But it does make sense

Half of Americans Getting Government Aid Swear They've Never Used Government Programs - Culture - GOOD

Half of people getting federal student loans don't think they've ever used a government social program. Forty percent of Medicare recipients have no idea their health insurance is funded by the state. And 25 percent of the people receiving that emblem of All That Is Bad About Big Government, welfare, don't connect that paycheck to the "enemy." Given the fact that one in six Americans use anti-poverty programs alone, there's a hell of a lot of people who are deluded about how much the government helps them out.

FDR: "We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob."

H/T Digby

What they learned from us

Iraq blocs to take two more weeks on U.S. troop issue | Reuters

(Reuters) - Iraq's fractious political blocs will take two more weeks to decide whether U.S. troops should extend their stay in Iraq beyond a year-end deadline, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Saturday.

A find

Longform.org

Longform.org posts new and classic non-fiction articles, curated from across the web, that are too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser.

Pretty much says it all. Some really good stuff here, way more than you're likely to accumulate by just web surfing, and you can get it delivered to your Instapaper (now that we're doing more reading on our color nook we're loving Instapaper these days) or Kindle and read it on your tablet or phone. The site also offers RSS and Twitter feeds so you never have to stop obsessing about it, ever. How cool is that?

And BTW, this December, 2001, piece from the Washington Post is a must: Why Not the Worst?

If people would just stop looking for work we'd have a lot less unemployment around here

Job Growth Falters, Clouding Hope for Recovery - NYTimes.com

Although the government’s survey of employers showed a slight expansion in jobs, a separate survey of households found that more people were searching for work than in the previous month, causing the unemployment rate to rise to 9.2 percent from 9.1 percent in May.

And what a mess it was

Britney Spears hits fans with engery, elegance at UC - Chicago Sun-Times

Britney Spears hits fans with engery...

It's Captain Obvious!

U.S. has ‘long way to go’ after poor jobs report: Obama | The Raw Story

President Barack Obama said Friday the US economy has "a long way to go" towards a strong recovery...

Say what?

Jobs halt Wall Street rally, investors eye earnings | Reuters

(Reuters) - Stocks fell on Friday as a weak jobs report dashed optimism that the economy was emerging from a soft patch...

Soft patch?

The panic button

Treasury: No to 14th Amendment Route | Talking Points Memo

The General Counsel of the Treasury Department has just sent out an email to the New York Times which seems to say definitively that Secretary Geithner believes that only Congress can raise the debt limit and has full authority to force the country into default. In other words, nothing President Obama or the Treasury can do about it.

Arch

iPhone photo: Phil Compton

Go for it, Minnesota!

Shutdown Day 8: All quiet as record book awaits | Capitol View | Minnesota Public Radio

If the shutdown lasts until Sunday, Minnesota will have the longest state shutdown since 2002...

Actually I have a modest solution for all of Minnesota's budget woes. Minnesota would make an excellent reality show, one of those battle-with-adversity types, like living on a South Seas island and eating snakes. Do you have any idea how cold it gets in Minnesota, for how long? How deep the snow gets or, in the summer, how big the mosquitoes are? (In Minnesota, mosquitoes don't bite, they refuel.) And Michele Bachmann!

Dude, I'd watch.

 

If you're looking for a really, really safe job...

Unemployment rate rises to 9.2 percent. Just a 'soft patch'? - CSMonitor.com

Professional forecasters still generally predict that the US economy will regain some momentum in the year's second half and continue to grow...

...be a professional forecaster. They will never run out of work and what's more, they don't even have to be right. Professional guessers would be a better job title, but would probably involve a slight reduction in pay. 

Of course there's really no reason I can think of why some guy in central Africa can't guess as well as some guy in a big New York firm, and do it on five cents a day to boot. I'm forecasting nobody will ever forecast that, though.

Stars and Stripes Forever

Undernews: House GOP prefers funding military bands over feeding the hungry:

"Politics USA - House Republicans have rejected a proposal to cut $120 million from the military band budget in order to feed low income American women, children, and senior citizens."

Bet on it

What's In A Name? Dems Support Social Security Benefit Cut -- By Calling It Something Else | TPMDC:

"Social Security benefit cuts may be a bridge too far for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). But what if Republicans and Democrats alike just agreed to refer to a benefit cut by another name.

That's how key negotiators have decided to treat one policy proposal, popular in Washington...the so-called Chained Consumer Price Index...

Exactly! That's it!

From Twitter's help page...

If you've signed up to Twitter and are wondering how to get started or why you're here...

Why indeed? I joined Twitter once before and lost interest almost instantly. Maybe things have changed. Anyway it makes me crazy, reading about twit-this an twit-that. I don't see what Twitter has that txt, email, IM, Facetime, Google and Yahoo and just about everybody else on the planet has too, and often has better. Oh, as the saying goes, well.

Anyway, just don't tell me blah blah Arab Spring. I remember following the Russian revolution in a chat room. OK, not the Russian revolution, just one of them. They've had so many I've lost count. But still. Brave new world, we all thought. Until the next time, when it was IM. 

NRA heaven

Budget Cuts Force Texas Town To Lay Off Entire Police Force, Mayor Warns ‘Bolt Your Doors’ | ThinkProgress

The Lone Star state is famous for its own harsh brand of justice, but residents in one small town will soon be left to fend for themselves after budget cuts forced Alto, Texas to lay off its entire police force...

"Bolt your doors and buy a gun."

If Obama puts Social Security on the table

Hullabaloo

Keep one thing in mind as you mull all this over. Paul Ryan didn't put Social security on the table. And even the Catfood Commission didn't portray their SS recommendations as contributing to closing the deficit. And that's because SS has nothing to do with the deficit -- the trust fund is secure for more than 30 years. Sweetening the pot with Social Security in these alleged "deficit" talks is purely gratuitous.

Kids these days

How the Titanic disaster pushed Uncle Sam to "rule the air"

"Some amateurs deliberately sent false or obscene message [sic], especially to the navy," Douglas notes. "The temptation to indulge in such practical joking was enhanced by the fact that detection was virtually impossible. Amateurs would pretend to be military officials or commercial operators, and they dispatched ships on all sorts of fabricated missions."

The navy didn't think any of this was funny, of course.

Well, OK, those days. This is the first decade of the last century we're talking about here, and the technology was not TCP/IP but just plain old radio. Not txt, Morse Code. But that doesn't make it sound any less like fun.

Elizabeth who?

The Annotated Frank Rich - The President’s Failure to Demand a Reckoning From the Moneyed Interests Who Brought the Economy Down -- New York Magazine

The administration’s much-hyped Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being sabotaged by Washington Republicans intent on blocking any White House nominee, whether Elizabeth Warren or some malleable hack, to lead it. “We can’t let special interests win this fight,” said Obama when he proposed the agency in October 2009. Well, he missed his moment to fight for both it and Warren, and the special interests won without breaking a sweat.

Prepare to get traded, Bunky, you're the next to go

Obama Wants to Strike Broader Deal on Cutting Deficit - NYTimes.com

The president’s renewed efforts [at "negotiating" on the debt limit matter] follow what knowledgeable officials said was an overture from Mr. Boehner, who met secretly with Mr. Obama last weekend, to consider as much as $1 trillion in unspecified new revenues as part of an overhaul of tax laws in exchange for an agreement that made substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.

Obama answers 0.045% of questions asked on "Twitter Town Hall"

Why you didn't get to #AskObama anything on Twitter - CNN.com

Tens of thousands of people submitted questions under the #AskObama Twitter hashtag on Wednesday, hoping the U.S. president would respond to their queries in what was billed as his first-ever Twitter Town Hall....

Eeeewww!

TSA warns airlines of explosive implants - USATODAY.com

 
Transportation Security Administration warns airlines and foreign security agencies that terrorists might try to surgically implant bombs in their bodies as a way to evade security....

"As a precaution, passengers flying from international locations to U.S. destinations may notice additional security measures in place," TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball said. "Measures may include...the use of enhanced tools..."

Why not just require everybody to have a zipper installed?

The numbers game

Undernews: War and debt

The fantasy parading as serious negotiations over the nation’s debt collapses on the recognition of one fact: our absurdly expensive wars are not even on the table.

A Brown University study finds that the figure just for our post 9/11 misbegotten escapades approaches $4 trillion. That’s about 25% of our whole national debt accrued in just one decade of badly distorted policies. Add in the Bush tax cuts and you have an explanation for one-third of our total fiscal deficiency.

It's going to be a long, long year

Obama Has Finally Become Dick Cheney - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic

His administration wants to jail James Risen, a reporter who exposed Bush-era wrongdoing, if he doesn't reveal one of his sources

"Austerity: It's what's for dinner"

Mike the Mad Biologist

In light of the recent E. coli outbreak in Germany that has killed nearly forty people, one would think the U.S. would be strengthening, not weakening microbiological surveillance in agriculture. One would be very, very wrong:...

The numbers game

America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta - CSMonitor.com

Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what's likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history.

This appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, unearthed across the country....

 

What? He gets more than 140 characters? WTF?

Obama Twitter session to concentrate on jobs, economy | Reuters

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama holds a "town hall" webcast on the economy and jobs on Twitter on Wednesday...

 The online service's normally ironclad 140-character limit -- the written "Tweet" format -- will apply to the questions the president receives but not to his answers.

Can this get any dumber? The safe bet, of course, is yes.

It's so hard to say goodbye

US 'offering' to keep troops in Iraq? More like begging for permission to stay. - CSMonitor.com

The Associated Press reported late yesterday (citing the ever-popular White Houses "sources" – that is, officials probably authorized to speak and plant a message in the press but granted anonymity anyways) that the Obama administration is "offering" to keep 10,000 troops in Iraq in 2012, beyond the agreed deadline with the Iraqis to withdraw all troops....

While that word "offer" has been repeatedly used by US officials named and unnamed in recent months, a better word might be "pleading."...

 

We are shocked

Obama May Break His Promise on Iraq Withdrawal - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic

U.S. troops were supposed to be gone by year's end. But the White House is now offering to leave behind a force 10,000 strong.

Now will Mexico build a wall to keep U.S.ians out?

For Mexicans Looking North, a New Calculus Favors Home - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

AGUA NEGRA, Mexico — The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive....

Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the United States for the first time had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s. “No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped,” Mr. Massey said, referring to illegal traffic. “For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.”

 

The hostage-taking template

Apparently it's not just about the money in Minnesota

Antitax Extremism in Minnesota - NYTimes.com

The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs. The [Republican] Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that [Democratic Governor] Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.

The normal

Undernews

I realized that I had just heard perhaps the most stunning evidence of the collapse of the American republic – not the result of a war, an act of terror, or climate change. But a disaster of greed being described as normal.

At this moment – in large part because of the networks and other media – Americans are accepting the disintegration of their country as an inevitable matter that they’ll just have to learn to cope with. Even as the pay of the CEOs of the largest corporations rises 23%....

Ironic but no driver's

Balloon Juice » Ironic License, Please

One of the Ohio Republicans who pushed a state law to toughen voter ID restrictions to “prevent fraud” because there’s no reason why “citizens wouldn’t have a driver’s license” would himself lose the right to vote under the law because his license may be revoked for an Indiana DUI.

 

Weed to eat Manhattan?

Agency warns giant plant that causes blindness, blisters spreading across NY - NYPOST.com

ALBANY, N.Y. — A monster plant with flowers the size of umbrellas and sap that causes blisters and blindness is spreading across New York.

Woohoo! Is this the lowest Tomatometer score ever?

Season of the Witch - Rotten Tomatoes

 

The entertainment just never ends

Watched V for Vendetta last night—nothing to do with the 4th of July but lots of fireworks—and even though there is one kiss—fair warning but, dude, she kisses a guy wearing a mask so how icky can that be?—this geek classic goes on our Movies With No Kissing list, appropriately asterisked.

 And new to the reading list is Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest. If you like your coppers mean and your gumshoes tough (and full of gin) and your bad guys stone dead, this book does belong on your list.

Putting down hacks

George Will Spreads Some Lies About the Economic Crisis | MyFDL

It really is incredible to see such a concerted effort to rewrite history in front of our faces. There is not much ambiguity in the story of the housing bubble. The private financial sector went nuts. They made a fortune issuing bad and often fraudulent loans which they could quickly resell in the secondary market. The big actors in the junk market were the private issuers like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Lehman Brothers. However, George Will and Co. are determined to blame this disaster on government “compassion” for low-income families.

(H/T The Sideshow)

 

Brooks on the DC drama queens

The Mother of All No-Brainers - NYTimes.com

The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right.

(Noted by our Midwest bureau)

 

Tongue! Ick! Ick!

North Carolina Gay-Rights Preacher Kiss: Joan Parker arrested for kissing Salisbury preacher James Belcher at gay pride event.

A 74-year-old gay rights advocate has been charged with simple assault after she planted a kiss on an anti-gay protester in North Carolina.

It was a woman who kissed the guy but she was a lesbian. Wait. It's a miracle! 

OK, maybe not so much. But still. You never know.

Can you spell WTF?

Ten-foot-tall Reagan statue unveiled in London | Raw Replay

The Reagan Foundation commissioned a ten-foot-tall statue of former President Ronald Reagan that was unveiled in London Monday...

Maybe they wouldn't allow it in Dubuque. 

So maybe it's a good thing nobody understands math any more

Undernews: Corporate profits are 88% of growth in national income. . . wages and salaries about one percent

Center for Labor Market Studies - Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only 0.1%....

Republicans long for a past that never was while Democrats increasingly dream of a future that will never be

New Mileage Rules Debated by Carmakers and White House - NYTimes.com

The administration is proposing regulations that will require new American cars and trucks to attain an average of as much as 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025, roughly double the current level. That would require increases in fuel efficiency of nearly 5 percent a year from 2017 to 2025.

Krugman

Corporate Cash Con - NYTimes.com

Lack of corporate cash is not the problem facing America. Big business already has the money it needs to expand; what it lacks is a reason to expand with consumers still on the ropes and the government slashing spending.

What our economy needs is direct job creation by the government and mortgage-debt relief for stressed consumers. What it very much does not need is a transfer of billions of dollars to corporations that have no intention of hiring anyone except more lobbyists.

 

Awesome!

An ePub version of The Jargon File here at, well, The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000 by Various - Project Gutenberg. Right. Put it on your reader, your smartphone, carry it around with you everywhere you go.

Now you too can be a geek!

 

I need something chocolate and I need it really, really bad

What else is there to say?

Who says we have not evolved?

Dan Savage on the Virtues of Infidelity - NYTimes.com

"...tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird.”

Also Jello shots

There You Go! Now Drive Safe, You Hear? - NYTimes.com

The drive-through daiquiri stand is a Louisiana institution...

Two Americas, two White Houses

White House to pay $37 million in salaries for 2011 | Reuters.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it will pay $37,121,463 in salaries for 454 employees in 2011....

More than 30 percent earn between $100,000 and $200,000 a year while 154 take home less than $50,000, according to the 2011 annual report on White House staff.

And under President Bachmann we might not have to pay them anything at all. Maybe they will work for peanut butter sandwiches or something. Or anything.

I can live on a lot less than $50,000 but I don't work in the White House. Or live in Washington, DC. Oh, and by the way, you wouldn't call this a security risk or anything, would you? No. Of course not. Why would I think a thing like that?

Let the good times roll

Executive Pay at Big Companies Rose 23% Last Year - NYTimes.com

IT turns out that the good times are even better than we thought for American chief executives.

...median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

No kidding

Minnesotans frustrated, angry over state government shutdown | Reuters

(Warning: Use of strong language in paragraph 3) [sic]