Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Suet Day For Golf

So I went to Ace Hardware to get some nuthatch treats for the bird feeder.


After I left the store, the sleet/snow mix started to pick up. Immediately, one thought came to mind. That's right, Hitler GOLF!








Look at these quitting quitters! I bet they're Sarah Palin fans. Go ahead and quit, you big quitters!











UPDATE: Suet installation:



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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Morning Sounds - Cacapon Mountain, West Virginia





Mountain Laurel Checkup: Looking Good!




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Monday, March 28, 2011

Checking in with Krgthulu

Seeing as the paywall goes up in about 1 1/2 hours, I figured I'd click on over to see what Paul Krugman is up to. (Given that this is probably the only NYT link I'll be clicking, I'm not sure that I'll ever have a paywall issue, anyway.)


Anyways, Paul K. sounds like he's just about had it with Bush's Third Term (or perhaps I'm projecting?):

But the way I see it, Obama adopted Republican framing of the budget debate — including the rhetoric about how families are tightening their belts so the government should too — as early as the 2010 State of the Union, back when Democrats had 59 Senate seats and control of the House.
...
So, can we now count on Obama, at least, not to preemptively surrender to the right by proposing Social Security cuts — cuts that we know will be a starting point, not an end to the discussion?

No, we can’t.


UPDATE: General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of "former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress."

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.


Pictured Below: Obama with Job Czar Jeffrey Immelt



Perhaps if you gave Jeffrey Immelt and company another billion dollars, they'd hire some people from this country, Barry? (I'm kidding, please don't take this suggestion!)
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Saturday, March 26, 2011

New York Times News

First up, Bill Keller:




Has anyone actually seen James O’Keefe and Julian Assange together? Are we quite sure that the right-wing prankster who brought down the leadership of National Public Radio and the anarchic leaker aren’t split personalities of the same guy — sent by fate to mess with the heads of mainstream journalists?

Sure, one shoots from the left, the other from the right. One deals in genuine (albeit purloined) secrets; the other in “Candid Camera” stunts, most recently posing as a potential donor and entrapping a foolish NPR executive into disclosing his scorn for Republicans and the Tea Party. Assange aims to enlist the media; O’Keefe aims to discredit us. But each, in his own guerrilla way, has sown his share of public doubt about whether the press can be trusted as an impartial bearer of news.

Good grief! Number one, James O'Keefe edited all his videos to take remarks out of context and provide misleading narratives. In spite of having done this with ACORN and with Shirley Sherrod, when he did it again with NPR, the corporate media uncritically passed it along. James O'Keefe is a fraud, but you've repeatedly picked the up the gun he set on the table and shot yourselves in the feet with it.

Number two, you're going to play the victim here and use the term "purloined" to disparage Wikileaks? Think way back. Back into time! Way back when the New York Times had some credibility and didn't uncritically pass along government press releases as the 'news'. Remember the Pentagon Papers? The "purloined" Pentagon Papers?
Some years ago, a colleague tried to sum up the essentials that set us apart from agenda-driven journalists of the right and the left.

The first is that we believe in verification rather than assertion. We put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny. We put our faith in the expensive and sometimes perilous business of witness.

One side of our political spectrum has engaged in class warfare for three decades, and we're buried in debt, entangled in overseas quagmires, and have a society that's reaching levels of income inequality typical of a banana republic as a direct result. Yet the N.Y. Times is going to bring pretend that each side's statements have equal veracity as if every day is a blank slate, and present this as a virtue. Thanks for nothing, Bill. I'm sure it's a coincidence that the owner of the New York Times is a billionaire who inherited his empire, and thus is also a direct beneficiary of this class warfare. (The same is true for the Washington Post, which if anything has shed its reputation even faster than the Times.)

So there is a corollary to this first precept: when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible. Connoisseurs of penitence find The Times a bottomless source of amusement. (An actual correction: “An article in The Times Magazine last Sunday about Ivana Trump and her spending habits misstated the number of bras she buys. It is two dozen black, two dozen beige and two dozen white, not two thousand of each.”)

At the other end of the culpability scale, I’ve had a few occasions to write mea culpas after we let down our readers in more important ways — including for some reporting before the war in Iraq that should have dug deeper and been more skeptical about the supposed weapons of mass destruction
.
Oh, so cute. Sure the NYT eventually canned Judy Miller, but her partner in crime, Michael Gordon, is still there drawing paychecks. As Glenn Greenwald has documented extensively, you are still passing along government spin as God's truth. You have yet to explain why waterboarding is torture when other governments do it, but not when our own does.

This is why you've lost your credibility. You've squandered it yourselves.

Second, I see that Bob Herbert is leaving the New York Times. Why don't you read his column, Bill, and think to yourself, "This is what we should be doing." Your job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. You've gotten it all backwards.


The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.
P.S. H/T to BDR for the Bill Keller link...I've grown accustomed to reading Pauk Krugman and Bob Herbert and nothing else there.
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Friday, March 25, 2011

Koch Whores To America: OMG, DIAF! LOL!


Today is the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The pig above, Paul LePage, was elected Governor of Maine with 38% of the vote in a five candidate election. He is the latest Koch Whore to pull down his pants and moon the working people of this country.



Let fury have the hour, anger can be power. D'you know that you can use it?


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ORBS In Motion


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Thursday, March 24, 2011

Bush's Third Term

Going as well as one would expect.


IOZ, re:Afghanistan and war in general.

The Medium Lobster, on Obama's totally excellent Libyan adventure.

UPDATE: New Picture, gifted by fish.

P.S. Via Glenn Greenwald:
Suffice to say, it is no longer provocative or controversial when someone like Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin writes, as he did the other day, that Obama "has more or less systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the George W. Bush Administration."
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Mango Fries

Mango Fries (almost): Do just like I did here, only leave the broiler on longer at the start before switching to bake mode. These cooked Mango slices came out fine, but the first time I tried it (because I had a mango sitting around getting too ripe), they came out of the oven completely dried out and looking like french Freedom™ fries. Yet tasting so much better!





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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Super Moon + Orbs

Saturday's full moon will be was a super "perigee moon" -- the biggest in almost 20 years.






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Friday, March 18, 2011

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Sin Happy Vacationists





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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Monday, March 14, 2011

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other Things



Paul Krugman asks: "So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?"

Which of these things is not like the other things?

1) Bush tax cuts
2) Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
3) Deregulation
4) Social Security

Social Security is not a major contributor to our national debt of $14 trillion.

Social Security does not put money directly into the pockets of our society's wealthiest members.

So why are we talking about cutting this fourth thing, Social Security? It's simply more class warfare on behalf of the plutocrats. The people concern trolling about Social Security now have proven over the last few decades that they don't give a damn about the national debt or the accumulated annual deficits and interest on same that created it.

I'm ashamed of the President I voted for in 2008, he's on the wrong side of too many issues. We need a Democratic party that's an alternative to the Republican party, not its enabler.

Thers has a similar post. We can all see it.

But our national political parties, their sycophants in the media and on K-Street, and most importantly, the owners of all three groups are determined that the truth neither be seen, nor talked about.

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Sunday, March 13, 2011

Who Run Sparrowtown, Part II

As expected, Robin 'hood, Part III was the biggest box office hit of the series, in spite of being panned by the critics.



Saturday was a beautiful spring day here in Columbus, with a high in the 60s (albeit with winds gusting up to 20 mph).











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