There are about 350,000,000 people in the US, including children. $700,000,000,000, divided evenly among them, would amount to approximately $2000 per person. I don’t personally want to pony up two large to provide an ass-catcher for some corporate cocksucker who’s found his balls in the wringer.
Here’s my corporate bailout plan: Let the overextended banks tank. Fuck ’em. Our nation is nowhere near 1929 levels; we’ll weather this. Round up the CEOs of the Fortune 500 — all of them — and send them to Guantanamo as enemy combatants whose terrorist behavior has corrupted the US economy. And during the November congressional elections: 100% turnover. Fire every incumbent.
Bush et. al. want us to believe this is a “crucial” situation that must be dealt with immediately. The last time we listened to this shitbag, we ended up in a hopeless war on two fronts and endless illegal unconstitutional internal spying, wiretapping, etc., and it’s his frat buddies that got us into this mess. Are we really so stupid that we’ll listen to them and believe them now?
It really says it all.
Demonstrators protest the proposed 700 billion USD Wall Street bail-out in front of the New York Stock Exchange in the Financial District in New York on September 25, 2008. In response to the global financial crisis, protesters, from a variety of activist groups, denounced the capitalist system, Wall Street and the administration of US President George W, Bush. Photo: NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images
Via My [confined] Space.
This ad for Sensoa (apparently a Belgian group dedicated to sexual health) is clever on more than one level.
The big payoff is at the very end.
I put the ad below the fold because it’s a Flash video that begins playing immediately, and who needs that?
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Ever redesign a logo for a $150 mln institution on your own?
Well, I did.
More, as I said, later.
It’s fascinating to me to hear McCain and Obama expound on policy, as though they were already elected and dictating to congress. One of them surely will be, but the hubris required to behave as though you’ve already won is genuinely — well, entertaining.
McCain is now saying that he would “pre-emptively” strike (that is, incite war with) Iran if that nation were to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Isn’t that a bit, well, lateish? I mean, isn’t that the biggest reason we haven’t attacked Pakistan or North Korea (at least not directly)? Isn’t there just the slightest concern that a nuke-possessing nation might, oh I don’t know, actually use its nukes?
Jesus. In trying to maverick his way around the Bush Doctrine, that doddering old goddamned fool manages to get it completely wrong. Why is it that no one in the “liberal media” is publicizing this shit?
Those of you unfamiliar with Pharyngula might have missed a link from PZ.
We have a new euphemism and a potential new regulation from the Bush administration: “provider conscience rights”. What this is about is providing religious doctors with loopholes so that they can avoid responsibility for treating patients with the best possible care — so they can use religious excuses to justify neglect.
That’s not really hysteria on PZ’s part; there’s reason to be concerned. I looked over the press release covering this proposed change, and left a comment on the government’s feedback system. You might want to do the same. My message to the fed is under the fold.
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A while back I said this was probably the best photo I’d ever taken.
I didn’t count on this.
Or this.
Sisters, brother.
Beautiful kids, beautiful day.
Oh my God, what a beautiful day.
CNN’s story led with a provocative and possibly-alarming header: “Cell phones can affect sperm quality, researcher says”. That’s distressing by virtually any rational standard, no?
Cellular phones have a long history of being feared and mistrusted. There is an abundance of people who believe they cause brain cancer, despite lack of anything like hard evidence; a few years ago they were being blamed for fires at filling stations (something ably debunked by MythBusters in episode 14); they’ve even been blamed for lightning-strike deaths. The one thing we know is dangerous about them — using them while driving — is still stubbornly pursued by people who really ought to know better.
By now, many of us have probably heard about the egg supposedly cooked when it was placed between two active cellular phones. That, as it turns out, is also a hoax. The RF (radio frequency) energy emitted by a cellular phone is in the milliwatt range, and often it’s not even in the microwave frequency zone (1 to 40 GHz; most handsets operate between 600 and 900 MHz, just below the microwave spectrum). There are 1.2 and 2.4 GHz cordless telephone units that operate at higher frequencies than cellular phones — and many people don’t think twice about picking up a unit like that and talking for an hour or more.
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Here’s the AP on McCain. No shit.
John McCain embraces and expels Washington like an accordion player belting out a song.
Squeeze in and he touts his vast knowledge of the capital city. Draw out and he casts himself a reformer bent on changing its ways. […]
Squeeze in, and he’s the new capital tour guide for his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. […]
Draw out, and he’s never set foot in the city himself. […]
Squeeze in, and he’s got the Washington skill set needed to right the country’s Wall Street woes. […]
Draw out, and he distances himself from the administration of the Republican president who has endorsed him. […]
There are even times when McCain does both — squeeze in and draw out — in the same thought.
This is our fourth estate, people. Yours and mine. The first draft of history.
As I commented on Wonkette, this is not flexibility; it’s further evidence that McCain is a wind sock whose opinion matches the prevailing breeze in the room. That, or it’s the onset of dementia — but he’s been doing this for years. Years.
John McCain is like an old granddad rocking in a rocking chair on the porch. “When I was your age everything cost a nickel!” He rocks forward. “You could buy a house for one hundred dollars.” He rocks backward. “And you could get real cocaine in your Coca-Cola!” He rocks forward. “And it only cost ONE NICKEL!” He rocks backward.
We need not just a lower age limit for politicians, but an upper one as well.
Ike — aptly named if one knows the history of the Turners — did a hell of a lot of damage. I don’t know how the Jesus crowd feels about what keeps happening to Galveston (it gets hit pretty regularly, and last I heard, it’s not a gay mecca), but I’m sure they’re trying to exonerate their sky daddy by any means available.
Unfortunately such means surfaced with a story on MSNBC about a lioness that ended up sheltering in a Baptist church during the storm.
The full-grown lion was from a local zoo, and the owner was trying to drive to safety with the animal when he saw cars and trucks stranded in the rising floodwaters. He knew he and the lion were in trouble.
He headed for the church and was met by a group of residents who helped the lion wade inside, where they locked it in a sanctuary as the storm raged. The water crept up to their waists, and two-by-fours came floating through broken windows. But the lion was as calm as a kitten.
Before the Christard babble begins: No, this is not a case of the lamb lying down beside the lion. Unfortunately, you know as well as I do that they’re not going to see it that way.
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This is a hell of a fun little test to take. There are 100 hue tiles arranged in 4 rows, and you have to sort them.
I only got four wrong, which isn’t particularly shabby. I wonder how they’re filtering for displays, though; I’m using a calibrated CRT. I don’t know how the test would break down on an LCD or plasma display.
I found that it got more difficult the longer I worked at it because of the afterimages; after a while everything just started turning into grey stripes. I had to look at other things for a while to reset my eyes.
(No, that is not how it ended up when I was done with it.)
Via How.
There is absolutely nothing in the vast wasteland of television worth taking in today. We’re due for another day of maudlin, obscenely inane retrospectives.
Jesus’ General kindly references Ani DiFranco for us, while Wonkette skewers the trash favored by white trash.
I have nothing of importance to add to the discussion.
