My Senator

Oxdown Gazette » Lieberman for Anything

The time has come for President Barack Obama to recognize the important accomplishments of Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He should appoint Joe Lieberman to, well, just about anything. Surely there are some ambassadorships still available to loyal "with us on everything but the war" Senators like Joe Lieberman.

I think this is a terrific idea. It lets us get rid of an annoying scold, lets Lieberman feel like he actually accomplished something and, if we can get a decent candidate, will get an actual Dem for the junior senator from CT.

That is change I can get behind!

Yes, it is a hissy fit but ...

John Boehner Throws Hour Long Hissy Fit on the House Floor | Video Cafe

While the cable news channels decided that nothing else was going on other than the death of Michael Jackson, John Boehner was on the floor of the House doing his best job to pretend he is in the Senate filibustering a piece of legislation. He was supposed to be using his two and a half minutes alloted to him to wrap up debate on the energy bill and carried on for well over an hour instead.

The entire fiasco looked like nothing less than cheap showmanship and games to me, with Michelle Bachmann for the better part of the hour in the background with the rest of the Republican peanut gallery yelling "Yeah!!! You go John!!!...Keep going!!!" every chance she got.

The party of "No" isn't too good at governing when given the opportunity, but they sure are good at theatrics.

You know, if this had been done by anyone that actually considered voting for the bill I would actually applaud it. 300 pages of amendments the night before a vote is ridiculous.

I understand that this is typical but it is also a terrible way to make law.

Measuring Charges on ATOMS

IBM Scientists Directly Measure Charge States of Atoms Using an Atomic Force Microscope - June 12, 2009 Friday 2:22 PM GMT - PR Newswire

As reported in the June 12 issue ofSciencemagazine, Leo Gross, Fabian Mohn and Gerhard Meyer of IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Regensburg and Utrecht University imaged and identified differently charged individual gold and silver atoms by measuring the tiny differences in the forces between the tip of an atomic force microscope and a charged or uncharged atom located in close proximity below it.

To conduct these experiments, researchers used a combined scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and atomic force microscope (AFM) operated in vacuum at very low temperature (5 Kelvin) to achieve the high stability necessary for these measurements.

I am sure that it is only because I am a huge geek that I think this is cool but ...

Citibank Sucks

Just saying...

Things I wish Obama could really say

The Bobblespeak Translations: Obama Press Conference - June 23, 2009

Obama: well fuck if they can't compete with the government who they say can't do anything right then maybe they fucking suck

Go read the entire translation of Obama's presser today. It is classic!

This goes in the WHAT THE FUCK file

WTIC News/Talk 1080 - Autopsy: South Windsor Stabbing A Suicide

An autopsy has determined that a South Windsor man on whom local police used a stun gun Saturday morning committed suicide, State Police said. The Medical Examiner's office has determined that Derrek Kairney, 36, of 51 Birch Road, died of a self-inflicted stab wound to the chest.

When you use a taser on someone, how the fuck do they manage to then deliberately stab themselves in the chest? This just sounds like less than 1/2 of a story.

Healthcare as a natural monopoly?

Oxdown Gazette » Wealthy, Healthy George Will Pretends America’s Health Care System Is Just Fine

Will fears that if people had the choice of a public plan, they'd choose it because its cost structure is inherently more efficient. In Will's contorted philosophy, that's not fair competition, so the solution is to deny that choice to protect the inefficient. What he's describing, however, sounds like a natural monopoly condition -- as in single payer? -- but never mind that.

I might argue that it is rather more like a monopsony but why quibble. The point is that it makes much more sense from the point of view of society as a whole to have a single payer for healthcare.

PowerLine on Iran

Power Line - Let it be said

We make a few simple points about the events transpiring over the past week in Iran. The Iranian regime is an evil tyranny. It supports terrorists and terrorism. The United States has a debt of honor to settle with it for the kidnapping and mistreatment of American hostages thirty years ago. That disgrace is not simply a matter of history. It is a disgrace in which Iran's execrable president personally participated. We remember.

The Iranian regime is responsible for the maiming and murder of many Americans and others who have been made its victims. The overthrow of the regime would be well deserved. We support the brave protesters who have taken to the streets of Iran to express their opposition to the regime and we wish them success in their endeavors.

So let's be clear here. Powerline is backing Mousavi because the current President is evil and participated in the revolution.

Someone should tell these fine people about these neat sites called Yahoo, Google and Bing. I am told that you can find out all sorts of things by using them so that you don't look like a fucking moron.

Just a thought

Joe Klein on the Idiots at the Washington Post on Iran

There Will Be Blood - Swampland – TIME.com

The failure to understand this basic fact--the failure to even care what Iranians, even the Iranians who hate the regime, actually think--is at the heart of the lethal carelessness that marked the Bush Junior's Administration and neoconservative thinking in general. I would guess that the Supreme Leader--which is the man's actual title, no matter how Krauthammer disdains it--is itching for an excuse to send tanks into the streets. (Which he may well do anyway.) If Barack Obama were sounding like John McCain, the tanks would have been in the streets days ago, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people killed, and a ready excuse that would have great credibility with the Iranian people: the U.S. was at it again, trying to foment a revolution to overthrow the duly elected government of Iran.

But then, in the long-term scheme of things, the neoconservatives would undoubtedly argue, blood will be spilled in the pursuit of freedom. Undouboutedly true, but you don't want the blood to be on your hands. You want it to be the choice of those who are risking their lives in the streets.

The problem is that the blood is never on the hands of the neo-cons. They never fight their own battles. They always find surrogates or, even better, the sons and daughters of their followers. I have yet to find a neo-con that actually risks anything personally in the wars they seek to foment.

Obscenity at Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs to make record bonus payout | Business | The Observer

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Imagine my shock. I bet I could make a profit too if I had scarfed back about $10Billion in taxpayers money less than a fucking year ago

via many places but reading it at Balloon Juice actually made me blog this.