I wonder what the good people of Florida’s Eighth District will think about this. You can be sure Grayson’s five kids, ages 4 through 14, would be unhappy to hear about it, for sure. But I doubt his constituents would appreciate having their congressman targeted by some nobody douchewad who’s ‘Director of the Business & Media Institute’:

Finding it impossible to spell ‘smarmy’ microseconds before ridiculing an ‘idiot’ is funny. But I find the third party entreaty especially shitheaded. Throwing out a ‘tweet’ to millions of people, asking any of them (oops, sorry — asking any Representative, *cough-cough*) to do something nasty and frankly illegal on your behalf qualifies you for plenty of scorn.

I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, ‘beornborg’ replied:

. . so, Gainor pretended it was all a big larf:

. . oh, well — so you like jokes, do you? Try this one on for size:

So, if any of you feel like ‘representin’, go and knock yourself, or someone else, out. Kidding, just kidding, HAHAHA . .

There is no ‘free’ lemonade
In giving drink away, girls ignore rules of economics — and sum up what’s wrong with U.S.
July 5, 2010
BY TERRY SAVAGE Sun-Times Columnist

This column is a true story — every word of it. And I think it very appropriate to consider around the Fourth of July, Independence Day spirit.

After you read this, you’re gonna wonder why she would brag about it.

The three young girls — under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them — explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars.

Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

“Oh, no,” they replied in unison, “they’re all free!”

Ah, kids. Even rich ones living in the same neighborhood as finance tubedork Terry Savage. They dig adults because their parents are so wonderful. They just wanna be nice to them, so you get a free lemonade stand in a quiet, affluent neighborhood.

I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: “But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I’m really thirsty!”

His fiancee smiled and commented, “Isn’t that cute. They have the spirit of giving.”

. . 3 . . 2. . 1 . .

That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine.

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

You can’t give me lemonade, it isn’t ethical. You’re carrying loans against your inventory. Time for their parents to foreclose.

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”

Stupid fucking kids, listen to limo-mommy Terry Savage. There’s no point in running a lemonade stand outside of optimizing your margins.

It’s sad to have to post news like this, but it’s important to know the truth about what’s really happening down in the Gulf. I doubt that Americans really appreciate the amount of misery BP has caused. The oil conglomerate’s done a pretty professional job of keeping the bad press to a minimum, but that doesn’t do anything for the suffering of the people. It just keeps piling up:

FORT MORGAN, Ala. — An Orange Beach, Ala., charter boat captain shot and killed himself this morning just before his vessel was scheduled to set out to take part in oil cleanup and protection efforts, investigators said.

Kidding? No. Dry sense of humor? No!

Ameri-biz twathole? CLANG. $408M a year divided by 1.3M people is . . *clackety* . . $313.85.

Buddy of mine worked over the weekend moving families from house to house, made $200 in tips.

So the REAL yearly bonus rate for the lucky ones came out to $1,200.

. . and $92M divided by 0.687M workers is . . *clackety* . . $133.92.

Google “Goldman Sachs” yourselves, I’m going to bed.

I can only assume Confederate Yankee serially spent plenty of ‘alone time’ in the nearest Confederate Condo Crapcloset after this post. Those gunpowder-and-ballistics Palin pics surely are now spotty and plenty worse for wear, assuming they’re not just stuck together like stacks of rice paper mats after a corn syrup monsoon.

Labor union SEIU turned up the heat on the business flaks and banksters by staging protests directly in front of their homes. They realized that bringing a few hundred people to demonstrate outside the mega-skyscrapers of the powerful and insulated results in nothing much effective, so they changed tactics.

The scene is certainly more aggressive, and its politics are controversial. Huffington Post reported on the cacophony this way:

Class Warfare: Hundreds Protest Outside Bankers’ Houses In DC
First Posted: 05-16-10 08:00 PM | Updated: 05-17-10 05:46 PM

Huge raucous crowds converged outside bank employees’ houses on Sunday afternoon to demand banks stop lobbying against Wall Street reform.

“Bank of America: bad for America!” shouted community leaders outside the house of Bank of America deputy general counsel Gregory Baer.

The Chicago-based grassroots organization National People’s Action, in coordination with the SEIU, bused more than 700 workers from 20 states to Baer’s neighborhood, one of the wealthiest corners of Washington. The action kicks off several days of protests targeting K Street for lobbyists’ role in financial reform.

Baer’s son was in the house at the time and got scared, though no harm or destruction resulted. The group apparently packed up and moved to another bigwig’s house. Confederate Yankee, however, caught an electric whiff off the fear and fired back:

It’s All Fun For Them, Until One of Their Little Unionized Terrorists Get Shot
Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:07 PM

I was offline most of the weekend, spending the bulk of Saturday and Sunday in an NRA Personal Protection Outside the Home course with a class filled with NRA instructors. All of us were concealed carry permit holders, and all had previously taken the Personal Protection in the Home course (more on the courses at another time, perhaps).

As a result, I didn’t get a chance until today to read about Nina Easton’s account of a SEIU/NPA mob action that terrified the teen-aged son of a Bank of America lawyer, who was alone when the mob poured out of 14 buses and stormed their home . .

You can tell where this is going, right?

If a homeowner in such a situation felt that a chanting mob banging forcefully on door [sic] and windows was attempting to break into the home, they would be fully justified under the laws of many states if the [sic] decided to start firing a gun through the door into the tightly packed mob behind it in order to stop what they felt was a felony home invasion in progress.

Now that would be the felony home invasion of all-time. When the massive group pours out of a whole bunch of buses, wearing the same colorful shirts, carrying signs, marching up and down the street and yelling cliches through their bullhorns, you can be sure they’re there to sneak up on the front door and stampede it if you inexplicably answer the doorbell. “WHOOOIIIZZIIITT?” Wait for the 110-decibel pleas of “SSSSHHHHHH!!” coming through the hand-helds, bouncing through the neighborhood. Then you can tiptoe to the door and brace for the worst.

Gotta admit, it’s a brilliant strategy. After they’ve tied you up and taken all your jewelry, long after they’ve skulked away in the bright light of day, disappeared in an elephant migration of diesel-spewing buses, how will you ever identify them? There are hundreds of them, dammit. Of course, you might just tell the police you’re being robbed — they are, after receiving all the calls from angry neighbors, standing there monitoring the whole thing. Nonetheless, go ahead, pull out your rifle and pour a couple clips worth of high-velocity rounds through the door at the “tightly packed mob behind it.”

This is not an extreme nor unusual statute, but a simple acknowledgment of castle doctrine and stand your ground laws applied to a bizarre situation.

Now there’s some logic: it’s a bizarre situation, I feel scared, time to blow your noggin off. Unless you mean after the fact, then I would agree: indiscriminately and blindly opening fire upon a crowd of protesters in your front yard would be a bizarre situation, AKA “wholesale slaughter.” Incidentally, considering the unarmed hundreds of them, good luck convincing anybody that tactic constituted a reasonable solution to your problem.

No jury on earth would convict a family trapped by 500 thugs screaming through bullhorns and causing them to reasonably suspect that their lives were in danger from a mob they thought was breaking down his door, and it’s doubtful there would even be a prosecution in many jurisdictions.

On second thought, that might be true, knowing what some places in the country are like. Doesn’t mean it’s legal or justified or that you wouldn’t be a notorious mass-murderer of working class types. But then, you’d also become a celebrated anti-union Bernie Goetz for the far-right, so your ticket would be eternally punched. Hmm, this is an even better Confederate Yankee fantasy than I’d originally figured.

Barack Obama’s comfort with thug politics and love of strong-arm behavior may get some of his supporters killed one day, and he’ll have no one to blame but his own tactics and allies.

Grab some Jergens and go satisfy yourself, Yankee. God fear monkey nuts.

This post below is a good example of one of the newest tactics in political smearing.

It’s a young cousin to the Rove-ian tactic of tagging your opponent with the opposite of how he (or she) could be perceived. If he says he’s a reformer, scream that he’s corrupt. If he says he’s an outsider, call him a sleazy crony. Don’t bother with much of anything like facts, they just get in the way. If he says he’s a dog, get the whole Republican Convention to ‘meow’ whenever someone mentions his name. That’s how John Kerry, wounded Vietnam veteran, became a draft-dodging sissypants in the eyes of the right wing.

The new tactic is even more ridiculous and unfounded than the last. It goes like this: when your opponent shows interest in an issue, take every negative view and connotation within arm’s length and throw it at him. If he wants to do good things for children, he’s a nanny-stater, a government bully, a socialist, a zealot, immature, dangerous, anti-family and a child molester. Never mind that those charges are mutually exclusive in myriad ways, it’s all true.

This tactic is particularly attractive to the party of ‘NO.’ Since you don’t really take an actual side to anything because you don’t actually respect the government or want it to help Americans, there’s little hypocrisy in throwing the bad stuff on opposing sides of an issue at anybody you hate.

To wit, this post on Obama’s push for financial regulation:

Friday, April 30, 2010

The Corrupt Party, the Stupid Party, and the Birth of Crony Fascism
by Scott Wheeler

. . For more than a week now, we’ve been advising Republican Senators that they must demand a special prosecutor investigate the already documented connection between President Obama, Wall Street Financiers and the Congressional Democrats who have been loudly posturing that they are going after “big business.”

Corruption! The Democrats have been assaulting the public trust.

A brief perusal of FEC filings shows that Obama has been the recipient of nearly a million dollars from Goldman Sachs – Obama’s largest corporate contributor, the very entity under investigation by his own SEC, the same folks dragged to the Hill in televised humiliation this week — AND that the majority of Wall Street dough lands in Democrat campaign accounts. Pretty shocking revelations, there for all to witness, and yet, silence from Republicans.

Cronyism! The Democrats are doing the bidding of the criminal financiers. Like Goldman Sachs, who apparently asked to be investigated and perhaps slapped with criminal indictments.

Democrats have been publicly assaulting the free enterprise system for years.

They’re anti-business! That’s why they always pocket “the majority of Wall Street dough.” And why Goldman wants to live in their jails.

And now, finally, they have the votes, the political coverage and the compliant press required for them to fashion legislation that assumes control of certain businesses, allowing them to pick and choose who succeeds based solely on their record of donations to Democrats.

That’s how Democrats managed “to pick and choose” corporate donor numero uno, Goldman Sachs, for a giant investigation. The Wall Street behemoth now “succeeds” to be shamed, humiliated and perhaps imprisoned.

It’s a modern-day spoils system, designed by shameless and hypocritical legislators, and guaranteed the approval of America’s first socialist president. [. . em. in orig. --ed.]

Yes, that damned anti-business crony-capitalist system-gaming pro-business Socialistic corrupted reformer. Also known as . . what?!?

Can you at all see where there’s discussion of a particular view of financial regulation in here? There’s none, and that’s the point. The party of ‘NO’ can’t make or win discussions because they essentially sport a nihilism familiar to slaves. They’re owned by a corporate-ocracy in this case. Whatever the corporations want, that’s what Republicans want, so they don’t want financial reforms, but they haven’t any reasons why. So you get this hysterical guilt-by-all-associations attack Wheeler trots out for us, here.

Obama is a Bully

By: Dennis Kneale
CNBC Media & Technology Editor

Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President?

I thought for sure this was going to be satire pointed directly at the endlessly self-important business wanks and banksters all over-wrought over needed regulation, HEAVENS. Turns out this guy is serious.

Barrack Hussein Obama has taken his gift for inspirational oratory—one of the traits that got him elected—and turned it into something darker and more insidious.

Bam is a bully.

Yes. He’s calling the president ‘Bam.’

Bad enough that he bashes Wall Street, but this President has gone farther than any in modern history in putting the wrong kind of “bully” back into what Teddy Roosevelt had called the bully pulpit.

Obama’s latest broadside came over the weekend, when he vehemently criticized the state of Arizona and its (Republican) governor for passing a tough new law on illegal immigration . .

Can you remember any other modern President, wagging a finger from on high, so directly and bitterly criticizing a new law passed by any state?

This is hubris at best and ignorance of the Constitution at worst.

So I wondered who this douchebag was, and, oh, about 30 seconds later, I found this. Turns out Dennis Kneale’s as rugged as cotton candy ponies with pink panty saddles. So it all makes sense. Enjoy:

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Return of ‘Social Utility’
by Tony Blankley

. . I pointed out that creating a venue to which community banks could sell their mortgages freed up their capital to make more home loans, thus creating more homeowners. That is why Franklin D. Roosevelt set up Fannie Mae in 1938. Secondary markets tend to enlarge the primary market. This is good.

Short-selling, which is now being attacked as immoral, can be well defended in the words of Dean Baker, writing at the American Prospect: “Short-selling can play a very important role in the market. If informed investors recognize that a stock is overvalued, they perform a valuable service by selling it short and pushing down its stock price.”

Unless a heretofore bedrock transaction, like a house mortgage, ends up mysteriously ‘marketized’ without the original participant having any clue. And then it gets sold short by the people who once held the note, ‘incentivizing’ the misery of the participant . .

You thought Sting was some sensitive touchy-feely? He sings for the night, dances for the desaparecidos, hopes the Russians love their children too, blah blah? The joke’s on you: he just pocketed a million pounds to play for the murderous, despotic ruling family of Uzbekistan.

Sting in the pay of tyrannical Uzbekistan regime
Sting accepted more than £1m to play for the Uzbek dictator’s daughter, reports Marina Hyde

Once again we must ponder the question “how much money is enough?”, inspired by reports that Sting accepted between £1m and £2m to perform for the glory of the brutal despotic regime in Uzbekistan.

The services of Sting – whose personal fortune is estimated well north of £150m – were engaged by Gulnara Karimova, the daughter and anointed heir of dictator Islam Karimov.

There he is, with Gulnara. But Islam “The Boiler” Karimov? A contender to the “I Think Saddam Hussein Was A Girl” title? This is what the guy does:

Uzbekistan: Two Brutal Deaths in Custody / Human Rights Watch
Deaths Reveal “Horror” of Uzbek Prisons
August 9, 2002

Two suspicious deaths with apparent signs of torture highlight Uzbekistan’s brutal ongoing crackdown against independent Muslims, Human Rights Watch said today. The bodies of Muzafar Avazov and
Husnidin Alimov, both religious prisoners at Jaslyk Prison, were returned to family members for burial in Tashkent Thursday.

Individuals who had seen one of the bodies told Human Rights Watch that it showed clear signs of torture. The authorities reportedly restricted viewing of the second body. Both men had been imprisoned at Jaslyk Prison, well-known for its harsh conditions and ill-treatment and torture of religious prisoners.

Human Rights Watch has learned that the body of Muzafar Avazov, a 35-year old father of four, showed signs of burns on the legs, buttocks, lower back and arms. Sixty to seventy percent of the body was burnt, according to official sources. Doctors who saw the body reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing Avazov in boiling water.

Sting’s trying to spin it, but it ain’t working:

“I played in Uzbekistan a few months ago,” he begins. “The concert was organized by the president’s daughter and I believe sponsored by Unicef.”

You can believe it all you like, Sting, but it’s absolute cobblers – Lost in Showbiz has checked it out with Unicef, who tactfully describe themselves as “quite surprised” by your claim . .

The United Nations Children Fund?? Laaaaaaame. Can’t keep up on current events?

“Hey, Sting — what the hell are you doing here, in Tashkent, headlining the “Razor Straps for the Secret Police” event?”

“. . err . . Haiti.”

Better. Well, it was actually for the daughter, and maybe she’s not quite as evil, eh? No?

Sting. Seriously. At least pretend to give a shit. Or have all those seven-hour orgasms finally made you too tired to care? Because as bad as the father is, the daughter – Sting’s host – is right there with him.

Sting’s actual host, Islam’s daughter Gulnora, was named last year by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the World’s Worst Daughters for actions like deporting 24 of her ex-husband’s relatives to Afghanistan at gunpoint (and imprisoning three others), and dealing with competitors to her tea businesses by sending “hooded men with machine guns” to “liquidate their holdings.” (And while we have no proof, it’s entirely possible that “holdings” means “intestines.”)

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray:

“This really is transparent bollocks,” observes Murray on his blog. “He did not take a guitar and jam around the parks of Tashkent. He got paid over a million pounds to play an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime. Is the man completely mad?

“Why does he think it was worth over a million quid to the regime to hear him warble a few notes?

“I agree with him that cultural isolation does not help. I am often asked about the morality of going to Uzbekistan, and I always answer – go, mix with ordinary people, tell them about other ways of life, avoid state owned establishments and official tours. What Sting did was the opposite. To invoke Unicef as a cover, sat next to a woman who has made hundreds of millions from state forced child labour in the cotton fields, is pretty sick.”

Wingnut cesspool Townhall.com:

Killer Competition
by Rich Tucker

Do private companies want to kill their customers?

It seems like a goofy question. Clearly, if a company killed its customers, there’d be nobody to buy its products and it’d go out of business. But many liberals don’t see it that way . .

Companies don’t kill people, it’s market suicide.

When you’ve got 4 campuses and over 3,500 students, you’re not exactly exclusive. And you’re probably not exactly shy about money-making or marketing.

Which probably explains why the Thomas M. Cooley Law School ranked the Thomas M. Cooley Law School twelfth in the nation in the Thomas M. Cooley Law School rankings:

Poor Stanford and Berkeley. And recruiting for the lesser institutions will only get tougher now that Cooley has got Oldsmobile Thomas M. Cooley Law School Park:

Thomas M. Cooley Law School Buys Stadium Naming Rights

Okay, the legal economy is in the tank. Recent law graduates are having a tough time finding jobs. Graduates from lower tier law schools are getting squeezed as top tier law students and deferred associates compete for jobs and opportunities. You get the picture.

. . What is Cooley Law School doing to improve the lot of the students suckered into a 4th tier law school? It’s buying the naming rights to a minor league baseball stadium. I’m not joking. Cooley is taking the tuition dollars of its students and buying naming rights. Naming rights. I guess replacing all the desks and lecterns with steaming piles of dung was just a little bit too expensive for the bigwigs at Cooley. Buying naming rights gets the same message across to students.