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skippy the bush kangaroo



Wednesday, September 19, 2012

this is excellent news for john mccain!

ed kilgore, writing over @ washington monthly, points out that, with the latest poll, mitt romney is probably holding his nose and saying "pew":

it’s hardly the kind of definitive evidence we need to conclude mitt romney’s in the process of burying his presidential prospects, but there’s just no way for anyone to spin the new national pew research poll as anything other than really bad news for the gop nominee. taken from september 12-16 (in other words, before the boca moment video hit the airwaves), it shows barack obama opening up an 8-point lead among likely voters, while also topping 50%. if you want a real topline shocker: the same poll at this point in 2008 showed obama and mccain even at 46%. if there’s been a poll this year showing obama outperforming his 2008 numbers at any point whatsoever, i certainly don’t recall seeing it.

…

pew’s analysis is very lengthy, and i haven’t had a chance to read, much less absorb and write about, it all. but for the moment, i’ll leave you with pew’s opening summary:

at this stage in the campaign, barack obama is in a strong position compared with past victorious presidential candidates. with an eight-point lead over mitt romney among likely voters, obama holds a bigger september lead than the last three candidates who went on to win in november, including obama four years ago. in elections since 1988, only bill clinton, in 1992 and 1996, entered the fall with a larger advantage.
but don't start popping the champagne corks just yet. as ed points out, this poll could be an outlier.

as opposed to mitt romney himself, who is an out-and-out liar.

posted by skippy at 9:06 PM | 1 comments

just wednesday

oddly enough, romney does better in robot polls

a breakdown of who the 47% are

the newset popemobile is electric

why not adopt a skull?
posted by skippy at 12:15 PM | 0 comments

avast mateys - its international talk like a pirate day






arrrgggghhhhh....
a hardy hello to all 
ye pastafarians out there today!


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posted by Cookie Jill at 11:28 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

tuesday morning

hey mr. romney: misconceptions and realities about who pays taxes

astronomers have found a real-universe version of dr. who's home planet, gallifrey

new study finds high-income tax cuts don't stimulate the economy

scammy scammers and the scams they pull
posted by skippy at 12:20 PM | 0 comments

Monday, September 17, 2012

say hello

to the progressive news posts daily
posted by skippy at 11:57 PM | 0 comments

go ahead, mr. romeny, tell us how you really feel

david corn, over @ mother jones, expounds about a secret video in which mitt romney, talking to a room of the 1 percenters, exposes his true feelings about half of america:

during a private fundraiser earlier this year, republican presidential candidate mitt romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support president barack obama. he dismissed these americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don't assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in november, romney replied:

there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. all right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. that that's an entitlement. and the government should give it to them. and they will vote for this president no matter what…these are people who pay no income tax.
romney went on: "[m]y job is is not to worry about those people. i'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
apparently parts of this video have been floating around youtube for a few weeks, but david is the one that brought it into mainstream media.

things just aren't going well for romney. on top of the mean girl politico piece, which gossips that his campaign is in tatters (she-dooby), romney is not going to win over any undecided voters who hear what he really thinks of them.



as brad de long puts it,

note that if:

• you make $60,000
• you are married with three minor children
• you tithe 10% to the cjclds
• you pay $3000 in state and property taxes
• you spend $1000 in job expenses and tax preparation fees
• you have $5000 in child care expenses

then, according to romney, you are a moocher.
and, on a personal note, may we just say how good it feels to have the gop field a candidate whose campaigning skills make mike dukakis look like ronald reagan.
posted by skippy at 8:34 PM | 2 comments

Random Notes, Again

If the new SAGgingAFTRA gets up in arms about this, maybe they will be worth paying dues. But that I heard about this from Patrick first isn't encouraging.

As a Rutgers-Newark alumnus—not to mention the father of two Jewish daughters—I find this sad, pathetic, and personally revoting. The most diverse campus in the United States, whose law school produced the next Senator from Massachusetts,* has some bad apples in it, too, apparently.

I'm not reading blogs much. Lawrence Norfolk has a new novel out. There is a direct relationship between those two statements. Highly recommended. But you would expect that, no?






*The other candidate, who attended only private college and law school, pretends he's the one who is "of the people." And I gave at the office.
posted by Ken Houghton at 11:36 AM | 1 comments

monday night

it's occupy wall street's one year anniversary

wal-mart workers expose truth about working there

a brief history of teachers' strikes in america

15 really strange movie credits

posted by skippy at 10:30 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, September 16, 2012

environmental news stories sunday

for those pesky little stories that you probably didn't hear anything about on the talking head shows this morning....but should have...

home rule. school kids in colorado have to walk at least 1,000 feet from the playground to reach the nearest medical marijuana dispensary. but the closest oil and gas well need only be 350 feet away. and as the city of longmont recently discovered, the state does not play nice with city governments that introduce legislation to the contrary - high country news

japan finds another gap in its disaster readiness – mount fuji.- when toshitsugu fujii became head of a japanese task force on disaster response at mount fuji, he was confronted with a startling oversight: japan had no plan in place to deal with a disaster in which an earthquake, such as the magnitude 9.0 tremor in 2011, sparks a volcanic eruption at the famous landmark - reuters

weather pushes allergy and asthma miseries to new level. -as one of the hottest summers ever recorded drew to a close, jay portnoy watched patients stream into children’s mercy hospital and clinics in kansas city, mo., coughing and wheezing with asthma, 20 admissions per day for the week that started with labor day, he said. - washington post

georgia officials give drought the silent treatment.- georgia's relentless experience with drought has created ambivalence among residents and policymakers about how to cope with it, hinting at problems other states may have to face if their droughts drag on or recur with troubling regularity - latimes

arctic sea ice vanishes – and the oil rigs move in.- this summer, the sea ice that caps the arctic ocean melted to the lowest level since at least 1979, when satellites first began keeping track of ice over the north pole. but the most immediate impact of climate change-related arctic ice melting will likely be the opening of vast new drilling territory for a thirsty oil industry - time magazine

annual report reveals list of contaminants in cumberland county water.- local drinking water quality reports, provided to cumberland county residents and businesses with an update on the safety of tap water, have revealed a list of contaminants that may give pause to some who get their h2o from faucets - carlisle sentinel

promise of the sea.- in the not-too-distant future, when some oregon residents plug their laptops into an electrical outlet they could be using juice generated by the fierce waves that roll shoreward along the pacific northwest coast - high country news

laissez-faire failing world’s dwindling water resources.- growing water shortages in many countries are a major threat to global security and development and should be a top priority at the u.n. security council, a panel of experts said in a new report - inter press service

japan plans to end reliance on nuclear power within 30 years.- japan has announced plans to end its reliance on nuclear power within 30 years, in a historic policy shift prompted by the triple meltdown at the fukushima power plant. - the guardian

why doesn't your city have curbside composting?- following san francisco's lead, nearly 100 cities now have curbside composting. keeping food scraps, leaves, tree limbs, and grass clippings out of the municipal waste facilities preserves limited space, and it saves money. why don't more cities and states make it easier for us to compost? the answer: big trash - mother jones

the bay area chevron explosion shows gaps in refinery safety.-chevron's 100-year-old plant has long been a source of contention in this industrial east bay city – and for good reason. it injects millions into the local economy, but it's also racked up dozens of air-quality violations in the last year alone, not to mention three serious fires in the last 12 years - high country news

backyard birders should check their bird seed.-earlier this month, scotts miracle-gro co. was sentenced in federal court in ohio to pay a $4million fine and do community service for spiking its bird seed with insecticides, according to the u.s. environmental protection agency - san gabriel valley tribune

farmers warned to watch for carcinogen as drought continues.- a fungus that produces a toxic carcinogen is flourishing in the continuing heat and drought baking corn crops across the midwest, purdue university researchers report. livestock eating infected corn risk health problems - daily climate

want the presidential debate moderators to ask about climate? then tweet them this

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posted by Cookie Jill at 8:33 PM | 0 comments

month of sundays

are all the racists on the right?

pharyngula knows this feeling well

florida's voter purge caught exactly one non-citizen voter (a canadian)

$30 million in maple syrup stolen from canada's strategic maple reserves
posted by skippy at 6:43 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, September 15, 2012

saturday in the park (i think it was the 4th of july)

joe walsh is a misogynist asshole

how the republicans reinforce a campaign of lies

chronicling mitt's mendacity vol. xxxiv

10 bookstores that used to be something else
posted by skippy at 10:33 AM | 0 comments

Friday, September 14, 2012

thank god it's friday

how to tell if you're being religiously oppressed

can science be funny? the ig noble prize

5 atheists who should be more well-known

extreme trolling may be signs of mental illness
posted by skippy at 11:25 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, September 13, 2012

skippy's thursday night music club

in these days of really slippery people....

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posted by Cookie Jill at 11:56 PM | 0 comments

why erik loomis supports public school teachers (and you should, too!)

we can't say it any better than erik loomis did over @ lawyers, guns & money:

and then there was a man named stuart perlmeter. i first ran into him in the 7th grade when he taught some classes at my middle school. this was around 1987. he was a weird guy, or so it seemed. he had big curly hair. his classroom was festooned with lyrics by some band none of us had ever heard of before called talking heads. and he was very into science. i have no idea why this man ended up in the springfield public school system. because he was kind of a famous guy in the science world.

mr. perlmeter used to tell us stories. he actually worked with dian fossey on gorillas. don’t believe me? he took the last of these pictures in this 1981 national geographic article.

once i started high school, he started teaching there. but he didn’t bother with the ap classes. he focused on the kids who weren’t much engaged in school, those at risk of dropping out. he started a program where they could go observe bats. he wrote about his experiences in popular and academic journals. this came out the year after i graduated. i remember some of the kids in these pictures. for all this work, mr. perlmeter won oregon’s school teacher of the year award in 1990.

certainly not every school had a guy like this. but we also had all of these teachers who taught kids who were underprepared, dealing with unemployment, substance abuse and domestic violence at home; who had no family expectations that they would amount to anything. and these teachers, underpaid no doubt, persevered and tried to teach these kids. sure, 20% of them may have been terrible. are 20% of administrators not terrible? 20% of political pundits? mediocrity is part of the world. but the majority of teachers ranged from good-hearted people to superheroes.
for skippy, there were thankfully too many wonderful teachers to remember here. there was miss bennett, the wry, sarcastic high school science teacher who imparted her love of the mysteries of the physical world to us kids. there was mr. hammond, gruff exterior, with a heart of gold and a brilliant mind that could make adolescent brains excited about geometry. there was mr. barnes, the clarinet-playing band teacher who grew up on chicago's southside, and who taught us kids the wonders of jazz in band practice. there was crazy sonja pohlman, the erudite redhead who got stuck with the privelege of teaching advanced literature to the misfits in high school, and showed us that learning was more than memorizing; it was imagination, it was critical thinking, it was acting out scenes from dostoyevski and trips to the mall to simply watch real people interact.

teaching is hard, and getting harder. even physically threatening. and severely underpaid and under-appreciated. so we agree w/erik on all counts:

the chicago teachers union deserves everything they are asking for because many of them are heroes. for some, for kids like me, they are role models who give young people social mobility and who teach them that learning is a great thing. they know that standardized testing is worthless, that it bores everyone (as its early iterations bored me in high school), that they need to be allowed to teach and inspire. they deserve what they are asking for because they care more about young people’s future than anyone else in society, often more than the students’ own parents and certainly more than the education capitalists and liberal pundits who concern troll about these kids without having interacted with them. these teachers deserve what they are asking for because each and every day, many of them face confused, angry kids who have seen terrible things at home and can’t deal, who bring hateful words and knives and even guns into to the schools, because they face cursing and violence and horrible things on a daily basis, things rahm emanuel can’t even dream of.

the chicago teachers union deserves the world because they take kids like me out of working-class families and help them fulfill their dreams. those who attack them place themselves on the other side of the class divide, on the side that promotes social inequality and the side that provides no incentives for good teachers to stay in working-class schools since poor test scores, largely a result of poverty, will cost them their job. they claim to help children but don’t understand poor public schools; they claim to support policies that will improve education but promote ideas that will enrich capitalists at the expense of students.

and these pundits, these people who have never worried about money a single day in their lives, who were born with a silver foot in their mouth to quote ann richards, claim to support unions but never actually provide that support when working or middle-class people decide that enough is enough and walk off their jobs for the betterment of themselves, their families, and their community. and that makes me very, very angry. to quote campos from yesterday’s post on yglesias’ commentary, “look, either you support this strike or you don’t. if you don’t support it on the merits then come out and say so, and why. if you do support it, then say so, and why.”

indeed. you are either on the side of teachers or on the side of those who will crush their union. in the middle of the strike, there is no gray area. which side are you on? i side with the people who changed my life.
addendum: from commentor darkrose @ balloon juice:

if you want to support the chicago teachers from afar, here’s one way, from dave zirin:

there is no winning a game when the rules have been rigged, but there is power in numbers. there is power in struggle. and there is power in pizza. the easiest way to support chicago teachers is to order them a piping hot pizza pie. you can get food to the picket lines by calling gus or daisy at primo’s pizza at (312) 243-1052. when pizza shows up to the tired picketers, everyone’s spirits are lifted. it’s read to them from which part of the country a pie was ordered and it makes them feel that much less alone.

it may seem like a small, kind of silly thing, but trust me, it means a lot.
posted by skippy at 7:18 PM | 1 comments

holy thursday

nypd secret squad set up for spying on muslims disbanded after finding zero cases

hard right is paranoid about the wrong things

w and romney: deja vu all over again

which president would win in a knife fight? (via)

posted by skippy at 9:00 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

big apple pizza - update

from reader joel, we learn that:
big apple pizza's yelp page has been deluged with five-star reviews, completely overwhelming the rightwing bad reviews, and driving the overall rating to a solid five stars.
so many people have contacted big apple to order pizza in solidarity that van duzer has begun asking them to contribute to his favorite charity, the van duzer foundation, which "[assists] families and individuals in st. lucie county florida, who are experiencing financial and personal hardship brought about by unforeseen crisis or tragedy.

 you know what to do.

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posted by Cookie Jill at 11:26 PM | 1 comments

thou shalt not smirk

when discussing the death of americans.

 hunter over at the great orange one's puts it succinctly.
one does not smirk when discussing a horrific act. no matter how much you feel the act may benefit you personally, presuming you are the sort of monster that thinks such things, one does not smirk when discussing acts of murder and violence. even if you have the emotional capacity of a gnat, even if your own ambitions are so great that you cannot help it, one does not smirk

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posted by Cookie Jill at 8:48 PM | 0 comments

with his foot in his mouth, can he taste the bullet hole?

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via political carnival
posted by skippy at 6:59 PM | 0 comments

big wednesday

don't ask "are you better off now than 4 years ago," learn to ask the right questions

the complete guide to america's job crisis and the failure of bernanke's monetary policy using animated gifs

southern whites troubled by romney's wealth & religion

5 things to tweet and not to tweet
posted by skippy at 11:31 AM | 0 comments

nmnmnmn
posted by skippy at 9:06 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

big apple pizza

and the right wing melt down over a bear hug. bearhug-gate. really. wtf.
not many things republicans say or do shock me. but yet these people, the party of 'business' are now not only attacking scott van duzer verbally, but have moved on to harassing his business. they have begun to attack his yelp.com Profile driving down his business review ratings  - daily kos
“people are saying a lot of bad things and boycotting my restaurant,” scott van duzer, 46, told politico - politico
are there democratic headquarters in the area? i think dems should call up and order some slices from big apple pizza for the volunteers.

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posted by Cookie Jill at 9:55 PM | 4 comments

tuesday's heartbreak (9/11 edition)


bush ignored multiple warnings about 'imminate''dramatic' attack

first responders' cancer linked to 9/11

with the budgetary dispute resolved, construction on the national 9/11 museum will resume

the overly-made-up ladies of fox news
posted by skippy at 12:50 PM | 1 comments

9/11

and the reminder of the ineptitude of a certain administration.
the direct warnings to mr. bush about the possibility of a qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001.. - nytimes

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posted by Cookie Jill at 6:19 AM | 0 comments

Monday, September 10, 2012

an ounce of bounce is worth a ton of won

nate cohn @ the new republic makes a compelling case that obama's post-convention rise in the polls is a little more decisive than just a bounce:

in contests involving an incumbent president, the candidate with a higher share of the vote following his convention in gallup polling has won every election since 1964. we can go further: no modern candidate has won the presidency without taking a lead after his own convention. and there is a strong relationship between the incumbent’s share of the vote and their eventual finish in november.* to take a recent example, bush peaked at 50.4 percent in the realclearpolitics average after the rnc, and eventually won 50.7 percent of the vote. and it’s worth noting the largest errors involved races with incumbents who took the presidency due to assassination or impeachment (ford, johnson), and a year in which the polls systematically advantaged the incumbent (1996).
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as nate silver (two nates, no waiting) extolls, it's too early to make that much out of this bounce. but nate (the first nate, the new republic nate) makes a compelling case.

if we were mitt, we'd be worried.
posted by skippy at 9:57 PM | 0 comments

monday mourning

11,000 show up for obama in florida while only hundreds hear romney in virginia

the history of men redefining rape

the gop fact vaccum

arctic tipping point: a north pole without ice
posted by skippy at 9:05 AM | 2 comments