The 29 Best Chalkboard Gags In "Simpsons" History

The title pretty much says it all. From The Huffington Post.

29 November 2009

Al Gore Goes Crazy!

Former Vice President Al Gore appeared on SNL and told how, to fight global warming, he was going to "out crazy the crazies." Funny stuff.

23 November 2009

What Happened to the Public Option?

Robert Reich writes about the ever-dwindling public option portion of health care reform over at TPM. Politics in this country just makes you want to punch a puppy!

23 November 2009

Understanding Sarah Palin

Frank Rich has a great op-ed out in The Times about Sarah Palin, her place in America right now, and how things may play out for her in the years to come. Worth a read.

22 November 2009

Bill Moyers' Retirement

As noted on The Huffington Post:

Bill Moyers is leaving weekly television.

The New York Times' Elizabeth Jensen reports that the PBS newscaster is retiring from his Friday night program, "Bill Moyers Journal," on April 30, 2010.

"Bill Moyers Journal" launched in April 2007.

Jensen reports that it was Moyers' intention to retire at Christmas this year, but PBS asked him to stay on through April to help raise funds.

"I am 75 years old," Moyers told Jensen. "I feel it's time."

I totally understand Moyers' decision. That said, it is a sad day for journalism, a sad day for PBS, and sad day for those of us who have enjoyed not just the Journal, but the great many wonderful programs and projects with which he's been connected over the years. If you have not seen Bill Moyers Journal, do yourself a favor and tune in. Record it or catch it on the Interet if your social life takes hold on Friday night, but catch it while you can.

21 November 2009

Fox Cooking the Books, Part 2

On November 11th, I noted how Fox "News" had been caught splicing film footage from multiple events -- without disclosure -- in an effort to lie to the public. They are at it again. Do they not understand that folks are watching?

From Rachel Slajda of TPM:

Yesterday afternoon, Fox News used footage from 2008 McCain-Palin rallies when talking about the "crowds" coming out to see Sarah Palin on her book tour, which started yesterday.

Today, they issued an on-air apology for the mistake.

"We mistakenly aired what's called file tape of Sarah Palin. We didn't mean to mislead anybody in that tease. It was a mistake, and for that we apologize," said a host of Happening Now.

As Josh Marshall of TPM noted:

We just had that new daily segment on Fox News where they apologize for getting caught using phony video to inflate GOP crowd sizes the previous day.

Fun new segment.

LOL. Of course, I would laugh harder if it were actually a mistake.

19 November 2009

"Going Rogue" Goes Rogue

Late Night did a funny bit regarding Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue in which the book, well, goes rogue. Highlights include the book shooting Rachel Maddow and sleeping with the novel New Moon.

18 November 2009

Subaru Safety

As many of you know, I have become quite a fan of Subaru vehicles and the reasons for this keep mounting. The insurance industry has released their annual list of the safest cars. Subaru had more models than any other individual maker and was the only maker with all of its vehicles on the list. The ability to love after a crash... it's what makes a Subaru a Subaru.

18 November 2009

A New Meaning for Headstone!

From The Huffington Post:

Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri vetoed legislation last week that would give same-sex couples the rights to claim the bodies of and make funeral arrangements for their deceased partners. He said such legislation was a "disturbing trend" signifying the erosion of traditional marriage.

Stephen Colbert took both Carcieri and the Catholic Church to task last night, the latter for threatening to close its homeless shelters in DC if gay marriage becomes legal there. "I mean, they have no choice. After all, as Jesus said, 'If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, unless a couple of dudes register at Pottery Barn, in which case, f**k the poor,'" Colbert quipped.

He went on to "applaud" Carcieri for his stand against giving gay couples the right to post obits for and bury their partners saying, "This is an assault on marriage from beyond the grave. They're like gay zombies."

See the link to play the show clip.

17 November 2009

Financial Meltdown: 10 Years to the Day

The financial meltdown in which we find ourselves began ten years ago today... exactly. The Glass-Steagall act was repealed a decade ago and anyone with half a brain knew that it would ultimately lead to the sorts of financial problems the country has faced. I remember speaking out against it at the time and it is one of the reasons that I count Bill Clinton's presidency as a complete failure. Your country and its "leadership" sold you down the river for 30 pieces of silver.

You can read about this sad anniversary in The Huffington Post.

12 November 2009

Fox Cooking the Books

As noted on TPM, with video:

On the Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart pointed out that, in a segment about Rep. Michele Bachmann's tea party rally at the Capitol last week, Fox News' Sean Hannity used footage from the much bigger 9/12 rally, apparently to pump up the attendance numbers.

You can also read about this on The Huffington Post.

11 November 2009

Colorado Springs

I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is a beautiful area now populated by and large with those who have dead souls.

I do still know some folks in the city who are good people, which warms my heart. Still, most of the news coming out of there isn't pretty.

Sad.

11 November 2009

The State of the GOP... & America?

Paul Krugman has a great op-ed out titled Paranoia Strikes Deep regarding the current state of the Republican party, how it differs from seemingly similar moments in earlier times, and how it could mire the nation in an ungovernable mess for decades to come.

9 November 2009

The Circle of Life

Without a kill, I suppose that it is a rim shot, not "one in a million."

9 November 2009

Wall Street: Just Plain Wrong

Arianna Huffington has a great op-ed out today titled Why It's Wrong When Wrongdoers Are Allowed to Admit No Wrongdoing. It deals with a specific incident on Wall Street, but is illustrative of how our system of "justice" deals with white collar crime on a large scale. It begins:

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

So wrote Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It is one of my favorite quotes and it popped into my head as I was reading about last week's settlement between JPMorgan and the SEC in which the banking giant agreed to pay a $25 million penalty and cancel $647 million in fees owed by Alabama's Jefferson County as the result of a complicated derivatives deal that blew up in the county's face.

As part of the settlement, JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing -- despite ample evidence that it had engaged in plenty of wrongdoing. Things like paying off local officials with millions to win no-bid contracts worth billions and convincing county officials to switch from fixed-rate bonds to bonds hedged with risky derivatives -- a switch that has driven Jefferson County to the brink of bankruptcy. "We have been victimized by our creditors," said a county official.

JPMorgan released a statement that it was "pleased to have reached a settlement with the SEC," and acted as if it was practically a disinterested party: "The charges relate principally to municipal transactions that occurred six and seven years ago. JPMorgan has since discontinued that business, and the employees in question are no longer employed by the firm."

So no wrongdoing admitted, and time to move on to the next lucrative money-printing scheme. How tidy. This is what passes for justice on Wall Street these days. If you commit a petty crime and hammer out a plea bargain, you'll have to admit wrongdoing as part of the agreement. But put on a suit and commit a billion dollar crime and you won't even have to admit you did anything wrong. It'll be as if it never happened. Which, of course, makes it much more likely that it will happen again.

You can read the entire piece at the link above.

9 November 2009

Addition: Further illustration of the point.

The Timidity of Governing

Arianna Huffington has a new writing today regarding David Plouffe's new book The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory. She indicates that the book is a good, insightful one. However, it also serves as something of a counterpoint to how President Obama is leading versus how candidate Obama campaigned. That book, she says, might be called The Timidity of Governing. No doubt.

We need a lion, not a lamb.

3 November 2009

Obama Undermines Investor Protection

From Shahien Nasiripour at The Huffington Post:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling Democratic members of the House Financial Services Committee that he supports amending the Investor Protection Act of 2009 -- a bill designed to beef up protection for investors -- in order to exempt small businesses from a requirement in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that mandates audits of internal controls. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 in the wake of accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom that rocked investors and damaged confidence in the markets.

"This has enormous significance to individual investors," former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt told the Huffington Post. "This is something the Republicans could never have accomplished, and what a bitter irony it is that the Democrats...are emasculating the best piece of legislation of the past 20 years."

You can find the balance of the story at the link above.

Obama continues to fail us.

2 November 2009