6.25.2011

Too bad about all the kissing...

...and the corny ending. Otherwise this movie (YA story from Philip Dick) is pretty good. 

I'll have another cup!

Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever | quietube

 

News for our time

Kim K. gets X-ray to prove her butt's real – The Marquee Blog - CNN.com Blogs

On an upcoming episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” the soon-to-be Mrs. Humphries headed to the doctor for an X-ray to prove that her tush is implant-free.

In a promo clip for the show, Kim explains to her physician that her sisters "dared me to get a butt X-ray, because there are so many rumors that I have butt implants, and I'm so tired of them."

Also debt limit housing crash foreclosure unemployment Libya something something whatever.

6.24.2011

Bygones

Undernews: Hedge funders pay $36k each to pal with Obama over dinner

Business Insider - Last night Obama headed to the Upper East Side to wine and dine Wall Street. The DNC fundraiser at tony restaurant Daniel cost attendees $35,800 each, and a source told Ben White at Morning Money that the event netted $2.4 million. So his calculations were that at least 67 financiers had come to the party.

"Wall Street may hate Washington but sources tell M.M. that last night's $35,800 per-head event... was a boffo success packed with hedge fund and private equity types."

Not all news is bad

World's wealthiest people now richer than before the credit crunch, says study | Business | The Guardian

We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new report shows the world's wealthiest people are getting more prosperous – and more numerous – by the day.

Libya: Euro arms show

Libya boosts Euro fighter jets at Paris Air Show - World news - Europe - msnbc.com

The Rafale and a European market rival, the Typhoon, have been among standout performers in the NATO air campaign against Moammar Gadhafi's forces — offering an unexpected shop window as nations including rising world powers Brazil and India consider multibillion-dollar fighter jet purchases.

6.23.2011

Bernie sets it straight

Sen. Sanders: Koch bros. ‘want to destroy Social Security’ | Raw Replay

Seeing what he called “an enormous amount of disinformation about Social Security” in the media, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined with activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald to produce a video that attempts to explains [sic] why.

See video here.

The "recovery" so far

Dollar strengthens on weak jobs report - Yahoo! News

The U.S. Labor Department says applications for unemployment benefits rose by 9,000 to 429,000 last week, the biggest rise in a month.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve lowered its forecast for economic growth, acknowledging that the economy is slowing.

 

If you want you some free speech get yourself a great big pile of money and donate it to some politician's election campaign

That's free speech. This, not so much...

Supreme Court strikes down state drug data mining law - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday a state law that prohibits the use of prescription drug records for marketing, in a case pitting free-speech rights against medical privacy concerns.

The high court handed a victory to data mining companies IMS Health, Verispan and Source Healthcare Analytics, a unit of Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer, that collect and sell such information and that challenged the law.

 

Turns out it's not just the farmers the State of Georgia has screwed with it's new immigration law

Undernews: Georgia immigration law could force taxi drivers to check status of every rider

Several taxi companies and more than 2,000 cab drivers have filed their own lawsuit against the law. Their grievance has to do with a specific provision which would make it a misdemeanor to transport fewer than seven undocumented immigrants and a felony to drive any more than that. The cab drivers claim that this would burden them with the responsibility of checking the immigration status of each and every one of their passengers.

We are shocked

Suburban Guerrilla » Blog Archive » Dumber than a can of paint

After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia....

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.

(Emphasis in original)

 

6.22.2011

I think I do remember

10,000

Troops to be brought home from Afghanistan. That is to say, 10%. Remember when everyone said they had to vote for him because he would have theoretically voted against the war?

This can not be good

One-Fifth of Grandparents Use Social Networks [STUDY]

Twenty-two percent of all grandparents are using a social network, a new study by the website MyVoucherCodes suggests.

I can hardly believe my eyes

Report: Sarah Palin quits bus tour halfway through, retreats to Alaska | The Raw Story

WASHINGTON – Amid diminishing media interest, Sarah Palin has quit her high-profile bus tour halfway through...

Diminishing media interest?

Remember that slide projector for Chicago's Adler Planetarium?

Adler Planetarium's new show, Deep Space Adventure, plays on highest-resolution digital dome screen in the world - chicagotribune.com

Planets do not, in the normal order of things, attack.

But when you see Earth projected onto the dome at the Adler Planetarium's revamped and renamed Grainger Sky Theater, it seems almost to be coming at you.

Keep your eye on the pea (and your hand on your wallet)

What Afghans think about President Obama's troop drawdown - CSMonitor.com

Initial estimates indicate that the US will remove 5,000 soldiers this summer, followed by another 5,000 in the winter or spring of 2012. The US president is also looking at plans that could bring home the remaining 20,000 troops he ordered here as part of a 2009 surge by the end of 2012.

Presently, there are about 100,000 US forces stationed in Afghanistan. Since Obama took office, the number of US troops in Afghanistan has nearly tripled.

 

Nifty

A Camera That Could Care Less About Focus: Introducing Lytro

...if one Silicon Valley startup has its way, the very idea of focusing, or adjusting light levels, or having to wait before you click the shutter, will be a relic of the early 21st century...

One more reason we don't want a plug-in car

Storms leave 300,000 without power in Chicago area; flights canceled - CNN.com

(CNN) -- More than 300,000 electric customers were without power early Wednesday morning in Chicago and its suburbs, electric company Commonwealth Edison said.

Spokesman Bennie Currie said while crews are working to restore power, it could take days to return service to all customers.

 

6.21.2011

We just can't wait to see how this turns out

Obama will ‘likely’ pull 10,000 troops from Afghanistan | The Raw Story

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama will "likely" withdraw about 10,000 US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, with half coming out this summer and the remainder leaving later in 2011, a senior US defense official said Tuesday.

Dude...deep-fried Kool-Aid?

Fat food: Pound for pound, these dishes are the chompions of heft

Deep-fried Kool-Aid in its finished form is like a pastry, first sweet and then tangy, according to delighted tasters. The recipe is top secret but it involves a whole lot of Kool-Aid powder, flour, powdered sugar and hot oil.

Anybody who took a class from this guy should have his law degree revoked

In Libya, Scores of U.S. Airstrikes Followed Handoff to NATO - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Since the United States handed control of the air war in Libya to NATO in early April, American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times, according to military officials....

The disclosure of such details could add texture to an unfolding debate about the merits of the Obama administration’s legal argument that it does not need Congressional authorization to continue the mission because United States forces are not engaged in “hostilities” within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution.

Add texture, indeed. War Powers Resolution, indeed. Pay attention, Bunky: Dropping bombs on people, no matter who they are, is a hostile act. Using a national air force to drop bombs on another country is an act of war. You can damn well believe if Mexico decided to drop a few non-hostile bombs on some drug dealers in Texas we would not be having this discussion about the War Powers Resolution. 

Not even counting the Dubya wars, we are firing missiles from drones in Pakistan, bombing Libya, and, by all accounts, firing missiles from drones in Yemen...and who knows where else...and those are Obama's wars. Period.

6.20.2011

Summer comes to Main Street


Don't look back

Undernews: Judge lets BP off the hook

Sabrina Canfield, Courthouse News Service - Ruling in favor of Transocean and BP, a federal judge [in  New Orelans] dismissed third-party environmental claims in a giant pleading bundle in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, saying the fact that the oil flow has stopped makes those lawsuits irrelevant.

6.19.2011

More from America's war-fighting elite

Robert M. Gates Weary of 'Wars of Choice' - NYTimes.com

“When I took this job, the United States was fighting two very difficult, very costly wars,” [U. S. Secretary of Defense] Gates said. “And it has seemed to me: Let’s get this business wrapped up before we go looking for more opportunities.”

And...

Even as a trained historian, he said, he has learned most clearly over the last four and a half years that wars “have taken longer and been more costly in lives and treasure” than anticipated.

Maybe he skipped that class. 

And by the way, does "defense" really describe what we're doing in Libya and Yemen? Afghanistan? Iraq?

And please don't forget it's not really a war

NATO Says It Mistakenly Hit Libyan Rebels Again - NYTimes.com

TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO acknowledged Saturday that its aircraft had mistakenly hit a column of rebel military vehicles last week...

“We regret any possible loss of life or injuries caused by this unfortunate incident,” NATO said in a statement. The attack was at least the third such episode since the air campaign began three months ago....

But they're working as fast as they can

Foreclosure Backlog Gives Homeowners a Reprieve - NYTimes.com

In New York State, it would take lenders 62 years at their current pace, the longest time frame in the nation, to repossess the 213,000 houses now in severe default or foreclosure, according to calculations by LPS Applied Analytics, a prominent real estate data firm.

Of course

McCain blames some Arizona wildfires on illegal immigrants - CNN.com

(CNN) -- U.S. Sen. John McCain is blaming illegal immigrants for starting some of the wildfires that have scorched hundreds of thousands of acres in Arizona....

The Arizona senator, however, did not say what the evidence is...

We're not surprised at this, are we? If you're surprised, raise your hand.