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We really ought to be featuring a shot of the great Billie Holiday here, but even she would likely have gone with this one.
No main topic today, just a lot of little ones:
[1] It’s the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday’s birthday on Tuesday (when this site will be busy with an Anaheim City Council meeting, so we’re calling your attention to it a few days early.) Read this piece for plenty of inspiration to listen to Lady Day.) If we have any young readers out there unfamiliar with Billie Holiday, get ye to a YouTube or whatever you use and prepare to be dazzled by her one-of-a-kind talent. If we have older readers unfamiliar with Billie Holiday, please identify yourselves so that we can berate you for being a racist (which you may or may not be) and a cretin.
[2] Wrong as it may be to mention her within one paragraph of the great Ms. Holiday, this site does feel the need to act as a cog in a pop star’s PR machine by calling attention to the holiday miracle performed this past week by Nicki Manaj, who took a sobbing boy from the audience and cured him of his ills through the healing technique known as “the laying on of glands.” Go view the whole video and come back when you stop giggling.
[3] We have a lot of campaign-oriented people among our readers, so I thought that y’all should read this piece very, very carefully. Sure hope this is the start of a trend!
[4] Putting aside the 50% of California’s water dedicated to environmental protection uses, 80% of the other 50% is used for agriculture. (I don’t know whether Nestle’s pulling our water to bottle and sell counts as that or not. It is sort of harvesting, in a way.) The other 20% of that 50% is earmarked for household use. And that is why the Governor’s new executive order, by exempting agricultural use from any restrictions put on water use — and not putting a moratorium on the water-intensive procedure of hydraulic fracking — is a complete washout. If he campaigned for President, would he be using the slogan “Putting Almonds First”? (No, actually, it’s putting hedge funds first.) Tell you what — you can use our sea water for that purpose. Then you can grow salted almonds!
[5] Want to feel sad? This will make you feel sad. It makes shark’s fin soup look like pig’s knuckles (or something.)
[6] Feeling a little dearth of hatred for my illiterate cousin Jamie? This will put the roar back into you.
[7] Ask Vern about this. This is not my department, but you may find it diverting (and it may suck up your weekend.) [VERN: “Huh?”]
[8] Love Harry Reid, hate him, or fall into the tolerate-to-eyeroll middle, he changed the political polarity of a controversial major national policy issue five years ago — and not many politicians get to say that in their whole careers.
[9] Happy Passover!
[10] Happy Easter Sunday! (You know that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder, right?)
That’s it — ten plagues is all you get this week. This is your Weekend Open Thread: talk about these or anything else you’d like within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum. And happy 2nd anniversary to the Register’s paywall!
Solving the world’s problems is a difficult task, but someone has to do it. Barney Frank
was recently on Bill Mahr and said: By sending our manufacturing and banking off shore we have created a vicious cycle of lost middle class jobs in the United States. There is no incentive to create good paying jobs and without those good paying jobs our purchase power and consumerism is reduced causing further job loses. The real estate market and universities have had to rely on foreign investment and buyers. The Japanese in the 60’s, The Saudi’s in the 70’s, The Koreans in the 80’s, The English and the Euro Zone in the 90’s, The Chinese in the Millenium forward. These folks come here to either buy our real estate or bring there money to get a university education for their kids or invest in our stock exchange. Meanwhile, our Public Sector is not being bolstered by good paying Middle Class jobs which increase our tax base. The 1%er’s take the best tax breaks, put their fat wallets into investment in family tax free trusts or ship their cash to off shore havens. It is a vicious cycle and is encouraging the black economy in undocumented workers who will take less money to do Middle Class jobs – all supported by American Business – who love to get that competitive advantage on their competition. As Kurt Vonnegut said: “And so it goes!”
A more point: As the foreign money ramps up the price and demand for real estate (creating another bubble) and the undocumented ramp up the cost of rental housing – more kids cannot afford to live off campus and have to live at home, can’t afford to get married and can’t afford a decent auto. They are then stuck affoding an I-Phone or I-Pad and paying their phone and cable bill each month on minimum wage jobs. Meanwhile, the banks continue to invest in bogus Hedge Funds and inventive phony Derivatives – again!
OMG! What happened to the Winship’s asterisks?
We truly have entered never-never land when it comes to Israel and Iran. Consider that President Obama accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of racism for telling his supporters to turn out because the left was driving Arab turnout sky-high — a proposition that was true and yet for which Netanyahu apologized for giving offense. The apology was deemed insufficient by a White House bent on creating a rift. Moreover, the president has refused to accept Netanyahu’s clarification and reaffirmation that he has not abandoned the two-state solution. His chief of staff, Denis McDonough, thundered to the anti-Israel J Street crowd that some words just can’t be ignored. But then right on cue, the administration dismissed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s chant of “death to America” as merely for “domestic” consumption. Pause. Face palm. The contrast is striking…
– Washington Post
*The Israeli’s have to keep the conflict between Palestinians going in order to satisfy their own agenda. A lot like our own NRA has to do to keep gaining members. Netanyahu could be the next Andrew Jackson by simply ordering all the Palestinians out of the West Bank to Lebanon, Syria or Jordan….or all of them….in a new Trail of Tears. The Iranian Format for Peace really angers the Republican Tea Party’ers and the Israeli’s because it does absolutely nothing to increase tensions in the area. We still want to see some ISIS/ISIL captives unmasked and interviewed for Global television release. They have killed about 10,000 of these folks and no captives to interview? The whole deal in the middle east is hog wash and dog doo. If the ISIS/ISIL fighters have taken Yemen….why are WE not bombing their infrastructure? Now we are pals with Egypt, according to Dana Rohrabacher? The beat goes on…..as Cher might say!
Spoken like a true dead-ender.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – “Celebrations broke out in Tehran on Thursday night as a landmark framework agreement for a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was announced.
Videos posted on social media showed cars driving through the streets of Tehran with honking horns and passengers clapping.”
Reminds me of the celebrations in the streets Arab countries after 9/11.
I was surprised to see no one here covered Chris Norby’s letter to the LA Times or the firey responses….
[Ed. note: And then I banned the comment author. Life’s too short to put up with this sort of malicious asshole. -GAD]
“Clocking in at fewer than 30 words, the letter from Chris Norby of Fullerton was the shortest in Thursday’s paper — and it was also the most talked-about among our readers. Reacting to Indiana’s religious freedom law, Norby asked a simple question that drew complicated responses: Would a kosher caterer have the right to refuse service to a Christian couple who wanted to serve ham at their wedding reception?”
And that answer is: no, not if they did not (as is probably the case) have ham listed on their menu of available goods offered.
Similarly, if they have two individual “groom” figurines, they might have to comply with a request to put both on one cake. But they would not necessarily have to special order a decoration that had a single plastic image containing two groom figurines. The test is: is the product or service generally or customarily offered.
*Meanwhile, in Lausanne: First off – Happy Passover to those affected. 2ndly, we have to ask Bibi as he rants and rants and does the dance with Boehner at the Wailing Wall: Do you guys really fear a Nuclear Deal with Iran as much as the Nukes of Kim Jon Un of North Korea, the Special Groups and Generals of Pakistan, Vlade Putin, China, India and even
their own State of Israel. Are the Republicans going to make or take Sanctions on all of those we just mentioned? Bibi and John- get a job and go bowling for dollars somewhere else!
*We also didn’t wish everyone a Happy Easter and ask them to go to church…just in case they had forgotten what Bunny Day is all about.
*Finally, here is your current list of Republican “thinking about” being President: Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
Tolkein and Cthulhu are battling it out for top honors in naming rights to geographic features on Pluto and its moon Charon, which should be ripe for naming when the New Horizons spacecraft conducts the first close fly-by on the planet in mid-July.
Voting ends Tuesday! Here’s the current tally:
http://www.ourpluto.org/tally
No offense to the Lord of the Lord of the Rings, but — GO CTHULHU! I mean, it’s freaking PLUTO we’re talking about here! Cthulhu has some RIGHTS!