Friday, March 23, 2012

Supper

Tonight it was ribs and suds. After  braising:

After Smoking:


Sauced with spuds



2.5 hrs braise, 30 mins hot smoke,shredded spuds with parmesian, butter, and milk for 1hr. Needs a green; therefore coleslaw.



Vote



Would That We Did

Obviously, Bruce is being ironical here but the fact of the matter is if we did Trayvon Martin would be alive and neoliberals wouldn't run the economy.




In a related matter Obama's choice for the World Bank potentially lightens the darkness of our future.

This Isn't The First Time

that official America condoned the murder of a fellow citizen for no good god damned reason.

How to describe

Geraldo Rivera's  comments on the Treyvon Martin tragedy. Grotesque? Heartless? Cruel? Ignorant? Disgusting? Vicious? Vile? Lies? Distraction? Beneath Contempt?

For god's sake a boy was murdered for no good reason and the vile, horrid little man insists that the decision to wear a hooded sweatshirt is as much to blame as the horrid little man who ignored police orders to follow and then confront a kid whose "crime" was being black.

Think about that for a minute.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Controversial But True

Earlier I mentioned that Bill Maher erroneously conflated calling out, condemning, and boycotting liars with misplaced outrage arising from lying about one's outrage at anodyne remarks. Here is an example of a fine human being using potentially inflammatory language properly because every word she says is true. If Mitt Romney et alia want to be all outraged at this and seek to remove or boycott Rachel Maddow that would be wrong and should be resisted. What she did and Limbaugh did are not the same. Civility is one thing, lying is another.




via

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

On the NYT opinion page today there is an essay from Bill Maher in which he conflates serial liar, blowhard, and purveyor of vile smears Rush Limbaugh with the ginned up controversies. He is right about the various tempests in tea pots over Robert De Niro's joke and the like. He is just flat wrong about Limbaugh or, for that matter, Anne Coulter.

It's one thing to wax wroth over something that if you squint hard enough might be offensive; it's quite another to object to careers built on lies and vilification of nonexistent enemies in the service of ruining the country.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Can't Explain

Do you think Romney sees this as a stirring call to action?




Because it is a rambling and disconnected diatribe aimed squarely retire the petite bourgeoisie and the empty-headed fools who believe Rush Limbaugh's lies.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Game Changer?

The Trayvon Martin story is horrific. The number of Floridians "legally" murdered because of its insane gun laws is horrific. Its economic condition is horrific.  All of these horrific events and conditions result from some neoliberal reform or another.

The Martin story alone ought to be enough to put an end once and for all to the idea that racism, institution if not personal, is dead. The unnecessary gun deaths ought to put an end to the idea that an armed society is a polite society. The economic misery ought to put an end to the neoliberal fantasies.

Any decent society would denounce the Florida syndrome without hesitation. Anybody is actually interested in our common good and collective future would denounce the Florida syndrome.  Anybody who actually cares about the current crises in America would not be running around wringing their hands about contraception and abortion but would rather denounce the Florida syndrome.

Will we? Will they? Will this be the moment when we finally start to get our country back from the small-minded theocratic thugs, the empty-headed political and tv grifters, the lying cultural warriors, the plutocrats and their academic shills?

God, I hope so. But don't hold your breath.

Monday, March 19, 2012

This is What Kleptocracy Looks LIke

The story of Craig Dubow's disastrous reign over Gannet is pretty well know. Today, it seems, he was given a 32 million dollar severance package.

Much like hedge fund managers Dubow's social utility, which is almost always the argument for these kinds of outrageous payoffs, is near zero. He left the company he ran weaker than when he started; he seriously damaged or destroyed the careers of around 20k living human beings; he engaged in the duplicitous practice of increasing his own and his coterie of wrecker's salaries even as they failed miserably in their jobs.

If someone did this to, say, a house, it would be a case of theft and vandalism; however, because this happened in the "free market," it supposed to be perfectly legal. We're I the owner of any Gannet Stock, I sued everybody on the board and Dubow for theft and vandalism.

Relatedly, over to The New Yorker, there is an article detailing rich peoples comprehensive fraud to avoid paying their fair share. The story begins with a lout who makes several hundred million dollars per year and to avoid paying his taxes he games the system by living in New York City in fact while pretending to live elsewhere. The issues is a technical one when it should be a criminal one: fraud.

It's almost as if the rich are conscienceless swine.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

How Does That Work?

From Paul Krugman comes an Alec MaGillis article on hedge fund managers in which a neoliberal economics professor intones, concerning the mild criticism of the men and women who wrecked the economy, that because
it wasn’t just anyone knocking them–it was the president of the United States, notes Eugene Fama, a legendary finance professor at the University of Chicago and Asness’s former mentor. “Lots of [hedge fund managers] started out poor, and made a huge amount of money, and created thousands and thousands of jobs in the process. They’re used to being the American Dream, and now you have the president who looks at them and sneers at them like they’re bad guys.”
How does that work? What jobs did the hedge fund manegers create? One or another of my siblings suggests private cooks, maids, butlers, yoga teachers, and related etc. Recall, on the jobs front, that from Reagan on stock prices rose on the shedding of decently paid jobs and their replacement with machines or shipping of to low wage countries.

Hurrah the hedge fund managers and profit maximizing corporate presidents and boards, they hollowed out the American economy and profited form the semi-slave labor and nonexistent environmental laws and regulations of repressive regimes.