Posts from — May 2012

Richard Lugar has lost his attempt to run for re-election to his seventh term in the Senate, so his seat is actually in play this year as the ‘purity purge’ continues among the Republicans. The Democrat who is running would be called a moderate Republican if there was any truth in labeling for politicians.

It doesn’t look like any of the parties who contested the Greek election are going to be able to form a government, so there will have to be another election in a month.

Juan Cole notes that a day after talking about calling an early election, Netanyahu has cut a deal to bring the Kadima party into the ruling coalition, so he can continue in power until the scheduled election in 2013.

Netanyahu has been attempting to pass some ‘feel good’ legislation before the election, but his ultra-whacko coalition partners are refusing to cooperate. He knows the election will be a disaster for Likud if he doesn’t at least make an effort to show he cares about Israelis who aren’t among the ultra-Orthodox.

North Carolina has decided to include Sharia law in its constitution. The voters don’t know that, but they have. This is just the latest implementation of Sharia law in Republican controlled states in vain attempts to make people feel ‘virtuous’. It is amazing how little the ‘Christian moralists’ seem to know about the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. Leviticus and Revelation are they only two books they seem to read.

I would like to second Avedon Carol’s recommendation on reading a couple of my favorite author’s books to understand banking.

In Terry Pratchett’s two novels, Going Postal and Making Money, you learn about the consummate conman, Moist von Lipwig, and his resurrection of the Post Office and the Bank in Ankh-Morpork on Discworld.

The reason for reading them is to appreciate the importance of the Post Office and have a painless introduction to Modern Monetary Theory. Making Money was published in 2007, but it could have been written about any of the ‘too big to fail’ banks involved in the our global meltdown.

An additional reason I’m reminded of Going Postal is that this Saturday, May 12^th, is the annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive of the Postal Workers. I participate every year by filling a bag with non-perishable food items and putting it on the mail box Friday night. The food pantries need the help, because they are serving an ever-increasing number of people.

And Rahm Emanuel is a clueless jerk.

Digby is annoyed with him, which a a waste of time and effort. Yes, one has to wonder who thought it would be a good idea for the mayor of Chicago to attend a dinner hosted by the French ambassador, but Emanuel opining in his typical ignorance that François Hollande looks more like a prime minister than a president, shows a basic lack of knowledge about Sarkozy’s problems in France.

Sarkozy had a 65% approval rating when he was elected, but lost a big chunk of that within hours of being elected because he held a victory party with the glitterati at an expensive restaurant, rather than celebrating ‘with the people who elected him’ at the Place de la Bastille. There are ‘rules’ about how the President must act in France, and Sarkozy ignored them, which turned off a lot of people. He became known as ‘President Bling-Bling’ for hanging around with the ‘rich and famous’. Business Week covers some of these problems that Sarkozy admits caused trouble for him at the polls. There is no doubt that the most important issue was the economy, but Sarkozy’s ‘unPresidential’ conduct also cost him votes, especially in the run-off.

NewsBiscuit is the Onion of the UK. They start with a real news article and then go to extremes.

They started with news that the military was looking for sites to put surface-to-air missiles for Olympic security and add their special twist to it.

As that didn’t cover their sense of absurdity, they decided the Royal Navy should be involved.

Having dealt with the military their next target was the UK Border Agency.

Well, it is better to laugh, than cry when your government has headed around the bend.

Lots of elections taking place in Europe in the last few days, and parties that were associated with austerity were punished for their actions.

In local elections in the UK the Conservatives and their junior partners, the Liberal Democrats, were rejected. As Scottish TV notes: Man dressed as penguin receives more votes than the Liberal Democrats. Jams covers that and more.

After the French Presidential run-off, the Nicky and Angie show became a single as the BBC reports: Socialist Francois Hollande wins French presidency

French socialist Francois Hollande has won a clear victory in the country’s presidential election.

Mr Hollande – who got an estimated 52% of votes in Sunday’s run-off – said the French had chosen “change”.

Admitting defeat, centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wished “good luck” to Mr Hollande.

In Greek parliamentary elections the two parties that made up the ruling coalition suffered major losses, as the BBC reportsL Greek main parties ‘suffer big losses’ at polls

Partial results in Greece’s parliamentary election suggest the two main parties have seen dramatic losses.

With half the votes counted, centre-right New Democracy is in the lead with 20%, down from 33.5% in 2009.

Centre-left Pasok is in third place with 13.8%, down from 43.9% in the last elections. Left-wing coalition Syriza is in second place with 16.06%.

Pasok and New Democracy, in coalition since last November, were expected to lose support to anti-austerity parties.
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The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party could enter parliament for the first time if the exit poll prediction of it winning 6.5% -7.5% of the vote comes to fruition.

There is no majority party, so the new government will have to be a coalition of some kind, but it cannot continue the national suicide of austerity in a severe recession. Of course the media will focus on the possibility of the Golden Dawn entering parliament and glide by the refutation of austerity which is common in all of these elections. Austerity is bad economics as well as bad politics.

Wikipedia usually has to “lock” its Cinco de Mayo page. I suspect it may be related to the sudden appearance of sites opposing the celebration of this semi-holiday and others who have a hissy fit about any Mexican holiday being celebrated in the US.

In Mexico Cinco de Mayo or Batalla de Puebla, is only a really big celebration in the state of Puebla, where the battle took place.

The Mexican army won the Batalla de Puebla on May the 5^th, 1862, but the French went on to Mexico City in 1863 after receiving reinforcements and installed Emperor Maximilian.

It has the status of St. Patrick’s Day in the US, an excuse to eat different food, and drink different booze, and be obnoxious show an interest in other cultures.

Margaritas, tacos, and the destruction of piñatas, that’s what it is really about.

The Mittster has had unkind things said about him by the editors of the Local Puppy Trainer: Romney, Carter and Desert One

The Daily News isn’t interested in defending President Obama’s role in the killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden. The president reinvigorated the hunt for bin Laden after it had gone slack; he overruled advisers to launch the final raid; and he succeeded where his predecessor had failed. We don’t have to defend him. He doesn’t need our help.
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“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” Mr. Romney said with a sly smile.

His message was clear: The raid to kill bin Laden was such a high-reward, low-risk affair that even an indecisive fop like Carter would have OK’d it.
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The Emerald Coast has never forgotten the sacrifices of those who died at Desert One.

Jimmy Carter is not our favorite former president, but implying that he was a doofus who took the easy way out shows that Mr. Romney either doesn’t know what happened on April 25, 1980, or doesn’t care.

Five airman stationed at Hurlburt Field died on the Desert One mission. Mr. Romney needs to find some competent people to advise him on national security and recent history, because he just ticked off the Special Ops people, and their supporters.

Cyrus Vance, Carter’s Secretary of State, opposed the mission, and resigned when Carter approved it, holding his resignation until after the mission took place to avoid giving any indication that something significant was about to happen. It definitely wasn’t a unanimous decision by Carter’s advisors, nor an easy decision to make.

So, the chairman of the county’s Tourist Development Council got into trouble and resigned after he used county money to buy a 40-foot yacht. Well, at least the title of the boat was made out to the county. He made another purchase and kept the title in his own name, according to reports today.

The Local Puppy Trainer has the story: Sheriff’s Office issues warrant for Mark Bellinger’s arrest

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office has issued an arrest warrant for Mark Bellinger, the former director of the Okaloosa County Tourist Development Council.

The Sheriff’s Office, in conjunction with the Northwest Florida Mortgage Fraud Task Force, obtained the felony warrant late Thursday.

Bellinger, 52, is facing charges of felony theft.
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Bellinger is accused of using TDC funds to purchase a home in Destin, according to an OCSO news release.

The $747,000 home is located in the Kelly Plantation neighborhood of Destin and was purchased in August 2011. The Sheriff’s office’s ongoing investigation determined that some of the funds used to purchase the home might have come from BP money funneled to the TDC following the 2010 oil spill.

No doubt he got a great price for an all cash deal and immediate closing … 😈

He must have figured out this was coming, which is probably why he resigned after they found out about the boat, to give him more time to get away.

He left a suicide note for his wife to find.

Update: Mr. Bellinger died of an apparent drug overdose in Pelham, Alabama.

New Kits On The Blocks

Axe Murderer!

[Editor: Ms Underhouse and the Pump House Gang. There is a blue and two gray tabbies with white feet.]

Friday Ark

In Memoriam

Hipparchia’s canine ‘foster mother’ to feral kittens, Fluffy Black Dog, has made his last run on the beach, and licked his last kitten. He was 16.

I lost my appreciation of anything that involves large bodies of water after an incident that involved a significant period in an inflatable that was definitely not of my choosing, so my reaction to the purchase of a boat is ‘a hole in the water into which you pour money’.

I know a guy who kept buying larger boats until he reached the point that he had purchased a boat that he could only use a few times a year because that was how often the tide went low enough for him to sail the boat under the bridge over the creek he lived on to get to the bay. He didn’t discover this until after he had purchased the boat and brought it home at the time of one of this tides, and found out afterwards about this problem. He knew when he bought it that it was too wide to put it on the trailer at his house without cutting down a couple of large trees, and about two feet off one side of his house to reach the road. This was however, THE BOAT that he had always wanted.

Apparently, the guy that the county hired to head the Tourist Development Council also has a ‘boat problem’, as the Local Puppy Trainer reports: TDC director resigns after $710,000 yacht purchase

Okaloosa County’s top tourism official stepped down under pressure Tuesday after acknowledging he bought a $710,000 yacht with bed tax money.

Mark Bellinger, who has been the head of the county’s Tourist Development Council since May 2010, told county commissioners he bought the yacht in December to use in a year-long promotional campaign.

County Administrator Jim Curry and the Sheriff’s Office are investigating the purchase.

This guy bought this boat planning on keeping it for a year to use in some tourism promotions. The final promotion involved giving away the boat!

The county is slicing and dicing everything that it does to avoid default, and this guy blows through three-quarters of a million dollars for a boat he intends to give away …

This is your fiscally conservative Republican local government that you keep hearing about, the one that thinks you should run government like a business.

Apparently the Washington Times has its knickers in a knot because Zero’s campaign is using ‘Forward’ as its new slogan [this is after people figured out that there was no Hope for a Change]. The Times is upset because V.I. Lenin once named a newspaper ‘Forward’, so if you use the word ‘Forward’ you must be a Marxist-Leninist fellow-traveler.

So, I guess the Republicans prefer ‘Retreat’ or ‘Run Away’ … 😈

Actually, the long-time official Party newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was called ‘Truth’ [Pravda], so the official Party newspaper of the Repubs must be ‘Lies’ [or ‘Fox’, which is the same thing] … 👿

I guess any meaningful discussion of things that actually matter to the American people is totally out of the question.

The ABC has a fun piece on Cameron’s problems: Cameron in crossfire as Murdoch pressure mounts

British prime minister David Cameron is continuing to defy pressure to launch an investigation into his culture secretary’s alleged links with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Mr Cameron was called in front of the House of Commons overnight amid Opposition demands for an immediate inquiry into the conduct of culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

A slew of emails released last week appeared to show Mr Hunt’s office had leaked confidential information to News Corp in the run-up to its failed attempt to take over British pay television operator BSkyB.

And if that wasn’t enough you have the BBC writing about a report just released by a committee in Parliament: Rupert Murdoch ‘not a fit person’ to lead News Corp – MPs

Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”, MPs have said.

The culture committee questioned journalists and bosses at the now-closed News of the World, as well as police and lawyers for hacking victims.

Its report has concluded that Mr Murdoch exhibited “wilful blindness” to what was going on in News Corporation.

But the committee was split six to four with Tory members refusing to endorse the report and branding it “partisan”.
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BBC business editor Robert Peston said it would push Ofcom, the media regulator, closer to the conclusion that BSkyB – 39% owned by News Corp – is not fit and proper to hold a broadcasting licence.

BSkyB is the only really profitable operation that News Corp currently owns. If Murdoch has to sell out to prevent BSkyB from losing its license, News Corp will be in worse shape than Greece. Being ‘wonderful, caring people’, investors will be offering pennies for the News Corps shares in BSkyB, and then savage the rest of News Corp.

Cameron is tied all too closely to Murdoch, and the Tories may start looking for a new leader. The problem for the party is that they definitely don’t want an election any time soon, because their poll numbers are in the sub-basement at the moment.

The May Day association with labor is all American, and just as controversial as everything of any consequence in history. The day is tied to a strike for the eight-hour day and the so-called “Haymarket Riot” of 1886. When it comes to “riots” and the Chicago police are involved, you are not going to find a single truth.

The dynamic duo that mucked up the Pledge of Allegiance, Dwight Eisenhower and his Republican Congress, made May 1^st both Law Day and Loyalty Day so those Commie working people wouldn’t get any ideas about having rights.

Don’t forget: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!