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Have a drink… 26 February 2010

Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.
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Photographer takes to the water for perfect shots in the Great Rift Valley: A zebra stallion peers through the dust cloud that has blown up around his herd [Greg du Toit/Barcroft Media - Guardian ]

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I read today (in Spiegel) that Politikon, the Danish newspaper that published, at least in Europe, the so blasphemous cartoon images of The Prophet, has settled with his descendants for damages.

Lordy! Dregs of French aristos have for years claimed descendance from none other than Jesus….

Please, Heavenly Father and Allah and whoever else!, renounce them all.

Can you imagine the law suits from the fucking whining Xtians?

Better to contemplate the watering hole in the Great Rift Valley.

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Comments»

1. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Go Canada!

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catnip - 26 February 2010
Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

forget the ski bunnies … the curling team are the REAL women.

Canada up one!

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2. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Schneier: CCTVs don’t make us safer

Pervasive security cameras don’t substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

ours are in more places than public housing… BUT they did do it in almost all black neighborhoods.

gah.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

CCTV is about CONTROL, not protection.

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

Agree

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3. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Pentagon fesses up to 800 pages’ worth of potentially illegal spying, including peace groups and Planned Parenthood

PLANNED PARENTHOOD?!?!

Pertaining to the Planned Parenthood members, for example, the oversight report provides no explanation about how the information was collected. Nor does it indicate why the information was collected and notes only that military intelligence is not allowed to collect and disseminate information on U.S. persons unless the information constitutes “foreign intelligence.” The report indicates that the collection was therefore “clearly outside the purview of military intelligence” and should have been handled by law enforcement.

Another oversight document discusses an incident involving the interception of civilian cellphone conversations of U.S. persons in April 2007. During a field exercise at Fort Polk, Louisiana, a Signals Intelligence noncommissioned officer operating a SIGINT collection system intercepted the cell phone calls, though the document doesn’t indicate if they were intercepted on U.S. soil or outside U.S. borders.

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

I am guessing PP was monitored as they have gone into court repeatedly against the government.

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ts - 27 February 2010

Right now the FBI and the CIA are saying “They can’t spy on our people! Only WE can spy on our people!”

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Booooooooooooooo!

Canada loses in 11th.

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catnip - 26 February 2010

SO close! :(

Oh well – silver will do.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010
catnip - 26 February 2010

Women’s curling: Mom-to-be becomes most pregnant Olympian ever

Canadian team alternate shocked to get in the game, but likely won’t name her baby Rock, Skip or Hammer to mark the occasion

lol

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

what about Button?

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catnip - 26 February 2010

That would be perfect. :)

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

I jsut heard Sweden won………..

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5. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Boies & Olson on Moyers tonight.

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

ugh on both of them… I have zero faith in the exercise, once i found out it is funded by the young Reiner of H’wood… and he drafted both Olsen and Boies.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

I suspicious too, but I have to say they’re making a pretty strong case.

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

I’ll listen. But they should be able to mount the argument… and even sound believable.

I was exp disheartened when Reiner was up here, front and center, for the trial, hearing whatever that was a few weeks ago.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Of course, Olson is using the case to subtly push some of his other bullshit (he made a claim that Judge Bork would support what he’s doing if he felt “safe” to speak out, or something equally stupid).

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

oh FFS. Bork is interviewed iwth some frequency and from what I see does nto hesitate.

i can’t stand EITHER Boies OR Olsen.

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6. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010
7. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

Johnny Weir Defends Individuality at Press Conference

Said Weir: “I’m not somebody to cry over something or to be weak about something. I felt very defiant when I saw these comments. It wasn’t these two men criticizing my skating, it was them criticizing me as a person, and that was something that really, frankly, pissed me off…I hope more kids can grow up the same way I did and more kids can feel the freedom that I feel to be themselves and to express themselves and that’s the most important thing.”

The skater added: “I’m always thought of the sparkly flamboyant character that wore a crown of roses…nobody knows me. I think masculinity is what you believe it to be. To me, masculinity is all my perception. I think masculinity and femininity is something that’s very old fashioned. There’s a whole new generation of people that aren’t defined by their sex or their race or who they like to sleep with. I think as a person you know what your values are and what you believe in and I that”s the most important thing.”

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

bit by bit…

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8. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010
9. Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010
10. marisacat - 26 February 2010

No heavy lifting… obviously. via The Corner http://corner.nationalreview.com/ :

Grandpa Joe [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

CNN and the Politico caught this precious vice-presidential moment yesterday:

The burdens of the presidency have been well documented, but perhaps it’s not so hard being the No. 2.

At least that’s what Vice President Joe Biden suggested to Republican Rep. Eric Cantor at Thursday’s bipartisan health care summit.

Cameras picked up an impromptu discussion between Biden and the House minority whip shortly before the afternoon session began:

Biden: How you doing Eric?

Cantor: Not bad Mr. Vice President


Biden: Good, doing alright. It’s easy being Vice President believe me.

Cantor: It’s like being a grandparent and not the parent.

Biden: Yeah that’s it.

Jay Carney, Biden’s communications director, said the vice president was “obviously joking, as any review of his schedule and responsibilities would make abundantly clear.”

02/26 04:57 PM

Oh very clear.

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11. marisacat - 26 February 2010

so dumb.

[M]r. Corbitt acknowledged this week that a State Police officer visited the woman in the first hours or days after the episode, at the Bronx apartment shared by Mr. Johnson, the woman and her 13-year-old son. He described the visit as customary in episodes that might attract media attention, an assertion dismissed as false by many inside and outside the State Police. He also said that it was meant merely to offer the woman counseling and tell her she had “options.”

Two days after the woman says Mr. Johnson choked her, ripped off her clothing and prevented her from calling for help, she went to Family Court in the Bronx to seek an order of protection. She complained under oath then, and in a court appearance two days later, that troopers had been pressuring and harassing her not to pursue charges or obtain the order of protection. ….

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

hmm Bob Herbert pretty much calls for Paterson to step down.

Along the way this is very interesting.

[M]r. Johnson was not arrested as a result of the woman’s complaint, which is not unusual. She alleged that he choked her, but choking is not a crime in New York unless there is evidence that the victim was injured. The charge raised against Mr. Johnson — and later dropped — was second degree harassment. That’s not even a misdemeanor. It’s a violation, the equivalent of a disorderly conduct charge. ….

Not even a misdemeanor. But hmm brought down a governor.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

maybe the meager law I took misled me, but would physically attacking me constitute assault and battery, at the very least?

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marisacat - 26 February 2010

one would think so… I was VERY surprised. Choking is an overt act, it requires placing the hands and then squeezing…. Much more than a “shove” might be….

PLUS he also slammed her in to a mirrored vanity or chest of drawers and tore her clothing off…

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Madman in the Marketplace - 26 February 2010

the physical contact would be battery, any threats would be assault, unless NY law is vastly different.

Prosecutors may not BOTHER with charging them, especially for politically connected assholes, but …

I’m mystified.

Gee, I’m sure Bob gets the NYT access to fucking Lexis or FindLaw … it’s not that damned hard.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

And thre was a witness, her woman friend was with her in teh bedroom, they were dressing for Hallowe’en.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

hmm I will watch for LTE on that column. Too odd.

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12. marisacat - 26 February 2010

Counterpunch has a post up on Dianne Feinstein adn Richard Blum (her husband) and their holdings..

[T]he economic and political policies promoted by Richard C. Blum and associates, including Senator Feinstein and other leaders of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, have locked nations and peoples across the planet into a system of de facto colonial bondage whereby their lands and destines are controlled by distant, debt-holding banks and hedge funds – among them, Blum Capital Partners, LLC, and Newbridge Capital, LLC, of which Blum was chairman of the Asia investment division for five years. The result has been what author and UC Irvine sociologist Mike Davis calls a “planet of slums,” where .23 percent of the world population privately owns more than 50 percent of the land, and 85 percent of urban dwellers in the Third World are consigned to living on illegal squats in hellish shanty towns under conditions of grinding poverty.

Just ask the people of Haiti, whose capital city now greatly resembles a war zone reduced to rubble ala Fallujah, Iraq, or Kabul, Afghanistan, not by virtue of a natural disaster per se, but because the IMF-WTO-US Treasury specialists in immiseration have forced them off their land into desperately sub-standard slum housing, often perched tenuously on the side of deforested hills and ravines. This “urban geography of mass vulnerability,” as the academic field of disaster sociology refers to it, was created by the destruction of the country’s rural agrarian economy that provided for subsistence, in an economic transformation imposed by international creditors with the constant backing of the US military. ….

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BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

LOL. Yeh, he’s a fuckin Buddhist, all right:

Beyond this exercise in mystifying the causes of poverty in distant lands, the state’s economic elite — with Blum and Feinstein helping to lead the charge — have long been in the process of turning their philosophy of neoliberal privatization, fiscal austerity, and personal enrichment on the State of California itself. Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies, indeed.

Blum is a self-professed Buddhist and friend of the XVIth Dalai Lama. Many of his anti-poverty efforts are geared toward slum dwellers in Tibet and Nepal. “Would an actual Buddhist provide the bulk of the funding for a multi-million dollar institute, only to attach his own name to it?” Brechin mused.

The populist anger seething below the surface of the American body politic has not yet boiled over into any sort of coherent rebellion against the elites who have wrought the greatest economic catastrophe since the 1930s. There is little indication that it will any time soon.

LOL. Yeh –
He must be of the Clannish, Exploitive, Neocon Buddhist sect.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

We are very tired of the Dalai Lama here, I can tell you.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

“Would an actual Buddhist provide the bulk of the funding for a multi-million dollar institute, only to attach his own name to it?” Brechin mused.

And I have Brechin’s very excellent book on the Imperial San Francisco. A tremendously wonderful book.

BTW, there were protests Thursday night during the night on the Berkeley campus, Durant Hall… I sort of took Friday off, somewhat, and watched Netflix things… so I did nto follwo all the details. Good, I say.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

From the Counterpunch link:

[T]his past semester, UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar of Geography Gray Brechin co-taught a course on investigative journalism. Brechin is best known as the author of a superb historical work on Northern California’s ruling elite, Imperial San Francisco. He has been an observer of Blum-DiFi, Inc. for years.

“I’m very impressed by the reluctance of most journalists to follow a story that has been screaming to be done for years while they have been covering their ears and eyes,” Brechin told us. “You guys and Peter [Byrne] are about the only ones who understand that behind the billowing smoke appears to be a roaring bonfire.” …

And the article does, to be fair, mention two articles [just two!!] on the Blum Feinstein shenanigans, in the SF Chron and in the North Bay Bohemian, which I don’t recall hearing of……….

We have very little political press here, and what commetnary there is, is utterly deferential to our Democratic Party overlords.

The so called “alternative” SF Bay Guardian, which nominally supported … oh whats her name, Sheehan in the 2008 house rep run agaisnt Pelosi ALSO somehow managed to never interview her. Or report on her.

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BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

Well, You’ve been living thru and writing on the
dirty dealings in San Fran and Cali for some time, so coming from you the Brechin sounds like a really good read. Thanks for the tip.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

I noticed in the google page on him (I linked to it at my earlier comment), one link indicated he was o had been or is working on a Imperial Manhattan

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BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

There’s obviously a better way to handle these
Entertaino Whales. – Not releasing them, no, -
nor should we considering ourselves part of the problem.

In March, Orky actually grabbed a hold of a trainer during a performance and pulled the person down to bottom of the thirty-two foot deep tank. He then rushed to the surface and spat the trainer out.

No, sir. What is needed here is obviously…
better narration when such a thing happens:

ALL PART OF THE SHOW PEOPLE!
ALL PART OF THE SHOW!

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BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

Whoops! LOL
That one’s Supposed to go with the Orky post below!

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

I thnk they need to bag a couple more… fast.

Every time i read a comprehensive look at the history of these captives… I get a huge kick when some “trainer” gets the hint and immediately leaves the business. Checks out of the hospital and never. returns. to. work.

Target achieved!

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ts - 27 February 2010

Well, you know they’re very self-absorbed up there in the Bay Area. ^_^

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13. BooHooHooMan - 26 February 2010

LOL. Dodd Proposes Financial Protection Agency

Hopefully it will protect us FROM DODD. :lol:

I PROPOSE he blubber off into the sunset oiling up his man titties.
in a diaper. Wandering the old sod in Ireland, Take to calling himself the Taoiseach Titty O’Lubeyloon around the digs he dug for himself on the cheap out of Countrywide in 2003 as Ranking Dem on the Senate Banking Collusion Committee .
Should go over well with the neighbors.

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BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

See how
the On-the-take/Piece of Shit Dodd sets this up…

The proposal would exempt banks and credit unions with assets of $10 billion or less. It would give the bureau the power to enforce regulations on large banks and nonbank lenders, in conjunction with other regulators, but would largely have to defer to other regulators in the case of smaller banks.

Perfect for how the Wall Street fuckers are going to unwind the House of Card Big Banks anyways – and the same set will STILL be in control, STILL with their heels pressed to throats of consumers.
And the leveraged-to-zero or, depending who gets stuck with the crap portfolios, in those cases we’re talking negative equity IN the breakup deals. In either case, most unwindings will occur to below any new regulatory-on-paper thresholds. And will be engineered by the same politically connected institutional and pension fund managers who will carry on the game as “managers” , the pillaged stakeholders with little more than 12th of NEVER equity in these contrived , new, Mom and Pop Banks.

Not to worry tho- LOL- The main thing Dodd is proposing are regulatory exemptions for the same Boutique Banks already set up in the last ten years. The same “community” banks – cough/ choke/ Brokers/ Pols / Lawyers /Menendez Bank for example -
precisely the bullshit fronts likely to benefit for any “Move Your Money” impetus that takes hold.

The Brokers , milkers and Wealth “management” game will live on…Or move the action back into the Accounting Firms and Management Consultancies. No, these bastards are well ahead of the “Move Your Money” movement…and their lesser political hacks are still entrenched with Bank Charter powers in the Statehouses. And back at the Federal level they have a chokehold on Credit Union Charters .

About the only thing I see as sensible is getting into and hanging with a decent Credit Union for servicing transactions as needed and locally pooling money in smalll co-ops to buy durable goods: things like the larger ticket appliances to a group of people kicking in to help someone get a reliable car. Otherwise the banking and consumer credit thieves will take whatever an average person has liquid.

Of course the whole Direct Deposit shift gets people from jumpo with the associated fees to move cash frequently in smaller amounts.

And the Big Problem is this: fewer people now have money to buy FOOD let alone help someone buy a fridge .

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

Dodd lived a long time off his father’s memory, at the Nuremburg trials and in the senate.. then he lived off his [ugh] Kennedy association… drinking bouts and body shots and screwing waitresses whetehr they wanted it or not.

Time to end it.

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catnip - 27 February 2010

That idea is another one of Obama’s caves:

WASHINGTON — As part of an effort to save a financial regulation bill, the Obama administration is prepared to agree that an existing agency, rather than a new agency, could take responsibility for consumer protections as long as the regulators have substantive powers.
[...]
The Obama administration last June proposed the creation of a new agency to oversee consumer financial products like mortgages, credit cards and payday loans, and the House passed a regulatory overhaul in December that included the proposal.

But the idea has met with resistance from some parts of the banking industry, and for weeks, members of the Senate Banking Committee had been deadlocked over the idea.

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14. BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

Oh it’s STILL SNAFU.

House clears intel bill after snafu

The House approved a major intelligence funding bill Friday after Democrats removed a provision that would have put CIA agents who used “cruel, inhuman and degrading” interrogation techniques behind bars for up to 15 years.

Democrats were force to pull the bill from the House floor late Thursday after Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter added the provision without backing from other House leaders. Leaders wanted to avoid a debate over torture—and they likely wouldn’t have been able to muster the votes to pass it with the language intact.

The bill was reintroduced Friday without the torture language and passed 235-168.

What Leadership from The Vichy Democrats of Fascist America.
Fuck Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and Clyburn and Barney and all the others facilitating this Barbarism.

Oh They sure protect their Bankers.
Right in there on that one.
No protection for unarmed prisoners isolated in one of the dungeons of our ever-evangelical Democracy, tho.

LOOK AWAY LIBERALS: They Wanted to AVOID DEBATE.

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15. BooHooHooMan - 27 February 2010

What has been termed
a “massive” 8.8 quake off the coast of Chile has knocked down buildings in Santiago almost 200 miles away. A tsunami is being reported as well. With more than than 200,000 people living in very low lying areas nearby.

The epicenter was just 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river, and 60 miles from the ski town of Chillan, a gateway to Andean ski resorts that was destroyed in a 1939 earthquake.

An Associated Press Television News cameraman said some buildings collapsed in Santiago and power was out in parts of the city. Phone lines were either down or busy, making confirmation of damage difficult elsewhere, especially further south toward the epicenter. The quake was felt in Argentina as well.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Chile and Peru, and a less-urgent tsunami watch for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Antarctica.

”Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated. It may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter and could also be a threat to more distant coasts,” the center said.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

Thanks for posting that!

After the 7 off Japan I was expecting one, maybe close to the Haiti 8 something……

They try to tell us earthquakes are not connected, but you cannot convince anyone who lives on the Ring of Fire of that.

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marisacat - 27 February 2010

The BBC page for individuals to report in… It seems, so far, no one is talkin of massive struvtural damage. So far.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8540309.stm

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16. marisacat - 27 February 2010

Jason Hribal has nother post on the orcas… looking back at Sea World in 1987

[A]s the pressure mounted on Sea World, new facts started to emerge. It was soon reported that three trainers had been injured in the past three months. According to the park, these were minor scraps. No big deal. Later, though, more numbers came out. There had been fourteen separate injuries in past the five months. Some were not overly serious, such as bites to the hands. But others were. Trainers had been rammed while in the water. In fact, among the fourteen injuries at the San Diego park, at least three had involved neck and back trauma. In June, an orca named Kandu jumped on top of a person during a rehearsal.

In March, Orky actually grabbed a hold of a trainer during a performance and pulled the person down to bottom of the thirty-two foot deep tank. He then rushed to the surface and spat the trainer out. At which time, another whale slammed into the individual. With the person floundering about, Orky grasped onto the man once again and pulled him under.

The attack lasted two and half minutes, and the trainer was taken to the hospital with broken ribs, a ruptured kidney, and a lacerated liver.

Subsequent lawsuits would release the next round of revelations about Sea World. We would, for example, find out that orcas have “dangerous propensities.” As one trainer spoke candidly about the attacks: “it’s not [a question of] if but a when.”

We would discover that Orky himself was partially blind and had additional, severe health problems. Yet Sea World forced him to perform anyway. So damning was the evidence given in the trial for the November 21st incident that Harcourt and Brace lawyers cleared the courtroom beforehand and had the majority of the records sealed from public view at the conclusion. But the trouble did not stop there, as OSHA was ready to issue its findings. The report, which was made public, concluded that Sea World’s orcas were under a tremendous amount of stress and that this factor could have been a central cause in the attacks. This was not an unsubstantiated hypothesis. ….

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catnip - 27 February 2010

Stupidity abounds on CNN with Rick Sanchez asking yesterday if killer whales who attack people should be killed because, apparently, they’re like rogue dogs.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 27 February 2010

well, it is really unpleasant when one humps your leg …

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17. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 February 2010
marisacat - 27 February 2010

well that was a fun read.

the Democratic party has, in various levels of subtlety, been saying for years that it needs to accommodate itself to how religious and conservative blacks are. All that blather just serves how repressive the party is, imo. They give a flying hoo hoo about ”accommodating” anyone.

Hey go for it. Once upon I time I would wring my hands. Who cares.

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18. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 February 2010
19. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 February 2010

Bronze to China in women’s curling. They just spanked Switzerland.

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20. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 February 2010
21. catnip - 27 February 2010

Proof that I’m smart!

Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

(CNN) — Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say.

Oh c’mon. What fun is that?

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22. marisacat - 27 February 2010

Reuters updates:

SANTIAGO, Feb 27 (Reuters) – A huge magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile early on Saturday, killing at least 122 people, knocking down homes and hospitals, and triggering a tsunami that rolled menacingly across the Pacific.

TV Chile reported that a 15-storey building collapsed in the hardest-hit city of Concepcion, where buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and cracks opened up in the streets. Cars turned upside down lay scattered across one damaged bridge.

Residents huddled in streets full of rubble of masonry and glass from destroyed homes. Many were terrified by powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to call friends and family. ….

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23. marisacat - 27 February 2010

Gnu………

LINK

……………………. 8O

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