This past Wednesday, The Aunt reached the age of 97, and today, to accommodate more family members, we had a birthday soirée for her, complete with a custom-made cake, singing (of course) and a birthday tiara for the lady of honor.
Included among the nieces, nephews and grandchildren, were, one great niece, two great nephews, and one great-great-grandchild.
That be some longevity.
It was a marvelous, wonderfully nice day, and she was quite happy.
So, we'll let this gem from Shirley Horn bring this wonderful, marvelous day to a close.
We go tabloid tonight, not to make light of another awful domestic violence incident, if only to highlight two monster lines by other writers, and, for the fact that the famed PartyofNoicans prestigious "family values" were on dubious display, once again.
All the more juicier that the animal neanderthal wife-beater is tied to the Bush Clan.
A prominent attorney and former White House lawyer was charged with attempting to kill his wife at his New Canaan home Wednesday night.
John Michael Farren, 57, of 388 Wahackme Road, was charged with attempted murder and first-degree strangulation after police received a panic alarm from his home shortly after 10 p.m.
You can click through the link, to read the grisly details of Farren beating his wife with a metal flashlight, over being served divorce papers, ironically, due to his "explosive temper", and then goes all Three Stooges/Niagara Falls when she hits a panic alarm, beating her more.
Former Bush counsel John Michael Farren, 57, of 388 Wahackme Road (oh, cruel irony) went a little apeshit when his wife served him with divorce papers:
[snip]
It is entirely likely that Farren will be defended by John Yoo who will explain that beating a woman unconscious with a flashlight is an entirely legitimate response during a time of war… on marriage.
And while NBC officially said no final decision on the plan had been made, two senior NBC executives who had talked to the top management about the moves said that under the plan being discussed, Mr. Leno would definitely shift back to 11:35 but in a half-hour format, while Mr. O’Brien would slide back his start time by a half hour and then produce an hourlong show.
Mr. O’Brien, meanwhile, has seen his own ratings suffer. He has trailed the CBS late-night star David Letterman by about two million viewers a night. Mr. Leno had easily been the winner in that time period previously.
Whether putting Jay Leno back at 11:30, if that's what they decide to do, is the right move or not -- that remains to be seen. It's certainly depressing, content-wise, for those of us who greatly prefer O'Brien's style to Leno's and hoped that when this all went kablooey, Jay would be the one who moved on. In any event, a couple of the network's executives are about to face a giant room full of TV critics, so they're going to wind up having to say something.
But here's the unspoken reason NBC was so hot to do this deal;
They wanted Leno in-the-house, as a safety valve, should Conan O'Brien crash-and-burn with moving from his off-beat 12:30AM time slot, to the primo, 11:30 Tonight Show shrine.
Leno establishes the 10PM time slot, makes it workable, and, then, after some major ego pampering, and dancing-on-eggshells PR, Leno bumps back to the 11:30PM Tonight Show, to pull it out of the ratings (i.e. losing money) ashes.
[snip]
This time, they're keeping Leno in-the-house, as a "just-in-case".
And don't think Conan O'Brien doesn't know it.
Jesus, he has Leno staring at him for an hour before he goes on.
Yeah, we know the title is jarring, but, even going that graphic, that in-your-face, doesn't do justice, doesn't begin to come close to what Tsutomu Yamaguchi went through in his life.
His plight, his "lot-in-life', became a wry joke, to illustrate just how much a sorry-assed-loser a person might be.
He was an impassioned and articulate man, a respected teacher, beloved father and grandfather — but none of these explain the unique distinction of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who has died in Nagasaki aged 93.
He was the victim of a fate so callous that it almost raises a smile: he was one of a small number of people to fall victim to both of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
On August 6, 1945, he was about to leave the city of Hiroshima, where he had been working, when the first bomb exploded, killing 140,000 people. Injured and reeling from the horrors around him, he fled to his home — Nagasaki, 180 miles to the west. There, on August 9, the second atomic bomb exploded over his head.
A few dozen others were in a similar position, but none expressed the experience with as much emotion and fervour. Towards the end of his life, Mr Yamaguchi received another distinction — the only man to be officially registered as a hibakusha, atomic bomb victim, in both cities.
Among them was the young engineer – who was in town on a business trip for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – who stepped off a tram as the bomb exploded.
Despite being 3km (just under two miles) from Ground Zero, the blast temporarily blinded him, destroyed his left eardrum and inflicted horrific burns over much of the top half of his body. The following morning, he braved another dose of radiation as he ventured into Hiroshima city centre, determined to catch a train home, away from the nightmare.
But home for Mr Yamaguchi was Nagasaki, where two days later the "Fat Man" bomb was dropped, killing 70,000 people and creating a city where, in the words of its mayor, "not even the sound of insects could be heard". In a bitter twist of fate, Yamaguchi was again 3km from the centre of the second explosion. In fact, he was in the office explaining to his boss how he had almost been killed days before, when suddenly the same white light filled the room. "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima," Mr Yamaguchi said.
It is nearly incomprehensible, the thought of surviving, not one, but two nuclear blasts.
As he aged his opinions about the use of atomic weapons began to change. In his eighties, he wrote a book about his experiences and was invited to take part in a 2006 documentary about 165 double A-bomb victims called Nijuuhibaku ("Twice Bombed")[4], which was screened at the United Nations. At the screening he pleaded for the abolition of atomic weapons.[2]
Yamaguchi became a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament.[5] In an interview he said "The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings."[5] Speaking through his daughter during a telephone interview he said; "I can't understand why the world cannot understand the agony of the nuclear bombs, how can they keep developing these weapons?
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.
“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.”
Between Summers and Geithner, it appears that President Obama has made the exact same mistake that one George W. Bush did: Instead of filling his administration’s most important posts with his own people, he reached back to prior admins (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc) and loaded up on incompetent retreads.
Barack W. Obama indeed . . .
Felix Salmon points out another fact that Timmy, probably, would like to bury;
Michael Corkery also points out that all of this secrecy coincided with Geithner’s nomination to be Treasury secretary, which makes the whole thing stink much more: was Geithner deliberately trying to keep anything potentially damaging secret for the sake of his own personal career progression?
Let me add a few words to Yves’ last post because I don’t think she was explicit enough about what’s going on here. This was looting and a cover-up plain and simple.
[snip]
He was on the job when these firms levered up and took reckless risks that endangered our financial system. For him to absolve himself of responsibility is a disgrace. And to add insult to injury, we now learn that he urged a systemically important company to withhold evidence of his looting of taxpayers.
Tim Geithner must go
Now, we wait, to see what Congress does, and if they will go after Geithner, and, for that matter, Heistin' Hank Paulson, for their total scam rip-off of the Treasury, the citizens, the country.
And, for those holding squares, say, in Spring (the Obama White House will want to get this off the radar well before the Fall Midterms), you're sitting pretty ...
So sorry Garlic fans, we're out-of-gas this evening, and, possibly, coming to be under-the-weather (the relentless cold weather has been playing havoc with the sinuses).
So, rather then force anything, we're kicking back until (hopefully) tomorrow.
We don't leave you empty though ...
Monster track here, from Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers(circa 1962 - Curtis Fuller/Trombone, Freddie Hubbard/Trumpet, Wayne Shorter/Tenor Saxophone, Cedar Walton/Piano and Reggie Workman/Bass).
For nearly three decades after World War II, Mr. Allina was the vice president in charge of United States operations at what is now Pez Candy. In 1955, at his urging, what had been an austerely packaged Austrian confection for adults took on vibrant new life as a children’s product.
That year, the first character dispensers, as they are known in the parlance of Peziana, were issued, giving birth to what is today a highly collectible pop-cultural artifact. Instantly recognizable, the dispensers are slim plastic containers, usually anthropomorphic in design, whose heads — modeled after those of TV characters, cartoon figures or historical personages — flip back to disgorge brick-shaped pieces of candy.
[snip]
A Pez dispenser is a simple little machine: back snaps the head, out pops the candy, and the head flicks shut again with a satisfying click. But oh, the variations, from a spate of licensed characters to those designed by Pez. For serious collectors, the most highly prized dispensers, long discontinued, are elusive objects of desire that can run to thousands of dollars apiece.
It is now, those "serious collectors" that are causing tremendous trouble for authorties in Olympia, Washington, where Allina resided.
Hundreds have descended on the town, and have been badgering family members, seeking to purchase Allina's body for their Pez collections.
In some cases, collectors have attempted to break into Allina's home, and, in another incident, there was a carjacking of a young lady, thought to be a granddaughter.
"It's been awful," said one resident.
"They are stalking people all over town, going through garbage cans, looking for anything they can lay claim to."
One collector, who asked to remain anonymous, was near hyperventilation, with the thought of claiming Allina's body for his collection.
"I have thousand, and thousands of Pez dispensers, going back decades .. Rare and impossible to find ones ... Having Mr. Allina in the collection would just make it priceless."
Another collector that was also seeking the body, planned to cash out his collection, on eBay.
When contacted, eBay, on the possibility of someone selling the Pez creators' body, the spokesperson indicated they had no specific rules against it, if it were part of a collection, and cautioned anyone purchasing it, to verify who the seller was, and check their rating for selling on eBay.
"We really don't want to get in the middle of a sale, of someone buying a collection and it not being the specified item."
In a related matter, the Pez Corporation announced that they are discontinuing plans for the release of a new, 2010 Pez Dispenser, Allina's final creation, the head of the former President, The Commander Guy, dispensing shoe-shaped pez pellets.
The object lesson is America’s addiction to hamburgers versus E coli. E coli gets into the food chain when feces get into the meat. Period. It’s a very straightforward contamination mechanism. And in this case, the party fighting for the right to eat contaminated food is Cargill, and one of its major suppliers in its burger business, a company called Beef Products.
It is a detailed, and tremendously fascinating, tale, on just how contaminated meat sold to the public is, how the enormocorps, in this case Cargill, are totally cool with that, as they, sanctimoniously, cite bullshit boilerplate tributes to "following regulations", and such.
And, in using information from NYT articles, Smith gets to the diss, who else, the NYT, for not connecting the dots in their own reporting.
I am hesitant to quote more from the post, as you need to read it, jaw-dropping paragraph, after jaw-dropping paragraph.
The height of the Burj Dubai remained a closely guarded secret on the eve of its opening. At a reported height of 2,684 feet, it long ago vanquished its nearest rival, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. The building boasts the most stories and highest occupied floor of any building and ranks as the world’s tallest structure, beating out a television mast in North Dakota.
“We weren’t sure how high we could go,’’ said Bill Baker, the building’s structural engineer. “It was kind of an exploration. . . . A learning experience.’’ Baker, of the Chicago architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, said early designs had the Burj edging out the previous record-holder, the Taipei 101, by about 33 feet. The Taiwan tower rises 1,667 feet.The Burj’s developer, Emaar Properties, kept pushing the design higher even after construction began, eventually putting it about 984 feet taller than its nearest competitor, Baker said. He was keeping quiet about the exact height.
However, after the economic downturn ripped through Dubai — sending property prices plunging 50% and forcing Sheikh Mohammed to go cap in hand to his wealthy neighbour, Abu Dhabi, for a $25 billion (£15 billion) bailout — critics are already dismissing the tower as a gaudy memorial to a lost decade of uncontrolled speculation. “It’s the last blast of the Noughties in a city that got too big for its dishdasha [robes],” said one local banker.
The prospect of a partly-empty skyscraper invariably opens the Burj Dubai to charges of overbuilding. Surprise: It's happened before. As the history of the Empire State Building reveals - when it opened in 1931, it had so few tenants that it was known as the "Empty State Building" - today's white elephant is often tomorrow's beloved landmark...
We didn't have to wait long, for some lughead of an idiot to jump up, New Year's party hat affixed, streamers dangling off his shoulders, jumping up and down, waving, dying to be the first Ignorant Dolt of the new year.
Just think of of a stork, carrying a little newborn baby, with the face of Charles Krauthammer, and a sash, reading "2010's First Ignorant Dolt".
Charles Krauthammer ... C'mon down!
I mean, jeez Charlie, before you wrote that column, did ya think to check, maybe Google? Did you call Mary Katherine Ham for pointers on how not-to-fact-check, and snag that Ignorant Dolt crown?
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." It's over -- that is, if it ever existed.
Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."
As it turns out, Charlie, you have to be the "dimmest of the dimmest".
It is true that the Obama administration has dropped “war on terror,” a phrase that is so broad and ill-defined that even Donald Rumsfeld sought to abandon it. Instead of declaring war against a tactic, the President has actually sought to define the enemy – repeatedly saying that the US was specifically “at war” with Al Qaeda. In fact, just today Obama said in his weekly address:
our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.
Moreover, Obama has consistently said this. In May, Obama stated in a major speech at the National Archives:
Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates.
In his speech at West Point, Obama justified the Afghan troop increase to help bolster the war against Al Qaeda:
We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region…This is not just America’s war.
What is it with the PartyofNoicans, and the Flying Monkeys of the Right Wing Freak Show?
It's almost that they wouldn't be satisfied of anything short of Obama, winging his way to Detroit on Christmas day, standing on top of the plane that carried the Panty Terrorist Bomber, bullhorn in hand, bellowing out across the tarmac "Bring'em On!"
And, then, of course, follow that up with sending our military into a country that had nothing to do with the Panty Terrorist Bomber.
In case any of the other Flying Monkeys are reading this, and didn't get the memo, The Bush Grindhouse is out-of-business, and you can't keep making up your own bullshit and passing it off as fact.
So, Charlie Krauthammer, c'mon down, and pick up your Ignorant Dolt Crown and Sceptre.
And, carry on, with being the "dimmest of the dimmest" ...
