random ramblings

Amazing Posts: What Your Month Of Birth Tell...

May 1st

Top 5 Swine Flu Don’ts

May 1st

“I’m not saying Susan Boyle caused swine flu. I’m just saying...”
— British Junior Minister Sion...

May 1st

“For it is not every one who thinks that believes, since many...”
— St. Augustine of Hippo

May 1st

“Today, I called my mom for the first time in a few weeks,...”
— FML

May 1st

“And now for my prediction… . Prejean is going to...”
— learning my lines…

May 1st

Apparently, this afternoon’s theme is stupidity.

May 1st

In the battle of Yo Mama vs. Osama, the terrorist is...

May 1st

WORLD Magazine | Cartoons 5.9 | | May 09, 09 I love the...

May 1st

needtherapy: mikehudack: Facebook Group: World Leaders ...

May 1st

shawnblog: thelos: monkeysays: increasethepeace: ...

May 1st

According to the BabyMaker3000, this is what my kid should...

Apr 30th

“why are we so worried about swine flu? its caused the deaths...”
—  a private forum

Apr 30th

John Stossel on Credit Cards and Uncle...

sds: Credit cards are a demagogue’s dream come true. What better way to win public affection than...

Apr 29th

This picture is on our county’s ten most wanted list. ...

Apr 28th

“Talking to reporters in Istanbul, Turkey, Obama’s chief...”
— Obama’s high-velocity...

Apr 26th

The way the story of Melissa Huckaby - aka that “Sunday School teacher” - is being...

Apr 26th

“If Christianity is on the decline in an increasingly secular...”
— “Christianity Under...

Apr 26th

“An American professor doing research in London stumbled...”
— Forgotten Franklin letters...

Apr 25th

needtherapy: notthatkindagay: poortaste: gumshoe: New...

Apr 24th

needtherapy: msbadkittie: Republican governor for sale ...

Apr 24th

shawnblog: (via airport)

Apr 24th

“There is a subset of Twitter users, perhaps a...”
— What Annoys Me About Twitter -...

Apr 24th

via images.scripting.com This is the only thing getting me...

Apr 24th

HOPE AND CHANGE: Government Watchdogs Warn of Lack of Oversight For Trillions in President’s New...

Apr 24th

Though I will certainly not keep posting photos everyday, I...

Apr 24th

“Here are seven things the White House wants reporters to...”
— 100 days: What Obama wants you...

Apr 23rd

“By fetishizing youth and virginity, we’re supporting a...”
— No such thing as virginity,...

Apr 23rd

“If abandoning “torture” is seen as having led to...”
— Best of the Web Today: Ve Haf...

Apr 23rd

I really thought our office’s default music station was getting better when they started...

Apr 23rd

As promised, here is another of my favorite pictures. ...

Apr 23rd

I hate it when I am expecting an email,...

…only to get yet another email from HP, telling me about their great deals.

Apr 23rd

azspot: The threat of bigness

Apr 23rd

“…I’m sick to frigging death of people – self-identifiedly...”
— Upturned Earth (via azspot) ...

Apr 22nd

“In his ill-fated presidential campaign, Republican...”
— “Of Course It Was...

Apr 22nd

Framing the torture discussion

squashed: Recent revelations about the frequency with which certain prisoners were waterboarded...

Apr 22nd

Interrogation techniques: for...

sds: Which brings us to the next of the justifications for disclosing and thus abandoning these...

Apr 22nd

Since the subject of torture seems to be a popular one on...

Apr 22nd

Maureen Dowd: You say the brevity of Twitter enhances creativity. So I wonder if you can keep your answers to 140 characters, like Twitter users must. Twitter seems like telegrams without the news. We now know that on the president’s trip to Trinidad, ABC News’s Jake Tapper’s shower was spewing brown water. Is there any thought that doesn’t need to be published?
Biz Stone: The one I’m thinking right now.
[...]
Maureen Dowd: Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?
www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22dowd.html

Apr 22nd

I have decided to start sharing some of my photography at...

Apr 22nd

via assets.comics.com

Apr 21st

“They are the seeds of the internet. You plant some and...”
— Matt Perry - Slashdot Comments...

Apr 21st

azspot: RJ Matson I have stated previously that...

Apr 21st

“The dilemma posed by consumerism, including the Christian...”
— Skye Jethani (via azspot)

Apr 21st

“What I Have Lived For Three passions, simple but...”
— The Prologue to Bertrand...

Apr 20th

“Dunder Mifflin is committed to improving the environment....”
— Dunder Mifflin: A Micro-Cap...

Apr 20th

“The Department of Homeland Security estimates that it can...”
— Obama to order $100 million in...

Apr 20th

Photos that Changed the World

Apr 20th

“So Denny Hastert was helping the Turkish lobby with...”
— at-Largely (via azspot) I...

Apr 20th

“This government lied about their belief that all men were...”
— Rev. Jeremiah Wright (via...

Apr 20th

You know how sometimes your eyes will catch a word or two in...

Apr 20th

Watch

sds: “Marriage and Men” - Mark Driscoll This is by far one of the most convicting and...

Apr 20th

I wish I could say this was fake, or at least from a...

Apr 19th

The Teleprompter "Controversy"

squashed: The Tax Day Tea Parties brought out a lot of crazy people—and reading coverage of the...

Apr 19th

azspot: Religion vs politics

Apr 19th

shawnblog: willzone: The End is Near.

Apr 18th

mills: Whereas the wind blows through her hair precisely...

Apr 18th

wooliebear: sedatedm: Via Not too many things actually...

Apr 17th

Twitter is quite possibly the stupidest...

Yes, today is the first time I got on anyone’s Twitter.  It will also probably be the last.

Apr 17th

“It seems like just last week the convenient stereotype was...”
— Woolie: A Meditation on Taxes...

Apr 17th

“It is hard to remember that two years earlier Obama was...”
— Danny Schechter (via azspot) ...

Apr 17th

“In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not...”
— Glenn Greenwald (via azspot)

Apr 17th

“I favor the abolition of all Social Security, Medicare and...”
— Ari Fleischer Says It’s...

Apr 15th

A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues,...

Apr 15th

“There is more than taxes on the minds of the growing TEA...”
— TEA Party voices frustrations...

Apr 15th

Protests

A continuation on my earlier posting. I have had the distinct pleasure of observing (and, rarely,...

Apr 15th

Why People are Protesting

jeffmiller: squashed: Like most protests, you have some powerful interests tapping into a lot of...

Apr 15th

“Tumblr needs an “I feel your pain” button. It seems rude to...”
— Squashed, commenting here. I...

Apr 15th

Tax Day Tea Party The Tax Day Tea Party is a national collaborative grassroots effort organized by...

Apr 15th

“Gov. Rick Perry joined state Rep. Brandon Creighton and...”
— DRUDGE REPORT: TEXAS GOV. BACK...

Apr 14th

Apr 12th

Apr 10th

“To those on the political and religious right who are intent...”
— WORLD Magazine | Iowa court...

Apr 9th

Firefighters told to use poles to test fire...

Apr 9th

“America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of...”
— Bill McKibben (via azspot)

Apr 9th

azspot: mattbors.com

Apr 9th

“Puritans expected to be a minority because they thought that...”
— Dr. Dotterweich (via...

Apr 7th

“That antifat campaign, like the antisalt campaign, was...”
— Findings - Public Policy That...

Apr 7th

The meme in the press was how the test launch made Obama’s disarmament speech all the more...

Apr 7th

Barack Obama’s never had more foes — or less clothing — than in two comics about...

Apr 7th

“A megamouth shark, one of the world’s most elusive...”
— Ultra-Rare Shark Caught and...

Apr 7th

squashed: bellatoris asks, You ask, “But why would we nuke Iran? Because we like killing...

Apr 7th

Nuclear disarmament

squashed: Bellatoris asks (in response to my post on nuclear disarmament) So you see no benefit...

Apr 7th

Nuclear disarmament

squashed: Newt Gingrich insists that nuclear disarmament “is a dangerous fantasy that runs an...

Apr 7th

“General Motors - under an end-of-May deadline to come up...”
— GM, Segway team up to develop...

Apr 7th

soupsoup: mikehudack:negevrockcity:kryz: The World As...

Apr 6th

Techno Dancing Stalin Battles Martian Threat...

Apr 6th

“For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has...”
— The Rise of Partisanship in...

Apr 6th

azspot: Steve Breen

Apr 6th

“What we are in most need of today is “convicted...”
— A Letter: A Third Way Response...

Apr 6th

“The lies employed to camouflage the economic decline are...”
— Chris Hedges (via azspot) How...

Apr 6th

War and Peace - and Deceit - in Islam -...

Apr 6th

“Funny is it not, that the same people who are pro-guns are...”
— Larisa Alexandrovna (via...

Apr 6th

The Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and...

Apr 6th

Get Fuzzy free online comic strip library at comics.com

Apr 6th

The question that flummoxed the great...

[Again, as the original author used both italics and bold, I have forgone italicizing this quoted...

Apr 5th

“There might even be good news in the Iowa decision for gays...”
— The Meaning of Iowa’s...

Apr 5th

Meet Obama's pollsters

Apr 4th

Obama to call for world without nuclear...

Apr 4th

Bill Moyers sits down with William K....

[As an aside, I was going to reblog and highlight only a portion of this, but after reading the whole thing, I thought it all should go in. Also, here's William K. Black's bio www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/black.htm] - bellatoris
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.
BILL MOYERS: In other words, they could have closed these banks without nationalizing them?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, you do a receivership. No one -- Ronald Reagan did receiverships. Nobody called it nationalization.
BILL MOYERS: And that's a law?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's the law.
BILL MOYERS: So, Paulson could have done this? Geithner could do this?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not could. Was mandated--
BILL MOYERS: By the law.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: By the law.
BILL MOYERS: This law, you're talking about.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: What the reason they give for not doing it?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: They ignore it. And nobody calls them on it.
BILL MOYERS: Well, where's Congress? Where's the press? Where--
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, where's the Pecora investigation?
BILL MOYERS: The what?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: The Pecora investigation. The Great Depression, we said, "Hey, we have to learn the facts. What caused this disaster, so that we can take steps, like pass the Glass-Steagall law, that will prevent future disasters?" Where's our investigation?
What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, "Oh, we don't want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking. Many people might have been, you know, we don't want to pass blame. No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them. And here, we've got a double tragedy. It isn't just that we are failing to learn from the mistakes of the past. We're failing to learn from the successes of the past.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: In the Savings and Loan debacle, we developed excellent ways for dealing with the frauds, and for dealing with the failed institutions. And for 15 years after the Savings and Loan crisis, didn't matter which party was in power, the U.S. Treasury Secretary would fly over to Tokyo and tell the Japanese, "You ought to do things the way we did in the Savings and Loan crisis, because it worked really well. Instead you're covering up the bank losses, because you know, you say you need confidence. And so, we have to lie to the people to create confidence. And it doesn't work. You will cause your recession to continue and continue." And the Japanese call it the lost decade. That was the result. So, now we get in trouble, and what do we do? We adopt the Japanese approach of lying about the assets. And you know what? It's working just as well as it did in Japan.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: You are.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong.

Apr 4th

“Cathy Curtis, a former staff writer for The LA Times, shares...”
— kottke.org - home of fine...

Apr 4th

squashed: I asked how funny it would be if Ted Stevens ran against Sarah Palin in Alaska’s...

Apr 3rd

FT.com / Global Economy - G20 leaders hail crisis fightback ...

Apr 3rd

“I think that it is important for Europe to understand that...”
— Obama Takes Charm Offensive to...

Apr 3rd

Colorado man kills his mother with guitar

Apr 3rd

gilmoure: mrs-fishtits: addieplum: via...

Apr 3rd

Tunnel Harry

Apr 3rd

First Edition of the Washington Wire, 1940

Apr 2nd

Scientists at Yahoo! today released Ideological Search, allowing users to control the ideology of...

Apr 2nd

“The Alternative Was to Self-Finance After Inheriting the...”
— Best of the Web Today: The...

Apr 2nd

“It seems to us that it is not healthy for American democracy...”
— Best of the Web Today: The...

Apr 2nd

Ted Stevens and Mark Begich

squashed: So the Ted Stevens investigation and prosecution was botched.  This doesn’t mean Stevens...

Apr 2nd

“If I set myself to think of couples in marriages that I...”
— Douglas Wilson (via...

Apr 2nd

Have You Ever Eaten Alone in a Restaurant?...

Apr 2nd

“That is how Barack Obama arrived in London last night, with...”
— In a blaze of dazzling light...

Apr 1st

Obama Seeks Expanded Power to Seize U.S. Treasury (2009-03-25) — The Obama administration and the...

Apr 1st

Obama Presents Global Economic Recovery Plan to a Resistant...

Apr 1st

More from CADIE: hi! OMG here i am. im cadie im a AI...

Apr 1st