Today's Pix

Where's The Outrage?

From RTD:

RICHMOND -- A felon and admitted longtime gunrunner caught on Interstate 95 headed to Boston with handguns in the trunk of his car is set to be sentenced Tuesday in federal court.

Anthony T. Champion, 33, of Columbus, Ga. who pleaded guilty in November to possession of a stolen firearm, faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer.

According to court documents, Champion was stopped by a state trooper near Doswell on Jan. 31, 2013, and nine handguns in a cloth bag were discovered in the trunk of his Toyota Camry -- two were stolen and one had the serial number obliterated.

Gun freaks and Libertarians oughta be teamed up and jumpin' all over this one.

Doesn't a US citizen have the right to take his guns with him on a trip up north?

Doesn't he have the right to make a living selling guns (the ones he owns anyway) to whoever he wants to sell 'em to?

And why do we care if the serial number on one of those guns was obliterated?  It's his gun - he can do what he wants with it.

Since when is it OK for the lawdogs to search a guy's car just because he gets a little nervous and decides to stop by the side of the road and take a short walk to clear his head?

What's this country comin' to?

Interesting Tidbit:  In 2010 and 2011, 825 guns that were used in crimes in New York were traced back to Virginia (eg).  It stands to reason that some number of people were arrested here in The Old Dominion for some kind of illegal-ness connected with those guns in New York.  I wonder if any of the cops (here or there) who made arrests in any of those capers were adherents to some bullshit outfit like the Oath Keepers.  Cuz, y'know - 2nd Amendment is a holy sacrament and if we don't hold it inviolable, Jesus won't love us anymore and then we're really in trouble and ... and actually, as you widen it all out, it just gets weirder and weirder.

God, Guns, and Goons In Uniform - what could possibly go wrong?

Record Intact

The Polk Awards were announced this week, (kinda kicking off Awards Season) which means we've passed another solid year of outstandingness in world journalism, during which DumFux News extended its unblemished record of perfection having received a grand total of ZERO awards for reporting of any kind.  Again.

Brooklyn, N.Y. - Four reporters who revealed the extent of secret surveillance and massive data collected by the National Security Agency are winners of the 65th annual George Polk Awards in Journalism announced today by Long Island University. The four – from the British newspaper The Guardian and The Washington Post – were among 30 recipients from 15 news organizations who were recognized in 13 categories for work in 2013.

Reporting by those honored also triggered probes of statehouse corruption in Virginia and political payback in New Jersey, explored the gap between rich and poor in urban and rural locales, produced telling accounts of mass death in Bangladesh and civilian killings by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, exposed dark sides of pro football and major league baseball and examined community responses to mental illness that ranged from ineffective to absurd.

DumFux News has been around since 1996, and they've never won anything for anything.

No awards. Ever. No Peabody. No DuPont-Columbia. No Loeb. No Murrow. Not even an Emmy. Nada.

Today's WTF

Of all the douche nozzles on the air in whatever capacity - Joe Scarborough, David Gregory, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Marino, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Howie Long, Alex Jones etc etc et-fucking-cetera - how is it this guy has just recently managed to scrap his way back - to a thoroughly stupid time slot on a barely findable sub-heading of a sports channel that's not even available on an awful lot of basic cable packages; and one that can't quite figure out when the show might or might not run?  WTF!?!



The guy quotes Eddie Izzard for fuck's sake - on a sports show.  You honestly think that doesn't take some doing?  And do you think some of us don't know this is one of the guys (if not the guy) who made a 24-hour sports channel worth watching in the first place?)

Olbermann
ESPN2
Mon-Thu
11pm (usually - sometimes ya just hafta guess)

Lettin' It Get Ugly

It's important to remember that correlation is not proof - it doesn't necessarily mean that one part of the correlation is the cause of the other part(s).

Keep that in mind.

NYT editorial by SAMUEL BOWLES and ARJUN JAYADEV

Another dubious first for America: We now employ as many private security guards as high school teachers — over one million of them, or nearly double their number in 1980.

And that’s just a small fraction of what we call “guard labor.” In addition to private security guards, that means police officers, members of the armed forces, prison and court officials, civilian employees of the military, and those producing weapons: a total of 5.2 million workers in 2011. That is a far larger number than we have of teachers at all levels.

What is happening in America today is both unprecedented in our history, and virtually unique among Western democratic nations. The share of our labor force devoted to guard labor has risen fivefold since 1890 — a year when, in case you were wondering, the homicide rate was much higher than today.

5.2 million of us - it means that more than 1.5% of our total population is fully engaged in "protecting" the wealth of some Americans from other Americans.

It Isn't Ending Well

I'll have to listen to this a few more times to get it all, but I have some serious doubts that my mood will improve.



We have a capitol building chock-full of people who're really good at getting elected, fucking with each other, and practically nothing else.

With the economy in free fall, Obey met with his Republican counterpart Jerry Lewis of California to start writing a bill.

“And Jerry just grinned and said ‘Dave, I’m sorry, but we’ve got orders from headquarters, we can’t play, we can’t play,’” Obey recalls. “He said it twice.”
Whatever Republicans thought privately – some of them told Obey they agreed that Congress needed to pass a stimulus bill – they weren’t going to publicly help the new president help the economy.

But that wasn’t the scariest thing, Obey says. He realized many fellow House members – Democrats and Republicans – simply lacked a sophisticated understanding of the economy and government spending policy.

“One of the problems that you have today, is that a lot of members of Congress just don’t know a hell of a lot anymore,” Obey says.

We are so fucked. 

Seems A Little Silly

...but sometimes ya gotta beat the horse even after it's dead(?)  I honestly don't know what else to say about it.  Climate Change (most probably due to AGW) is a real thing, and somehow, we still have a substantial percentage of people who just can't bring themselves to recognize it.

I refuse to give Marsha Blackburn any time on my little blog here; and I sure as fuck hate even acknowledging a preening fluffer like David Gregory; so I'll just give ya'll this little bit:

Something Else

...that'll prob'ly never happen.  But hey - we can dream.



Take a good look at Alexis Goldstein

Cosmo Strikes Out

This appeared on Cosmo's Facebook page, and reaffirms what most of us have known for a while about dumfuk magazines "for women".

(paraphrasing a favorite comment):

Dear Cosmo -

Kindly take your ridiculous, arbitrary dictates of what women should want to look like and shove 'em back up your ass.

Sincerely,

Every guy on the planet who's had to spend hours reassuring a wife, girlfriend or daughter (ie: any real-world-perfect-for-me woman) that she's not fat and grotesque, all because assholes like you insist on undermining her confidence by playing on her fears just so you can sell her a load of shit she doesn't need in the first fucking place.

It's An Act Of God

God makes a gi-normous fucking mess, and everybody else gets to clean it up.  Is that why so many "conservatives" claim god as one of their own?

So basically - god's that one dickhead you don't invite back for the next party(?)  I can dig it.

Following Up

I keep hoping the nonsense about "dangerous vaccinations" has receded enough to get  people back to reality, but every so often, one of my Facebook buddies just has to post some bullshit that re-amps the fear.

YouTuber potholer54:




This potholer guy does some good work.  Here's his takedown on Ken Hamm:

Love Is The Answer

Some mid-winter tunes - reaching for softer breezes and milder climes.

Crystal Blue Persuasion --Tommy James and the Shondells

Samba Pa Ti --Santana

Moon Dance --Van Morrison

The Day After

We always get some kind of post-game shit, so what the hell:

Today's Pix

It's Valentine's Day, Dammit

...so make sure you clear your box(?)

C'mon ya bastids - aerobicise!

Virginia Is For Lovers

...again...kinda.  (The judge stayed her own decision to allow for appeal)

A federal court decided yesterday that Virginia's constitutional amendment banning same-gender marriage is stoopid.  Yay, Judge Allen.

Richmond Times-Dispatch:

A federal judge struck down Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban Thursday, finding that it violates the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen followed arguments by the plaintiffs in Bostic v. Rainey who had argued that the 2006 amendment to the state Constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman denies gays and lesbians the fundamental right to marry, essentially making them second-class citizens.

"There can be no serious doubt that in America, the right to marry is a rigorously protected fundamental right," the judge wrote in her ruling. "The Supreme Court has recognized repeatedly that marriage is a fundamental right protected both by the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

Wright Allen, appointed to the bench in 2011 by President Barack Obama, added that marriage rights are "of basic importance in our society, rights sheltered by the Fourteenth Amendment against the State’s 'unwarranted usurpation, disregard, or disrespect.' "

"The right to marry is inseparable from our rights to privacy and intimate association."

I guess I can only assume the wingnuts are unhappy, cuz it seems a rather mysterious silence has descended over Goober Nation.

RedState = nuthin'
Fox Nation = crickets
Breitbart = zip
WND = it shows up, but it's just a link to a very short piece at NBC

As of 10:45AM today: Mostly Bupkis.

There was one story (well below the headlines) on the DumFux News site, but gosh, "Comments are currently closed for this article".  What on earth could that be about?

For Your Valentine

Here We Go Again

When do we learn to stop fuckin' around with all this shit?

WV Gazette:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- More than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into an eastern Kanawha County stream Tuesday in what officials were calling a "significant spill" from a Patriot Coal processing facility.

Emergency officials and environmental inspectors said roughly six miles of Fields Creek had been blackened and that a smaller amount of the slurry made it into the Kanawha River near Chesapeake.

"This has had significant, adverse environmental impact to Fields Creek and an unknown amount of impact to the Kanawha River," said Secretary Randy Huffman of the state Department of Environmental Protection. "This is a big deal, this is a significant slurry spill."

"When this much coal slurry goes into the stream, it wipes the stream out."

--and--

There was an alarm system in place to alert facility operators of the broken valve, but the alarm failed, so pumps continued to send the toxic slurry through the system. There was a secondary containment wall around the valve, but with the pumps continuing to send slurry to the broken valve, it was soon overwhelmed and the slurry overflowed the wall and made its way to the creek.

Huffman said they did not know why the alarm system failed.

--and--

For most of the day, the DEP was operating under the assumption that MCHM, the chemical that contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginians last month, was included in the spilled slurry. Huffman said that they learned late in the day that the facility had stopped using MCHM just a few weeks ago, so a different coal-cleaning chemical was involved.

Huffman said that the new chemical was polypropylene glycol, although he also referred to it as polyethylene glycol. He said that that chemical is such a small part of the slurry that they don't believe it, specifically, will have an impact.

Huffman said they had been testing for MCHM, but will now have to change their testing protocols.

Residents near the spill had complained of MCHM's telltale licorice odor, but Huffman said that the odor was from a tank of MCHM that the company was moving off site.

Oddly, in Patriot's statement the company mentioned testing for MCHM in Fields Creek.

--and--

Among other things, the 2009 OSM report found it hard, using DEP inspection reports and databases, to definitively quantify the number of blackwater spills. When spills occur, state inspectors cite companies for violating different regulations, and inspection narratives don't always explain clearly what happened, OSM said.

The lack of clear data may lead some operators to face less-serious enforcement action than they should and may hurt the DEP's ability to cite companies for a "pattern of violation," which can lead to operations being shut down and operators being blocked from receiving new permits.

OSM investigators also found that other strategies -- including settlement agreements with mine operators and federal criminal prosecution -- don't always work in stopping future blackwater spills.

"It appears that the consequences for violating the law, even when the violations are intentional, willful and blatant, are not significant enough to be a deterrent," the OSM report said.

The alarm that was supposed to tell somebody there was a problem with the valve malfunctioned (assuming it was even hooked up); the inspections to make sure the safety measures were being followed weren't happening; the coal company decided to test for a toxic chemical that they weren't using, while neglecting to mention to any-fucking-body that they were using some other toxic shit; and the mine safety guys had done practically nothing about known problems for goin' on 5 years.

So really there's no system; no protocol; not a goddamned thing in place to ensure these Noble Job Creators and their Coin-Operated Politicians aren't just fuckin' us with a wood rasp.  Isn't that pretty much it?

Yo - Goddies

One of the Anti-Evolutionist's favorite crapola arguments is usually along the lines of, "you can't show me one example of one species evolving into another" or some such.

This might be one:

Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia (Greek ἀμφí, amphi, "both" + βíος, bios, "life"). They inhabit a wide variety of habitats with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Amphibians typically start out as larva living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this. The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely upon skin.

It's most widely accepted that life started in the ocean, and some of the critters evolved ways of getting out of the water and up onto the land.  Seems to me an amphibian just might be the example that way too many god-botherin' dingle-butt derps keep telling us can't possibly exist.

Logical Fallacy #1 - Straw Man

From Wikipedia:
The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:

1. Person 1 has position X.
2. Person 2 disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y. The position Y is a distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:
   1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position.
   2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context—i.e., choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see fallacy of quoting out of context).^[4]
   3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then denying that person's arguments—thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.^[3]
   4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
   5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.
3. Person 2 attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This reasoning is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position does not address the actual position. The ostensible argument that Person 2 makes has the form:

"Don't support X, because X has an unacceptable (or absurd or contradictory or terrible) consequence."

However, the actual form of the argument is:

"Don't support X, because Y has an unacceptable (or absurd or contradictory or terrible) consequence."

This argument doesn't make sense; it is a non sequitur. Person 2 relies on the audience not noticing this.

My Pillow Never Dries

Lonely Teardrops --Michael MacDonald

Drowning In The Sea Of Love --Eva Cassidy (cuz she does it better'n Boz Scaggs that's why)

A Question

Repubs seem to love arguing about the silliest things.

Benghazzi, IRS, ammunition purchases, birth certificates, FEMA camps, Bill Ayers and on and on and on.

And way too many Dems follow right along, trying to rebut all that crap instead of saying, "yeah - that's just dumb - come back when you're ready to speak rationally about immigration or sequetration or a grotesquely bloated DoD budget or over-stressed infrastructure or clean water or or or".

So I gotta ask - with so many things we really oughta be haggling over, why are they constantly going so far out of their way to find something stoopid to fight about?

Stick to the fuckin' point and stop helping those assholes hijack the debate.

Gay Football Politics

"I applaud Michael Sam and wish him the very best as he continues the pursuit of his NFL dream. We will evaluate Michael just like any other draft prospect -- on the basis of his ability, character and NFL potential. His announcement will have no effect on how we see him as a football player." --John Elway, Exec VP Football Operations, Denver Broncos

And with that, any lingering political aspirations Elway may have had with the GOP are now officially and irrevocably dead.

Today's Pix

A Simple Remedy

One Time On Michael Sam

Mostly, I don't care that Michael Sam came out because I don't care if he's gay, straight or other.

So I'll just do this one little post and be done with it.

The thing I find interesting is that the people who're willing to stand up and throw the the guy a little encouragement are (generally) people who stand behind what they say and aren't afraid to own their thoughts and actions.

While the ones who just wanna tear people down and fuck it all up - well, they do things from the shadows.  The tendency for them is that they don't use their real names.  They seem more than a little scared to come out in the open and let the rest of us see them for who they really are.

I have a basic test for everybody, and it consists of 2 questions.

1) Will you at least try to carry your end of the boat?

2) Can I trust you around my kids?

If I believe you can answer in the affirmative to both of those questions, then I don't care if you fuck frogs.

The Morality Gene

Bible Thumpers think they win the God vs No God argument by claiming we have to have some kind of outside agency that dictates morality to us.  And that one's always been a really tough nut to crack in rebuttal.  Except that it isn't.

From the last of a 5-part YouTube thingie:

Meet The New Bubble

...same as the old bubble - more or less.

The ticks on Wall Street work really hard (gotta give 'em that much).  Unfortunately, the hard work and long hours they put in are in service to finding new and exciting ways of picking the bones of whatever's left of the American Middle Class.

From Mother Jones:

Over the last two years, private equity firms and hedge funds have amassed an unprecedented real estate empire, snapping up Spanish revivals in Phoenix, adobes in Los Angeles, Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, and brick-faced bungalows in Chicago. In total, Wall Street investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in some of the cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown. But they're not simply flipping these houses. Instead, they've started bundling some of them into a new kind of financial product that could blow up the housing market all over again.

--and--

As of November, Blackstone had acquired 40,000 houses, most of them foreclosures, worth $7.5 billion. Today, it is the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the nation.

Blackstone's deep pockets—$248 billion in assets under management and a $3.6 billion credit line arranged by Deutsche Bank for buying houses—allow it to outbid individual buyers, driving up local real estate prices and pushing families out of the market. "You can't compete with a company that's betting on speculative future value when they're playing with cash," says Alston. "Institutional investors are siphoning the wealth and the ability for wealth accumulation out of underserved communities," adds Henry Wade, cofounder of the Arizona Association of Real Estate Brokers.

and it just gets better and better:

But buying houses cheap and then waiting for them to appreciate isn't the only way Blackstone is making money on these deals. It wants your rent check, too. In November, after many months of hype, the firm released the first-ever rated bond backed by securitized rental payments. Joining forces with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan (whichrecently paid a record $13 billion fine to settle accusations of ripping off mortgage investors), Blackstone has bundled the rental payments from more than 3,200 single-family houses, offering investors its mortgages on the underlying properties as collateral. After investors tripped over themselves to buy into the $479 million bond, Blackstone's competitors announced that they, too, would develop similar securities.

 A bond backed by Securitized Rent Payments.  What could possibly go wrong?

Today's Quote

Give 'em hell, Harry.

Republicans approve of the American farmer - but they are willing to help him go broke.

They stand four-square for the American home – but not for housing.

They are strong for labor – but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.

They favor minimum wage – the smaller the minimum wage the better.

They endorse educational opportunity for all – but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.

They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine – for people who can afford them.

They consider electrical power a great blessing – but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.

They think the American standard of living is a fine thing – so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.

And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

-
~Harry S. Truman

50 Ways To Love Obama

Repubs are gearing up for the 2014 midterms, and oh gosh, look - they're setting the stage for another shot at rousing the rabble with their standard pitch about how rotten the gubmint is.

So, while slagging Obama on DumFux News, Trey Gowdy (R-Of Course) tried to make 3 points. First, Obamacare's not everything, it's the only thing.  Second, Obamacare's such a disaster not even the Prez wants to go thru with it. Third, hand over the government to us or you face total lawlessness.

hat tip = Charlie Pierce:



"...this experiment in divided government has failed".  I don't have the vocabulary to describe how creepy and ominous that sounds to me because it seems like whenever the radical wingers are planning to pull some shit, they start out by "warning" us that the Dems are planning to pull the shit the Repubs are so valiantly trying to warn us about.

Anyway, the meme is that the only thing Obama's been able to do is Obamacare blah blah blah - but y'know, if you wanna make the case that Obama hasn't gotten anything done and you wanna slag him for his efforts to do what he can with Exec Orders etc - then really, let's at least look at who's been helping him get nuthin' done, OK?

It's important for me to remember that Obama's a politician.  He does things I like and he does things I don't like - and all manner of combinations of doing and not doing that I do and I don't like.  It's politics and nobody gets it all his own way no matter what. Ever.

With that in mind, here's a list from almost 2 years ago at Washington Monthly (which doesn't include adding 8 million jobs in 5 years, and beating down the federal deficit by more than half):

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

4. Ended the War in Iraq: Ordered all U.S. military forces out of the country. Last troops left on December 18, 2011.

5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan: From a peak of 101,000 troops in June 2011, U.S. forces are now down to 91,000, with 23,000 slated to leave by the end of summer 2012. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the combat mission there will be over by next year.

6. Eliminated Osama bin laden: In 2011, ordered special forces raid of secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed and a trove of al-Qaeda documents was discovered.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

8. Recapitalized Banks: In the midst of financial crisis, approved controversial Treasury Department plan to lure private capital into the country’s largest banks via “stress tests” of their balance sheets and a public-private fund to buy their “toxic” assets. Got banks back on their feet at essentially zero cost to the government.

9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: Ended 1990s-era restriction and formalized new policy allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time.

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi: In March 2011, joined a coalition of European and Arab governments in military action, including air power and naval blockade, against Gaddafi regime to defend Libyan civilians and support rebel troops. Gaddafi’s forty-two-year rule ended when the dictator was overthrown and killed by rebels on October 20, 2011. No American lives were lost.

11. Told Mubarak to Go: On February 1, 2011, publicly called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to accept reform or step down, thus weakening the dictator’s position and putting America on the right side of the Arab Spring. Mubarak ended thirty-year rule when overthrown on February 11.

12. Reversed Bush Torture Policies: Two days after taking office, nullified Bush-era rulings that had allowed detainees in U.S. custody to undergo certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques considered inhumane under the Geneva Conventions. Also released the secret Bush legal rulings supporting the use of these techniques.

13. Improved America’s Image Abroad: With new policies, diplomacy, and rhetoric, reversed a sharp decline in world opinion toward the U.S. (and the corresponding loss of “soft power”) during the Bush years. From 2008 to 2011, favorable opinion toward the United States rose in ten of fifteen countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with an average increase of 26 percent.

14. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grant Spending: As part of the 2010 health care reform bill, signed measure ending the wasteful decades-old practice of subsidizing banks to provide college loans. Starting July 2010 all students began getting their federal student loans directly from the federal government. Treasury will save $67 billion over ten years, $36 billion of which will go to expanding Pell Grants to lower-income students.

15. Created Race to the Top: With funds from stimulus, started $4.35 billion program of competitive grants to encourage and reward states for education reform.

16. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards: Released new fuel efficiency standards in 2011 that will nearly double the fuel economy for cars and trucks by 2025.

17. Coordinated International Response to Financial Crisis: To keep world economy out of recession in 2009 and 2010, helped secure from G-20 nations more than $500 billion for the IMF to provide lines of credit and other support to emerging market countries, which kept them liquid and avoided crises with their currencies.

18. Passed Mini Stimuli: To help families hurt by the recession and spur the economy as stimulus spending declined, signed series of measures (July 22, 2010; December 17, 2010; December 23, 2011) to extend unemployment insurance and cut payroll taxes.

19. Began Asia “Pivot”: In 2011, reoriented American military and diplomatic priorities and focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Asian-Pacific region. Executed multipronged strategy of positively engaging China while reasserting U.S. leadership in the region by increasing American military presence and crafting new commercial, diplomatic, and military alliances with neighboring countries made uncomfortable by recent Chinese behavior.

20. Increased Support for Veterans: With so many soldiers coming home from Iraq and Iran with serious physical and mental health problems, yet facing long waits for services, increased 2010 Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 16 percent and 2011 budget by 10 percent. Also signed new GI bill offering $78 billion in tuition assistance over a decade, and provided multiple tax credits to encourage businesses to hire veterans.

21. Tightened Sanctions on Iran: In effort to deter Iran’s nuclear program, signed Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (2010) to punish firms and individuals who aid Iran’s petroleum sector. In late 2011 and early 2012, coordinated with other major Western powers to impose sanctions aimed at Iran’s banks and with Japan, South Korea, and China to shift their oil purchases away from Iran.

22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”

23. Passed Credit Card Reforms: Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009), which prohibits credit card companies from raising rates without advance notification, mandates a grace period on interest rate increases, and strictly limits overdraft and other fees.

24. Eliminated Catch-22 in Pay Equality Laws: Signed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, giving women who are paid less than men for the same work the right to sue their employers after they find out about the discrimination, even if that discrimination happened years ago. Under previous law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the statute of limitations on such suits ran out 180 days after the alleged discrimination occurred, even if the victims never knew about it.

25. Protected Two Liberal Seats on the U.S. Supreme Court: Nominated and obtained confirmation for Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman to serve, in 2009; and Elena Kagan, the fourth woman to serve, in 2010. They replaced David Souter and John Paul Stevens, respectively.

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

27. Achieved New START Treaty: Signed with Russia (2010) and won ratification in Congress (2011) of treaty that limits each country to 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200) and 700 launchers (down from more than 1,400), and reestablished and strengthened a monitoring and transparency program that had lapsed in 2009, through which each country can monitor the other.

28. Expanded National Service: Signed Serve America Act in 2009, which authorized a tripling of the size of AmeriCorps. Program grew 13 percent to 85,000 members across the country by 2012, when new House GOP majority refused to appropriate more funds for further expansion.

29. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection: Signed Omnibus Public Lands Management Act (2009), which designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, created thousands of miles of recreational and historic trails, and protected more than 1,000 miles of rivers.

30. Gave the FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco: Signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009). Nine years in the making and long resisted by the tobacco industry, the law mandates that tobacco manufacturers disclose all ingredients, obtain FDA approval for new tobacco products, and expand the size and prominence of cigarette warning labels, and bans the sale of misleadingly labeled “light” cigarette brands and tobacco sponsorship of entertainment events.

31. Pushed Federal Agencies to Be Green Leaders: Issued executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to make plans to soften their environmental impacts by 2020. Goals include 30 percent reduction in fleet gasoline use, 26 percent boost in water efficiency, and sustainability requirements for 95 percent of all federal contracts. Because federal government is the country’s single biggest purchaser of goods and services, likely to have ripple effects throughout the economy for years to come.

32. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.

33. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense: Cut the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense budget, saving $1.4 billion in 2010, and canceled plans to station antiballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of sea-based defense plan focused on Iran and North Korea.

34. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown: After winning agreement from congressional Republicans and Democrats in summer 2011 budget deal to reduce projected defense spending by $450 billion, proposed new DoD budget this year with cuts of that size and a new national defense strategy that would shrink ground forces from 570,000 to 490,000 over the next ten years while increasing programs in intelligence gathering and cyberwarfare.

35. Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.

36. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

40. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections: Signed Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), which expands existing hate crime protections to include crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.

41. Avoided Scandal: As of November 2011, served longer than any president in decades without a scandal, as measured by the appearance of the word “scandal” (or lack thereof) on the front page of the Washington Post.

42. Brokered Agreement for Speedy Compensation to Victims of Gulf Oil Spill: Though lacking statutory power to compel British Petroleum to act, used moral authority of his office to convince oil company to agree in 2010 to a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; $6.5 billion already paid out without lawsuits. By comparison, it took nearly two decades for plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill case to receive $1.3 billion.

43. Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: “The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory,” reports Governing magazine.

44. Pushed Broadband Coverage: Proposed and obtained in 2011 Federal Communications Commission approval for a shift of $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.

45. Expanded Health Coverage for Children: Signed 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, which allows the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover health care for 4 million more children, paid for by a tax increase on tobacco products.

46. Recognized the Dangers of Carbon Dioxide: In 2009, EPA declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, allowing the agency to regulate its production.

47. Expanded Stem Cell Research: In 2009, eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, which shows promise in treating spinal injuries, among many other areas.

48. Provided Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers: In 2009, signed Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who the government cheated out of loans and natural resource royalties in years past.

49. Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Appointed two envoys to Sudan and personally attended a special UN meeting on the area. Through U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split in 2011.

50. Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.

But if you really wanna get way down into the weeds, take a look at 194 Obama Things at DailyKOS from a little later in 2012.

Bad Lip Reading

Another look at a clip from a few weeks ago:



hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Debunkment

Did ya hear the one about the guy who didn't take the meds prescribed by his Homeopath for 3 days?  He died of an overdose.

What do they call Alternative Medicine or Homeopathic Medicine that's been studied and tested and proven out?

They call it Medicine.

This is part of a longer (and wider-angle) look at reason and rationality called The Enemies Of Reason:



I hate thinking I have reason to believe Healthcare is driven mostly by Rent-Seekers demanding a fat profit at the expense of sick and dying humans.  So it follows that I'd hate it even more whenever I think about those same Rentiers manipulating people into a belief in Folklore-Over-Fact just because it gets harder and harder to take anybody's word for anything.

The profit-takers are playing both sides, just like always. Only this one's the perfect parlay.

American Capitalism has degenerated into a proposition of delivering less for about the same money and then pretending we're getting quite the rare deal (thank you, Milton Hershey eg).  In "traditional" healthcare, it means the family doc throws freebie drug samples at us at the end of ever-shortening office visits; and if we ever manage to get admitted to the local hospital, they send us home as early as possible - generally sicker and weaker than ever before - hoping we'll be OK on our own for the first few days/weeks/whatever.

Well, Homeopathy and Alt Med both fit that model perfectly, so why would any right-thinking Corporate Slag not promote the fuck outa diluting everything in sight until we get to the point where we're delivering tap water at Dom Perignon prices?

I dunno - makes my head hurt.