke up Ma Bell once.

International Terrorists

What will it take for a startlingly matter-of-fact sentence like this to raise a few eyebrows in the Obama administration?

Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House.

Are we really going to let them get away with it?

Not, it seems, if Spain has anything to say about it. I don't think anyone is under any illusions that the thugs from the Bush administration would ever be extradited from the US to face war crimes charges in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter), but it would be righteously deserved to see them forever bound to our shores because of international criminal warrants leaving them open to arrest and trial should they ever leave American soil.

Great Moments in Misguided PR

We should all stop kidding ourselves. GM is done.

Old Days

Goodbye, Newspapers: Another Nail in the Coffin

The Los Angeles Times is a self-loathing publication on a downward spiral toward insolvency, irrelevancy and -- ultimately -- nothingness. Its decision to print drivel such as this, in its own pages no less, is Exhibit A:

If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration's recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That's the likelihood; here's the certainty: You've never listened to Rush Limbaugh.
[...]
You're not a moderate or you wouldn't be reading this newspaper. You're not tolerant of a wide range of views; you are tolerant of a narrow spectrum of variations on your views. And, whatever you claim, you still haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh.

Which leads to a question: Why not? I mean, come on, the guy's one of the figures of the age. Aren't you even curious? I listen to all your guys: NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, The Times, the New York Times, the New Yorker -- I check out the whole left-wing hallelujah chorus. Why are you afraid to spend a couple of hours listening to Limbaugh's show and seriously considering if and why you disagree with him?

Let me guess at your answer. You don't need to listen to him. You've heard enough to know he's a) racist, b) hateful, c) stupid, d) merely an outrageous entertainer not to be taken seriously or e) all of the above.

Now let me tell you the real answer: You're a lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered intellectual coward. You're terrified of finding out he makes more sense than you do.

I listen to Limbaugh every chance I get, and I have never heard the man utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word.

Remember, this is the same newspaper that fired Robert Scheer and replaced him with the nauseating Jonah Goldberg.

Bracket of Evil

More March Madness!! The Government vs. Media semi-final matchup is shaping up to be an epic battle.

Gotta make yer free throws....

The last remaining team from Philadelphia has advanced to college basketball's Final Four. They did it, in large part, by making 22 of 23 free throws, shooting 95.7% from the line.

YAZ?!?

While I might be damn fool enough pay $64.99 for a Carl Yastrzemski baseball card, who in their right mind would pay that sum for a 4-CD set of Yaz's "greatest hit?" Found this gem at the local record store. Ick. The Velvet Underground box set was two bins down at $54.95.

Existential Economics

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi was on Rachel Maddow:

I'm obviously not an expert on any of this stuff but I think on this one point the logic here to me doesn't seem all that hard to follow. If these companies are too big to fail, they're too big to exist.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds

President Obama's budget plan was more than 1000 pages...the Republican budget "pamphlet" ran all of 19.

Life Lesson

You gotta make your free throws.

Bust It

It wasn't a gaffe, you morans. It was a joke.

From The Telegraph.co.uk --

Mr Obama hosted an evening reception for the visiting Irish premier Brian Cowen and other Emerald Isle and Irish-American dignitaries in the State Dining Room of the White House. First up, Vice President Joe Biden. Then, President Obama.
[...]
"Then it was Cowen's turn, and he was in for a surprise. 'We begin by welcoming today a strong friend of the United States,' he said--then stopped in surprise as he realized he was reading President Obama's speech off the teleprompter. 'Why don't these things work for me?' he asked, as the crowd roared. 'Thank you for having us. Who said these things were idiot-proof?' Then he got his bearings and gave the same talk that he delivered in the East Room.

When he ended, at 8:12, Obama stepped to the microphone and said, 'First, I'd like to say thank you to President Obama...(much laughter). Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everybody.' Then we were escorted out."

When you have no sense of humor, it's hard to appreciate a good joke. In a good, well-structured comedy bit, there's something comics refer to as a "call-back." A call-back occurs when a comedian makes a joke that refers back to something funny that he/she said in the act 5 or 10 or 30 minutes earlier. It's a classic bit, with the punchline coming well after the set-up, and President Obama executed it (and ad libbed, to boot) brilliantly. If the humorless morans on the right don't get it, that's their problem.

Great Moments in Legislative Disaster

You just knew it would play out this way: The Governator and the Legislature shirk their responsibilities off on the public and, guess what, we the people are having none of it...

LAT -- Five state ballot measures aimed at solving California's budget crisis are falling short of the support needed to pass in the May special election, a sign that voters may force lawmakers into another fierce clash over tax hikes and spending cuts, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The state's dismal economy has already partly unraveled the budget deal that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature reached last month, with a drop in tax collections leaving a new $8-billion shortfall. Rejection of the ballot measures would widen the gap to nearly $14 billion.

March Madness: Bird vs. Magic

Thirty years ago today....

Acting the Part

If central casting ever calls looking for "man with furrowed brow," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is definitely your man.

Interrogation by Idiot

Whether you agree with their policy decisions or not, I think we can all agree that it's gotta really piss smart guys like Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke off to have to undergo an interrogation by a complete and total idiot like Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. Just look at Geithner's expression as he tries to follow Bachmann's questioning regarding the constitutionality of legislation passed by the Congress. And Barney Frank can be a real dick.

But he's our dick.

Q: "Did You Ever Have to Fart on a Bus?"

Haven't kids these days ever heard of the old "artificial fart under the arm?"

Hindsight is 20/20

13 years after the fact, it's worth remembering that Kobe Bryant was the 13th pick in the NBA Draft. There are some good players on this list, but 13th?!?

Don't Be Fooled...

If you buy a toy and somewhere on the packaging it sez Really Works!, chances are it doesn't.

And it won't.

Press Conference: *...Yawn...*

I guess when you've spent 8 years fluffing a mildly retarded imbecile and telling people the world could come to an end at any moment (and doing your best to help make it happen), "reassuring," could come across as "boring."

Flip Wilson introduces KISS...

Teleprompter vs. No Teleprompter

I was unaware that George W. Bush never used a teleprompter...

FOX's Brett Baier's first impression of President Obama's National Press Conference after telling us how long it was and how many questions he took was to cut to a shot of the massive screen in the back and middle of the room and he said that Obama read his opening statement there. Wow. Did the media focus on President Bush's use of the teleprompter, ever?

David Letterman, of all people, has more here.

My favorite Bushclip evah:

Geithner's Yesterday in 100 Seconds

How bad is it....?

It's over — we're officially, royally fucked.

[...]
It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

Matt Taibbi breaks down the whole infuriating story, right here.

D'oh. SNAP!

Next.

What Molly sez:

[This post is] in honor of Ed Henry, who now carries his ass in a brown paper bag.

Catch Me If You Can

Can't wait to get chased by one of these.

What has three wheels, climbs hills and gets used by Cal Poly’s police officers?

Answer: the T-3, a motorized, chariotlike vehicle that police ride standing up while on their patrols or monitoring parking.

Two vehicles built by the company T-3 Motion were purchased by the University Police Department about a month ago for more than $8,000 each to help the campus officers patrol sidewalks and narrow pathways.

The battery-powered vehicles — which operate similarly to the Segway — help officers to cover more places on campus than they can access in cars.

The T-3s travel up to 18 miles per hour, making them much faster than bicycles, which campus police also use now.

Emphasis mine. 18 miles per hour? Game over.

21st Century Retirement Plan

We should all be so lucky.

Ralph Amendolaro of Queens, New York, used confessed Ponzi schemer [Bernie Madoff's] prison number to play the lottery, after seeing it on the front page of the New York Daily News earlier this month. And a few days later, that number -- 61727-054 -- came up, winning the lucky construction worker $1500.

Unfortunate Name Dept.

There's actually a politician out there named "Dick Wadhams."

And the Colorado GOP is sticking with him.

Johnny Appleseed

Lord, there goes Johnny Appleseed
He might pass by in the hour of need
There's a lot of souls
Ain't drinking from no well locked in a factory

Hey - look there goes
Hey - look there goes
If you're after getting the honey - hey
Then you don't go killing all the bees

Look, there goes Martin Luther King
Notice how the door closes when the chimes of freedom ring
I hear what you're saying, I hear what he's saying
Is what was true now no longer so?

Hey - I hear what you're saying
Hey - I hear what he's saying
If you're after getting the honey - hey
Then you don't go killing all the bees

What the people are saying
And we know every road
What the people are saying
There ain't no berries on the trees

Let the summertime sun
Fall on the apple - fall on the apple

Lord, there goes a Buick forty-nine
Black sheep of the angels riding, riding down the line
We think there is a soul, we don't know
That soul is hard to find

Hey - down along the road
Hey - down along the road
If you're after getting the honey
Then you don't go killing all the bees

Hey - it's what the people are saying
It's what the people are saying
Hey - there ain't no berries on the trees
Hey - that's what the people are saying, no berries on the trees
If you're after getting the honey
Then you don't go killin' all the bees.

Simple Answers to Stupid Questions

Cal Poly's basketball coach, Kevin Bromley, was fired last week after leading the team to a 7-21 record and a last place finish in the woeful Big West Conference, prompting a letter writer to ask:

Is winning basketball games so important that a coach’s employment is terminated (is being scapegoated?) for losing?

Yes.

The Pastime

If only America cared as much about baseball as Japan and South Korea. Dodger Stadium was rocking tonight with drums and whistles and passionate fandom, and Ichiro saved the championship for Japan with a 4-hit night and a clutch 2-run double in the top of the 10th. Well played, men. Wow.

India Firm Unveils World's Cheapest Car

Seriously.

Obama Tax Increase: How Bad Is It?

All the recent talk about the tax rate increase proposed by Barack Obama got me to wondering. What would be the real $$$ impact of a rate increase from 35% to 39.6% on people making more than $250,000 per year. Perhaps you've not yet seen the numbers laid out in front of you for examination, but here you go...

1st scenario: What would be the real $$$ impact of a rate increase on married taxpayers earning $300,000 ($50,000 greater than the minimum):

Before the increase:
$300,000 Adjusted Gross Income x .35 = $105,000 total tax.

After the Increase:
$250,000 x .35 = $ 87,500
$ 50,000 x .396 = $ 19,800
Total Tax = $107,300

In Scenario 1, those making $300,000 owe an extra $2300.

2nd scenario: What would be the real $$$ impact of a rate increase on married taxpayers earning $1,000,000 (well over the minimum):

Before the Increase:
$1,000,000 AGI x .35 = $350,000 total tax

After the Increase:
$250,000 x .35 = $ 87,500
$750,000 x .396 = $297,000
Total Tax = $384,500

In Scenario 2, taxpayers making $1,000,000 a year would owe an extra $34,500.

Onerous? Unfair?

CA Congressman Skips Stimulus Funding

The wingnut congressman whose district butts up against mine requested zero earmarks for his constituency in this year's budget. And he's wearing that legislative neglect as a badge of honor. Perhaps that shit will play well with the rednecks over there in Bakersfield, but it's his stark hypocrisy that rankles me out here on the coast.

Representative Kevin McCarthy objects so strongly to President Obama's economic stimulus plan that he has declined all earmark spending in the upcoming budget, proudly securing "zip zilch nada" in funding for California's 22nd Congressional District. He did so, he says, "On purpose." This news got me to wondering whether McCarthy showed the same intestinal fortitude when George W. Bush was president. So I looked it up. And whadd'ya know? Taxpayers for Common Sense, a "non-partisan budget watchdog group," reports that Kevin McCarthy brought home more than $56-million in pork-barrel spending as recently as fiscal year 2008!

Among the programs McCarthy deemed worthy of federal tax dollars (while George Bush was president anyway) were $1,378,000 for study of the ozone layer in the Central Valley; $245,000 for San Miguel railroad crossing safety; $1,000,000 for a “flow path analysis tool” in Redlands; and $359,000 to study “cotton pathology” in Shafter.

Well, things sure have changed (now that Barack Obama is president). "Zip. Zilch. Nada." It's good to see a man who [grand]stands on principle...and is willing to allow his constituents to suffer just so he can score a not-so-cheap political point.

HYPOCRISY UPDATE: And just today, McCarthy is crying foul because Defense Secretary Robert Gates has cut funding for a laser beam that's made in his district. Honestly, a "laser."

Little Buddy Pwned

Governor Gilligan gets punked by a volcano...

Barack Obama on 60 Minutes

Watch CBS Videos Online
Still feeling pretty good about this new president we've got.

Twitter

Like text-messaging only sillier.

ROFLMFAO. Tweet!

Dictionaries Have a Well Known Liberal Bias

Conservatives have their tidy whiteys all twisted because (ZOMG) the nation's most popular dictionary updated the definition of marriage.

I always thought it was "tighty whiteys." Can anbody elighten me on that?

March Madness

They really should have called the Midwest Region the South, because my bracket looks like Sherman marched through and purt' near burned the whole thing to the ground.

FYI

I know it rhymes with "gotten," but there's no such word as "boughten."

Spineless Weenies

As I watched one self-righteous congressman after another take angry potshots at AIG CEO Edward Liddy yesterday, I had to ask myself, "Where were these people when George Bush and his cronies were lying us into the Iraq War?" If only a few more of these assholes had shown some 'nad backbone and asked a few pointed questions in 2002, maybe we could have avoided that whole Iraq War fiasco. Jackasses.

ADDING: As it happens, today is the sixth anniversay of the war in Iraq. And the beat[down] goes on.

Cheers!

Apologies...

...for the preceeding whacked-up Ronnie Lane clip, which cuts off abruptly at the end, but it's such a wonderful song I'm going to leave it up anyway.

"I wish that I knew what I know now...when I was younger."

Leave the AIG Execs Alooooooone! Sniff.

The A.I.G. executive who was nicknamed “Jackpot Jimmy” by a New York tabloid walked up the driveway toward his bay-windowed house in Fairfield, Conn., on Thursday afternoon. "How do I feel?” said the executive, James Haas, repeating the question he had just been asked. “I feel horrible. This has been a complete invasion of privacy."

Mr. Haas walked on, his pink shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came haltingly. "You have to understand,” he said, “there are kids involved, there have been death threats. ..." His voice trailed off. It looked as if he was fighting back tears.

"I didn’t have anything to do with those credit problems,” said Mr. Haas, 47.

March Madness: Pet Peeve: Louisville

What is it with people who insist on calling the red team from Kentucky Luh-uh-ville?

Look, you can only swallow half that word and have it sound right if you're from there, otherwise how 'bout we just go with Loo-ee-ville? That way it doesn't seem like you're choking on a buffalo wing every time you talk about the L'Ville Cardinals.

Funniest Story in the Bible

Courtesy of my Jeopardy page-a-day calendar:

Samson used the "jawbone of an ass" to kill 1000 Philistines.

WTF was that all about?

Conservative Economic Theory

[click on image for larger view]

Wing Bowl 17

Nathan's Hot Dogs has nothing on Philadelphia's Wing Bowl!

Bada-bing!

That about sums it up.

And take just a minute to savor the snark in this brief comment by SoCal Congressman Brad Sherman:

SNAAAAP!

More Issues Than the Harper's Back-Catalog

Bill O'Reilly is psychotic super creepy.... Here's the plot summary from his 1998 book "Those Who Trespass":

The antagonist is a tall, "no-nonsense" television journalist named Shannon Michaels, described as the product of two Celtic parents, who is pushed out by Global News Network, and systematically murders the people who ruined his career.

Meanwhile, the protagonist, a "straight-talking" Irish-American New York City homicide detective named Tommy O’Malley, is charged with solving the murders that Michaels has committed, while competing with Michaels for the heart of Ashley Van Buren, a blond, sexy aristocrat turned crime columnist. Some reviewers have claimed that Michaels and O'Malley are "thinly veiled versions" of O'Reilly.

Michael's first victim is a news correspondent who stole his story in Argentina, and got him into trouble with the network. He then stalks the woman who forced his resignation from the network and throws her off a balcony. After that he murders a television research consultant who had advised the local station to dismiss him by burying him in beach sand up to his neck and letting him slowly drown. Finally, during a break in the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention, he slits the throat of the station manager.

After this, he is pursued by O'Malley and Van Buren, where he attempts to lose them by crossing a runway in front of a speeding jet. Although he makes it, his car's right back tire is cut by the jet's wing, causing the car to spin, flip over, and be subsequently melted by the exhaust from the jet, which explodes. Michaels dies in extreme agony, as his contacts (used to hide his identity) burn into his eyes and a chunk of the car crushes his head in.

You can hear salacious audio clips from O'Reilly's reading of the book here. Wear a raincoat though, because they are soooooper-creeeepy. Ick.

What a Difference a Day Makes

The above graph takes a sharp turn right around 01.20.09.

Let's see....what was it again that happened on that day??

Easy Money

Since when did a bonus ever come with a guarantee?

...the enablers are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very people “principally responsible for the firm’s meltdown.” That’s a cool $44 million divided among the top 10 shysters, even though the depth of their chicanery was well known to top management.

As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank: “The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals’ bonuses to be 100% of their 2007 bonuses. Thus, in the spring of last year, AIG chose to lock in bonuses for 2008 at 2007 levels despite obvious signs that 2008 performance would be disastrous in comparison to the year before.”

The lame argument that those bonus-baby employees needed to be retained in order to sort out the mess they had created was also shot down by Cuomo, who revealed after his office’s initial investigation had pierced AIG’s veil of secrecy that “[e]leven of the individuals who received `retention’ bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million.”

Tom 'n' Iggy

Finnegan's Wake

Waste of a Perfectly Good Tattoo

Now that Bristol has broken things off with baby-daddy Levi Johnston, what's he going to do about that tattoo? He might take a cue from Johnny Depp, who, after his breakup with Winona Ryder, had his "WINONA FOREVER" tat..."revised"...so that it read "WINO FOREVER."

The cringe worthy, car-side ambush interview is here, including this exchange:

ABC NEWS: "The engagement is off?
LEVI: "The engagement's off."
ABC: And whose idea was that?"
LEVI: Both of ours...well, me not being mature enough or somethin'..."

Now, at this point, and nothing against this poor kid Levi, but doesn't Britsol come off as the smartest, most personable one of the whole Palin bunch?

Idiot Wind

"Blowin' through the buttons on my coat."

"It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe...."

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Meeeeee-ow!

Careful everybody, there's a catfight in the Republican Party...

“It infuriates me,” she said. “I’m a political writer on a blog, and all of a sudden I’m too fat to write?” The View’s conservative co-host, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, called Ingraham’s remarks “a low blow.”

McCain said she felt like Tyra Banks when the model “went on her show in her bathing suit and said, ‘Kiss my fat ass.’” “That’s what I feel right now,” McCain said. “I’m like, ‘Kiss my fat ass!’”

Travel Day: A City by a Body of Water

Culture Jamming

I got to meet the artist who created this incredible work last night at the SLO International Film Festival. They were showing a film about how his piece called, simply enough, "W" , which raised the hackles first on the McDonald's people and then (after he explained to them that it was really an anti-Bush anti-war statement) on every wingnut idiot within 100 miles of Paradise by the Sea.

I recall when I first saw the sculpture on the corner of State and Canon Perdido. I had no idea it even existed, hadn't read about any controversy and simply stumbled upon it [quite literally, as is my wont] late one night. It stopped me in my tracks. I wanted one of my very own, and would have paid handsomely for a replica.

I think it may be the best, most whimsical, pop-art counter-culture work I've seen since we spray-painted "Gawd" and his posse all personalized parking spaces at St. Euthanasia Church in Isla Vista, CA.

Hats off to Colin Gray, creator of a true work of art.

Here's the trailer...

Health Care Reform Dept.

Two quick takes on the health care reform debate:

1) One of the arguments against nationalized health care is that it will take decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients and put them in the hands of "government bureaucrats."

Ahem...If you think our current system isn't run by private-sector bureaucrats, then clearly you've never had to do battle with some desk jockey at an HMO. This baloney that the current American health care system leaves important decisions to the doctor and the patient is the biggest canard in the whole argument against single-payer nationalized health care. The system we have now dwarfs single-payer inefficiencies by leaving "health care decisions" to pencil pushing twerps in Peoria Punjab while real people suffer and die from the wait.

2) 45 million people in America have no health insurance coverage at all, right now. If you think their tendency to use the hospital as a source of primary care isn't a greater inefficiency than any nationalized coverage model employed by any other first world country, then you must be smoking medical marijuana.

All the best health care ingenuity in the world ain't gonna help you if you just got tossed overboard off one insurance plan and the pre-existing condition you've got means no one else will take you either (unless you can afford the $2000-a-month premium).

Guess where those people end up? In the hospital.

Guess who pays for that? You do.

Exceptional Photo (with effects)

[h/t to photog. Bernie Nowel, SLO, CA]

Never Saw It Coming

This clip is from Sept. 16, 2008. That's less than 6 months ago.

Sure glad Mr. Wilson Gramps he didn't win.

Not in My Lifetime

...did I ever think I'd see something as bleak as this: economic hard times have lead to the creation of a tent city just outside Sacramento, CA.

[from the Daily Mail] -- A century and a half ago it was at the centre of the Californian gold rush, with hopeful prospectors pitching their tents along the banks of the American River.

Today, tents are once again springing up in the city of Sacramento. But this time it is for people with no hope and no prospects.

With America's economy in freefall and its housing market in crisis, California's state capital has become home to a tented city for the dispossessed.

Those who have lost their jobs and homes and have nowhere else to go are constructing makeshift shelters on the site, which covers several acres.

As many as 50 people a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people.

In an odd way, I think we have a tendency to romanticize the old "Hoovervilles" of the Great Depression. We think somehow the people who populated the shantytowns of the 1930s are different from us. After all, the men in all those old photos wore hats. When we look at pictures of today's dispossessed, we're more quick to judge, more readily prepared to blame them or to assume that their difficulties are of their own making. Such is hubris...

We would be better served to recall the words of the president who help to guide the nation through that great crisis 80 years ago:

"I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C., January 20, 1937.

Voice of the People

If regular folks talked like Rush Limbaugh...
...we'd think they were xenophobic racist a-holes.

"You in some trouble boy...."

[Made loud to play loud.]

I Get Email

...from my boy Harvey Milk Sean Penn.

Dear Jim,

A few minutes ago, the California Supreme Court heard the final oral arguments in the case to overturn Proposition 8. Within 90 days, we will know whether the court will restore equal rights or uphold injustice.

No matter what the state Supreme Court decides, the fight for equality will continue in California and across the country.

If we win, the same people who backed Prop 8 will find another way to undermine equal rights. If we lose, we will need to take our case to the people of California again. No matter what, we'll eventually need to win full equality under federal law.

At nearly 700,000 members and growing, the Courage Campaign is building an army to prepare for this fight -- the kind of people-powered movement that Harvey Milk would lead. A movement that proudly portrays -- and tells the stories of -- the people victimized by the discrimination of Prop 8, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Harvey Milk understood the need to organize communities from the bottom-up, the need for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people to be out and proud as leaders in this movement, and the need for straight allies to join them in solidarity.

That's why we worked so hard to get the film "Milk" to movie screens across America. We wanted to show a new generation of Americans how Harvey organized to win landmark victories in the fight for equal rights.

Just like Harvey did in 1978 when he led the movement to defeat the "Briggs Initiative," the Courage Campaign is organizing across California to repeal Prop 8 -- training marriage equality activists at "Camp Courage" events, launching Equality Teams county-by-county, and producing online videos like the heartbreaking "Fidelity," viewed by more than 1 million people.

Thank you for joining us in supporting the Courage Campaign.

Sean Penn

Teh Stupid in 100 Seconds

Clarification

I'd like to clarify my point regarding the mortgage "cramdown" policy advanced by the Obama administration. This is the new plan that allows homeowners facing foreclosure to renegotiate their mortgages with their lenders. I had noted previously that existing bankruptcy law already allowed owners of second homes and rental properties to enter into such negotiations, but primary residence owners were left to fend for themselves.

In the course of making that point, I had said the old policy favored "wealthy" property owners over regular Joes. Well, let me be clear. I have plenty of friends, regular Joes in fact, who actually do own second homes and/or rental properties. I was not implying that they are particularly wealthy or have not been paying their share, my only intent was to show that tax policy has long favored "investors" over single-property, primary residence homeowners. Why those people were left out of the equation in the first place is the real inequity.

Another Duplicitous Moment

Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press this morning:

REP. GINGRICH: Well, what does clawback mean? Clawback means the government's going to decide that whatever you thought you had earned is not yours, and they can intervene and take it back from you post facto. What do we have with the mortgage bill that just came through the House? A trial lawyer and a, and a, and a bankruptcy judge can rewrite mortgage contracts. Now, what does that say to the next cycle of mortgage contracts?
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

REP. GINGRICH: That means I shouldn't loan you the money for your mortgage unless I have built in a risk factor for you getting it rewritten. I mean, I think this administration's anti-business, anti-success rhetoric and its tax increases are an enormous burden. And the energy tax increase is as big a threat as anything they've got to recover.

What the Lizard King fails to mention in this misleading bit is that -- as I've mentioned previously on this blog -- some property owners already have the right to get the terms of their mortgage rewritten in bankruptcy court: they're the people with second homes and rental properties. There's a primary residence exclusion in current bankruptcy law that forbids single property homeowners from using the courts to get relief. And that's yet another example of a conservative Republican policy that favors the financial interests of wealthy over the middle-class.

A Reassuring Voice in a Time of Crisis

WTF on MTP

Today on Meet the Press, South Carolina Senator Huckleberry Graham said he thought President Obama ought to veto the 09/10 budget legislation because it contains so many earmarks, including 37 of his own that he said he wouldn't hesistate to insert in any future bill should President Obama veto this one...

MR. GREGORY: Now, as Senator McCain pointed out, this is a bipartisan disease. Forty percent of the earmarks are from Republicans, that's $7 billion. Should the president veto this bill?

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I'll leave that up to the president. We do need earmark reform. I wish he would veto the bill. We'd get back together and come up with the earmark reform process. Senator McCain does not object to members of Congress designating money to be spent in their state, as long as it has a federal purpose that's transparent and people understand what the money's going to be spent for and will have a say about whether or not it's a good idea. That system doesn't exist. I think it would be good for the country if the president and Senator McCain could meet, soon, sooner rather than later, and come up with a package.

MR. GREGORY: And yet Senator McCain is actually giving you a hard time.

SEN. GRAHAM: Sure.

MR. GREGORY: He's on Twitter, and number six on his list of pork barrel spending, $950,000 for a Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: You want him to--you want the president to veto this spending bill?

SEN. GRAHAM: I voted to take all earmarks out, but I will come back in the new process and put that back in. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we're trying to build an international airport, an international convention center and open up a new interstate highway to diversify Myrtle Beach's economy.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

SEN. GRAHAM: This came through the Small Business Administration.

MR. GREGORY: You've got 37 earmarks, and you think they're more important than other people's projects around the country.

SEN. GRAHAM: I think I should have the ability as a United States senator to direct money back to my state as long as it's transparent and it makes sense, yes.

Live with Me

This smokin' hot clip is from the recent Martin Scorcese film "Shine a Light."

The Good News in 100 Seconds

Unemployment Line Just Got Longer

February jobs report out today. News not good.

NYT -- Another 651,000 jobs disappeared from the American economy in February, the government reported Friday, as the unemployment rate soared to 8.1 percent — its highest level since 1983.

Pulitzer Worthy Daily Show Piece

Once again, Comedy Central's Daily Show proves it's a more relevant source of news and analysis than any other media outlet in America...

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Gawd, it feels good to call bullshit on people. Doesn't it?

Best. Mashup. Ever. [B-Boyz vs. J. Geils Band]

Oooooh, damn! No they di'ent....

Indigo Montoya Dept.

I don't think that headline means what the New York Times thinks it means. [via Wonkette]

15 Minuteers

Remember Darva Conger?

Mockery is So Much Fun Dept.

Now that the Republicans have been laid low and forced from power, don't they all just come across as completely crazed lunatics? It would be sad if it weren't so much fun to watch them climbing the walls and tearing their hair out. I mean, it's not like they're not saying the same crazy things they've always said, it's just that we don't have to take them seriously anymore.

Little Reported Fact

Amidst all the hand-wringing over Barack Obama's plan to offer assistance to losers homeowners facing foreclosure or having trouble paying their mortgages, it's worth noting that current law does allow some people to declare bankruptcy when they fall behind on their mortgages...the ones with vacation homes or rental properties. It's only the homeowners losing their primary residence who are shit outta luck when it comes to loan modification.

REO

One of the great rock anthems of all time...

Blessed Christian Salt

Straight from the floor of the Dead Sea, no doubt.

Compare and Contrast

I think I'll stick with our guy...

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence - exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word - we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Smokin'

I wonder if Michelle Obama makes Barack go outside onto the patio when he needs a cigarette?

Real Protest Music

Pity the Fools

You Say You Want a Revolution?

The wingnuts are stockpiling ammunition...

It's hard to find .38 and .40 ammo around here. A few places still have some but when they replace it, they raise the price by about 50%. I just bought a box of 50 GI hardball .38 by Federal for $18.00. Everywhere else it's $25-$45.

It's fear and anticipation. There is some rationale for the fear. Do a Google search on HR 45. It's coming, folks. Our elected leaders are working hard to eliminated the 1st and 2nd ammendments.

Where have these people been for the last eight years?!?

Bass-ackwards Argument

Why is it that a budget plan that cuts taxes for the 95% of all Americans making less than $250,000 a year is framed in the media as a tax hike on the fortunate 5% who make more than that?

A Modest Proposal

Republicans reminiscing about America's salad days would do well to remember that tax rates for the wealthy were well over 50% under St. Ronald Reagan, and they were north of 90% when FDR rescued the nation from financial ruin. It's no coincidence that 30 years of upper crust tax cuts have left us with failing schools, crumbling roads, shuttered government services and a dwindling middle class. If the Democrats really want to fix what ails the country, we could always go back to the tax policies of the mid-20th century.

Birds of a Feather?

Michael Steele is the Roland Burris of the Republican Party.

"It's Not in the Bill"

Alas, it appears they're not going to build that train from Disneyland to Las Vegas.

Met with Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack from Riverside County's Coachella Valley. While a social moderate, Sonny Bono's widow is a solid conservative. Talked to her about Obama's $780 billion stimulus legislation. She's outraged that the plan has "$1 billion wasted on a magnetic-levitation train from L.A. to Sin City" - all at Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's doing.

After expressing my doubt that the Las Vegas line was actually in the bill's language, Bono Mack directs her staff to "get him the bill, it's right there, show him." A few minutes later, a staffer emerges with a copy and quietly says "it's not in the bill."

Either they're lying or they're stoopid. In the above case, I vote for stoopid.

Separated At Birth?

The Case Against Nationalized Health Care

The Oracle

I've been away. Did Rush Limbaugh say anything stupid today?

Welcome to Hell

[h/t Crooks and Liars]

Big Idea

What say we privatize Social Security?

"Los Lakers" [Zombie Thread from 2008 Draws New Comments]

In case you missed it, the LA Lakers played last night's game against the Golden State Warriors wearing jerseys that said "Los Lakers." It was "Latin night" at Staples Center, a tip of the hat to the team's legions of Hispanic B-ball fans.
I thought the jerseys looked pretty cool, myself. Naturally, the immigrant bashing xenophobes out there didn't quite see it that way. Here's a sampling of comments from around the web:

Like everything else in America, we are slowly becoming Mexico. Why does Nickelodian feel fit to use every single show to teach my children Spanish? We are slowly dissolving the border. Pretty soon we will be the nation of North America. --Scott L. at Yahoo!


This is actually a bit offensive to me. There is only one official language here and last time I checked it was not Spanish. It's the same crap the Muslims are trying to pull in London. --Tottenham at LakersGround.net


Exactly. This is the US of friggin A. They might as well go all out and switch the gatorade with some horchata. --tamakin at LakersGround

Indigo Montoya Dept.

I don't think that sign means what the young man thinks it means...

"Marginal" Reporting on Marginal Tax Rates

The reporter who did this story clearly learned nothing about how the income tax system actually works...

ABC News reports on "upper-income taxpayers" who are trying to reduce their income so they avoid proposed tax increases on those earning more than $250,000.

According to ABC, one attorney "plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law." According to the attorney: "We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00." ABC also quotes a dentist who is trying to figure out how to reduce her income.

This is stunninglywrong.

As Jonathan Chait [not] so patiently explains, the tax code doesn't work that way. This is dumb, lazy reporting that insults the intelligence of readers and plays right into the hands of the charlatans trying to demagogue the issue of tax reform.

"Above the Fold"

A quaint and soon-to-be-anachronistic phrase.

Journalism as we know it is in crisis. Daily newspapers are going out of business at an unprecedented rate, and the survivors are slashing their budgets. Thousands of reporters and editors have lost their jobs. No print publication is immune, including the mighty New York Times. As analyst Allan Mutter noted, 2008 was the worst year in history for newspaper publishers, with shares dropping a stunning 83 percent on average. Newspapers lost $64.5 billion in market value in 12 months.

Rocky Mountain News, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free-Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Los Angeles Times, Columbus Dispatch, Minneapolis Star-Tribune...each is in dire straits. I read recently that there are only a handful of papers that still reach more than 100,000 people a day.

Government Mule

Some kind words for the bureaucrat from Amanda Marcotte...

...if bureaucracy bothers you that much, then it’s fucking bone stupid to hate the government and worship corporations, who have the government beat in the sucky customer service department beyond a shadow of a doubt...The government doesn’t outsource call centers to India, for instance, hoping that language and cultural barriers between customer service and customers will force the customers to give up seeking real service in despair, while also exploiting cheaper labor.

Bureaucrats in the government might be bored and covering their own asses, but in general I’ve found they’re likelier to be mellow than corporate ones, probably because they get paid a living wage and have health care benefits, and are not given demoralizing faux-friendly scripts to use, but are expected to be smart enough to speak with you without having someone monitoring every syllable.

If I call the IRS to get some info on my tax return, they don’t heave a painful sigh and try to upsell me on something that they know I won’t buy, and that they’ll get in trouble for being unable to sell to me. On the whole, dealing with government bureaucrats is a lot less horrible.

With that, I'm off to a day of public service...toodles!

The South Will Rise Again

Along with higher rates of teen pregnancy, illiteracy, poverty, hypocrisy and dental decay, there's this....

8 of Top 10 Porn-Consuming States Voted Republican in 2008 Presidential Election
Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.
[...]
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

Flight 1549: "We're Goin' in the Hudson"

The closest thing to actual video of the short but uneventful flight of USAirways 1549.

Wanted: Punching Bag

I'm guessing Matt wants to kick somebody's ass...

Clean Coal: The New Glade

[h/t T]