Journo to Red China: Have You *Studied* Confucius? [Epic Fail]

An article demonstrating that, when it comes to the brand new spontaneously-arising Confucius Peace Prize, Red China is very confuscshed.

Ya rly. Srsly.

It was an event for the benefit of foreign media. But if the organisers had hoped the Confucius Peace Prize would convince the world China is right, it failed. And, in the opinion of this correspondent, it was an epic public relations fail.

During the question and answer period in the increasingly stuffy conference room of a central Beijing hotel, the Confucius Peace Prize Awards Committee couldn't even bring themselves to say Liu Xiaobo's name, instead circuitously referring to him as "he of the three-character name you mentioned".

When Liu Xiaobo conjures up Harry Potter's Lord Voldemort, the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, you know some Chinese are experiencing a crisis.

The press conference went from bad to worse, as question after question was asked.

"Jimmy Carter was one of your nominees for the first Confucius Peace Prize. Carter signed a letter asking for the release of Liu. Does this make you a supporter of a supporter of Liu?"

Or, "Doesn't it bother you and speak volumes if Lien Chan, the winner, hasn't shown up? Do you just have a hard time accepting the truth?"

Or this one, by a Hong Kong journalist, "Have you studied Confucius? Because you appear to have gotten the concepts wrong..."

[Pardon my abbreviated blogging of late. Things are ch-ch-ch-changing. Hopefully, for the better.]

Australia blames US for cable leaks - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Hmm. Cui bono resurrecting this story?

What, murdered?

David Kelly?

I'm shocked, shocked.

Yes, let's let them hypnotize America because why not eh?

"Democrats Pressing Pelosi to Step Aside!"


Ooooh, Nancy Pelosi is being dumped by Democrats, ooh!

Lookit the headline! Everybody knowz!

Cuz she's too librul, oooooh!

[Expletives deleted].

Go ahead, people, wallow in the Koch-Rove-fueled propaganda-fest, why don'tcha?

Which Democrats? Are they Democrats?

Because we're waaay too skeered to be progressive, aren't we? Or else we're waaay too purist?

Something's got to explain Coakley and Russ Feingold going down, shouldn't it? Oh, wait, Martha Coakley just got hugely re-elected, with the help of a local Boston Republican paper! Apparently it didn't know about or didn't care about all of Coakley's intentional sueing of Goldman-Sachs! Which she did waaaay before it was fashionable!

So, yuh, sure: bad Nancy! bad Nancy! bad Nancy!


(I am always read to dump progressives under the bus, and I always have very good reasons, do I not?)

Misogynist Minister Sembiring Blames Mrs. Obama For Own Behavior

Oh noes!
Indonesian Minister Sembiring FORCED to touch unrelated female!

"I tried to prevent [being touched] with my hands but Mrs. Michelle held her hands too far toward me [so] we touched,’ Sembiring tweeted.
Footage on YouTube shows otherwise, sparking a debate that has lit up Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the blogosphere."

Note victimized Sembiring's wide sh*t-eating grin and his hand, extended much farther than Mrs. Obama's hand.

Just sayin'.

Die, Healthcare Serf-Slave Mommy! Die! Die!

Yuh, we hear of employers who want to dump providing health insurance for employees.


This worker's dumping work to dump her health insurance provider-profiteer.

Yes, Ms NBFH just quit her job because the insurance her not-quite-ex-employer offers so sucks.

Big-time insurance profiteering company. Cost $12K a year. New plan began July 1 of this year, effects became clear in the past 3 weeks. Same outrageous price, but even worse coverage. If that is imaginable. $12K for family "coverage," with a huge deductible. You get an ultrasound for $525, they pay all of $125, you get stuck with--surprise! A bill for $400! And they tell you if you'd just driven an hour and a half away for a potentially life-threatening condition, they gladly would have picked up more of the tab.

I've been a healthcare insurance serf-slave to this company for years. And it's just not worth it anymore. I will be saving money by not working, because for the last six weeks, every penny I earn there has gone only to pay this crappy insurance company's crappy rates for crappy coverage.

So I'm done.

I can't be the only one who's re-cycling Paddy Chayevsky: mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Thus Empire crumbles under the weight of its own stupidity and greed.

Midterms: money changes everything - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Midterms: money changes everything - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Spying and lying about the left - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Your tax dollars at work: Spying and lying about the left - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

The Pleasures of Eating - Wendell Berry | Center for Ecoliteracy

The Pleasures of Eating - Wendell Berry | Center for Ecoliteracy

SNL : I'm not a witch

Nanny Backs Up Maid for Whitman's Let 'Er Eat Cake-Gate

Meg Whitman--a woman who can't clean up after herself.

Finding love in the wrong places - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Finding love in the wrong places - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Fund-Raiser for Corrente!!!!

Pass it on!

TMI

"Are You Going to Man Up, Or Just Lie There and Bleed?"

This is from the NYT on the phrase, "man up."

Yes, Virginia, flagrantly gender-biased language remains invisible, because sexism just, well, you know, it just is how things is, isn't it?

NBFH to Corporate Sickness Profiteers: Drop Dead

So. So. So.

So I had a family member with a potentially life-threatening condition who needed an ultrasound, two ultrasounds, in fact. The employer through whom our family has health insurance dropped our secondary coverage on July 1, saying they could no longer afford to provide a secondary coverage benefit, essentially giving us a $4K cut in salary.

So our family's health insurance serf-slave had to drop PPO coverage, and get into a HMO just to keep some benefits. These "benefits" cost us ~$1400 month.

So today we get a bill for $375 out of the blue, for the first ultrasound. The first ultrasound cost $504 at our local hospital. Corporate Sickness Profiteer paid all of $125 of this. Remember, our family is paying them $16,800 for "coverage," and now, it turns out, we must absorb a $4000 deductible in addition for services such as this ultrasound. Oh, and the CSP would have reimbursed more if sick person with potentially life-threatening condition had been driven sixty miles away to have ultrasound at a "cheaper" hospital.

So really the first $20K of earnings (which is nearly all of earnings from this employer) is going to CSP to provide us sh*tty coverage.

Question is -- serf-slave is working there, why? Serf-slave is paying extortionate rates to CSP because, why?

Serf-slave will be better off unemployed, serf-slave thinketh.

What thinketh our gentle readerth?

Consciousness of Guilt (Or, Yes, Bush/Cheney's Still Getting Away With Murder)

It's Rosemary Woods on crack and steroids: the convenient "disappearance" of evidence which, by federal law, must not be disappeared. Not a miserable few minutes on Nixon's tapes, but ALL SORTSA emails. Especially Dick Cheney's emails. You know, sensitive emails. Stuff that is meant to be preserved.

But it did disappear.

No biggie.

I mean, cui bono? These things just happen! Why would you think this spontaneous event involved destruction of evidence? Why?




Hat-tip to Corrente.

American Family Values, or, How Random Parenthood Becomes Cruel and Unusual

Here's a man starving a 7-month old child. His own child, btw.

Here's a Minnesota dad wreaking havoc on his four-week-old daughter.

A Fargo man wreaking havoc on his girlfriend's 4 month old child.

Call for Boycott: Dr. Pepper, Snapple, Mott's

For: Conduct Unbecoming an Employer.


Yes, that's right. A corporation tries to screw its employees and get away with it. Well, I'm not buying.

How about you?

Buffalo Cops Save Life of Live Cat Being Marinated Prior to Becoming Owner's Meal

Yikes.

Owner said cat was mean to him.

No wonder.

Also called his cat "possessive, greedy, and wasteful."


Yuh, somebody's got issues.

Buffalo police rescued a cat from a Cheektowaga man who apparently was planning to make a meal out of his pet because he thought it was ill-tempered, authorities said Monday.

When Ferry-Fillmore District officers pulled over a car driven by Gary L. Korkuc on Sunday night during a traffic stop, they said they heard a cat crying from inside the trunk and investigated.

What they found has left animal lovers at the SPCA Serving Erie County in shock.

The cat, according to police, was in a cage “marinating” in a mixture of crushed red peppers, chili pepper, salt and oil.

“It’s disgusting. It surprises me every day what people are capable of when it comes to violence, whether it is animals or people,” said Gina M. Browning, the SPCA’s director of public relations. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

Korkuc, 51, was arrested on one count of cruelty to animals by Officers Jerry Guilian and John Poisson, shortly after he was stopped on the 1100 block of Broadway at about 7:45 p. m. for allegedly passing a stop sign.

Police took the 4-year-old cat to the SPCA on Ensminger Road in the Town of Tonawanda, where Korkuc had adopted it May 11. He told police the cat had been “mean” to him, authorities said.

In condemning the treatment of the cat, whose name is Navarro, Browning read from an SPCA memo put together in part from information provided by the officers and shelter staff:

“Do not under any circumstances adopt to this man ever again. He claims he did not want the cat because it was ‘possessive, greedy and wasteful.’ That the cat got pregnant after ‘spaying,’ even though it was a neutered male. This man is a danger to animals. . . . was soaking cat in marinade to ‘cook.’ ”

People Who Love You Get to Hit You and Hurt You, Cape Cod Church Edition

Cape Cod Calvary Church pastor Silas Coellner advocates causing children -- and crawling infants -- pain. On purpose. To teach them that people who love you get to hit you and hurt you, a lesson they will carry with them forever.

MATTAPOISETT — A pastor and father of three poised to become the assistant principal at Old Rochester Regional Junior High School is under fire for sermonizing that spanking children is "critical" — starting with when they crawl.

"I have this little bundle of innocence. When do I start dealing with them?" Silas Coellner said in an online podcast he took down after the Herald inquired about it.

"There's something about when they reach that crawling stage, I have found, in my experience, when you can suddenly see that heart of defiance, of rebellion, for the first time. That's when you begin."

Pastor Silas is one sick puppy. Maybe he needs someone to beat some sense into him?

Shock And Awe: Trickle-down Ace Reaganomicist David Stockman, of All People, Sees Da Light

They said it couldn't be done.

Th[e ] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

Read It And Weep

Via Corrente, Stirling Newberry: Government prints money. Arabs raise price of oil. Checkmate. Thank you.

Another Oilist Outrage: BP Uses Prisoners, Mainly Black Prisoners, For Gusher Clean-Up

Full story here.

Let me guess why.

They're cheaper?

They're expendable?

They're helpless?

They're uh, you know, prisoners?

In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

Work crews in Grand Isle, Louisiana, still stand out. In a region where nine out of ten residents are white, the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men. The racialized nature of the cleanup is so conspicuous that Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, sent a public letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward on July 9, demanding to know why black people were over-represented in "the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins."

Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process.

Bankster Lenders Discriminate Against the Pregnant

Just when you think Banksters couldn't have any more egg on their faces--or whatever that viscous stuff is--they come up with a new outrage.

Here's a NY Times story about banksters and mortgages for the pregnant--long story short, if banksters find out you're pregnant, they'll screw up your mortgage! Wow!

Mortgage lenders are taking a harder look at prospective borrowers whose income has temporarily fallen while they are on leave, including new parents at home taking care of a baby. Even if a parent plans on returning to work within weeks, some lenders are balking at approving the loans.

“If you are not back at work, it’s a huge problem,” said Rick Cason, owner of Integrity Mortgage, a mortgage firm in Orlando, Fla. “Banks only deal in guaranteed income these days. It makes sense, but the guidelines are sometimes actually harsher than they need to be.”

Back in the slapdash days of easy credit, lenders were more likely to overlook the fact that a parent was out on maternity or paternity leave. But now that lenders have become more conservative, they are requiring new parents to jump through more hoops to prove their income will be enough to cover the mortgage.

So before some prospective parents start spending their Sundays at open houses, they should be prepared to deal with some complications. They may have to delay the purchase, deal with the banks’ bureaucracy (and requests for extra paperwork) or buy a home they can afford on one salary.

“Maternity leave or any other leave of absence often prevents a person from obtaining a mortgage,” said John Councilman, president of AMC Mortgage in Fallston, Md. “There are some who long for the days when such strict proof of income was not required.”

The lenders’ new attitude can be traced, in part, to new loan quality-control measures that went into effect earlier this year. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two quasi-governmental mortgage giants that buy the bulk of conventional loans from lenders, have not changed their rules for qualifying for a mortgage. But the system of checks and balances has been tightened, making lenders increasingly skittish.

Fannie, for instance, now requires lenders to recheck a borrower’s financial situation right before the loan closes. That includes calling an employer to verify employment. Before, lenders required only a statement in writing. Fannie’s new rules went into effect on June 1. Freddie’s similar rule took effect in January.

Both Fannie and Freddie have always required that borrowers have enough income to pay for the loan on closing day — and the lender must document that the income is likely to continue for at least three years.

But here is how some lenders are interpreting the guidelines for, say, a new mother receiving short-term disability insurance for a couple of months (new mothers may receive disability payments while on maternity leave, though the amount and length depend on state law and company policies).

Since the disability payments will not continue for three years, these lenders will not count it as qualifying income, brokers said, and will require the new mother to reapply for the mortgage once she returns to work. (The same logic may apply to an injured employee receiving worker’s compensation.)

That is what happened to Elizabeth Budde, a 33-year-old oncologist who lives in Kenmore, Wash. She nearly lost her mortgage after a loan officer learned she was home with her newborn.

With stellar credit and a solid job, Dr. Budde said she had been notified via e-mail that she was approved for a loan on June 15. But that note prompted an automatic, “out of the office” e-mail reply from Dr. Budde’s work account, which said she was out on maternity leave.

The next day, Dr. Budde received a second e-mail message from the lender, this time denying her loan approval. Since “maternity leave is classified as paid via short-term or temporary disability income,” the e-mail message said, it could not be used because it would not continue for three years.