Ebenezer’s Return

     Hey!  I think something may have happened in the Senate today…I’m hearing they passed some kinda legislation.  Some Republican, whose last name rhymes with” Complainer”  called it bad names, which means it must be good for America. Good enough for me.  He said of it:

Not even Ebenezer Scrooge himself could devise a scheme as cruel and greedy as Democrats’ government takeover of health care

    I thought Ebenezer Scrooge ”knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”   Well… by the end of the book he did anyway.  And isn’t how you end at least as important as how you begin?  And who is being the Humbug here?  Why do you Hate, Rep. Boehner?  You are lying about this bills adding to the debt when it doesn’t, talking about it being a takeover of health care when it doesn’t, and saying the rest of the bill will be “hammered out in secret” when that is clearly not the case.  Who’s the Ebenezer Scrooge here?

    John Boehner is in fact Rep. Bah Humbug from The Tanning Salon, and he’s the only one who doesn’t know it. Watch a viddy with George C. Scott in “A Christmas Carol”

   

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    Hugs aren’t always a good thing.  Proof?

     A crazy woman, who apparently wanted to “hug the Pope” was arrested, as she broke through a security barrier, rushed the pope and managed to pull the man to the ground, even with a security guard draped on her.   An 87 year old french cardinal broke his leg falling away from the melee,  although the good news here is that the Pontiff, unhurt, went on with the procession and said mass.  The woman is currently in the custody of Vatican police.  Maybe she was thinking about this?  Who knows…

      First Italian security lets through a man who flattens Prime Minister Berlusconi with a statuette, and now a woman attempts to hug the pontiff with such vigor that bones are broken. One wonders how much training their security officers get. 

      Silly humans.  People are strange, even on Christmas. 

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      I’m watching Santa on Norad’s Santa tracker.  Apparently at 10:00pm New York time, The big fat red bastard is currently flying over greenland.  Two minutes ago he was over Rio De Janeiro.  The man has some hella afterburners on that sleigh.  No wonder Norad follows him.  They wanna find out how he gets that sleigh flying that fast. 

    Maybe it’s all the blow those reindeer do.  Who knows? 

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    I’m done.  Later.

Today’s nuggets, from Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”, Via wikiquote:  There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

All The Money In The World…

     …can’t buy happiness, but it can rent it.   No money however, definitely gets you heartache, not to mention stress, and anger, and most of the other negative emotional reactions you can have.  So when they say money can’t buy happiness, they’re talking out of their necks.  Yes it can, insofar as it confers both comfort and stability.  Or do you think that a lack of comfort and stability leaves room for a great deal of happiness? You can have moments of happiness, the joy of friends or the happiness being with the love of your life, but the lack of money, the discomfort that lack confers, slowly destroys domestic felicity.  So while money can’t buy happiness, it does make it easier to hold onto and maintain.

    I’m just saying…

  A Viddy, of the Prez speaking of the meeting he had with community bankers. 

    

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    More money stuff, less philosophical, more actual economic news.  The Government is…actually getting smaller, at least the amount of money it lends, spends and guarantees is shrinking.  The amount, according to Bloomberg news is at it’s lowest point in a year, down to $8.2 trillion dollars.  This is apparently taking place because the Obama white house and congress are shifting focus away from Central Bank lending, and moving more towards stimulus spending, according to the bloomberg report.

  And the big boys are making money again.  Goldman really Suchs has pulled in a record $27.3 Billion in trading revenue, doubling their previous record, and JP Morgan’s trade revenue went up 122%.  So, something must be working right. 

    But were still eyeball deep in debt.  That hasn’t changed.  Let’s hope the small goodness above makes for better news in future regarding that debt. 

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   Hey! More good money news!  We the people have MADE A PROFIT off of tarp!  Srsly!  $16,000,000,000 worth.  not too shabby, seeing how we were supposed to take a financial hit on this.  But that doesn’t mean it’s all happiness and light for us and tarp.  There are over 50 institutions that are late paying it off, mostly smaller banks, but the big issues is AIG.  We gave those schmucks $40,000,000,000 in tarp funds, according to this report ( There was at least $130,000,000,000 more but that wasn’t TARP money as I recall)

   So we haven’t heard the last from this beast of a story.  But at least there something happening that doesn’t entirely suck here.   

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    Off on a serious tangent:  The President says he never campaigned on the Public option.  But he did.  I remember it, and it was on Countdown tonight, showing a viddy of him doing just that.  Is it a disappointment? Ya, a bit, but at this point, you take what you can get, legislatively, and fix the inconvenient issues that arise from the legislation later on.  Despite all the hoopla of the election cycle, when push comes to shove, he’s a politician.  He does what he has to do to get what he thinks needs to be done done when he can do it.  It’s called political expediency, did you think it would never happen with him? No? srsly?

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   Off on a less than serious tangent:  A link which explains why the public option SUCKS, A link with a lawyer joke(that’s right, just one), and a most excellent site for the serious guitarist! srsly! Just found it and dammit, I like it.

    A curious viddy with Yul Brynner to close things out.  Before I saw this I didn’t know the man played guitar. Enjoy!

   

Today’s nuggets, via wikiquote(except that last one, I don’t remember where I got it) :  No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.   Luke 16:13

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.  Leo Tolstoy

A fool and his money are soon partying.  Steven Wright

Minor fix 3:21 am 12/24.

The Good With The Bad

   

    YAY!  The Asshat isn’t running for anything!  Nice!   He’s even being nice enough to put the kiss of death on Rick Lazio!  Talk about being nice to the people of New York.  Thanks Rudy!  He hasn’t been this good to New York…well… EVER. 

    And I really do have to apologize to those who think Rudy is the shit because of 9/11.  Without 9/11 , Giuliani would have easily gone down as one of the worst mayors this city has ever had, and every time this weak piece of horse manure makes a decision that keeps him out of power, i can do naught but applaud. 

   The man said he cut taxes all over the place during his reign as mayor, but didn’t cut nearly as much as he claimed in public, those of us who followed the 2008 Presidential campaign should have no problem remembering him pulling that stunt, lying about his tax record.  He took credit for the drop in crime in  New York City during his tenure, but crime was going down nationwide in major cities during that time, so it wasn’t just him, and most of what he did was harass people with his petty little quality of life crime bullshit.  You really aren’t fighting crime by giving out tickets for having an open beer in public. 

   But Rudy always was about bullshit.  Good to see he’s done.  He was a great prosecutor, I wish him luck wherever he goes, so long as it isn’t in politics.

   And also…. LAZIO SUCKS.

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    A happy viddy/link here from two years ago, about cops as agent provocateurs at protests.  An even happier link from a few months ago, about the link between cursing and pain relief, with an important caveat at the end of the article.   A very interesting link here, a story from ode magazine about something called a “time bank”.  I’m going to do research into this, see what this curious concept can do for me, and the world around me.

    I’m a new member of Stumble Upon, after checking it out and looking at stuff from there on and off for a while.  This is just a sample of the stories I’ve been looking up while stumbling alternative news.  Found this weirdy stumbling through their chaos/complexity section.  Odd Japanese art, one guesses based in some way on fractal geometry.  The sound throws me off here though, maybe it’s there to heighten the artiness of it.   Tis excellent fun though.  Wish I knew Japanese so I could figure out what the hell the script on the page says.

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     Still looking for work, and I am, as I have for the last month or so, been looking at lawyers, getting read to file chapter 7 bankruptcy.  I am still poor and still happy to have a roof over my head.   I’m thankful and happy that I have the support system around me that I do. During this festive time that is the best gift I could receive.

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   OK.  Someone has to explain this one for me.  How are the Yankees a better team after losing 3 outfielders?  I’m glad to have Curtis Granderson.  I’m glad to have ANYONE in the outfield.  Nick Johnson? He’s good, but do we need Nick Johnson?  We have Mark Teixiera at first base, did we need a second first baseman? Or is the plan to MAKE him an outfielder?  I dunno if he was an outfielder in high school or something, but they really need to do something here. 

    And didn’t we already have Javier Vazquez on the Yankees? I remember him being less then great here in 2004, he is suddenly Walter Johnson? I don’t think so.  Unless something happens soon, you can kiss the dream of winning two World Series in a row goodbye.

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   That’s it from here.  Later.

Today’s nuggets, via wikiquote:  We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for thirty or forty or fifty years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.  Rudy Giuliani

Short Pieces

     

    Joe Scarborough annoys me.  Pat Buchanan annoys me.  Ron Paul isn’t a bad guy tho…    

      Reading on bloomberg that Ben Bernanke won the battle with deflation.   Good for him.  I thought that was what he was supposed to be doing, keeping fed overnight rates as low as they are and have been for the past year.  And it was just him, right?  No one else worked on it?  …I digress.   Now lets see what the man does when Inflation rears it’s ugly head.  I presume he’ll handle it, but the question, as with all large scale financial questions, is a simple one.  What will he do to insure that there is no next time?  

     I presume not enough, but I’m a pessimist as far as our economic future is concerned.

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    Verizon  SUCKS.  Big bunch of friggin idiots, the lot of them (unless i get a job with them, then they’re all wonderful, LOL)  Read this article from Ars Technica on them and their ETF and Mobile web browser thievery. 

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     I’m looking at a bunch of different jobs at this point in my night.  I’ve been looking for work today since about 9:30pm.  The point of doing this is obvious, to have my resume be the first one (or one of the first ones) on any prospective employers desk when they get in on Monday morning.   I am also starting to look outside my areas of expertise, partly I want to improve the odds of getting a good job relatively quickly, but mainly because, despite all that I have heard about the job market opening up, I have yet to find a job.  Makes paying the bills a wee bit difficult, lack of money coming in, ya know?

   The question I am asking myself is, how far afield should I go when doing this?  I’m an ugly bastard,  maybe availing myself of modeling / acting might not work, but what’s the worst that happens, I don’t get a job?  That’s been happening for awhile.  Time to fling crap on the wall and see what sticks….Just gotta make sure I don’t get to silly with it.  This isn’t a joke, it’s my future I’m talking about.

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   4 -8 oz. New York Strip steaks,  1 ½lb. Boneless pork roast,  1 lb. Chicken Breast Fajita strips,  1 lb lean ground beef.  1½ lbs all white meat chicken tenders,   1 lb. of fish sticks,   2 ham steaks, 2 lbs. french fries,  1 lb lima beans,  1 lb. green beans,   2 lbs of fresh apples,   a dozen eggs,  10 tortillas, 1 qt. shelf stable milk, and a  2 lb. sweet potato pie.

     for $30.

    This, THIS is why I like angel food ministries.  Anyone can order and get any of a great many packages like this, relatively cheaply.  The cuts of meat are top notch, all the food is good, no fighting with people in a store, no coupons, no being unsure about prices.  And the nicest people around.  Everything was thrown out of whack due to the storm, but these people bent over backwards to be as helpful as possible.  

     Thank you, Angel food ministries.

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     That’s it for me. Later.

Today’s Nuggets, via wikiquote:  I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.   Benjamin Disraeli

We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man.  Maimonides

There’s a time when you have to separate yourself from what other people expect of you, and do what you love. Because if you find yourself 50 years old and you aren’t doing what you love, then what’s the point?  Jim Carrey

A Hot Steaming Mug of…

    Sen. Joe Lieberman got bitch slapped in public today. 

     Like them or hate them, one thing you can’t say about senators is that they are capable of brevity.  If you’ve ever watched proceedings live from the Senate floor you know that.  Al Franken, acting supposedly on orders from Harry Reid, in the cause of keep everyone as precisely on the clock as possible, shut Joe up.  And let me be clear, these people are generally not rude to each other, and Sen. Al very much went against the unwritten rule that a senator always gets to finish his or her speech, a fairly rude gesture.

  

    And let me be clear with one other thing.  The story that this was about time on the senate floor, which is the official story, is bullshit.  Al did this, not as Acting President Pro Tempore, which is how it would happen if it was actually how the official story is supposed to have happened, but as Senator from Minnesota.  This appears to be  Al making sure it is known that this was personal. Harry Reid just tossed that excuse out there to give Al some cover.  And Joe has to take it.  It’s a small thing, but an important small thing.  A shot across Lieberman’s bow.

    This was a public slap at a man who the Democrats feel, correctly, have hung them out to dry and used and abused them.  Senator Joe, the Senator from Aetna, for the first time felt the sting (admittedly a small one) of an angry Democratic party.  I do not think this will be the last public slap either. 

   And maybe someone up high in the administration likes it.  C-span usually takes between 24 to 48 hours to get anything from the senate or house floor to youtube.  This happened at 3:44pm today.  I found it at 7:45.  a 4 hour turnaround might not be a record for a C-span viddy to get to youtube for consumption by the general public, but its friggin close. 

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    Tell me, Mike Goldfarb, one blogger to another, WTF were you thinking?   For those who don’t know, he passed off a false story as true, claiming that Sen. Ben Nelson had been threatened with a military base closing in his state if he didn’t vote for health care legislation.

    Bullshit from one end to the other.  Sen. Nelson has said this didn’t happen.  Sen. Nelson’s aide says it’s not true, and that it’s “inside the beltway partisans who want to derail health care”   So where the hell did you get the info? Just made it up? Was it YOU who said it just to say you heard it said, and then just added the senate aide bit?  We’ve already heard from his top aide and press spokesman.  Did ya talk to his friggin dog, dumbass?

   Idiot.  And what’s worse is that the story actually has gained traction on the right.  Malkin, Limbaugh and Beck have grabbed this non-existent story and run with it.  Beck for one (in one of those guaranteed to be B.S. ”RUSH TRANSCRIPTS” fox tosses out) starts off his bit with his usual line about trying to get his stories right.  He might try, but he’s got a pretty high fail rate.  I’ve jumped in and read and or watched Beck a few times.  EVERY TIME he says something this wrong, that is the statement he uses to start his lies up. 

   No link for the beck story, and no video.  You want to read his bullshit or watch it, you find it yourself, I ain’t helping you.  I watched the video. It’s a bunch of crap from one end to another.  He says there are 3 separate sources. There aren’t, it’s just a rumor, and Ben Nelson thinks he knows who  started it. Don’t be surprised if someone ends up being very publicly bitch slapped in the next few days. 

   Yer an idiot Goldfarb.

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     Enjoy an Day Job Orchestra viddy,  9/11 Trek. 

   

    That’s about it from here. 

Today’s Nuggets, by Al Franken, via Wikiquote:   The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They’re about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover

If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they’ll tell you that the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America…. They don’t get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America the way a 4-year-old loves her Mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.”