And Happy Birthday!! to all the wonderful, incredible, indescribable brothers and sisters in arms it’s been my great good fortune to meet and call “dear friends” along the way. I have been so VERY blessed.
Ever the romantic about these sort of things, major dad says:
Trustees: Penn State president removed, Paterno out immediately
Head football coach Joe Paterno and the university president have lost their jobs, effective immediately, over a child sex abuse scandal at Penn State, university trustees announced Wednesday night.
Any less would be unthinkable and unforgivable.
Unthinkable and unforgivable like…not bothering to find a ten year old last seen being sodomized in a shower by one of your football coaches.
Batali Apologizes for Comparing Bankers to Hitler, Stalin
Celebrity chef and restaurant owner Mario Batali apologized for comparing bankers to Hitler and Stalin, while Wall Street executives reacted with angry comments and calls for a boycott.
“So the ways the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys,” Batali said. “They’re not heroes, but they are people that had a really huge effect on the way the world is operating.”
Batali made the comment yesterday at a panel sponsored by Time magazine and was quoted in a story posted on Forbes.com. The website said it had taken the comment directly from a transcript provided by Time.
Filthy haired, fat little clog clad turd.
Waddle off into obscurity with the rest of your offal now, why doncha?
Cain suggests accuser’s finances are motive for allegation Newly reviewed records appear to contradict Mundelein woman’s assertions that her financial troubles are long behind her
…Sharon Bialek’s fiance — who said he is her primary source of financial support — is unemployed and preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to Lake County court documents reviewed Tuesday by the Tribune. And in Cook County, lawsuits show she has been targeted by creditors who claimed she owed them thousands in unpaid rent, personal loans and credit card bills.
In a round of TV interviews, Bialek, 50, said she had no financial reasons for coming forward and had not been promised a job in exchange for accusing Cain of groping her in a parked car 14 years ago. She sought to downplay past financial problems.
And I’m wondering who’s paying all the other chicas’ lawyer tabs, since they seem to have some pretty pricey representation.
…Given this history — attempting to blackmail a payoff out of a government agency over a silly email forward — I’m categorizing her as a False Accuser.
If she has something, she has something. But she is not credible.
I am really focusing on sneaking that “And I got an offensive email, too!” part of her complaint. That has nothing at all to do with her actual complaint. She is just throwing that in to suggest Unless I am appeased, there might be some trouble for you. Just give me my paid year at grad school, and this will all just disappear.
Apology time: This woman is not credible at all, plainly wants to be paid to not work, and yes, I should have been more skeptical of her.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is coming out against swag.
That’s swag, as in the coffee mugs, pens, T-shirts and other public relations articles that federal government agencies purchase with taxpayer money to promote their work.
The swag ban is part of an executive order the president will sign on Wednesday to cut waste and make government more efficient. Obama has been using his executive powers on modest proposals to promote job creation, assist homeowners and consumers, or alleviate spending.
Besides putting an end to the promotional gear, the new order directs agencies to reduce travel spending, cut back on cellphones and laptops issued to employees, cut down the size of the executive vehicle fleet and post documents online instead of printing them — measures that individually would hardly merit a White House news release.
(Reuters) – Fannie Mae, the biggest source of money for U.S. home loans, on Tuesday said it needed a further $7.8 billion in federal aid to stay afloat as a shaky housing market widened its third-quarter loss to $5.1 billion.
The government-controlled firm also attributed the deeper cash drain to losses on derivatives used to hedge its exposure to interest-rate swings and on expenses related to home loans made prior to the 2008 financial collapse. In the year-earlier quarter it had a loss of a $1.3 billion.
Fannie Mae has now drawn $112.6 billion in bailout funds from the Treasury Department since being seized by the government in 2008 as mortgage losses mounted, and it has returned $17.2 billion to taxpayers in the form of dividends.
So we’re only out at least $95 some odd billion so far, eh?
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the mortgage giants that are now under government receivership, has approved $12.79 million in bonus pay for the performance of 10 executives at Fannie and Freddie last year despite both companies posting losses in all four quarters, Politico reported.
…The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move.
The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!“
The remark was naturally meant to be said in confidence, but the two leaders’ microphones were accidently left on, making the would-be private comment embarrassingly public.
Thank God we’re free of that gaff-prone Bush, calling people assholes and all that.
You know, Obama really cracks me up bitching about Bibi that way. Now maybe he has a clue how we feel about him.
UPDATE: You were probably wondering why you hadn’t heard about this little kerfluffle. Silly little peoples, why do you think?
…The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that reporters present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the subject of the embarrassing comments.
A member of the media confirmed Monday that “there were discussions between journalists and they agreed not to publish the comments due to the sensitivity of the issue.”
Of course! It’s what you thought! The mainstream medias was being “sensitives”!
Italy’s economic problems took center stage Monday as its government, led by increasingly threatened Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, faced yet another key vote.
The health of the euro zone’s third-largest economy has come into focus despite Berlusconi accepting IMF monitoring and surviving several confidence votes in recent months.
Italy’s size makes the potential consequences if it were to fail more wide-ranging than the much smaller Greece.
“Italy has much more systemic implications,” Thanos Vamvakidis, Head of European G10 FX Strategy, BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, told CNBC Monday.
I had 14 lbs of pork butt in the freezer, so I figured today’s the day
It’s actually two 7lb-ish butts but they’re frozen solid into one UniButt
Normally I coat it with Woosty to help the rub adhere but a lot of folks use yellow mustard instead, so I figured why not use…yellow mustard based BBQ sauce?
so slather that UniButt
coat with as much rub as I can get on there
and on ya’ go
Now if it will hold this temp for the next 10 hours or so
I’ll be mighty happy this evening!
If any of y’all are in the neighborhood bring lots of beer.
3pm Update: up to 156 internally after 8 hours; still got about 40 to go.
The settlement agreement between the National Restaurant Association and a woman who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment was reached in September 1999–and was not signed by Cain himself, according to Joel Bennett, a lawyer for the woman.
…Cain left the association June 30, 1999, according to the NRA. Under that timeline, Cain would have been gone when the settlement was reached–and may well have been gone when she filed the complaint.
Cain has insisted he only knew of one complaint, and says he knew of no legal settlements–only what he calls a severance agreement with one woman.
This timeline could well bolster his claims.
Has he and his team blown it out their ass handling the response? Oh, hell yes.
But they’re NOT politicians.
Do I STILL hope and pray this blows up in someone’s face anyway, à la Dan Rather? Oh, HELL yes!
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WTF does that mean, “I’m going to be careful for brussels“??!?!?!?!??!
It’s going to drive me insane all day, buried so fiendishly in your typical SPAMmish, innocuous paragraph. WhywhywhywhyWHYYYY????
Am I to question every sprout I see? Avoid them on the sidewalk? Anything green, diminutive and tightly wrapped immediately becomes suspect now.
Perhaps, instead, stay away from small, wiry haired dog breeds, or, rather, the Belgian capital?
Yes, Dear Readers, yesterday I was greeted upon my arrival at Chez Bingley by a most exclusive black envelope containing my personal invitation to leave the sullied sweaty rank ranks of the Hoi Polloi and breathe the Heady Atmosphere of, dare I say it, dare I even think it, the One Percent!
Look! It says it RIGHT THERE in the second sentence: I am the One Percent!1!1!1!1 And the card is “made with Carbon” so I assume it also harms Poley Bears! How cool is that?
The application for the card (not that I would need to or even deign to stoop so low as to fill out an application; I mean, puh-lease, do they realize just who I am? I’m sure it was included in the envelope in error by some ill-educated mumbling twit) was a pretty run-of-the-mill tell-us-about-your-gazillions sort of form except for one question which just comes completely out of the blue (and I quote): “Are you a married resident of Wisconsin?”
What the hell?
Did they not perchance note that they sent this mailing to New Jersey?
Has the paranormal paramours of Althouse and the Venerable Meade so shaken the foundations of International Finance that urgent steps need to be taken before such contagion spreads?
Or did someone drop a dime on me and tell them that I really do like curds?
Just saw some Occupiers (oh, about 20) walking up Wall Street chanting that catchy little ditty, doing some light scrubbing of the sidewalk as they went.
They were shadowed very closely by the cops, and there are 6 mounted cops awaiting them closer to the Stock market.
Via ZeroHedge, let’s file this under “Never-Say-What-Else-Could-Possibly-Go-Wrong”
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) pumped water mixed with boric acid into the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant early on Nov. 2 after finding traces of xenon, a radioactive gas that might indicate nuclear fission has taken place.
Officials of the company said that some parts of the reactor may have reached criticality, a state of self-sustaining nuclear fission. Fuel believed to have melted in the accident triggered by the March 11 earthquake may have caused the fission. The boric acid was pumped into the reactor to suppress the reactions.
…”We cannot deny the possibility of a temporary, small-scale state of criticality,” said TEPCO official Junichi Matsumoto. “However, because there was no sudden increase in the temperature or pressure of the reactor core, we concluded there was no major state of criticality.”
Large scale criticality will not usually occur unless, as is found in a normal reactor core, nuclear fuel is carefully positioned and surrounded by water to stimulate nuclear fission.