Links 3/12/13

Pine marten pitch invasion leaves Swiss footballer with nasty bite – video Guardian. Was he auditioning? He is very fast and has lots of stamina.

As Rats Persist, Transit Agency Hopes to Curb Their Births New York Times. How about getting people to stop throwing garbage on the tracks and the platforms? Lower food supply, fewer rats. I recently saw a rat scoot out and grab some food someone had dropped on the platform and run away. As far as I was concerned, he was performing a service.

Paralyzing algae is killing manatees at record pace in Florida US News (Chuck L) :-(

Iowa Fashion Week Begins Onion (Lambert)

Facebook reveals secrets you haven’t shared Financial Times

EFF To Represent Bloggers Against Copyright Troll EFF

Dead-Pig Tide and the Ongoing Danger of China Epidemics Bloomberg

Reserve Bank of Australia hacked Guardian

The Great Portuguese Hollowing Out Edward Hugh

Millions of Europeans Require Red Cross Food Aid Der Spiegel

CIA Ramps Up Role in Iraq New York Times

The NYT and Obama officials collaborate to prosecute Awlaki after he’s executed Glenn Greenwald

What’s More Important To You, Italy or the Dow? Roel

The Fall of the House of Europe Asia Times (Lambert)

Catfood watch:

Expansion of Medicaid Is Rejected in Florida New York Times. A feature, not a bug, of Obamacare

Feds Starving States to Concoct Funding Imperatives heteconomist

Paulson Said to Explore Move to Puerto Rico Bloomberg

Schapiro Is Nominated to G.E. Board New York Times

After Watering Down Financial Reform, Ex-Senator Scott Brown Joins Goldman Sachs’ Lobbying Firm Think Progress (1 SK)

Breitbart Duped by Krugman Bankruptcy — as Reported by Joke Website It Loves Atlantic

New York City soda ban struck down Guardian

Dozens “Riot” Over NYPD’s Fatal Shooting Of Brooklyn Teen Gothamist (more).

Police Beat Woman, Shackle Her to Hospital Bed for 17 Days Alternet

Insist On Full Index Transparency, Warns EDHEC-Risk Index Universe. The fact that this is even being discussed shows how nutty the debate is.

What’s Fueling the Housing Boom in Vegas? Diana Olick, CNBC. Acknowledges that shadow inventory is large but remains sanguine.

Less Than 4 Percent of Lenders ‘Acceptable’ According To New Risk Assessment Tool Mortgage News Daily (Glenn R)

Subprime car loan securities sales soar Financial Times

Usury and the Loan Shark Myth Lauren Willis, Credit Slips

It Would Be Great if Millionaires Would Not Lecture Us on ‘Living With Less’ Gawker

Long the Wealth Effect Long or Short Capital (Scott)

Antidote du jour. World’s smallest living bull:

And a bonus! Can someone teach me how to moonwalk in two weeks?

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76 comments

  1. Ignim Brites

    For those who are committed to the expansion of wilderness areas the hollowing out of Portugal raises expectations that in a couple dozen decades the entire Iberian peninsula will be wilderness.

    1. ambrit

      Dear Bites;
      Couldn’t we see this glass as half full and develop a scheme to reforest that hollow interior? Put the youth to work doing something good for the nation and the environment too. (I seem to remember an American politician from the ’30s doing something similar.)

  2. Brindle

    Re: “It Would Be Great If Millionaires…”

    Gawker did a good job there:

    —” My space is small. My life is big,” writes Hill. Of course it is! You can buy anything and go anywhere at any time, thanks to your vast wealth! The fact that a millionaire’s “life is big” offers little valuable wisdom to the common person.

    The presumptuousness is akin to a fat food critic walking out of a restaurant after a huge meal and telling a starving beggar on the curb, “Trust me—you don’t want to eat at this place.”
    Money doesn’t matter at all, as long as you have too much of it.”—

    The actual article in NYT has an unintentionally funny graphic (I think) of white guy sitting in lotus position in his smallish, minimalist living room, floating through the universe.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

    1. Klassy!

      Yes, thank you Gawker. I started to read that piece the other day and he lost me at Olga from Andorra.
      Now I went back and read it. Is he eating a dinner every night from those shallow bowls? Does he spend 365 days a year in his delightfully minimalist 420 square studio? Does he know anyone that is living with 6 people in a 720 square foot apartment? I do. I imagine the charm of tight quarters is lost on them.

      1. Ms G

        Thank God for Gawker and his commenters. I was working up an apoplectic fit reading the comments to the original NYT piece!

        Loved Gawker’s opening:

        “There is something about achieving great financial success that seduces people into believing that they are life coaches.”

        Knowing how pallsy the NYT and Mike Bloomberg are, what do you want to bet that this Advice from Your Friendly Millionaire Life Coach “op ed” is just one piece of the Billionaire’s Austerity Housing Program for Wafe Earners evident in one of Mike’s Signature Projects: “Micro-Housing.” They really are of a piece.

        http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-29/micro-digs-sliding-tv-murphy-bed-tempt-singles-review.html

        1. Klassy!

          Actually, I checked the top rated somments and there was some pushback.
          Here was one (by a reader that had several decades on him judging by her photo)
          Having never experienced affluence, I’m not sure how to react to this article. I would love to have some of the conveniences of that class of American: a decent car, my own laundry, for instance, or, say, an extra set of shoes or sheets. But these things have never been affordable and in today’s economy oppressed by the greedy plutocracy under which we struggle, I doubt they ever will.

          But what I’d really like is access to medical care and the best use of my incredible talents in order to contribute better to the world around me. That’s what tragic about the massive inequality in income: I only need modest amounts to facilitate large efforts but when one has almost nothing, the work to maintain a barely dignified existence consumes all resources and leaves little or nothing. Tis a pity.
          That was actually quite poignant.

          But yeah, of course this little lecture reminds you of Bloomberg. Poor guy. His soda ban was struck down– “arbitrary and capricious”. Who coulda seen that one coming?
          There are quite a few commenters who like to remind you that they “pay” for your choices. They seem to be useful dupes for the medical industrial complex– distracting attention from the fact that the reason medical costs are so high is the price gouging by every single actor in the system.

          1. Ms G

            @Klassy! Exactly — the “I’m payin’ for it” crew conveniently ignores the elephant (gorilla? continent?) in the living room — Pharma-Industrial=Insurance Complex gouging on every cent. Hopefully more and more people are keeping their eyes on the ball (Insurance Co and Pharma Gouging) rather than on the diversions (you fat people cost me money). Also never mentioned is that if “these people” could have jobs with a living wage and afford a decent place to live and decent grocery shopping (or a $2,000 fold up bike!) none of this would be a problem in the first place. But the first motto of Bloomberg (Third Way Panzer in Chief) and his cohorts is: abject poverty and regulated food intake for everyone else.

            (P.S. I’ve been scratching my head over why Bloomberg is so obsessed with “health initiatives” aimed at the poor. Because I always think of anything he does as part of the implementation of the Third Way agenda. I have a theory: we have to keep people poor but just healthy enough so that they can continue to serve the .01% (cough, work the plantation fields) for just long enough until their “replacements” come along. I.e., Mike’s (and now the DHSS) “public health” initiatives are intended to keep poor people poor, but Fit Enough to Serve!)

          2. Klassy!

            Also never mentioned– the role of stress in diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, so perhaps a living wage job might improve health irrespective of individuals food choices.

          3. Ms G

            Exactly right. Stress (i.e., cascading cortisol throughout the immune, musculo-skeletal and nervous system). Well, predictably, since it is obviously a primary cause and, in turn, caused by the root cause of brutal economic inequality, eliminating stress (i.e., eliminating economic inequality), is simply “not on the table.”

            I wish Bloomberg would take his damn helicopter and pilot himself into the Bermuda Triangle.

          4. Ms G

            * Important clarification regarding the Bermuda Triangle. I do not wish any harm to befall Mr. Bloomberg, of course. I was imagining the Bermuda Triangle as being a perfect billionaire city with gated compounds and free labor and tax haven facilities. That’s all.

      2. Ms G

        “Olga from Andorra” — now *that’s* destined to enter idiom (a proxy for the liberating experiences of the .01%)!

        1. Klassy!

          Ha! I like that– “a proxy for the liberating experiences of the .01%”
          I’d be happy with 1% though.

          1. Ms G

            Yes, because the lackeys of the .01% are, in the main, the demographic within the 1.0%.

            My motto: “Good for you — enjoy your 350 sq. feet and infinite money. Just take your life-coach blather elsewhere, thanks.”

          1. Ms G

            Excellent find, Brindle! I could not watch/listen past second 6. I don’t feel so bad about not being Olga from Andorra now :)

    2. petridish

      This article reminds me of my reaction to all the hype over Sheryl Sandburg’s new book.

      Would love for someone to ask her what “leaning in” looks like for the woman who scrubs her toilet and how it will enhance her servant’s life. Maybe Sheryl could get the gal a good insider price on Facebook stock–say around $38 per share?

      Puh-leeeeez!!!!

    3. anon y'mouse

      and all i could think was that it’s obvious that money and world travel didn’t buy the man any taste(per the one picture at gawker i did see). according to the article it didn’t buy him much humility, either.

      spiritually bankrupt with a bulging set of accounts. no thanks!

        1. Ms G

          Oh, and people who work for a living (i.e., earn suppressed wages and pay the types of taxes for which there are no loopholes, e.g., FICA and income tax) can thank Mr. TreeHugger Interior Designer for helping jack up the price of real estate in New York so that nobody can afford to live here anymore except other wealthy, simplicity-seeking, people like him.

        2. anon y'mouse

          the novelty of living in an apartment that has similar features to a sleeper car on Amtrak wears off if you have to actually cook, eat and live there on a daily basis with another person and without stepping on the cat repeatedly. also, the prospect of living like that is easy to take if you can jet off to Bali any damn time you feel like it, or go out to dinner every other night. does this guy even scrub his own microscopically-sized toilet?

          my other thought was, it looks like a cross between the executive suite on the Borg ship and a place the brat pack snorted crank in back in the Less than Zero 80s. way to go, millionaire!

    4. jrs

      Oh yea, it doesn’t help that everytime the NY Times does one of these “simplicity” pieces it’s about some 1%er. That’s not good salesmanship in a never ending recession … It would probably be as likely to turn people off the ideas, even if they might be good to begin with.

      Bloomberg, haha, combining all the worst elements of the liberal left and the corporatist right (nanny statism plus corporatist thuggery and crackdowns on dissent). Where do these people come from?

  3. Now orate yourself out of the dock, asshole

    I don’t waste my time reading NYT stenography anymore but hey thanks, NYT! Starting from the statements in the Awlaki propaganda article, any competent prosecutor could convict Obama of murder in the ICC under Rome Statute 8.2.c.i – or anywhere else, since the law is universal jurisdiction and “Nothing in this Part shall be interpreted as limiting or prejudicing in any way existing or developing rules of international law for purposes other than this Statute.”

    No holidays under the Tuscan sun for ex-president Obama, they have a real, independent judiciary, and they have Beppe!

  4. petridish

    Re: Vegas housing boom

    The fact that a significant number of Americans have been living in their houses without making payments for three or more years now is starting to be mentioned more and more. (It’s also starting to piss me off–why am I paying my rent?) I personally know someone who is doing this and has been for over three years. He’s got better cars than I have and way more disposable income. (But he doesn’t have a savings account.) It doesn’t seem to have affected his credit, or maybe he doesn’t need credit since he lives for free.

    Remarkably, he has a meeting every month with Bank of America to “discuss” his “foreclosure.” The bank’s representatives always have a reason for NOT DOING ANYTHING. They just set up a meeting for the next month–THREE YEARS OF THIS!!

    Having said all that, I’m wondering if it’s not time to start educating these people about “adverse possession.” Can you imagine??

    1. Expat

      Grit your teeth, Petridish. Dividing the 99% is how the .1% plan to protect their unjust gains. If only it were easier to rejoice in the nonpayers’ victories over the banksters, to join with them and imagine yet more ways to deprive banksters and rentiers of what — for them — is their lifeblood and reason for living, the almighty dollar. Nonpayment, and the use of legal shenanigans to prevent payment, is a nonviolent way of resisting domination. The fact that our system values money more than lives says all that needs to be said about the knaves and fools who have seized control of the democratic structures of Western countries.

  5. Eureka Springs

    Couldn’t read the pay-walled WSJ article… But the more I read extensive analysis of the west assault upon Syria at places like moonofalabama the more I wonder why we the peeps aren’t calling the CIA al-ciada? It’s been true since at least the time we gave Osama bin Laden types weapons and training in Afghanistan against the Soviets, has it not?

    What’s most likely happening in Iraq is the same as what’s happening on other Syrian borders – Jordan and Turkey. The US and the Saudi’s are funneling money, weapons and providing and training al-ciada type of fighters from many countries. The US IS al CIAduh as much as anyone. What the al-CIAduh wants in Iraq as much as anything is to keep Iran/Iraq Shia out of the Syrian fight.

  6. Very Important Pariahs

    I don’t waste my time reading NYT steno anymore but hey thanks, NYT! Credit where credit is due. Starting from the statements in the Awlaki propaganda piece, any competent prosecutor could convict Obama of murder in the ICC under Rome Statute 8.2.c.iv – or anywhere else, since the law is universal jurisdiction and “Nothing in this Part shall be interpreted as limiting or prejudicing in any way existing or developing rules of international law for purposes other than this Statute.” No holidays under the Tuscan sun for ex-president Obama, they have a real, independent judiciary and they have Beppe!

    There’s no statute of limitations. And as Grayson said, quoting ANC exiles, People Will Change Their Minds. I’ll live to see our scumbag puppet rulers in the dock.

    1. dan

      it would be wonderful to these murderous vermin pay for their crimes, just finding it hard to see how it happens in practice.

      you mention Italy but we’d go to war with Italy if they dared try to bring any of our war criminals to justice.

      1. VIPs

        Tell Robert Lady that. Italy took his Hannibal Lecter psycho-villa as compensation for his crimes when he ran. A couple dozen spooks are fugitives from Italian justice. Every day the US government has to decide whether to piss away more of its last dribs of legitimacy protecting scumbags. They won’t protect them all.

        1. dan

          the upper levels of the US government is nothing but criminal scum and they’ll protect their own, if not from property forfeiture at least from imprisonment or hanging. I’d love to be proven wrong.

    1. Garrett Pace

      Personality trait and predictive Likes, according to the study

      High IQ:
      Lord of the Rings

      –The books not the films, right?

      Emotional stability – calm and relaxed

      Business administration
      Getting Money

      !?!?!?!?!!

      1. DolleyMadison

        OMFG – saw that. So ‘Emotional stability’ is measured by an interest in business & money. Hmmmm…they may be right – after all, precious few folks are complaining about the excesses of Wall Street, but those of us who are seem to definitely be going crazy over it, while they continue on unconcerned…

        Considering I lobby for gay rights though I am not gay,(or even kidding myself), and “like” legalizing drugs when I have never even so much as smoked a cigarette or drank a beer…I wonder what value those buying this info are getting. Though it may explain the ads I have been getting for Asian hookers and hippie caftans :)

        1. Garrett Pace

          Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer Liberation Front

          As soon as the generals and the politicos
          can predict the motions of your mind,
          lose it. Leave it as a sign
          to mark the false trail, the way
          you didn’t go. Be like the fox
          who makes more tracks than necessary,
          some in the wrong direction.

  7. Garrett Pace

    Vegas Boom

    Here’s the crux:

    “We looked at a lot of the existing homes, and some of them were bank owned and were in pretty bad shape,”

    Instead, the Rodgers turned to new construction. They bought exactly what they wanted from Pardee Homes, a Los Angeles-based builder with a large footprint in Las Vegas.”

    The stuff that got built in Vegas over the past decade is garbage. The magical thinking in this case is the thought that your awesome new house will be any different in five years. But who thinks that far ahead?

  8. Lena

    RE: NY Times article about living with less (covered by Gawker, thank you, Gawker)… That’s the 2nd elitist article I read recently by the NYT. Officially canceling my subscription this week !

    1. Klassy!

      Lena,
      that is the right thing to do. To my eternal shame I once subscribed– AND to the WSJ too. I could never decide which one was worse. I finally concluded that worst one was whichever paper I was reading at the time. WSJ plays Mitt to the NYT’s Obama so I suppose NYT is the more effective evil. But you need the Mitt to make the Obama look reasonable. It wasn’t until I dropped WSJ did I notice just how heinous the NYT was.
      (That is not to say Mitt did anything to improve O in my eyes.)

    2. Lena

      Well, the second recently and I have a high threshold for being annoyed. But these 2 articles so seriously offended me, I even emailed the NYT about the first one (it was in the Apartment Hunt section – about this young, wealthy couple who were boo hooing about their building in the financial district being affected by Sandy and having to stay in – gasp – a luxury hotel for a while. Give me a break!).

      It isn’t the politics that offend me (I’m a Democrat, so the NYT leans my way politically)- it’s the fact that so much of what they write is about the wealthy and it feels so out of touch with the average person.

  9. rich

    If Corporations Don’t Pay Taxes, Why Should You?

    Go offshore young man and avoid paying taxes. Plunder at will in those foreign lands, and if you get in trouble, Uncle Sam will come rushing to your assistance, diplomatically, financially and militarily, even if you have managed to avoid paying for those government services. Just pretend you’re a multinational corporation.
    That’s the honest instruction for business success provided by 60 of the largest U.S. corporations that, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, “parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year” shielding more than 40 percent of their profits from U.S. taxes. They all do it, including Microsoft, GE and pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories. Many, like GE, are so good at it that they have avoided taxes altogether in some recent years.

    They want a huge U.S. government to finance scientific breakthroughs, educate the future workforce, sustain the infrastructure and provide for law and order on the home front, but they just don’t feel they should have to pay for a system of governance, even though it primarily serves their corporate interests. The U.S. government exists primarily to make the world safe for multinational corporations, but those firms feel no obligation to pay for that protection in return.
    Think of that perfectly legal and widespread racket when you go to pay your taxes in the next weeks, and consider that you have to make up the gap left by the big boys’ antics. Also, when you contemplate the painful cuts coming because of the sequester that undoubtedly will further destabilize the economy, remember that, as the Wall Street Journal estimated, the tax savings of just 19 of those companies would more than cover the $85 billion in spending reductions triggered by the congressional budget impasse. The most skilled at this con game are the health care and technology companies, which, as a Senate investigation last year revealed, have become quite expert at shifting marketing rights and patents offshore to low-tax countries.

    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/its_good_to_be_the_multinational_corporations_20130312/

    1. Ms G

      I’ve been looking for a 10-point How-To list for legally transforming my taxable wages into non-taxable offshore assets.

      This article isn’t quite specific enough.

      Any suggestions?

        1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

          Some genius is going to set up a tax-haven on the Republic of Mars.

          Incorporate there and you will never have to pay Uncle Sam ever again.

        2. Ms G

          Great — so now I have to go find the male version of Olga from Andorra and see if he’ll marry me for tax shelter purposes!

          :)

  10. lambert strether

    The Heteconomist article under Catfood Watch is terrific. It neatly explains this chart from Ezra Klein (!) on “public austerity”. Yes, Obama tossed $15 trillion to the banksters, no money down, no questions asked, and then starved the states and localities of funds “to create a need for the states to find private sources of funding that would be better provided through fiscal transfers.”

    Yes, it’s all about the rents, as usual.

    NOTE I haven’t seen this idea discussed in the press or by any economist, so I assume that, if not true, it’s at least in the set of all ideas that are possibly true. Even more unsettling, I haven’t seen in discussed by the political class, leading to the unsettling possibility that Obama actually thought it up by himself, a new form of ingenious cruelty. Or perhaps I’m not getting the right investment newsletters?

    1. Brindle

      Not that this is the answer or would even work very well, the point is one never ever even hears or reads of this possibility in the mainstream corporate press:

      —“An example of the consequences of starving the states is government-run buses, light rail, trams and trains getting covered with advertising billboards as a way to recoup some of the costs of providing public transport.

      Rather than the feds imposing taxes on the corporations engaged in advertising of an amount equivalent to that spent on advertising, the corporations get to detract from the aesthetics of urban environments at a price.
      The currency user instead could simply provide the fiscal transfers necessary for the states to administer the transport services, and the corporations could be required to pay tax without defecating on cityscapes.

      If it is desirable to have visual graphics on buses or other modes of transport, the space could be opened up for artists to create an array of designs. The public could vote on these, improving cities visually while also providing opportunities for artists and greater scope for creative expression.”—

    2. Klassy!

      ..and I suppose he could have come up with this idea all by himself– or his billionaire handlers let him believe he did. It would explain how he puffs up with pride when he describes how he’s cut government rolls. (alternate theory– he just wants the billionaire boys to take special note of that part of the speech.)

  11. Lambert Strether

    Awesome letter from Mainer Asher Platts for a Keystone Hearing:

    Let’s remember what’s really at stake here– millions of dollars for a small number of corporate executives. I mean, are we going to let the health and safety of the people of Southern Maine stand in the way of THAT?

    I know I personally would be glad to die of cancer so that an oil executive could make even one additional dollar. So long as they are able to turn a profit, I will know my untimely death will not have been in vain.

    I would urge you to vote in favor of re-permitting these smoke stacks so that tar sands can be brought to South Portland from Canada. It’s our duty as Americans to make sure that the people who have all the money always get exactly what they want, no matter how many people suffer because of it.

  12. rich

    Universities Pile on Faculty Perks as Student Costs Grow

    The University of Chicago paid James Madara $2.5 million in severance when he stepped down in 2009 as medical dean and hospital chief. Madara, who remained on the faculty, later joined the American Medical Association.

    Congress is taking a look at such payments following disclosures that Jacob Lew, the new U.S. Treasury secretary, received a $685,000 bonus when he left New York University and had $1.5 million in housing loans from the school.

    Harvard and Stanford universities also offer real-estate loans with sweet terms, records show. While the amounts are small relative to university budgets, the perks insulate faculty and administrators from the costs upsetting many middle-class families, said Jonathan Robe, a research fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington.

    “It certainly gives the public a clear example of how out of touch some universities are,” Robe said. “Parents will think, ‘Here I am scraping by, raiding my retirement plan to pay for college. Why are they making me do this just to enrich these executives?’”

    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-12/universities-pile-on-faculty-perks-as-student-costs-grow

  13. hunkerdown

    The Prenda Law copyright trolls had their day in court yesterday, at least those who bothered to answer their summonses. And, to hear TorrentFreak tell, it was quite a doozy. There may not be much of them left for the EFF to defend against, at this rate… BYO popcorn.

    1. bobw

      I don’t suppose the feds could jump in and RICO Prenda, seize assets…or do they not do things like that to fine upstanding businessmen?

  14. Synopticist

    My heart really bleeds for that awlaki guy.

    Poor would-be mass murderer, what did he do to deserve his fate, apart from emcouraging global jihad and terrorism?

    That c*nt is as far from a victim as it’s possible to get.

    1. dan

      what about all the other people we murdered trying to get him?

      I’m guessing you won’t lose any sleep over them either. c*nt.

      1. Synopticist

        How many innocent Yemenis were killed in getting him?

        Maybe if people like you didn’t make heroes out of some of the most evil men on planet earth your ideas would have more popular traction.

        1. dan

          what in god’s name are you blathering about?

          you’re the one who supports a murderous thug who claims the right to murder anyone on the planet at any time for any (top secret) reason he pulls out of his ass.

      2. Yves Smith Post author

        Go watch the Man for All Seasons, “I’ve give the devil the benefit of the law for my own safety’s sake” speech. It doesn’t matter what you think of him, it wasn’t determined in a court of law. If you can’t see the self interest in stopping extrajudicial proceedings, I assume you have an appetite for war zones too.

    2. wunsacon

      I believe the government lied about WMD, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, their claimed lack of foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, their claimed lack of foreknowledge about 911, and [pausing to reflect the resume of Dr. Henry Killinger] so much more.

      If you agree with any of that (or, alternatively, if you believe the government has a secret agenda to violate the 2nd amendment or any of our other rights), are you saying you will nevertheless argue that that government — that same government referred to in par 1 above — is not required to prove its claims (against that awlaki guy or anyone else) in something other than a kangaroo court?

    3. Dan

      “Would be mass murderer”

      What about actual mass murderers like Bush, Cheney, Obama, Biden, Blair, NutnYahoo, Olmert, Rice, Powell, Clinton, Cameron, etc. etc.

      You good with them being taken out by any means too?

  15. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Here in La Angelless, the paper reports today about LA county setting new tourism record.

    My question is, do they count a pregnant tourist as one or two (and could actually be more than that)?

  16. JohnL

    Speaking of animals, was in Florida the week before last. Manatee tours were cancelled. Couldn’t go to the beach as algae in the air were causing respiratory distress. Carl Hiassen is right. Nothing wrong with Florida that a cat 5 hurricance couldn’t fix.

  17. the idiot

    And here is a fascinating article about the C1-30. We have been hearing a lot about the F-35, but recently the Pentagon asked for 7 new C1-30’s, and Congress allocated money for funding for 14. Perhaps no company is more guilty of pay-to- play than Lockheed Martin:

    Tomgram: Jeremiah Goulka, C-130 Math and a Cargo of Pork

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175659/

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