You bailed out my mistake, I deserve a bonus for that

we (you, I, us, the taxpayers) gave the "too big to fail" banks our money so they wouldn't collapse, collapse under their own weight from their own mistakes created by their own greed, and now that they're solvent again, they're rewarding themselves for the fuck up, instead of paying us back

clipped from open.salon.com 2009 closed with the stock market rebounding 61 percent from its March lows, and “Wall Street is ready to pat itself on the back for its huge gains with big bonuses,” potentially surpassing the record payouts of 2007. Wall Street’s 2009 bonus pool could total $200 billion the return to big bonuses will also allow Wall Street banks to claim billions in tax breaks: Many American banks already pay minuscule federal income taxes, the payout-related breaks will reduce their tax bills further Altogether, the top three Wall Street banks — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley — will gain nearly $20 billion in tax breaks based on their employee compensation this year. Compensation related tax deductions will total about $80 billion across Wall Street, In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid an effective tax rate of just 1 percent NOT ONE OF THE BANKSTERS WHO COMMITTED THE FRAUD THAT CREATED THE MORTGAGE CRISIS HAS GONE TO JAIL.

I won't suffer, so you must

explain to me again why the entity you manage isn't doing as well as it should, and I'm the one who has to take the income hit

clipped from open.salon.com take to the streets and demand adequate funding for our children’s education instead of Wall Street bailouts and wars, economic hard times are precisely when workers need – and are motivated – to fight hardest in order to avoid being victimized and forced to bear the entire burden. workers in the private sector should demand that the company open its books and let the workers’ representatives determine for themselves how much the company is taking in, and where the money is going. Public sector workers who are asked to “share the pain” should demand that the money used to bail out Wall Street bankers and bomb civilian women and children be used instead to pay government workers decent wages to deliver public services. strong enough to force the bosses to share the benefits of the post-World War II economic boom with US workers, raising their standard of living to the highest in the world. The lessons of the militant labor union struggles of the prewar era must be relearned, and soon.

would you cut off your arm to save your leg?

to get what we got, what do we have to give up? What if that's not acceptable?

clipped from open.salon.com scared to death that, because they perceive limited health care benefits pie, it's they who are going to lose their slice in order to accommodate other's fair shares Why do we pay for war, to kill people, to kill our own, and balk to preserve health? Please add this to your essential reading list today.  I thank you.  Let's see how far this bill gets

I deserve health care, you don't

that's a paraphrase, but given comments from a certain drug-addicted blowhard, an accurate sentiment

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Limbaugh Lauds (Socialist) Medical Care in Hawaii I received no special treatment." in Hawaii, no one gets special treatment, because everyone can get it. all Members of Congress that have a medical office paid for by taxpayers Dick Cheney who had socialist pacemakers implanted paid for by the government, and George W who had a government-paid socialist colonoscopy while in office. Members of Congress over 65 get single-payer socialist medical care from Medicare. Hawaii nearly-universal since 1974. the costs of everything the highest in the nation, health care premiums in Hawaii, are nearly the lowest and their costs per medicare beneficiary are the lowest in the nation. Rush does not live in Hawaii and so his costs are not covered having that "socialist" system for more than 3 decades has not reduced the quality of the care he received. Rush appears to have survived his encounter with socialist medical care. If Hawaii-style medical care is good enough for Rush Limbaugh, it is good enough for me.

do who I say, not what I do

in closing: "I've long thought that the solution to the cheap, cost-free moralizing that leads very upstanding people like Karl Rove to want to ban same-sex marriages (which they don't want to enter into themselves, and thus cost them nothing) is to have those same "principles" apply consistently to all marriage laws. If Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and their friends and followers actually were required by law to stay married to their wives -- the way that "traditional marriage" was generally supposed to work -- the movement to have our secular laws conform to "traditional marriage" principles would almost certainly die a quick, quiet and well-deserved death."

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/2010-California-Protection-of-Marriage-Act/

clipped from www.salon.com Rove: Champion of "traditional" divorce By Glenn Greenwald an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, citing "5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage" as his justification.  He also famously engineered multiple referenda to incorporate a ban on same-sex marriage into various states' constitutions Texas' "no-fault" divorce law, basically allows any married couple to simply end their marriage because they feel like it.  one of the states which has constitutionally barred same-sex marriages, and has a Governor who explicitly cites Christian dogma as the reason to support that provision, yet the overwhelming majority of Texan citizens make sure that there's nothing in the law making their own marriages binding or permanent -- i.e., traditional.  They're willing to limit other people's marriage choices on moral grounds, but not their own, and thus have a law that lets them divorce whenever the mood strikes.

Win, or go home.

Anyone who's ever watched a football game, seen one team completely dominate the other in total offensive yardage, yet still lose the game, can understand why the current health care bill(s) being debated need to be fixed.

Most legislators, on the other side, understand the purpose of the game is to win - not both sides working together to rack up as many points for each other as they can.

I don't care what Harry Reid says, that the current legislation, as it's written, does a lot to fix what's broken. It does. A little. But too little. It is unacceptable in its current form. Agreeing to implement it is giving up.

"Gee, you guys played a pretty good first half, how about we call it a draw?"

If the other side cheats, uses sneaky, underhanded tricks to sway the game their way, you can't sit and cry that the ref didn't call it - you just have to play that much harder.

This isn't little league - both sides won't get trophies for just showing up. No one is going to congratulate you on game well-played, cheer you for scoring, no matter the outcome.

To my senators and congressmen: play well, or be traded next year.

What would Jesus buy?

Does Black Friday mean more to you than Good Friday?

Why are we upset that a retailer doesn't evangelize?

clipped from news.yahoo.com Christian Group Launches New Attack on Christmas Commercialism "Christians get all bent out of shape over the fact that someone didn't say 'Merry Christmas' when I walked into the store. But why are we expecting the store to tell our story? Advent Conspiracy churches have donated millions of dollars to dig wells in developing countries through Living Water International and other organizations. a fraction of the money Americans spend at retailers in the month of December could supply the entire world with clean water. one in which people spent a little less and thought a little more, expressing their love through something more meaningful than a gift card. A movement like the Advent Conspiracy is countercultural on two fronts - not just fighting the secular idea that Christmas is a month-long shopping and decorating ritual, but the powerful conservative notion that the holiday requires acknowledgement from the nation's retailers to be truly meaningful.

father & son

father & son

Who says we need reform?

Wife's premiums went up 55%, co-pays doubled, have 10% "co-insurance", deductible doubled. Now paying $6k/yr for $8k max payout.

Luckily we're not required to have ins. Wait, what? Well, at least we'll have public health care. Oh, about that...

clipped from www.salon.com Meet your new health insurance company overlords we still end up with a system that's based on private insurers that have no incentive whatsoever to control their costs A system based on private insurers won't control costs because private insurers barely compete against each other. you'd think the insurance industry would be subject to the antitrust laws the Senate bill still keeps Big Insurance safe from competition by preserving its privileged exemption from the antitrust laws. From the start, opponents of the public option have wanted to portray it as big government preying upon the market, and private insurers as the embodiment of the market. But it's just the reverse. Private insurers are exempt from competition. Without some mechanism forcing private insurers to compete, we're going to end up with a national healthcare system that's controlled by a handful of very large corporations accountable neither to American voters nor to the market.

Well just pound me in the ass and call me fish

Homemade shiv not included.

Seriously. Is this what you want your kids playing with (rated T, 13+)?

I sometimes think the various "Dope Wars" and "Mafia" games on Facebook, and certainly the likes of "Grand Theft Auto" are in bad taste (scoring points for engaging in criminal activity), but is this any better? I don't know if they're related to all the other "tycoon" games out there (Railway Tycoon, et al.) but this is going too far.

Or is it?

From the game description: "Private prisons have become the new growth industry." Unfortunately, that's true. And herein is the underlying problem. The description goes on: "You will construct and run an efficient rehabilitation facility with nothing but money on your mind." [emphasis added]

You are clearly not concerned with "rehabilitation" when there's "nothing but money on your mind."

News flash, folks: this is not a game - this is currently going on in this country in the real world. The US ranks 1st in the world in per capita prison population. That is, we put more of our citizens behind bars than any other modern nation. Why? Because we're inherently so bad? Because we're so much better than the rest of the world at fighting crime? Or because it's in the financial interests of a select few?

We're building prisons at a frightening rate - and still the ones we have are grossly overcrowded. We have a drug policy that puts teens in the hole until they're middle aged for having the audacity to get high. I could go on. I'll only mention tangentially the conspiracy theory about the plans to lock up large segments of the US population - like we did to the Japanese American citizens during the onset of WWII - during an imminently anticipated "civil unrest." Good thing we don't protest any more.

[CD-ROM Game - PRISON TYCOON.]

Hershey's Packaging Perfectly Contradicts Itself - mediabistro.com: AgencySpy

From the post: "It's bad enough that Hershey's has the audacity to make health-benefit claims on a bottle containing chocolate syrup. But by some oddity of logic, the nutrition facts lists the daily calcium percentage at "0%". During a recession, flat is the new up?"

via: Hershey's Packaging Perfectly Contradicts Itself - mediabistro.com: AgencySpy

what's wrong with mergers?

if it's so bad, why haven't we read anything about it?
</sarcasm>

clipped from www.salon.com Sure, NBC's Hulu is awesome -- but now Comcast is set to own Hulu. And free television online is not part of Comcast's business model. And Comcast is how 16 million American households connect to the Internet. Comcast is determined to prevent the watch-whatever-you-want-free future. massive cable companies that control broadband access to the Net for millions of Americans actually can affect the variety of options available to entertainment consumers Do only idiots pay for cable?

War, on Christmas

"No less was Nicholas known for his zeal for the truth. He was present at the First Ecumenical Council of the 318 Fathers at Nicaea in 325; upon hearing the blasphemies that Arius brazenly uttered against the Son of God, Saint Nicholas struck him on the face. Since the canons of the Church forbid the clergy to strike any man at all, his fellow bishops were in perplexity what disciplinary action was to be taken against this hierarch whom all revered. In the night our Lord Jesus Christ and our Lady Theotokos appeared to certain of the bishops, informing them that no action was to be taken against him, since he had acted not out of passion, but extreme love and piety."

clipped from raphael.doxos.com War on Christmas St Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, was too deeply engrossed in the teachings of Jesus, the man who went to his death offering no defense, the man who said “turn the other cheek. only later do we need to imagine a Bishop punching a heretic in the face and Mary and Jesus blessing him for it. And a lot of folks want to imagine our bishops or clergy or laity should be doing this now: punching infidels in the face. Truth is: we can’t make that relationship happen by punching others in the face, by beating them up in arguments, by forcing them in to the corner with laws, by hitting them over the head with a Bible or an icon. This will stand before the throne of God on judgement day and say, “They knew I was your disciple because I made shop girls say ‘Merry Christmas’ to me after I purchased $500 of toys and blue jeans in the Mall”. Personally, I’m happier the further “Merry Christmas” gets from Wal*Mart, the Mall and Amazon.com.

Tip: "emergency" buttons on smart phones

You may or may not have taught your youngsters how (and why) to dial 9-1-1 (and to not practice it - sorry, local PD). It's a very good idea to do so. However it's one thing to teach 2-4-yr-olds how to operate a push-button phone (assuming they know which buttons are which). It's quite another to get them to navigate multiple touch screens on the newest smartphones to even get to the dialer window. A lot of adults I know can't manage this.

The Lock Screen (and eventually, an ambulance) to the rescue.

My phone, a T-Mobile G-1 (not an endorsement of their product or service), has a lock screen - a privacy/security feature whereby you have to input a pattern or code to be able to access the phone. (I'm told the iPhone has this as well.) In case of emergency - when you can't, in a panic, remember the pattern, or you're incapacitated and some samaritan is trying to call help on your phone - there is a single button to get to the dialer, where it only connects to emergency numbers.

We were recently reinforcing to our 3-yr-old son the hows and whys of calling for help. My wife got one of those new phones that has a full QWERTY keyboard instead of a dedicated number pad. We're still working on 6 vs. 9, so throwing a bunch of letter keys on top of everything didn't clear up any confusion. We turned to my phone, and realized that, "press the green button with the phone picture," doesn't always open to the dial pad - sometimes contacts, sometimes call log.

I had turned my lock screen off, because I felt it too much of a bother to use each time I wanted to access the phone. When I first enabled it, allowing my son to entertain himself with the new "game" of drawing lines between the dots on the screen, I was sure to instruct him to never press "the white button with the red cross" (at least not any more) - that it was for calling for help, if someone was hurt, or there was a fire. I've since turned the lock back on, for this very reason. It's one button that my son can access and enables him to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency.

Tip: Cell phone as stand-in travel night light

We frequently do overnights at Grandma & Grandpa's house, but we often neglect to take a night light.

Solution: mobile phone.

It occurred to me one day as I was leaving my phone charging, powered on, that it emitted enough light to illuminate the room, just barely.

Our son simply cannot go to sleep in total darkness - plus, as a grown up, it helps to see where you're going when navigating the luggage and toys in the spare room, plus navigate to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Many phones have advanced features, such as being able to power themselves off after a set time (if you only want it while the little ones fall asleep, but not all night), besides doubling as an alarm clock.