It's All Over Now

So we can safely offer seasonal sacrilege. O'Reilly won the War on Christmas.

2010 Was Wacked

Let's look back on just a tasting of the lunacy on parade in 2010,
courtesy of Tom Tomorrow:

Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse

In the early morning of December 21 (That's tonight!), an extraordinary celestial spectacle will occur, transforming the moon into a brooding, reddish-orange specter.      A total lunar eclipse on the eve of the Winter Solstice has not happened since 1638!

All the info you need is on this NASA web page

Have a strange solstice!

The War On Foxmas

Don't they ever tire of spewing what they must know is utter bullshit?

Tom Tomorrow tries to reason with them in a Holiday Spirit kinda way:

And this is from 2004...plus ça change and all that....

My Favorite Holiday Vids

Here's a few of my faves. Will post more throughout the season.

The Drifters, White Christmas


Bob Dylan, Must Be Santa


Achmed the Dead Terrorist Christmas Song

Cognitive Dissonance

Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, brought to you by the good folks at Arby's and Fast Wok
(The short ad from the source comes with the video)

Reality Sucks

What is referred to as "news" is bitterly depressing.
Reality is far worse on almost every front.

Soooo... I'm stickin' with the comix!
The quality of relevant information is incalculably greater, they have nifty, non-threatening pictures...and I get to laugh.

                                                                R. Crumb

Tom Tomorrow

Ted Rall

Scott Adams


Robert Armstrong , coined the phrase "couch potato", singer and multi-instrumentalist with R. Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders, creator of Mickey Rat:

I've Looked At Bipartisanship From Both Sides Now

Tom Tomorrow sees all:

TSA! TSA! TSA!

A bit of north-of-the-border perspicacity from The Province

Four Loko Mania

Hot on the heels of the alcoholic energy drink/Four Loko ban in Michigan, New York City chef Eddie Huang (Xiao Ye) is rolling out an all-you-can-drink Four Loko night. Said Huang, who's been stockpiling the stuff in case of the apocalypse: "Four Loko is not a drink, it is chlorine in the gene pool. It weeds out all the people unfit for the next generation, like Darwin in a can."

Thinking Of Hunter

The immortal Hunter S. Thompson...

I nearly suffocated laughing when I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
40 years later it is still a reference point for my shaky foundation of reality.

But THIS, this transcends even that Olympian achievement, and is my favorite work by the Gonz. Why it suddenly overcame me like a demented apparition I have no clue, but am grateful for the visitation.

Read the whole thing at this link:
"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved"

Or see below for easily digestible nibbles.

I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit.

"Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up."

Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. "They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits," I said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes."

Here is Wikipedia's description of the demented one's writing technique in creating this literary creature.

Accompanied by Ralph Steadman's sketches (the first of many collaborations between Thompson and Steadman) the genesis of the article has been described by Thompson as akin to "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids". Faced with a deadline and without any coherent story for his editors, Thompson began tearing pages from his notebook, numbering them, and sending them to the magazine. The resulting story, and the manic, first-person subjectivity that characterized it, were the beginnings of the Gonzo style.

Shortly after Thompson's suicide in 2005, Steadman recalled their meeting at the Kentucky Derby to the British newspaper The Independent. In the article Steadman remembered his first impression of Thompson that day:

"I had turned around and two fierce eyes, firmly socketed inside a bullet-shaped head, were staring at a strange growth I was nurturing on the end of my chin. 'Holy shit!' he [Thompson] exclaimed. 'They said I was looking for a matted-haired geek with string warts and I guess I've found him.' [...] This man had an impressive head chiselled from one piece of bone, and the top part was covered down to his eyes by a floppy-brimmed sun hat. His top half was draped in a loose-fitting hunting jacket of multi-coloured patchwork. He wore seersucker blue pants, and the whole torso was pivoted on a pair of huge white plimsolls with a fine red trim around the bulkheads. Damn near 6-foot-6 of solid bone and meat holding a beaten-up leather bag across his knee and a loaded cigarette holder between the arthritic fingers of his other hand."

 I sure do miss him.

Some Things Never Change

Case in point; Republican conservative ideology.

As William Faulkner noted, "The past is never dead. It's not even past".

H.P. Lovecraft wrote this in 1936:

"As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead".

• Letter to C.L. Moore (August 1936), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 574

Thanks to The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire by way of Digby

Happy Friggin' Halloween!

Woe Is Us

Listening to Beck or Limbaugh is like standing nose to nose with a derelict whose brain and senses are benumbed by cough syrup and angel dust, and who has just chugged a Red Bull and Ipecac cocktail; whatever comes out of his mouth will make no sense, and you will definitely be splattered with foul-smelling vomit.

Yet millions of our fellow citizens eagerly choose to stand and be slimed, ravenously gobbling and swallowing puke chunks. And our badly corrupted corporate media conglomerates validate this stenchified feedback loop by transcribing the bleats of these addled gnomes and printing and broadcasting it without any filter of reason or fact.

Is it any wonder that the childish, misinformed voters of this heinously ignorant country are quite probably going to vote into power a collection of extremist freaks and old guard Republican corporatist stooges who will dismantle whatever remains of our nearly departed civilized society?

There is but a week remaining to defuse the doomsday bomb before it detonates and destroys the future for our descendants. Please, please, please do whatever you can to prevent this apocalypse. This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation...it is bloodsport.

Here are some worthwhile activist organizations who are fighting to the end, have real smarts and power, and boast a track record of electoral success:

Act Blue
MoveOn
Bold Progressives 

Here are some blogs that are extremely informative and well written. Their front page writers practice a high level of what used to be called reporting and journalism before our corporate mass media began featuring right wing dictation and infotainment. Each of these hard news sites features candidate profiles in vital races, with links to effective political action:

Hullaballoo
Daily Kos
Firedoglake

There are pathetically few TV news shows that have any journalistic integrity.
For fact-based news reporting, fronted by studiously prepared and well informed anchors with a work ethic, three come to mind:

Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC


Keith Olbermann, Countdown, MSNBC


And the King, The REAL Most Trusted Name in News:
Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Comedy Central

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2010 - Unforced Errors Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day

Saw this at Digby's Hullaballoo this morning. Just goes to show ya that:
a) Conventional Wisdom should be re-dubbed Incontrovertible Ignorance, and
b) Our corporate mass media does a thoroughly shitty job of informing the public
(I suspect this is entirely intentional).

Like the age old game show question asked: Who Do You Trust?

Dave Johnson has written a very handy piece called: Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.

Read on for more.

I've been having some interesting chats with mildly interested voters. And this is exactly the kind of thing that is really helpful in winning them over. They are busy, they are dealing with these issues in a very haphazard fashion and a lot of their ideas come from a sort of conventional wisdom osmosis. If you can present them with some simple explanations about why things are not as they think, they're receptive to it.

I'm not talking about the tea partiers, of course. They are "informed" by Glenn Beck and there's no getting to them. But your average independent voter or casual liberal voter is persuadable on this stuff.

RIDUCKULOUS

I love this so much, I just had to post it again. I'm considering making it a permanent feature at the top of the blog; at least until that charlatan Glenn Beck retires to his Scrooge McDuck gold vault.

 

Attention WalMort Shoppers!

UPDATE: As usual, comix nail it, while our deeply incompetent and corrupt corporate media tie themselves in knots attempting to avoid the direct, aggressive reporting desperately called for.

In this case, behold the master, Tom Tomorrow at work:

Here is all you need to know to understand the foreclosure fraud pandemic, brought to you by the good folks at BankWorld Discorporated:

NEW YORK (AP) — In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.

In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.

The deposed employees worked for the mortgage service divisions of banks such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, as well as for mortgage servicers like Litton Loan Servicing, a division of Goldman Sachs

For a housing recovery to occur, all the foreclosed properties — which could account for 40 percent of all residential sales by 2012 — need to be re-scrutinized by the banks and resold on the market. Now, with so much inventory under a legal threat, the process will become severely delayed.

And a taste of what is coming down the foreclosure pipeline:

Meanwhile, the public outrage continues to mount. In what is perhaps a sign of things to come, a Simi Valley, Calif., couple and their nine children broke into their foreclosed home over the weekend and moved back in, according to television station KABC of Simi Valley. The couple, Jim and Danielle Earl, say they were working with the bank to catch up on payments until they discovered a $25,000 difference between what they owed and what the bank said they owed. The family was evicted from their Spanish-style two-story in July. The home has been sold, and the new owner was due to move in soon.

The Earls and their attorney now allege that they were victims of fraudulent paperwork.

Please go to the above link and read the rest of the report.

If you want more detail in an easy-to-grok format I urge you to check out Foreclosure Fraud For Dummies, this series at the well informed site Rortybomb

It would all be so very  hilarious if human misery were not involved. The Keystone Kops truly run our clown car of a financial system.

Weak Tea

Matt Taibbi's latest screed in Rolling Stone digs down deep into the sclerotic piss pump that is the Fox News Tea Party.

                             These people need to wear their Depends over their mouths.

This is an immensely informative and horrifyingly entertaining piece of journalism. I stopped reading Wenner's Folly when it went gaga for grunge, but Taibbi is among the best and most insightful reads in all of wordom.

Some highlights:

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters.

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.

A loose definition of the Tea Party might be millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC.

 Taibbi also makes stops at Rand Paul World, the GOP T-Party Puppet Show,
The Altar of the Oligarchy and even a detour to the Creation Museum.

If some of your favorite topics are hypocrisy, corporatist domination, the termination of the American dream, and mind-numbing narcissistic stupidity, you won't want to miss a word of this masterpiece.

Please- go read it.

The Quacker and the Quack

Found this on my favorite economics blog, Naked Capitalism

 

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

Avast Mr. So-Called-Christian! There's Trouble Below Deck!

Roast Buddy Nils Nichols sent a love note to "pastor" Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla.
Yes, indeedy, that would be this Terry Jones, the anal tumor masquerading as a Christian leader, whose latest mission to his adoring flock is to burn a bunch of Korans, thereby combining the worst of Nazi, KKK and Homo Erectus philosophies into one corrosive stew of Hate. Burn in Hell shithead!

Even Saint David Petraeus has admonished this maggot. Check it out.

Here is Nils' billet doux:

It saddens me deeply to have to say that you are of the devil for preaching such things. You should be preaching tolerance and love; instead you have lowered yourself to the level of all other extreme religious fanatics. You are no better than those Muslims who practice violence, or the people in the U.S. who call themselves Christians, yet amass guns and preach violence against all non-Christians. Your actions will only lead to more deaths of American troops; more young Muslims joining the Al Qaeda and more attacks against America. You should ashamed of yourself for you will surely have blood on your hands. How dare you even call yourself a Christian.

The Origin of Labor Day; The Chicago Haymarket Riot of 1886

From Wikipedia's accurate history of the American labor movement's fight for the eight hour workday, celebrated internationally on May 1 as May Day to honor working people everywhere.

The rest of the world recognizes the Haymarket Riot as the seminal event of the birth of workers' rights, and the beginning of the end of the abuse of labor by the industrialists.

Few Americans have any knowledge of this catalyzing moment in history.
No surprise there, eh?

The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot) was a demonstration and unrest that took place on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a rally in support of striking workers. An unknown person threw a bomb at police as they dispersed the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of eight police officers, mostly from friendly fire, and an unknown number of civilians

In October 1884, a convention held by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard. As the chosen date approached, U.S. labor unions prepared for a general strike in support of the eight-hour day. On Saturday, May 1, rallies were held throughout the United States. There were an estimated 10,000 demonstrators in New York City and 11,000 in Detroit. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, some 10,000 workers turned out. The movement's center was in Chicago, where an estimated 40,000 workers went on strike. Albert Parsons was an anarchist and founder of the International Working People's Association (IWPA). Parsons, with his wife Lucy and their children, led a march of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue. Another 10,000 men employed in the lumber yards held a separate march in Chicago. Estimates of the number of striking workers across the U.S. range from 300,000 to half a million.

On May 3, striking workers in Chicago met near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant. Union molders at the plant had been locked out since early February and the predominantly Irish-American workers at McCormick had come under attack from Pinkerton guards...

Speaking to a rally outside the plant on May 3, August Spies advised the striking workers to "hold together, to stand by their union, or they would not succeed." Well-planned and coordinated, the general strike to this point had remained largely nonviolent. When the end-of-the-workday bell sounded, however, a group of workers surged to the gates to confront the strikebreakers. Despite calls by Spies for the workers to remain calm, gunfire erupted as police fired on the crowd. In the end, two McCormick workers were killed (although some newspaper accounts said there were six fatalities).

Outraged by this act of police violence, local anarchists quickly printed and distributed fliers calling for a rally the following day at Haymarket Square...The rally began peacefully under a light rain on the evening of May 4. August Spies spoke to the large crowd while standing in an open wagon on Des Plaines Street while a large number of on-duty police officers watched from nearby. According to witnesses, Spies began by saying the rally was not meant to incite violence...

The crowd was so calm that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., who had stopped by to watch, walked home early. Samuel Fielden, the last speaker, was finishing his speech at about 10:30 when police ordered the rally to disperse and began marching in formation towards the speakers' wagon. A pipe bomb was thrown at the police line and exploded, killing policeman Mathias J. Degan. The police immediately opened fire. Some workers were armed, but accounts vary widely as to how many shot back. The incident lasted less than five minutes.

Aside from Degan, several police officers appear to have been injured by the bomb, but most of the police casualties were caused by bullets, largely from friendly fire.

Eight people connected directly or indirectly with the rally and its anarchist organizers were arrested afterward and charged with Degan's murder. The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer credible evidence connecting the defendants with the bombing but argued that the person who had thrown the bomb was not discouraged to do so by the defendants, who as conspirators were therefore equally responsible. Albert Parsons' brother claimed there was evidence linking the Pinkertons to the bomb.

The jury returned guilty verdicts for all eight defendants – death sentences for seven of the men, and a sentence of 15 years in prison for Neebe. The sentencing sparked outrage from budding labor and workers' movements, resulted in protests around the world, and elevated the defendants as international political celebrities and heroes within labor and radical political circles. Meanwhile the press published often sensationalized accounts and opinions about the Haymarket affair, which polarized public reaction. In an article titled "Anarchy’s Red Hand", The New York Times described the incident as the "bloody fruit" of "the villainous teachings of the Anarchists."

The case was appealed in 1887 to the Supreme Court of Illinois...After the appeals had been exhausted, Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted Fielden's and Schwab's sentences to life in prison on November 10, 1887...The next day (November 11, 1887) Spies, Parsons, Fischer and Engel were taken to the gallows in white robes and hoods. Family members including Lucy Parsons, who attempted to see them for the last time, were arrested and searched for bombs (none were found). According to witnesses, in the moments before the men were hanged, Spies shouted, "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!"

The trial has been characterized as one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in United States history. Most working people believed Pinkerton agents had provoked the incident.On June 26, 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld signed pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab after having concluded all eight defendants were innocent. The governor said the reason for the bombing was the city of Chicago's failure to hold Pinkerton guards responsible for shooting workers. The pardons ended his political career.The police commander who ordered the dispersal was later convicted of corruption. The bomb thrower was never identified. 

The Haymarket affair was a setback for American labor and its fight for the eight-hour day. At the convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1888, the union decided to campaign for the shorter workday again. May 1, 1890, was agreed upon as the date on which workers would strike for an eight-hour work day.

In 1889, AFL president Samuel Gompers wrote to the first congress of the Second International, which was meeting in Paris. He informed the world's socialists of the AFL's plans and proposed an international fight for a universal eight-hour work day. In response to Gompers's letter, the Second International adopted a resolution calling for "a great international demonstration" on a single date so workers everywhere could demand the eight-hour work day. In light of the Americans' plan, the International adopted May 1, 1890 as the date for this demonstration.

     A secondary purpose behind the adoption of the resolution by the Second International was to honor the memory of the Haymarket martyrs and other workers who had been killed in association with the strikes on May 1, 1886. Historian Philip Foner writes "[t]here is little doubt that everyone associated with the resolution passed by the Paris Congress knew of the May 1st demonstrations and strikes for the eight-hour day in 1886 in the United States ... and the events associated with the Haymarket tragedy."

The first international May Day was a spectacular success. The front page of the New York World on May 2, 1890, was devoted to coverage of the event. Two of its headlines were "Parade of Jubilant Workingmen in All the Trade Centers of the Civilized World" and "Everywhere the Workmen Join in Demands for a Normal Day." The Times of London listed two dozen European cities in which demonstrations had taken place, noting there had been rallies in Cuba, Peru and Chile. Commemoration of May Day became an annual event the following year.

If I robbed a bank, could I get off with a "scolding"?

And get to keep the money?

A report from Pro Publica, the excellent investigative journalism site, tells me that crime does indeed pay, and quite well at that!

I do solemnly swear to steal as much as I possibly can, and to lie about it without reservation to anyone and everyone:

Current and former executives of credit rating agencies are sworn in during a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Oct. 22, 2008. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Moody’s Escapes SEC Lawsuit, Now Moves to Shield Itself From Liability

The money shot:

Despite allegations that Moody’s Investors Service, one of the three major credit rating agencies, committed fraud when it failed to fix what it knew was an erroneous rating, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Tuesday that it wouldn’t sue the rating agency. It instead settled for a scolding, directed at ratings agencies generally.

Drunk baboons plague Cape Town's exclusive suburbs

Oh Please! I've been hearing  the same boo-hoo-hoo  about me and my friends since I was 12.

Each day, dozens of Cape Baboons gather to strip the ancient vines – the sauvignon blanc grapes are a particular favourite – before heading into the mountains to sleep. A few, who sample fallen fruit that has fermented in the sun, pass out and don't make it home.

 Isn't this just normal behavior for spunky kids expressing a healthy independence?:

"They are not just eating our grapes, they are raiding our kitchens and ripping the thatch off the roofs. They are becoming increasingly bold and destructive..."

And what up with this wimpy crybaby? It's just kids being kids, so STFU already!:

A 12 year old boy was left traumatised after confronting a troop who had broken into his family home. Hearing noises from the kitchen, he went to investigate and found the beasts ransacking cupboards. When the child fled upstairs to find his babysitter, three males gave chase and surrounded him as he made a tearful phone call to his mother, while the animals pelted him with fruit.

Here's the bottom line for the oh-so-inconvenienced snotty bourgeouisie:

"Lunch parties in the garden are now just impossible," a homeowner complained. "It is so unrelaxing. Rather than chatting over our meal, we are looking over our shoulders and bolting the food as quickly as we can before it is stolen. We can't even leave a window open in summer. We are under siege."

Of course, we never went this far, but hey! It's a new era of teen hi-jinks. Can't fault them for going a bit overboard with their joie de vivre!:

Chickens, geese, peacocks and even a Great Dane dog have been killed in recent weeks by the marauding baboons

I just see them as emerging wine connoisseurs, developing an appreciation for the finer things in life. I guess the uptight suburbanites feel threatened by the new wave of Dionysian post-punk oenophiles, who are able to revel in the ecstasy of the grape without compromising their youthful spirit:

...the animals won't devour any old variety... the unwanted visitors prefer sweet pinot noir grapes, which sell for far more than merlot and cabernet sauvignon. They also like a nice chardonnay.

 Who you callin' an animal tight-ass?

You can build a library...but should you?

From the hilarious British satirical site The Daily Mash:
(Thanks to Roast hound Adam Parker)

OUTRAGE OVER PLANS TO BUILD LIBRARY NEXT TO SARAH PALIN

19-08-10

PLANS to build a state-of-the-art library next to Republican catastrophe Sarah Palin are causing outrage across mainstream America. Almost 40% of Americans still support the idea of books Campaigners have described the project as insensitive and a deliberate act of provocation by people with brains. The issue is forming a dividing line in advance of November's mid-term congressional elections with candidates being forced to declare whether they have ever been to a library or spoken to someone who has books in their home. Meanwhile President Obama has caused unease within his own Democratic party by endorsing the library and claiming that not everyone who reads books is responsible for calling Mrs Palin a fuckwit nutjob nightmare of a human being. But Bill McKay, a leading member of the right-wing Teapot movement, said: "Sarah Palin is a hallowed place for Americans who can't read. "How is she going to feel knowing that every day there are people going inside a building to find things out for themselves and have thoughts, right in the very shadow of her amazing nipples." He added: "Our founding fathers intended for every building in this country to be a church containing one book, written by Jesus, that would be read out in a strange voice by an orange man in a shiny suit who would also tell you who you were allowed to kill. "Building a library next to Mrs Palin is like Pearl Harbour. Or 9/11." And Wayne Hayes, a pig masseur from Coontree, Virginia, said: "I is so angry right now. "It's like something is on fire right in the middle of my head. Like I've eaten a real hot chilli, but it's gone up my nose tubes rather than down my ass tubes." He added: "Would these library lovers allow me to set up a stall next to the Smithsonian Museum and start selling DVDs of bible cartoons as long as it was in accordance with local regulations? "Oh they would? I see. So is that why they're better than me?"

BOOKER T. AND THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS WITH SPECIAL GUEST BETTYE LAVETTE

Here's a taste of last night's Public TV broadcast LIVE FROM THE ARTISTS DEN:
(I found this longer cut at HULU)

Phox Phueled Phobias

Islamophobia= Ground Zero Mosque

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mosque-Erade
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Latinophobia= Anchor Babies (What 14th Amendment?)

Negrophobia= The President of the United States , Barack Obama               
(also see Islamophobia)

Afghanistan:The Very Serious Society vs The Hippie Fruitcakes

From the Very Un-Serious Tom Tomorrow:

Tuli Kupferberg- Way Down South in Greenwich Village

Was dining in the West Village and thought of this acappella tribute to that unique and iconic pulse point of NYC, by the recently departed Fug and urban poet Tuli Kupferberg.

Big City Turn Me Loose 'n Set Me Free

Think it's time folks like us had some fun, so 'Toid and family are aheadin' fer the Catskills. It ain't Montana, but behold the soon-to-be-ours palace in the pines, in the peaceful and bucolic hamlet of Olivebridge, NY:

The House:

The Grounds:

The view:

What Climate Change??

Oh yeah, THIS climate change: 

Desirable waterfront property!

 

                                               Welcome to LA, 2020!

From  The National Academy of Sciences latest press release:

"Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems," the report concludes.

The compelling case that climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities is based on a strong, credible body of evidence, says Advancing the Science of Climate Change, one of the new reports

Substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require prompt and sustained efforts to promote major technological and behavioral changes, says Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change, another of the new reports.

Reducing vulnerabilities to impacts of climate change that the nation cannot, or does not, avoid is a highly desirable strategy to manage and minimize the risks, says the third report, Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change.  Some impacts – such as rising sea levels, disappearing sea ice, and the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events like heavy precipitation and heat waves – are already being observed across the country.

Then read this whole article  From the LA Times:

In a sharp change from its cautious approach in the past, the National Academy of Sciences on Wednesday called for taxes on carbon emissions, a cap-and-trade program for such emissions or some other strong action to curb runaway global warming.

..."climate change is occurring, the Earth is warming ... concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing, and there are very clear fingerprints that link [those effects] to humans"...

"The most dramatic possible threat, by 2050, is a sea level rise in the Gulf Coast of 2 to 4 feet., plus the prospect of more intense coastal storms," he said. "We may need to consider contingency plans … such as movement of infrastructure and settlements away from vulnerable areas." Preserving water supply in the Southwest, which will inevitably become more arid, will also be crucial, he added.

And then there's this latest report from Nature: 

The report¹, from the US National Research Council (NRC), sets out the consequences — from streamflow and wildfires to crop productivity and sea level rise — of different greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios. It also concludes that once the global average temperature warms beyond a certain point, Earth and future generations will be stuck with significant impacts for centuries or millennia.

...the report shows that each 1 °C of warming will reduce rain in the southwest of North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa by 5–10%; cut yields of some crops, including maize (corn) and wheat, by 5–15%; and increase the area burned by wildfires in the western United States by 200–400%.

 Whatever shall we tell the children?

Comix artists like Tom Toles do a better job of reporting than our slothful and corrupt old mainstream media (the link to Tom's blog takes you to one of the worst):

And the American public and its elected representatives? Here's a video metaphor for our consciousness of this ominous and threatening situation:

Will Ferrell: The Future Ain't What It Used To Be

Al calls the netroots to action on Net Neutrality

Nils Nichols sez: Watch this video, then visit Al Franken and sign his petition now!



PETITION: STAND WITH ME TO SAVE NET NEUTRALITY AND STOP THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF OUR MEDIA The Comcast-NBC merger is the first domino. If it falls, the rest will soon follow. If no one stops them, how long do you think it will take before 4 or 5 megacorporations effectively control the flow of information in America not only on television, but online? How long do you think it will take before the Fox News website loads 5 times faster than DailyKos? It's almost too late to stop this from happening, but not quite. The government can stop them… but first the government has to be MADE to act. Net Neutrality is THE First Amendment issue of our time. If you want to protect the free flow of information in the country and all that depends on it, you have to help me fight this. Add your voice to 26683 others in support of Net Neutrality by signing my petition:                    

American Ingenuity

 
Digby has this post up about one man's resourcefulness. What a country!

The way Lawrence tells it, Monday’s robbery of a Chase Bank was just a desperate ploy to get back behind bars, where he believes he will receive better medical care than he has been able to obtain on his own.

Holle said she can see the attraction of prison health care for some.
“You’ve got a place to live and ... a prison system providing nursing facility-type care,” she said. “And you live in a community.”

Three hots and a cot...what's better'n that?!

Recipes for Summer

The incredible bounty of fresh, luscious, drool-inducing summer produce is upon us!
Here in the Northeast USofA, recent years have seen a vast proliferation of small farms sprouting seemingly full grown from the soil.

This is not to minimize the back-breaking, time consuming work of farming, but merely to point out that if you go to any local weekend farmers market, you are likely to find an abundance and variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, tubers, breads, cheeses, honey, jams, etc, that will give you whiplash trying to take in the cornucopia of earthly delights!

Rule #1: Buy as much fresh, local produce and naturally raised meat as you can prepare and stuff into the eager mouths of your family.
If at all possible, buy at a farmers market from family farmers. Besides the culinary ecstasy you experience, you will also be helping to insure responsible stewardship of the soil and bypassing the industrial petro-farms who poison the land and water with a plague of chemicals, abuse their animals and eagerly kill you and your families with carcinogens, hormone disrupters and who knows what other synthetic abominations.

Rule #2: Eat 'em raw or choose recipes that are quick and easy to prepare, with minimal non-farm ingredients, to enhance nutritional value and allow the gorgeous flavors of freshness to dominate. I often look for ideas at searchable recipe websites such as  Epicurious and FoodieView.  Chow is best known for their restaurant comment boards, but their recipe section has some great stuff.

If you want to dig deeper into the small farm food movement and can stomach reading about the homicidal depredations of large-scale industrial agriculture,  
The Cornucopia Institute , Slow Food USA and La Vida Locavore are all excellent resource sites. You will also find shopping advice and some recipes at these communities.

Now, forthwith, here is a sampling of my favorite summer recipes:

SUMMER CORN CHOWDER WITH BACON
Makes 6 servings

6 slices bacon, chopped (Okay, if you must, use turkey bacon or fakin' bacon)
6 cups fresh corn kernels(cut from 6 to 8 ears)
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh fennel bulb
1 cup diced yellow zucchini or crookneck squash (about 2)
1 cup 1/2-inch cubes peeled russet potatoes
3 cups (or more) low-salt chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 cup heavy cream (optional- but really nice in here)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives, basil, parsley, scallions or a combination

Sauté bacon in large pot over medium-high heat until crisp and brown.
Using slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towels to drain.
Add corn, fennel, zucchini, and potatoes to drippings in pot.
Sauté 5 minutes. Add 3 cups broth and simmer uncovered
over medium heat until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
Transfer 3 cups soup to blender. Holding blender top firmly,
puree until smooth. Return puree to soup in pot.
Stir in cream, if using, and cayenne. Bring chowder to simmer,
thinning with more broth if too thick. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Ladle chowder into bowls and sprinkle with bacon and herbs.



SAUTEED GREENS
Serves 4-6

2 bunches farm fresh greens, alone or in any combination, such as chard, collards, kale of any color ( I love red Russian), turnip or beet greens, broccoli rabe, young poke salad, or just about anything green and leafy.
2 or 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot or small onion, diced
1 large clove peeled and thinly sliced garlic
1 small tomato or plum tomato, diced
1 or 2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Wash greens thoroughly in cold water.
Drain and wash again to remove grit, sand and mud.
Cut away thick part of stalks. If using chard, keep thinner parts of stalks and slice thin across the stems.
Stack greens and slice once from tip to bottom, then slice across leaves into 1/4" ribbons.

Put oil in a large pot and add onion or shallot, garlic, and sliced chard stems if using.
Turn heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion softens. If garlic starts to brown, lower heat.

Add diced tomato and a little salt, stir, cover pot and simmer for 3 or 4 minutes.

Add greens a couple of handfuls at a time, stirring each batch until wilted before adding more.

When all greens are in the pot, add a little more salt, stir well, cover pot and simmer for 10-20 minutes, or until greens are tender. Uncover pot, add cider vinegar, stir well, remove from heat and serve hot.

This stuff tastes even better with a little crumbled bacon on top.

I got plenty more where these come from. Leave your fave recipes in Comments below the post.