Nobody Asked Me, But

1) Thousands dead. Many more to come, perhaps. No snark today. My prayers and thoughts go out to the Japanese people.

 

2) The most up to date info can be found here, and while you're at it, please give.

3) あなたはこれを通じて取得すると、私の友人を繁栄する。

 

4) Fortunately, the damage appears limited to Japan.

 

5) Hawaii seems to have borne the tsunami with few ill effects. Remember, it hit at three AM local time.

 

6) Think about this: the tsunami hit Hawaii at 8 AM EST. It will hit the west coast of the United States at 11 AM EST. That's as fast, if not faster, than an airplane.

 

7) Apparently, we're getting better at predicting quakes.

 

8) But not good enough.

 

9) This quake was the fifth largest in recorded history. How large is that? It moved St Louis.

 

10) Some pretty amazing pictures from Sendai, at the heart of the tsunami zone.

Stays Crunchy, Even In The Red

Farewell, old friend

The Latest In Newspeak

Those overcharges actually save you money

Wisconsin: State Of Terror

You know who else banned reading quietly to yourself?

You Know Your Governor Is Evil When....

....Stephen King wants to use him as the villain in his next novel.

Welp! Time To Go Vegan!

E. Coli now passed thru ingestion

 

Oh. And it's resistant to antibiotics...

Possibly The Cutest Site Ever

At least after LOLcats....

 

Cowabduction.com

Hold Onto Your Butts

Here come da flood.

This Is A Pretty Chilling Story

The mutual fund Pimco believes the government has been propping up Treasury bond prices and expects them to drop dramatically shortly as the government can no longer afford to keep buying its own paper back. Right now, they hold zero, nada, nothing in terms of US backed securities.

 

Should bond prices collapse, interest rates on the bonds will skyrocket. Which means interest rates in general will be under enormous pressure, despite the Fed's stance at near-zero lending rates, to spike.

 

You see, Treasuries often set a benchmark for consumer and business loans, the so-called "T-bill +" rates where loans to you and me are set at a fixed rate above whatever the current yield for Treasury securities is.

 

So that means less borrowing, meaning less economic activity, meaning more layoffs, all so that banksters can protect their bonuses.

I, For One, Am Glad That Happened

Imagine trying to get laid with those!

So Much For "Open Carry" Laws, I Guess

They don't seem to stop vicious brutal crime very well.

Privatized Death Panels

Yea. The Obama Healthcare Reform was totally unnecessary..."Drug 'em up and churn 'em out!"   

'Fraidy Cat Republicans

Prime example: Peter King of Long Island

 

Oooh, scary! You insult BILLIONS OF PEOPLE and suddenly think maybe one or two might be offended? And you realize that they might take it out on you, some lone nutcase?

 

By the way, Rep. King...if you had any balls, you'd realize that your own ancestors had to suffer the hate-mongering you seek to foment.

Wisconsin Has The Sickly Stench of Dairy Air

So....it goes.

 

On the one hand, I'm kind of glad the Republicans were dopey enough to decouple this provision from the overall budget bill and force an up or down vote on it. Now we know precisely who to put up against the wall and shoot.

 

Electorally speaking, of course.

 

On the other hand, the foul stench of cowward-shit permeates the air over Wisconsin like the stench of stale vomit after a Packers' game.

 

By the way, FreeSpeechTV has a live feed of the crowded capitol building in Madison. While you're there, throw them a buck or two in thanks.

 

Here's what I recommend the activists in Wisconsin do: there's no point in picketing Walker's office. Or his house. Or the Koch Brothers.

 

What needs to be done is to disrupt smaller-yet-important donors to the Republicans in the legislature: set up picket lines in front of the banks and corporations, find the houses of the managers of those firms and start disrupting their private lives. Make it hell to get to the car or the garage or the dry cleaner. Follow them around, bullhorns loud and proud and ready. Make their neighbors hate them.

 

Unions fought hard for the things we workers take for granted, like an eight hour work day and a five day work week. Let's not take them for granted anymore.

James O'Keefe, Coward

Now, you just know that someone has already plotted this douchebag's downfall for kiddie porn.

So let me get this straight: the chief fundraiser...not policy setter, not program director, not anyone who actually runs the network...for NPR is caught suggesting in a fundraising talk that NPR might not need federal funds (which sounds to me like something a fundraiser might say ahead of "...if we got enough private contributions, like yours"), and somehow, Coward O'Keefe thinks he's proved something?

I can't wait for the blowback on O'Keefe and Breitbart. God is a cruel animal.

Another Sucker Was Born

PT Barnum would be proud

As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America.

Shame on you, Gabriel. Muslim fanatics are tired of the US dictating policy to the nations they live in and could give a rat's ass about "taking over" America. You'd be a little abraded too if some foreign power had cowed your government so much that they would ignore the rights and livelihoods of its own people in favor of a policy of another agenda.

During the Cold War, Lebanon was torn apart by the spheres of influences of both the United States (who backed the Pashas) and the Soviets (who backed the insurgents).

The very country you're scamming now is the nation which created the war that blew your house apart!

If God Was Angry At Gays

...and that's what caused Hurricane Katrina, then I guess God is REALLY pissed that Republicans have been elected up and down the east coast!

FOX News Keeps Us Up To Date With Vital Information

Like...How To Survive A Pirate Attack

 

It's next series will be about surviving a megavolcano or a tsunami if you live in a desert, because these are both also such imminent threats.

I'm Thinking He Probably Has, um, Loads Of Experience In This

How to beat the TSA tests

You Knew It Was Coming

Charlie Sheen to get his own reality show

I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I say!

There will be a letter in the Times tomorrow about this...as soon as I can get Stephen King to write it for me!

This Day In Beer

White House Microbrew

 

No. Really.

Do Me A Favor

As you read this article, I want you to contemplate the many penile innuendo jokes I *could* be posting right now. Boener...I mean, bonus points if they include "limp" or "dysfunctional".

Have You Ever Wondered If...

....you're rooting for the right baseball team?

 

Well, here's your sign

Sunspots, Mate!

At least it wasn't for Heidi

Fourteen Minutes, 57 seconds...Fourteen Minutes, 58 seconds...

Fox to fire Glenn Beck

 

Get this: for damaging their credibility.

 

*snark*

Here's To You, Mr. Less-Than-Minimum-Wage-Does-It-For-The-Tips Pizza Delivery Guy

I wouldn't make this run in the middle of summer. This frostbite's for you!

Aw, Frack!

OK, it's not often that human activities influence geologic events...except, you know, climate change...

Got Gas?

Better go get some quick!

 

When the hell will we wean ourselves?

 

Six years ago...and if I could be arsed to Google the archives, I'd link the piece...I posted a prediction by one of the top oil industry analysts predicting $15 a gallon gasoline by the year 2015.

 

He might have been a year too generous.

Republican Jesus Sucks

 

Here's why he exists

What Will It Take For Americans To Wake Up And Reform Capitalism?

This is what:

Yes, the rich live in a different world. And no, information won’t change them. But a revolution will. Revolutions build slowly over a long time. Then, suddenly, a critical mass, a flash point, something totally unexpected ignites the ticking bomb.

It happened recently in a remote Tunisian village. Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old college graduate, unable to pay bribes, set himself on fire to protest police confiscation of his unlicensed vegetable cart. That triggered a revolution. And his death rapidly led to the collapse of a 24-year dictatorship.

Today we have four hot time bombs, tick-ticking, soon to make history; any one can easily accelerate the revolution that’s already killing Wall Street from within.

I'll list them but I urge you to go to Market Watch and read the descriptions in full:

1. Wealth gap: Super-Rich vs class wars, death of democracy
2. Wall Street’s doomsday capitalism vs rule by anarchy
3. Pentagon’s perpetual war machine vs America’s budget time bomb
4. Global population explosion vs resources, jobs, better lifestyles

ANY ONE of those will trigger a mass collapse of the American economy. Any one. All four are in motion already.

 

You see, the rich really are different. As the article notes, they vacation in elite resorts, they meet at elite clubs, and they manipulate the economy from behind barriers and firewalls that would make Fort Knox blink.

 

And they are woefully out of touch with the nations they "reside" in. "Reside" in quotes because like there are now transnational corporations, there are now transnational people. They may reside in the US or Britain or Switzerland or some small tropical island, but their power and influence and economic activity is so globally pervasive that they can influence far flung regions of the globe.

 

Prime example? Rupert Murdoch, an Australian who made his media bones in the UK before crossing the Atlantic, and then the Pacific to set up Asia's first pan-national satellite television system.

 

The rich not only are different from me and you, they don't even care about me and you.