Bits and Pieces for the Week of August 14 - 20

An implausible, but not necessarily impossible, threat from outer space. (Mike)

HOLY SHIT: U.S. government is seriously considering destroying military retirement pay. (Mike)

Cyberloafing (surfing the internet at work) actually boosts worker productivity! (Mike)

Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini: ‘Karl Marx Was Right’ "At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational...is a self-destructive process... We're not there yet," Roubini said, but he did add that the current trend, if it continues, "runs the risk of repeating the second leg of the Great Depression" -- the 'mistake of 1937.'" (7 of 6)

Louis C.K. has reinvented the sitcom. It's possibly the best show on TV right now. (Mike)

New drug could cure nearly any viral infection. "Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection." (7 of 6)

When will they listen? Widow: After 8 deployments, Army Ranger takes own life. "Staff Sgt. Hagemann had orders to return to Afghanistan this month for a ninth tour of duty." I know, when we have a draft and make the rich start serving! (7 of 6)

Rick Santorum, the stand-up comedian?

100 Things You Can Say To Irritate A Republican

Conservatives are so easy to anger these days. Even the most insignificant statement can set off their tempers. If you want to enrage a conservative, I suggest saying the following: 1. A Socialist wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. 2. Jesus healed the sick and helped the poor, for free. 3. Joseph McCarthy was an un-American, witch hunting sissy. 4. Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were traitors. 5. The South lost the Civil War, get over it. 6. The Founding Fathers were liberals. 7. Fascism is a right-wing trait. 8. Sarah Palin is an ugly cow (said to conservative males). 9. The Earth is round. 10. Reagan raised taxes eleven times as President. 11. Reagan legalized abortion as Governor of California. 12. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. 13. Ronald Reagan supported gun control. 14. Global warming is real. 15. Republicans hate illegal immigrants, unless they need their lawns mowed or their houses cleaned. 16. The military is a government-run institution, so why do Republicans approve the defense budget? 17. The Cold War is over and the Soviet Union no longer exists. 18. Paying taxes is patriotic. 19. Republicans: Peddling the same failed economic policies since 1880. 20. The Republican Party began as a liberal party. 21. The Presidents’ full name is Barack Hussein Obama and he was born in the United States of America. 22. George W. Bush held hands with the King of Saudi Arabia. 23. President Obama saved the American auto industry, while Republicans wanted to destroy it. 24. Hate is not a Christian virtue. 25. Jesus was a liberal. 26. Republicans spend MORE money than Democrats. 27. Tea parties are for little girls. 28. Public schools educate all children; private schools are for indoctrinating children. 29. The Constitution is the law, NOT the Bible. 30. Sharia law doesn’t exist in America. 31. The President is NOT a Muslim. 32. Corporations are NOT people. People are people. 33. Fox News isn’t real news, it’s just a racist, sexist, hateful, right-wing propaganda machine. 34. The Federal Reserve was a Republican idea. 35. Women are equal citizens who deserve equal rights. 36. Women control their own bodies. 37. Abortion is a relevant medical procedure, just ask Rick Santorum. 38. Please use spell check. 39. It’s “pundit”, not “pundint”. 40. Social Security is solvent through 2038. 41. Health care is a right, not a product. 42. Roe v. Wade was a bipartisan ruling made by a conservative leaning Supreme Court. 43. G.O.P also stands for Gross Old Perverts. 44. The donkey shouldn’t be the Democratic mascot because Republicans are the real jackasses. 45. Barack Obama ordered the killing of Osama Bin Laden. It took him two and half years to do what Bush couldn’t do in eight. 46. Waterboarding IS torture. 47. 9/11 happened on George W. Bush’s watch, therefore he did NOT keep America safe. 48. Republicans invaded Iraq for oil, so Iraq should be allowed to invade Texas to get it back. 49. Separation of church and state is in the Constitution, it’s called the First Amendment. 50. Muslims are protected by the Constitution, just as much as Christians. 51. Barack Obama is the first African-American President, get over it. 52. The Oval Office is NOT a “whites only” office. 53. America is a nation of immigrants, therefore we are all anchor babies. 54. The white race isn’t disappearing, it’s evolving. 55. God is a particle. 56. Evolution is real. 57. The Earth is 4.54 billion years old, not 6,000. 58. The Founding Fathers did not free the slaves. 59. The Revolution was NOT fought over slavery. 60. Paul Revere warned the Americans, NOT the British. 61. Federal law trumps state law. 62. The Civil War was about slavery, NOT state’s rights. 63. Corporations care more about profits than they do about people. 64. Getting out of a recession requires government spending. 65. Glenn Beck is a nut-job. 66. Republicans: Paranoid since 1932. 67. Republicans don’t want to pay for your birth control, but they want you to pay for their Viagra. 68. Republicans actually NEED Viagra. 69. Fox News is owned by an Australian and has a Saudi prince as an investor. 70. Republicans complain about immigrants taking American jobs, then freely give American jobs to foreigners overseas. 71. Republicans hate communism, so why do they refer to themselves as red states? 72. Labor unions built this country. 73. Republicans hold America hostage as a political strategy; the temper tantrum throwing kind of political strategy. 74. Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. 75. When Republicans see black, they attack. 76. Inside every Republican is a Klansman or a Nazi waiting to bloom. 77. Republicans only care about children BEFORE they are born. 78. Republicans are hypocrites, they’re just too stupid to know it. 79. The Christian-Right boycotts movies that have violence, and then promotes guns and insurrection. 80. I think therefore I am NOT a Republican. 81. Republicans that oppose gay marriage are most likely in the closet themselves. 82. Churches should stay out of politics, or be taxed. 83. People are too poor to vote Republican. 84. Democrats think for themselves, Republicans form think tanks to do it for them. 85. Republicans hate education because they couldn’t hack it in school. 86. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins and Republicans wallow in it. 87. A little socialism on the Left is better than a little fascism on the Right. 88. The current corporate tax rate is the lowest in 60 years, so stop whining about it being too high. 89. Republicans: Anti-Gay Marriage, Pro-Lesbian sex. 90. Republicans: Terrorizing the American people since 1981. 91. Republicans have their own terrorists, just look up Timothy McVeigh. 92. Republicans love outsourcing, just ask the Chinese Communists. 93. The Republican answer to the oil spill was to apologize to BP, a foreign oil company. 94. Democrats will be working hard to bring jobs to Americans, while the Republicans tea bag each other in the middle of the aisles. 95. Voter disenfranchisement is immoral and un-American, that’s why Republicans do it. 96. Republicans would let your house burn down unless you pay them to put it out. 97. Democrats want to take care of the sick. Republicans take their credit cards and then deny them medical attention. 98. Republicans say teachers are union thugs, then proceed to rape and mug the entire middle class on behalf of corporations. 99. Republicans think rape isn’t a crime, but miscarriages are. 100. Republicans are idiots and arguing with them is a waste of time! Stephan D. Foster Jr.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of August 7 - 13

This is how stupid our political discourse has gotten. Candidates now announce that they are going to announce their candidacy for office. (Mike)

Terminating the Teabaggers (Mike)

21 Signs That The Once Great U.S. Economy Is Being Gutted, Neutered, Defanged, Declawed And Deindustrialized. This article makes a strong argument for "Trade Deficits!" (7 of 6)

How Obama is neutralizing the Left. (Mike)

"....Corporate power’s ascendancy over politics and society – by now mostly financial – has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate...." (Mike)

Here's to you, California. (Mike)

Germany discovers that boosting unions reduces unemployment. "Germany... enacted policies based on strengthening and building unions as a way of increasing consumer spending through higher wages paid to union workers. Thus this policy reduces unemployment by increasing workers' purchasing power... German policies encouraging union building and negotiation power found that it was able to reduce economic inequality... It should be noted that Germany has the tightest market regulation of banks in Europe." And it doesn't have near the bloated defense spending America has. (7 of 6)

Why We Can Thank Republicans for a Double-dip Recession. "It was never a debt crisis. The debt crisis was manufactured. It's been a jobs, wages, and growth crisis all along. And that reality has finally caught up with us... Now that we're slouching toward a double-dip recession, the only hope is voters will tell their members of Congress -- who are now on recess back home -- to stop obsessing about future budget deficits and get to work on the real crisis of unemployment, falling wages, and no growth." (7 of 6)

A Rant Worth Hearing

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bits and Pieces for the Week of July 31 - August 6

You may never see anything like this again in your lifetime. (Mike)

This year The Atlantic's web site added a section containing timely and professional-quality photo galleries. (Mike)

Stop picking on truck drivers. (Mike)

The recovery is dead. (Mike)

It's becoming clearer day by day that the Obama whom people had elected is not the Obama they THOUGHT they were electing. If you review all his decisions during his term as President, it becomes crystal clear that he is a moderate conservative. He's done more for Republicans in 2-1/2 years than Bush did in 8. (Mike)

Banks' shadow inventory of homes will keep house prices artifically inflated, and keep potential buyers away. (Mike)

Labor's Discontent With Obama Surfaces Yet Again "We have now had at least three or more experiences of the president explaining to people that he has a plan and it is under control but the results don't match," said Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union. "He has an unreasonable Congress that doesn't respond to reason. So why continue to reason with them?" Exactly Andy... WHY? (7 of 6)

"....'Eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly,' she stressed, 'Get six to eight hours of sleep and see a doctor regularly. But no one wants to do that,' she said with exasperation. 'But they'll use a hose to flush themselves out! The use of these methods are unhealthy. And what's scary is we only examined the cases that were reported to hospitals and doctors. Imagine all the people who are using these products and methods and have side effects and never go to the hospital. We don't know about them. The numbers could be staggering.'"

The "shadow" colon cleaners.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of July 23 - 30

The Deficit: Obama or Bush? (Mike)

How Obama Squandered the High Hopes of Those Who Elected Him "We were inspired by Barack's soaring oratory and believed he would care more about social justice. We expected him to be a hero... Now we recognize that Barack Obama is a realist, not an idealist. We understand that above all else, he is a politician." (7 of 6)

According to Juan Cole, it all started in 2001:

"I take it the American news cycle is dominated by the artificial debate over raising the debt limit. It is a silly season story. The budget was being balanced by Clinton in the late 1990s, and the Republicans were the ones who created long-term structural deficits by slashing taxes on the wealthiest Americans (even Bush argued with Cheney over the second cut), by an unfunded prescription drug give-away to get votes from the medicare crowd, and by two unfunded wars, one of them illegal in international law. "The reason that the Republicans deliberately destroyed the balanced budget and created unprecedented government debt was precisely in hopes that at some point they could use the debt as an excuse to destroy social security, medicare, and myriads of educational and health programs. They represent rich people, and the rich don’t want to be having to bear their fair share of the national burden. What better way to get out of having to pay those pesky taxes than making sure the government doesn’t do anything for anyone but the rich. "The government will find a way to continue to function eventually, and this particular government will find a way to throw ever more public resources to billionaires and to take even what little the middle class has away from them. "Reducing taxes on the super-wealthy and borrowing money for key government functions is just a sneaky way of increasing taxes on the middle class, who will now have to pay taxes to support the billionaires’ wars and corporate welfare plus pay out of pocket for health care, education, environmental protection, and social security– i.e. things they had already paid into the government for. Starving education of funding ensures that people are too ignorant to figure out this scam. They won’t even be able to distinguish between one-time stimulus deficits like Obama’s, and long-term structural deficits of the sort passed by Bush...."

What's really happening with debt ceiling talks in Washington

My favorite quote of 2011

President Obama claims the Republicans can’t say “yes” to anything. Well, apparently he hasn’t asked if he can kiss their ass.

source

TOO BIG

I came across this great comment today:

Here's what we keep hearing, in different forms: "The company is too big for the leadership to be aware of misdeeds and improprieties." "The company is too big to take responsibility." "The company is too big to punish." "The company is too big to fail." ....All of which are ways of saying "The company is too big."

Bits and Pieces for the Week of July 17 - 23

Go Bill!! "Former President Bill Clinton says that he would invoke the so-called constitutional option to raise the nation’s debt ceiling 'without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me' in order to prevent a default...Lifting the debt ceiling “is necessary to pay for appropriations already made,” he added, “so you can’t say, ‘Well, we won the last election and we didn’t vote for some of that stuff, so we’re going to throw the whole country’s credit into arrears.'” (7 of 6)

"ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council... is sponsoring a... "legislative training and indoctrination session in New Orleans on August 1st through August 6th... ALEC will teach your reps how to present laws (pre-written by corporations). The legislation runs the gamut from union-busting bills, laws that restrict voting, privatizing and selling off your state’s assets, and laws that rid your state of those onerous environmental protections that make your air clean enough to breathe and your water safe enough to drink... Not only that, ALEC’s donating corporations will give your legislator a $1900.00 ‘scholarship’ to attend." (7 of 6)

"The bottom line is that the debt ceiling is a gun pointed first and foremost at Wall Street's head. And, there is no way on earth that Wall Street is going to let the Republicans pull the trigger." - Dean Baker (7 of 6)

Severe tornadoes, severe snowfall, severe flooding, severe economic destruction by Republicans, severe lengths of U.S. wars, severe tuition prices, and now severe drought. Armageddon?

Obama said this today:

"....Also to put our economy on a stronger and sounder footing for the future, we’ve got to rein in our deficits and get the government to live within its means, while still making the investments that help put people to work right now and make us more competitive in the future. As I mentioned, we’ve had some good meetings. We had a good meeting here yesterday with leaders of both parties in Congress. And while real differences remain, we agreed to work through the weekend and meet back here on Sunday. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner that the markets know that the debt limit ceiling will have been raised and that we have a serious plan to deal with our debt and deficit, the sooner that we give our businesses the certainty that they will need in order to make additional investments to grow and hire and will provide more confidence to the rest of the world as well, so that they are committed to investing in America....."

NOOOOOO!!!!!! Would someone please tell him that fixing the debt and deficit is NOT going to help the economy! We need more government stimulus spending and higher revenue from taxing the wealthy and the corporations. That's it. Please!

Dear Republicans: Government health insurance is good.

Here's the text of the latest pot legalization measure currently awaiting approval by the California AG's office for placement as a ballot proposition. Good luck! UPDATE: Here's the one for legalizing same-sex marriage.

Hunter's comments on this report about 25% of U.S. children living in poverty:

"But by all means, let's piss away the time talking about austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. Let's have state and federal shutdowns while politicians insist that no, in this greatest recession since the Depression, we just aren't interested in creating jobs or continuing support for the poor. We're in a nationwide war against public workers and teachers, and a state-by-state rollback of family planning services—now that puts a fire in political pot-bellies, but jobs? It's not even being discussed. "You know something? This generation of kids is going to grow up hating the people who put them in poverty, and then kept them there. The government doesn't give a damn about them. The Republicans have a fit if anyone even tries to give a damn about them. Their own states certainly don't give a damn about them. You think Chris Christie, Scott Walker, or Rick Scott gives a damn about nearly 25 percent of American children now living in poverty? I sure haven't heard a peep out of them. "A whole generation marked by poverty. Poverty caused by wealthy bankers making crappy bets, but then prolonged excruciatingly by a nation of political leaders who literally could not possibly do less to get out of recession if they tried. Poverty that will have long-term effects on these children's future prospects, and in turn on the American economy that will rely on them. "Forget mere disapproval: I think anyone talking about austerity for these children's families, while simultaneously coddling the rich and the corporate, deserves to be tarred, feathered, and set adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The more you hear the hard numbers of how bad this "jobless recovery" actually is for people, the more offensive it becomes."