The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Today's horoscope says:

From time to time, it's okay to skate by.
Life is a matter of prioritizing energies, and sometimes the balance must fall against the side of hard work.
Today, however, the effort of your investment equals your reward.
So if your expectations are low, don't expend too much.
But if you think there's a chance for real success, give it all you've got.

 Some of our readers today have been in:
Red Deer, Alberta, Canada
Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Kampar, Perak, Malaysia
Paris, Ile-De-France, France
Munich, Bayern, Germany
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
Bilbao, Pais Vasco, Spain
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Rome, Lazio, Italy
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Bangkok, Krung Thep, Thailand
Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada
Brunaby, British Columbia, Canada
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Burlington, Ontario, Canada
Seragoon, Singapore, Singapore
Amersfoort, Utrecht, Netherlands
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Jerudong, Brunei and Muara, Brunei Darussalam
Newbury, England, United Kingdom
Morini, Morini, Comoros
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Delft, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Doncaster, England, United Kingdom
Bochum, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Algiers, Alger, Algeria
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany

as well as Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Israel, Finland, Austria, Norway, Georgia, Mexico, Peru, Kuwait, Serbia, Bangladesh, Latvia, Greece, Scotland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Wales, Iran, Singapore, Poland, Taiwan, Sweden, Afghanistan, Belgium, Tibet, Croatia, Pakistan, Romania, Paraguay, Sudan, Vietnam, Argentina, Cambodia, Egypt, France, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Maldives, Qatar, Brazil, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Slovenia, China, Iraq, Ecuador, Nigeria, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Paupa New Guinea, Moldova, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Vietnam, Norway, Finland

and in cities across the United States such as Alpharetta, Fairhope, Juneau, Tewksbury and more!

Today is:

Today is Thursday, November 10, the 314th day of 2011.

There are 51 days left in the year.

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:

Sesame Street Day.

  

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Non Sequitur

Semper Fidelis

 

Today is the Marine Corps birthday.

Chaos follows Paterno firing

Campus chaos follows Paterno firing

Students clash with police after the coaching icon is ousted in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal.  

 President out, too

Also: 

• Paterno talks to students
• Healing begins
• Paterno's legacy

Thorough Thursday

Service members remains dumped in landfill during shrub junta

How did people not think that this was a problem?

The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of portions of troops’ remains by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burial at sea.

The Dover, Del., mortuary, the main point of entry for the nation’s war dead and the target of federal investigations of alleged mishandling of remains, engaged in the practice from 2003 to 2008, according to Air Force officials. The manner of disposal was not disclosed to relatives of fallen service members.

On Tuesday, the Air Force acknowledged that the mortuary had lost a dead soldier’s ankle and an unidentified body part recovered from an air crash; had sawed off a Marine’s arm so his body would fit in his casket...

Mutherf@*&ers.  2003-2008. The shrub junta.  Anger cannot be expressed in either polite or impolite company!  The repugicans blather on and on about patriotism, but when it comes down to it, all they are is blather.

Former SC repugican leader calls Pelosi the c-word, then the b-word, then a wh*re

He said this in response to Herman Cain calling Democratic House Minority Leader, and former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi "Princess Nancy." The repugicans have a serious problem with intolerance in their ranks - be it sexism, racism, or homophobia. They think it's PC, and thus silly, to suggest that we don't call women the c-word, the b-word or the w-word. No, it's not about being PC, it's about having a sense of common decency. It's about a basic level of respect you show other human beings. The extremists that are now in control of the repugican party don't have that sense of respect or decency, not in their politics, their policies, nor in their personal dealings with Democrats or the American people.

Wingnuts now deny the existence of "sexual harassment"

Back to the proven playbook. (Why not? The rubes fell for it last time.)
Dahlia Lithwick writing at Slate has this excellent commentary:

Conservatives aren’t just defending Herman Cain. They’re denying the very existence of sexual harassment.

I have no idea what Herman Cain did with the two, or maybe three, or possibly now four women who have raised allegations of improper sexual behavior about him. I don’t know whether any of them will come forward and run the risk of being labeled a slut for their efforts to do their jobs without being treated like pole-dancers. I do know that—as Amanda Marcotte so eloquently explained this week—the very same people who insist that we don’t know what actually happened all those years ago seem to know exactly what happened: nothing.

Sexual harassment is now nothing. Welcome to the era of gender harassment denialism. The harassment skeptics claim that harassment, like racism, used to exist but is now over. ...[G]reat swaths of [Cain defenders] have opted to assert that there could never be a valid sex discrimination claim because the whole thing is just a racket. And they went even further: The same folks criticizing the National Restaurant Association employees who came forward with claims that they were uncomfortable in their workplace are willing to deploy the most archaic and gender-freighted stereotypes to get there. Sexual harassment can’t be “real” because the women who claim it are money-grubbing, hysterical, attention-seeking tramps.

Hope it never happens to one of your daughters, friends. It would suck if someone called her a humorless hooker, even before learning her name.

Lithwick then presents her case; for example, John Derbyshire:

“Is there anyone who thinks sexual harassment is a real thing? Is there anyone who doesn’t know it’s all a lawyers’ ramp, like ‘racial discrimination’? You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up.”

An excellent piece.

Movement wingnuts are so used to winning simply by making assertions, and then making them true simply by re-asserting them, that you could almost guess this would happen. (Remember "racism"? Ask your grandparents about it.)

After all: (1) They're the "say anything" crowd. It's what they do, their bread-and-butter running play.

(2) The billionaire-controlled corporate media is reliably "repeat anything" — so long as billionaire-financed politicians are the ones who are talking.

(3) This is the age of "perception is reality" — can't tell you how many times I've walked past a corp presentation room and found that on one of the overheads. What, nothing exists unless you say it does? This is an entirely corrupt philosophy for an ad-age corrupted era — and an ad-saturated public. (For example: "Manliness," a wholey-owned concept of Miller Lite.)

We have always been at war with Eastasia. Until we weren't.

The truth be told

Tom the Dancing Bug

Blind, Deaf and Stupid

It really is that simple

That about sums it up

Why is it ...

Curious isn't it?

Poverty reaches new high in US

It's even worse than the "official" report from September. Once again, if the clueless political class wants to understand why OWS is so popular, here's another example. What jumps out here is the excessively high cost of health care. The original health care reform plan that includes yet another boondoggle for insurance companies and Big Pharma has to stop. The system still needs reform and the repugican's suggestions to turn back the clock are ridiculous.
The system is not working.

The numbers released Monday are part of a first-ever supplemental poverty measure aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty. Although considered experimental, they promise to stir fresh debate over Social Security, Medicare and programs to help the poor as a congressional supercommittee nears a Nov. 23 deadline to make more than $1 trillion in cuts to the federal budget.

Based on the revised formula, the number of poor people exceeds the record 46.2 million, or 15.1 percent, that was officially reported in September.

Broken down by group, Americans 65 or older sustained the largest increases in poverty under the revised formula — nearly doubling to 15.9 percent, or 1 in 6 — because of medical expenses that are not accounted for in the official rate. Those include rising Medicare premiums, deductibles and expenses for prescription drugs.

Bankruptcy makes history

Massive bankruptcy makes U.S. history

A county with some of the nation's richest neighborhoods takes a drastic step to wipe out $5 bil debt.  

 Backlash 

Also: 

• Mayor's website hacked
• Mental health funds cut
• Crisis could shock globe

Why your taxes might surge

Why your income taxes might surge

Tax changes next year could hike a family's IRS bill by more than $3,500.

Which write-offs will vanish 

Also: 

• repugican plan for revenues
• Tax on Christmas trees
• Year-end strategies

Yellow diamond could fetch $11-15Million

A rare yellow pear-shaped diamond is expected to fetch $11-15 million at auction next week, and the buyer will have the chance to name it, Sotheby's said Wednesday.

 Full Story

Why Buick is big in China

Why Buick is so big in China

GM figures out how to revive a brand long considered irrelevant in the U.S. 

  Can make 90 cars an hour in Shanghai 

Also: 

• Toyota recalls 550K cars
• Chevy discounts Volts
• Tiny car gets 350 mpg