Bad Dog.

End Corporate Personhood!

One of my biggest issues. Vote here.

What's the Consequences of an Atomic Bomb on PDX?

Insert "97211" into the text box HERE.

The Smell of Rotten Fish

Shades of Paul Wellstone.

New Favorite Guitarist

Buckethead.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

What kind of drugs do you think it might be?

UPDATE: Hillbilly Heroin.

Ebert's Studebaker

Ebert waxing nostalgically about when Detroit really made cars.

This Leary Guy Is Getting Funny Again

I'm Finding It Hard To Shed a Tear

Greed is GOOD, right?

Made in Chicago

Just saying.

At the same studio your xmas cards were printed.

Gov'nr Please!

Really!?!

I Can't Stop Laughing

Half Moon, Cont'd

Despot Killer

Deputy Gov.

Next stop, jail?

Rahm's Inbox:

Click to embiggen:

Not Sure How I Got Here.

I like manufacturing videos, and this one is pretty interesting:

However, I got curious about a related video and thought I should share:

Is This Why the Cubs Weren't Part of the Trib's Bankruptcy?

Wow, this Blago thing is getting interesting:

When the Tribune company went bankrupt becaue Zell had loaded them down with debt, Zell made sure that the Cubs and Wrigley field weren't included in the bankruptcy. One assumes that's because he thought they had a better chance of making money going forward. That's where Blagojevich comes in.

Submitted Without Comment Pt. 2:

CLICK FOR DETAIL

You Better Start Hording as Much Gas As You Can.

Clusterfuck Nation:

The price of oil is suddenly down to an astounding $40-odd per barrel. Those of us studying the Peak Oil story have said that the "bumpy plateau" years of peak production would be expressed in tremendous price volatility, and for exactly the reasons now evident -- that the high-price phase would mangle advanced economies, that they would fall back in paralysis, then respond anew to oil price collapses by straggling up again, only to be crushed again when a resumption in demand for oil drove the price back up.

What was not so generally anticipated was the wholesale destruction of global finance in the first phase of this period. This has now occurred so comprehensively that we know the banking business will never be the same again. It has also accelerated other plot-lines in the story. One affects the global oil industry itself: a lack of capital to go forward with the new oil projects that were designed to mitigate the present depletions in old oil fields. The result of this quandary is as likely to be oil shortages in 2009 as much as an extremely sharp snap-back in oil prices. The oil markets themselves are changing in the face of financial disruption. Between pirates lurking off the Horn of Africa, and a shortage in letters-of-credit that enable the shipping of anything for delivery between nations, the allocation system is impaired. This affects poorer nations the most, and when they don't get their oil shipments, conditions in these nations get worse. People lose incomes. Ethnic strife ramps up. All this will make it harder to move oil from the places where it is produced to the importing countries.

Submitted Without Comment:

Roger, Don't Hold Back

Ebert on the Trib's bankruptcy filing:

Zell recently observed that no paper ever made money because of its Pulitzers. I would add that no paper ever made money because of its putzes, which Zell has proven. The lesson here is that journalists create newspapers, and their owners should be in sympathy with that purpose. Sam Zell made his purchase because he wanted to make money.

On Prohibition:

This could go for The Weed as well:

This is a speech by Mississippi state legialator Noah S. "Soggy"
Sweat, Jr., in 1952:

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

Today in Weed:

Good for memory:

The more research they do, the more evidence Ohio State University scientists find that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.

Say it ain't so:

Amsterdam To Close Many Of Its Brothels, Marijuana Cafes, Sex Shops

However, it's not totally going away:

"It'll be a place with 200 windows (for prostitutes) and 30 coffee shops, which you can't find anywhere else in the world _ very exciting, but also with cultural attractions," he said. "And you won't have to be embarrassed to say you came."

Still worthy of a trip.

Ken Derry is High:

Ken Derry, crane operator on the Trump Tower, takes great pictures. Click the photo for more:

Submitted Without Comment:

That Toddlin Town

Chicago. GQ City of the Year.

Apropos of Nothing

Wow, This Guy Is Something Else.

Meet Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Associate Justice, sexual predator, self-loathing black man:

Ode to Coffee

Great drawings using only napkins and...coffee.

Winter Classic Promo is Classic

The Bailout: Visually

Wow.

Today In Weed

Chicago Heights, less than an ounce, same as a traffic violation.

Supreme Court: give him back his medicine.

Tides are turning, the anti-legalization forces need to find a new boogieman.

Matt Taibbi

He's doing a blog now. Check him out via the links to the left.

Mary, Mary, You Say It's Your Birthday!

A good recipe here.

Today, New Yorkers are celebrating the "birth" of the Bloody Mary, which they claim occurred in the St. Regis Hotel on this date in 1933. The date may be in question, but the creator is not. According to Robert Hess, Ferdinand "Pete" Petoit actually created the drink at Harry's Bar in Paris in 1920. Petoit took his drink with him when he moved to New York where, the cities lushes claim, he "perfected" the drink by adding Tobasco

Half Moon

Don Asks...

"Can you recommend a good porter?" The one porter that left a fine memory in my mind is Left Hand's Black Jack Porter. If you can find it on tap, you will not be disappointed.


I also gave him an unsolicited recommendation for a great lager, Peroni:

But only if you can get it on tap. It goes skunky quickly in the (green) bottle.

The End of the World as We Know It.

I read James H. Kunstler's book The Long Emergency over the Thanksgvng holiday and am still in shock. This book maybe the only xmas gift I buy for you this year. He delves into the economic jackpot of the petroeconomy, it's ability to help us enjoy an unsustainable lifestyle outside of what earth's parameters allow and what happens when the oil runs out. The truth hurts. This article is a brief introduction to the idea:

If you really want to understand the U.S. public’s penchant for wishful thinking, consider this: We invested most of our late twentieth-century wealth in a living arrangement with no future. American suburbia represents the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. The far-flung housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, big-box stores, and all the other furnishings and accessories of extreme car dependence will function poorly, if at all, in an oil-scarce future. Period. This dilemma now entails a powerful psychology of previous investment, which is prompting us to defend our misinvestments desperately, or, at least, preventing us from letting go of our assumptions about their future value. Compounding the disaster is the unfortunate fact that the manic construction of ever more futureless suburbs (a.k.a. the “housing bubble") has insidiously replaced manufacturing as the basis of our economy.

Visit his blog at ClusterFuckNation.

You've been warned. Act and plan appropriately. I'm off to buy more guns and ammo.

Submitted Without Comment:

Didn't Eat Yourself to Death on Thanksgiving?

Here's another chance.

Day Late, Dollar Short

Of course if they were three banks going to D.C. with hands open they would have gone back to Detroit with briefcases loaded with cash.

The Myth of the $70/Hour Autoworker

Complete, traditional media bullshit.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Except ... notice something weird about this calculation? It's not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that--probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."

UPDATE: Just came across this post wondering if the Republicans are trying to union-bust and Katrinaize Detroit:

But I can't help thinking that in their hearts a lot of them are looking at the possibility of tens of thousands of people in Michigan losing their jobs and then their homes and seeing the opportunity to do to Detroit what Katrina allowed them to try to do to New Orleans, empty the city of Democrats.

Over/Under?

Whatcha think the over/under is for W. either drinking hisself into rehab or coffin? I got two years, if he stays in the States. One year if he's off to Paraguay.

You Don't Mess With the Rahmbo

On the "O"

An interview with the designer of the Obama logo.

Kill Your Television.

And get happy.

This Is a Great Fishing Story

Dog found swimming a mile off shore.

More on Right Wing Radio and Tactics

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com has some interesting insight on the Right's tactics, talk-radio and their failures after a pretty funny interview with a Republican operative. It dovetails nicely with one of my earlier links.

Too Funny Not to Pass Along

Thanks to Angie:

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect
Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over
the past eight years through his controversial use of
complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's
appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the
president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr.
Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually
every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in
his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks,
since after the last eight years many Americans may find his
odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the
University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it
"alienating" to have a president who speaks
English as if it were his first language.

"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and
verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he
keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an
elitist."

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using
complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find
itself saying, "Okay, subject, predicate, subject
predicate -- we get it, stop showing off."

The president-elect's stubborn insistence on using
complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one
of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too
talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the
Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I
think needing to do that isn't tapping into what
Americans are needing also," she said.

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears
in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his
award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.

I Consider This Good News

Sorry Dingell, move over for Waxman.

The Detroit (nee Big) 3 are losing clout by the day. There is some serious change on the horizon.

This Really, REALLY Pleases Me.

Sticking Up for My Detroit Homies

Wherein I chime in on a automotive bailout discussion thread on a poster website. Great economic minds there.

Rochester Hills, MI Says: "Nuge, Where Are You?"

The Nuge should have a spotlight like the Batman. Rochester Hills, MI is in need of his help.

Not Exactly Biking Nude, Dude.

But the asshole in the metal box is getting his just desserts.

Submitted Without Comment:

The Right Wing Spin Infrastucture

Here's a peek inside Rush The Drug Addict's playbook.

Sure, Bail Out GM...

...then make them rebuild the light rail they dismantled. Great article, will anyone have the balls to propose it on Capitol Hill?

First Thing I Thought Is That They™ REALLY Don't Want Him To Own the Cubs.

But then I read this and was tossed a curve ball.

Here's How You Write a Great Blog Post:

First, report on some current event,

Then, compare and contrast with keen insight.

Find the Oregon reference.

This is a great post.

I'm No Couch Security Guard...

On the insidious ONDCP anti-marijuana ad campaign:

You might have seen it while you were vegging on the couch, sipping a Chardonnay watching the idiot box:


There's more taxpayer-funded stupidity here.

Anyways, they're not telling The Whole Truth™. Had they, you may have heard this:

By the way, jobs held by people who’ve acknowledged smoking marijuana include governor of California (Arnold Schwarzenegger), astronomer (Carl Sagan), mayor of New York (Michael Bloomberg), billionaire rock star/songwriter (Paul McCartney), and — well, you get the point.

Some Awesome Images You haven't Seen Yet:

Check these out. Will not disappoint.

Macomb and Oakland Counties in the NYT

As barometers of the nation's elections?

When the Warm Up Band Sucks:

Obama Meets With Dangerous World Leader Without Preconditions

h/t Digby

Pure Butter

Click the image for more hand-churned butter.

RahmBo

EVEN RAHM EMANUEL'S MOTHER CALLS HIM "RAHMBO"

This is funny. But not Butter funny, Guns funny.

Krugman Should Be One of O's Econ Advisors:

God, do I love his blog.

Didja Know?

From a furiner publication:

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball
• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini

...

A Couple of Weekends Ago...

I helped teach people to brew.

If I Had the Energy...

I would have been here this weekend.

I May Have Found a New Avenue for My Skills

via Photoshop Disasters:

An interesting CraigsList ad.

Economic Bleeding Hits Home Pt. 2.1

Dear The Donald:

You're FIRED!™


image: WSJ

It's Never Too Early for a Healthy Flashback:

Click the image for the full, official slideshow:

Your Heart Needs This Site:

One of my daily visits, The Daily Coyote:


©Shreve Stockton

He Still Brings Tears to the Eyes...

Tears of joy I might add. In today's press conference when asked if he has consulted any former presidents, the President-Elect answered that in addition to all the living presidents he spoke to he had been reading a lot of Abraham Lincoln--I wept because I knew it was true. Unlike the current president who uses books as props, this president will inspire and renew confidence in the office--at the very least.

And he's a mutt like you and I.

Krugman on O's Agenda:

As always, right on the mark. I hope Krugman is offered a advisory position in the New Administration.

Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is a date that will live in fame (the opposite of infamy) forever. If the election of our first African-American president didn’t stir you, if it didn’t leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there’s something wrong with you.

Pat Bagley:

It's Like a Rash

I Like This Explanation of the Repugs

From a diary on DailyKos:

The GOP is run by rich folks, and basically looks after their class interests; low taxes, no estate taxes, helping out business. However, there are not enough rich folks to elect a president, even if you count the toadies, the hangers-on, the wanna-bes and the folks who think they're rich but aren't. So the party has to use the religious right as its actual voters, and this group includes a fair number of folks who AREN'T rich.

To gather this group in, the GOP promises, but doesn't deliver, a return to a simpler age where abortion was done in back allies, gays were closeted family men who could be thrown in jail and the black folks and the Jews knew their place. It's been a 30-year exercise in stringing these folks along. The rich people who pay for the party have neither interest in making good nor incentive; once abortion is made nationally illegal a lot of the religious right probably won't bother turning up to vote.

The problem is that the rich folks who run the party - and run Fox News - aren't really sincere about the party's social agenda. It's just red meat for the rightwing workies. The rich - really, the country's owners - want the party to look after their class interests, which are all economic. They don't trust the petit bourgeois footsoldiers any more than you or I do.

The problem is that the crazies are getting restless, and want to run the party themselves, not just provide the voting muscle. This makes the richies nervous: you see this with the complete lack of rich-folks funding for Huckabee (who incidentally wasn't reliable on economic issues as far as the rich were concerned).

Palin also scares them, as she's drawn from the same group, but seems even more ignorant and likely to blow up the world in search of the the end of the world and the second coming. Even short of that, she seems ignorant and incompetent enough to fuck things up even more royally than the most recent occupant of the White House did, given the chance. She'd further tarnish the brand, and probably cause everyone's portfolios to blow up. And the people who run the party aren't fools, just dedicated to their own interests: they realize that she's incredibly ignorant, and probably dangerous beyond a point they're willing to tolerate.

Much safer to destroy her NOW than to let her build herself up and run in 2012, where she MIGHT win the nomination because of her attraction to the smalltown and southern white folks who actually provide the votes. She's attractive and hits all the right-wing sweet spots. She seems one of the people. The rich do NOT want a choice between her and Obama; they want someone sincere on the economic rightwingness but insincere on the rest. Fox, being the instrument of the rich folks who run the party, is the chosen means to have at her when she's vulnerable.

Can't let the stupid people rise up now can we?

We Can Haz Clean Energeez Nau?

fivethirtyeight.com FTW!

Submitted Without Comment:

Morford:

Above all, it is a time to exhale, to relax a little, to get the hell on with it. I know I speak for roughly five thousand fellow media lackeys when I say, sweet Lord, I am just so glad this damnable beast of an election is finally over. It's like a combination of the day after Christmas and post-coital orgasm and giving birth. You can only sit in the wobbly afterglow, warm and buzzing and dizzy, insanely grateful you didn't get a stocking full of Satan and Alaskan moosemeat and dirt, or a baby with three tiny heads and a nail gun where his arm should be.

Heh...

Some things to look forward to:

"You're watching Alaska Cable Access Channel 2. Welcome to Hockey Talk with your host, Sarah Palin..."

Trudeau:

Toles: