From Pine View Farm

The theology of pretzel-minds, who wish death to others to demonstrate their allegiance to the God of love.

Andrew Sullivan is right to call the “Christianists.” There is no moral difference between them and jihadis who profess other faiths.

Pah!

The New York Times seems to have put its “registered user” wall back up.

Once I did register several years ago, then they kept telling me that they didn’t know who I was whenever I tried to log in.

Not worth the trouble.

I have done without them before. I can do without them again.

“Tie me wallaby down, sport, tie me wallaby down.”

From Reuters. (Warning: Short commercial at beginning.)

. . . not private armies of clerks:

American doctors and hospitals have to employ far more billing clerks than counterparts in, say, Germany or Canada, Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt said.

“We have without any question the most complex, bureaucratic health system in the world. There is just no other nation that spends as much on paper and computers . . . just claims-processing. . . . To my mind, we get very little for that in terms of social value added.”

There is no way that a government system could be as bad as what we have.

Just think: social security recipients get their government checks on time; doctors don’t get the private insurance reimbursement on time.

But I forgot. Government officials don’t get country club memberships from the stockholders.

It is all about the insurance execs’ country club memberships.

Furniture shopping.

One note samba:

The fact is that the Republican Party told teabaggers’ grandmas (of “death panel” fame) that Social Security was going to be the end of America. And today you can’t swing a euthanized cat without hitting a Republican at a microphone insisting he’s Social Security’s greatest champion.

Republicans likewise told teabaggers’ dads that Medicare would be the end of America. And today you can’t swing a… oh yeah, you’ve heard that one.

Today, of course, Republicans will spend the entire day telling teabaggers themselves that the health insurance reform bill will be the end of America.

Act here.

In today’s Inky, Susan Estrich portrayed Sarah Palin as a victim of sexist libruls pointing and giggling at the picture of Palin on the cover of Newsweek (the link is to Yahoo, because I could not find the column on the Inky website).

The irony is that the cover, far from skewering Palin, as was its clear intent, helps her. The picture overwhelms the caption — “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah? She’s Bad News for the GOP and Everyone Else, Too” — and reduces it to a hit piece. It makes Palin a heroine to the people who hate the liberal media, reinforcing the view that the media are biased against conservatives. It makes women like me horrendously uncomfortable, because sexism is not OK under any circumstances. And it makes non-political, moderate women (you know, the kind who decide every election) more sympathetic to a woman who, on most issues (not just abortion, but health care, for instance, and stem cell research), is on the opposite side of them.

The libruls I know found the cover in quite poor taste, as I remarked here.

But there’s another way to look at it. She loves to play the MILF card when it’s to her advantage, then play the “you’re sexist” card when it benefits her. Jessica Valenti writes at the Guardian:

You simply can’t have it both ways – it’s ridiculous to be upset about being treated differently by the public because you’re a woman and a mother, while demanding the same biased treatment when it might give you the edge in an interview. Hers is a gender politics of convenience, one that insults all women in politics.

It’s as it may be. But all the charges of sexism in the world don’t answer this question:

Is Palin aware that every other word that comes out of her mouth a lie, or is she merely delusional?

Inquiring minds want to know.

And, as a long time SEC fan, I generally loathe everything Big Ten on principle.

Ohio’s attorney general sued Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings on Friday, asserting that they provided misleading credit ratings that led to hundreds of millions of losses for state funds.

The persons who certified the bad paper are just as culpable as the ones who printed it.

Via Balloon Juice.

Banks shot:

Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida, Fort Myers, Florida

There is no moral difference between the high school thug who shoots his classmate for dissing him and the wingnut who wants to bomb some country for every little fancied slight.

GI Statue, Philadelphia, Pa., Korean War Memorial, Foglietta Plaza. A citizen has added the rose, no doubt taken from one of the hundreds of rose bushes in the Penns Landing and Society Hill areas.

Sun setting behind Society Hill Towers.

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Will Bunch crunches the numbers.

This sounds so much like an urban legend I’m having trouble believing it.

But I’m glad I don’t use cosmetics.

Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before killing them and extracting their fat.

The liquidised product fetched $15,000 (£9,000) a litre and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.

I just saw the English version of this ad. It posited that Italian restaurants serve pizza.

Three Four things.

• I’ve been to lots of Italian restaurants, like this one. Pizza was an afterthought. Pizza is a big deal at pizza joints, not at restaurants.
• “Dr. Oetker” is German. What do Germans know about pizza?
• The best pizza joints are run by Greeks.
• Modern pizza has little to do with traditional Sicilian pizza. I’ve had both, including Sicilian pie made by a real Sicilian. I know.

No sale.

Still over half a mil:

Initial jobless claims were unchanged at 505,000 in the week ended Nov. 14, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week, while those getting extended payments jumped.

The loss of 7.3 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, the biggest drop of any postwar economic slump, makes an acceleration in firings less likely as consumers begin to spend. A rebound in hiring may take longer to develop as companies have ample room to boost hours for current employees before taking on additional staff.</blockquote>

 

Joshua Bell and Frankie Mureno.

You can’t make this stuff up:

Here’s what happened: In 2005, Texas voters and the state Legislature approved a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

But the amendment included the following clause, which was reportedly designed to ban civil unions and domestic partnerships: “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

One thing that is “identical…to marriage,” of course, is marriage.

Via Unqualified Offerings, which recasts this as a jobs bill:

All those Texans who thought they were married will now have to go to another state and get married all over again. They’ll spend money on caterers, dress designers, priests, cake decorators, wedding planners, musicians, and numerous other creative professionals.

I remember when I was a young ‘un, pundits would talk about the limitless potential of the oceans to provide food.

Not so then, not so now.

From the BBC:

A species of skate could become the first marine fish driven to extinction by commercial fishing, say scientists.

A study reveals that an error in the classification of the species has meant researchers have failed to see just how close to the brink it is.

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings applies Wall Street strategy to lexicography:

Perhaps I should start selling assets based on buzzword usage. I’ll go out to Riverside County (real estate there is so cheap right now! better buy it fast because it won’t stay cheap!) and open a for-profit school that doesn’t actually teach any students but generates huge volumes of paperwork full of buzzwords, sell assets based on these buzzwords, then get out of the market before the bubble bursts. And once it does, I’ll explain that your children will never learn to read if you don’t give me a trillion dollars.

Brendan:

I don’t support the death penalty: it ends the torment of incarceration for those who deserve punishment, without providing a way to freedom for those who have been unjustly imprisoned.

She was alone.

They were abstinence tapes, folks. Abstinence tapes.

(Concept shamelessly stolen from Michael Feldman.)

That’s why I agree with Markos Moulitsas when he calls the conservatives a bunch of cowards. They want to fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here. Why be afraid to fight terrorists wherever they might arise? After putting New Yorkers at increased risk of retribution by attacking and occupying a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, the conservatives feign concern for the safety of New Yorkers when they try to put the real culprits on trial. It is beyond insulting.

Read the whole thing.

Vote here (Facebook account required).

On the south side of Chestnut between Front and Second.

The inscription reads

From the People of the
Bicentennial to the People of
the Tricentennial Our Mementos
to be Opened Only by the
Mayor of Philadelphia
July 4, 2076, 3 P. M.

Depth 5 Feet

It’s not going to make it.

Thomas Noyes writes at the Guardian (emphasis added):

Time and again, we have given the wizards of Wall Street all they want, and what do we get? Bigger and bigger messes. Time and again, we have been told that an increasingly unfettered financial system will unlock more capital and give us ever-growing prosperity. Instead, we are suffering through the greatest economic crisis since the 1929 crash . . . .

A year ago, Alan Greenspan, the high priest of laissez-faire capitalism, admitted that he was “absolutely, precisely” wrong in thinking that self-interest would protect the financial system from self-inflicted collapse. Yet, the belief that unfettered finance would bring blessings to shareholders and customers alike dies hard.

Instead of wondering which institutions might be too big to fail, it’s time to consider whether the financial behemoths are too big to succeed.

It’s got to better than the Newsweek article. I read The Nation. Agree or disagree with its writers, you must concede that they can string sentences together using a subject and a predicate (click the image for the link):

Ten bucks for the ebook.

I made it to the Philly Drinking Liberally for the first time in a couple of months. Some of my friends were there; some were out of town. It was good seeing those who were there and, oddly enough, good missing those who were out of town. Even though some were missing, the fellowship was not.

Now to investigate Liberallies in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

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One knows that the Newsweek issue about Sarah Palin must be really bad when even diehard carpet chewing liberals are complaining that it’s disrespectful and sexist.

Afterthought: I gave up on Time and Newsweek a long time ago and U. S. News and World Report even a longer time ago. All they are good for is passing time in the dentist’s waiting room.

Well. Not even that. I have internet on my cellphone.