Sunset in Key West

Happy Birthday, Ted!

Today is Senator Ted Kennedy’s 77th birthday. Let’s wish “The Lion of the Senate” a very happy birthday!

Ted Kennedy was born February 22, 1932, and has been the Democratic US Senator from Massachusetts since November 7th, 1962.

From Wiki:

Since his presidential bid, Kennedy has become one of the most recognizable and influential members of the party, and is sometimes called a “Democratic icon”. In April 2006, Kennedy was selected by Time as one of “America’s 10 Best Senators”; the magazine noted that he had “amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country” and that “by the late 1990s, the liberal icon had become such a prodigious cross-aisle dealer that Republican leaders began pressuring party colleagues not to sponsor bills with him”.

As of 2008, Kennedy is the second-longest serving current senator, trailing only Robert Byrd.

Oscar Night Open Thread

Glancing over the nominees, I see that I have once again failed in my duty as a movie fan. Or the Academy has once again failed to interest me. I’ve seen one of the animated films, none of the Best Picture nominees and two of the Best Supporting Actor films (including the dead guy and the one film certain to win nothing). I will look at photos of the gorgeous actresses in their beautiful gowns tomorrow, otherwise, fffft to the Oscars. I’ve been boycotting them since Spring of 1970 when they passed over Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman to give the Best Actor award to John Wayne. Bah, humbug!

Saturday Night Cesspool Party!

Anyone in the mood for a party?

Hey, come on now.. It’s Saturday night!

Welcome to the Cesspool Party, where no one gets out clean.  Got a joke, a story, a story about a joke, a limerick, a game?  All’s fair on Saturday night at TheZoo.

Bar’s open!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GORN!!!

Business. Environment.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News

Just do it already!!!

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

Cellar’s Market…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jack Ohman, Portland Oregonian

Giving ground…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.

Godspeed.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News

Motion Sickness…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
John Cole, Scranton, PA Times-Tribune

Bill Maher interviews Ron Paul

They discuss removing federal prohibitions on mari-hoochie…

Who’ll Stop The Pain

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As influenced by this opinion piece published this week in the New York Times by Nobel-winning economist, Paul Krugman:

Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve released the minutes of the most recent meeting of its open market committee — the group that sets interest rates. Most press reports focused either on the Fed’s downgrade of the near-term outlook or on its adoption of a long-run 2 percent inflation target.

But my eye was caught by the following chilling passage (yes, things are so bad that the summarized musings of central bankers can keep you up at night): “All participants anticipated that unemployment would remain substantially above its longer-run sustainable rate at the end of 2011, even absent further economic shocks; a few indicated that more than five to six years would be needed for the economy to converge to a longer-run path characterized by sustainable rates of output growth and unemployment and by an appropriate rate of inflation.”

So people at the Fed are troubled by the same question I’ve been obsessing on lately: What’s supposed to end this slump? No doubt this, too, shall pass — but how, and when? (Read on..)

Krugman ends with this:

You can see, then, why some Fed officials are so pessimistic.

Let’s be clear: the Obama administration’s policy initiatives will help in this difficult period — especially if the administration bites the bullet and takes over weak banks. But still I wonder: Who’ll stop the pain?

Here’s a song parody to accompany Krugman’s piece (cross-posted from Pick Wayne’s Brain):

Who’ll Stop The Pain
Original words and music, “Who’ll Stop The Rain” by John Fogerty
Additional lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider

Long before November
The pain been comin down.
Worst in history showin’
Recession all around.
Bad men through the markets
Tryin’ to chase a buck
And I wonder, still I wonder,
Who’ll stop the pain?

Douchebag of the year award: Fred Phelps

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It would be best, I suppose, if there was never any news about Fred Phelps and his coven of psychotic fundamentalists. It would be best if Fred and the Deeply Insane simply didn’t exist, and never had. In the meantime, it’s good to find a few pearls in the great big pile of dung that Fred Phelps represents.

For starters: Hey, Fred, the Brits don’t want you!

The British government has banned Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper from entering the United Kingdom.

The Phelpses, whose protests at military members’ funerals in the U.S. have prompted lawsuits and legislation, apparently had planned to fly to the United Kingdom to protest a performance of “The Laramie Project.”

The play about the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay student who was killed in 1998 in Laramie, Wyo., is scheduled to open today at Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke, Hampshire.

“Both these individuals have engaged in unacceptable behavior by inciting hatred against a number of communities,” a U.K. Border Agency spokesman told the Times Online, the online site of The Times of London. “The government has made it clear it opposes extremism in all its forms.”

The move follows a similar banning earlier this month of a Dutch government official for his anti-Muslim views. Geert Wilders was deported immediately after flying into Heathrow Airport.

Unfortunately, the British sent him back rather than put him on a plane to Baghdad, where the troops would have greeted him with open arms. . . with arms, anyway. Maybe more the kind you bear.

The thing is, of course, we don’t want him either. Not even kids.

Usually, we ignore stories about Westboro Bapstist minister Fred Phelps and his flock of fundie bigots. There’s something about a guy who claims that American soldiers are going to hell because the U.S. “supports” homosexuality that makes us think he’s not worthy of any attention, but when a group of 14 Westboro asshats decided to set-up shop outside the Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, over 450 students left school to let Phelp’s followers know that they don’t want any part of his hate.

(More photos at the link.)

Hail Atlantis! Saturday open thread

Spoilsports at Google say it’s a data anomaly. Surrrre it is. Like Plato made that stuff up, right? Ha!

Google is officially denying widespread Internet rumors that its Google Earth software located the mythical sunken city of Atlantis off the coast of Africa. Either that, or Google is totally trying to hide something. Since I always appreciate a nice juicy conspiracy theory, I’m going to go with the latter.

From what it sounds like, a British aeronautical engineer was playing around with the new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data, and noticed something funny off the coast of Africa, about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands, that resembled a pattern of a street grid. According to the United Kingdom’s Press Association, the pattern of streets equated to an area the size of Wales.

I think Google wants to get there first, and sneak off with all the magic devices and gold. That’s what I think.

What’s On The Menu

Turn the speakers off the audio is lame. Still whose cooking what this weekend? Squid here but I haven’t settled on the preparation just yet

By request…

For Houseofroberts and witch1…

Linda Ronstadt | Blue Bayou

Creedence Clearwater Revival | Lookin’ Out My Backdoor

And from “Canciones de mi padre“, here’s Linda Ronstadt again:

Meeeeeow!

Bringing rockabilly back in the early 80s

Antony and the Johnsons

I love Antony’s voice! And the song is almost, well, it’s almost up-beat.

A little Pink Floyd

Wish you were here

Time

And of course… Money!

Don’t miss the song parody of “Money” by Critter Wayne A. Schneider called “Cheney“!

I Prefer Strawberry Rhubarb

To view this video, go here.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis. H/T: The Daily Dish

By Jonathan Jarvis:

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jdjarvis.com.

Fascinating… I can honestly say that after watching this I have a better idea (at least SOME idea) of how all this works.. Or, as it turns out, DOESN’T work…

Troubled Bank…

Newly Poor Swell Lines at Food Banks

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News

War Criminals, Including Their Lawyers, Must Be Prosecuted

by Marjorie Cohn (Posted at TheZoo by permission)

Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA’s secret black sites will be closed down. But Obama is non-committal when asked whether he will seek investigation and prosecution of Bush officials who broke the law. “My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,” Obama said. “But,” he added, “generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” Obama fears that holding Team Bush to account will risk alienating Republicans whom he still seeks to win over.

Obama may be off the hook, at least with respect to investigating the lawyers who advised the White House on how to torture and get away with it. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has written a draft report that apparently excoriates former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the infamous torture memos, according to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff. OPR can report these lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline, or even refer them for criminal investigation. Obama doesn’t have to initiate investigations; the OPR has already launched them, on Bush’s watch.

The smoking gun that may incriminate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al., is the email traffic that passed between the lawyers and the White House. Isikoff revealed the existence of these emails on The Rachel Maddow Show. Some maintain that Bush officials are innocent because they relied in good faith on legal advice from their lawyers. But if the president and vice president told the lawyers to manipulate the law to allow them to commit torture, then that defense won’t fly.

Alan Keyes, Crazy or Craziest?

Apparently this guy is still grieving his lost senate race to President Obama. He has a video with a petition claiming that the President isn’t a natural born citizen. Right, because Hillary and Bill Clinton didn’t have enough legal expertise or connections to uncover this scandal. The GOP is going to persecute President Obama every step of the way just like they did Bill Clinton.

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The Troubled Swiss Banks

The news, that UBS The Swiss Bank is going to reveal customer data to the IRS was not only a blow to the Swiss banking sytem, but to Switzerland as a whole.  There was a move to make banking secrecy constitutional and thus part of the political make-up of the whole country. It was renounced but the privacy provisions of the constitution in article 13 are decidedly meant to apply to banking matters, of course.

Then there is the law. The banking secrecy law is handled very strictly. Christoph Meili, the whistleblower in the “dormant accounts”-affair had to seek political asylum in the US after uncovering that banks illegally shredded papers that may have helped finding the owners of orphaned accounts, that is to say the legal owners of the money within those accounts. The name of Christoph Meili sounds to a Swiss banker like “Lord Voldemort” to Ron Weasley.

What is the big deal? It’s data of some 300 customers and it’s only one bank right? Wrong.

First of all the oversight agency has decided to go forth and order the release of the data even though the persons affected by this decision have not yet exhausted their legal procedural opportunities. This signals, obviously, that Swiss banks need not obey Swiss law and, if the pressure is heavy, won’t act according to law. Forget trust.

Second, the banking system itself, is, in part, working on the premise that people who have money don’t want to share it by paying taxes. Like bootleggers got rich because there will always be a demand for booze, the Swiss banks cater to the demand for tax havens. They use the fact that in Switzerland Tax avoidance is a misdemeanor and not a crime and argue only actual tax fraud requires legal assistance to foreign countries. Well, yesterday the US announced that a couple of hundred customers’ data wasn’t their idea of collaboration and are now asking for the details of 52’000 US citizens who have undeclared Swiss bank acccounts. The European Union used the moment and demanded the same treatment for their requests and British PM Gordon Brown just declared war on all tax havens.

The Swiss are in panic mode now. While their banks claim to have all the experience and professionalism that comes with being a high ranking banking place, noone knows how many possibly toxic accounts they are still holding and if they are prepared to switch to on-shore banking only, on short notice. The advantage of being an off-shore destination is gone, they will have to compete with all the other banks on an equal footing now.

The Zurich based index SMI is calculated from a list of 20 blue-chip companies, 30% are part of the Financial Industry. SMI at 12:46 CET: 4’851.70 (-2.78%)

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