skippy the bush kangaroo

this is bad...times of india:

"mumbai" is the right way to pronounce "bombay," which is considered the financial center of india. nytimes:

mike finnegan of c&l; sends us this great offer from the landover baptist church: receive a free frozen turkey by accepting jesus christ as your personal savior before december 25!

sounds too good to be true!

the young turks have an interesting idea, there.

Labels: blogtopia, cia

shelby lynne - dead flowers

country star shelby lynne gives us a soulful down-home rendition of the rolling stones' hit.

who will be the "top chef" at the white house. will cristeta comerford stay or will she be told to pack her knives and go? will chicago cuisine reign supreme? insiders say it's too early to say...but it's never to early to speculate.

outside speculation has focused on the personal chef of denver nuggets star carmelo anthony, daniel young, who cooked for obama during the democratic national convention in denver...- the denver channel

i'm kinda liking the long shot chicago rising star chef "kendal duque"

we already know that the president elect enjoys chili, pie, hot sauce and arugula...but not beets.

a first family of foodies. their decision on the white house chef may cause some indigestion...but we'll just have to see. we'll have to wait for the playing of hail to the chief...i mean chef.

(wonder if obama would ever call the butterball hotline? 1-800-butterball)



p.s. say hello to obamafoodorama.

Labels: food, white house, youtube

has a great sense of humour about taxes...and tax relief. they have a great joie de vivre!



ahhh...if i could only afford to spend many, many weeks..months...years at my favorite property of theirs...ventana at big sur.

Labels: big sur, california

and should you want to try your hand at it, martha's website has the recipe.

Labels: food, olbermann, teevee

flash flood watch in effect for the recent burn areas from tuesday afternoon through wednesday evening...

a pacific storm will bring periods of heavy rain and possible thunderstorms beginning late tuesday and continuing through wednesday. rainfall rates of a half inch per hour are possible during the peak of the event.

who ever repeats the refrain "it never rains in southern california" apparently
forgot the..."it pours...man it pours" part.

Labels: california, weather

they need to drop their multi-million dollar sports sponsorships. or better yet, let's "brand" them...american taxpayer's aig...american taxpayer's citibank. hey...we've "earned" the right to naming rights.

aig, citibank and a number of other federally bailed-out financial institutions have no plans to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in sports team sponsorships, even as they take billions in taxpayer support, abc news has found.

...struggling citibank just sealed a multi-billion-dollar emergency "backstop" deal with the u.s. government. the financial behemoth, suffering with billions in bad mortgage-related assets on its books, recently shed 53,000 workers and saw its stock price lose over half its value. yet it's in a 20-year contract to pay the new york mets $400 million to name the team's new stadium "citi field." - abc news

Labels: aig, banking, bankruptcy, financial markets, greed

spandau ballet - true

john cole has a very good point:

crude oil has dropped to a few bucks over $50 a barrel (it went up today).

the airlines' excuse for charging for checked bags was rising fuel prices. well, the prices ain't rising no more; in fact, they are dropping. and consumers are not so stupid as to not notice:

i guess:

roger stone is one of the last guys on earth one would expect to feel guilty over an episode of rough and tumble politicking. as a self-described hit man for the gop, stone has had a hand in everything from nixon's dirty tricks to eliot spitzer's resignation to spreading discredited rumors of a michelle obama "whitey" tape during the 2008 democratic primaries. you might call stone the forrest gump of scandal, popping up to play a bit part in the most notorious campaigns in recent history.

the capstone of stone's career, at least in terms of results, was the "brooks brothers riot" of the 2000 election recount. this was when a stone-led squad of pro-bush protestors stormed the miami-dade county election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-governor george w. bush one step closer to the white house. though he is quick to rebut gop operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in florida.

"there have been many times i've regretted it," stone told me over pizza at grand central station. "when i look at those double-page spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in iraq], i got to think, 'maybe there wouldn't have been a war if i hadn't gone to miami-dade. maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if bush hadn't become president.' it's very disturbing to me"...

yeah?

good.

Labels: dirty tricks, iraq, politics

now they tell us.

a new earthquake fault that could run as close as 1,800 feet offshore of diablo canyon nuclear power plant has been discovered by pacific gas and electric co. - slo tribune

Labels: california, earthquake

lookie over here in the state of crispy cal.

founded in 2006, transonic cmbustion has invented a way to improve the efficiency of standard car engines, wrenching as much as 100 miles out of a gallon of gasoline. the technology relies on a new type of fuel injector and timing improvements that let the engine run on a leaner fuel-air mixture and operate at higher compression ratios. - pacific coast biz times

if y'all want taxpayer money, you might want to start talking to these guys...and g.m...you better have some 'splaining to do about why you squished the ev-1. you built it before...and if you want taxpayer moolah...you can build it again.

Labels: bailout, cars, general motors

naomi klein's article up at rolling stone re: the wall street bailouts. you'll be "shocked" at the treasury's "doctrine." we're one nation...under financed.

...five days before paulson struck his deal with the banks, british prime minister gordon brown negotiated a similar bailout — only he extracted meaningful guarantees for taxpayers: voting rights at the banks, seats on their boards, 12 percent in annual dividend payments to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, and a legal requirement that the banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses.

in sharp contrast, this is what u.s. taxpayers received: no controlling interest, no voting rights, no seats on the bank boards and just five percent in dividend payouts to the government, while shareholders continue to collect billions in dividends every quarter. what's more, golden parachutes and bonuses already promised by the banks will still be paid out to executives — all before taxpayers are paid back.

no wonder it took just one hour for paulson to convince all nine ceos to accept his offer — less than seven minutes per bank. not even the firms' own lawyers could have drafted a sweeter deal. - rolling stone

and we now learn that citicorp is being allowed to feed at the trough, too.

..in the largest single rescue effort thus far in the current financial crisis, the treasury department, the federal reserve and the federal deposit insurance corp. will shoulder 90% of the losses on most of a $306-billion portfolio of toxic mortgages and related securities. - latte times

Labels: banking, financial markets, greed

in honor of tonite's american music awards, here's the artist w/the most nominations, plus more, doing the theme song for the new bond film...



alicia keys & jack white - another way to die

from quantum of solace

saturday nite live's newest cast member, michaela watkins, did a spot-on impression of arianna huffington last nite.



we think it's hilarious, and not just because arianna refuses to link to us.

part of santa barbara showing the effects of what stupid college students are capable of doing to a community.

Labels: brush fires, disasters, fires, flickr

greetings from the land of year 'round fire seasons and bbq flavored air.

nissan, toyota locked in race to market zero-emission cars. while detroit executives beg for bailouts, japanese automakers speed through turns in a race whose winner could dominate the next generation of car sales. - portland oregonian

gas-rich lake is at stake in feud. in the midst of a rush to tap what could be the biggest natural gas discovery in the country, louisiana is entrenched in a heated legal battle with the federal government over control of a sprawling lake that holds a portion of the underground treasure.- times-picayune

antidepressants aren't for fish. each year, tons of medicine ends up in the environment. some is excreted by patients, some is flushed down the toilet or thrown out with the trash. details of their potential to evoke adverse consequences in wildlilfe have been emerging in dozens of new studies. - science news

beetle invasion to dim new england fall colors? a beetle invasion could mean big trouble for new england's trees—and the syrup fans and leaf peepers who love them. - national geographic

locusts poised to destroy australia's crops. recent rains in new south wales provided a bit of relief from the worst drought in a century, but now those living on the land face another challenge: locusts. - london independent

fishermen caught up in climate change. climate change is reducing the supply of popular types of australian seafood and threatening a multi-billion dollar industry, according to a new government report. - abu dhabi national

chromium polluting wastewater plant. large amounts of a carcinogen hazardous to aquatic life dumped into helena’s sewers is killing nitrogen-eating bacteria at the city’s wastewater plant, causing it to discharge more than five times the permitted amount of ammonia into prickly pear creek.- helena independent record

nasa scientist cites 'global-warming emergency'. time is running out to prevent catastrophic consequences from global warming, a leading climate scientist warned a packed audience thursday at stanford university. - palo alto weekly

warning on nukes and climate by washington's national intelligence council. the next two decades will be marked by a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of the us as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly bleak assessment. - sydney australian

ski areas have wish list for obama. in that vein, 70 ski resorts across the nation are lobbying congress for mandatory caps on carbon-dioxide emissions, hoping to decrease the amount of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. - denver post

Labels: climate change, environment, global warming, nuclear weapons, obama, pollution

hey. awol. would you mind doing something about these terrorists?

barely three weeks since america elected its first black president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens of towns across the country.

more than 200 such incidents -- including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of president-elect barack obama -- have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and the southern poverty law center, which monitors hate groups...

can you intervene on behalf of your country here, awol? or are you worried you might peeve the aclu?

Labels: terrorists

the boy least likely to - be gentle with me

funny video for a song heard on the soundtrack of the tina fey/amy poehler flick baby mama

andy martin, self-proclaimed internet powerhouse and all-around nutjob*, has had his lawsuit demanding the state of hawaii produce barack obama's birth certificate dismissed outright. honolulu advertiser:

except he'll be exposed as the loony toons that he is.

we had seen veiled references to this lawsuit in various comment threads thru-out blogtopia and yes, we coined that that phrase, immediately after obama's win.

it's a good reminder that, tho sanity has made a comeback, it hasn't defeated the forces of craziness yet.


* nytimes:

tchris, from talkleft:

and here we thought the sadly, no! boys were only interested in upping their levels of snark. they are beginning their war on christmas by demanding we "redistribute the wealth" to needy kids:

we'd suggest tht it wouldn't be a bad thing if you'd care to donate a toy or two.