September 19, 2013

This passed across my computer screen last night and just cracked me up:

"It all makes sense now. Gay marriage and marijuana are being legalized at the same time. Leviticus 20:13 says if a man lays with another man, he should be stoned. We were just misinterpreting it."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/18/1239845/-Shortest-one-joke-diary-ever-but-funny

September 18, 2013

An Open Letter to The Youth of America

Dear The Youth,

Hey! Sup! Got a minute? Right---of course you don't. Well, I'm the adult here so put the skateboard down, take your earbuds out, siddown and pay attention.

You may have noticed that the country you live in has turned into a bit of a mess. Not to put too fine a point on it, dudes and dudettes, but our government is frozen in carbonite, people are still losing their homes and selling their bling to get by, the planet's baking, we can't stop shooting each other, and nobody knows how to get anything done. To put it another way: we're running this place with all the finesse of your grandparents twerking on a tightrope while holding a beaker of nitroglycerin in each hand.

But here's the good news: your mission in life will be to clean up our mess!

I know what you're saying. "Hey, we didn't crap out this shit. Why do we gotta clean it up?!" First, watch your language. Second, we planned it. Let us explain.

You see, in order to build character and resilience and valuable "life skills," we must tear you down and then give you the freedom to build yourselves up. That means breaking your spirit, paying you peanuts for your efforts, ignoring your concerns about stuff, and leaving this place worse than we found it. But when the time is right, we'll turn the wheel over to you (or, more accurately, you'll desperately grab the wheel from us) so you can fix everything! It's called "tough love," and we're doing it because we care. Quit slouching.

Now, we're not quite done fracking the creamy filling from your spongecake world yet. That will take a little more time. So keep on texting and whatnot for now, but be ready to take over when we give you the signal. The signal, by the way, will probably look like a bunch of grownups jumping off of bridges. Yes, you can help yourself to any beer you find in their refrigerators. I call dibs on the rum and vodka.

I know this must all seem supremely weird and inconvenient, but it's for your own good. If we don't trash the most powerful---some say "exceptional"---country on earth and reduce it to roving bands of shiny-object chasers, you'll spend your lives all healthy, prosperous and happy, and what fun is that?! Trust us...you'll thank us later for giving you this amazing opportunity to dig yourselves out of our hole.

Peace. Word. Get a haircut.

---The Adults Currently In Charge Of Things

P.S. We'll give you a head start with a free tip: invent a tree that sprouts "money fruit." We know you can do it!

P.P.S. Go (your team here)!!!


Child with dunce cap: But not this youth. He's destined for the House tea party caucus.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/18/1239465/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Wednesday

September 8, 2013

107-Year-Old Killed by SWAT team

Ark. SWAT officers kill man, 107, in standoff
AP 12:35 p.m. EDT September 8, 2013

PINE BLUFF, Ark. (AP) — Police in the southeast Arkansas city of Pine Bluff say a 107-year-old man is dead after SWAT officers shot back at him during a standoff at a home.

Pine Bluff Lt. David Price tells KATV that police officers called to the home Saturday were told Monroe Isadore had pointed a weapon at two people there.

Officers had the threatened pair leave the home and approached a bedroom. Police say Isadore shot through the door at officers but missed hitting them.

More officers were called, including a SWAT team that inserted a camera into the room and confirmed Isadore had a handgun.

Police say SWAT officers released gas into the room when negotiations didn't work. They say Isadore shot at officers and they fired back, killing him.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/08/arkansas-standoff-107-year-old-man/2782117/

Wow! I feel safer!

F**king idiots!!

September 7, 2013

MUST READ!! Joseph Stiglitz: Why Janet Yellen, Not Larry Summers, Should Lead the Fed

The Great Divide
Why Janet Yellen, Not Larry Summers, Should Lead the Fed
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

The controversy over the choice of the next head of the Federal Reserve has become unusually heated. The country is fortunate to have an enormously qualified candidate: the Fed’s current vice chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen. There is concern that the president might turn to another candidate, Lawrence H. Summers. Since I have worked closely with both of these individuals for more than three decades, both inside and outside of government, I have perhaps a distinct perspective.

But why, one might ask, is this a matter for a column usually devoted to understanding the growing divide between rich and poor in the United States and around the world? The reason is simple: What the Fed does has as much to do with the growth of inequality as virtually anything else. The good news is that both of the leading candidates talk as if they care about inequality. The bad news is that the policies that have been pushed by one of the candidates, Mr. Summers, have much to do with the woes faced by the middle and the bottom.

The Fed has responsibilities both in regulation and macroeconomic management. Regulatory failures were at the core of America’s crisis. As a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration, Mr. Summers supported banking deregulation, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which was pivotal in America’s financial crisis. His great “achievement” as secretary of the Treasury, from 1999 to 2001, was passage of the law that ensured that derivatives would not be regulated — a decision that helped blow up the financial markets. (Warren E. Buffett was right to call these derivatives “financial weapons of mass financial destruction.” Some of those who were responsible for these key policy mistakes have admitted the fundamental “flaws” in their analyses. Mr. Summers, to my knowledge, has not.)

Regulatory failures have been at the center of previous crises as well. At Treasury in the 1990s, Mr. Summers encouraged countries to quickly liberalize their capital markets, to allow capital to flow in and out without restrictions — indeed insisted that they do so — against the advice of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (which I led from 1995 to 1997), and this more than anything else led to the Asian financial crisis. Few policies or actions have greater culpability for that Asian crisis and the global financial crisis of 2008 than the deregulatory policies that Mr. Summers advocated...

MUST READ: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/why-janet-yellen-not-larry-summers-should-lead-the-fed/?hp&_r=1&

September 6, 2013

A CAR that runs on fuel made from CO2 removed from the Atmosphere creating a carbon neutral loop!

Thu Sep 05, 2013 at 06:27 PM PDT
A CAR that runs on fuel made from CO2 removed from the Atmosphere creating a carbon neutral loop!
by Lefty CoasterFollow

This is absolutely brilliant! A British company Air Fuel Synthesis has found a way using Air Capture Technology to get vehicle fuel out of the atmosphere around us by extracting the constituent carbon and hydrogen from it.

Well the invisible video is there somewhere since it wouldn't embed so here's the LINK
Please do watch it!

The report said this technology is still in its early stages of development. If the energy inputs for the electric current needed came from sustainable sources this would be a green source of liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

This is really exciting to think about the possibilities this technology could open up for rapid conversion to a green transportation infrastructure without having to replace the existing vehicle fleet, with all the resources that would require. Air Capture Technology could conceivably be useful as a bridge technology to power older vehicles greenly as they are being phased out.

PlanetForward.org

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/05/1236655/-A-CAR-that-runs-on-fuel-made-from-CO2-removed-from-the-Atmosphere-creating-a-carbon-neutral-loop

August 28, 2013

Okay, this is creepy: Scientist controls colleague's hand in first human brain-to-brain interface

Scientist controls colleague's hand in first human brain-to-brain interface
University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao sends a brain signal to Andrea Stocco via the Internet, causing Stocco's right hand to move on a keyboard.
by Dan Farber
August 27, 2013 12:09 PM PDT


University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao, left, plays a computer game with his mind, while across campus, researcher Andrea Stocco wears a magnetic stimulation coil over the left motor cortex region of his brain.
(Credit: University of Washington)

The telepathic cyborg lives, sort of. University of Washington scientists Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco claim that they are the first to demonstrate human brain-to-brain communication. Rao sent a signal into a Stocco's brain via the Internet that caused him to move his right hand. Brain-to-brain communication has previously been demonstrated between rats and from humans to rats.

"The experiment is a proof in concept. We have tech to reverse engineer the brain signal and transmit it from one brain to another via computer," said Chantel Prat, an assistant professor of psychology who worked on the project.



In a press release, the experiment was described as follows:



The mind-meld between the researchers wasn't seamless. Rao spent time training his mind, with feedback from the computer, to emit the brainwave for moving the right hand so that it could be detected by the computer. "The intention can be as detectable as the movement itself," Prat said. "Brain-computer interfaces have been capturing this with increasing accuracy over the last decade."

When the software sees the right signal it is sent via the Internet to a computer connected to a transcranial magnetic stimulation device, which is positioned on the exact spot of the brain that controls the right hand. "It uses simple physics," Prat said. "When the magnetic field changes, it induces an electrical current, so a signal is sent through the cortex of the brain and excites the neurons, simulating what happens naturally."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57600284-76/scientist-controls-colleagues-hand-in-first-human-brain-to-brain-interface/

August 24, 2013

Greg Palast: The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial Crisis

Sat Aug 24, 2013 at 03:55 PM PDT
"The End Game" Memo
by AmBushed

Greg Palast has published a bombshell article proving what many have long suspected -- that the global financial crisis was deliberately engineered by a small cabal of bank industry bigwigs. A confidential memo -- a very, very damning memo -- was leaked to Palast. It was written in November of 1997 by Timothy Geithner.



Palast writes:

When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn't believe it.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

After confirming the authenticity of the memo, Palast explored how the end game worked: By manipulating other countries via the WTO, these powerful few - who Palast calls "The Big Bank Five" - were able to alter banking regulations around the world in order to expand their shady derivatives trading. Read the article. It's quite condemning.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/24/1233570/--The-End-Game-Memo

August 23, 2013

Best. Convocation speech. EVER!!!

August 21, 2013

DailyKos: And here's my first experience with Obamacare

Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 09:38 PM PDT
And here's my first experience with Obamacare
by tb92

My Uncle was a good man. He was loyal to his wife and patiently cared for her quadriplegic son. He was Christian in the old fashioned sense of being kind and generous. He worked hard as a appliance repair man, and his customers trusted him. He was quiet and gentle and loving. And he died six months ago.

My uncle never thought to take care of himself. He had been in pain for years, but didn't bother to have it checked out. When it became too much to bear, his wife took him to the emergency room. They told him he had cancer. That it filled his entire abdomen. That he had less than a month to live.

And then they told him they could not help him, that he should just go home and wait to die. You see, my uncle's insurance, which he had paid into for decades, saw no point in paying for care for a man who could not be saved. And he was a bit too young for Medicare. The hospital wouldn't be paid, so there was nothing they were willing to do. He went to a second hospital, and was told the same thing. He wasn't offered any additional effort, any hospice, any real help at all.

His wife was heartbroken and terrified. She had NO idea how to take care of him. What would he need? How would they deal with the pain? Was there absolutely nothing that could be done? Panicked, she got on the phone and called the local teaching hospital, and they, thank the gods, knew what to do.

They put her in touch with a patient advocate, who convinced the insurance company that they damn well were going to pay for whatever he needed. The advocate arranged to have him admitted to the teaching hospital and to have appropriate tests done. When their last ditch efforts were clearly failing, she arranged for him to have the equipment and medication he needed at home. She educated his caregivers. She let them know they were not alone.

My aunt was told that this advocate position was created by Obamacare. Most of my family is conservative, but not at all politically aware. They had thought that Obamacare was something to fear. Now they know better.

My Uncle died at home, with his family, in no pain, with no fear. His last actions were to give a thumbs up to his brother and say, "I'm good". That wouldn't have happened without that advocate's loving work. And that is now what Obamacare means to my family.

Mark E. Anderson wrote a diary today about his first experience with Obamacare being a free physical. When I read it, I knew I had to share my experience. I hope others will continue the trend. This program is about to change our lives. We should document the experience.

No matter what else the President does or does not do, I will always be grateful for this.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/21/1232709/-And-here-s-my-first-experience-with-Obamacare

August 14, 2013

5 ways a 14-year-old crushed an arrogant interviewer

5 ways a 14-year-old crushed an arrogant interviewer
By Christina Mozaffari | Posted: August 13, 2013

If everybody performed in interviews like 14-year-old Rachel Parent, I would be out of a job.

The young Canadian activist founded an organization called “The Kids Right To Know,” which campaigns for mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). She has organized and spoken at rallies against GMOs and just happens to be one amazing spokesperson.

Here’s the proof: Parent challenged investor and TV host Kevin O’Leary to a debate after he called GMO protesters “just stupid” and suggested on his show that they “stop eating” as a way to “get rid of them.” O’Leary accepted, and last week Parent was a guest on the show he co-hosts, “The Lang & O’Leary Exchange,” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).



O’Leary made it clear early in the interview he had no intention of taking it easy on Parent because of her age. That’s not unfair given Parent’s activism and visibility in her movement. Still, there’s a fine line between respectfully challenging and bullying. O’Leary managed to end the interview looking like a condescending bully due to Parent’s stellar performance.

One of the first questions he asked her, “You know what a lobbyist is, right?” set the tone for the 13 minutes that would follow...

MORE ON THE 5 WAYS SHE HELD HER OWN: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/5_ways_a_14yearold_crushed_an_arrogant_interviewer_15006.aspx