Open Thread

18 Comments

1. 

   justadood on August 18, 2011 at 2:49 pm

   Latest outrage?  Lessee….

   Michelle Bachmann claims to be a Doctor when in fact she only has a LL.M

   Darryl Issa has a former VP of Goldman Sachs operating on his staff, under an assumed name

   Allen West thinks he’s Harriet Tubman…

   I’ll run out of alcohol before I run out of things Conservatives are doing for which I’d need a stiff one to handle…

2. 

   GreenCaboose on August 18, 2011 at 2:55 pm

   Well, Leon Panetta has proposed massive slashes to the military retirement packages.   Probably not a bad idea, but interesting that the first Democrat to be DoD Secretary in over a decade proposes this publicly right out of the gate, although in fact it’s been discussed behind the scenes by the Pentagon leadership for a while now.

   Why, if I was a conspiracy-minded person, I might even think this was planned to even further erode the view of Democrats by those in the military.   But instead I’ll just write this off as yet another example of the rank political stupidity of the administration of the Great Campaigner.

   They are terrific when running a campaign as outsiders, that much is true.

   • 

     seabe on August 18, 2011 at 3:40 pm

     The only bright-side I see to this is it’ll make joining the military a lot less attractive. The only problem with that theory is that I heard not a large percentage stay in long enough to even receive those benefits.

3. 

   rae on August 18, 2011 at 3:24 pm

   Where the heck was it (the iphone)??

   • 

     CabinGirl on August 18, 2011 at 5:50 pm

     Well, I asked many times “did you look in the couch cushions?” and was assured by BooMan that the couch had been thoroughly searched…BooMan maintains that Finny placed the iPhone under the couch cushions after he had already searched there as part of a dastardly toddler-hatched plot to discredit his father’s iPhone-finding abilities.  

     I report, you decide.  🙂

     • 

       BooMan on August 18, 2011 at 6:01 pm

       Well, put it this way.

       I not only looked in the cushions.  I removed them completely at least three times.  And then I searched deep in the cracks, finding all kinds of things: change, lighters, toy cars, etc.  

       When I found my phone, it wasn’t even under the cushions.  It was tucked in the side near the arm where it could not have remained when I removed the cushions completely (at least three times).

       So, since it is a physical impossibility that the phone was there the whole time, I think it’s easy to decide what happened.

       • 

         Man Eegee on August 18, 2011 at 7:37 pm

         [grabs popcorn]

       • 

         rae on August 19, 2011 at 1:26 pm

         I knew it!!  No doubt Finny was hiding the iphone in his diaper for days, and then finally saw the opportunity to offload the hot merchandise.  Probably he had been advertising it on craigslist, but didn’t get the price he wanted.  Devious kid.

4. 

   NMP on August 18, 2011 at 3:57 pm

   If it’s not under warranty, take $150 with you becuase they won’t even look at it.  I’m going to give you and your white liberal community here a good laugh.  I recently was having problems with my Iphone.  It wasn’t taking pictures of black people, particularly dark skinned black people.  That’s right, it wasn’t taking pictures of black people.  No matter the shade of the black person and the degree of lighting, the facial features were barely visible, not even their ‘too broad’ noses, but white people were “picture perfect”.  My initial suspicion was that one of my IT friends tampered with my phone to teach the “angry black lady” a lesson, but Steve Jobs has these phones too well booby trapped for that.  I was reluctant to take the phone into an Apple store thinking not even I would believe some sh*t like this.  So I went to the Apple store and secretly took pictures of white and black folks inside the store.  Same result.  I took my evidence to the Genious Bar.  You can imagine the looks I got when I explained the problem. But wouldn’t you know it…they took pictures as well and the same results.  I got a new phone.  But whether or not the Iphone is racist is still an open question. 🙂

   • 

     cruzy on August 18, 2011 at 4:21 pm

     LOL, Is that the iPhone David Duke Edition?

     • 

       justadood on August 18, 2011 at 4:27 pm

       nah…just the KKKamera app….

   • 

     budr on August 18, 2011 at 5:37 pm

     I remember something about that in the news a while back.  Something about the design of their facial recognition algorithms or some such.  Lots of sheepish dissembling by some Apple spokespersons.

   • 

     CabinGirl on August 18, 2011 at 5:53 pm

     Wow. Did the new phone work?

5. 

   lamh31 on August 18, 2011 at 5:44 pm

   So I see that Maxine Water’s recent comments about “black frustrations” with Obama has been getting alot of airplay and has been used here and elsewhere as a way to say “hey…even African Americans are upset with Obama…”.  This could not be farther from the case.  In truth, it’s a little more nuanced than certain care to think about.

   I understand that the majority of the people could probably care less about this nuance.  It’s enough that the “perceived” frustration expressed by Ms Waters’ is out there.  So for anyone who actually would like to read a pretty good post about the subject that at the very least tries to give you an accurate picture of how the CBC, Obama, etc are perceived within the community.

   Rep. Maxine Waters, CBC, Waiting For You to “Unleash” Them On Obama

   While President Barack Obama was on the road duing a listening bus tour, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were getting an earful in Detroit from frustrated constituents upset over our dire economic conditions. When pressed on why the CBC isn’t doing more to put pressure on the president, Rep. Maxine Waters gave a candid response that they were waiting on permission from their constituents. She said these voters, often fervent supporters of the president, needed to “unleash” them…

   Rep. Waters and other CBC members are in a precarious situation where their voting public is angry, frustrated, struggling and wants action. But there is a serious political risk if members like Waters and others if they are perceived as too aggressive…

   Obama has only been in office three years. Many CBC members have been around since the Clinton Administration or longer. And many issues dragging down the African American community are systematic issues that have lingered since — quite frankly — forever. But when it comes to the current economic crisis, it’s been at a “Depression” level for African Americans since George W. Bush’s second term as president. Any critique of “Why isn’t Obama doing anything?” can easily be turned around back on them and they can be asked, “What has the CBC been doing for the last 20 years?”

   Is that a far question given how complicated politics can be? Probably not. But will that get asked over and over again by those in defense of the president? Yes, indeed. … if they go too hard on the president, who is more popular than many of them as a whole (individually, I’m sure they’re beloved in their various districts) — they will get clowned. For all the CBC’s accomplishments, many perceive the current organization as ineffectual and decadent in the same way people view the NAACP and the National Urban League. There seems to be no innovation in the fight, just a retread of old tactics — like having a meeting, holding a boycott or having a march…

   There is more. Please read the whole post.  It is very good, and IMHO, perfectly describes the situation as I experience it in my conversations with my own family and community.

   Again, if anyone cares to go deeper than the headlines.

   • 

     lamh31 on August 18, 2011 at 5:47 pm

     ETA, that’s what I get for cutting and pasting without proofreading..

     I didn’t mean to say that anyone here was discussing Maxine Waters.

     I just happened to see that Tweety and a whole segment dedicated to the subject, with Maxine Waters as his guest.

   • 

     budr on August 18, 2011 at 6:33 pm

     If you’re willing to crash the country to just get a better shot at an election, rational governing left the building long ago. Even more disturbing, when politicians like Michele Bachmann or Texas Gov. Rick Perry STILL go around saying they wouldn’t have raised the debt ceiling, and no one in the press questions them on it, it makes it seem as if the inmates are finally running the asylum in America. Things that used to be truths for us have become politicized. Our history has been revised. Reality is up for debate.

     I share Maxine Waters’ frustration.  But at the same time, I think I understand the situation Obama is in.  If he ever once shows any real aggression about anything, the Faux News crowd will be all over the angry black man who hates America, and the corporate media echo chamber will beat him to death with it.  To some degree Waters and the other members of the CBC are in the same bind.  Damned if they do and dammed if they don’t.

     • 

       GreenCaboose on August 18, 2011 at 8:19 pm

       “If he ever once shows any real aggression about anything, the Faux News crowd will be all over the angry black man who hates America, and the corporate media echo chamber will beat him to death with it. “

       True.  But they do that anyway using fake pretenses.  

6. 

   budr on August 18, 2011 at 5:48 pm

   Justice Department Probes S&P, Rivals Over Crisis-Era Ratings – WSJ.com

   The U.S. Justice Department has joined the Securities and Exchange Commission in investigating Standard & Poor’s and other credit-rating firms for their role in developing mortgage-bond deals that helped trigger the financial crisis, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

   The probe by lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil division appears to be centered on the actions of S&P, though that could change as the investigation proceeds, this person said.

   The SEC for months has been looking closely at the conduct of S&P and reviewing the role played by Moody’s Investors Service, owned by Moody’s Corp., in relation to at least two mortgage-bond deals, according to people familiar with the matter.

   SEC officials are focusing on whether some rating firms committed fraud by failing to do enough research to adequately assess and rate pools of subprime mortgages and other loans packaged into mortgage bonds. An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

   Payback’s a bitch, innit?