By now you have heard there was an incident on a plane headed to Detroit. I’m not going to speculate about what happened because the reports are all over the place, and I do not want to minimize the seriousness of it, but I will state that I think we all know the kind of media freak-out we are about to have over this event. Peter King and the usual suspects are already running over people to get in front of cameras. With that in mind, I’d like to bring you the other message from the Vatican this holiday:
The Vatican will review its security procedures after a woman jumped a barrier and rushed at Pope Benedict XVI for the second time in two years.
But the Vatican’s top spokesman warned that it was impossible to guarantee 100% security around the pontiff. This time the woman managed to knock the Pope down before being pulled away by guards.
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Vatican press chief the Rev Federico Lombardi said it was unrealistic to think the Vatican could ensure 100% security for the Pope, considering he was regularly surrounded by tens of thousands of people for his weekly audiences, Masses, papal greetings and other events. “It seems that they intervened at the earliest possible moment in a situation in which ‘zero risk’ cannot be achieved,” he said.
There are no zero risk situations in life for the Pope, and there are none for you, either. I hope our elected leaders keep that in mind.
Scanned some pics of the old Cole pets- one of my projects is to digitize all our old photo albums, but the current scanner is crap, so I will probably do that this summer. At any rate, here is a picture of two of my childhood pets:
Ajax was a scruffy mutt I got a week or so before Christmas in 1979. He was a great little dog, although a rotten dog. He could run away and get in the creek in 30 seconds, loved eating spaghetti and getting it all over his whiskers, and would refuse to come if you called unless he was convinced you could see him, which meant that you would find my mom in the yard yelling “AJAX, I SEE YOU.” His nickname was “swampfoot” because he could get get his feet uber filthy in no time.
The cat is the greatest cat who ever lived, named Mr. Purr Puff (my sister Devon named him). He was a big cat, and the most laid back cat ever. He only had a half a tail (as you can see here) because the rest got cut off in a dorm fire escape door. He lived for close to twenty years, mainly because he was the laziest cat to ever live (for the last few years of Purr Puff’s life, my father was fond of saying “All my kids are out of college, I’m close to retirement, and my only goal left in life is to outlive that god damned cat.” You can not tell from this picture, but he was actually bigger than Tunch, but not fat. Wait till I find some pictures of my sister dressing him up in doll clothes.
Here is my favorite picture from the Cole family Christmas. Here is my younger sister who is sort of the family diva, and who, much like her older brother and your bloghost, does not have much of an internal monologue or poker face. I believer her fiancee once referred to her as “un-filtered.” At any rate, here is Anne’s reaction to receiving this gag gift from my other sister:
My other sister Devon had worn that to an “Ugly Christmas Sweater” party and decided to give it to Anne as a joke. You can see her to the right of the picture laughing.
Thank you AsianGrrrl for a new and glorious companionable version of my favorite carol:
When advances in teleportation-booth technology permit the Balloon Juice community to get together for the holidays, we can pretend we’ll sound like this. (Hey, I have a very nice singing voice, just no ear for the right pitch.)
We may go out for Chinese food, because the Spousal Unit is lollygagging about taking off for his familial obligations in upper lower Michigan. Please be nice—meaning: no “Little Drummer Boy”.
The end-all-regulation, my-health-insurance-company-is-just-fine-thanks crowd in the Tea Party movement have found an unlikely target for their next national effort: Corporate America.
The Tea Party Patriots group is planning a “National Day of Strike” for Jan. 20, one year to the day after President Obama’s inauguration. The goal of the strike, according to the website where it’s being planned, is to “financially cripple” the companies across America the group says are “backing the leftist agenda” and “funding socialism.”
How can you tell which companies are funding socialism? The answer, according to organizers: they advertise on CNN and/or MSNBC, and they donate money to Democratic candidates.
So they are going to cripple socialist businesses by striking for one day? That means they acknowledge their boss and employer is a socialist- why not quit? Striking for one day- don’t they call that a “sick day” or a “hangover” most places in the country? What happens when one of them gets fired? Will that be labeled socialist oppression by Big Hollywood?
Or do they actually mean they are going to boycott these companies? If that is the case, how the hell does a one day boycott work? Will anyone notice?
I’m sure glad some well-meaning progressives have decided to team up with these clowns. Maybe we can combine efforts- we can strike for a day, and during that day we can make incoherent attacks on Joe Lieberman’s wife.
*** Update ***
Via the comments:
Let’s not forget that she is actually out there doing real stuff. She raises a ton of money for progressive causes, and she is more effective than most bloggers at impacting the political dynamic. Anyone who puts themselves out front like that is going to make some mistakes, and she takes the heat like a warrior. She doesn’t whimper and whine—she comes back with a vengeance, witness the way she demolished Jed Lewison today:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/12…..iefreddie/
I’ve got a lot of respect for those who are in the trenches doing the real work. The blogosphere has more than it’s share of couch potatoes hiding behind their laptops while Jane is out there getting her hands dirty.
As for her alliance with Grover Norquist on the alleged misdeeds of Rahm Emmanuel, she will no doubt be happy to reveal that she thinks Norquist is a wacko on most issues— but if an unlikely combination of forces can actually achieve something, then I’m all for it.
The entrenched economic interests remain in control because they have succeeded in dividing the peasantry with hot button social issues like abortion, gun control, gay rights, and the environment. If the poor losers on the Left and the Right ever realize that they are both getting screwed equally by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Halliburton and General Electric, then maybe we can start to turn things around in this country. Jane takes the position that in some instances it is sensible and effective to join forces with those whose values you don’t generally share. For chrissake, Teddy Kennedy and Strom Thurmond worked together on the occasional piece of legislation. It’s called politics.
I can understand that. It is the methodology that is problematic.
Made it home in one piece, and am now watching a couple of Jack Russell Terriers run around with a Bull Mastiff while Lily sits on various laps observing.
Was just wondering how the Progressive jihad was going- have we advanced to suicide bombings and delinking yet? Is Bernie Sanders still a corporate whore? Have No Quarter and Hillary is 44 weighed in yet? Any more push polling and fund-raising?
Charles Johnson quite rightly excoriates Tim Pawlenty for some answers Pawlenty gave about evolution in a recent Newsweek interview:
Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?
I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.
[....]
Where are you personally?
Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution andcreationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.
David Frum replies that “Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism” and goes on to say that Pawlenty will have trouble with the religious right anyway because they don’t view him as a real Jesus person (since he converted from Catholicism to evangelicalism when he got married).
I find stories like this, especially when they’re told by two intelligent conservatives (even if I don’t always agree with them) to be quite chilling: we have here a Republican candidate who is an anti-science loon but still may be too sensible and non-Jesus freaky to satisfy the Khmer Rogue faction that may dominate the Republican primaries.
“This is what I meant a year ago when I said the next year will determine whether Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations.”
Mr. Egol, a Princeton graduate, had risen to prominence inside the bank by creating mortgage-related securities, named Abacus, that were at first intended to protect Goldman from investment losses if the housing market collapsed. As the market soured, Goldman created even more of these securities, enabling it to pocket huge profits.
Goldman’s own clients who bought them, however, were less fortunate.
Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on securities that they believed were solid investments, according to former Goldman employees with direct knowledge of the deals who asked not to be identified because they have confidentiality agreements with the firm.
Goldman was not the only firm that peddled these complex securities — known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s — and then made financial bets against them, called selling short in Wall Street parlance. Others that created similar securities and then bet they would fail, according to Wall Street traders, include Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, as well as smaller firms like Tricadia Inc., an investment company whose parent firm was overseen by Lewis A. Sachs, who this year became a special counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Look- this isn’t just some crank writing for Rolling Stones- this is the NY Times. It is common knowledge these guys are crooks, and yet there will still people who defend them here, in the comments, because they were just smarter than other folks and knew how to operate the system. It is a disgrace, and they should have to pay a price.
