Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 09 July 2012 11:30:41 PM. © Crooks and Liars

enlarge Credit: Blue Gal

Open Thread below...

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Open thread for night owls: The great capitalist
heist made Paris Hilton's dogs better off than you

post from Daily Kos on 09 July 2012 11:30:09 PM. © Daily Kos

Gerald Friedman teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author, most recently, of Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic Labor Movement. In the first installment of a new series at Alternet, he writes The Great Capitalist Heist: How Paris Hilton's Dogs Ended Up Better Off Than You:

Summer 2009. Unemployment is soaring. Across America, millions of terrified people are facing foreclosure and getting kicked to the curb. Meanwhile in sunny California, the hotel-heiress Paris Hilton is investing $350,000 of her $100 million fortune in a two-story house for her dogs. A Pepto Bismol-colored replica of Paris? own Beverly Hills home, the backyard doghouse provides her precious pooches with two floors of luxury living, complete with abundant closet space and central air.
Gerald FriedmanBy the standards of America?s rich these days, Paris? dogs are roughing it. In a 2006 article, Vanity Fair?s Nina Munk described the luxe residences of America?s new financial elite. Compared with the 2,405 square feet of the average new American home, the abodes of Greenwich Connecticut hedge-fund managers clock in at 15,000 square feet, about the size of a typical industrial warehouse. Many come with pool houses of over 3,000 square feet.
Steven Cohen of SAC Capital is a typical product of the New Gilded Age. He paid $14.8 million for his Greenwich home, which he stuffed with a personal art collection that boasts Van Gogh's Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat (priced at $100 million); Gauguin's Bathers ($50 million); a Jackson Pollock drip painting (also $50 million); and Andy Warhol's Superman ($75 million). Not satisfied, Cohen spent millions renovating and expanding, adding a massage room, exercise and media rooms, a full-size indoor basketball court, an enclosed swimming pool, a hairdressing salon, and a 6,734-square-foot ice-skating rink. The rink, of course, needs a Zamboni ice-resurfacer which Cohen houses in a 720-square-foot shingle cottage. Munk quotes a visitor to the estate who assured her, ?You'd be happy to live in the Zamboni house.?
So would some of the over 650,000 Americans sleeping in shelters or under highway overpasses. [...]
The share of income going to the top 1 percent has doubled since the 1970s, returning to the levels of the 1920s. The greatest gains have gone to the very wealthiest and to executives and managers, especially of financial firms. From 1973 to 2008, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of American households fell even while the rich gained. The wealthiest 1 percent gained 144 percent or over $600,000 per household; and the richest 1 percent of the 1 percent, barely 30,000 people, gained over 455 percent or over $19,000,000.
That's enough to buy a nice doghouse. Or a mansion in Greenwich.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:

Say what you will about Chuck Hagel, and there's plenty of unflattering things to say about about the man, when he broke with Bush on Iraq, he broke with Bush on Iraq.
That included standing with Jim Webb today in support of his amendment requiring that active duty troops have at least the same time at home as the length of their previous tour of duty overseas, and setting a minimum floor for National Guard and Reserve mobilization and deployments.
That's a real break with Bush. The Webb amendment is the first marker of the "tough" talk by would-be Bush defectors. So Smith, Snowe, Collins, Domenici, Lugar, what are you going to do? Are you going to support the troops by correcting our troop-rotation policy? Are you going to break with the President when it really counts, or continue to rubberstamp his war?

Tweet of the Day:

62 percent of Americans believe "upper-income people" pay too little in taxes -- highest number for that Q since 2008, per Gallup.
? @mollyesque via TweetDeck

Tune in Monday to Friday from 9-11 AM ET for Daily Kos Radio, hosted by David Waldman a/k/a KagroX. You can listen here. Monday's podcast:

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

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-owls-The-great-capitalist-heist-made-Paris-Hilton-s-dogs-better-off-than-you

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Rep. Barney Frank Marries Jim Ready

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 09 July 2012 11:18:23 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow GazetteRep. Barney Frank married his partner Jim Ready Saturday in Newton, MA. Mr. Frank met his husband at a fund raiser in 2005 and they started dating in 2007 after Mr. Ready's longtime partner, Robert Palmer, passed[...]

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C&L's Late Night Music Club with Johnny Cash and
Joe Strummer

post from Crooks and Liars on 09 July 2012 11:02:44 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Genre: Country & WesternTitle: Redemption SongArtist: Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer
video details and more

Yes, the Bob Marley song. Odd pairing. But hey, it's music. Sometimes the oddest pairings work out. Whatcha listening to tonight?

Unearthed

Price: $49.99 (As of 07/09/12 07:44 pm details)

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Monday Stuff

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 09 July 2012 11:02:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

(I also posted here.)

RIP Ernest Borgnine (I thought this was a nice remembrance) ? among other things, he racked up a bunch of service commendations from the Navy during WWII, and he also beat the you-know-what out of that skinny kid from Hoboken in ?From Here to Eternity? (I read once that the movie role of "Marty" was turned down by Rod Steiger, and Borgnine sure ran with it, I'd say); I thought he had a great cameo role in ?The Dirty Dozen? too, and what else can you say about a guy who played Mermaid Man (along with Tim Conway as Barnacle Boy) on ?Spongebob??...

...returning to politics, it looks like Willard Mitt is making all nice with the Koch brothers (big surprise, I know)...

...which of course is part of this (here)...

...and I never thought I?d want to use this tune in a political context, but I guess it does fit a bit concerning the Repug presidential nominee, so here it is (from that pipe pants-wearin?, Dippity-Do decade).

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Where'd They Get This Guy

post from Talking Points Memo on 09 July 2012 11:01:21 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Okay, the Gov. of Maine appears to be nuts. Late Update: The best part of this story (the Maine Gov calling the IRS the 'new Gestapo') is the Governor's press secretary trying to help spin or explain away his decision to compare the IRS to the[...]

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_this_guy.php

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Video: Guy does women's gymnastics in drag,
really well

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 09 July 2012 11:00:14 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

Paul Hunt performs as Paulette Huntenova in 1988. I suspect some will call this sexist, but I see this guy as poking fun at himself. It's really quite good.

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ymnastics-in.html

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Utah Salutes Women of Color

post from Jesus' General on 09 July 2012 11:00:09 PM. © Jesus' General

Helmet tip: Alex Goldschmidt.

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Late Night: Witness for the Persecution

K-Lo, everybody. Requiring insurance plans to cover contraception is just like dissolving the Catholic Church in England so Henry VIII can marry a harlot.[...]

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The Nightowl Newswrap

By @BGinKC

Good to know. The always-awesome Left Leaning Liberal Lady has the voter ID requirements for all fifty states, compiled in one handy bookmarkable post.

So bookmark it already. Because your vote counts, and you preserve it by knowing the rules where you live -- and if they cheat you out of your vote, they can steal the election.

The governor ran a for-profit healthcare chain and was forced out in a Medicare-fraud scandal, so of course he doesn't see any reason to keep the only TB hospital in the state open, even though they're in the middle of the worst outbreak in twenty years.

Of course they have. Remember the kid who wowed CPAC a few years ago and we all rolled our eyes at the little lamb pretending to be a conservative lion, and we all rolled our eyes? He's a high-school grad headed off to college this fall and he's a left-leaning Obama supporter. And conservatives have crucified him and his mother -- basically assuring that he will never in his life return to the fold.

Unfortunately for him, it wasn't Mittens in his cop costume who busted him, so he will actually face charges. Ted Nugent's drummer has been busted for a DUI, assaulting the arresting officer and making his break for freedom on a stolen golf cart. Oddly enough, in the few minutes between making his great escape and getting caught up to a few minutes later, he had picked up two women on the golf cart. You can't make up anything ridiculous enough to top what these morons do themselves, which makes my job a hell of a lot easier. All I have to do is mock them for their stupidity.

It had the opposite effect on me, I gained fifteen pounds freshman year. A British pharmaceutical company is testing an anti-obesity drug that is, ironically, marijuana-based.

Here's one for the stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day file. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie -- who was a US Attorney before he was a politician -- is officially on record that the drug war has been a failure.

Some of us do math for fun. And if we didn't, how would you ever know that Batman would need a parachute to land safely, the glider wings just wouldn't support the mass. Not after you factor in that super-cool, gotta-get-me-one-of-those utility belt.

And finally. . . . .