Instead, I’ll just tell you this: if you live in PA and you’re having trouble running your Mozilla-based internet and email, if you can’t get to Wikipedia, or you can’t look for a job because craigslist is down, blame Bob Casey, who continues to support this dangerous and misguided legislation, even though support for it is peeling away like skin off a rotten banana. It’s shelved in the House, opposed by the White House, and dying in the Senate.

Bob Casey’s had plenty of opportunity to drop his support. the fact that he’s pushing on into strong head winds shows either that he truly believes Comcast and the government should be able to censor the Internet, or that he doesn’t exactly understand how the Internet works.

Neither reflects well on the man. With unemployment pushing 9% in PA, and 12% in Philly, the last thing we need is the country’s biggest job site shutting down. But that’s where we are, because of Bob Casey. I’m sure the unemployed are grateful to him for standing up for the likes of Comcast.

Also worth noting: Republican Pat Toomey opposes the Protect IP Act. Just sayin’.

A few weeks back, I was at a hot rod show in upstate NY, where two of Anheuser’s other fake craft beers were being sold: 312 and Goose Island, which were recently bought out by the global industri-brew giant. Now, I don’t know how these beers tasted prior to acquisition by AB/Inbev, but my verdict two weeks ago was that both tasted HORRIBLE.

the crafty bastards are trademarking another dozen or more area codes, so be on the lookout for this fakery. Be an infomed beer drinker, and support real independent brewers.

The first question was about discrimination about atheists. Another wanted to know Obama’s biggest regrets. Another asked about compromise, what does it mean? And finally one person asked about Roosevelt’s epic fuckup that plunged the US back into the red in 1937. I swear, these questions were so thoroughly unrelated to the supposed topic, I had to wonder if they were plants, especially the young woman who wanted to shake the president’s hand because he is so awesome.

Along the way, the president informed me that Democrats only read the NYT and watch MSNBC, while conservatives and republicans only read the WSJ and watch FOX News. This is such a ridiculous and shallow characterization, i have to wonder if the president really believes it: if so, can someone please bring him out of his bubble?

And oh yes, much was made of the false and inaccurate analogy that governments, like families, must tighten their belts, as if families never deficit spend (ahem, college loans, mortgages, home equity loans, carloans) and when they do that they put credit card payments ahead of putting food on the table.

The whole thing was quite free of substance, and I’m sure the president was grateful that he had to answer questions about atheists facing discrimination rather than the prospect of senior and soon-to-be-senior citizens living out their old age eating cat food. I’m sure he was glad he didn’t have to talk too much about how cutting Medicaid would put the financial burden of caring for sick, elderly parents on families, not the government.

I did learn one thing though: the president may be sincere about his desire to gut these programs, but reading the comments at the linked Daily Kos article, you see an equally sincere group of activists getting angrier by the second. And you know, contrary to the claims of some people, we’re not all a bunch of upper middle class white progressives who just don’t get it. Some of us are counting on social security, medicare,and medicaid when WE get older, because our careers and paychecks have stagnated for years, pensions no longer exist, and there is no such thing as job security anymore.

I’d put the president’s re-election at 50/50. If these cuts go through, I’d put my bets on his challenger.

I learned back in 1992 that Bill Clinton was a lying piece of shit, not a progressive, and barely a Democrat.

From the description:

Leaked cell phone footage of Bill Clinton cozying up to Paul Ryan

The day after the stunning upset in the special congressional election in upstate New York, Rep. Paul Ryan is a man under fire.

ABC News was behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Congressman and GOP Budget Committee Chairman when he got some words of encouragement none other than former President Bill Clinton.

“So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I’m glad we won this race in New York,” Clinton told Ryan, when the two met backstage at a forum on the national debt held by the Pete Peterson Foundation. But he added, “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing.”

Ryan told Clinton he fears that now nothing will get done in Washington.

“My guess is it’s going to sink into paralysis is what’s going to happen. And you know the math. It’s just, I mean, we knew we were putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out there. You gotta get this thing moving,” Ryan said.

Clinton told Ryan that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he should “give me a call.” Ryan said he would.

Not our friends by any definition. We’re fucking doomed.

On my drive into work this morning, the riots in Greece were the lead story, with the reporter stating that the protests had grown immeasurably from the small group of anarchists the day before. The cops were firing tear gas into the crowd. i don’t know how that’s going to work out, when you hear ordinary Greeks like Anastasia Arvanitiki say things like “They’ll be the worst criminals in history… we want to see them hanged.” And it’s worth noting that the protestors are already breaking into government office buildings.

My prediction is that the riots are going to spread. And sometime by next week, my bet is that Athens will be in flames. I wouldn’t rule our car bombs either.

You push people too far, they turn on you. A friend of mine put it really well, so I am essentially plagiarizing him here:

What the banksters, and the politicians that fellate them, don’t seem to get is that their wealth is a social construct. They have gotten title to assets typically land, but also trademarks, patents, monopolies, oligopolies that would not exist without the social compact/construct of our civilization. Without that social construct, any crowd with pitchforks and torches could break down the gates of their gated suburban communities and just take it from them, as I predict is going to happen in Greece.

You think that they would realize, if not from a sense of humanity and goodness (which they seem to lack) but from a sense of self-preservation and self-interest that making sure that the majority of society functions with a reasonable standard of living makes a lot of sense. Clearly they don’t get it.

I think Athens will be on fire soon. Literally, in flames. And I think a couple of ministers had better watch out, because I wouldn’t be surprised if the youth are out for blood.

Look, if both parties are insisting you eat Friskies in your old age before dying on the street, maybe it’s time to start looking into other parties, many of which believe you should grow old with dignity.

One thing is for certain, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans deserve your vote, just your contempt and abject hatred.

they should all go die in a fire.

The details of Oh,bummer’s “deal” are trickling out: if, as some have said, he’s the only thing standing in the way of right wing disaster, we are totally, thoroughly fucked in the dick with a pickle fork a backhoe:

Compared to 2010 levels, there are big cuts to cherished Democratic-backed programs. The Women, Infants and Children nutrition program is cut $504 million, foreign food assistance by $194 million and assistance to state and local law enforcement by $415 million.

The Environmental Protection Agency is cut by $1.6 billion, a 16 percent reduction, and lawmakers from Western states were able to include a rider allowing states to de-list wolves from the endangered species list.

The Homeland Security Department sees significant cuts as well: $226 million is cut from the southern border fence at the suggestion of the Obama administration, and the number of Transportation Security Administration workers is capped. FEMA first-responder grants are cut by $786 million.

Health funding also takes a serious hit. Community healthcare centers lose $600 million while HIV and other disease-prevention funds are cut by $1 billion. But Democrats noted that the health centers would not have to close altogether under a cut of this size. [...] Low-income heating assistance is cut $390 million, while Community Development Funds are cut $942 million.

Well, at least health centers won’t have to close altogether. Instead, hours will be dramatically cut, so i guess that’s OK. If you’re not sick and poor that is. As for low-income heating assistance, maybe the poor can keep warm by burning all those “Hope and Change” posters that blanketed their neighborhoods in 2008. Anyway, continuing…

Republicans claim victory in defunding two so-called “ObamaCare” programs: the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (Co-Op) and Free Choice Voucher programs.

If the president won’t stand up for his signature program, what does that say about his principles? What does that say about his willingness to fight for YOUR priorities, if he won’t fight for his own?

Obama is a lying piece of shit. I expect the Republicans to be evil, heartless bastards who would rape their own daughters for a nickel, but the Democrats are simply worthless. We live in a de facto one-party country: that party is Big Money, and you can’t expect anything out of them but pain and suffering. Oh and wars. We ALWAYS have plenty of money for wars.

The whole lot of them can go die in a fire for all I care.

Every single day, I log into Marketwatch and go bearish on M&I Bank, a huge supporter of fascist Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. The unions are boycotting them, and they are losing money hand over fist as more and more people learn what a shitty, toxic, criminal enterprise Wisconsin’s largest bank really is:

M&I is also the bank that helped coin the phrase “Las Vegas loophole” by using dummy subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes in Wisconsin…

Both Kuester and Furlong were behind M&I’s strategy to get rich by making real estate loans in red hot markets like Arizona and Florida. When the bubble burst, M&I’s profits tanked, taking its stock price along down. M&I shares are now worth about $7.70 today, down some 85 percent from the $50 peak back in June 2008.

There’s even more here, which will make you want to register for Marketwatch and start going bearish on their stock as well:

M&I’s executives ran one of the most conspicuous dumping sites for toxic financial waste in the country. And that the same executives are about to get very rich, even though TARP rules supposedly don’t allow big bonuses for underwater bankers like the leadership at M&I.

These executives didn’t just contribute to Scott Walker’s campaign. They also helped the governor avoid the press — and his own constituents — by letting him use their bank’s underground tunnel, which leads directly from its parking lot into the Capitol Building in Madison. Using it for this purpose may have been a violation of the bank’s own Code of Business Ethics…

How toxic were M&I’s loans? As Bloomberg News reported in 2009, “The biggest banks with nonperforming loans of at least 5 percent include Wisconsin’s Marshall & Ilsley Corp. and Georgia’s Synovus Financial Corp.” Bloomberg quoted one former regulator as saying these figures were “off the charts,” while another said: “If (a bank) is at 5 percent, chances are regulators have them classified as being in unsafe and unsound condition.”

At its worst, M&I Bank’s figure was 5.18%.

And yet investors might not have known the bank was in “unsafe and unsound” conditions by reading SEC filings for previous years. That document made it sound as if the bank was merely suffering from the difficult conditions everybody was facing. What’s more, “management concluded that internal control over financial reporting was effective as of December 31, 2008.”

Every “toxic loan” represents a household whose life has become a shambles. The executives of Marshall & Ilsley Bank, on the other hand, are doing just fine. Thanks to a a legal workaround discovered by the enterprising folks at M&I, they’re using a 2008 contractual provision to write themselves fat checks before taxpayers get their money back.

How fat are those checks? The CEO, Mark Furlong, is getting $18 million. CFO Gregory Smith is getting $5.5 million. Senior Vice President Kenneth Krei will receive the same amount, while Senior Vice Presidents Thomas Ellis and Thomas O’Neill are getting $4.1 million and $5.1 million, respectively, with another $26.7 million being distributed to other M&I executives (many of whom undoubtedly oversaw the writing of toxic loans).

If these underperforming executives gave back all this bonus money they’d be less than 1/25th of the way toward paying back the $1.5 billion that the bank still owes on its TARP money.

That’s right: the bank’s executives haven’t even paid back the money we taxpayers loaned them.

Now, thanks to their greedy and clearly misguided support for Walker the fascist, their shareholders are losing money. Frankly, I think M&I Bank is lucky no one has thrown a molotov cocktail through the windows of their corporate offices. Or for that matter, bank executives personal homes.

For example, why are so many baby dolphins washing up dead? Really, it’s SUCH a mystery:

he investigation into the many infant dolphin deaths along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama will be multi-faceted in the months to come and watched by dozens of agencies and hundreds of attorneys in litigation with BP.

But why the young mammals died and continue to die prematurely, weeks before the birthing season in the northern Gulf, may remain forever a mystery.

By the end of the week, there had been 39 confirmed deaths, an unprecedented number for Mississippi and Alabama, but not as unusual for the much-larger Texas coast.

Tissue samples will be checked for signs of oil. There’s no ignoring that crude oil from BP’s well was gushing into the environment when the mother dolphins were in their early months of pregnancy.

You’ll notice the word “Corexit” never appears. Not once. I wonder why, he asked cynically.

And the missing turtles? “Shrimp boat nets”. Seriously, even though a number of commenters point out that “All fishing and shrimping activities in that region were temporarily suspended due to the emergency.”

Meanwhile, Ben Marble MD provides sad reminder from last year.