Let Them Eat Horse Cake

Donald Trump got Cake Boss star Buddy Valastro to make this cake for Ann Romney's birthday party:

Because SHUT UP HORSE CAKE that's why. Not as creepy as these cakes, but close.

We Don't Need No Stinking Wallet

CNN says most experts believe average people will be paying with their phones by 2020.  In seven years, they predict that some sort of swiping or verification scanning will replace credit cards.  And they may be right.  It makes sense that credit cards and identity theft will force people and financial institutions to go through some big changes in the next few years.

However, as we still learn shocking stories of how our information is stored unencrypted on phones, and the many ways that developers and markets lack regulation and industry standards, we are at the mercy of the dumbest app on our phone.  Let's face it, stupid apps are here to stay, and people will have to become more tech savvy to protect themselves, so there are some risks.

I wonder what the future of cash will be.  Because it's not moving currency, its value is in its physical presence. Of course, that's also its weakness, because once cash is taken it's virtually untraceable. Government would benefit from a cashless society, because then our financial transactions would be stored ledger style for their reading enjoyment.  Thieves and hackers can manipulate numbers in a database, where cash cannot be altered.

Just thoughts.  It's neat and all, but I have seen such little respect for privacy and security that I doubt I'll be taking part until I'm forced to.

Pro-Choice Hiding In Strange Places?

Bob Cesca writes a pretty interesting piece about how he came to the pro-choice conclusion, and then makes some thoughtful points about what Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have to say.  While claiming to be staunch pro-lifers, they have a few verbal missteps.  

It was Carl who gets partial credit for my transformation into a liberal Democrat.

Here's how he did it.

It was one question during a debate about abortion. One interrogative sentence. I remember exactly where Carl and I were standing in the high school library when he asked me this question: "If your girlfriend got pregnant, what would you do?" Almost without thinking, I replied, "Well, it would be her choice to make -- ohhhh." And there you go. I had admitted to being pro-choice without realizing I was pro-choice until that very minute. And of course, being intellectually honest, I conceded the point to Carl.

With that one question, Carl had ignited an epiphany of sorts that led me to liberalism. Naturally it should be "her choice." It was so obvious. What else was I supposed to do? Hold her hostage and force her to birth our (rhetorical) child? Her body, her choice.

In two different instances, Cesca points to Bachmann and Palin talking about "choice" in context of pregnancy.  For Bristol's "choice" to keep her child, to thoughts of her "choice" with Tripp, Palin speaks of an alternative.  Bachmann goes on a nice little rant about how women want their own choices in health care and respect for their medical rights.  Bachmann then says that with Obamacare that may be in danger.


Cesca and I leave each other when he indicates that this demonstrates a belief in choice.  I disagree.  It's a mere acknowledgement that there is one, compounded by their own hypocrisy.  Bachmann would say Obamacare is the reason pickles are green, as she has a contractual obligation to say Obamacare in every single speech she gives.  Palin makes a big deal about her choice and never shows gratitude that she had one.  She implies her choice is right for every woman out there.  As for Bristol, she'll never know what it's like to flip burgers for minimum wage and turn 80% of her check to daycare because dad is either not in the picture or flipping his own burgers to try to pay for rent, groceries, utilities and lack of insurance.  It's just another case of comparing apples and oranges. 


The only thing Bachmann and Palin have in common is that they would sell out all women for their political agenda.  Which makes them so deplorable the mere thought of them makes me shudder with disgust.

The Thin, Stupid Line

Florida Republican Rep. Allen West is the gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats.  He's the poster child of everything wrong with the Tea Party in a swing state like Florida and why the Republicans are in for some shocking and disappointing election results in November.  His contempt for anyone not in his chummy little clique of "patriots" is borderline hatred, and he simply can't contain himself when given a media outlet.

“There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, Socialism,” West said. “It’s about nationalizing production, it’s about creating and expanding the welfare state, it’s about this idea of social and economic justice… it is also about the creation of a secular state.”

He said proposed federal government rules requiring virtually all private insurance policies to cover female contraceptives was “really about” the federal government reclassifying religious organizations so that religion could be manipulated “however they wish.” In addition, West claimed that the government was already in the process of nationalizing production.

“Folks, do your research, understand these ideologies, this is a choice between two very clear futures for the United States of America,” West said. “And I’m not going to back down.”

Allen West wouldn't know the difference among Karl Marx, Richard Marx, and Groucho Marx, frankly.  But it sure is fun watching him spout the same FOX News propaganda over and over again, ensuring he's a national embarrassment to his constituents.  He's being saying moronic things for his entire term so far and has fled Florida's 22nd district for the far redder and safer 18th after drawing some big-league opposition.  So if Florida wants to keep this clown in the House, by all means.

I could use the laugh.  New tag: Allen West Sees Marxists EVERYWHERE.

Veepstakes 2012: Robbie And The Robot

Jonathan Karl at ABC News has updated the list of Romney's possible Veeps, and at the top of the list is Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

The popular senator from the important state of Ohio has twice been a cabinet level official, as well as a member of the House and Senate. He’s arguably the most qualified person on the list and he helped Romney beat Rick Santorum in the Ohio primary.

I'm not 100% sure about how much Portman's contacts in Ohio helped Romney, but it certainly didn't hurt him.   Portman has a number of Village-types in his corner...after all, he's who they wanted for McCain's veep in 2008.

The problem is Portman doesn't bring much of anything to the ticket other than a couple of points in Ohio. His major draw is that he has the fewest negatives, especially compared to Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal and the rest of the folks that sat out the 2012 race. He doesn't say stupid and insane things on TV like the rest of the clown car.

That's his selling point.  If anything, he's even more bland than Romney.  He's the safe choice.  Question is, will Romney go for safe, or do what McCain did and go for broke?

He may not have a choice, in the end.

StupidiNews!

• So far three Secret Service agents have lost their jobs over allegations of agents soliciting prostitutes during the President's trip to Colombia earlier this month.
• Ohio has resumed death penalty executions after a six month moratorium despite lingering questions about the methods used and legal exonerations.
• House GOP Tea Party freshmen are fighting back, asking right-wing bloggers to help keep them in office as they face increasingly skeptical voters.
• The IMF believes that European banks may have to sell some $3.8 trillion in assets in order to stay afloat should the worst happen in the EU.
• Photo blogging service Tumblr is growing up: the service will launch ads on all sites on May 2.

Last Call

NOW can we leave Afghanistan for good when our troops are doing completely stupid, moronic crap like this?

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse's severed legs.

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.

This is ghoulish, disgusting, and we're coming up on eleven goddamn years of this.  We're coming up on an entire generation of kids knowing nothing other than our war in the sandbox.  Between this and the shooting rampage last month, we have no moral authority left.  None.  It's a travesty.

Bring them home.  Just for the love of all that's good in the world, go.

Facing Justice

The latest CNN poll shows that over three-quarters of Americans agree that Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, should have been arrested.

Wednesday's poll reported 78% of Americans polled saying they thought Zimmerman should have been arrested, compared to 11% who said he should not have been arrested.

The results mirror an earlier CNN/ORC poll, taken before Zimmerman's arrest in late March, which showed 73% of Americans saying he should be arrested and 11% saying he should not. The earlier poll indicated 16% were unsure whether Zimmerman should be arrested.

I'd like to meet the 11% of the country that says Zimmerman shouldn't have been arrested, and I'd like to make sure that none of them are allowed to hold public office due to the general principle of not having a functional human soul.  I can actually understand being unsure, at least.  But the one in nine of us OK with Zimmerman walking free after killing an unarmed teenage boy?  No.  Makes me want to get nine people in a room with a box of adorable baby puppies and see which one of them is repulsed.

The Last Bandstand Standing

Television icon Dick Clark has passed at the age of 82 of a heart attack.  From the NY Times obit:

Over half a century, Mr. Clark made millions as a producer or executive producer, shepherding projects onto the airwaves that even he acknowledged were more diverting than ennobling: awards shows like the Golden Globes, the Academy of Country Music Awards and the American Music Awards; “TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes” and other omnibus shows featuring collections of clips; and television movie biographies and dramas, in either uplifting or lurid mode, that targeted devotees of camp, kitsch or B-list celebrities. He wasn’t high-minded about his work. 

“I’ve always dealt with light, frivolous things that didn’t really count; I’m not ashamed of that,” he said during a 1999 interview for the Archive of American Television. “There’s no redeeming cultural value whatsoever to ‘Bloopers,’ but it’s been on for 20 years.” He added: “It’s a piece of fluff. I’ve been a fluffmeister for a long time.” 

But none of it would have been possible without “American Bandstand,” a show that earned immediate popularity and had astonishing longevity. It was broadcast nationally (and for several years daily) from 1957 to 1989, and the list of well-known performers who were seen on it (many of them lip-synching their recently recorded hits) spanned generations: from Ritchie Valens to Luther Vandross; from the Monkees to Madonna; from Little Anthony and the Imperials to Los Lobos; from Dusty Springfield to Buffalo Springfield to Rick Springfield. Mr. Clark was around for it all. 

The right man at the right time, Mr. Clark was a radio personality in Philadelphia in 1956 when he stepped into the role of host of what was then a local television show called “Bandstand” after the regular host was arrested for drunken driving and fired. By the following October, the show was being broadcast on ABC nationwide with a new name, “American Bandstand,” and for the next several years it was seen every weekday afternoon by as many as 20 million viewers, most of whom were undoubtedly not yet out of high school and tuned in to watch a few dozen of their peers dance chastely to the latest recordings of pop hits, showing off new steps like the twist, the pony and the Watusi, and rating the new records in brief interviews. 

“It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it” became a catchphrase. 

For me, Dick Clark will always be the host of the $25,000 Pyramid, back when $25,000 was a lot of money.  No matter what though, Clark's influence on television and American pop culture was absolutely unmatched for half a century.  People talk about how P. Diddy or Dr. Dre or Joss Whedon are everywhere these days, or stars like Ron Howard and Tom Hanks or George Clooney are now big producers and directors in Hollywood, but the man who did it first was Dick Clark:  music, TV, pop culture and everything in between, he was a part of it.

Rock on, Dick.

Even More Fine Police Work There, Lou

So, they handcuffed a six-year-old girl and took her to jail.  She fought the adults, trying to get out of the office. She threw "a small shelf" and when it hit the principal on the leg, the assault charge compounded the problem.  She was complaining the cuffs were too tight when her mother came to pick her up, and had been left alone in a holding cell, which to some would imply she was left unsupervised and deprived of the safety of an adult being present during a traumatic time.

There is no mention of the family going after money or publicity.  They asked how their child could be handcuffed and taken, and the official answer was:

"Our policy states that any detainee transported to our station in a patrol vehicle is to be handcuffed in the back. There is no age discrimination on that rule," Milledgeville Police Chief Dray Swicord told WMAZ-TV.

The family on Tuesday demanded that the city change its policy, the Associated Press reported, and claimed the girl was shaken up while at the police station.

Very well, said the parents.  Please change your policy.

That is when the asshattery begins.  There is no age discrimination on that rule?  How about common sense.  The girl may have a behavioral issue that needs to be taken care of, but this is not how you teach kids about trust and boundaries.  It sounds to me like this child was afraid, and acted out of fear and anger.  Based on how the adults reacted here, I'm saying she may have had some legitimate reasons to feel defensive and scared.  The bottom line is, if you can't curb, redirect and communicate with a six-year-old, elementary education may  not be for you.

One Minute Of Awesome

Thor and Iron Man battle it out in the newly released Avenger's trailer.



On a personal note, my youngest nephew asked me why they called them movies.  I explained that movies were pretty new overall, and once upon a time it was a Big Deal to see motion pictures.  He blinked and digested this, then told me he bet their video games were awful.

Oy.

Anyway, I'm so excited to see the movie, and my husband is driving me insane counting it down.  For him, this is a chance to see his favorite characters of all time done by people who can pull off the special effects.  No more hokey painted Hulk (no offense, Lou, you were terrific for the time) or tin can suits.  And it's not another tired remake, for which I give points right away.

Guns Or Butter?

The Republicans of course choose guns, and want to throw 3 million Americans off food stamps and cut benefits for tens of millions more because we need to fight more scraggly terrorists with mutli-billion dollar super planes and all the cruise missiles the military-industrial complex can crap out.

Republicans controlling the House are eying big cuts to food stamps and would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to claim child tax credits as they piece together legislation to cut $261 billion in the coming decade.

It's the first step in a GOP exercise aimed at cutting domestic programs to forestall big Pentagon budget cuts next year.

The cuts to food stamps would reduce the monthly benefit for a family of four by almost $60 and would force up to 3 million people off the program altogether by tightening eligibility.

The measure would also eliminate a grant program to states for social services like day care. Six House panels are producing legislation this week as the first step in implementing the GOP's budget plan.

So vote Republican, America, and all those poor welfare queens will magically disappear.  Starvation does that, you know.  We can't afford food for the poor, but damn can we make spiff ass air superiority fighters!

Waging A War

A very interesting editorial from the editors of Bloomberg News on, of all things, raising the minimum wage and why it needs to be done.

Raising the minimum wage won’t entirely solve the problem of anemic incomes, but it would help. Economists have long found that boosting the minimum wage can raise income levels for those earning just above the minimum. Employers, seeking to protect “wage ladders,” often bump up salaries for slightly higher-paid employees, too.

This is one of many reasons that critics, including business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association and many Republicans, oppose minimum-wage increases. The argument is that it will hurt the very people it was meant to help by forcing employers to cut jobs, raise prices or both. They point to studies that minimum-wage increases hurt teenagers, because young workers typically get minimum-wage jobs, which become scarce when employers are forced to raise salaries.

But a wave of new economic research is disproving those arguments about job losses and youth employment. Previous studies tended not to control for regional economic trends that were already affecting employment levels, such as a manufacturing-dependent state that was shedding jobs. The new research looks at micro-level employment patterns for a more accurate employment picture.

The studies find minimum-wage increases even provide an economic boost, albeit a small one, as strapped workers immediately spend their raises. A 2011 paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that a $1 minimum-wage increase lifts household income by about $250 and increases spending by about $700 a quarter in the following year. The spending increase is driven by a small number of households that primarily buy vehicles.

A team of economists, led by Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, compared employment levels in contiguous areas with disparate minimum-wage levels over a 16-year period and concluded in a 2010 paper there are “strong earnings effects and no employment effects of minimum wage increases.” 

Let's back that up and review.  The main arguments that Republicans employ about minimum wage are that first, raising the minimum wage will wreck the economy as jobs are lost.  In fact, more than a few Republicans tried to pin the economic catastrophe on raising the minimum wage in 2006 rather than the effects of income inequality and lax oversight, as if the poorest Americans were earning too much money for the economy to support.  We know that's not true.  Minimum wage hikes at the state level, which happen to be higher and more frequent, don't cost jobs.

Second, Republicans say it destroys small businesses.  Hogwash for the same reasons above:  minimum wage workers spend their raises immediately and do so locally, supporting small businesses and large chains alike.  In other words, Republicans claim the labor market is a zero-sum game, the same people who tell us tax cuts create jobs think raising wages destroy them.

Finally, the notion that youth employment suffers when wages goes up is also without merit, mainly because of the first two reasons:  jobs get created, pay more, and teenagers take that money and spend it.

There are a lot of reasons to raise the federal minimum wage.  It'll never happen with Republicans in charge.

StupidiNews!

• Investing guru Warren Buffet announced he has stage I prostate cancer and will be receiving treatment.
• North Korea has now left the nuclear negotiating table in retaliation for US food aid being withheld in the wake of last week's failed rocket launch.
• The Environmental Protection Agency is set to take on air pollution from fracking with new safety regulations.
• CitiGroup shareholders have voted down this year's executive compensation plan in an historic first for the banking industry, citing that CEO Vikram Pandit too easily collected millions.
• Stage magician Teller, of duo Penn & Teller, takes on patenting a magic trick in US court.

Last Call

Upon further speculation, President Obama has decided to seek a leash on oil speculation driving up prices at the pump.  Hey, Dodd-Frank allows that kind of thing now.

On Tuesday, the White House laid out five ways to crack down on oil market manipulation, one of the elements it blames for high fuel prices.

Civil penalties for firms involved in market manipulation would rise to $10 million from $1 million and would be assessed for each day the manipulation occurs rather than on a per-violation basis under the new proposal.

Maximum criminal penalties would rise to $10 million as well.

The White House also asked Congress to give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority to require traders to have more collateral when they trade oil in an effort to reduce risky trading.

Obama is also calling for more funding to increase CFTC surveillance and enforcement staff and to improve technology.

"At a time when American consumers are feeling pain at the pump, it is critically important to ensure that illegal manipulation, fraud and market rigging are not contributing to gas price increases," the White House said in a statement.

Republicans of course completely ignored the President and sided with the oil companies, which was the point of the entire exercise.  Expect yet another Senate vote soon putting Republicans on record in Big Oil's pockets, the the surprise of no one.

Bonus points if wingers are stupid enough to say "But Uppity McDark here said there was little the White House could do about $4 gas!"

Which is why has asking Congress to give the CFTC the power to do something about it, guys.  Which of course the Republicans won't dare to do.