UK cops reportedly want to talk to Murdoch’s son again, discussed possible arrest

This story still doesn't seem to be getting much play here in the states.  Odd, considering who's involved.  Imagine if George Soros were the entrepreneur involved in all of this, instead of Rupert Murdoch.  Bet Fox News would find the story newsworthy then. Read the rest of this post...

Armistice Day reflections

In Flanders Fields (h/t the good Atrios):



To those for whom they die (may you rot).

GP Read the rest of this post...

NPR host eats possibly hottest pepper in the world, on camera

Pepper photo via Shutterstock

I've never understood hot (spicy) food. To me it's not a flavor or a spice.  It's like serving me dinner and kicking me in the shin while I try to eat.  I remember watching a Scientific American show with Alan Alda about hot peppers.  They said different people taste them differently.  To some they taste mild, to others they're fire.  To me, even the smallest amount, is nasty stuff.  Anyway, here's video of a local NPR host trying what might just be the hottest pepper in the world.  And I found the video of the SciAm broadcast with Alan Alda, it's only around 13 minutes long and a fun watch. Read the rest of this post...

Taibbi: The Occupy Movement is about "going on strike" against this "fiendish, rigged system"

This is brilliant. It captures the Occupy Movement perfectly — what it's about, what it "wants," and why people on the left and the right, each for different reasons, have been perplexed by it.

Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, starts with this admission:

I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street. ... I loved the energy and was amazed by the obvious organic appeal of the movement, the way it was growing on its own. But my initial impression was that it would not be taken very seriously by the Citibanks and Goldman Sachs of the world.

Then he saw the light (my paragraphing and emphasis)

But I'm beginning to see another angle. Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance.

It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become.

If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left. ...

People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. ... It's about dropping out ... and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation.

The rest of the article details those reactions, left and right, and then describes in more detail (and classic Taibbi prose) the deadening soullessness of a life lived to feed bankers' endless need for endless money.

Of special note is his discussion of the role of the NYPD (and other cop guardians). He flatly states that it's clear from their behavior who they work for, and tells them what they should be doing instead (no, not that). I'll let you find that part for yourself.

All in all, a very smart piece, and very much worth your time.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Romney to do away with VA, send vets to private hospitals

Happy Veterans Day! From AP's Kasie Hunt:

Romney suggests possibility of using a voucher-type system for health care for vets to allow them to use private insurance instead.

That didn't go over too well with vets when McCain proposed the same thing back in 2008.

Remember, everything the Republicans propose is for some rich donor.  In this case, private insurance.  Nothing is every proposed by the modern GOP that is intended to actually help solve a real problem. Read the rest of this post...

Timeline of Gingrich’s affairs, marriages, and divorces

Cheryl Casey / Shutterstock

HuffPost has a nice timeline of Newt Gingrich's various wives and affairs.  It's kind of fascinating to see it all in one place, to see the patterns, etc.  Here's a summary:

1. Gingrich started dating Jackie, who was to be his first wife, when he was a 16 year old in high school, she was his geometry teacher (you can't make this stuff up), 7 to 9 years his senior. They married in 1962. She's the one he, allegedly, famously, served divorce papers while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery.

2. Gingrich reportedly had girlfriends (plural) during his unsuccessful run for Congress in the mid 70s. That's when one of the women came forward and said that Gingrich liked to have oral sex because then he could deny having "slept" with the woman.

3. In 1981, Gingrich marries his second wife, Marianne, who he started dating while still married to his first wife, Jackie. Gingrich asked her to marry him before he was even divorced.

4. 1999, Gingrich meets third wife, Callista, 26 years his junior, while still married to second wife, Marianne. Second wife is diagnosed with MS, Gingrich divorces her and marries third (remember that the first wife had surgery for cancer when he divorced her - it's at least an interesting coincidence). He allegedly already had asked wife number three to marry him before he asked wife number two for the divorce.

These "youthful" indiscretions span 25 years of Gingrich's adult life.  (That's assuming the first affair was in 1974, there's no way to know if they started earlier.)  And if you include a teacher having an affair with an underage student (again, the pattern of favoring illicit affairs), then it's much more than 25. That's one heck of a long, repetitive, pattern to now claim you've broken.

Why does it matter?  Because Gingrich took the lead in going after Bill Clinton for his affair.  Gingrich is also one of the GOP's lead moralists-in-chief, on every issue under the sun.  The hypocrisy, and intellectually dishonesty, is rank. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Dog Blogging

Who me? Sasha, my Yorkie-Bichon mix, is quite the alert dog,
very (too?) perceptive of her surroundings.

She just heard my iPhone receive a text message and
thus got up from her nap. She thinks my iPhone text
tone means we are going to play with the
neighbors' puggle Chato.

Sasha in the local park doing her
best-of-show stance.

Waiting intently for the possibility of
a neighbor exiting their apartment.

Ball is God.

One more best-of-show pose. She really does
just stand like that.

Read the rest of this post...

Europe heading towards another recession

Europe photo via Shutterstock

And that doesn't help our economy, as we (and every other European trading partner) will likely see exports to Europe drop, thus hurting our economies even more, causing us to buy less from Europe, which hurts their economy even further. It's a big vicious circle in this interconnected world. And all of this doesn't take into account what will happen if things go south on the Greek or Italian debt deals. Wash Post:

Europe may be slipping into a “deep and prolonged recession” as high levels of government debt, financial market turmoil and political paralysis stoke a dangerous downward cycle, the European Commission said Thursday.

The commission’s latest survey emphasized that there is no safe haven from the slowdown. Even the euro region’s large economic stalwarts, France and Germany, will see growth plummet to less than 1 percent in 2012, far slower than the commission forecast in the spring.

Read the rest of this post...

Video: Herman Cain jokes about Anita Hill

Photo by Christopher
Halloran,  Shutterstock

Not only am I increasingly convinced that Herman Cain has a problem with women, but it's also becoming clear that he doesn't have very good judgment either.  When you're in the middle of a sexual harassment scandal you don't call the most senior woman in the US government "princess."  As Jon Stewart noted last night, it's not really appropriate to call any girl, past the age of 5, princess.

But last night, Cain did it again.  For some reason, on being told that Anita Hill had a new book out on race and gender, Cain doubled over in hysterics.  Then he told a joke: "Is she going to endorse me?" Cain and the crowd laughed again, apparently because it's hysterically funny when women accuse men of sexual harassment and sexual assault.  (There's video via the link.)

Here's the thing.  If you're facing multiple charges of sexual harassment, and at least one charge of sexual assault, and you're in the race to be president, you'd play it serious, at least for a few days.  You'd avoid gratuitously denigrating women.  And you'd definitely avoid any discussion of Anita Hill, regardless of your opinions of her.  You wouldn't laugh at the mention of her name, and then crack a joke about it.  Unless you were a rather unserious candidate, and a little bit creepy too. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Jon Stewart takes down the most recent GOP debate

He takes on all the GOP candidates. It's particularly good. I'm not going to embed it so as not to slow down the site too much. Go check it out. Read the rest of this post...

A medical explanation for Rick Perry’s memory lapse

From the Washington Post:

Such mental blocks often involve the failure to retrieve a proper noun, the experts said. A proper noun is like a label: It represents a more complex concept. Patients with recurring, pathological problems retrieving a label are said to suffer from anomia. But it’s something that happens to everyone occasionally.

Diamond said retrieval failures often involve new information. In Perry’s case, he’s been governor of Texas for more than a decade but has been running for president for only a few months.

“We are doing so much now, we’re multitasking perhaps at a higher degree than ever before,” Diamond said. “We get into work, and we’re handling e-mails, we’re going to all the Web sites, we’re processing more information now than ever before. We’re asking more of our brains than evolution ever prepared us to handle. So every now and then we just drop the ball.”

I've definitely had it happen before. First off, names. Forget me remembering someone's name. Face, yes. To an uncanny degree I will remember the face of someone I talked to ten years ago at a party.  Their name, however, forget it. Even if I just met you, gone in 3 seconds. Even if I've known you for ten years, if I have to introduce you to someone, your name is gone. I've also had it happen when you're answering a question, either to a reporter or even an interview - all of a sudden you have no idea what question you're answering. Then again, I'm not running for President :) Read the rest of this post...

40,000 more credit union members last week

The numbers are still small but they're also not insignificant. Bloomberg:

Credit unions attracted more than 40,000 new account holders last week during the so-called Bank Transfer Day, according to a Washington-based trade group.

Member institutions reported about $80 million in new savings, or an average of about $2,000 per new account holder, the Credit Union National Association said today in a statement. That figure may also include new money from existing members, said Patrick Keefe, a spokesman for the group.

Read the rest of this post...