– The Republican Fig Leaf Industry
– It’s impressive that Rush Limbaugh could lament the supposed sexism of Al Jazeera and say something incredibly sexist in the same sentence.
– Prophecy.
– I like this idea for a 3 in 1 trash can.
– There’s a debt fix I can get behind.
– Not sure who I’m voting for for mayor in 2013, but I think I’ve found my candidate for 2025.
Al Gore did very nicely on the sale of Current TV to Al-Jazeera. Too bad he didn’t get the deal closed before January 1, 2013: he’d have saved a bundle on capital gains taxes!
Hopenchange, baby:
The numbers tell us what we all already know, from my friends and yours – millions of young people woke up this morning with one thing in common: they don’t have a job.
Our Millennial Jobs Report for December 2012 has the unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds at 11.5%, while the overall unemployment rate sits at 7.8%. This is the 49th consecutive month with national unemployment above 7%.
If you factor in those young people who have simply given up looking for work, the rate is actually 16.3%.
Read more: http://generationopportunity.o.....z2H24xeWkY
Oh, and for the young black population, unemployment rate is 22.1%.
‘s OK. Lib Sci’s children will have jobs. They’ll need them – I don’t expect my retirement to come cheap.
Thank your kids for me, Lib Sci.
@2 – I also like to thank Monkey Bush for all the plentiful jobs that were lost under his regime. He squandered a surplus away for wars and the rich for absolutely nothing.
@2 That means, of course, families not being formed; children not being born; houses and cars not being sold; taxes not being paid. The Great Recession is producing one hell of a baby bust. And pity the poor justices of the peace who have no weddings to perform.
2 – If Mitt RMoney was in charge, here’s the job policy (as expressed by our local troll contingent):
b cs -T t -b “get a job” -c
+——-+
| count |
+——-+
| 217 |
+——-+
1 row in set
Simple.. All that needs to be done is a right winger shouting “get a job!”.. Works every time like all their other right wing BS as we saw last Nov 6.
NOoooo!!!
Barney Frank did the country and the world a lot of good in his time in the house. But, it’s time for new blood and new thinking in the senate and you can’t get that from an old congressman (looking at you Ed Markey as well).
@ 4
I’m not holding my breath, but maybe once, just once, RR will do some fact review prior to spew.
The ‘baby bust’ has been a gradual decline in US birth rate over a period of decades.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html
The real reason for RR’s concern is that there won’t be enough future taxpayers to cover Lib Sci’s childrens’ retirement when it’s finally their turn.
I suppose that could be a problem, if our deficit spending continues apace.
What happens when you run out of rich people to tax?
Better luck next time right wingers:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....10790.html
How’d all that ODS work out for you?
Because in Liberalese, unemployment = employment.
Hilda Solis: Paying People Not To Work Saved Millions Of Jobs
“We helped to provide, I think, some stop-gaps, and what I think about is, those two million people who would’ve lost their unemployment insurance — because think about it, all that money that goes out in terms of what’s being spent by that unemployment check, helps to generate two additional dollars back in the community so small businesses, everyone continues to keep their jobs, so, I can’t give you an exact figure but I’ll tell you that just by the movement the president made, we saved millions and millions of jobs.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/.....lions-jobs
Trash Cans: I believe that many people will cooperate if you ask them to. At UPS Law, we had collected metal cans to support law school social outreach programs – all voluntary. We provided separate bins for metal cans that we emptied every few days and it was rare to find anything other than metal cans in these bins. Compared to law school students, I suspect that the general population would be even more cooperative.
Typical right wing tool of the insurance industry mentality.. If you get sick, get into a car accident, lose your house to a flood, etc.. expect nothing…
By all means pay the premiums, just don’t expect to collect anything if something bad happens.
@1 Good of you to try to spread that right wing meme. So suddenly a corporation maximizing profits for shareholders is something unseemly?
The best part ElDrugbo’s reaction is how it lays bare how little conservative “intellectuals” know about the middle east. It’s not like Qatar has a U.S. military base. It’s not like they provided a desert tank division for gulf war 1. It’s not like there are more foreign workers than Qatari citizens in that country. It’s not like it’s a highly westernized part of the middle east due to all that foreign influence. It’s not like women have the right to vote in Qatar. It’s not like Islamic dress codes are not law, custom or common in Qatar.
To the average mouth breathing conservative, even the supposed deep thinkers like Rush, it’s middle eastern so Qatar is a hotbed of sharia and Islamic extremism. (What’s another word for gross generalization of a people based on religion or ethnic origin?)
@ 11
If you get sick, get into a car accident, lose your house to a flood, etc.
Last I checked, illness, injury outside the work place, or acts of God affecting your dwelling don’t confer eligibility for unemployment in the first place, much less beyond two years. You have disability insurance to cover the former and State Farm to cover the latter two scenarios. Not unemployment.
Go ask for unemployment insurance because your house washed away in a flood and hear how loud the laughter is behind you after they direct you elsewhere and you begin to walk away.
13 – Unemployment insurance is insurance..
Social Security is insurance..
Medicare is insurance…
I guess it’s ok to pay the premiums so the government can wage wars against swarthy skinned people who are unlucky enough to be born over buried pools of hydrocarbons but not so ok to collect on the ostensible benefits of those policies.
Laughably you miss the entire point.
@ 12
So suddenly a corporation maximizing profits for shareholders is something unseemly?
Not exactly. There’s a difference between taking a 49 point lead in a football game, and in doing so AND spiking the football after each touchdown as your lead grows ever greater.
It’s not unseemly that Gore profited. It’s unseemly that he did so by taking oil money after his two-plus decade ‘Earth in the Balance/An Incovenient Truth’ shtick.
A look at Wikipedia says that Qatar’s oil reserves have 37 or so years to go at the current rate of extraction. They have considerable gas reserves but I’m sure they won’t last that much longer..
In the next 10 years there may be energy production or end use breakthroughs that shrink the value of those reserves. Not a moment too soon in my view.
Diversification into services is a smart play for an extraction based economy.
@15
So if the public face and 20% owner of a corporation has a set of core principles he can and MUST override the other 80% of shareholders and refuse to take the best offer on the table to sell a money losing business on moral principles. That’s how capitalism works. Makes perfect sense to me now,
“I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator.” He added, “I support Israel, but my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States, not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....11434.html
LOL! He’s not perfect by any means. We all know what a knee-jerk right winger he was on taxes and other domestic issues. As SecDef he may not be anywhere near as good as Gates or even Panetta..
but after saying that, he’s ok in my book.
@15 what about the 7% Fox Saudi prince Al Waleed Bin Talal owns?
FRA Safety Rules tend to make it hard for any passenger rail operator, whether public or private, to get new rolling stock in the US. Well, Amtrak is petitioning for a review and possible change of the rules. Claiming it costs them too much money, and potential bidders stay away, partly because the rules make trains heavier than they are supposed to be. The extra weight slows acceleration, and increases fuel(on in the case of the NEC, electricity) use. It also increases the cost of the purchase.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon.....witch.html
The Swiss company Stadler AG has a good product that works pretty good, a light Diesel Multiple Unit, the GTW, that is used in three US Cities. Trenton, NJ, Autsin, TX, and Denton County, TX. The last one, got an FRA Waiver to operate in mixed traffic, on a light density line, connecting with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail system. The first two operate under temporal separation, with freight running when passenger trains are not running. I think fiscal conservatives might go for the this, as it could save Amtrak both operations and capital money, which will work out good. Amtrak has been asking for less operating money this year, as ticket revenue covers 85% of their operating costs. Labor costs is one of the operational expenses for Amtrak, another is fuel costs. The Stadler GTW, and a newer model, the FLIRT 3, might work good on our branch lines. Bombardier, AnsaldoBreda, PESA(Poland), NEWAG(Poland), Alstom, and a few others make vehicles in this category. On the High Speed Front, there are several options Amtrak could buy from that fit the bill of the lighter vehicle. TALGO is one of them, and the two sets Oregon bought, and the 2 marooned in Milwaukee(after Walker canceled the order made by his predecessor for the re-equipping of the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor) are much better than what we are alread using in the Pacific Northwest. Germany has the ICE Trains(Siemens), the TGV are built by Altsom, as well as another type called the Pendolino, and a newer model called the AGV, and then there are the Japanese ShinKanses.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon.....witch.html
Another thing, Amtrak President/CEO Joe Boardman is a Republican, former Federal Railroad Administrator under President George W. Bush, and appointed as an interim basis around 2008, and then made permanent(until he either quits, or gets fired, and Amtrak has had a few leaders that have served multiple administrations and different parties). What he is looking into an easing of these standards for, is the NEC, where there is freight traffic, but not much. Still, I think some of the other things I mentioned could benefit too.
@20 “I think fiscal conservatives might go for the this”
The Scott Walker/Michelle Bachmann crowd won’t be satisfied with anything less than to see every last piece of passenger rolling stock melted down and turned into monster pickups and AR15’s.
Oh, speaking of monster pickups, the bus I was riding on last night happened upon the aftermath of a doozy of an accident on 520. Near Yarrow Point someone eastbound in a big pickup managed to climb the Jersey barrier in the middle of the road and slide along it for about 100 yards before coming to a stop balanced on top of it and another eastbound vehicle. The driver of our bus had to dynamite the brakes, and since it appeared some other folks were attending to the occupants of the vehicles involved, he asked if some of us would mind getting out and clearing all of those plastic deflectors the truck had sheared off the top of the Jersey barrier which were now lying all over the westbound lanes. We had our side of the road cleared for traffic and were on our way before the first emergency responders showed up.
It’s not unseemly that Gore profited. It’s unseemly that he did so by taking oil money after his two-plus decade ‘Earth in the Balance/An Incovenient Truth’ shtick.
Heh. Oil money my ass. Dude, that’s so pathetic. Isn’t terrorist money what you really mean? After all, in the rightie bubble, isn’t that what everyone in the middle east is? There isn’t much that could be more frightening to a Goper than that arab terrorist sounding word “Al Jazeera” and along with it the sharia law that most certainly is on its way to your neighborhood. Just a hint it makes any God fearing rightie want to lock and load his AR-15 and go out and shoot a bunch of Hajjis. Good for Al Gore, who if elected wouldn’t have needlessly sent to their deaths thousands of our troops, not to mention tens of thousands of others over “oil money”.
Why am I not surprised that wingnuts are upset about Al Gore being rich? Only wingnuts are supposed to be rich. They want the rest of us to be their lackeys. No thanks, I don’t want that job. And I don’t need a job on their terms, or any terms. I’ve made $6700 in the stock market since Wednesday.
Guns don’t kill people …
… until they’re picked up by humans who shouldn’t have them.
A 20-year-old Florida woman was in critical condition Friday after she shot and killed her 6-month-old son then turned the gun on herself, police said.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/.....?hpt=hp_t3
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Can it possibly be any clearer that guns are too easy to get, and a lot of people who shouldn’t have guns have them? This, of course, is the fault of our excessively lax gun laws.
This writer, with good cause, compares the GOP’s negotiating tactics with those of a suicide bomber.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/.....?hpt=hp_t2
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I say let the fucker blow himself up.
ArtFart@21, good point, but their is a sign that they are not that unified. Michigan got some of the money Wisconsin gave back, and are working with Amtrak to upgrade the Wolverine service(Chicago-Kalamazoo-Detroit-Pontiac) to 110MPH, and some of those upgrades have gone online already(Kalamazoo to the Indiana line), and they are purchasing form Norfolk Southern a line that NS was downgrading, and will then upgrade it to higher train speeds. Even Walker tried to get money for the Chicago-Milwaukee service, only to see Secretary Lahood say no. The response was, they would only work with willing partners. The DCTA(Suburban Dallas) example I alluded to, did not get Federal money, they just needed the waiver, and on that one they worked with the FRA. The rolling stock was built in Switzerland. As for the two TALGOs in Wisconsin, they were built to the previous administration in Madison’s request, and on the interior, are much different, so unfortunately, they won’t be used out here.(One thing, no Business Class coach, unlike Amtrak Cascades).
Plus, I was not talking about Bachmann nor Walker when I mentioned the fiscal conservative crowd, I really meant people who actually would like to see budget savings found, and don’t complain about it when they are in total control. By the way, Bachmann is about to have a passenger rail operation, other than the Empire Builder in her district. Right now the Northstar Commuter Rail operation runs from Minneapolis to Big Lake, and the plan is, eventually, St. Cloud.
http://mn-getonboard.com/expansion.html
Also, conservatives are getting on board, last month, the FrontRunner line from SLC to Provo went on line. San Diego, where the New Construction Light Rail boom got started, is not exactly a Liberal bastion of California, although the defeat for Rep. Bilbray might show something different. Texas seems to have several proposed ones coming, mainly in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, but there is also proposals for Austin-San Antonio, and a couple of the suburban counties around Houston, in addition to a couple Light Rail lines in Houston and a proposal in Hidalgo County on the Rio Grande. That last one stumped the moderator on a railfan board that passed the article along, since he had never heard about it. I looked it up, and the county seat, McCallan, has a population a little bigger than Seattle.
ArtFart, did not mean to go that far in my response. Even if it was sarcasm there, it got me thinking, if they were really concerned about saving money, they would go for the idea of allowing the lighter European and Japanese rolling stock on the NEC, if the cost savings do work out, it could make money for Amtrak.
By the way, the Hidalgo County seat I mentioned, I got it wrong, while McCallan is in it, the county seat is Edinburg, and it is right now in the feasibility study stage.
http://www.co.hidalgo.tx.us/index.aspx?NID=811
Also, there was another operation in Dallas set to start, the DART Cotton Belt Line, which will continue on into Fort Worth as TEX Rail, was going to use Locomotive-hauled coaches and transition to the light DMU later, but they feel the light DMU works good now, and will pay for itself later in reduced operating costs, despite the higher initial cost. The goal is to have TEXRail up and running by 2016.
http://www.progressiverailroad.....211;33692#
From 6:
“Barney Frank did the country and the world a lot of good in his time in the house. But, it’s time for new blood and new thinking in the senate and you can’t get that from an old congressman (looking at you Ed Markey as well).”
We’re almost in total agreement on this one, Michael. Barney Frank is just another reason for term limits on members of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court.
@28 We already have term limits. They’re called “elections.”