Halloween Culture

Today's Pix

Today's Quote

When asked by a fundraiser attendee about civility in the Senate, Tom Coburn (R-OK) reportedly said: “There’s no comity with Harry Reid. I think he’s an absolute asshole.”

Yesterday, Reid's office came back with this (via Spokesman Adam Jentleson):

"Nothing says 'comity' like childish playground name-calling, especially from a senator who has not sponsored a single piece of successful bipartisan legislation during his entire Senate career."

ed: Coburn's been a senator for 8 years, and he's been on the federal payroll for 14 out of the last 18 years.

Please Please Please

Seriously, guys - tell me you're not gonna vote for this asshole.

EW Jackson - TheoPutz - Republican (of course) running for Lt Gov here in Virginia.

Yo, Texas

Judges in the lower courts keep knocking down these attempts to deny women their rights, but I don't believe it has anything to do with anything short of getting an appeal up to SCOTUS in an attempt to blow up Roe v Wade.

Dallas Morning News

The Week

Mamming

Torches And Pitch Forks

...coming soon to a gated community near you.

Wall Street On Parade (10-23-13):

Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a very weak jobs number: just 148,000 new nonfarm jobs had been added by employers in September. To the rational mind, an appropriate reaction in the stock market would have been to sell off on the basis that the economy remains weak. Instead, the Standard and Poor’s 500 hit a new record, closing at an all time high of 1,754.67.

The general thesis to explain this reaction is that today’s Wall Street is running a racket similar to Lance Armstrong. It’s on a heavy doping regimen in the form of the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is funneling into the markets through the purchase from Wall Street of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. When the Fed buys those instruments, it forces $85 billion of cash each month into the hands of traders to deploy into higher risk assets – stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), stock futures and what have you, artificially forcing the market higher.

--and--

The 401(k) is the mechanism that created the subliminal mindset that what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street. The hard reality is that the top 5 percent of the wealthiest Americans own 60 percent of stocks.

More and more people being left with less and less, will eventually understand they have nothing to lose by storming the barricades and taking whatever they want.

What's A Skeptic?

From The Skeptic Society:



My favorite bit is the Radical Skepticism:

Radical skepticism or radical scepticism is the philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible.[1] Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified. To determine the extent to which it is possible to respond to radical skeptical challenges is the task of epistemology or "the theory of knowledge".[2]

Lou Reed Walkin'

I'm not much of a fan really - and maybe this is just too much of a chestnut, but it's also one of the great headphones memories from my misspent youth.

Take A Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed, 1972

Unfortunately

...some of the best commentary comes from the jokes on a comedy show - and way too much of the policy comes from politicians who don't know that they actually are the jokes.




And if you have the time, listen to this bit from WWNC Talk Radio in western NC to hear this clown make it even worse by trying to rationalize it:






Here's the basics:  "I don't care if what I said was racist crap - as long as I don't recognize it as racist crap, it can't be racist crap - so I'm not the racist asshole, you Librulz is the the racist assholes for calling me a racist asshole."