Some Things Are Sweeter Than Candy

How much sugar is in that snack? This site compares stacks of sugar cubes (representing the grams of sugar on the "nutritional" label) with various foods, beverages and snacks. (via Neatorama).

This Day In History

On this day in 1789, George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States.

And it's been going downhill ever since....

Why We Tortured

Frank Rich does a nice job of explaining America's descent into the totalitarian tactic of torture. It all boils down to a frantic effort to find evidence linking the 9/11 attacks to Saddam Hussein in Iraq:

"...Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections."

The Republican politicians and conservative pundits who defend America's torture tactics are indistinguishable from the Germans who acquiesced in the Nazi machinations that led to war and holocaust. Fortunately, our system of government was stronger than Germany's and we were able to dislodge the criminals from their high government offices and bring an end to their malfeasance -- if not (yet) its aftermath. But to allow them to slip into the shadows of history without appropriate punishment -- yes, punishment -- is to ignore the behavior that very nearly destroyed American democracy. And closing our eyes to the truth would encourage the next band of criminals that seeks to seize the reins of power in America.

We, the people, need another Nuremberg trial. Perhaps it could be held at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia.

Bea Arthur -- R.I.P.

Bea Arthur (1922-2009)

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

As the wingnuts lose their influence over policy, let alone their control of the government, they devolve into a bizarre, babbling rabble. This photo from Talking Points Memo pretty much sums up the paranoid lunacy that is anti-government conservatism.


The whole teabaggers' party scene had an Alice in Wonderland feel to it. These people are as mad as hatters.

At any rate I'll never go there again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. 'It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!

Republican Party of Three

Do you kinda miss the antics of the Bush Administration as self-parody in action? Fear not, the best and brightest of the conservative world continue their campaign to brighten your day.

The Hand of God

A recently released "photo" of the debris cloud surrounding a pulsar 1,700 light-years from earth has stimulated some interesting responses. For example, the NY Daily News ran a poll and 40 percent of respondents said the image was obviously the hand of god. Here is the image:



Despite this convincing display of biblical truth, it turns out that the image had to be heavily processed and filtered for the human eye to be able to see this particular image. The actual "hand" is only visible in the x-ray spectrum but even that filtering process leaves a messy image that looks like this:



Fortunately, OplusO has the latest in astronomical data-crunching devices and has been able to produce the actual image of what Pulsar B1509-58 truly looks like:





And finally, for all you heathens out there calling this obvious miracle the "missing finger of god", here is a link to a sequence of images representing various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum showing what the scientists had to work with.

The Wrong Black Man Is President

Chris Rock is too honest to be president.

Wall Street's Mole

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is either conveniently incompetent (from the perspective of Wall Street) or a double-agent sent by financial firms to steal whatever remains of wealth in America.

His latest plot -- um, "rescue plan" -- calls for the American taxpayer to put up as much as 97 percent of the money to buy bad debts ("toxic assets") from banks. The remaining fraction is to be provided by investment firms which will, no doubt, use this to justify incredibly large bonuses for the lucky few at the top.

Warnings seem to fall on deaf ears. Perhaps that's because those ears belong to the bad guys. Obama should think about what the bankrupt firms would have done had they been able to design their own bailout plan without government interference. Would it have differed in ANY significant respect from Geithner's?

This Is Why You're Fat

This is why you're fat . And this is why I gave up meat.


Hard boiled egg on-a-stick wrapped in sausage, rolled in breadcrumbs, and then deep fried.

But that's just an appetizer for the main course -- the Porkgasm.


The chef bragged that:

My guests were all total gluttons. I even had two vegetarians and one person with a failing gall bladder try it out (they had half slices). I was disappointed that no observant Jews or Muslims showed up, because I think they would have had to eat some too. Most of us ended up with nightmares and stomachaches. They were well-earned. At the end of the night, there was only enough left for one little sandwich the next day. I ate it for breakfast, on white bread, with barbecue sauce and ketchup.

Make your own Porkgasm by following this recipe.

Corporate Theft

Among the many odd claims being presented by the thieves that run many American corporations today is the assertion that it would be a violation of employment contracts to reduce (or better yet, eliminate) bonuses paid to the incompetent managers who allowed their companies to go bankrupt. Make no mistake, these companies (AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, etc.) are technically bankrupt. Only federal bailout funds kept them from admitting it and thereby triggering a wipeout of employment contracts (just look at airline bankruptcies that were specifically designed to void union contracts for an idea of how this works).

In the financial world, only the top brass are given actual employment contracts. The average employee may be fired at will and without recourse -- perhaps receiving two weeks severance and a cash out on unused vacation. But the millionaires at the top, in collusion with the so-called "trustees" on the Board of Directors, have made sure that they are well insulated against anything like failure, stupidity or global economic collapse.

In recent years the "compensation packages" of these captains of capitalism have increased astronomically (even as the average wage earner's pay stagnated) often under the claim that the increased productivity of the lowest paid workers somehow justified multi-million bonuses to folks who get to fly in the corporate jet.

There is word for this type of behavior -- conversion. As a legal term, conversion refers to the illegitimate taking of assets (in this case, corporate funds). Theft is the criminal term for essentially the same thing.

Corporate managers are hired to run the company that is owned by the shareholders. Yet too often the managers collude to transfer massive amounts of corporate funds to themselves -- regardless of the performance of the stock or the corporation itself. The moral hazard is too tempting and they succumb. The very individuals who make hiring, firing and compensation decisions vote themselves a pay increase. And co-sign contracts with each other to make it all legally binding come hell, highwater or technical bankruptcy.

It is easier to identify corporate theft when you have a transparent crook like Bernie Madoff lying his way through billions of dollars. But the principle is the same when employees of the shareholders (i.e., CEO, president, etc.) skim corporate income into their own pockets with a "heads I win, tails you lose" contract.

What a Difference a D Makes

When George W. Bush was President, Republicants assure us, an event (aka 9-11) that took place 9 months into his first term was actually the fault of his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

Yet even with the economy in free-fall since October of last year, Republicants now assert that Obama is to blame for stock market and job losses, despite being on the job only since January 20th.

Tax Argument Dodgers

There's an interesting debate going on over President Obama's outline for new tax rates and deductions. Interesting in that so little of it seems to be based on fact.

For example, Chuck Grassley, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate's tax writing committee, opposes Obama's plan to raise tax rates on the top 2 percent of incomes in America. Obama argues that these are the very individuals who most benefited from the Bush tax cuts of recent years, reaping enormous untaxed profits during the real estate fueled bubble. Grassley argues that Obama's proposed tax changes would discourage the small business owners who create most of the jobs in America and thereby harm the economy.

But taxes are only paid on "profits," not business expenses. So if an entrepreneur hires a new worker, that salary is a business expense and would be deducted from gross revenues. The same is true for investments in equipment, buildings, inventory, training, etc., etc. The only thing that is taxed is the amount left over AFTER all of that job creating, salary paying, America building effort by the employer.

In other words, there may be a lower after-tax profit for the employer but there is no tax increase on any aspect of actual job creation.

There is no argument over whether or not taxes can influence behavior. And the federal tax code has been used to promote public policies since it was first imposed. The real question should be which approach best delivers on the public policy goals such as job creation, deficit reduction, etc.

Marginal tax rates do matter, but when it comes to job creation and deficit reduction Bill Clinton's marginal rate tax increases were followed by far stronger job creation -- and the first balanced budget in a generation -- than Bush's tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans. It would be helpful if the mainstream media reported the facts behind the arguments of both sides of the debate.

Doing The Dog Paddle

via videosift.com

Joy In The Balance

Maggie could do this if she wanted to but she has far too much dignity to perform silly tricks: