With over 13,200 comments on O/T, we have to do a little house cleaning and begin a new and improved O/T Post. The sever, right now, has to retrieve all of them, each and every time. Every 13,000! Whew!!
However, this time there will be rules!! Read carefully!!
YOU MAY ONLY POST COMMENTS HERE IF:
THEY ARE OFF TOPIC, TO POST LINKS TO ARTICLES, TO COMMENT, TO SAY HELLO, TO HAVE A DIALOG, TO POST A VIDEO, TO PLAY, TO ASK QUESTIONS, TO HAVE OPINIONS, TO DISCUSS, TO POST KITTIES/PUPPIES/CARTOONS, TO TELL JOKES AND STORIES,
AND A BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF I CAN’T THINK OF RIGHT NOW.
BUT ABSOLUTELY, NO SPITTING, EYE GOUGING OR HITTING ABOVE OR BELOW THE BELT!!
You know the rules, now follow them! Please?
Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.
The following questions were taken from the 2008 Civic Literacy exam.
Take the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) Civics Quiz
Happy New Year, K’es ❗ ❗ ❗
Happy New Year!!! And now…light that candle, ’cause I’m about to drive home with all the drunks on the highway!!
Be safe, k’es, and the candle is always lit for you.
No kidding, Khirad, I can think of a bunch more before I would come up with Krugman and Rich!!
edit: how did I put this here, and where does it belong? 🙂
May this be a good sign for the New Year
Reuters
January 1, 2011 03:49 GMT
North Korea calls for end to hostility with South
The rest, not so good.
http://www.globalpost.com/breaking-news/global/us-international-summary-96
Got a chuckle from this Matt Yglesias tweet:
😆
We women might stand a better chance under sharia law than with being left to the tender mercies of the GOP RW Constitutionalists, b’ito! 🙂
And — yes — I did miraculously get sprung, after we sent a few folks home to celebrate. I’m on a borrowed computer with a crushingly slow connection, though… 🙁
k’es, Did you hand out extra ‘meds’ tonight for the New Year, ya know, some of the good stuff? 😆
b’ito, we just un-wrapped ’em all and put ’em in a big candy dish on the table in the nurse’s station.
Grab a handful and see what happens! 😀
MMMM, Just like M&M’s!!
Who ate more, the RN’s or the patients? 🙄
Or those pretty, pastel-colored after-dinner mints…
Oh, fond memories of my month in ICU…. wait a sec…. maybe, they weren’t so fond. 😆
Oh no, not these, I hope.
[img]http://www.thechocolatestore.com/images/product-pictures/27_L_melty-mints.jpg[/img]
I can get sick gorging myself on these in no time.
No Khirad,
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Four_colors_of_pills.jpg[/img]
😆
I do hope they’re fortified with real Vicodin flavor. 😆
Happy New Year, Khirad, I won’t see midnight. It is 31 in town right now.
Well, an early New Year’s to you then, as well bito!
We wish! Unfortunately that “hypocritical”-sorta nursing oath demands that someone must be more or less sober at all times. Florence Spoilsport Nightengale!!
Oh — and you may have deduced, correctly, that I made it home with nary a scrape.
And — to Khirad — yes, our meds are indeed chock full o’ vitamin V goodness! Makes ’em wanta/hafta come back for more.
Now — I really must shower off and hop to bed…wabbity fast. (The sound of the pounding rain in these 50 degree temps will lull me to sleep.) Happy New Year once again!
Here’s a feel good true story.
My husband’s family hated me,
Now imagine me – being me – and the family hating me.
It was when my husband’s daughter died, and she was mine, that’s when everything changed.
I still cry – I miss my step-daughter, and especially remember when she called me mom for the first time.
A) Can’t imagine it.
B) They probably didn’t hate “you”, just the idea of you.
Wow.
You got it and I thank you.
LOL
You must play your guitars and sing!
Happy New Year!
One-third of 9 month-old babies are obese?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20101231/sc_livescience/athirdof9montholdsalreadyobeseoroverweight
A good column today from Frank Schaeffer:
Obama’s Critics Owe Him a New Years (Fact-Based) Apology
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/obamas-lefty-critics-owe-_b_802911.html
While I support his POV, I can think of better examples than Krugman and Rich to pick as major critics of the President, perhaps the owner of the site he posted this on might be a good start.
I don’t read Krugman daily, perhaps I have missed something, many economists feel a need to put more money into the economy and Krugman has often listed the limitations placed on the President from doing so.
No kidding, Krugman and Rich are who he went after?
Then again, maybe the others would have hit too close to home on HP?
“President Obama’s Lefty critics look more and more like petulant teenagers who are too small to admit that they are wrong.”
*applause*
And, I see those very people came out to protest his article! 😆
A wife sleeping with her husband
[img]http://planetpov.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/164112_478728635813_583505813_5895966_119073_n.jpg[/img]
Q, such a sad photograph, but something everyone should view as a reminder of war.
We’re so insulated from the wars and the military and their families.
I think it’s less than 1% of the population that serves and the MSM rarely covers the war or the cost of war on the troops and their families.
Very sad.
The above picture was from the NYT, javaz. We are instead deluged with the horrors of weather by the MSM. Why is weather all of a sudden always so disastrous?
Powerful.
In Their Boots – No Religious Preference
It’s super good. I can’t believe Huffington Post recommended it.
This Afghanistan veteran confronts his own prejudice against Muslims by talking to Muslim veterans.
It was pretty moving. The triumph of the human spirit and self-reflection, plus the courage to confront that which makes you uncomfortable.
http://www.intheirboots.com/itb/shows/operation-in-their-boots/no-religious-preference.html
Yet in the military overall Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Buddhists are prejudiced against. Why? Because the military is evangelical.
Their blood will never be worth as much as those “clean” and “purified” by the Holy Spirit. Didn’t you know the Prince of Peace makes the best soldiers. Screw this guy and his mom:
[img]http://i679.photobucket.com/albums/vv156/NavyBlueWife/080929_slideshowplaton16_p465.jpg[/img]
I bring this short blog post up not so much for it but the comment
Fortunately, making a statistical error on live TV is not a capital offense
😆 ain’t it the truth?
It don’t doubt it a bit, b’ito. But I suspect Brooks probably wouldn’t even bother to talk to the Home Depot employee, don’t you?
Would he even go into a Home Depot? Purchase his own lawn mower? Wouldn’t he be likely to have a lawn service (staffed by “invisible” Mexican immigrants)?
Am I getting too cynical?
Maybe his columns are more likely to be launched by a five minute conversation with Tucker Carlson while waiting for the elevator?
Maybe I should go to bed and take my crankiness with me? 😀
Either way, he and his fellow pundits are out of touch, to say the least!
I’ve been without the MSNBC for a month now. So, forgive me in asking: what’ did Tucker do (this time)?
I thought he was banished to Hasbeenistan, or whatever he calls that thing — the Daily Crapper, or whatever.
—
That comment was too funny, and too true. They do tend to – I don’t know a better way to say this – circle jerk it.
They never really get out there. That’s what I think Joe Klein tried to do. I still don’t know how much he really succeeded or not. One person I do know that cuts through the glass cage, is Matt Taibbi.
Truthout has an interesting review of Jeff Sharlet’s latest book: “C Street: the Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy.”
(C’lady has mentioned his 2008 book, “The Family” as a great source of info on the religious right.)
http://www.truth-out.org/c-street-review-is-fact-power-its-justification66406
Hey, k’es, That is a good quote from the review from a great site. It used to be my go-to-site. Their outrage at the Iraq war by Scott Ritter opened my eyes wide to the lies of the Bush administration before the invasion.
The perversion and depth of C-Street in governance is a tad scary. Why did Mr. Ensign escape his escapades within the GOP with nary a scratch??
Their gospel reminds me of what your son said about the money changers in the temple.
I’ve been tempted to sketch my son’s comment into an editorial cartoon and send it off to a couple of the local newspapers, b’ito. (Does anyone read newspapers any more, though?)
Was that AlterNet that you cited yesterday with the list of ten things on the RW agenda for the near future? I was looking for that comment, but it might have gone into lalaland when the “misfortune” struck with the incredible shrinking comments… 😆
Oh, what luck, k’es, still had the tab up.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/149333/10_ways_right-wingers_will_try_to_wreck_any_economic_recovery?page=1
Not a bedtime story!
Yaaaay! Let’s hear it for keeping 45,367,231 tabs available! 😆
Thank you!
Guilty as charged, if I put it in bookmarks it would really get lost. 😆
I must have 300 items in bookmarks. It’s hopeless… 🙄
Your way works better.
Ugh, don’t get me started on my untidy bookmarks. I’m always putting off organizing them.
They’re sorta haphazardly organized, but when I’m thinking of just the right article to vanquish a troll, wouldn’t you know it, I can’t find it.
Replacing Styrofoam with fungi!
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/eplace-styrofoam-musrooms/
Way Cool, j’avaz, I love TED. They do some great things.
The fungi/husk compound is also a fire retardant.
Besides being better for the environment and not using oil, the fungi/compound doesn’t burn like Styrofoam.
It burns slowly, very, very slowly, so imagine the possibilities and lives saved if it is used as insulation in planes, homes, mobile homes and trailers, and maybe even vehicles and perhaps someday on future space stations.
People would have a much better rate of survival during crashes, or electrical fires, if the insulation didn’t ignite and people were given the time to flee.
American ingenuity on display and I do believe the two men responsible for developing the fungi/husk replacement for Styrofoam are only 26 years old!
j’avaz, this gives me a chance to post this link
http://challenge.gov/
You too could be a winner!! Put you thinking cap on!!
Bito– awesome site! bookmarked that!
Cher, Now, if only I was smart enough to think of something. 😀
OK. Now they need to come up with a durable, edible form of this stuff. A nice mushroom omelet made from packing material…yummmmm.
Sorry I’m a little late, but speaking of the weather here in the Buckeye State…
Right Now Next 36 Hours
Fair Tonight Tomorrow Tomorrow Night
Cloudy Cloudy T-Showers
Fair Cloudy Cloudy T-Showers
44°F 37° 53° 44°
Feels Like: 41° Low High Low
Past 24-hr:
Precip: 0.21 in (est.)
Snow: 0 in Chance of Precip:
20% Chance of Precip:
20% Chance of Precip:
80%
Wind:
From SE at 5mph Wind:
SSE at 11 mph Wind:
S at 14 mph Wind:
SSE at 12 mph
Humidity: 85% 80% 78% 82%
Dew Point:40°
Pressure: 29.96 in Steady Pressure
Visibility: 10.0 mi
UV Index: 0 – Low — 1 – Low —
Time Until Sunrise: 13 hrs 30 min Sunset: 5:16 pm Sunrise: 7:54 am Sunset: 5:17 pm
Through 12am: Mostly cloudy with temperatures steady in the low 40s. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Overcast. Low 37F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Overcast. High 53F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Rain showers in the evening then thundershowers overnight. Low 44F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
***Edit*** Out and about this afternoon sans coat!
We are having our first snowstorm of the season down here in Denver/Boulder. Hooray!! It’s been dry as a bone for months, and warm too.
I posted about Rep. Ryan and the new “cut-go” but here is a couple of new twists to the budget from ThinkProgress.
Proposed House GOP Rules Give Rep. Ryan ‘Stunning And Unprecedented’ Power To Shape Budget
Not sure if the T-Partiers will go along with this, some want to go back to 2000 spending levels.
H/T The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Well, that would certainly be troubling! I wonder if the GOBP is floating that idea in response to the Senate considering reforming the filibuster rules? Separate branch, true, but the Repubs stick together, whichever house of Congress. I can see them doing that not only for power, but to take revenge on the Dem Senate. Do you know if the House rules allow that sort of change?
Cher, it may have some to do with the senate, but it has more with their hypocritical “austerity/deficit” rant. The cut-go anly applies to deficit spending on social programs but not deficit ballooning tax cuts or military.
Yes the house convenes every 2 years as a “new body” (all reps having just stood for election) and can write new rules. The senate is usually convened as a “continuing body” (only 1/3 are new members) and keep the old rules. This may be different this year because of the filibuster reform and they may also convene as a “new body.”
Back to the new house rules, these rules are quite draconian and are the wet dreams of Reagan/Stockman idolizers. “Starve the beast” and trickled on. They seem to, conveniently, forget that under Reagan taxes were raised 3 times and the deficit and debt exploded.
That’s depressing, bito. Thanks for the explanation about the rules though.
Dear Mr. Gandhi, We regret we cannot fund your proposal…
http://findwhatworks.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/dear-mr-gandhi-we-regret-we-cannot-fund-your-proposal/
Ice cream stand robbed …
… in the middle of a blizzard.
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_78604dca-1365-11e0-8647-001cc4c03286.html