HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread 1/11

by — ,

– I like Wyble, but I think he’s wrong about still supporting Rodney Tom

– Christians are not supposed to take the side of wage-deniers against wage-earners. Christians are not supposed to take the side of slut-shamers against women. Christians are not supposed to take the side of ignorance against truth. Christians are not supposed to take the side of indulgent pride against love.

– Transportation Advocacy Day is coming up.

– It’s not far to caricature people. Except liberals, obvs.

– There might be several little ants in that acorn.

Comments

  1. 1

    The Obama administration is considering funding many more police officers in public schools to secure campuses, a leading Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html

    In other news, President Obama is said to be planning to cut his own “I am the NRA.” print ad.

  2. 2

    @1 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial Reneger,

    Send Darryl the check for $1,000 made out to Northwest Harvest and pay off the wager you lost by betting on an Rmoney win.

  3. 3

    “Then he proceeds to take down the American flag, and said, ‘This is a symbol, but it’s only a piece of cloth. It doesn’t mean anything,’ and then he throws it down on the floor and then stomps on it, repeatedly.”

    “I asked what was he trying to get, the point across? And she said, ‘I don’t know,’ and he said, his explanation was there would be no consequences, it’s just a piece of cloth that doesn’t mean anything.”

    http://www.wistv.com/story/205.....estigation

    ‘s OK. I hear prime-time gigs at MSNBC pay better than teaching jobs, anyway, and this type of behavior is just what that network is looking for.

  4. 4

    @3
    What a fantastically stupid man you are, Dr. H.

    I thought you right wingers were about “FREEDOMZ!!” What that teacher in South Carolina was doing was providing a very pointed lesson on the First Amendment.

    You, of course, cannot resist making a typically (tiresomely) snide jab at your opponents, this time nearly literally wrapping yourself in “THE FLAGGGG!!”

    You reveal yourself to be not just the garden-variety greedhead we took you for, but rather a nasty and more noxious specimen, a creep perfectly happy flinging accusations of inadequate patriotism, the first strp toward a bona fide fascist/Teahaddist.

    Congratulations, doc.

  5. 5

    @ 4

    Next time you teach your children about First Amendment values, Lib Sci, remember to bring along some TP. No one wanted to shake hands with you

    http://lefteyeimages.photoshel.....EgU.7hoWP0

    that day.

    I think ‘Time and a Place’ is an important thing to keep in mind. The teacher could have shown pornography or launched into a profane diatribe as part of his First Amendment lesson, as well. Those would justifiably have resulted in some sort of sanction against him. Arguably, this should have, as well.

  6. 6

    U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) said that Aiken was “partly right” in his comments that a woman can’t get pregnant in the case of “legitimate rape”.

    As an OB/GYN, it is somewhat surprising to hear him make that claim. And his detailed explanation makes some sense – he says that stress can stop a woman from ovulating, but if she has already ovulated when the rape occurs, “that horse has already left the barn”. But using that to claim – as Aiken did – that the female body shuts down the reproductive process in the case of “legitimate rape” is nonsense. A pregnance occurs withing a few hours of rape – not days after when the process of ovulation could be stopped by some stressful occurance. It seems that the GA congressman was going out of his way to give Aiken at least some credit, when none was deserved – Aiken clearly didn’t understand some basic biology, yet chose to speak on it and use his flawed knowledge as the basis of his public policy positions.

    But Gingrey is digging his own hole at the same time, taking sides with Aiken on the “legitimate rape/illegitimate rape” distinction. Gingrey’s comments:

    “…look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, ‘Hey, I was raped.’ That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that….” (emphasis added)

    I’m not sure what he was referring to when he said that he “doesn’t find anything horrible”. Was he referring to Aiken’s comments? Or was he referring to the idea that a 15-year-old is pregnant?

    But more importantly, he is clinging to the old idea that most women don’t mind being raped, or that they somehow deserve it for being out alone, or wearing “scanty” clothing, etc. Apparantly he feels that most rape allegations are made up of such claims.

    Thanks, Gingrey, for keeping the Republican war against women alive for us to mock.

  8. 8

    @ 6

    Thanks, Gingrey, for keeping the Republican war against women alive for us to mock.

    That’s pretty much it. I don’t even think a GOP woman could successfully pull off an attempt to parse Akin’s comments as something not totally idiotic. It’s an own-goal situation.

  9. 9

    Ever discussed state budgets and budget deficits with a conservative WINGNUT and hear about if we keep spending we’ll end up like California!?

    And you try to tell them that it ain’t all about spending … and get no where?

    Well,
    California Governor’s budget has surprise: a surplus

    SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – California’s budget deficit is gone after years of financial troubles, Governor Jerry Brown said on Thursday, proposing a state budget plan that would raise spending on education and healthcare, boosting total expenditures by 5 percent with a surplus remaining.
    [snip]
    California’s job growth tops the national average, unemployment has fallen to below double-digit levels for the first time in nearly four years and more money is expected to flow into state coffers from the voter-approved tax increases.

    Amazingly this dramatic change of fiscal circumstances in California coincides with Democratic super majorities in its legislature and a Democratic governor.

    Arnold must be pissed.

  10. 10

    In related state budgetary news Mr. Charles Pierce fills us in on the fun in GOP superstar Bobby Jindal’s neck of the woods.
    Bobby Jindal’s Creative New Tax Plan


    “Bobby” unveiled his new tax plan for Louisiana and, boy howdy, is it some kind of tax plan. He wants to eliminate the state’s personal income taxes and its corporate taxes, the latter probably because the state hasn’t yet allowed major corporations to poison it quite as thoroughly as they can. (Huey Long must be rolling in his grave.) In their place, “Bobby” suggests that the state sales tax — which, of course, falls most heavily on the poor and the middle class — be hiked to somewhere vaguely in the vicinity of the Van Alen Belt.

  11. 11

    @ 9

    Er, MBS, you realize that Jerry Brown’s numbers are based on projections and not on fact?

    Since California has had one ‘unexpected’ revenue shortfall after another, for years now, do you have a credible reason why things will be different this time around? California has raised taxes repeatedly only to see her problems grow progressively worse.

    Brown’s proposed budget has to go through both houses of CA’s Democrat-controlled legislature. What are the chances that spending will be held to Brown’s level when that happens?

    The dramatic changes in California are not what you say they are. Those who produce are busy leaving the state, leaving behind the uber-wealthy, who haven’t begun avoiding the taxes Brown thinks will materialize, and those on assistance. That latter group is 20% of the population in Los Angeles County.

    Good luck with all of that.

    Texas, meanwhile, has a real surplus. I don’t think that coincides with a Democratic super-anything, MBS.

  12. 12

    @11 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial Reneger,

    Send Darryl the check for $1,000 made out to Northwest Harvest and pay off the wager you lost by betting on an Rmoney win.

    Now on to the stoopid you are.
    you realize that Jerry Brown’s numbers are based on projections and not on fact?

    Do have any understanding about what a budget is? I know you don’t, but had to ask.

    California has raised taxes repeatedly only to see her problems grow progressively worse.
    Really? Do show us when the last time income taxes were increased in California.

    Texas has oil and gas revenue which drove its swing from a $27 billion deficit to an $8.8 billion surplus, but you realize the Texas budget is a projection …? LOL

  13. 13

    @ 12

    I assume you are telling me that California has no natural resources from which it derives revenue. No oil, gas, minerals, etc. That must be why you pointed out that Texas has revenues from sources like that.

    All states have revenues from various sources other than direct taxation of its citizens.

    CA is avoiding a projected deficit as a result of a massive tax increase passed by citizen vote. Which is great, until some of it expires and they are in deep shit yet again. On a related note, the temporary B&O tax surcharge in WA state is due to expire mid-year. What are the chances it won’t be extended?

    TX has a budget surplus because of a recurring revenue stream based on production and not on income taxation.

    Your point about TX surplus being based on projections is noted although the surplus actually has existed, as they do their projections only once every two years.

    CA increased its income tax rate in 2005, and then added on a mental health services tax surcharge to the top earners, so there were a couple of tax increases on income.

  14. 14

    Up @11 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial Reneger – gives us some more of the usual conservative WINGNUT bullshit about tax rates and migration.

    The dramatic changes in California are not what you say they are. Those who produce are busy leaving the state, leaving behind the uber-wealthy, who haven’t begun avoiding the taxes Brown thinks will materialize,

    You’ve heard it before, if you raise tax rates on the wealthy they’ll leave.

    Funny thing about that. It is demonstrably wrong.

    There is a wonderful detailed Stanford University study completed just last year and it’s available on the web.
    Millionaire Migration in California: The Impact of Top Tax Rates [pdf]

    Go read the whole thing if your are interested in the research and methods, but here’s the conclusion:

    1. Migration is a very small component of changes in the number of millionaires in California. [snip]
    2. Using difference-in-differences models, which compares migration trends of the group
    experiencing the tax increase to a group of high-income earners not facing a tax change, neither in-migration or out-migration show a tax flight effect from the introduction of the 2005 Mental Health Services Tax. In fact, out-migration has a “wrong-signed” estimate: out-migration declined among millionaires after the tax was passed (both in absolute terms and compared to the
    control group).
    3. The 1996 tax cut for high-income earners likewise had no consistent effect on migration.
    There was a small effect for those experiencing the small (0.7%) tax cut, but no effect at all for those experiencing the large (1.7%) rate cut.

    Bottom line, the blessed Job Creators! don’t leave when taxes increase.

    F*ck Bob, your hero Rmoney has moved to California since the wealth tax passed.

    Now, Send Darryl the check for $1,000 made out to Northwest Harvest and pay off the wager you lost by betting on an Rmoney win.

  15. 15

    @ 14

    I used the same exact article for the tax rate info I provided in @ 13.

    MBS, in the italicized quote from me you used, I wasn’t talking about the millionaires leaving the state.

    I was talking about the people who are the ones producing leaving the state. Millionaires will still be millionaires, but the people they used to employ that made them rich aren’t hanging around. They’re moving to states in which their fortunes will be brighter. That would be Texas, North Dakota. Probably even WA.

    I don’t disagree with your point about the richest staying put in CA. I wasn’t talking about them, though. Other than to say they’re still there. Did you read what I wrote?

  17. 17

    @13 & 14 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial Reneger,

    I’m not going to deal with all your bullshit.
    The population of California is not decreasing and neither is its per capita GDP. Both have been and are increasing.

    Regarding California income tax increases, they have been increased twice since 1990 (22 years) prior to this year’s voter approved increase.

    So, your statement up @11 “California has raised taxes repeatedly only to see her problems grow progressively worse.” is full of shit, just like everything else you spew. California did NOT raise taxes repeatedly and its fiscal problems exploded. California raised taxes this year, and it has significantly improved the fiscal situation. Evidence, how does it work?

    Now, you reneging POS, send Darryl the check for $1,000 made out to Northwest Harvest and pay off the wager you lost by betting on an Rmoney win.

  19. 19

    @18 Kap’n Kornflake – Serial Reneger,

    Did I say per capita income?
    Or did I say per capita GDP?

    Stop trying to make WINGUT points you reneging POS, and send Darryl the check for $1,000 made out to Northwest Harvest and pay off the wager you lost by betting on an Rmoney win.

  20. 20

    # 14: The whole argument that millionaires leaving California because of high taxes is for the birds. This only works (arguably) in actual nation-states where there is no cooperation in tax collection between the various nations. So like DePardou (sp), French taxes can be succesfully avoided if he transers his nationality – and his source of income – from France to Russia.

    But most of the wealthy in California are there because it’s their source of income. The entertainment industry millionaires might have homes elsewhere, but they still have to pay Califonia income taxes on California-earned income, and they know they have to spend a considerable time in California (or to a lesser extent, New York) to keep earning that income at those levels. Likewise, the I.T. industry has to be either in Silicone Valley or the Seattle area because that’s where the high-demand workers live.

    Of course, Serial flakes is trying to avoid this by referring only to “production”. But has Serial every really compared Texas and California manufacturing numbers? It’s true that a number of manufacturers left California in the early 2000’s, but that’s more due to manufacturers needing steady energy supply and prices which had become uncertain entirely due to Enron’s (a Texas corporation) illegal market manipulations (check out the history of Buck Knife’s move).

    One of the dirty little secrets is that a lot of “Texas manufacturing” is done across the border, with a Texas firm slapping on a small piece and re-packaging with a “made in USA” logo and shipping it as their own product. This caused a lot of problems for Boeing when it’s wiring for the 787 had to be completely re-done (Boeing had to re-establish a wiring shop they previously had abolished, and set up wiring harness construction tables right alongside the 787’s on the production line. (It doesn’t surprise me a bit that some of these early 787’s have electrical issues).

    As for oil and gas revenues, price variations affect Texas finances more than California because California has a much larger and more diverse economy than does Texas. In Texas, the oil & gas industry IS the big fish in the little pond, whereas in California it’s just one industry among many.

  21. 21

    Oh, now it’s not “millionaires”, but “people” leaving the state? The argument seems to keep changing.

    It’s true that people follow jobs. But following a job to a low-wage, low worker protection state like Texas is an act of desparation.

    Texas has long been engaged in a cut-throat competition for companies, principly by fighting to be the lowest-tax, lowest worker-protection, lowest wage, and lowest consumer protection state in the nation. I’ve got friends from High School who have lived in Texas for several decades, and they say it’s gotten worse every year – wages are stagnant or decreasing, you can’t sue a company for fraud or negligence without getting approval from industry-dominated boards, etc.

  22. 22

    @rhp6033, right on.
    Texas’ economy has gone as the oil & gas economy goes since the Spindletop find in 1901.
    When oil & gas is booming, Texas has money and vice versa.

    California’s economy is far more diversified, and now that it’s decided once again to tax more fairly it will be better off. The experiment of low taxes lead to prosperity for California has been a disaster. Just look at what it was and what became of it with Ronald Reagan and Prop 13.

  23. 23

    @11 “Those who produce”? You mean the entertainment industry. Sure, they’re moving…to Vancouver BC, where the taxes are even higher.

  24. 24

    @3 Is that anything like a sitting President referring to the Constitution as “a Goddamn piece of paper”?

  25. 25

    Mike@9

    Arnold probably would be jealous at least. He had to change the primary system to get some of his own Republicans to support a budget once. They said they feared a primary challenge.

    Plus, Jerry Brown was frugal when he was Governor the first time. They built a new Governors manion under Reagan, Brown sold it. He commutes from his home in Oakland, I believe.

    The people who are probably most upset with the surplus, will be the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who partly helped cause California’s problems, and opposed the tax increase ballot measure. When he was Governor the first time, and after Prop.13 passed, Jerry Brown had an ulikely supporter for re-election based on how he handled the fallout, the guy who got Prop.13 passed, Howard Jarvis!

  26. 26

    @25 EvergreenRailfan,
    We could yap all day about either Prop 13 or Jerry Brown. :-)

    Succinctly, Prop 13 may be the greatest failure in direct democracy ever.

    About Jerry, he’s had quite the political career. It’s my opinion that his father, Pat, was the best governor California ever had. Without question Jerry learned from his father.
    Regarding his budget, I think he realized that not only were liberally opposed budget cuts needed in the short term to work through the fiscal crisis, but to obtain public support for what he knew to be part of the solution; tax increases.
    It is just a hunch on my part, but I suspect he’ll be looking to close out his political career as California’s governor by leveraging what he’s done to repeal Prop 13.

    By the way, compare what Jerry Brown is doing for CA to what one of those who claims to produce and Brown’s opponent, Meg Whitman, continues to do to the once venerable H-P.

  27. 27

    LEBANON, Pa. — A mother of three who became a voice of the gun-rights movement when she openly carried a loaded pistol to her daughter’s soccer game was fatally shot along with her husband, a parole officer and former prison guard, in an apparent murder-suicide at their home.

    Every day, 270 people in America, 47 of them children and teens are shot in murders, assaults, suicides, accidents, and police intervention.

  28. 28

    26)
    Good points, especially Whitman at HP, from what I heard, more layoffs. I saw the national media showing some of the ads from the 2010 race, and 2 of them stood out. The add where they compared Shwarzenegger to WHitman, and the add where he took a quote of Whitman’s and used it against her. Saying 30 years earlier, when she moved to California, it was a great place to live and for business.

  29. 29

    Since the only progressive talk station was changed to be the THIRD sports talk station in the area, I skim the THREE conservative talk stations on my drive in.

    According to the conservative radio chorus, the massive flu this year is a democratic conspiracy to force people to appreciate the Affordable Care Act.

    i guess like like Hurricane Sandy was a conspiracy to make people vote for democrats.

  32. 32

    I was surfing a railfan discussion board, and the moderator passed along this interesting story. Amtrak’s annual operating loss. it is at it’s lowest point since 1975. The $361 million loss is actually 19 percent less than the previous fiscal year. This is the operating side of the budget, not the capitol side, and Amtrak has a lot of catching up to do for the last decade(aging equipment, for exampl on that one. Now, Amtrak is not like a transit operation, their fares are pro-rated, further one goes, the more they pay to ride, and their is a supplement for first class travel. One thing about Amtrak, is on some corridors, back when the loss was this low, had more service. There were two trains headed East out of Seattle in 1975, not 1, 2 running through Montana, and a Chicago-Florida service(no switching in D.C, but a direct run, called the Floridian).

    http://www.philly.com/philly/n.....z2Hgrjq4JK

    Also in 1975, Amtrak still had a couple routes where they were using baggage-cart loads of Presto Logs to fire the stoves in the diners, and some private competition, with the Rock Island, Southern, Georgia Railroad, and Denver and Rio Grande Western operating some trains. The Georgia Railroad qualified to join Amtrak and get out of operating their mixed trains(a coach on freight train), but they were worried about losing the tax break that was in their charter from the State of Georgia(it required some passenger service to be maintained). When they got bought out, the new owner got the politicians in Atlanta to amend the charter.

    http://www.timetables.org/brow.....;item=0033

  33. 33

    Forgot to mention, the current Amtrak President/CEO is a Republican, Joe Boardman, and was Federal Railroad Administrator under President George W. Bush. Also, in 1975, I think Amtrak was being led by someone who had experience operating passenger trains before, it’s second president, Paul Reistrup, when he was at Baltimore and Ohio/Chesapeake and Ohio(not exactly merged at the time), and then Illionis Central, his way of getting patronage, and revenue up, was to find ways to save money but not compromise services, and to promote the trains as best as possible.

  34. 34

    @32, my bro-in-law lives in Guangzhou, China took a trip on the world’s longest route super train over the holidays.

    All aboard for Beijing-Guangzhou railway

    The high-speed rail route from Beijing to South China’s Guangzhou will open on Dec 26, cutting the journey from 22 hours to around eight, the Ministry of Railways said on Friday.

    It is the world’s longest high-speed rail route, with a distance of 2,298 km, according to the ministry.

    Government spending. 1400+ miles of super train. Why can’t we have nice things?

  35. 35

    @34 That’s a train paid for, as someone else pointed out, by American Wal-Mart shoppers.

  36. 36

    The engineering challenges are one, that length you mentioned, I saw it compared to the Coast Starlight out here, Seattle-Los Angeles. That route takes almost a day, and it is one of Amtrak’s best routes, when it runs on time. Over the years they have done route-specific improvements to on board amenities, only to see a change of direction at the top eliminate or scale them down. The political and fiscal issues are some of the hurdles, but also the geographical issues. California is going to go ahead with construction of High Speed Rail soon. but South of San Jose, the trains will be going through the Central Valley. Amtrak California has a good operation, the Pacific Surfliner, that has a couple trains going north to San Luis Obisipo, but the bulk of the service is between San Diego-Los Angeles-Santa Barbara, and one of the hurdles to increasing service North of Santa Barbara, and getting the Surfliner into at least San Jose, is track owner Union Pacific. In the California State Rail Plan, they were mentioned on several cases, as being almost unco-operative, and they own several of the key passenger corridors in California. That is one thing making the HSR plan very important, at least in the current blended plan, is Merced to Bakersfield and into Palmdale, and North and South of the corridor they will be running on conventional trackage, is they will get a new corridor over Tehachapi Mountains, one of the reasons the current San Juoquins, state-funded since Reagan was Governor, end in Bakersfield. The current freight route through the mountains, is congested, and a slow route.

    http://www.cahsrblog.com/2013/.....peed-rail/

    I also mentioned earlier, that one of the reasons is that the foreign trains are too light and don’t meet the current FRA standards, and BOardman wants a review on those. CalTrain had to get a waiver from those standards so they can get some of the lighter Electric Multiple Units for the San Jose to San Francisco Commute trains(the SP term for them). The trains will be sharing the line with HSR, Diesel hauled trains from Gilroy, and a couple UP Freights that still run on the Peninsula(including one that goes into the port of San Francisco). So far, since it will be a few years before the wire is up, they have not ordered the EMUs yet, but one that might be a worthy contender, is the Alstom Coradia Duplex, it’s in production for France, Luxembourg, and a pretty good vehicle. Bombardier and Siemens got something that might work out too. The FRA waiver allows CalTrain to buy something off the shelf.

  37. 37

    Last night, I watched Larry Kudlow make some negative comments about this new guy to be the Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew. Then I took a look at Current TV, and Cenk Uygur was also criticizing this guy Jack Lew.

    Well, if a hard-core Republican like Kudlow doesn’t like the guy and a far-left progressive macaroon like Cenk Uygur doesn’t like him either, my guess is that he’ll work out just fine as Secretary of the Treasury.

  38. 38

    @1 You don’t see a difference between cops and untrained citizen vigilantes? I knew you were stupid, but this surprises me.

  39. 39

    @5 Interesting how what a teacher does in South Carolina morphs into “you” in just 2 postings. We can now add intellectual dishonesty to Cereal Bob’s lengthening list of dubious “talents”.

  43. 43

    The next housing horror afflicting hapless homeowners: Zombie titles.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/busines.....-1B7933378

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: We should fire every banker in America and hire a bunch of high school students to take over their jobs. The kids need work and undoubtedly would do a better job than our “professional” bankers.

  44. 44

    Conservatives’ approach to the housing debacle is to defend dishonest bankers and blame the whole mess on their victims.

  45. 45

    # 26, # 28: My brother-in-law is a computer programer (mainframes) who went to work for EDS back in the early 1980’s, and survived there through it’s various ownerships, including most recently the Hewlett-Packard ownership.

    A couple of years ago they assigned him to “train” some programmers in India on how to do his job, while steadfastedly insisting that there were not going to be any layoffs. Over the past few years, the big clients of EDS left, a lot due to quality issues, responsiveness, and loss of faith in HP.

    Their building was mostly empty due to successive campaigns of early retirment programs and layoffs, so when these last ones were announced, he started seriously looking for a job. Fortunately, he found one just down the road rather quickly – working for the former EDS customer who had left due to the poor quality of work they were seeing under the Meg Whitman cost-cutting regime. They were more than happy to have my brother-in-law work in-house for them, however – he had a decade-long experience and contacts with the company, was familiar with their computers and programming (he wrote most of it). At the job interviews he saw the room filled with just about everyone who was still left in the department at EDS/HP – they jokingly refer to the in-house computer programming at the new company as the “EDS/HP department of XXXXX company”. The company even offered a raise, and he can work from home all five days a week (only coming in to attend an occassional meeting), and even gave him a substantial allowance for converting a room in his home into an office. He’s as happy as a clam.

    The only thing he misses is the accumulated vacation time-off, he was at four weeks a year at EDS/HP, but now he has to start again at only two weeks per year.

  46. 46

    # 43: Luckily, Washington (like many of the Western States) use the Deed of Trust instead of a Real Estate Mortgage. Most people commonly refer to it as a mortgage, but there is a big difference. Under the Deed of Trust, the bank can’t come back against the lender for any difficency after a sale. In return, the lender gives up the Right of Redemption which would otherwise allow him to come back up to two years after the sale and recover the property after tendering payment of the amount paid plus costs.

    But if the bank chooses not to foreclose at all, it doesn’t make a difference – the homehowner can be liable for any debts incurred against the property, since they are still the owner of record.

    (BTW, a friend of mine lost his job last month when he refused a transfer to a S. Federal way office (almost Auburn) which would have required him to commute from Lake Stevens to south Federal Way each day. He asked his bank for forebearance until he got a new job, and they promptly nailed a “notice of intent to foreclose” on his door instead. He’s inclined to let them have it – he’s been upside down on the house since he bought it in 2007, and if the bank is going to be like that, there not going to get another dollar from him. He could rent a similar house for half the monthly payment.

  47. 47

    @45 rhp6033,
    Glad it worked out alright for your bro-in-law.

    Meg Whitman is and always has been a buffoon.

    Don’t know if you know about the $8.8B write-off she’s taken for Autonomy, but I loved this analysis of it.

    For example, at its 3 October analyst meeting, HP tells Wall Street that 2013 profits will fall below expectations, $3.40 to $3.60 per share v earlier estimates of $4.16. The stock hits a nine-year low. That same day, HP puts out a lengthy (2,056 words) news release as well as a link to the presentations to be used at the meeting. I downloaded the (excellent) slides, looked for the word “Autonomy”, and found a mere footnote in Meg’s presentation and, elsewhere, an upbeat slogan: “Taking Autonomy from startup to grownup“…. Neither the chief executive nor Cathie Lesjak, the chief financial officer said a word to tell shareholders trouble was brewing.

    Emphasis mine because there’s nothing that says Job Creator!, Master of the Universe!, CEO! like a cute little slogan instead of actual management.

  48. 48

    More about Governor Jerry Brown and the dramatic turn around he’s led.
    California’s deficit is gone


    Gov. Jerry Brown took office two years ago promising that he had the know-how and the fiscal prudence to guide the state out of its financial crisis, and on Thursday he delivered a budget without a deficit.

    It’s the first time since 2007 that leaders at the Capitol haven’t had a deficit to contend with and the first time since the late 1990s that the outlook over future years shows surpluses instead of deficits.

  49. 49

    Hahahhhhaaaa…. you little TeaBagging heroine is trying to force her campaign workers to sign an NDA before they get paid.

    Jesus Christ Goopers, is there anyone you won’t rip off? I believe you’d sell your own mothers to a glue factory.

  50. 50

    @49 Deathfrogg,

    So a Republican is failing to pay and reneging on a debt. Sounds familiar somehow.

  51. 51

    cute little slogan

    You know when the peppy business Newspeak comes out, you’re being grifted.

  53. 53

    This, unfortunately, does not surprise me…

    A New Hampshire lawyer who works with a virulently anti-gay Christian-right organization has been found guilty of child pornography charges after videotaping her own daughter having sex with two men on multiple occasions.

    Lisa Biron, 43, of Manchester faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison after a jury convicted her yesterday. The jury deliberated for less than an hour.

    Biron, arrested by the FBI last November, was accused of eight felony counts involving the videotaping of men having sex with a 14-year-old girl who was identified by the Associated Press as her daughter. She also allegedly made a cellphone video of herself having sex with her daughter.

  55. 55

    An expedition searching for dozens of buried wood crates containing unassembled, never-flown Spitfire fighter planes has found a crate filled with muddy water.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....s-headline

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’d guess they’ll have to clean the engine block and change the oil before flying it home.

  58. 58

    Seems puddl has turned up, of all places…DailyKos…

    Clear out, it is our turn now! the deadbeats and degenerates of the US have slowed us down long enogh as a nation with their cum swilling and rectal hallucinogen absorption, and WE will bring this country back to greatness! In God’s image!

    Do you know what God looks like? You aren’t even fit to get on your knees before his likeness!…

    …And now your fat hog union goon squads have ruined the twinkie and the ring ding forever, does this make you proud? Which great American company do you intend to destroy next? Probably Denny’s or Papa John’s, because they have the guts to stand up to goon squads of union hippies passing out health care stamps that give 20% off all free range dildos!

  59. 59

    @59 He doesn’t seem to know much about Christian doctrine. Jesus went out of his way to gather the unfit around him — prostitutes, moneychangers, criminals, all the usual suspects. If he were here today, he would be recruiting bankers to become apostles.

  60. 60

    @59
    Well, there was also that “Love your neighbor as yourself” stuff that WAY too many Christians seem to forget is foundational to their religion.

  61. 61

    Well.. What a surprise..

    Americans work harder, produce more and the ownership class takes more of the profits:

    Wages have fallen to a record low as a share of America’s gross domestic product. Until 1975, wages nearly always accounted for more than 50 percent of the nation’s G.D.P., but last year wages fell to a record low of 43.5 percent. Since 2001, when the wage share was 49 percent, there has been a steep slide.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01.....2&

    Way past time unions made a big comeback.

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