tricky dickless, please shut up

dick cheney just doesn't seem to get the message that almost all of us loathe him, find him evil & creepy, reject his ideology, and wish he would go riding off into the sunset post-haste. that includes members of his own party, who realize that his continued criticism of an extremely popular president is winning them zero converts.

so how about it, neo-cons: can't one of you put a cork in this guy?

let's play hangman

so we gave the banks a trillion bucks out of our own - i mean, out of china's - pocket (so far), which we have to pay back by giving up all of our medical care, retirement benefits, and wage increases for the next few decades or so. which is bad, right, but they say it's what we need to do to get the economy moving again, so we bent over. that's one.

then, of course, the banks refused to tell us what they were doing with our - i mean china's - money. because they knew what to do with it, and that was all they decided that we needed to know. and when it turned out that they used it to give themselves bonuses, we bent over a little further and took the fist.

now, of course, they're raising interest rates and fees. you know - in case we have any money left at all that they've somehow missed.

and they still say class warfare like it's a bad thing.

if you looked like this, how much shit would YOU put up with?

now here's the truth: it doesn't matter what you look like.

hell, it doesn't even matter if you're male or female.

rule #1: don't put up with shit from anybody, period.

quit yer bitchin' #42

so what's the difference between those that rise to the top and the rest of us?

you know who we mean - the girls that become not the homecoming queen, but the girl that the homecoming king wishes he was with, who later got that hot new placement in the company's seattle/hong kong/paris office after dating that musician everybody knows, then started her own green company and married that painter from lyon.

what makes her different from the wannabes standing behind her?

in a word: attitude. and it all starts here, baby.

the problem in a nutshell

it's becoming increasingly clear that our food supply isn't safe. why? because - like most us industries, these days - the tail is wagging the dog.

case in point: during the recent peanut butter poisonings, the manufacturer had to give its permission before a recall of its products could be issued.

wtf?!

and folks, i know that we all expect obama to magically make the world perfect - and we're only too glad to dump it all on his shoulders - but this is one issue that both political parties haven't done squat about in decades - largely because they take money from the lobbyists that represent these companies.

if you want to feel safe about what you eat, you're going to have to get off your ever-expanding ass and make some serious noise about it. period. i mean, they're putting rocket fuel chemicals in baby formula, for gods' sake - how much worse do things have to get?

walking the chinese tightrope

everyone talks about our growing trade deficit with china, but always in vague, quickly-changed-to-another-subject terms. what does it all really mean? and why does the issue of china's growing online offensive capabilities keep getting swept under the rug?

let's start here: china is hacking into every us government computer system that they can. now word is out that they've hacked our power grid, too. why? because the us has a formidable military, and china - although they have more bodies to throw into a battlefield - understands that war (at least until we start to really run short on water and oil) has become a lot less about who's got more guns and a lot more about who's got the ability to turn off the other guy's lights. if they turned off all the power here for, say, 2 weeks in the middle of february, how long do you think it would be before we became tibet?

so why don't we do something about it, like hack them back, or slap'em with a white glove or something? in a nutshell: because it's complicated.

walk into any retail store that you like, pick up an item, and look at its country of origin. unless your income is about us$400k/year, chances are better than 90% that the tag says 'made in china'. we have an unhealthy appetite for chinese-manufactured goods, folks. the reason is simple: because they're cheap. and in an era when wage values are actually declining, the decreasing costs of chinese goods allow us to fool ourselves into thinking that we're actually doing okay.

we're not. it's an illusion at best, and a deliberate lie at worst. us companies, of course, are only too happy to have their wares made in china. that way lies no workers comp, no environmental concerns, lax tax enforcement, and incredible profits. so the state department is under pressure from industry to make nice with china, our military is distracted by (and overextended in) the middle east, and our intelligence community keeps slapping its forehead wondering why we're concentrating on securing oil fields when they can see china buying up us$2 billion of our country every single day of the year (including christmas).

at this rate, china will own us in less than 30 years, without firing a single shot. turns out you don't need light sabers or exoskeletons, after all - just a large, cheap labor supply and a calculator.

speaking of horse & buggy media

newspapers are apparently miffed at google and other news aggregators for redistributing their content.

(actually, that's probably not quite true - truth to be told, they're probably just glad no one has turned out the lights yet - but they are ticked that no one is paying them.)

excuse me? isn't this a conversation that should have happened 15 years ago?

now, of course, it's too late: there are countless sources of free news, and newspapers everywhere are trying to fit dutch boys into dikes long after the levees have failed. they could have jumped on the kindle and other ebooks sooner (the cost of paper being one part of the lossy equation), they might have partnered with e-ink to create digital newspapers, they might have addressed their ridiculously overcalc'd circulations and ad rates long before the web showed us all that the emperor has no clothes, and and and...

ah, well. think of all the trees their demise will spare. which probably means it's a good time to get out of the logging business.

mow the lawn

i love uk commercials. if the us media - and audience - would just loosen up a bit, following in their footsteps might help bolster declining ad revenue.

where the heck is drew barrymore?

after a long line of a-list starring roles and production credits, hollywood's former bad girl seems to have faded into the background, with recent work spaced out & of an ensemble bent. what's up with that? drew, we're not tired of you yet, we promise.

quit yer bitchin' #41

look at it this way: this could have been (or could still be) your 45th birthday party.

(stereo easter bunnies and oompa loompas? we didn't even know that package existed.)

necking

whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

julius 'groucho' marx (1890 - 1977)