WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

In recent weeks (months,eons) there has been a lot of criticism of the Obama administration on job creation and job retention. As usual, many Americans are so addicted to instant gratification that they are quick to find fault and point fingers.

But the AP just released an article citing some surprising trends. The complete article can be viewed HERE. And while it is true that we are a long way from economic recovery, this certainly is cause for renewed hope in future economic stability.

“As record numbers of orders flow through Legacy Furniture Group's manufacturing plant, workers toil between towers of piled foam and incomplete end tables precariously stacked five pieces high. With a 10 percent sales growth this year, Legacy has quickly forgotten the recession's low point in March, when weak order volumes forced the company to implement four-day work weeks.”

“Legacy's recent success highlights a trend: Counties with the heaviest reliance on manufacturing income are posting some of the biggest employment gains of the nation's early economic recovery. This is a big change from just half a year ago, when some economists worried that widespread layoffs by U.S. manufacturers might be part of an irreversible trend in that sector.”

“Elkhart County, Ind., meanwhile, saw such a startling surge in layoffs one year ago that President Barack Obama made a stop there in the opening weeks of his presidency. The unemployment rate there, driven by job cuts at RV manufacturers, spiked in March at 18.9 percent, but has fallen steadily ever since — to 15 percent in September.”

"Manufacturing jobs are here to stay, and they're coming back," said Derald Bontrager, president and chief operating officer of Middlebury, Ind.-based RV maker Jayco Inc., which recalled or hired 200 laid-off workers over the summer to help ramp up production after an unexpected sales boom overwhelmed all-time-low inventories and left the producer unable to meet demand. They're still trying to catch up.”

Even though there has been a steady exodus of jobs out of the country which predates the recent economic collapse by manufacturers looking for cheap labor and little oversight, there are new employers opening facilities and hiring workers.

While this will be unhappy news for the “I want Obama to fail” advocates, this will be a shining light at the end of a long tunnel for many beleaguered families out of work and in need of some good news.

(Cross posted at Progressive Eruptions)

'Tis the season

Yes, they're still pushing the "Obama is a Muslim" thing and one of the reasons must be that a central theme of the last presidential contest was that he was not only "the most liberal senator in American History," but a Marxist, a concept that is getting harder and harder to pin on our rather deliberate, frustratingly centrist and sometimes rather too conservative president. After all, an absurd claim is harder to counter and outrageous fabrications draw followings in inverse proportion to evidentiary support.

Legalizing 'Drugs' or prostitution are out of the question as a spur to the economy said President Obama to a student in Allentown Pennsylvania yesterday. Regardless of his reasons for the statement, it's not the opinion of a "far left socialist radical" trying to make us just like European Socialists. Better to rave about conspiracies to pass a Kenyan off as a native born American because the evidence is, that Obama is at best a centrist on social issues like allowing gays to serve in the military and no more of a Marxist than anyone at Goldman Sachs.

If only the knuckle draggers behind the Muslim libel wouldn't try to give evidence for it! The idiot mayor of some two-bit suburb of Memphis is blogging that the President's speech on Tuesday announcing 30,000 extra troops to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan deliberately was scheduled to preempt that night's broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas , with its "Christian message" because as a Muslim, he hates our holiday "traditions." After all, Jesus himself watched the program as a child, didn't he? That's not of course, even contorted logic, it's bullshit. I would love to ask Mayor Russell Wiseman if Franklin Roosevelt was a closet Shinto supporter for choosing the Christmas season to ask Congress to declare war on Japan.

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation [sic] about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

said the ironically named Wiseman. Sorry, Russ, the answer is none of your damned business and none of the Government's business as concerns what any of us think about God, Christmas, Charlie Brown, the Son of God or the Son of Sam. The question is whether we consider you as a traitor for giving aid and comfort to the Taliban by calling Obama one of them, or for misrepresenting the Constitution and advocating that we replace it with your infantile and ignorant beliefs.

If this is Conservative thought in America then all our asylums are filled with Republicans.

Social tolerance and immigration

It's an ethical dilemma that I don't find easy to solve. Are the Swiss wrong to forbid the building of mosques? Are Londoners only being racist or xenophobic in opposing the Abby Mills Mosque or are they legitimately protecting themselves from the strife, turmoil, noise and sometimes the violence said to be growing in formerly calm, ecumenical and liberal countries? Is the curtailment of religious freedom justified in some cases? Yes, in the US, we have to fight for the idea that the free exercise of Christianity does not convey the right to push non-Christians around, but just how far do our own laws concerning religious freedom extend and how far should we let them extend?

Like many people, I'm uneasy when a Swiss party leader calls for the banning of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and we all know the horrible history of sectarian strife in Europe such measures evoke. Yet I see how the Liberal Netherlands has to deal with what appears to many of them as a growing population opposed to the secular, liberal and highly permissive culture they are so proud of and I can sympathize. By sympathising however, with people whose hard won freedom is put in jeopardy by a growing sub-culture, am I able to disassociate myself from groups who want to close the American borders to anyone who might not look Anglo Saxon or be Protestant? How much of the Dutch, Swiss and American fear of a large Muslim presence is real and how much is misguided? When is ethnic cleansing not ethnic cleansing? Most importantly, can we even discuss these things over the snarling of the trolls?

CYBER-HACKERS AND THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE

From Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal:

For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails, and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.

I have been writing about the impacts of energy on the economy, the environment, and public health since 1974. My career began as an educational and documentary filmmaker starting with this project: A Consumer Guide to the Energy Crisis (1974), a co-production of Prentice-Hall and the New York Daily News. Since the 1970s, I have written, directed, and produced numerous documentary films for Burns & Roe (engineers of utility-scale conventional and nuclear electric generating plants), the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Rural Electrification Administration (a division of the USDA). Although not an engineer or scientist by training, I am no stranger to the subject.

With respect to energy consumption and global climate change, it is hard to know where to begin. Shall we begin by talking about the hazards of coal starting with mining accidents … but by no means ending with slow agonizing deaths by black lung disease? Shall we talk about acid rain and the damage to North American forests, lakes, and streams? Or the Love Canal incident that drove hundreds of families from their homes after 21,000 tons of chemicals leached into their basements and groundwater? Or the oil slick that caused the Cuyahoga River to burst into flames? Or the incidence rate of cancer in the general population attributable to industrial pollutants? Or the 123 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf destroyed by Hurricane Katrina? Or the geopolitics of oil?

The history of corporate piggish and pigheadedness does not even begin to cover the global climate change debate.

I am tired … tired of corporate interests that put profits over public welfare, tired of privateers who pollute and pillage, and tired of climate change deniers and the want-it-now crowd lacking forethought as to the consequences of profligate consumption on future generations. I am tired of mendacities, false conspiracies, and every contrivance to confuse and confound the climate change debate.

These days, everyone is an expert with an opinion; but there is no prerequisite obligation to read a book or research a subject before blathering. Talk is cheap, and the Internet is cheapest where free confers a presumptive right to engage in free-for-alls. The Internet has not fulfilled its grand utopian vision as a repository of knowledge and scholarship; it has merely accelerated the spread of ignorance through viral messages and cyber-terrorism. If “the best lack all conviction,” there will always be " open-minded" neophytes and dilatants willing to be suckered by swift boaters and hackers engaged in criminal acts parading as heroism. When cyber-crooks poke holes in the dike to trap fingers and hands, that is when they steal your wallet. Its called distraction, distraction, distraction.

My career rewarded me with a decent income, but there is no money, no glory, and all too often little sense of accomplishment in blogging. Why do we bother? Are we motivated by some overwhelming sense of mission and purpose? Or do we blog just to amuse and entertain ourselves? Why bother when you have to watch your back at every turn.

Some like it hot

Others not.

So have the figures that show a tight linkage between human lifestyles and changes in climate and atmosphere been tuned up for purposes of "clarity?" sure looks like it. Is this going to legitimize other hypotheses? Could be -- and if one cares about science, should be. It's certainly not the first time that academic politics went to war with science and if the reality turns out to differ from the current consensus in one way or another, I certainly won't be surprised. Science is supposed to follow the data while opinion usually follows authority which follows the money.

Don't be downhearted, unplugging your cell phone charger or even driving a Prius wasn't going to change anything anyway, much less "save the planet" and I suspect you're only "going green" because it's a new way to buy into hipness.

While I do believe that science is the best possible route to truth, I don't automatically believe in the intrinsic honesty of those who practice it. If global warming does not have human activity as the predominant factor, that doesn't mean the people who lobby for the oil companies are honest and face it, they're spending huge amounts to influence scientific opinion as well as public opinion to support doing absolutely nothing that might cost them anything. Perhaps the Industrial Revolution / global warming link is true and perhaps the decrease in solar activity since the late 1950's has masked or counteracted it. The Maunder minimum does correlate strongly to a long period of solar quiesence after all. There's evidence for several schools of thought, but I just don't know and so I'm not going to be like the trolls, many of whom have jumped on a competing bandwagon hoping to ride it to where the Wizard will give them a brain and resort to mockery -- nor am I going to be a counter-troll and fling dung on anyone with other data that might be ignored at present. After all, this "climategate" thing may prove to mean nothing in the long run.

I am however, going to mention that even if we have caused atmospheric CO2 to rise and average temperatures to follow, particularly at the high latitudes, the Earth's climate is too complex and dynamic a system not to call into question simplistic long term predictions. What if the obvious warming at the polls does precipitate a sudden and catastrophic drop in temperatures as some have been arguing rather than the boiling hell of the planet Venus as others like to predict? Evidence grows that this is what happened with the Younger Dryas freeze some 12,800 years ago. Global warming could lead to global cooling and no fooling. This planet has been in a relatively long period of climate stability and change is always coming -- don't count on any change making you happy.

Odds are that I won't live long enough to see any of the hypothetical scenarios play out and I'm certainly not going to sell my coastal home or put it up on stilts. Who knows but that my Great Grandchildren won't desperately be dogsledding down here to Florida 50 years from now anyway and some future Palin won't be crossing the frozen Rio Grande heading for refuge in Mexico.

Does any possibility make alternative energy a bad idea? I don't think so. We are going to run out of things to burn eventually and the little bit of oil we might get out of the Gulf or in any Alaskan wildlife reserve won't matter one way or another - indeed arctic oil may be covered under miles of ice if that scenario proves real. We're always going to need more energy if we're to remain a civilized species -- or become a civilized species, that is.

"YOU GO TO WAR WITH THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE YOU HAVE"

According to Politico:

Adm. Michael Mullen told a House committee Wednesday that Gen. David McKiernan, who led U.S. troops in Afghanistan between 2008 and this year, had asked for 20,000 troops for the effort but was rebuffed.

“We didn’t have them because they were pushed to Iraq,” the four-star admiral said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in response to a question from Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence. “That was the priority of the president.”

Rumsfeld, you arrogant bastard, UP YOURS!

God hates freedom of religion

He hates yours anyway, you heretic.

I don't know if the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but the road to Heaven is once again being resurfaced with fresh slime. The Family Research Council, which purports to be a Christian organization having something to do with families, is really a lie factory with the objective of fomenting a civil war pitting fundamentalists against our religiously neutral constitution. They've now launched yet another campaign against the rest of us, claiming that the President plans to "silence Christianity" and "Impose homosexuality." It's the kind of thing that requires dementia, stupidity and ignorance to believe but in 21st century America, the very air stinks of it.

I really don't wonder that such people are obsessed to the point of mania about homosexuality or that for them, the purpose of what they call Christianity is to bring about a fundamentalist state that will enforce their sexual and social taboos. It's not so much that people hiding behind a false name are at war with secular democracy or at war with religious freedom or at war with private consensual sex, these are people at war with their own wet dreams.

"It's hard to make this stuff up" says Stephen Webster at Raw Story. Not for them it isn't. Their four-page letter, available here howls, shrieks and lies like the Devil himself about Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would guarantee gay, lesbian and transgendered Americans the right to work just like other Americans without fear of reprisal by the employers due solely to their sexual orientation or appearance. No, it does not force churches and their businesses and their schools to hire anyone they don't want to but FRC lies and says it does. No, limiting the free exercise of religion does not extend to giving any group the right to force their practices on anyone, but they say it does. The FRC has been lying about a lot of things for a long time and the rest of us have let them do it no matter how many people have to suffer. America gets weak and spineless every time some one crosses two sticks and pretends to speak for God.

MAKE THAT ONE DIP OR TWO?

No, I am not selling ice cream with sprinkles. The term, double dip, refers to a second recession that may collapse an already fragile economy and trigger the second Great Depression.

About two weeks ago, I discussed the possibility in this post, The Looming Unemployment Bomb. To recap some key points:

When you look at this multimedia visualization, you can see why joblessness represents an even bigger threat to economic recovery than the credit crisis that triggered this mess. Watch the black death of unemployment sweep over the country in 30 seconds or less. And notice the data feed: It does not even include the latest unemployment figures. The visualization gives you a snapshot through September 2009 when the unemployment rate reached 8.5 percent.

In fact, the current official unemployment has reached 10.2 percent and still rising. When you count real unemployment, the one that includes discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs and those marginally working part-time jobs, the true unemployment rate (also known as U-6 - Alternative measures of labor underutilization) is closer to 17.5 percent.

Paul Krugman has joined the ranks of pessimists with a Double Dip Warning:

I’d be more sanguine about all of this if there were any indications that private, final demand is taking off — consumers, business investment, whatever. But I haven’t seen anything suggesting that sort of thing (…) The chances of a relapse into recession seem to be rising.

The stimulus has run its course, and all leading indicators suggest a continuing downward trend. One problem is that the econometric forecasting methods used by Washington assumed an unemployment rate of 10.3% by the end of next year. In fact, we arrived at this level a year earlier, and the worse case turned out worse than expected and sooner than expected.

The problem with the stimulus may not be the stimulus, although Krugman advocated for more robust aid, but the TARP bill that was cobbled together in the closing months of the Bush administration. If you recall, then Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson sounded the alarm in the form of a one-page memo that would have given him unbridled power to distribute the almost $800 billion in TARP funds with no controls. The compromise bill rushed through Congress did not anticipate the chicanery that would render it ineffective. Here is what the TARP bill should have accomplished:

Rule #1. Never leave it up to banks to decide for themselves what to do with public funds. Tell them how and where the funds should be allocated. The purpose of the funds was to unlock frozen credit markets. Why this did not happen? The banks used the money to improve their balance sheets when they should have been making commercial loans.

Rule #2. When banks are bailed out with public funds, make sure banks get out of the lobbying business. How is the public interest served when public money is used to buy influence that may go against the public interest! Post-bailout lobbying smacks of double-dealing, self-dealing, and conflict of interest. That is why current reform efforts are stalled in Congress.

Rule #3. No bonuses or wage increases until all public money has been paid back. The hubris of Wall Street offends us and turns upside down our basic values: We should reward merit, not failure, nor entitlement.

Rule #4. Community banks play a larger role in distributing commercial loans to local businesses than big banks. Why were these NOT included under TARP?

On the subject of reform, I have two more pet peeves. First, there are other professions - doctors, lawyers, real estate brokers, and teachers - that undergo some form of accreditation or licensing. Why not those on Wall Street to whom we entrust our assets, our retirements, indeed our lives. The same fools who authored the credit default insurance swaps that brought down AIG are the SAME fools who authored the junk bond crisis 25 years ago. When you recycle fools back into the system, you perpetuate their culture.

Second, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. The regulatory system installed during the Great Depression and dismantled in 1999 must be restored and the Glass-Steagall Act reinstated. Regrettably, our diversified financial institutions are bigger, more arrogant, and more dangerous than before. To suggest that it is too unrealistic to put the genie back in the bottle is unacceptable.

The Christian kings of Uganda

It's not healthy to be Gay in Uganda, even with Idi Amin Dada gone. In fact it's a life sentence if their right-wing government gets hold of you, but that's not enough to please President Yoweri Museveni who has proposed a bill making it a capital crime to be homosexual and that assigns a three year sentence to anyone who knows but does not report the "crime." Speaking up for gay rights would bring a seven year jail term.

Don't feel too proud that we're a bit more liberal here, some of the backers of this hideous legislation are Americans; politicians who identify Christianity with conquest and total domination of society. You may have heard of them as "The Family" and this secretive, powerful and wealthy group isn't confining its efforts to make life miserable to the United States.

If author Jeff Sharlett is correct, the Christian Right group that's been in the news recently is giving financial support to this Hitleresque policy, if indeed, they didn't actually draft it.

"[The] legislator that introduced the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of The Family," he said. "He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda"

said Sharlett to Terry Gross at NPR. Is it any wonder to you that I cringe when I hear the word Christian? Is it any wonder that I snicker at the idea that Islam is the biggest danger to peace and justice and liberty?

Sarahpalooza!

This took far too long to get right. My apologies.

HOW TO SABOTAGE YOUR OWN CAUSE (AND SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT)

The climate change deniers have their legions of climate change denier trolls out in force, and the trolls have been trashing and bashing the liberal blogosphere.

If there is proof of one hypothesis, one can well understand why climate scientists want to insulate themselves from reactionaries who would waste their time and harass them at every turn.

This is how reactionary wingers divert public attention at a crucial time: Hack into a computer system (illegal by the way), steal 20,000 e-mails (illegal by the way), invent a controversy, start conspiracy rumors, slander a scientist, make news and noise, distract, distract, distract. The bastards are damn good at it too. Witness how teabagging astroturfers derailed the healthcare reform debate. Now they are stalking global climate change (they love their see-oh-two more than life itself).

Right now I am having an argument with a liberal forum that cross-posts my articles. I complained about trolls, but the forum does not believe in censorship. "The trolls should be allowed to embarrass themselves," goes the argument.

I say: “Trolls never feel embarrassment, and intelligent readers don’t need a demonstration.” Furthermore, a forum that enables trolls enables their cause and merely intensifies the distractions with self-defeating tolerance.

Why the hell are liberal bloggers having this argument? Yup, another distraction, another casualty of the climate change deniers and their trolls. The deniers and their trolls have their own blogs and websites; why should we let them hijack and disrupt ours?

Kick a Jew Day

I hesitate to make more of this than it really is. Middle School students aren't deep thinkers, if they're thinkers at all and if some idiot kid in a Naples, Florida school thought "Kick a Jew Day" would be a blast, it doesn't necessarily mean that they've even heard of anti-Semitism or that their parents are Aryan Nation followers. The misbegotten event wherein Jewish kids were subject to being kicked last week was a "funny" take-off on "Kick a Ginger Day," which in turn derived from the supremely idiotic "South Park," the show that features a talking turd as part of the cast.

I think it may be a bit much at this point, to tie it to some sinister neo-Nazi or other anti-Semitic group. Still, some boys and girls were kicked and at that age, when peer approval is everything, the humiliation can be expected to matter a lot in their lives.

Although Fox News did comment on the kicking of red heads, I haven't seen any mention of the Naples story so far and so it's not fair and balanced to comment on what they might use the story for. I'm sure that there are people who will haul out the old PC straw man and grumble about Jews looking for pity and I'm more sure that some Jewish parents will overreact and call for more than the one-day suspension handed out to 10pre -teens. For my part, I think the Jewish kids have learned a valuable lesson about living in a self-styled Christian Nation: Kick Back!

I had some idle thoughts about printing up some T-shirts and sending them over to Naples, but it's been done.

Alabama's Annual Archaeism

Despite its reputation as the buckle of the Bible Belt, Alabama's de facto state religion is college football. Today will see the ritual battle of our two main denominations in what has come to be known as the "Iron Bowl."

Auburn, located in a southern corner of the state, is a former agricultural school whose campus is a cultural island amid a sea of red state farmlands. The University of Alabama has a truly old campus in urban Tuscaloosa. Both are now premier universities sharing a century's history of big games and cult figures.

Among these is Paul "Bear" Bryant, the man in the houndstooth hat. Besides coaching Alabama to countless victories over the decades, Bryant was the first coach in the Southeastern Conference to recruit Black athletes. In fact, his decision in 1971 was something of a watershed for race relations in the south: by 1973, the entire SEC was integrated, and arch-segregationist George Wallace had opened Alabama's state government to Blacks.

But Bryant's biggest legacy is a tradition of victory. His iconography is ubiquitous; he is a patron saint to millions, always pictured wearing the hat. Indeed, Alabama's religion has created quite the consumer kitsch-culture, with flags mounted on vehicles year-round and large stickers proclaiming allegiances; but the big, recent trend is simply a magnetic sticker of the hat. Far less common are elephants, which were the team mascot long before Bryant was their coach.

Auburn fans have no shortage of this crass, commercial stuff either, and are never ashamed to display it with proud prominence. Upon entering the state, you will find it the color schemes of both teams everywhere, even in the most inappropriate places.


These bottles are incredibly common throughout the state. I've never found one that wasn't enshrined like a holy relic on mantle, shelf, or windowsill:

Alabama has the most national championships of any college team. Auburn has its share of glories, and among them is a (possibly apocryphal) game in which an eagle soared over the stadium as the team won a huge comeback upset of Alabama. The story led to Auburn's somewhat unique position of having two mascots: they are the Auburn Tigers, but the school keeps a live (rescued!) eagle on display.

The name for their rivalry, "Iron Bowl," is an archaeism. For decades, the game was held in neutral territory at Legion Field in Birmingham; apart from a sad Civil Rights legacy, the city is best known for having once been a major steel producer. Today, the largest foundry is a museum and concert location with a reputation for being haunted by the ghosts of non-union workers, but the name remains attached to this perennial battle. Perhaps it is fitting, as American football is a game of the industrial age.

Moreover, football is a creation of marketing. As I explained, both teams reinforce their rivalry with every sort of consumable. An exceedingly small sample of Alabama residents have ever visited, much less attended either university, yet I have seen couples break up and friendships end over this game. Tribalism is rampant, and encouraged.

Thus the Iron Bowl is our archaeic ritual sacrifice; it is surrounded by an industry of charms, wards, and icons. Despite the involvement of a Crimson Tide, precious little blood is spilt by these latter-day gladiators, who wear layers of high-impact plastic and protective padding. The church of football does not want victims, but fans; the libation is Gatorade and the offering is sweat.

If you visit this state, bear one cultural rule in mind: there are only two denominations of our state religion, and they are always at war. Rumors of a third option persist in the northern reaches around Huntsville, but these folk are held harmless cranks by most -- and heretics by some. Avoid a lynching by leaving your orange-and-white color schemes at home.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2009

Yeah, yeah, I know! Same stoopid turkey photo as last year, but this year is my turn to prepare the family feast for twenty hungry humans, an armful … even for an (O)CT(O)PUS. Nevertheless, I would be remiss in my duties (Cthulhu forbid!) if I forgot to wish my fellow beachcombers a very Happy Thanksgiving!

So here is a holiday recipe for all fellow beachcombers and visiting trolls, my very own:

SWEET NOODLE PUDDING

4 eggs
1 cup orange juice (or any juice)
4 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger

Beat the eggs lightly and mix in the rest of the ingredients. Then add:

1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup candied citrus peels
1/2 cup raisons

Set aside this mixture and prepare the following:

1/2 lb (8oz) wide egg noodles
8 cups boiling water
1 teaspoon salt

Boil the noodles in water with salt for 7 to 8 minutes. Drain the noodles. To the mixture that has been set aside, add:

6 tablespoons margarine (cut into slices)

Add the noodles to the mixture and mix until the hot noodles have melted the margarine and all ingredients are evenly distributed. Transfer to a well-buttered bread pan and bake at 400 F for 45 minutes. This recipe is faster and easier than it looks and well worth it. Yumm!

Palining around with Terrorists

"I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead"

said Miss Maverick to Barbara Walters, thinking as she does in lock step with the PsychoChristian Book of Revelation terrorist Church. At least this time she's speaking in almost understandable English rather than in tongues.

Like many euphemism addicts, she seems as well to avoid the use or the word Jew as though it were a socially offensive term, which it is not, but neither is it surprising that she has problems with Judaism, seeing Jews as anything but pawns or with the notion of a government that derives from the will of the governed.

I have to ask myself how we get a Maverick, a renegade or anything but a victim of another sort of politico-religious correctness in Sarah Palin. I have to ask myself how many Americans really want our foreign policy derived from John of Patmos or even Billy "The Jews are ruining the country" Graham, currently suffering from Alzheimer's, who she recently visited to get some guidance about what the Bible commands our country to do in Iraq, Iran and Israel.

I actually get a lot of amusement out of this breathless 2000 year "any minute now" wait, although horrors like Jonestown do put a damper on it. But face it, Palin is a rogue only in the sense of being an unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a scoundrel or rascal. She hasn't separated herself from the herd of regimented thinking, she's embraced myth as truth, defined a demented dogma as independent thinking and yearns for absolute theocratic rule as much as any medieval Pope -- and lower taxes for the rich who are more favored by God, of course. Most and worst of all, she is part of and is informed by a cult anticipating the greatest act of terrorism since Noah's Flood.

Sorry Sarah, Jesus has been here and gone. I'm not interested in your ambition to promote a war in the Middle East, I think Israel should stop building settlements in occupied land and that people should live in peace. I'm not converting to your hare-brained death cult and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you throw away two centuries of secular democracy. I'm not "flocking" to Israel, nor is anyone else and if there is some damned god who wants a war there, he'll have to start it himself.

Dana Perino and Junkyard Wars

So Dana Perino still isn't bowing out of her mission to defame the President who employs her. It's too breathlessly important to talk down the America that pays her salary; pays her excellent medical and dental plan that she would deny us, to bother to be consistent with what she just finished saying or with objective reality. Why should she, after all? She's preaching to her own demented and dishonest choir, none of whom is any smarter or more honest than she is.

A few days ago, it was wrong for President Obama to play golf because "there's a war on." Yesterday it was just fine to call him to task for not calling a shooting "terrorism" even though "there's a war on." Criticizing the President in time of "war" is only treason when the President is of their tribe, you know and it's never treason when Fox does it. Anything goes, you see, when you're blond and perky. Anything -- even forgetting that the 9/11 attacks were not only on George W. Bush's watch, but that George W. Bush wasn't actually watching and had effectively shot down those who were. But hey, that was history and history is a junkyard from which you take parts and assemble your own truth.

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during president Bush's term,"

Perino said to Sean 'Insanity' Hannity on Fox last night. The old Fox with the botox face didn't even flinch. She went on to politicize the shootings at Fort Hood by accusing Barack Obama of "politicizing" the shootings at Fort Hood by not calling the act of an American officer "terrorism" in advance of any evidence to back that up other than the man's religion.

So why is it so important, other than for reasons of creating a religious war, to label the Fort Hood murders terrorism? So that she can pretend Bush was a protector and Obama is not. She needs a "terrorist" attack to create a false equivalence no matter how outrageously unequal it may be. In her little mind, your little mind will accept that the billions of dollars of destruction and the 3000 or so lives is equivalent to an American officer going wacko and shooting up his fellow soldiers and therefore Barack Obama is a failure.

What's in a name? Everything, it seems. The difference between death by friendly fire and terrorism is all in the politics of the beholder, whether or not the fire is friendly. If someone "fragged" his commanding officer, it's not terrorism and if Pat Tillman was shot by his own men, that's not terrorism either. Charles Manson isn't a terrorist, even though his mission was to strike terror into the hearts of white people and start a war. David Berkowitz wasn't a terrorist although he terrorized New York -- and why? A political football is not a football until someone kicks it and the Grand Old Fox has no interest in doing so unless it serves their need of supporting Republicans and toppling Democrats.

I've seen famous comedians booed off the stage for making mild jokes about George Bush, I've had death threats for saying Reagan had serious flaws. Where is the outrage now? Where is the response to such amateurish, clumsy and wildly dishonest propaganda coming, like foul breath, out of the mouths of Fox?

BYE, BYE, MISS AMERICAN PIE - BYE, BYE TO LIBERAL MEDIA

Act 1: Last August, Comcast removed MSNBC from its Digital Starter Package and moved it to one of its premium offerings. Of course, Fox News remained in the basic Starter Package because Comcast is a conservative media conglomerate and wants to spread the Fox-Beck-Hannity-Billo message. According to beachwriter429 at Daily Kos:

What this means is that one now has to pay an additional $17 per month ($204 per year) to view anything progressive enough to even remotely balance out FNC's right wing extremism (…) The neighbor who alerted me to the situation is an attorney, and he thinks this appears to be to be an FCC/Fairness Doctrine violation.

Act 2: Some Daily Kos readers in the Jacksonville area ganged up on Comcast with a letter writing campaign. In response, Comcast restored MSNBC to all customers in the Jacksonville area and sent this reply (excerpt):

Thank you for the email. First and foremost, I wanted to let you know that today we restored access to MSNBC for all of our digital cable customers in the Jacksonville, Florida area (…) Please know that this week's disruption was not at all targeted at MSNBC - it was due to some changes to our digital channel security system (…) This issue was isolated to the Jacksonville area, and we have no reason to believe that Comcast customers in any other areas experienced any interruptions of MSNBC.

Except for the fact that Comcast customers in the suburban Philadelphia area still paying extra for MSNBC (and how many other markets that we don’t know about). Comcast = L I A R S !

Act 3: Advance the calendar to November 4, 2009. In the Pittsburgh area, MSNBC has been replaced by the Golf Channel. When an irate Comcast subscriber called to complain, this is what Comcast said:

I was told that at my level of service, basic cable, it is no longer available. No way can I afford to upgrade my service, (and nor would I....it is Comcast after all) so no more MSNBC for me (…) The agent on the phone also told me that Comcast had nothing to do with this decision, but that because MSNBC is a national cable network, it was no longer available in a non digital format. Oddly enough, CNN and Fox are still in the same place.

Act 4: If you can’t beat them, buy them out:

General Electric and the cable giant Comcast have moved closer to a deal giving control of NBC Universal to Comcast (…) After a series of meetings last week, the two companies reached a tentative agreement on Friday over the main points of a deal, these people said. Comcast would own about 51 percent of NBC Universal, contributing several billions of dollars in cash and its own stable of cable networks to the new venture (...) Other potential bidders have surfaced, including the News Corporation.

Does this mean bye, bye to Keith Olbermann? Bye, bye to Rachel Maddow? Bye, bye to liberal media? Sorry folks, but this wave of media consolidations spells b-a-d * n-e-w-s ! Once MSNBC is gone, that leaves only us, the netroots community, to keep the liberal flame from flickering out.

Rogue numbers

Would it really surprise anyone these days to see Fox News using stock footage from the Oklahoma land rush to show how many people "spontaneously" show up at a Fox planned and organized rally? It certainly doesn't surprise me when they fail to check out stories that appear on web sites or refuse to apologize when caught inventing stories like some city in Michigan "banning" Christmas. They know we're gullible and they know that if feels good to believe, it will be believed.

Still I'm ever amazed at their confidence in our gullibility and unquestioning belief. How many Fox friends looked at this and bothered to do the arithmetic? How many just saw it and thought " hey, that Sarah's gonna be our next President!"

Amazing.

PARTITIONING THE INTERNET: WHERE PARTISANS AND MONOPOLISTS COLLUDE

Just when you thought hyper partisanship couldn’t get any worse, when the country wasn’t bitterly polarized enough, now we learn that there are forces in motion that threaten to divide the Internet. An unholy alliance between a monopolist and a news conglomerate wants to change Cyberspace.

In case you haven’t tracked this story, Rupert Murdoch wants to block Google’s search engine and prevent it from accessing all content from News Corporation. This means no more online access … at least through Google … to Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times of London, or other company-owned content. Yes, you guessed it: Murdoch is exploring online payment models to boost revenues and will grant exclusive access to Microsoft’s search engine … in exchange for payment. And Microsoft does not mind hurting Google’s margins.

Of course, the Internet search engine market is not the only place where Google and Microsoft compete head to head. Recently, Google announced a new operating system, Chrome OS, that will compete against Windows in the web-enabled laptop market.

Implications? There is no telling where this all is going and how it will affect the future of the Internet. Does this mean an end to the Information Super Highway as monopolists carve it up to profit themselves? I have my suspicions. What are yours?

Fox in the hen house

What the hell Barack Obama was thinking when he appointed Dana Perino to anything at all, I don't know. Raw Story says, with a bit of mockery, that she's staying true to her convictions but although that sort of thing is so often described as virtue, I have to remember that never changing one's mind and never changing the subject is the mark of the fanatic -- to put it politely. What was he thinking when he appointed a hostile and professional anti-regulatory, anti-government propagandist to the Broadcasting Board of Governors? She may cackle like a biddy, but she's a Fox in the hen house for sure.

I haven't heard the hortatory "there's a war on" trope for a while now, but here she is again on Fox News trying to use it to generate that same community spirit we had 65 years ago when there really was a war on that had something to do with national security and not another illegitimate, unnecessary and degenerating quagmire having little to do with anything but the ego of a president who never won anything fairly in his life. I have to wonder if the obscenely perky Ms. Perino actually knows enough about WW II to make a valid comparison.

You'll remember of course that last year as white house deputy press secretary, it came out that she'd never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, but with the arrogance only someone with the strength of conviction of the ignorant can have, she's chastising her boss by saying he shouldn't play golf "when there's a war on." and when unemployment is up - like it was under St. Reagan the infallible. He shouldn't keep the generals waiting she says, not remembering that if Kennedy hadn't keep his generals waiting, Florida might still be radioactive.

Funny stuff anyway, coming from a mouth that used so recently to tell us not to criticize the president when there's a war on. Disgusting stuff when that particular president set and still holds the US record for number of vacation days taken, morning runs, weeks accumulating into months of brush cutting and evenings passing out on the couch -- war or no war. Was Obama hoping to plant an ally of some sort in the Fox den? Sorry, you can feed it like a dog, but a Fox is a Fox.

"In fact, I think President Obama has already played golf more than President Bush did in eight years. I don't begrudge him for playing golf but you have to understand when you have the B roll of the video that shows the president playing golf while there is a 10.2% unemployment rate, while his senators are basically having to twist arms in order to get this party line vote, while KSM is headed to New York City for trials, while we have the Gitmo detainees possibly coming to Illinois — they have to understand that people could look at that and say, 'Oh, and by the way General McChrystal has been waiting 86 days for a decision about Afghanistan."

She twittered to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends infamy. This, from someone who told us that global warming would be good because fewer people would get colds and who doesn't remember how unemployment went from just over 6% to as high as it is now under St. Reagan the faultless.

No, it was OK for Bush to bicycle, jog, cut brush and pass out in front of the TV while hundreds of thousands died and millions were made homeless, It wasn't golf, that elitist game. It was OK for Ronald to sleep all afternoon when unemployment was 10.5% and there was "a war on" in Granada but Obama should not have a break, or get a break either -- because he's Obama.

For someone who clearly remembers the way the warhawks went after Dwight Eisenhower for dithering and playing golf instead of addressing the missile gap that never really was, it's amusing and infuriating at the same time, since his greatest strength, in my opinion, was his resistance to being rushed or bullied by the Generals. It's also amusing to remember that Lyndon Johnson played golf when a far bigger and deadlier war was "on" and you didn't hear much about it from the support-any war-Republicans.

All and all, she's just another yipping Fox Friend, with the annoying self confidence of those born yesterday. She belongs with Fox and along with Malkin and Coulter and giggling Glenn, not working for a government she hates.

What the hell was he thinking?