Tag: women’s issues

Music Monday: Life Pro Tip

 

If you ever find yourself asking “Should I Drink Another Drink,” the answer is almost certainly NO! At least this song is conscious of that fact.

In Closing: sigh our “liberal” administration that is “lax on terror” sure loves them some warrantless surveillance (and how many arrests have there been as a result? Yeah that’s what I thought); maybe if you paid enough that somebody could take the job?; Missouri shows me the common sense; the fiscal cliff and you; Penny Marshall; “Sure, increase the number of chickens you have to inspect in a minute by a factor of 5! What could possibly happen?”; because every kid who scores less than 3 out of 5 is a waste of $80 (yes, I see what the pressure cooker does to kids that actually belong in those classes); where does “work ethic” meet “unrealistic job expectations”? Are workers entitled to a life?; zingers; private equity; on polling bias; Pediatric concern trolls strike again; no wonder they never get ahead.

Disaster Averted!!

It turns out that we need not fear a global bacon shortage. Prices may go up, but since I expect prices to go up on pretty much all foodstuffs (already seeing it on some products), I refuse to panic. Maybe now they’ll have to stop making that bacon-infused-lunchmeat crap.

In Closing: how to waste time while imaging that you are doing “marketing“; student loans and the default thereupon; ain’t I a woman too; you can’t reform schools successfully without addressing poverty; but clearly jobs are going overseas because we have too much regulation and lazy workers, right?; and when the ACLU and the Heritage Foundation agree, either something is a serious problem or you need to be on the lookout for other signs of the apocalypse.

Music Monday: Inspiration, Part 1

When I was first losing weight and trying to get fit, there were two music videos that I found inspiring. This is the positive one:


 

Madonna was 40 years old when this was shot, and a new mom. Ok, I couldn’t afford personal trainers and dietitians, but I could watch what I ate and work out.

In Closing: scandal; what about S-Mart?; depressing graphic; some people need to grow up; this could be a problem; history we don’t talk about; and Nipplegate .

The Shorties Inside

Japanfilter: Mt Fuji is at risk of eruption.

Expect Republicans to call for NASA spending cuts in 3…2…1….: NASA explains the last decade.

A few items on Employment, Unemployment, and Job Growth: Why have millions of Americans given up looking for work? Why mostly young people? How many jobs do we need to create each month to keep up?

No kidding: Prince Harry is considered a high value target.

Did you know we had one?: Las Vegas Chinatown.

Hold your nose and vote: Amen Jill.

No argument from me: Unlike most “liberals” and “progressives,” I’m not a fan of gun control. After all, the Founding Fathers who wrote the 2nd Amendment overthrew the government. Money quote: “The real point is that gun control fails because gun control laws are only effective against law-abiding people.”

Well, something is repressed: a quick quiz.

Empty Apology: Yeah. Just trying to help. Sure. I hope a real woman runs against her using this as ammo.

The Italians Noticed: The right to vote is imperiled in America.

One Miiiiiiiiiilion Dollars! Muahahahahahahahaha!: That’s what Larry Flynt is offering for Rmoney’s tax returns. Heck, I wonder if that’s enough money for Ann Romney to send them in.

Why was it there in the first place?: ~21,000,000 compromised medical records, 54% due to stolen computers, including laptops where the data should NEVER have been in the first place.

Mental Health Parity: What if we treated every illness the way we treat mental illness?

And Finally: Fireflies.

Cat Ass Trophy

Or, Caturday, Film Festival Edition

Ok, I like cats well enough. I even have a cat. Sure, I occasionally look at pictures of cats online, with or without witty catpions (intentional misspelling). I’ve been sucked in by video of Maru the Box Cat at least once. I have posted about Stationmaster Tama and  library cats. IBKC and Cute Overload are linked in the sidebar. But you know, I think this cat thing has officially gone off the rails. 

Thursday night in Minneapolis, ten thousand people turned out for a festival of short films starring cats:

The crowd — easily double what organizers expected — packed the lawn outside the museum, spilling onto the sidewalks across the street. There were local cat lovers and out-of-state fans of Fluffy; many wore kitty-theme T-shirts or simply ears and whiskers. Some took real cats on leashes. A few dogs came, for irony.

They all settled in for a screening of cats behaving badly, or cutely, or mysteriously, sometimes all at once. That much of the audience had already seen the clips on YouTube did not seem to diminish the enthusiasm. Quite the contrary.

Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat allegedly wanted to be paid to attend. Inasmuch as Nyan Cat is animated, I’d like to know how that would even work. I won’t link to those furry freeloaders now just on principal.

Did they actually use film, or did they just cue up 60 tabs in YouTube?

In Closing: more stuff to do in Vegas; we don’t need no steenking warrant; just say no to huge birthday bashes for little kids; “The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs”; of course job growth is variable by region (which is why we need streamlined short sales now) Double Dose of Ezra; is that where I’ve heard it before?; Etch-a-sketch; mathematically impossible; yes the Republicans have a place for single women, I guess; low carb diets do work; the study never said skinny monkeys, just underfed monkeys; and great timing.

Have you seen this crazy thing yet?

Ok, here’s an explanation of that thing you just watched. It’s nice to see someone with a sense of humor about himself.
 

Ok, and here’s a Music Monday Bonus: 10 Songs that you’re more likely to have heard the cover than the original! Complete with videos.

In Closing: hiding in plain sight; seriously?; AOL paying shareholders $500,000,000 (didn’t know they still had that kind of money); pseudoscience; Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison defends the Republican stance on women without ever mentioning birth control or abortion (she does at least mention rape) (“People in red cars don’t necessarily drive fast. I used to own a red Ford Escort!”); and listen, if you are applying for a job with me, I don’t want to hear from your mommy. I hear from mom, and your resume goes straight in the NO pile.

Missing the Point

It is absolutely a tragedy what happened at the Empire State Building. Who can possibly predict that a guy who was laid off almost a year ago would come back and start shooting? Nevertheless, I’d like to digress for a moment to point out that it’s a lot safer to never hire a nutcase than to have to fire one. Screen your employees before you hire them, people.

So then let’s get into the nitty gritty, starting with this opinion piece talking about how NYPD officers use great restraint:

As a rule, it takes a lot to get NYPD officers to fire their guns at anyone. Despite a handful of isolated, but highly publicized, exceptions to this rule when officers have shot unarmed individuals over the past decade and a half, New York’s 35,000-officer force remains a worldwide model of firearms restraint and veneration for human life.

[snip!]

In rapidly unfolding and completely unpredictable situations, assessing the need to use firearms is often a split-second decision. It can mean the difference between life and death. Officers have to sift through confusion, fear and fragmented information.

In the incident outside of the Empire State Building, it is made more difficult because the street is one of the busiest in America. The officers had to take into account the risk of the gunman hurting potentially many people in the vicinity were he not stopped.

Look, nobody sane is disputing that they had to make sure this guy didn’t hurt anybody else. The man pulled his gun out and was clearly intending to shoot at the cops. This wasn’t a place to experiment with a taser.  What were they supposed to do, offer to buy him a latte and talk for a while??

The problem is not that NYPD had to shoot this guy. The problem is that out of the 16 shots fired, 3 hit the perp. All 9 innocent bystanders were shot by the cops trying to “protect” them.

Take aim at the real problem: aim.

In Closing: It’s the jobs, stupid; the important question is the one about whether his mom was born in Kansas; if no blacks support Romney and a minority of women and Hispanics and people under 35 support him, how can the polls possibly be as close as they’ve been? Are there really that many angry old racist men?; school internet safety; yep (so why are these guys still married?); if Republicans get their way, be ready for $10,000 per ounce gold; abused by the system; fake world leaders; can’t make this up; trash can babies; ok, but Goldman didn’t make the drought happen; over 20 serial rapists in Detroit so far; scary; probably not what life is like in Russia; and the old man speaks the truth.

NASA can be cool

…. And not just because some of a geek with a mohawk.

It turns out that in addition to putting robots on Mars, they’re responsible for a lot of things that are making life better right here on Earth. Just keep clicking for more great tidbits.

Welcome to yet another internet rabbit-hole.

In closing: brains and beauty; you don’t need that crap anyway; I was wondering when somebody was going to notice this; pass it on; turns out that harassment is  sometimes a security issue; and Ezra’s still got it.

The Bar Set Low

Music Monday will be delayed a bit.

So. A woman will be allowed to ask questions of all the important men at the big Presidential Debates for the first time in 20 years. This is after a “recent push” to let a woman do this big, important job. That recent push, by the way, is from 3 female high school students that started an online petition.

Really? This is what passes for an achievement these days? Has the participation trophy movement finally reached this high? Whoop-dee-freakin-doo.

No mistake. Congrats to Candy Crowley for being named a moderator. I hope she holds their feet to the fire and won’t take lies for an answer. And congrats to those high school ladies that learned they can make a difference just by bringing enough attention to an issue. That’s a great civics lesson and one we adults should take to heart.

However, there are many more “women’s issues” that deserve the same kind of news coverage: your right to control the size of your family is a political football instead of a private and personal matter; some high school students are subjected to pregnancy tests (here’s a hint, none of them are boys); sexual harassment still exists (and I admit it cuts both ways sometimes); a woman can still lose her job for having kids; women still earn less than men while conservatives make excuses instead of solutions; and, as PunditMom points out, nobody’s asking who will be watching Paul Ryan’s kids while he’s on the campaign trail as they asked about Sarah Palin.

If only we could solve all those things with a couple of petitions.

There is no in closing today.

Sign of the Bankpocalypse

Praise Sandy Weill, for he hath told the truth — and delivered you from Shorties.

Seriously, I thought I’d have to resort to Shorties today until I saw this little gem: Sandy Weill, the same man who had a giant game of “chicken” with Congress, forcing them to pass laws that allowed his company to become a huge “financial supermarket” now says that we should go back to the way things were after the Great Depression and break up “too big to fail” banks “so that the taxpayer will never be at risk, the depositors won’t be at risk, the leverage of the banks will be something reasonable, and the investment banks can do trading… they can make some mistakes, but they’ll have everything that clears with each other every single night so they can be mark-to-market.” He goes on to drop a second bomb: “There should be no such thing as off balance sheet.”

Really, Sandy? Why the change of heart? Has it suddenly occurred to you that if We The People don’t have any money, we don’t put it in the bank and we don’t buy things? Perhaps you realized that Japan never got out of it’s doldrums until the “zombie firms” were allowed to fail? Have a “spiritual” moment where fair play and the bigger picture somehow seemed important? Don’t get me wrong, glad you joined the “common sense” bandwagon. Just wish you’d popped aboard in the 90s instead of pooh-poohing sensible and necessary banking laws as “archaic” and “not reflecting the needs of the next century.

Too Big To Fail simply must become Too Big To Exist. Seriously.

In Closing: 1 in 5 companies misrepresents freaking lies about their profits; a conservative would probably say they need to get jobs!; two must see video clips; outlawing abortion kills women; what’s retirement?; wasn’t expecting that one; no wonder the “news” doesn’t say anything anymore; what a coincidence [you don’t want to get me started about Pyschiatric Institutes of America and why you’ll never ever get mental health care parity]; Give a big LOL to the State Department Anti-Terror Troll Team; and neither will I.