November 30, 2012

Why is the media still so focused on "Why Romney Lost"?

A 4th grader could tell them why..

bad message
bad candidate
dirty-mean-racist campaign

November 30, 2012

Mapping America's Most Embarrassing Addresses

Mapping America's Most Embarrassing Addresses
Wednesday, November 28, 2012, by Rob Bear

http://curbed.com/archives/2012/11/28/mapping-americas-most-embarrassing-addresses.php






Yes, four lucky families share a cul-de-sac called Broomrape Lane.

Every city has its coveted streets, blocks, and addresses—like Park and Fifth Avenues in New York, Broadway in San Francisco, Chicago's Gold Coast—but this map has nothing to do with those storied bastions of taste. Instead, this is an exploration of the far from prestigious, the sometimes mortifying, the always entertaining worst addresses in America. Welcome to a world where directions include "take a left at Poopoo Place" and "go down Psycho Path."


snip... (the other 9)

November 30, 2012

Former prison to become site for homeless vets

Former prison to become site for homeless vets

Updated: 11/29/2012 02:51:50 PM MST
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_22090072/former-prison-become-site-homeless-vets

By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press
DENVER—An aging former prison in southeast Colorado is unusable for many purposes and should be turned into transitional housing for the chronically homeless, state budget-writers were told Thursday.

The governor's office is asking for $840,000—and an additional $6 million or so over the next two fiscal years—to repurpose the former Fort Lyon Correctional Facility in Las Animas. The prison was closed last year because of a declining prison population. The fences are down at the century-old facility, but officials have struggled for two years to find a new life for Fort Lyon. The former Veterans Affairs hospital was a major employer in rural Bent County, and lawmakers were told that the federal government won't take Fort Lyon back and that the aging property shouldn't be just boarded up and abandoned.

"We have a facility that is going to be expensive even if we mothball it," said Roxane White, chief of staff to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.



snip

November 29, 2012

I think Republicans are JUST FINE, the way they are.

they do not need to "change"

They showed us up close & personal just what kind of people they are, and I am glad to see them being open and upfront about it.

they were only too happy to welcome the racists in, and the bible-thumpers and the anti-science folks, and the xenophobes, and the misogynists, and the 2nd amendment folks.

THIS is their "big tent"..unfortunately for the big shots, the disparate parts have coalesced in the form of the TEA PARTY, and they will no longer hold their tongues.

They now have an unholy alliance.. Their patchwork Frankenstein is feeling his oats and will not sit down & be quiet.

Keep showing us who you are, and telling us what you believe

Let the people decide..and they did

November 29, 2012

Perfect gift for cooks with a sense of humor

About Whipped & Beaten Culinary Works

About Whipped & Beaten Culinary Works, Inc.

The story begins on a cold and snowy evening in a quaint and sleepy little town called Chicago. At a local alcoholic beverage distribution establishment, three friends gathered to discuss politics, religion, the meaning of life…and to get quite drunk. We will call these three Jason, Leslie and Dave (because those are their damn names). Many libations were imbibed that evening, and eventually the alcohol would contribute to one of the most brilliant ideas ever to be borne from a human mind. Well.. an intoxicated human mind.

A few months earlier, Leslie, knowing Jason was a master of the culinary arts, had asked him for a recipe so she could make a special birthday dinner for her beloved, Dave. He mulled it over for a short while, and came up with something he thought would be awesome. This recipe would later come to be known as “Poke Me! Pork”, and as it turns out…. it sure as hell was amazing. For, on that snowy night at the bar, while the three pondered the nuances of the universe, and got more hammered than the teenage offspring of a frat-boy and a crack-whore, Leslie and Dave told Jason that they thought he should write a cookbook. “Write a f%@king cookbook?” Jason slurred, “You two must be drunker than the teenage offspring of a frat-boy and a crack-whore” he continued ”I will tell you what I do think though… I think that you two bit@hes oughta get in the kitchen, and pay me back for giving you that damn recipe”.. Just at that moment, the stars had aligned, the clouds parted and a moonbeam descended upon Jason’s head, time stopped and only he was still in motion, the lights of all of Chicago … well, you get the damn idea. ”How damn funny would a cookbook called “Get in the kitchen, BIT@HES!” be?!?!?!” he said to Leslie and Dave. They both looked at him with their alcohol-glazed eyes, swayed back and forth almost unnoticeably, and produced the widest grins he had ever seen. Jason knew he had just touched upon something great. Either that, or they were simultaneously passing gas. He chose to believe it was the former.

Jason started planning everything in his head as the three zig-zagged and stumbled their way through the frozen tundra that hours before had been Damen Avenue. Jason chose to crash at Dave and Leslie’s because he knew there was no freakin’ way to get home in two feet of snow, plus, he thought there might be a chance for a three-way.

snip

Never before has there been a culinary company so creative, so awesome, and so damn cool.

sample Entrée Recipes:
South of My Border Pasta
Bend Me Over Beef
Artichoke The Chicken
Thai Me Down! Chicken
Pimp Me Out! Pasta
Break My Chops
Here’s the Beef Pasta
Bitchin’ Burrito
Holy Sh!t Ravioli
Fallen Angelhair Pasta
click here for the full list

November 29, 2012

Jon Huntsman should be Sec of State

Republicans don't "love" him, but they would be hard-pressed to vote against his confirmation.
He'd probably do worse as a candidate in 2016...I don't think he'll run again
He's up to date on Asian politics, and speaks Chinese.
Huntsman has already had one appointed position in the Obama admin, as Ambassador to China. I think he would do it again.

It's the easy way out for everyone.. He could appoint Rice as his deputy sec of state, and Kerry could hold onto the MA senate seat.

Obama looks magnanimous, and I think that having a man follow might be a good choice, especially when so much diplomacy will be done in societies that might pay more attention to "suggestions" coming from a man.. as a Mormon, he might also be viewed as more of an impartial person when it comes to Middle east issues.

We have had Albright, Rice & Clinton in recent years, and it may be time to have a man in that position..

November 29, 2012

Real-Life 'Wonderful Life' Boss Gives Business to Employees

http://gma.yahoo.com/real-life-wonderful-life-boss-gives-business-employees-162546267--abc-news-money.html

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/iARbnA1ROOAUrOHUTM9Olg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MzYwO2NyPTE7Y3c9NjQwO2R4PTA7ZHk9MDtmaT11bGNyb3A7aD0zNTU7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--/

"It's a Wonderful Life" has come to life in Bemidni, Minn., with a hero as public-spirited as the George Bailey of the Capra classic movie.

Grocery mogul Joe Lueken, 70, literally is giving away the store, to his 400 employees.

After 46 years running Lueken's Village Foods, he and his family will start transferring ownership of the three-store chain on January 1 to an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program), in which each employee will own stock. The number of shares will be based on their salary and years of service. Two of Village Foods' stores are in Bemidji; a third is in Wahpeton, N.D.

Asked by ABC News what prompted him to give away his business, Lueken says it just struck him as the right thing to do. He considered other options, including selling out to a private buyer; but when he talked to his family about it, his wife and four sons agreed that handing it off to the employees made sense, considering how much his employees, past and present, had done for him.

"It wasn't just the best option," says Lueken. "It was the only option." It was too, he thinks, best for the community. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Lueken has been famous for years for his generosity to local charities and causes, including the Sanford Health Foundation and the Bemidji State University Foundation. Lueken tells ABC that after he came down with Parkinson's disease in the 1990s, doctors recommended he have electrodes implanted in his brain to help control his trembling. It wasn't until he was being prepped for the operation, he says, that he realized the surgeon was a man whose education he'd helped pay for. That made him feel a lot better, he says, about having the procedure.

Brent Sicard, an employee who started at Village Foods in 1998 as night janitor, will be the company's new CEO and president.

snip

November 28, 2012

Facebook cannot tell an elbow from a breast

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/facebook-confuses-elbow-nipple-timeline-photograph/story?id=17829690&fb_ref=abc-fb-recs#.ULaEeGf4KCQ




By JOANNA STERN (@joannastern)
Nov. 28, 2012

Look again at that photo. Yes, we know, the first thing you think you see is a breast or a nipple. But look again. It's very clearly an elbow.

You looked closely. Facebook, however, didn't.

Last week a website called "Theories of The Deep Understandings of Things" came across the photo and decided to test Facebook.

"We post lots of art and also funny stuff on our Facebook page. Some of them, naturally, have some skin -- art and the non-art. We have discovered that Facebook standards are pretty much Bible-esque," the CEO of "Theories of The Deep Understandings of Things" told ABC News. He said he preferred not to reveal his name.

snip

(check out the linked site "Theories of The Deep Understandings of Things" for some very interesting art

November 28, 2012

Remember Elian Gonzalez?... Now we have Angel, Isaiah & Adrian.

This is an especially sad story, since all three are American citizens, but they have a ridiculously unreliable American Mother, and a Mexican Father who was deported. The NC judge has ordered them "reunited" with their father who is temporarily staying in a hotel, but who will undoubtedly be sent back to Mexico once he's finished his "parenting classes".

There are no "winners" here,,

I cannot help but feel that NC is just eager to get rid of the lot of them



http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/11/felipe_montes_reunified_with_his_children_on_trial_basis.html


Felipe Montes, an immigrant father who lost his three children to foster care when he was deported two years ago, was provisionally reunited with his three young children today in a North Carolina court. “The court cannot find that the father is unfit,” County Judge Michael Duncan said from the bench in the Alleghany County courtroom shortly after noon. “The permanent plan is reunification with the father.”

snip

Montes is not yet free to take his three U.S. citizen sons, now 2, 3, and 5, to Mexico. After the ruling in court, the judge told the attorneys in chambers that the reunification would be a “trial placement” in Alleghany County, said Donna Shumate, Montes’s attorney. From December 7th until February 19th, the children are scheduled to live with their father in a local hotel. It’s the same local hotel where Montes and his kids have visited with their father since August when he returned to the country on a rare humanitarian parole from federal immigration authorities. The parole, which was granted after a long application process so that Montes could attend his parental rights hearings, currently expires on December 23rd. Ann Robertson, an immigration attorney hired by the Mexican Consulate to represent Montes, said today she will apply for an extension so that he can remain in the country until the 19th of February.

Colorlines.com broke the Montes story in February. Soon after, the Latino advocacy group Presente.org gathered 20,000 signatures on a petition demanding Alleghany County reunify the boys with their father. In recent weeks, the Alleghany County Department of Social Services reversed it’s position and began recommending the children be returned to their father. If all goes well for Montes during the trial placement, the Judge will close the child welfare case and grant Montes full rights over his children. The father plans to bring his children with him in Tamaulipas, Mexico, where he’s lived since he was deported for driving violations in 2010.

snip

Montes’s children were removed from the custody of his U.S. citizen wife Marie Montes shortly after he was deported. Mrs. Montes, who is now pregnant, is currently incarcerated for parole violations related to driving violations. She has long struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues and could not continue taking care of their children, including a newborn baby, after her husband was deported. The county child welfare department initially refused to place the boys with their father in Mexico, instead, arguing that they should be adopted by foster parents. The foster parents, Brian and Marcie Galyean, who have cared for the two older boys Isaiah and Adrian, and Bob and Patricia Westlund, who have raised Angel since the baby was born, sat quietly in the second row of benches as the judge spoke. Mrs. Galyean and Mrs. Westlund began to cry when the judge ordered the boys move toward reunification. They have previously declined to speak with Colorlines.com and left the court room quickly after the hearing today.

snip

November 27, 2012

John McCain for Secretary of State

Ist assignment:

Get to the bottom of Benghazi... Go there and stay there until it's all figured out

and take your little buddy Lindsay with you