Saturday, July 31, 2010
Aw Du-uuude
uhhhh.... No.
Now we know why the young Prince is being groomed to take over from Grandma. Cuz she threw a cuh-ray-zee one.
The Prince of Wales says he believes he has been placed on Earth as future King ‘for a purpose’ - to save the world.
Sorry, JWF—while I agree that is world-class dooshbaggery, it’s also world-class wack-doodle-ism. JugEars is the only fella on the planet who actually thinks he’s gonna get Teh Big Job.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Oh Yeah -- That'll Work
ya understand what’s in it now, NannyP?
The Joint Economic Committee made a little chart of the new Obama HellCare System. Just so they could, yanno, see what was in it “away from the fog of controversy.”
Here’s a detail:
That part, the one where the POTUS, BigSis, Eric “Cowards!” Holder, etc., are directly involved in MY medical stuff, is all the way across this:
from me/you, “Patient”
BTW, the JEC only was able to fit about one third [1/3::0.333] of the weirdly-acrtonymed agencies, obscure regulatory bodies, invented backwaters and legal eddies onto their chart. So if ya bust yer leg at age 25, you’ll be 90 before your “claim” makes its way through this maze.
Me? I’m off to find an elderly “herbalist” living alone in a thatched cottage in the forrest.
Quick-loading PDF here via NR.
Oh Yeah—That’ll Work
ya understand what’s in it now, NannyP?
The Joint Economic Committee made a little chart of the new Obama HellCare System. Just so they could, yanno, see what was in it “away from the fog of controversy.”
Here’s a detail:
That part, the one where the POTUS, BigSis, Eric “Cowards!” Holder, etc., are directly involved in MY medical stuff, is all the way across this:
from me/you, “Patient”
BTW, the JEC only was able to fit about one third [1/3::0.333] of the weirdly-acrtonymed agencies, obscure regulatory bodies, invented backwaters and legal eddies onto their chart. So if ya bust yer leg at age 25, you’ll be 90 before your “claim” makes its way through this maze.
Me? I’m off to find an elderly “herbalist” living alone in a thatched cottage in the forrest.
Quick-loading PDF here via NR.
Hell—even Snookie hates it!
Say It Out Loud
can I get a Hallelujia!
Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) ... “Americans are sick and tired of their elected leaders making backroom deals to ram through unpopular, 2000-page bills that no one has read,” said Chairman Price. “They are sick of out-of-touch politicians, and they are tired of being ignored. A number of Democrats, including members of their leadership, have recently expressed a desire to ignore the public will and use a lame duck session to pass liberal legislation Americans do not want. Today I gave my Democrat colleagues an opportunity to show they are finally ready to listen to the American people.
“Our system of government rests upon the consent of the governed, but it is quite clear that Democrats no longer have Americans’ consent. The public’s trust in this Congress has been repeatedly broken. Voting for a national energy tax and other items on the liberal wish list in a lame duck session would shatter it beyond repair. Republicans are fully prepared to do what is necessary to restore Americans’ trust in their elected representatives. We know it will be a long road, but it is one well worth traveling.”
[emph mine - e~C]
Not that I think the R’s aren’t infected with the same Ruling Class Virus [RCV] . . .
Note: Instead of taking a clear stand on this issue, House Democrats chose to delay a vote on the Price resolution. The text of the resolution is available here.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Intelligence
IDNTWMWYTIM
...a whistle-blower who used the online name ‘Bradass87’ when he contacted a high-profile Californian computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, on May 21 ... identified himself as “an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern Baghdad” with “unprecedented access to classified networks”.
...he copied some of the information on to blank CDs labelled “Lady Gaga” and hummed along to non-existent music while he downloaded secret information.
...“I want people to see the truth,” he said. “It’s open diplomacy it’s Climategate with a global scope and breathtaking depth it’s beautiful and horrifying. It’s public data, it belongs in the public domain.” ...
...On May 25, [Adrian Lamo] met Pentagon officials at a Starbucks cafe and gave them a print of the chat.
... [Brad] Manning [born in 1987] was arrested the next day at US Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad
The “hax0r” turned down Bradass87, who then went to this ...fella:
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks
Moral: Wash your hands after playin’ on Da InnerToobz
Run Away!!!!!!!!
now this is a Conversation Starter
OR *clicky*clicky*
Econ 101
TaxCheatTimmy - absent
We know he wasn’t in Ethics class…
..."The right thing for the country, the fair thing, the responsible thing for the country is now to make sure we leave in place and preserve tax cuts that go to more than 95% of working Americans,” Geithner told NBC, stressing that the White House’s plan would incentivize businesses to grow and hire more employees, which in turn would boost the recovering economy.
...Letting the cuts expire would raise taxes on individuals who make more than $250,000, but leave tax relief in place for all Americans making less than that.
..."The country can withstand that,” he said. “The economy can withstand that.” ...I do not believe it will have a negative effect on growth,”
Long-term capital investment was encouraged by lower tax rates. [If you don’t want it to happen, tax it.]
Long-term capital investment encourages growth. ["Taaaax it1!!1one!!!-- TimmyG]
The top 5% of income earners pay >50% of the federal tax revenue.
The top 1% of income earners pay >25% of the federal tax revenue.
48% of income earners Americans pay 0% of the federal tax revenue.
Can we “withstand” that?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The "Conversation About Race"
who’s a coward?
Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
...
Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against [bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force], having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.
...
At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves… Of the South’s 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white… ...in advancing minority diversity programs, [policy makers] treated whites as a fungible monolith. ...
...Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white.
Webb does a good job pointing out that “managing” a work force by race is about as successful as “managing” an economy: everybody loses, including the whole. This was in the WSJ, last Thurs. [7/22]. Where are the howls of derision/support, the cries of “raaaacist?” Where’s the freakin’ “Conversation”?!?
It might appear that *some* are cowards.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Was Shirley Sherrod Thrown Under the Back of The Bus?
*scrape*scrape*scrape*
Poor Shirley Sherrod, targeted by eeeevil Breitbart, raaaacist FNC, and alla you viiile Teabaggers… Fired by the old white guys in the West Wing, vilified by Vilsack, who struggled, in her soft voice, to tell Andy Cooper
[vid—@2:30]
“... I don’t think [Andrew Breitbart] is interested in seeing anyone get past [black vs white]. I think he’d like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That’s where I think he’d like to see all black people end up again.And that’s why I think he’s so vicious against a black President....”
“...What has he [Breitbart] done to promote unity among The Races? ...
I’d like him to show me he’s not a raaaacist."
Riehl World has a little more on this post-racial couple; this time on what husband Charles has done “to promote unity among The Races”:
Charles Sherrod: “We must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections."
Go. Click Read. Savor the post-raaaacist gestalt.
And then, let’s wonder why this Paragon of Promoting Unity Among The Races was strangely absent from the Sunday shows.
*vrooom*thumpthump*
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Oh, my. More?
Oh, my. More?
*sound of cat trying to cover on a linoleum floor*
hm…
... New Communities, Inc., the land trust that Shirley and Charles Sherrod established, with other black farm families in the 1960’s. At the time, with holdings of almost 6,000 acres, this was the largest tract of black-owned land in the country.
...Over the years, USDA refused to provide loans for farming or irrigation and would not allow New Communities to restructure its loans.
I’ve been among ranching and farming folks going back four generations in three states, among folks who were white, black, Jewish, and Injun; never did meet no one who had a dang thing to do with the USDA—for loans or any other thing. Admittedly, my experience has been limited to The West [and California] and cattle, sheep*ptui*, horses and hay, and things might be very different with row crops in The South…
...The cash (settlement) award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. ... New Communities is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. ... (Pigford vs Vilsack)
hm… 1985… That’s about 24 years ago, isn’t it. Just about the time some other farmer was sent to “one of his own kind” for help. Funny coincidence, that.
$8,247,560 is $1,375 per acre. Don’t know if that’s a lot or a little for that particular area in that era. $4,241,602 is $848,320 per year for the years cited. Which might sound like a lot, but ‘taint so much when the costs of seed, fuel, equipment, water [y’all pay for water in The South?] etc. are factored in. 6,000 acres of flat farming land is a helluva big area to work.
OTOH, $300,000 for “Pain & Suffering” ... For being turned down for a loan? [If that’s the going rate, I know some particularly adventurous fellas who would never need a loan again.] I wonder if the ‘settlement’ involved any job offers… Just askin’ questions, here; not like I’m throwin’ anyone through a plate glass window…
But wait…
As part of a April 14, 1999 class action case settlement, commonly known as the Pigford case, U.S. taxpayers have already provided over $1 billion in cash, non-credit awards and debt relief to almost 16,000 black farmers who claimed that they were discriminated against by USDA officials as they “farmed or attempted to farm.”
How does one “attempt to farm”? I’m pretty clear on how to fail at farming; just takes some weather year, a coupla bad decisions. Farm FAIL = not too hard :: Farm FAKE = ??!?!??
In addition, USDA’s Farm Service Agency spent over $166 million on salaries and expenses on this case from 1999-2009, according to agency records.
Members of Congress may approve another $1.15 billion this week to settle cases from what some estimate may be an additional 80,000 African-Americans who have also claimed to have been discriminated against by USDA staff.
Wow. That is a pile of our money. And more to come? That’s a heap of discriminating. Or something.
Already, the number of people who have been paid and are still seeking payment will likely exceed the 26,785 black farmers who were considered to even be operating back in 1997, according to USDA. That’s the year the case initially began as Pigford v. (then Agriculture Secretary) Glickman and sources predicted that, at most, 3,000 might qualify.
That’s a lot of folks. And we thought it was just Shirley, waaay back when, and one [1] white farmer; before she changed her ways and realized that race isn’t the issue, class is.
Clearly we’re no longer talking about the Sherrods and their New Communities farm. 26,000 folks is a a good-size town; not a farming group. 80,000 is a city.
But wait; this case seems to have turned into every black farmer the USDA ‘discriminated’ against, evah. We’re talking about folks from all over.
... 14 individuals in Washington, D.C.received payments as a result of the Pigford case. ... [Hawaii 1: Idaho 1; Utah 1 ...]
Not sure what-all is here, but it’s something. Good on Tom Blumer for digging this up. I’d suggest Tom not respond to any listserv invitations and maybe stay far away from busses for a while.
MM1Mike
hm…
... New Communities, Inc., the land trust that Shirley and Charles Sherrod established, with other black farm families in the 1960’s. At the time, with holdings of almost 6,000 acres, this was the largest tract of black-owned land in the country.
...Over the years, USDA refused to provide loans for farming or irrigation and would not allow New Communities to restructure its loans.
I’ve been among ranching and farming folks going back four generations in three states, among folks who were white, black, Jewish, and Injun; never did meet no one who had a dang thing to do with the USDA—for loans or any other thing. Admittedly, my experience has been limited to The West [and California] and cattle, sheep*ptui*, horses and hay, and things might be very different with row crops in The South…
...The cash (settlement) award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. ... New Communities is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. ... (Pigford vs Vilsack)
That’s $1,375 per acre. Don’t know if that’s a lot or a little for that particular area in that era. It’s $848,320 per year for the years cited. Which might sound like a lot, but ‘taint so much when the costs of seed, fuel, equipment, water [y’all pay for water in The South?] etc.
So far, so good. But wait…
As part of a April 14, 1999 class action case settlement, commonly known as the Pigford case, U.S. taxpayers have already provided over $1 billion in cash, non-credit awards and debt relief to almost 16,000 black farmers who claimed that they were discriminated against by USDA officials as they “farmed or attempted to farm.”
How does one “attempt to farm”?
In addition, USDA’s Farm Service Agency spent over $166 million on salaries and expenses on this case from 1999-2009, according to agency records.
Members of Congress may approve another $1.15 billion this week to settle cases from what some estimate may be an additional 80,000 African-Americans who have also claimed to have been discriminated against by USDA staff.
Wow. That’s a lot of folks. And we thought it was just Shirley, waaay back when, and one [1] white farmer; before she changed her ways and realized that race isn’t the issue, class is.
Already, the number of people who have been paid and are still seeking payment will likely exceed the 26,785 black farmers who were considered to even be operating back in 1997, according to USDA. That’s the year the case initially began as Pigford v. (then Agriculture Secretary) Glickman and sources predicted that, at most, 3,000 might qualify.
Clearly we’re no longer talking about the Sherrods and their New Communities farm. 26,000 folks is a a good-size town; not a farming group.
Not sure what-all is here, but it’s something. Good on Tom Blumer for digging this up. I’d suggest Tom not respond to any listserv invitations and maybe stay far away from busses for a while.
MM1Mike
Teh Origami Narrative
unfolding
More on Shirley Sherrod.
[In] Shirley Sherrod’s 17th year ... 1965, her father was shot and killed by a white man in a dispute over cows, the family says.
That year, she was one of the first black students to integrate the high school in Baker County in rural southwest Georgia.
That year, she decided to become involved in the civil rights movement in that area of the state.
...Grace Miller, Sherrod’s mother, said she remembers the night that most likely nudged her daughter into public service. Until then, Sherrod has said several times, she was determined to move out of the South and away from farming.
She changed her mind a few days after her father was killed, an event Sherrod often includes in her talks.
Sherrod’s father, Jose Miller, had a dispute with a man over cows that had come into his pasture. The neighbor insisted that three of Miller’s cows were his. Miller said he would call the “law” to settle the dispute. As Jose Miller was closing the gate, he was shot in the back, the family says.
Grace Miller said that the neighbor was not held accountable.
She later went on to receive a B.A. in sociology from Albany State University and an M.A. in community development from Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
“She was not able to go to jail like the rest of them [protesters],” Grace Miller said. “She was off at school. She really wanted to go [to jail].”
Which leads the HuffPo to ask:
Is Shirley Sherrod the Rosa Parks of our Time?
No. No linky for that kinda crap. But I will link this:
SHIRLEY SHERROD, FORMER USDA OFFICIAL: They want you to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.
The regeime administration scared of a dork with a four blackboards; now that’s the function of journalism.
[as opposed to JournoLism]
ToDaZeD List
let’s make our own
Hillary smartestwomanintheworld™ was fooled by Chimpy McBusHitler into voting for a “bad war.”
NAACP snookered by FNC and Teabaggers.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
ToDaZeD QOTD
pick yer fave!
“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”
I am genuinely scared” of Fox” ... because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.”
...“I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”
...“the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. It’s very close in spirit to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”
“I’m not saying these guys are capital F-fascists,” added blogger Lindsay Beyerstein, “but they don’t want limited government. Their desired end looks more like a corporate state than a rugged individualist paradise. The rank and file wants a state that will reach into the intimate of citizens when it comes to sex, reproductive freedom, censorship, and rampant incarceration in the name of law and order.”
You know, for the left’s constant blather about “The Other” (an idea with merit, I think), they sure the hell are oblivious to their constant Otherizing of others, aren’t they? You’d think that people who never shut the fuck up about Otherizing the Otherish Others would once in a while realize, “Hey, you know what? I think I’m indulging in a little Class-A Otherification here myself.”
But I digress.
Teh 48-hour Rule
Of The Quick and Teh Dead Beclowned
Breitbart releases this vid clip of Shirley Sherrod speaking at a NAACP meeting describing how she “did not do all she could” to help a white farmer.
NAACP condemns her.
Tom Vilsack [vil; Latin - douche] fires her.
SHERROD: Why am I out? They asked me to resign. And, in fact, they harassed me as I was driving back to the state office from West Point, Georgia, yesterday. I had at least three calls telling me the White House wanted me to resign.
... And the last one asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it.
She said, “Well, Shirley, they want you to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."
*Someone* manages to watch the the full video and realizes Ms Sherrod is describing an incident 24 years old wherein she recognized her own raaaacism and changes her ways. Which was the point of her speech at the NAACP event.
Hilarity ensues:
OR *clicky*clicky*
@2:08 “really..."
Perhaps Teh Post-Racial ∅ne will comment on this… It appears that *someone* “acted stupidly.”
STEP Right Up!
Getcher condescending lecture right here!
OR *clicky*clicky*
@1:25
NB embed being cranky—go to *clicky*clicky*
I guess the family tradition continues:
[Roll Call] Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) $31.12 million
...Grayson lists a claim valued at $25 million to $50 million against Derivium Capital.
The now-bankrupt firm managed a Ponzi scheme in which investors, including Grayson, could turn over stock to Derivium in exchange for cash loans and redeem the value later if the stock prices increased. A South Carolina court ruled earlier this year that Derivium shareholders were collectively owed about $270 million in lost profits and that Grayson’s share would be about $34 million.
In addition to that claim, Grayson, an attorney who founded the telecommunications company IDT Corp. in 1990, lists a trust valued at $5 million to $25 million. The same trust was previously Grayson’s largest asset, with a value of $25 million to $50 million when he filed a candidate disclosure form in November 2008.
Now—just to calm your nerves—go down to your cellar, start up your front-loader and re-stack your cash. Thaaaaat’s a goo-boy!
Monday, July 19, 2010
ToDaZeD QOTD
misunderestimating Americans
Demonstrating again how she earned the title of Dumbest woman in the Senate, Bab’s “pay me” Boxer tossed this little ...item into the punchbowl:
Sen. Barbara Boxer has fired a shot across the bow of Carly Fiorina - in the hopes that her Republican rival’s ownership of a pair of yachts might sink her with voters.
Boxer has taken to comparing her years of “public service” to Fiorina’s choice “to become a CEO, lay off 30,000 workers, ship jobs overseas (and) have two yachts."
Considering she made most of her gazillions from her “service” at the public trough, that demonstrated quite a lot of faith in the compliant nature of the average CA voter. Granted, possibly not misplaced, but still...
These two quotes provide further enlightenment—I’ll send ya to Ace for the rest.
[VDH] In short, money, privilege, and status create in the cultural elite both a fear of mixing it up with others that might jeopardize position and placement, and yet guilt for that very sense of entitlement and exemption. All that, in turn, only heightens the shrill and sanctimonious rhetorical demands on less blessed others to prove their morality.
[Janet Daley] What is more startling is the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) “enlightened” class with the poor and deprived. ... What is peculiar in American terms is that this sentiment is taking on precisely the pseudo-aristocratic tone of disdain for the aspiring, struggling middle class that is such a familiar part of the British scene.
They really think US dumbass redneck Americans ain’t a’gonna grasp that insult?
Noblesse Oblige—in order to work—requires respect for those to whom one is obliged. Otherwise it’s just ol’ fashioned, condescending patronage.
Yanno… like this:
What it does mean is that a sizable percentage of the Tea Party types were born into a segregated America, many of them in the South or in the new working-class suburbs of the North, and lived through the marches and riots that punctuated the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s. Their racial attitudes, like their philosophies of governance, reflect their complicated journeys.
...not necessarily because a subset of these antigovernment ideologues are racist, per se, but in part because they are just plain old.
Drop Dead, you elitist gits. And Get The Hell Offa My Lawn!
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{/if}
