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News & ArtsFriday, January 4, 2013
News The Friday Morning News
Posted by Goldy on Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:02 AM
The "Romney Recovery" continues: The US economy added 155,000 jobs in December, as the unemployment rate held at 7.8 percent. A total 1.84 million jobs were added for the year.
Mint the coin! Consensus is starting to build, urging President Obama to sidestep the looming debt ceiling showdown by minting a couple trillion dollar coins and depositing them with the Federal Reserve. There's even a petition.
Or so Google News tells me... Search giant Google was cleared of federal anti-trust charges after agreeing to make minor tweaks to its search results. Google had been accused of providing preferential placement for its own services over that of competitors.
Four dead, two wounded. You know how Switzerland is such a gun-crazy country, yet never has any US-style shooting rampages? Not so much. Also, a quarter of all Swiss suicides are by firearms.
If only we had some sort of "state store" that sold intoxicating substances. California vending machine company Medbox is offering to help the state liquor control board set up rules for selling marijuana.
The Bank Dick. A man suspected of robbing the US Bank near Broadway and East John on New Year's Eve was caught after he was found masturbating on a nearby sidewalk.
Duck! Some college football team from Oregon won a bowl game or something.
And 1 in 4 drive stupid. A CDC survey has finds a driving drowsy epidemic, with 1 in 24 drivers admitting to falling asleep at the wheel during the past month.
School of hard knocks? A Bartow County, Georgia school board member has resigned after running over a 17-year-girl who was saving a parking space in a Walmart parking lot.
Planet of the Guppies! Swedish scientists have bred big-brained guppies in order to study, well, who cares what they're studying... I've seen enough sci-fi films to know that this can't turn out well.
2
The 17-year-old girl was not seriously injured. I feel like "run over" is a bit of an exaggeration.
3
I'm not sure the phrase "running over" is accurately descriptive. "Striking," "hitting," or "running into" might be more appropriate. Your blurb had me wondering why the ex-school board member wasn't being arrested for murder.
6
Foolish teenage girl. The only way to protect a parking spot is with a gun, preferably stolen from the Walmart. Stand your ground!
8
In his joking, #6 brings up a fair point...since Georgia is a "Stand Your Ground" state, could the girl have legally shot the man dead who coming at her with a deadly weapon (the car)?
12
@8 Read Larry Niven's short story "The Deadlier Weapon."
Also, car windshields are surprisingly bullet resistant.
Also, car windshields are surprisingly bullet resistant.
13
@5 - I can't decide which way this should be tweaked. Put Ronald Reagan's picture on it (or Jesus!), and the far right will have to publicly decry a coin featuring their god. Put Obama's own face on it, smirking smugly at the viewer, and the outrage could power the whole eastern seaboard. Put Uncle Pennybags on it, and it would just be goddamn hilarious.
15
@12 But no match at all for frozen turkeys. BTW, are you sure you mean bullet resistant? Mine can barely repel small rocks kicked up on the highway.
16
@2&3
The story I read about this yesterday also mentioned the police measuring the tire mark on the girl's pant leg at about mid to upper thigh level.
The story I read about this yesterday also mentioned the police measuring the tire mark on the girl's pant leg at about mid to upper thigh level.
17
@5 It would actually be a bad idea. The markets would have a complete meltdown, just because the optics imply that the country is monetarily lawless.
A better idea would be the Treasury/Executive Branch/President making the case that Congress already effectively raised the "debt ceiling" by approving budgets that require borrowing to effectuate. Congress can't have it both ways. They can't say "borrow money to pay for our spending" and "don't borrow money to pay for our spending" at the exact same time, referring to the exact same spending. So, if Congress brought the President to the Supreme Court to try to stop Treasury from issuing bonds without their explicit additional permission, they'd run into a) logic, b) reality, and c) the 14th Amendment. And, the markets wouldn't freak, because Congress clearly is still in control of spending, raising taxes and indirectly, borrowing.
A better idea would be the Treasury/Executive Branch/President making the case that Congress already effectively raised the "debt ceiling" by approving budgets that require borrowing to effectuate. Congress can't have it both ways. They can't say "borrow money to pay for our spending" and "don't borrow money to pay for our spending" at the exact same time, referring to the exact same spending. So, if Congress brought the President to the Supreme Court to try to stop Treasury from issuing bonds without their explicit additional permission, they'd run into a) logic, b) reality, and c) the 14th Amendment. And, the markets wouldn't freak, because Congress clearly is still in control of spending, raising taxes and indirectly, borrowing.
18
@5 Robert Rubin's. His work in Clinton's admin gets my vote for the fundamental cause of the 2007 crash, which leads to our current revenue defecit.
http://13bankers.com/excerpt/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-26…
from http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat…
http://13bankers.com/excerpt/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-26…
from http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat…
19
@16: I don't know how tall the girl is, but I think the vehicle is some kind of SUV (does Lexus make an SUV?). The tire could have been tall enough to brush her thigh if she got sideswiped.
20
Laser equipped mutated space guppies stealing our parking spots, what is the world coming to ...
Oh, it's more of a Mitt Economy than you know - most job creation is in high tech in Blue cities, the Red rural areas are not doing very well.
Oh, it's more of a Mitt Economy than you know - most job creation is in high tech in Blue cities, the Red rural areas are not doing very well.
22
Mint a few extra trillion dollars? Hyperinflation is AWESOME! I mean, it's got "hyper" right there in the name!
23
Oh, and @Goldy -- I see what you're saying about the state-run liquour distribution system, but the law we passed explicitly says that pot stores have to be dedicated, so we couldn't have combined them with the liquour stores anyway.
24
The swiss shooter was ultimately stopped from a much grander massacre by all of his gun toting neighbors. Good job public gunnery!
Oh, wait, it was the police.
Oh, wait, it was the police.
25
Malala, The Flower of Pakistan
Malala was finally discharged from the hospital after the horrendous attack on her by members of the Pakistani Taliban.
Malala's father was recently appointed to the position of educational attaché at Pakistan's London embassy, so hopefully Malala will be out of harm's way for awhile.
Pakistan has a history of strong and brave women, although little heard of in the West. Fatima Bhutto is a sterling example of female activists in that country.
While Ms. Bhutto's relative, Benazir Bhutto, had a political career tainted with corruption (a missing billion here, a missing billion there, and she would accede to the destruction of her people's rights in return for political power, much like Obama and Clinton have acceded to the destruction of the rights of Americans), overall the Bhutto family has been a historic force for much progress in Pakistan.
It's curious to note that it was Condoleezza Rice, late in the Bush administration, who urged Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan to seek the position of president or prime minister of that country. Several weeks prior to her return, John Negroponte would visit the same region of Pakistan.
Whenever an assassination or lengthy period of bloody violence occurs, somehow Negroponte always appears in the neighborhood?
When Diem of Vietnam was assassinated, Negroponte was nearby. A short while later, during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Negroponte was sighted in the vicinity; perhaps temporarily attached to the American embassy in Mexico City?
Negroponte received his nickname of "Death Squad John" after Jack Binns, Jimmy Carter's appointed ambassador to Honduras, was replaced with Negroponte by Ronald Reagan.
It seems that Ambassador Binns had been vociferously complaining to Washington about the violence perpetrated by corporate-financed militias, so the honorable former naval career officer had to go!
Shortly after Negroponte's appointment as ambassador to Honduras, death squads began appearing. This wasn't Negroponte's first introduction to death squad activities as Negroponte was supposed to have been associated with the notorious Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War.
Interesting to observe that both Condoleezza Rice and John Negroponte are members of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission; could the elderly David Rockefeller be pulling the strings behind the scenes?
He does vacation yearly in Chile, visiting the Josef Mengele Rejuvenation Clinic he helped finance --- he'll probably outlive us all. (And we can depend on obfuscatory and confusing reportage, thanks to fellow Trilateral Commission members, Charlie Rose [Charlie Rose Show], along with representatives of the Washington Post, New York Times, US News & World Report, etc.)
Lately, John Negroponte has been with the Jackson Institute at Yale University, along with Gen. McChrystal, Ernesto Zedillo and the usual suspects. (Jackhole Institute ? ?)
As Gerald Celente once remarked, America's problems can be summed up thusly:
"Bullets, bombs and banks; Harvard, Princeton and Yale."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yous…
More...
Malala was finally discharged from the hospital after the horrendous attack on her by members of the Pakistani Taliban.
Malala's father was recently appointed to the position of educational attaché at Pakistan's London embassy, so hopefully Malala will be out of harm's way for awhile.
Pakistan has a history of strong and brave women, although little heard of in the West. Fatima Bhutto is a sterling example of female activists in that country.
While Ms. Bhutto's relative, Benazir Bhutto, had a political career tainted with corruption (a missing billion here, a missing billion there, and she would accede to the destruction of her people's rights in return for political power, much like Obama and Clinton have acceded to the destruction of the rights of Americans), overall the Bhutto family has been a historic force for much progress in Pakistan.
It's curious to note that it was Condoleezza Rice, late in the Bush administration, who urged Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan to seek the position of president or prime minister of that country. Several weeks prior to her return, John Negroponte would visit the same region of Pakistan.
Whenever an assassination or lengthy period of bloody violence occurs, somehow Negroponte always appears in the neighborhood?
When Diem of Vietnam was assassinated, Negroponte was nearby. A short while later, during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Negroponte was sighted in the vicinity; perhaps temporarily attached to the American embassy in Mexico City?
Negroponte received his nickname of "Death Squad John" after Jack Binns, Jimmy Carter's appointed ambassador to Honduras, was replaced with Negroponte by Ronald Reagan.
It seems that Ambassador Binns had been vociferously complaining to Washington about the violence perpetrated by corporate-financed militias, so the honorable former naval career officer had to go!
Shortly after Negroponte's appointment as ambassador to Honduras, death squads began appearing. This wasn't Negroponte's first introduction to death squad activities as Negroponte was supposed to have been associated with the notorious Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War.
Interesting to observe that both Condoleezza Rice and John Negroponte are members of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission; could the elderly David Rockefeller be pulling the strings behind the scenes?
He does vacation yearly in Chile, visiting the Josef Mengele Rejuvenation Clinic he helped finance --- he'll probably outlive us all. (And we can depend on obfuscatory and confusing reportage, thanks to fellow Trilateral Commission members, Charlie Rose [Charlie Rose Show], along with representatives of the Washington Post, New York Times, US News & World Report, etc.)
Lately, John Negroponte has been with the Jackson Institute at Yale University, along with Gen. McChrystal, Ernesto Zedillo and the usual suspects. (Jackhole Institute ? ?)
As Gerald Celente once remarked, America's problems can be summed up thusly:
"Bullets, bombs and banks; Harvard, Princeton and Yale."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yous…
26
@ Goldy, you know, Goldstein, you might try reading the jobs data once in a frigging while; the bulk of those jobs were part-time, with the majority going to the 55+ age group.
I realize you are one of those blind, lemming-like followers of Drone Master Obama (with the Nobel Peace Prize), but a speck or mite of integrity and analytical behavior is in order occasionally.
I realize you are one of those blind, lemming-like followers of Drone Master Obama (with the Nobel Peace Prize), but a speck or mite of integrity and analytical behavior is in order occasionally.
27
Regarding the "run over" girl, I just want to say for the record that you don't get to save a parking spot by standing on it. You can try, but as soon as someone calls your bluff and starts pulling in, a normal person concedes and gets the fuck out of the way. If you keep obstinately standing there trying to hold your ground, well...getting run over is the risk you take and your right to sympathy is greatly reduced.
29
@27: Also, the officer who responded and reviewed the surveillance tape said that the car "lurched" toward the girl, so it doesn't even sound like she had much of a chance to get out of the way. The local news reporter for WXIA ended his report by saying, "Remember, the pedestrian always has the right of way." Sounds like you need a reminder of that, yourself.
30
@ 27, what bullshit. Yes, you DO get to save parking spaces by standing in them. Are you some kind of psychopath? Fuck off.
31
@27 and 28: Look, obviously you can't hit people with your car. All I'm saying is that blocking a parking space with your body is a cheeky maneuver, and while it's fine to try, the proper response to someone pulling into the space while you're standing there is not to hold your ground like you're staring down a tank in Tiananmen Square. Just concede the point and get out of the way. Parking spaces are for cars, not people.
In this specific instance, it's pretty hard to tell from the video who's at fault...the girl seems to kind of step into the path of the car. It's not even clear the driver knew she was trying to save the spot.
In this specific instance, it's pretty hard to tell from the video who's at fault...the girl seems to kind of step into the path of the car. It's not even clear the driver knew she was trying to save the spot.
32
On a recent trip to Mexico, I noticed that the Walmart and Solana parking lots have guard towers in them. Just an observation.
33
The story about the mass shooting in Switzerland has one real stand-out point for me. After the fellow started psychiatric care back in 2005, his known guns were confiscated and destroyed. There are no mechanisms for this in the U.S. and I'm sure that the NRA would oppose any such legislation.
34
@23, the law was written after we lost our "dedicated" liquor stores so they could not have been referenced.
35
@ 31, in parking lots, pedestrians always have the right of way. The girl has ZERO fault, regardless of what's happening. You don't pull quickly into spaces because there could be someone getting into one of the cars on either side, and you can't see clearly until you're going in.
You can allege that people shouldn't hold onto parking spaces in this manner, but there is NEVER any right on the part of the psycho behind the wheel who just has to have that spot and will run over a person for it. Jesus. She could have honked or done any number of things instead.
You can allege that people shouldn't hold onto parking spaces in this manner, but there is NEVER any right on the part of the psycho behind the wheel who just has to have that spot and will run over a person for it. Jesus. She could have honked or done any number of things instead.
37
@27 I usually agree with your comments. I find them generally witty and insightful. Alas, dear virtual-friend, I think you must be under the weather today, because you're not your usual self.
Just because someone is in command of a 5000-lb motorized conveyance does not mean they are immune to laws regarding battery and assault. They're still a person, with no more rights than any other person.
Just because someone is in command of a 5000-lb motorized conveyance does not mean they are immune to laws regarding battery and assault. They're still a person, with no more rights than any other person.
38
@35: Calm down, man. I never said the driver has a "right" to run somebody over just because they're in the way of a parking spot. I just think a pedestrian is abusing the spirit behind "the pedestrian always has the right of way" when he or she purposefully blocks a parking spot with their body, and then stands there like an asshole after someone has made it clear they'd like to park there. A non-asshole would concede the spot.
So in short, while it's not cool to run over assholes, and assholes--no matter what--unquestionably maintain their right of way as pedestrians, I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who gets nudged by a car strictly because of their aforementioned assholishness, even if they do have the right of way (and to be clear, the driver in this specific scenario, if she did indeed "lunge" straight into this girl without giving her a chance to get out of the way, is the asshole here).
So in short, while it's not cool to run over assholes, and assholes--no matter what--unquestionably maintain their right of way as pedestrians, I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who gets nudged by a car strictly because of their aforementioned assholishness, even if they do have the right of way (and to be clear, the driver in this specific scenario, if she did indeed "lunge" straight into this girl without giving her a chance to get out of the way, is the asshole here).
39
@33 The NRA will say "See, they took ALL of his guns, and it didn't change anything.".
Nevertheless, I understand your point: Swissyland, the peaceable nation of Guntopia; even they choose to implement rational gun management laws.
As the article suggested, I also sought and read info on the prior 'big incident' in which a Swiss madman shot up a courthouse. The story said that it was followed by a national call for better gun management - defeated. The voters see their citizen 'army at large' as national defense. They consider it as the reason they weren't overtaken by Nazis.
My father in law expressed a similar sentiment as to why Japan never landed in (continental) America during WWII. Apparently, they were too afraid to even dare.
Nevertheless, I understand your point: Swissyland, the peaceable nation of Guntopia; even they choose to implement rational gun management laws.
As the article suggested, I also sought and read info on the prior 'big incident' in which a Swiss madman shot up a courthouse. The story said that it was followed by a national call for better gun management - defeated. The voters see their citizen 'army at large' as national defense. They consider it as the reason they weren't overtaken by Nazis.
My father in law expressed a similar sentiment as to why Japan never landed in (continental) America during WWII. Apparently, they were too afraid to even dare.
40
@37: Not under the weather, just being misinterpreted. I am not trying to say the driver shouldn't be legally at fault, and obviously you don't get to run people over, not for any reason (and to reiterate, nobody was "run over" in this specific situation). I'm just making a point about general courtesy, and the responsibility of pedestrians to use their right of way politely and intelligently. That might be a little much to ask out of a Georgian Wal Mart parking lot, but I'm an idealist that way.
41
@ 38, go back and re-read your comment @ 27. You're blaming the victim and defending the perpetrator's actions. Oh, you didn't say they have the right? You didn't have to. Hell, just your justification of "nudging" a pedestrian with a car tells everybody exactly where you're coming from. Yeah, that's absolutely as justified as honking, or rolling down the window and asking her to move. And you think you're standing up for general courtesy? Seriously? Asshole.
And you're also wrong about this incident. You either didn't watch the video, or your outsized rage at the girl blinded you to the obviously dangerous way the SUV accelerated at the girl. This was no "nudge." The driver was literally on the brakes just in time (like, hundredths of a second) to keep from seriously injuring the girl.
"Hit," "struck," "came into contact," "run over" - all these terms are interchangeable in a situation like this. Learn that, if nothing else.
And you're also wrong about this incident. You either didn't watch the video, or your outsized rage at the girl blinded you to the obviously dangerous way the SUV accelerated at the girl. This was no "nudge." The driver was literally on the brakes just in time (like, hundredths of a second) to keep from seriously injuring the girl.
"Hit," "struck," "came into contact," "run over" - all these terms are interchangeable in a situation like this. Learn that, if nothing else.
42
@41,
Also, if you look at the video, there's an empty space a few spots back and to the left. The driver decided risking that girl's safety (and if the driver hadn't braked in time, the girl could have been seriously hurt) was better than backing up a few spaces.
Also, if you look at the video, there's an empty space a few spots back and to the left. The driver decided risking that girl's safety (and if the driver hadn't braked in time, the girl could have been seriously hurt) was better than backing up a few spaces.
45
If there was another empty parking space nearby, why was the girl so adamantly "saving" the one she was standing guard over? Walmart parking lots are huge. Lots of spaces. I can't see why anyone would stand in a parking space.
Unless maybe she dropped a contact lens and didn't want a car in the space before she found it. But that's unlikely to be the case here.
Unless maybe she dropped a contact lens and didn't want a car in the space before she found it. But that's unlikely to be the case here.
46
@ 45, none of that is shown in the video or reported on in the news because that's beside the point.
Anyway, if the driver thought it was worth driving to a pedestrian to get, it was probably worth saving.
Anyway, if the driver thought it was worth driving to a pedestrian to get, it was probably worth saving.
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