Question of the Day
The logical follow-up to yesterday's QotD: Who was the last person you took a picture of?
Iain. I took it with my phone while we were playing Talisman over the weekend, as we ate brunch, and he looked very cute with his sleepy fuckhair and in his Mr. Cluck's t-shirt, with two doggies curled up beside him and a board game o' delicious nerdiness spread out before him.
[Posted with Iain's permission.]
I'm Shocked, SHOCKED, I Tell You
New York Times—Top Tabloid Editors Endorsed Hacking, Letter Says: "A high-profile parliamentary panel investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid released embarrassing new evidence Tuesday that the practice of intercepting voice mail had been widely discussed at the newspaper, contradicting assertions by its owners and editors."
I am appalled that an upstanding character like Rupert Murdoch and the dedicated employees at his reputable newspaper could lie under oath.
Next thing you'll be telling me is that Jersey Shore isn't the 100% spontaneous shenanigans of its delightfully whimsical cast!
Well, I trust that these News Corp. ne'er-do-wells will get their deserved comeuppance in a court of law. HA HA JUST KIDDING have fun on your gold-plated yacht, Mr. Murdoch!
Seen
Seen at a local festival this weekend. "Cornhole" is a children's game, popular in Midwestern corn-yielding states like Indiana, in which beanbags, or, more traditionally, cotton bags filled with feed corn, are thrown at a slanted board with a hole in it.
"Cornhole" also, of course, refers to teh buttsecks.
When I took this picture at the weekend, naturally I immediately texted it to Deeks, who replied: "Awesome! I would sooooo win that."
Of Course
Lisa Mascaro in the LA Times: Anti-tax group is top donor to super committee members.
The conservative Club for Growth and its members gave more money to lawmakers who are members of the new congressional "super committee" on debt than any other organization, PAC or group of individuals, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan MapLight.org.Pat Toomey is, in fact, a former president of the Club for Growth, which, according to The Nation's John Nichols (via SourceWatch) is "an organization funded by extremely wealthy conservatives to carry out their budget-stripping goals [that] has been a key player in Republican Governor Scott Walker's move to take out [Wisconsin]'s organized workers."
Club for Growth, its members and employees, contributed more than $990,000 over the last decade, topping Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, EMILY's List and others.
The club has been an influential force in political campaigns, and helped propel its past president, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), to the Senate last fall. Toomey was named last week to the new super committee.
Over the next three months, the 12 members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction will be tasked with recommending at least $1.5 trillion in budget cuts, a difficult assignment, and one that also concentrates tremendous power in relatively few hands.
Lobbyists have already begun trying to influence the debate, as our Los Angeles Times colleagues wrote earlier this month.
I can only say "RIP Democracy" so many times, but I don't know what else to say.
[H/T to Shaker Julia.]
Quote of the Day
"Our founders said [our] rights were given to us to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Does anyone here believe that first inalienable right is as whole as it was at the time of our founding? It isn't. Does anyone believe that our freedom is as whole as it was at the time of our founders? It is not."—Former Senator, Current GOP Presidential Candidate, and Perpetual Full-Tilt Thunderfuck Rick Santorum, arguing that "we" are less free than we were at the time of the country's founding.
Presumably, he is unaware of both the abolitionist and suffrage movements, and the institutional prejudices that necessitated their existence.
Breaking Bad Open Thread
"Maybe it's time to cool it with the wine, Talky McChatterson."
Sunday's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...
Ron Swanson Still Kicks Butt
As you femifarts, queerbaits, gender-benders, fat chicks, and various other dinguses may remember, Ron Swanson is my favorite person on television, because he is a majestic specimen of mustachioed manhood and a Great American. So you can imagine how excited I was (no homo) when I saw this glorious collection of portraits of Ron Swanson, Man Hero.
I really don't want to have to pick a favorite, but if I was cornered by a pack of wolf-tiger hybrids with nothing but my wits, my Chuck Norris Action Jeans, and my nunchucks to save me, and the Lord of the Wolf-Tigers offered me sanctuary in exchange for my selection of the best Ron Swanson portrait, well, fuck man, I guess I'd pick this one:
By: angieramone.deviantart.com.
Hey, speaking of pictures of American Heroes, check out this picture I just found in my bathroom of me and my ex-wife/fiancée Tammy's first wedding day.
HA HA. What a coupla crazy kids we were! We sure have been through a lot since then. So's that picture, amirite? Man, if I can scratch that "douche" offa there, I'm gonna get that shit on matching t-shirts for our next wedding. MEMORIES!
Number of the Day
92%: The percentage of foreclosures "on bankrupt families in and around New York City [for which there was] no proof the creditors had the right to foreclose."
The lack of proper documentation in foreclosure cases has been long known, and has been long ignored by the elected officials in Washington who are supposed to be representing the interests of people who are literally getting their houses stolen out from under them by for-profit corporations.
Now as many as 92% of foreclosures, at least in New York, lack evidence of the right to foreclose, and, meanwhile, the Obama administration is proposing profit-making opportunities for corporate owners on foreclosed homes.
Anyone else see a problem with that?
Well, Pardon Me for Not Being a Straight White Dude!
Another interesting tidbit from the Richard Cohen piece I mentioned below is this passage about how Rep. Michele Bachmann stacks up (or, rather, doesn't) to Gov. Rick Perry:
I can think of no reason why anyone who, for some unaccountable reason, supports Michele Bachmann will not move over to Perry. He is her equal in social issues, which is her strength, but he is a much better campaigner — as he showed the other day in Waterloo, Iowa. He retailed a GOP dinner, going from table to table, while Bachmann made a Lady Gaga entrance — rock music, lights, phalanx of security — and just perfunctorily met with the ordinary people she claims both to be and to represent.Does Richard Cohen actually remember the 2008 Republican Convention? Or any Republican Convention at all ever? Because:
Cohen just as easily might have called Bachmann's entrance a "John McCain entrance," but I think we all know why Bachmann was not compared to another presidential contender who made grand entrances at campaign appearances, and was instead compared to a dramatic female performer.
Cohen goes on:
Perry, who actually looks like a president (also the late Rory Calhoun), will raise far more money and breeze by her. Au revoir, Michele.Yes, Rick Perry actually looks like a president, while Bachmann just looks like a woman. A crazy woman, perhaps. Or a reptilian woman. Or maybe she just looks like a cat. In any case, she doesn't actually look like a president, that's for sure.
Well, excuse the fuck out of all of us who don't look like Millard frigging Fillmore.
[H/T to Shaker scatx, by email.]
[We defend Michele Bachmann against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
Rick Perry Is Terrible, Part Wev in an Ongoing Series
[Trigger warning for violent rhetoric.]
Texas Governor and Professional Dipfuck of Epic Proportions Rick Perry is like a one-man thunderdome of belligerent pugnacity, whose campaign strategy appears to have been devised by Godzilla: "Just stomp the fuck out of EVERYTHING."
Rrrrrooooowwwwwwwwr!
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a leading advocate of gun rights who likes to boast of having dispatched a coyote on a recent jog, so I asked him during today's walking press conference at the Iowa State Fair whether he was armed.SMAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!
"I never comment on whether I'm carrying a handgun or not," he said. "That's why it's called concealed."
(If he was armed, he could have found himself in hot water with the state police over a ban at the fair that has rankled some local gun groups.)
Perry's appearance at the fair, where he challenged reporters on whether they were "tough" enough to walk with him, chomped on meat and a hard-boiled egg and struck rugged poses was a well-staged political triumph. (The word "manly" got thrown around a lot, with varying degrees of irony, in the press pack.)
Texas Governor Rick Perry, who entered the presidential campaign on Saturday, appeared to suggest a violent response would be warranted should Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke "print more money" between now and the election. Speaking just now in Iowa, Perry said, "If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion." Treason is a capital offense.Thump!
Speaking to reporters tonight following an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Texas Governor Rick Perry appeared to question President Obama's patriotism. In response to a question from Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal, who asked Perry if he was suggesting that Obama didn't love this country, Perry replied: "I dunno, you need to ask him."Meanwhile, this is the guy about whom Serious Journalist Richard Cohen thinks it's "just plain folly, as some have already suggested, to think that he cannot campaign effectively in the rest of the nation. This man was born for the stump."
If Perry is the GOP's secret stump weapon, Obama's sure got an easy campaign ahead of him.
Headline of the Day
I know it's early, but I'm pretty sure nothing's going to beat this:
Perfect. Put this in the time capsule and mark it "Summer 2011."
That "Medicare for All" Thing Is Still an Option...
There are some problems with the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obama's health care insurance reform legislation. David Dayen and Igor Volsky lay out some of the details.
Here's how it worked when I visited the doctor in Scotland: You went to the doctor, you got treated, and you left. Despite the horror stories of interminable waits, there was no one else in the waiting room.
It's a pretty good system.
We should try it.
Question of the Day
What were you doing last time you had your picture taken?
It was just this past weekend, and I was at a local festival, listening to music performed by a friend, sitting at a table with his wife, my parents, one of my oldest friends C (also recently mentioned here), her two daughters, and Iain.
Random Recipe Thread
For the cooks among us: What's your current favorite recipe with 5 ingredients or less?
Mine:
1. Linguine, tossed with: 2. EVOO, 3. Sun-dried tomatoes; 4. Capers; and 5. Crumbled Gorgonzola.
If you want to get fancy, you can add some basil, oregano, and pepper. Yum.
Number of the Day
23: The number of polls showing that a majority of USians believe tax increases should be part of the strategy for paying down the debt, rather than relying on budget cuts alone.
[H/T to @ThinkProgress.]
Imagine That
CNN has a reasonably decent article by Madison Park about two new studies published today which "suggest reframing the way medical practitioners look at overweight and obese patients. The studies question the notion that BMI and weight determine health—even when someone is severely obese."
You mean that fat and healthy are not mutually exclusive concepts?! HOLY SHIT. It's almost like all the fat people who have been saying that very thing for years as if they knew better about their own bodies than people who had simply internalized bullshit narratives about cake-devouring fatties were right after all!
I found this bit particularly sad:
The conventional wisdom is that if you're overweight or obese, you're in mortal danger because that extra weight is like a ticking time bomb ready to unleash diabetes, heart disease and other health complications.And yet fat people (especially fat women) die every year because they walk into doctors' offices with complaints that are ignored by doctors who can't see past fat. Shortness of breath? Lose weight. Whoops, that was a pulmonary embolism. Pain in your leg? Lose weight. Whoops, that was bone cancer. The first doctor I saw when I had a herniated disk in my back many years ago told me it was back pain from fat. Lose weight. I damn well knew it wasn't muscle pain, and I knew damn well it was something related to a known cyst on my spine, but I walked and walked and walked because, well, maybe if I lost weight I would feel better. That's what all my doctors told me. I went on a 20-mile hike through the Scottish Highlands, and went into shock at the end of it, because my disk had herniated so severely. By the time I went to the emergency room at Northwestern in Chicago after I got home, I couldn't even walk and had permanent nerve damage to my left foot.
But doctors have known for years that obesity doesn't affect all people the same way.
I never lost any weight, but I ended up in the hospital for a week after emergency surgery, and I lost significant mobility that my fat body had had before.
Whoops.
