MARRIAGE IN NEW YORK!!!

Yeah!

well here's another fine mess you've gotten us into

For yet another fine example of fiscal responsibility a la Tea Partiers, Ron Paul wants to spend somewhere between 15 and 60 million dollars assaying the fort knox gold. 

we're all going to hell.


WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- With the price of gold at record highs, presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul wants to make sure the U.S. gold bars at Fort Knox are really there.
Paul called a congressional hearing Thursday to grill federal officials about his bill to audit and inventory all of the gold reserves at Fort Knox, Ky., West Point, N.Y., and Denver, even though Treasury officials insist that the gold is audited annually and is all there.

During the hearing, Paul suggested that the Federal Reserve of New York, which has 5% of the U.S. gold reserves, has the ability to secretly sell or swap gold with other countries without anyone knowing.
"The Fed is pretty secret, you know," said Paul, who leans Libertarian. "Congress doesn't have much say on what's going on over there. They do a lot of hiding."
Paul, a Texas Republican who wants to convert the U.S. monetary system to one based on the gold standard, says the federal government owes it to taxpayers to make sure U.S.-owned gold is safe. (Ron Paul: Bernanke's biggest critic)
"This is one of the few legitimate functions of government: To check our ownership and be fiscally responsible and find out just what we own and whether it's really there," said Paul, who is among those running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Audits by the Treasury Department and Government Accountability Office are based on samples. Paul wants to open up Fort Knox and other reserves and count the bars manually.
"We know where it is. We know how much there is. We know it's there. None of it has been removed," said Treasury Inspector General Eric Thorson.
In September, Treasury completed its latest audit, showing that U.S. gold reserves total 9,300 tons with a market value of $320 billion, Thorson said. The recent run-up in gold prices -- the precious metal is trading at about $1,515 an ounce -- puts the market value at $340 billion as of Wednesday, according to Thorson's testimony. He added that each gold bar weighs about 27 pounds and is worth around $500,000.
Paul said that his questions were partly in response to the numerous Internet conspiracy theories, including those that accuse the government of secretly selling all of the gold in Fort Knox.
Thorson said Treasury doesn't believe that anyone, including the Fed, has taken the gold or laid claim to U.S. gold bars. Any further audit as proposed by Paul's legislation would be redundant, he said.
"There is no movement. There is nothing there that can happen, once those doors are sealed," Thorson said. "It's very obvious if those seals are ever broken."
William Lacy Clay, a Democratic representative from Missouri, said that doing a complete audit as Paul is calling for is a waste of federal manpower and could cost tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Thorson reported that the U.S. Mint told him that moving, counting and testing the gold would cost around $60 million. Paul said he had heard from Treasury that it would only cost $15 million.
Part of the expense would be due to the bill's requirement to "assay" all the gold, said Gary T. Engel, a director of Financial Management and Assurance at GAO. Assaying means drilling little holes in all the gold bars in order to test its purity. But that process is "basically destroying whatever that piece is."
Finally, Engel cautioned, "There will be some loss of the gold from the bars through the assaying process if you do that for every single bar that's out there."

hgf

and we don't have enough sense to be ashamed

Two instances today of the state George Bush left us in when he escaped justice and exited office.

First we have a man in that ridiculous state of North Carolina where the characters from The Andy Griffith Show actually exist:

Man says he robbed bank to get health care

A man walks into a bank and slips a note to the teller.

The note reads: “This is a bank robbery. Please only give me one dollar.”

Then the man tells the bank employees, “I’ll be sitting right over there in the chair waiting for the police."

He perches himself on a chair outside the bank he just robbed and waits for the police to arrive.

That suspect, James Verone, who is from Gaston County, North Carolina, told CNN affiliate WCNC that he robbed a bank for $1 for the sole reason of getting in jail so he could get free health care. He was not armed during the robbery.

Verone, 59, told WCNC he doesn’t have health insurance, but has a host of medical problems: A growth on his chest, two ruptured disks and a problem with his left foot. Without a job and money, he reached the conclusion that going to jail would mean free medical care (although it's not free for taxpayers).

“I wanted to make it known that this wasn't for monetary reasons, but for medical reasons," Verone said. His jailhouse interview with the station is above.

The logic, he told the news station, was to get a three-year sentence so he can get out of jail then collect Social Security and then later live in a Myrtle Beach condo.

Verone told his local paper, The Gaston Gazette that he had worked as a delivery man for Coca-Cola for 17 years. That career ended three years ago, and he couldn’t find steady employment. Then the medical problems began. He lived off his savings and sought a part-time job.

The police charged him with larceny, not bank robbery, because of the $1 amount he demanded at the bank. Verone told his hometown paper if the jail penalty isn’t great enough, the crime will happen again.

Verone told WCNC, "I guess I am manipulating the courts to get medical care."

Then we extend the insult to olur children, the ignorant future of our country. When old people ask "what's this country coming to?" when referring to young people and their ideas, they can sim ply be handed a mirror so they can see who fucked it up.

Thanks to budget cuts, shiny new school sits unused
By Zachary Roth


A more striking symbol of the impact of cuts to education funding would be hard to imagine: A gleaming new Southern California high school that cost more than $100 million to build will sit empty and unused, because the local school district doesn't have enough money to run it.

In 2007, voters approved approved bonds to finance the building of Hillcrest High School in Riverside, which was intended to relieve overcrowding at a nearby high school. But thanks to major cuts in state education funding, the local school district can't afford the $3 million it would cost to pay administrators, teachers, and other staff, and to handle the other expenses that come with operating a school.

So when the school year begins in the fall, Hillcrest will sit idle. Its campus is currently fenced off.

Wendell Tucker of the Alvord Unified School District said the district's $130 million operating budget had been cut by $25 million.

"When the California budget goes down and income in the state goes down, funding to K-through-12 education goes with it," Tucker told USA Today. "We made a number of budget adjustments. Right now, we simply are out of adjustments, and it's not feasible … to open this school."

And it's not clear that things will be any different in 2012. "We'll look at it on a year by year basis," Tucker added.

As if all this weren't frustrating enough, even though the school won't be in use, the district will still have to spend $1 million to maintain the buildings and run air conditioning and other systems, to keep them from deteriorating. The library and sports fields will be made available for community use.

That's little comfort to students at nearby La Sierra High School, where some classes pack in as many as 37 kids.

"I wanted to go to that school," said Natalie Mercado, 14, who lives near the new campus. "I was really excited. … It looked really good."

According to Alvord school board member Ben Johnson, it was a choice between laying people off and keeping Hillcrest closed. "Choosing between people losing jobs and opening the school site, I couldn't in my mind justify one more person out of a job," he said.

Hillcrest's woes are just a symptom of a larger education funding crisis in the Golden State. To address a severe budget shortfall, the state has cut one third of K-12 funding over the last three years--$18 billion in all. California's once-vaunted education system is now 44th among states in terms of per-pupil spending.

Meanwhile, the state's economy is showing few signs of improvement. Its 11.7 percent jobless rate is the second-highest in the nation, and its housing market, hit hard by the mortgage crisis, has yet to recover.

The Hillcrest fiasco is a poignant marker of the bleak situation. "It's definitely a sign of the times," Tucker said. "This is a real-life example of what the current budget situation has done to K-through-12 education.''

Or perhaps a picture of this guy:

Will someone please explain to me how we can allow this to happen? The GOP has long intended to reduce taxes in order to starve the governments of funds so they can then privatize as much as possible. This is a terrible and greedy idea on its best day and has unconscionable results. Yet no one is ashamed enough to put a stop to it.

There is some good news, Sarah Palin went home.

And anecdotally, yesterday I overheard some guy telling another about the new cigarette labels. I said, well, it's just more "live in fear." and he said "Yeah that's the liberal party!" I almost laughed at his stupdity. But it made me too sad.

And so it goes:

One step forward...two steps back

I figure New York will have marriage equality this week. I figure it'll be fought in the courts. I figure they'll keep it in the end.

I also figure that people who disagree with you will be able to censor your speech whenever they like a la Roger Ebert today.

Now, let me state I'm not a huge fan of Roger's. He's been a bastion of film criticism for many years, and congrats to him for beating the cancer his counterpart Gene Siskel didn't.

But today he's been under attack for saying something that could probably have been phrased a bit more thoughtfully.

Yesterday Ryan Dunn, one of the stars of Jackass, drank drove and died as a result. Roger Ebert made a quip regarding jackasses and got his ass handed to him as a result. Including the fact that Facebook took down his page.

This brings me to a little diatribe about our willingness to allow Facebook to tell us what we can and cannot say. I'd go on about this being the beginning of Big Brother watching us and censoring our speech, but it's not the beginning, this has been going on, and no one seems to care.

Do we think so little of our freedoms and our hard won ability to speak our minds no matter how offensive or thoughtless, anywhere and everywhere, that we'll allow someone else to enforce them?

I will say that the privatizing of free speech considerations is a huge big deal and one we need to be more and more mindful of as the internet is regulated more heavily.

Ask any artist how well their job works when they're told what to say and how they can say it.

And so it goes:

I'm not Nick Cassidy

Ever had one of those days when, at the end of it you're sick of the sound of your own name?

Today was one of mine.

At the end of it though I did manage to make a connection with someone from my  past.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

In the meantime New York is well on the way to approving Marriage equality...cool.

Of course the Supreme Court is fucking women...and not in a good way.

And so it goes:

There's a teabagger among us

And not the fun (ny?) kind.


(i just don';t see the humor in teabagging)

Alas, it appears my  nephew is such an exteremist conservative, that he's now succumbed to tea party   notions.

It wouldn't seem possible except he's been lead to this moment in is life by all the forces necessary to make him a worthless nutcase.

First, he;s a cop. Bad enough, but I can forgive that in light of the fact that it provides great benefits for his family and he'll be able t retire at a  reasonable age. 

But still, tea party?  I mean this is the likes of Michelle (crazy eyes) Bachmann, and Rand Paul.  (I feel compelled to continue the Joemygod tradition of calling her Michelle (crazy eyes) Bachmann, because there's not a better descriptor I can come up with.)  And those two have proven time and again they're dangerous and stupid.

It wouldn't scare me so much except their constituents were so ready and willing to elect them in the first place and here we go with their insanity in congress.  A place flled with enough insanity already.

So it frightens me a little that our government is being, if not exactly run, at the very least influenced by these wingnuts. 

And now I have one of their very own in my life.  At least part of the time.  He made a bad Obama joke the other day and I politely laughed.  his wife tried to wave him off and he muttered something to the effect of "I don't give a shit." So I see where this is going and I choose not to play. 


Teabaggers unite!  (At the ECT clinic, pls.)

And so it goes:

new fangled invenchuns

Gotta figure out how to log from the new phone I had plenty of time to do it, just no way to get it accomplished.

Here's a little link to an amusing story for today's blog, sorry i was late, but I was busy.


And so it goes:

A day late...

I was all prepared to do a huge post on Michelle Bachman, the woman I think/hope will bring down the GOP.

She is truly

 But as I was doign some research to talk about her positions I ran across a site that's already done all of it for me. 

crooksandliars.com

I just got a little excited in my pants.  This site takes her all the way down.

Here's a lttle block quote:

I'm not sure who is more evil: Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin. Both have an uncanny ability to sound high-pitched shrill dog whistles for their fellow racists.
Michele Bachmann spoke in Colorado at the Western Conservative Conference over the weekend, and in Bachmann-like fashion, dropped a few claims that just made me shudder. This one, in particular:

"'We are determined to live free or not at all. And we are resolved that posterity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world,'" Bachmann read from founding father John Jay , ending her reading with the statement, "We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves."

She then launches into the requisite Tea Party theme of tyranny, pointing specifically to health care reform as some sort of tyrannical monster threatening the nation. (Cue death panels.)
But really, it's worth looking at her agenda, because Bachmann is as wingnut crazy as Sharron Angle:

“We reform social security, then we reform Medicare, then we pare back welfare to the truly needy, for the truly disabled, because, yes, we can make that determination,” she said. “Close and secure American boarders, cut the budget, limit our foreign entanglements for America, then we massively cut spending first, then we cut taxes.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39608.html#ixzz0tamKLmmS

A closer look, restated with real terms would read like this:

We privatize Social Security, then we privatize Medicare, then we starve those most needy, we let the disabled twist in the wind. Then we leave our troops twisting in the wind while cutting all social programs but not touching military spending. Then we give it all to our corporate masters.

And for icing on the cake they provide a link to her "owners"

 http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_give/2009_H6MN06074

Slave indeed.

And so it goes:

hate musicals, love nph

can't get there from here

Since the haters can't seem to get rid of the Prop 8 ruling any other way, they're trying to get rid of the judge.

Well, "he's a fag," they reason, so he'd benefit directly from his own ruling so we can get rid of this mess by declaring he had a personal interest and therefore should have recused himself.

Grasping at straws I'd say.

And so it goes:

genius should be recognized

and these guys have got it

hgf

Narcissus has been looking in that damn pool again

Rick Santorum wants everyone to know that:



as if...

I'm becoming a huge fan of the late Howard Zin. Read him.

And so it goes:

They just keep giving me more and more help

It is true that all good things come to those who wait. I've spent over 1000 posts and about four years of my life dedicating myself to extolling the horrors of the depth of the stupidity of the average American. And now...

nsfw btw


And in an effort to meet their mandate to be a public service organization, Faux news has mistakenly used this picture

of Tina Fey instead of a real one of Sarah Palin.

They must have hired the former Kansas City Star intern who mistakenly used this photo:

to promote national clown week a few years ago. It's a photo of John Wayne Gacy. oops.

So I am forever grateful to the galactically stupid,(Tom Cruise pun intended) who keep this blog afloat.

I hope they get someone to read this blog to them so they know how grateful I am.

And so it goes:

Ain't we got fun

I love Sarah Palin! Her unwillingness to admit a mistake, and her incurable American Disease, i.e. her insistence that someone else was at fault...always...enamors me to her.

I mean where else would I find a joke that makes its own punchlines so readily?




The best part is that the teabaggers are so willing to support this POS that they're attempting to change the wikipedia page on Paul Revere to support her contentions that her version of events is correct and that Paul Revere was actually warning the British.

Why admit a mistake? Just rewrite history to suit you...much more expedient.

Ah Sarah, you justify ALL of my contentions about the hideous education system in this country.

Thanks.

Of course there's always my favorite patriot...hehe.

And so it goes:

yes i know, and hgf

Yes, I did I skipped yesterday's post. I was busy, and I was trying to figure out how to work my new phone.

Holy shit! I swear there's a period in the firsts ten days in which all one really wants to do is to throw a new phone against the wall. I was very tempted.

Well, today in political news a conservative hypocrite pays for his own helicopter rides,(Christie NJ) and a liberal hyopcrite goes to court to answer for some more of his sins(Edwards).

We have such an upstanding citizenry.

And so it goes:

you CAN make this stuff up!

So often I sit here and rail about some nutcase in a position of some influence who is abusing their power, and point out exactly what I think we need to do about it.

However, there are times, such as this one, when all I can do is let the latent speak for themselves.

Enjoy:
via towleroad.com


And so it goes:

last week in joplin

and so it goes:

In a minute....!

Alright, now hold on here.  HGF will be along in just a second you big pervs, just hang on.  First I want to show you a letter from the Director of the Vermont Arts Council to Dam Brownback and address a couple of issues regarding him and that...THEN we'll leer, just bear with me.

The letter:

An Open Letter to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

May 25, 2011

The Honorable Sam Brownback

Governor of Kansas

Dear Governor Brownback,

I have been following with great interest your efforts to remove government support from the Kansas Arts Commission and to re-establish it as an independent, non-profit agency, with the expectation that doing so will relieve your administration of the responsibility of allocating taxpayer funds to match federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.  The budget now awaits your signature and there is a great deal of concern that you will use your line-item veto to effectively abolish the Commission which, I understand, a bipartisan coalition in the Kansas Senate representing a broad cross-section of Kansas citizens hopes you will not do.

It is neither my place nor my intention to engage in the political discourse of your state.  However, since our small agency has been frequently singled out by your administration as an example of a nonprofit state arts agency that is thriving without, as the media has reported it, the benefit of state investment I am compelled to weigh in and set the record straight on just three points.

First, in Vermont our nonprofit state arts agency is effective only BECAUSE there is significant state investment in our work.  Without a State appropriation of just over $500,000 we would be unable to provide the professional development services, educational outreach to underserved communities, accessibility services to hundreds of historic cultural venues that were built long before the passage of the ADA, and a host of other grants that support our creative sector.

Second, without State support we would be forced to raise more than half million dollars (to match our Federal grant from the National Endowment for the Arts) from the private sector—an activity that would put us in direct competition with the very cultural institutions that our mission requires us to support.  In addition, our largest grant program (Cultural Facilities), not only provides significant improvements to our historical and cultural institutions in the area of accessibility, the funds we award employ hundreds of carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and other blue-collar workers that are, along with artists and teachers, the life-blood of our communities.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, every State SHOULD invest in the arts sector simply because it makes good economic sense.  One of our most conservative policy analysts looked at state and local tax revenues that flowed to state and municipal coffers from our very narrowly-defined arts sector in Vermont.  Income taxes paid by artists, arts administrators and independent arts contractors, as well as the long-established IMPLAN economic modeling analysis on just the nonprofit arts institutions in the state, reveal a total return of $19.45 million on a combined investment of $2.5 million, which includes our $500k appropriation.  This annual ROI of 775%  is even more astonishing since virtually all of Vermont’s state tourism dollars promote skiing, outdoor recreation, fall foliage, maple syrup, and artisanal food preparation and service, NOT art and culture—a circumstance which, I am happy to say, is going to change starting this summer.

Our legislature is getting more and more comfortable with thinking of the work we do as expanding the revenue base of our state, not increasing the expenses that our citizen taxpayers must bear.  Our sector provides good jobs.  It adds enormous social and civic value to our communities.  It improves the relationship that young people have with their schools and communities.  And it serves as a powerful attraction to entrepreneurs seeking to locate their new businesses in a creative, vital community setting.  The “creative economy” is real and it is thriving here in Vermont.  I believe that all these arguments are relevant to making the case for keeping the Kansas Arts Commission on sound financial, PUBLIC footing.

With great respect for you and for the wonderful citizens of Kansas, I am

Sincerely yours,

Alexander L. Aldrich

Executive Director

Vermont Arts Council

Dam Brownback (the first time it was a typo but I've decided I like it) is a prime example of GOP extremism.  We're seeing it all over the place and I have high hopes that the voters will react appropriately.  The sudden  insurgence of the teabaggers should, (if it already hasn't) alarm each and every one of us.   The small towns in Kansas are dying, and no one seems to understand why. But they keep voting for the GOP, who then gives all the power, wealth, and tax breaks to the corporations that are starving these communities of their money.  And no one seems to get how they're perpetuating this vicious circle.

Recently I posted about the meat packing plants in western Kansas that are essentially creating a third world out on the plains at the expense of the immigrants, legal or otherwise, that live and work there.  there are no roads, no sewage infrastructure, no decent schools, no health care, and if the locals   rebel, they pack up the whole operation and move it to the next town where they'll be allowed to do as they please.

We are the only ones who can put a stop to what's being done to this country, and we have to accept the responsibility of fighting the people like Dam who think it's a good thing.  The longer I live the more I realize that we're doomed to repeat history because we not only don't learn from it, we don't teach it.

Anyone who has ever received a check, a job, an opportunity to view or participate in  an arts event  due to the existence of publicly funded arts councils should be supporting their existence, and fighting to keep their budgets intact.

Vote responsibly folks.  The GOP no longer stands for what you think it does.  

And now for something you'll really like: