s skippy the bush kangaroo

skippy the bush kangaroo



Friday, September 28, 2012

a few minutes on friday

ted koppel on why fox news is bad for america

why sneering at public servants comes so easily to many of america's richest citizens

cute alert! san diego zoo newborn elephant gets a name

and rest in peace, inspector clouseau's boss, brilliant character actor herbert lom
posted by skippy at 10:55 AM | 0 comments

we like what you've done with the place

we don't know where we've been lately, but the moderate voice has a great, sophisticated new look. good going, joe!
posted by skippy at 1:17 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, September 27, 2012

like a summer thursday

bank of america steals from child actors

mitt romney's "them" problem

musician releases album that changes every time you listen to it

10 key charts about inequality

why misinformation sticks - and how to fix it

and rest in peace andy williams
posted by skippy at 1:50 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

gangnam agnes de mille style



aka rodeo
posted by skippy at 7:21 PM | 0 comments

long wednesday

are libertarians stupid, or just really stupid?

the 14 most pornographic astronomical terms

group files suit against murray energy for making them attend romney rally

7 famous people who missed the titanic
posted by skippy at 11:59 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

say hello

to herlander walking
posted by skippy at 11:59 AM | 1 comments

tuesday night fever

is a ph.d. worth it?

german prosecutors name hewlett-packard in bibery case

wall st journal fails to disclose 9 writers are romney advisors

just what the world needs - colored pigeons! (see for yourself!)
posted by skippy at 8:39 AM | 0 comments

Monday, September 24, 2012

willard wonders about windows

and why they won't open. airplane windows, mind you.
...“when you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. i don’t know why they don’t do that. it’s a real problem." - the political carnival

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posted by Cookie Jill at 11:03 PM | 2 comments

health insurance = emergency rooms

according to willard mittens romney.
“well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance,” romney told interviewer scott pelley. “if someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and — and die. we pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital..." - mittens 2012
but, he was against high cost emergency rooms as healthcare before he was for them.
“it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility,” - mittens 2012

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posted by Cookie Jill at 10:36 AM | 0 comments

What The Retired Guy Said...

Saw this over at Alternate Brain:





...

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posted by Jim Yeager at 9:24 AM | 0 comments

austerity

it doesn't work, especially if the wrong people are being forced to abide by it.

it's not the average working person that is the problem....it's the banksters, the 1%, goldman sachs. where is their austerity?
recession-hit spaniards will this week be told to swallow yet more austerity as the government prepares a fresh round of reforms and another budget filled with spending cuts and tax increases that will allow it to seek a bailout from eurozone partners. - the guardian

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posted by Cookie Jill at 8:03 AM | 0 comments

monday night

mitt romney, class warrior

what's the fracking problem with natural gas?

mormon church wants to ex-communicate blogger critical of romney

germany celebrates 200 years of fairy tales with a 600 m brothers grimm forest walk
posted by skippy at 7:21 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, September 23, 2012

environmental news stories sunday

a sneak peek at those stories you probably haven't heard about on the talking head shows.

criminal investigation at chevron refinery. - federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of chevron after discovering that the company detoured pollutants around monitoring equipment at its richmond refinery for four years and burned them off into the atmosphere, in possible violation of a federal court order - sfgate

senate votes to shield u.s. airlines from eu's carbon emissions plan. - the senate unanimously passed a bill on saturday that would shield u.s. airlines from paying for their carbon emissions on european flights, pressuring the european union to back down from applying its emissions law to foreign carriers - reuters

arsenic in rice: pediatricians offer advice for parents. - new reports that rice products may contain "worrisome levels" of carcinogenic arsenic — especially from rice grown in certain states — have american pediatricians offering new advice for parents feeding children - chicago tribune

cleaning up oil spills with peanut butter, chocolate and whipped cream. the chemicals we pumped into the gulf to clean up the deepwater spill were almost as bad as the oil itself. after the next oil spill, we might be able to clean up with dessert - fast company

the dilbit disaster: inside the biggest oil spill you've never heard of, part 1. the july 2010 spill happened in marshall, a community of 7,400 in southwestern michigan. at least 1 million gallons of diluted bitumen - dilbit - blackened more than two miles of talmadge creek and almost 36 miles of the kalamazoo river, and oil is still showing up 23 months later - inside climate news

fire retardants in food. fire retardant chemicals are commonly found in household items like furniture and electronics. but a new study found them in a place you probably wouldn’t expect: food - living on earth

flame retardant chemical found in food. - a common flame retardant showed up in a variety of store-bought foods including meat, peanut butter and fish, researchers report today in the journal environmental health perspectives. the discovery of the chemical hbcd adds to growing evidence that our food supply is full of unwanted chemicals, including flame retardants. - discovery channel

how the world's oceans could be running out of fish. - global fish stocks are exploited or depleted to such an extent that without urgent measures we may be the last generation to catch food from the oceans - bbc

finding a remedy for burger smog. - sandwiched between paved-road dust and diesel truck emissions is the second-biggest producer of particle pollution in southern california: the char-broiled burger - riverside press enterprise

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posted by Cookie Jill at 11:42 PM | 0 comments

on a sunday

the tea party is less popular than atheists and muslims

pity the plutocrat's poor wife

life imitates breaking bad: chemistry teacher arrested for selling meth at school

and, speaking of breaking bad, scientists uncertain about heisenberg's incertainty principle
posted by skippy at 1:15 PM | 0 comments

willard mitt romney

flat wrong...and not sorry at all.

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posted by Cookie Jill at 12:53 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, September 22, 2012

romney reads ramos the riot act

by now, we all know that mitt romney packed the audience w/partisan cliques for his univision interview. but what we found interesting was the fact that the mittster threw a tantrum to get the introduction he wanted:

that wouldn't be the last demand from the campaign: romney himself almost pulled the plug on the whole thing minutes before the broadcast, [univision anchor maria elena] salinas said.

while introducing romney at the top of the broadcast, salinas's co-anchor, jorge ramos, noted that the republican candidate had agreed to give the network 35 minutes, and that obama had agreed to a full hour the next night. ramos then invited the audience to welcome romney to the stage — but the candidate didn't materialize.

"it was a very awkward moment, believe me," salinas said.

apparently, romney took issue with the anchors beginning the broadcast that way, said salinas, and he refused to go on stage until they re-taped the introduction. (one republican present at the taping said romney "threw a tantrum.")

"our president of news was talking to the romney campaign and negotiating it," salinas said. "but at that point, you can't really argue with that. the candidate is there, everyone is in their seats, the show must go on. there's a limit to how much we can object to it."

the compromise reached was that the anchors would note the discrepancy in the candidates' time commitments at the end of the broadcast. but salinas said, by then, the crowd was cheering so loudly that they drowned out the anchors' words.
this is the guy who wants to be president?
posted by skippy at 7:51 PM | 1 comments

saturday jump

expert predicts end of arctic sea ice in 4 years

chronicling mitt's mendacity, vol. xxxv

the distress of the privileged

and on that subject, arrested developement fans should enjoy lucille and mitt
posted by skippy at 12:10 PM | 0 comments

Friday, September 21, 2012

More Random Notes

I recently declared chez Mannion that I would leave my wife for Jenny Diski. For anyone who needs to figure out why, start with this post where she puts the Glorification of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics into context.  As Tom Lehrer sang in a similar context, “Though he may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs.”

(Not to mention this one, which hits rather close to home.)

I asked this on Twitter and never saw an answer. If Mitt Romney believes his approach “will put 23 million people back to work again,” why does he plan to create only 12 million jobs?

If the Boy Scouts made a moral decision earlier this year, what do you call the ones from the early 1970s?

In similar TANJ-is-a-feature-not-a-bug fashion, those who wonder why no one trusts the NYC police department when a car is involved are referred to this Forbes piece.  What would you expect when your force is made up of a bunch of car-dependent, overprivileged parking Lon Gislanders and Joiseyites?

If anyone was foolish enough to believe that the need for “education reform” is driven by a desire to take monies from the public coffers and give them to friends and campaign contributors, Valerie Strauss clears up the question for Tennessee, having previously body-slammed the Rahming idiocy coming out of Chicago.*

Doug Henwood points out that buying stock is really not “investing capital,” which Matt Yglesias appears to have overlooked.  (As a side note, my beach reading this summer was Matt’s dad’s fifth novel, which he dedicated to his two sons. It was that or my dog-eared copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I still think I made the right choice. At the price at the link, absolutely recommended. Indeed, you can get the hardcover for that same price, for a good cause. What more could you want?)

My application for press credentials to the Clinton Global Initiative—which I had covered for the last three years—was declined.  Which is probably good, since I can afford neither the time nor the money to go this year and (as with you) I’ll be able to watch most of the presentations via the Internet. (Though one of my best pieces from last year came from a lunch meeting that was not broadcast. Ah, well, their loss.)

And, finally, bleg of the day:

I am now the proud owner of not one but two IBM ThinkPad T40s. All things considered, the only problem with these top-of-the-line-at-le-fin-de-siècle, half-gig of RAM, 40-and-that’s-really-rounding-up GB HD machines is that their wireless capability is 802.11b. How difficult is that going to be to upgrade?

 

*The three reasons to keep the WaPo alive are Strauss, Sarah Kliff (who blogs chez Ezra), and Michael Dirda, who I probably irritated the last time we were together by waving buyable copies of The Best of John Sladek in his face.

posted by Ken Houghton at 10:13 PM | 1 comments

shuttle off to buffalo

actually, to los angeles international airport.

the space shuttle endeavor made its final flight today, taking off from edwards air force base in the mojave desert, flying up to sacremento, then over to the bay area, then down the coast for one final loop around southern california. skippy got to see it pass by mulholland drive.

Photobucket

Photobucket
pretty damn amazing.
posted by skippy at 6:15 PM | 2 comments

4 am friday - whatever it takes

here's a map of gas prices in the country

the black market goes green: theft of solar panels on the rise

also on the rise: lynchings of empty chairs

glengarry glen mitt
posted by skippy at 10:15 AM | 1 comments

Thursday, September 20, 2012

lazy thursday

is romney tanking gop's hopes for a senate take-over?

9 scientific breakthroughs that happened totally by accident

bill moyers on the one percent supreme court

california tries to lead the way on health law
posted by skippy at 12:08 PM | 0 comments

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 | 2 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