Hillary Clinton is in the hospital with a blood clot in her brain after sustaining a fall and concussion a couple of weeks ago. I await serious conservative Charles Krauthammer’s explanation of how blood clots are a symptom of “acute Benghazi allergy which causes lightheadedness when she hears the word ‘Benghazi.'”
Archives for 2012
Monday Morning Open Thread
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Hayley Reardon’s sixteen. Maybe there’s hope for the future, after all.
What’s on the agenda as we count down to midnight?
Late NIght Open Thread: Peddling One’s Assets for Money
I hope Glenn Hubbard has his google-alert app in full update, cuz it would be a shame if he missed Matt Taibbi’s assessment:
… A few months ago, the Dean of Columbia’s business school was a leading economic advisor to Mitt Romney and a rumored (perhaps even consensus) candidate for the Treasury Secretary job.
Now Romney’s out of the presidential picture and Hubbard – well, he’s just yet another grasping jobholder who’s been exposed as a paid mouthpiece in a court proceeding…
So how much does it cost to get the Dean of Columbia Business School to say that Countrywide customers weren’t injured by fraud? Well, MBIA’s lawyer, Phillipe Selendy of Quinn Emmanuel, asked Hubbard that very question:
Q. How are you being compensated?
A. I’m being compensated at an hourly rate for my work.
Q. Do you know your hourly rate?
A. Yes, it’s $1200 an hour.
For comparison’s sake, $1200 an hour is about what Natalia, the woman New York Magazine called “America’s #1 escort” in a famous profile many years ago, made early on in her career working for Jason Itzler, the self-described “King of All Pimps.” It’s not the top-end rate for the kind of Mercedes-class prostitute you’d romp with from an outfit like the Emperors Club, but according to the L.A. Times, it’s still more than you’d have to pay for the usual “vanilla sex” or “Republican sex.” Twelve hundred dollars an hour in America buys high-end companionship that can run a little bit kinky, if that’s where your needs lay. And that’s exactly what MBIA got with Hubbard’s research…
Late NIght Open Thread: Peddling One’s Assets for MoneyPost + Comments (108)
SNF Open Thread
Go Skins.
Tech Question
I’ve decided I am just going to rebuild my old box rather than buy a new system. I have a full tower that is water cooled and has multiple fans and a 1200 watt power source, I have two 24″ monitors, and my blu ray and dvd r/w are fine, and I have a Razer black widow keyboard, a Cyborg RAT 9 mouse, and harmon kardon sound sticks. Basically, I just need to replace my guts.
I need a new top of the line motherboard that can handle as much memory as possible, I need memory, two new video cards I can crossfire, maybe a new solid state drive for the OS, and a processor. Figure I will break down and buy Windows 8.
The one thing to keep in mind is I want to be able to keep my two currents hard drives- I have a 120 solid state and a 1 tb hd, and I would like to make them my second and third drive respectively.
So, dorks, what do you suggest? Don’t give me pieces parts, but the complete mobo/processor/hd/memory combo.
Thanks.
Open Thread: There Is Power in An NFL Union?
I don’t pretend to understand sports, but I will read anything Charles P. Pierce writes, and that includes his Grantland column. And the agitation about how dangerous football is, or ought to be, has leaked beyond the pigskin fansphere enough that I could almost follow the argument here:
… [W]hat is even more preposterous is that, in an age in which the NFL’s concern for the well-being of its players increases proportionally with the speed of the mother of all class-action suits that’s headed down the track straight at it, a lot of the cheering for what Tagliabue did is coming from the people who believe that same concern to be demolishing the exquisitely violent culture of the game they love. Make no mistake. A great deal of the criticism aimed at Goodell is directed at him by the why-don’t-they-wear-dresses crowd, an odd conglomeration of talk-radio brawlers and Internet tough guys whose vicarious lives have far too many rats running through them.
What Goodell did to those players was unconscionable, but very typical of the way commissioners act when nobody’s watching. (It’s also the way bosses behave in almost every American workplace these days, and in places where people don’t have Paul Tagliabue to go their bond for them.) The one thing I will not put up with is this notion that the various Saints in question — and I exempt Scott Fujita, who apparently really did get screwed, from all of this — are martyrs to union solidarity and the rights of due process. I admire not a single one of them, and this is why…
The Saints went out of their way to damage their fellow players for what amounts to tip money for most of them, and they did it in a perfect demonstration of the savagery that produced the current moral crisis in the NFL in the first place. And far too many people think Tagliabue’s criticism of Goodell’s authoritarian style justifies this plunge into a moral abyss, because that’s the way things always have been done in the NFL, where men are men and a lot of them don’t remember their names when they’re 50. For this group of fans, the important thing to remember is that Goodell’s power is broken, and not that Brett Favre’s body was. As far as I’m concerned — no matter how glad I am that his rights are now safeguarded — Jonathan Vilma can go pound sand.
The NFL still has so very far to go. It has to disenthrall itself from the fundamental dynamic that drives the devotion of its most fervent fans, who invest in it their frustrations and their truncated manhood, and the rest of the resentment that builds up all week and demands a blood sacrifice for catharsis every Sunday. It has to excise from itself the notion that it is something like a war, and get back to the notion that it is every bit like a game. It has to stop making excuses for its excesses, the way that Paul Tagliabue did in his report. It’s not about “broad organizational misconduct.” It’s about the encouragement of human destruction for private profit, from the owner’s box right down to the locker room….
Those of you with a firmer grasp of the NFL dynamics want to weigh in on the controversy for the rest of us?
Open Thread: There Is Power in An NFL Union?Post + Comments (212)
Cat Rescue Bleg – San Diego
From commentor Madeleine:
When I took in Precious, he already had a good home. Due to some unfortunate circumstances that involved the other cat becoming aggressive, he needed a place to stay for about a month and a half. I returned Precious to his owner hoping that things had worked out. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, the situation hasn’t improved and the owner decided that rehoming Precious would be the best option. Here’s her post from Facebook:
I made a very difficult decision to re-home Precious. I tried everything I could possibly do as an owner, but there has not been progress. Leo opened the door and entered the room Precious was kept and viciously attacked poor Precious. Now, Precious is living in fear. I can’t do this to my kitties anymore, for they deserve to be happy and safe. I decided to give up Precious because he’s a sweetheart, indeed, the sweetest cats I’ve ever had, and I know he will be loved by his new family. If anyone is willing to take Precious before the rescue organization finds someone, please let me know. I am willing to pay for his insurance, food, and other supplies for the first year, and I will definitely volunteer to cat sit when you’re away. This was never an easy decision, and my heart is broken.
Precious is now with the rescue organization I foster for. He’s 7 years old, could stand to lose a bit more weight but otherwise in good health. While he was with me, he was extremely sweet and loving, and mellow. He loves hanging out with you as much as possible. I’ve attached several photos I took while he was with me, that shows how cute he can be, and can provide more from his owner as needed. (The pink belly is from over-grooming due to stress; his fur’s grown back now.)
Hope the Balloon Juice community can help. It’s a sad situation and I hope someone can make it better by giving Precious a new loving home.
If you are interested — or know someone who might be looking for a Precious of their own — email me at AnneLaurie @ verizon dot net (click on my name in the right-hand column) and I’ll put you in touch with Madeleine.