Transit

Transit 23 June 2011

Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election.
trackback

Wuhan, China: Students make their way across a flooded school compound [AFP/Getty Images]

Massive flooding in China, it seems. Aside from the big rivers and tributaries in the USA, down river from Canadian run off….

Just by accident a few weeks ago, I stumbled on news reports of the flooding in… think it was Colombia. Over 3 million displaced internally.

Oh well. Gore working hard on the issue of climate change. A wordy (7,000 of them!) piece in Rolling Stone slamming L’Obster.

Maybe they can screw each other with their Nobels.

That’ll do it.

*******

Comments»

1. diane - 23 June 2011: Well, …… see Baby Fatters out there, you too! …. can drop out of highschool and be considered by the oBombster for Winning The Future:

Enter Huntsman:…. (answers from a pundit)
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Q.Which high school did he [Jon Huntsman Junior – diane] attend? Public or private?

– Posted by Frank J. Carnabuci III

A.An excellent question, Frank, and I did not know the answer, so I did some reporting on your behalf. Turns out Mr. Huntsman attended Palo Alto [California – diane] High School, a public school, before dropping out to pursue his dream of becoming the next Freddie Mercury. He later earned a G.E.D. He went on the University of Utah and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where his father’s name adorns a building [or two, …or more …– diane].

(bolding mine, No Firewall on that one)

Reply
marisacat - 23 June 2011: well honestly a straight line to some HS diploma was kind of incidental.

Reply
diane - 23 June 2011: (and: Reagan; Opium Poppy; Poppy’s son, poppy seedling; poppy seedling’s, Uncle Dick;…..and Henry Kissinger, agreed/agree with oBombster, …what better recommendation can ya get?)

Reply
diane - 23 June 2011: Problem is, Baby Fatters, …without that hooked up Daddy, you’re far more likely to end up: FODDER FOR ENDLESS WARS AND AUSTERITY, even if you do go to the only college classes you can afford.

As that sleazebag, Hollowwood, Cali Brit, …Bob Hope[y], once opined/snickered: SOME DO, …….some don’t. ……Some WILL, …some won’t..

Reply
2. Madman in the Marketplace - 23 June 2011: Crops Rotting In Georgia Since Illegal Alien Farm Workers Fled State

WHOOPS: Georgia’s legal promise to crucify any illegal immigrants it could get its hands on did, in fact, have the intended effect of scaring away the state’s undocumented workers. So, lo and behold, there are no workers left to harvest all of the state’s crops. Is America ready for forced labor again? Maybe this will solve the obesity epidemic? Georgia farmers are currently 11,000 workers short, and a failure to fill the ranks will cripple the state agricultural industry. Haha, there will be no food, this will solve the obesity problem, too!

The state has been trying to encourage some of the state’s unemployed probationers to join chain gangs harvest crews before ALL the crops rot in the fields, but probationers have not so far worked as quickly or as hard as the space aliens do with their magical powers.

Reply
marisacat - 23 June 2011: Also part of the problem, no effective, workable, flexible, useful to everybody, federal system for guest workers… esp migrant farm work – which is a specialised industry, whatever loons, who think they know something and know nothing, think…

Reply
3. marisacat - 23 June 2011: snicker

Apparenlty Ob (God is in the mix he has said, speaking of marriage… and I say, if you and Mich want a three way with Jesus, shut up about it!!)

.. but apparently he was at a fundraiser LGBTQWhatever in NYC:

[“U]nder the leadership of Governor Cuomo with the support of Democrats and Republicans New York is doing exactly what democracy is supposed to do,” he said.

“Do you support it?” a supporter called out, according to my colleague Maggie Haberman’s excellent Twitter feed.

“We,” Obama concluded, would continue to move on the issue. “I expect continued impatience with me.”

In that three way with Jeeeesuhs, who diddles whom and when ???

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 23 June 2011: just caught clips of it on Maddow. Pathetic. She summed it up as “I don’t believe in your civil rights, but i have the belief that you should give me money.”

Reply
marisacat - 23 June 2011: welllllllllllllll….HRC has already endorsed his ass… as has Dan Savage.

They probably hold out longer on a Saturday night date.

Reply
4. Madman in the Marketplace - 23 June 2011: Gun advocate arrested for punching Wisconsin union activist in the face

Reply
5. marisacat - 24 June 2011: May they all bite each other to death. On TV in prime time…

Apparently Madame Secretary, from the safe remove of Montego Bay, asked congress if they are on Qaddafi’s side or the side of the Libyan people…. (who of course we are bombing via our proxy, NATO, in Tripoli).

They all appear to be cocking the guns, lining up.

I say, Shoot. And shut up.

Reply
6. marisacat - 24 June 2011: Madman sent me this, David Marsh on Clarence Clemons… and Bruce.

I did see Bruce live, a thousand years ago (the 70s), at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. hmm it was a very surreal performance. And largely turned me off Bruce himself (and i had loved the albums and songs, esp Darkness on the Edge of Town ….)

Very amazing memorial from Marsh.

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: I thought that was a really great piece. Thanks for linking it.

Reply
marisacat - 24 June 2011: So glad you sent it to me.

The kind of thing that used to pop up in the New Yorker, before it became a Democratic party fellator — or at least that occurred to me as I read it.

Someone needs to set the whole party on “auto-fellate”

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: sad, magazines like that going the way they have.

Reply
7. Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: It looks like the NY State Senate is about to pass Gay Marriage. They just passed a religious exception for churches that don’t want to hold ceremonies (which seems just fine to me).

I’ll never understand people who want to stay with a “faith community” that hates them …

Reply
marisacat - 24 June 2011: be interesting to read how the deal went down, if it passes….

Reply
8. Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: GAY MARRIAGE PASSES, NY state Senate with 33 votes in favor.

ALBANY — Thirty-three state senators have publicly declared they will support legalizing same-sex marriage, all but assuring passage of the measure which will make New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples can wed.

The Senate took up the measure just before 10 p.m., and the Senate galleries were packed with gay couples in support of the bill and religious opponents of it.

Senator Stephen M. Saland, a Poughkeepsie Republican, became the critical 32nd vote, telling his colleagues in an emotional address that he believed the issue came down to a question of equality.

“I know my vote is a vote of conscience,” he told a hushed chamber. “I am at peace with my vote. It was a struggle. It was an extraordinary deliberation.”

Mark J. Grisanti, a freshman Republican whose Buffalo district is overwhelmingly Democratic and who had also been publicly undecided, joined Mr. Saland in saying he would vote for the bill.

The measure was to be the final act of this year’s legislative session, and lawmakers earlier Friday barreled through a variety of votes on university tuition, rent stabilization, and property taxes.

Reply
marisacat - 24 June 2011: wow… kind of stunning.

As Cali drags its ass slowly sideways, carrying masses of Catholics, Mormons, and fundies of every stripe and color.

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: and it was CATHOLIC REPUBLICANS who eventually cast the deciding votes, apparently.

Cuomo culture-warred their asses right back, apparently.

Reply
catnip - 24 June 2011: Great news!

Reply
marisacat - 24 June 2011: How are you, catnippers?

Reply
catnip - 24 June 2011: Glad it’s summer. Now if only the weather would cooperate. We’ve only had 6 rain-free days so far in June. 😦

How are things with you?

Reply
marisacat - 24 June 2011: Our weather is off too…. rain and chill well into June, tho warm now. For the moment. I spent last weekend bundled up and watching movies….

Oh me? Holding on.. basically.

Reply
catnip - 24 June 2011: I hear ya.

My body isn’t liking this weather at all.

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: Hey catnip!!!!

>>hugs<<

Reply
catnip - 24 June 2011: <> 😉

Reply
catnip - 24 June 2011: Ooops. My “hugs” disappeared in the arrows.

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: I felt them anyway!

Reply
9. Madman in the Marketplace - 24 June 2011: What happened before the Vancouver riot kiss

Reply
10. Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: Remember that judge that got re-elected here after that suspicious discovery of votes in the most winger district in the state?

Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow justice by the neck

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers last week, according to at least three knowledgeable sources.

Details of the incident, investigated jointly by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, remain sketchy. The sources spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing a need to preserve professional relationships.

They say an argument that occurred before the court’s release of a decision upholding a bill to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employees culminated in a physical altercation in the presence of other justices. Bradley purportedly asked Prosser to leave her office, whereupon Prosser grabbed Bradley by the neck with both hands.

Justice Prosser, contacted Friday afternoon by the Center, declined comment: “I have nothing to say about it.” He repeated this statement after the particulars of the story — including the allegation that there was physical contact between him and Bradley — were described. He did not confirm or deny any part of the reconstructed account.
Bradley also declined comment, telling WPR, “I have nothing to say.”

snip

Prosser, 68, a former Republican legislator who served as Assembly Speaker, was appointed to the court in 1998 by Gov. Tommy Thompson. He won a high-profile April election that was often cast as a referendum of sorts on the policies of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, including his effort to strip most collective bargaining rights from public employees. Prosser, after a recount, defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,000 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast.

The decision was released late in the afternoon June 14, only eight days after the court heard oral arguments on the case. On June 13, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, had suggested that the court could rule on the matter soon, saying his party intended to introduce the changes as a budget amendment the following day if the court did not act by then.

The 4-3 decision, which held that Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi overstepped her authority in voiding the bill, was notably contentious. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote a stinging dissent chiding the majority for “hastily reaching judgment” on a ruling that was “disingenuous, based on disinformation,” “lacking a reasoned, transparent analysis” and laden with “numerous errors of law and fact.”

Abrahamson singled out Prosser for criticism, calling his concurrence “long on rhetoric and long on story-telling that appears to have a partisan slant. Like the order, the concurrence reaches unsupported conclusions.” She said the ruling “seems to open the court unnecessarily to the charge that the majority has reached a pre-determined conclusion not based on the facts and the law… .”

In March, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that, in a disagreement over a case last year, Justice Prosser had called Justice Abrahamson a “total bitch” and threatened to “destroy” her. Prosser, the paper reported, confirmed making the remarks, saying he “probably overreacted” while accusing Justices Abrahamson and Bradley of being “masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements.”

Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_0eccd0ea-9f33-11e0-b4f1-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1QIkg4ftf

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: That brought to mind, John Grisham’s book, The Appeal.

It spoke to: how Justices in the US are being placed into its (the US) Courts of Law …Whatever else one may think about John Grisham, myself included, at times, I thought it was a great, if not, depressing as fuck,…read.

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: Bradley should press charges.

That is ridiculous…

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: I’m not familiar with Bradley, I was only noting: that The Appeal ……spoke to a corrupted judicial process in the US, and stand by that, despite John Grisham’s failings in life. Can you fill me in hon, what have I missed re:

Bradley should press charges.

That is ridiculous…

(my issue re J. Grisham, has been gender based and it focused, when he apparently was able to institute a privacy violation of a woman in his community)

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: I thought your Grisham comment was in response to the post from Madman about Prosser in WI

See:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers last week, according to at least three knowledgeable sources.

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: a pathetic response, here ….sigh, I didn’t read the whole of MadMan’s post ….(so many things one should be doing……so very little time……;0(..), already knowing that some teeny person, just got fucked once again;…SO LITTLE TIME TO UNDERSTAND, BEFORE YET ANOTHER TRAVESTY…………..AND THEN , I stupidly assumed, for lack of time to understand, before yet another boot falls, …… that your response, centered aroung Grisham. There happens to be a Bradley Grisham…oh never mind take it from there…..in a perpetual state, of sorry, ….cannot keep up with the state of misery…………………….never really thought that that was what life was supposed to be about, where have we gone wrong?

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: Well Bradley is not a “teeny person”.

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: yeah honey, my response was in regards to Madman’s post, and it was regarding the increasing, despicable prominence of corrupt $$$$$$US$$$$$$$$$$, Justices, in $$$$$$US$$$$$$$$$$ Courts of Law.

Reply
11. Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: New Yorkers Take to the Streets to Celebrate Gay Marriage Vote

Reply
12. Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: Tommy Chong, Drug War Flack Have Comical Marijuana Debate

Reply
13. ts - 25 June 2011: Michael Hudson on the Greek vote for national suicide.

Socrates said that ignorance must be the root of all evil, because no one deliberately sets out to be bad. But the economic “medicine” of driving debtors into poverty and forcing the selloff of their public domain has become socially accepted wisdom taught in today’s business schools. One would think that after fifty years of austerity programs and privatization selloffs to pay bad debts, the world has learned enough about causes and consequences.

The banking profession deliberately chooses to be ignorant. “Good accepted practice” is bolstered by Nobel Economics Prizes to provide a cloak of plausible deniability when markets “unexpectedly” are hollowed out and new investment slows as a result of financially bleeding economies, medieval-style while wealth is siphoned up to the top of the economic pyramid.

My friend David Kelley likes to cite Molly Ivins’ quip: “It’s hard to convince people that you are killing them for their own good.” The EU’s attempt to do this didn’t succeed in Iceland. And like the Icelanders, the Greek protesters have had their fill of neoliberal-learned ignorance that austerity, unemployment and shrinking markets are the path to prosperity, not deeper poverty. So we must ask what motivates central banks to promote tunnel-visioned managers who follow the orders and logic of a system that imposes needless suffering and waste – all to pursue the banal obsession that banks must not lose money?

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: Poor Greece. It is “on the menu”, so to speak.

It’s the old “destroy the village, to save it”. A missionary position that the “haves” use… One thing tho, the Greeks are not leaving the streets…

Reply
14. Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: OH MY GAWD

Alex Jones ‘DMT elves want the elites to kill us all’

Here, Alex Jones absolutely leaves David Icke in the dust as he spins a conspiracy theory of the how “the elite” smoke DMT to put them in touch with Terence McKenna’s “self-transforming machine elves” who want them to kill everyone Dalek-style. Apparently.

According to Jones, the alien beings have instructed that the Large Hadron Collider be built so that the inter-dimensional vortex could be opened, allowing them to gain access to our space-time continuum. (Well he doesn’t say that exactly, I’m interpolating just a little bit).

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: Did Alex Jones just adance to one of the crazier crazies? He may have.

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: yup, pretty nuts.

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: I always was of the mind that Alex Jones ™, ….was making lots of money off of half (and sometimes,…teeny, near non, ….or, …near whole) truths. I highly doubt he’s lost it, he’s probably still: rakin it in.

Reply
15. Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: Federal Judge Stays Indiana Law Cutting Off Planned Parenthood Funding Until She Hears Lawsuit

Reply
16. marisacat - 25 June 2011: 😆

Empire Buidling sports a rainbow. Not the greatest pic, but it is def red, red-orange, blue, blue-violet and the spire is green…

Never thought I would compliment Cuomo for anything… but, no avoiding it, he got it done.

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: NYT has a story purporting to be the behind the scenes on how it happened…

[T]he story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed.

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

And it was about a Democratic governor, himself a Catholic, who used the force of his personality and relentlessly strategic mind to persuade conflicted lawmakers to take a historic leap.

“I can help you,” Mr. Cuomo assured them in dozens of telephone calls and meetings, at times pledging to deploy his record-high popularity across the state to protect them in their districts. “I am more of an asset than the vote will be a liability.” . . . .

He also got large dollar checks from 3 mega hedge funders… with a vested interest in the deal. And… the Catholic Church seemed less interested in a big push than they were here. Maybe the absence of big big Mormon money in the deal.

Reply
17. Madman in the Marketplace - 25 June 2011: New Report Shows Women Will Be Hit Hardest By Changes to Social Security’s Cost-Of-Living Adjustment

(Washington, D.C.) Today the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) released a new report that shows how deficit reduction proposals to change the way cost of living adjustments (COLAs) are calculated in federal benefit programs—such as Social Security—underestimate the effect of inflation on the elderly and would especially harm women. The proposed switch to a new measure of inflation may appear to be a mere technical adjustment, but this report shows how the change will result in significant cuts to Social Security benefits that deepen over the years and dramatically increase economic insecurity among the elderly—especially women.

The proposed change delivers a triple whammy to women, according to NWLC’s report, Cutting the Social Security COLA by Changing the Way Inflation is Calculated Would Especially Hurt Women (view the report: http://www.nwlc.org/resource/cutting-social-security-cola-changing-way-inflation-calculated-would-especially-hurt-women). Since women live longer than men, they face deeper cuts in their Social Security benefits under the proposed new measure of inflation, known as the “chained Consumer Price Index,” because the cuts from this reduced COLA get deeper each year. Women rely more on income from Social Security, so these cuts would represent a larger share of their total retirement income. And since older women are already more economically vulnerable than older men, these cuts would leave many of them unable to meet basic needs.

“This proposal is a stealth attack on the economic security of older women,” said Joan Entmacher, NWLC Vice-President for Family Economic Security. “That is a shameful way to solve our nation’s deficit problem.”

Various deficit-reduction plans call for switching to the chained CPI, and it is reportedly being considered in the deficit talks convened by Vice President Joe Biden.

NWLC’s analysis uncovers some stark facts. For a woman who gets a benefit of $1,100 at age 65—approximately the median monthly benefit of all single women 65 and older—replacing the current cost of living adjustment with the chained CPI would mean $56 less per month and $672 less per year at age 80.

“That may not sound like a big cut to some Members of Congress—but it translates to a loss of more than a week’s worth of food per month or 13 weeks of food in a year,” said Entmacher. At age 90, that would mean $87 less per month and over $1,000 less that year—equivalent to 20 weeks of food that year. These cuts accumulate and add up dramatically as women age. A woman with an initial benefit of $1,100 will have lost more than $6,300 by age 80 and more than $15,000 by age 90—the equivalent of more than a year’s worth of benefits.

Reply
marisacat - 25 June 2011: Trust L’Obster to get it done.

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: That will come,…as big surprise to adult females, as they watch the world turn….Not………………

Reply
diane - 25 June 2011: id est, …anyone see any biological females in the piccy that prefaces this thread ….I didn’t think so………..

Reply
18. marisacat - 25 June 2011: New

LINK

………… 8)

Reply