February 14, 2011
— DrewM If at first you don't succeed....
Thousands of Iranians gathered in several locations across Tehran Monday, heeding calls in recent days by opposition leaders to demonstrate in solidarity with Egyptian and Tunisian protesters, who recently toppled their own regimes.Cellphone and text-messaging service was down along the protest routes, Iranians reported. Security forces clashed with protesters in several areas in Tehran, Isfahan and other cities, dispersing crowds with tear gas and beating them, according to eyewitnesses.
Activists said large crowds were marching in cities including Isfahan, Najaf Abad and Mashad. Several websites for the opposition, used to relay information about the protest, were no longer operating late Monday.
It doesn't sound like they are anything near the size they were in '09 before being crushed by the regime but it might be a spark that grows. One can hope anyway.
Over the weekend the Obama administration took a few shots at Iran over allowing protests. The State Department has also started a Farsi Twitter feed. It sounds funny and small beans but we and the Iranian regime ignore the power of social media at our separate peril.
That's all well and good but the reality is if Obama is going to make any difference in Iran he's going to have to come out and be full throated in his support of democracy and regime change.
It's understandable that the US was hesitant to toss Mubarak overboard at the first sign of trouble. He was an ally of longstanding and it wasn't clear what the outcome would be. Why go picking fights with friends only to see them survive only to be annoyed at you? Look at the damage control we have to do in the wake of the Egyptian crisis with long time allies in the region. They aren't too happy or comforted by our lack of support for Mubarak.
Iran is another matter entirely. Obama sounded like a full on neo-con after the fall of Mubarak, Support for the protesters there seems like a no brainer after talk like this. It's almost impossible to imagine a scenario where things get worse with Iran. We're basically playing with house money here...if the protesters succeed and the mullahs go, great. If not, no harm in trying.
So, what's it going to be Mr. President? And no, 'high speed rail' isn't an acceptable option.
Update: Hmmm...maybe the mullahs are more worried than it seemed. Obama really needs to come out hard for the protesters. No, I'm not holding my breath either.
Via John Noonan...video of the protests are starting to leak out.
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09:15 AM
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— Ace Lots of big numbers here to reinforce the oft-offered thesis that We are well and truly boned.
While some of the lowest borrowing costs on record have helped the economy recover from its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, bond yields are now rising as growth resumes. Net interest expense will triple to an all-time high of $554 billion in 2015 from $185 billion in 2010, according to the Obama administration’s adjusted 2011 budget.“It’s a slow train wreck coming and we all know it’s going to happen,” said Bret Barker, an interest-rate analyst at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which manages about $115 billion in assets. “It’s just a question of whether we want to deal with it. There are huge structural changes that have to go on with this economy.”
The amount of marketable U.S. government debt outstanding has risen to $8.96 trillion from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008, according to the Treasury Department. Debt-service costs will climb to 82 percent of the $757 billion shortfall projected for 2016 from about 12 percent in last yearÂ’s deficit, according to the budget projections.
Oh, and debt now equals 100% of our economy.
President Obama projects that the gross federal debt will top $15 trillion this year, officially equalling the size of the entire U.S. economy, and will jump to nearly $21 trillion in five years’ time.Amid the other staggering numbers in the budget Mr. Obama sent to Congress on Monday, the debt stands out — both because Congress will need to vote to raise the debt limit later this year, and because the numbers are so large.
Mr. Obama‘s budget said 2011 will see the biggest one-year jump in debt in history, or nearly $2 trillion in a single year.
What the hell is he doing?
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08:55 AM
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— Purple Avenger The electorate, as is frequently the case, is way out ahead of beltway cocooned politicians.
...Seventy-seven percent of likely voters believe Social Security is in trouble, while just 15 percent believe the program is financially sound...Let's face it - when ~30% of the population believes in UFO's and space aliens, and you can only scrape up 15% that think social security is all ducky, you got a major perception problem, right?
...Thirty-six percent of likely voters believe diverting payroll taxes to personal accounts should not be permitted at all, while 37 percent backed being able to invest either 25 percent or 50 percent. Sixteen percent supported the ability to invest three-fourths or all of oneÂ’s Social Security taxes...37+16 = 53%, IOW, a majority believe some form of "personal account" should be allowed. Clearly, something has happened that has shaken people's trust in the govt to handle large sums of money. What that might be remains a real puzzler, since nobody really has a grasp on how the reptilian minds of these obviously racist teabaggers operate.
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04:06 AM
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— Gabriel Malor In Japan, the women give chocolate to the men on Valentine's Day, including to their male coworkers (known as "obligation chocolate"). Apparently, this is because of a typo on the original 1936 ad campaign introducing the holiday to the country. In the 1980s, the candy industry introduced White Day on March 14, where the men give white chocolate or other white things to the women who gifted them. The value of the men's White Day gift is supposed to be two to three times as expensive as the women's Valentine's Day gift. Yes, the Japanese really do this.
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02:50 AM
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February 13, 2011
— Maetenloch Alrighty let's get down to it. Last call for the weekend.
Kids Today and Their Stupid Fashions
If it's not jeggings, it's the w-necks and the nerts.
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05:22 PM
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— Dave in Texas Something suggested by one of the morons in the open thread. How the detergent industry caved to the greens in one fell swoop.
At first, my Bosch was wonderful. Quiet as a windÂ’s whisper, the dishes were so clean you could eat off of them. But a few months ago I started noticing problems. A fork would come out with food between the tines; a glass would have bits of grime stuck to the bottom. Surely this was a fluke? Alas, no. My dishwasher no longer shines. What went wrong?It so happens that in the last six months, a lot of people have suddenly discovered their dishwashers donÂ’t work as well as they used to. The problem, though, isnÂ’t the dishwashers. ItÂ’s the soap. Last July, acceding to pressure from environmentalists, AmericaÂ’s dishwasher detergent manufacturers decided to change their formulas. And the new detergents stink.
As it happens, I bought the same model of a Bosch dishwasher 2 years ago, to replace the aged and noisy as all hell cheap Whirlpool dishwasher we had here for (at the time) 12 years.
It was so quiet. And the dishes, they got so clean.
Last week I pulled a plate out unloading, and noticed crud dried on it. WTF? I know we rinse with a brush to keep food particles to a minimum. I tried several loads, and got the same results.
Thanks Proctor and Gamble, for caving in this and reducing my nice new dishwasher into an elephant trunk spraying muddy water around for a half hour or so.
Criminy.
tip via comments in the open thread of love.
UPDATE: Oh duh, I forgot.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Dave Answers on Sunday. Email your questions to daveintexashasthedope -at- gmail -dot- youknow. I promise to mess you up big time. more...
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02:19 PM
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— Dave in Texas Maet tells me logprof got caught in the Great Spam War of Twenty-Eleven. If you find yourself in a similar predicament, feel free to email me your IP at gooberintexas -at- gmail -dot- you know what. I'll see what I can do to help.
It's a beautiful day here in central Texas, sunny, breezy and headin close to 70. I'm wearing pants. As far as you know.
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12:09 PM
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— Gabriel Malor It's been a blessed three years since we've had to hear from or about Rep. Ron Paul or his racist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, he's back on the national stage after paying for a couple hundred college students to go to CPAC.
As I wrote the other day, his paid-for followers were the most classless group of people at CPAC. They frequently interrupted the speakers with yells of "war criminal", "draft dodger", and "show us the shekels." And they greeted Ron Paul's paean to isolationist disengagement with glee.
That was too much for Young Americans for Freedom, which promptly expelled Paul from their advisory board.
“YAF’s concerns with Rep. Paul stem out of his delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe anti-war movement,” the press release declared. Specifically, they’re upset about Paul’s “journey into the anti-war left by laying the blame on America for the unprovoked attacks of September 11th. Additionally, Rep. Paul has not condemned the 9/11 ‘Truther’ conspiracy theorists that support him, and he has repeatedly insisted that the United States not bring justice to those who have murdered thousands of our civilians and soldiers at home and abroad.”
YAF's national director added:
"Rep. Paul is clearly off his meds and must be purged from public office. YAF is starting the process by removing him from our national advisory board. Good riddance and he won't be missed," added Marks.
Young Americans for Liberty, the successor group to "Students for Ron Paul 2008", promptly responded, "Nuh uh! We're the group of the future."
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08:52 AM
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— Open Blogger Here it is. One of the most anticipated movies of the decade. Atlas Shrugged part 1. h/t weaselzippers.us more...
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08:07 AM
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— Open Blogger Omer Baumgartner's obituary -- written, I am positive, by Omer himself -- makes me wish for an afternoon with this man before he passed on. (Here's a link where you can leave your own tribute to him.)
...Born on a dairy farm in Walnut, Ill., Baumgartner was prodigious with the movement of manure from an early age, and exercising these and other talents, earned recognition for his National 4-H Grand Champion Dairy Heifer, Clementine's Ramona, in 1930 at the age of 10. After this debut, and as the Depression raged, Baumgartner cut his teeth in the livestock industry while attending hundreds of county and state fairs, showing and selling cattle, frying oysters, skinning rabbits, and drinking whiskey. While still a freshman at the University of Illinois, he successfully quelled the great dairy upraising of 1938, averting a desperate ice cream shortage in Chicago, and was immediately recruited, without finishing college, by the state's Guernsey Breeders Association as a field agent.Despite never learning to cook anything other than fried oysters, Baumgartner attained the rank of captain during World War II for running mess halls feeding over 5,000 in Tennessee and Alabama for the Army Air Corps. He was wildly popular with the troops for his mess hours bongo drum performances accompanied by dancing girls. Baumgartner notably worked for L.S. Heath and Company, running the dairy division and inventing Heath Bar ice cream in 1951. He also co-ran Wilkinson's Office Supplies with his wife Jattie Wilkinson Baumgartner, serving one-third of the state of Illinois and parts of Iowa. Baumgartner disliked vegetables his whole life. Despite consuming more than 2,000 pounds of butter, he never suffered from any kind of heart disease. His last meal was ice cream....
God bless you, Omer, wherever you are. Hat tip to Dave Barry. ..fritz..
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