North Korea shot dozens of rounds of artillery onto a populated South Korean island near their disputed western border today, military officials said, setting buildings on fire and prompting South Korea to return fire and scramble fighter jets. (read more)
It is more or less business as usual up to now, WW3 is not yet around the corner. The trouble seems obvious: The US are backing the South, China is backing the North and both China and the US are economically far too interdependent to really make a move there. I don’t believe for a minute there is real danger from the alleged NK nuke program. But we all know the Koreans in the North are suffering badly under whichever Kim is currently munching popcorn and watching porn as their beloved “leader”. Again, for the sake of economic interests millions are suffering.
(You can tell I’m seething, can’t you?)
The second bit of not so new, but new to me news that got my goat this morning was Murdoch’s plans to get out a cheap iPAD newspaper:
Rupert Murdoch is a professed believer in the healing power of the iPad. “We’ll have young people reading newspapers,” Rupert Murdoch said during a recent earnings call. “It’s a real game changer in the presentation of news.” The paper will be available only as paid content, at an as yet undetermined price. ( source: Newser)
Now the deal is all but fixed. The publication will be called “The Daily” and cost 99¢ per week. I consider shelving my decision to buy an iPAD indefinitely. But, honestly, why are progressive media always coming in second when it comes to get out the message? We all know the manipulative ways of Murdoch “news”-media, why hand the field to him? I do think progressive media are far too complacent and too busy feeling superior to the great unwashed. This brand of intellectual arrogance has caused trouble before.
This is our Open Thread. Feel free to comment on this, or anything else that’s on your mind.
TheZoo 
Sorry, I totally forgot about the really important news: Justin Bieber is entertainer of the year.
Someone please shoot me.
Hi EV – So Murdoch thinks that young people are going to read the newspaper if it is on the IPad. My guess, the only readers that Murdoch will attract are the same ones that watch his Fox Opinion and Propaganda Network or people that read his supermarket tabloids. “The Daily” will probably be something like USA Today. Nothing but short clips that don’t amount to much information. Then again, all of Murdoch’s propaganda tools provide very little information.
The exchange of fire between North and South Korea is of some concern and needs watching. The boy Bush decided that invading Iraq was important and he totally ignored North Korea. What an idiot.
Justin Bieber is entertainer of the year.
Wait until the Palindrones vote Bristol the Pistol as winner on DWTS.
Will Murdoch’s iPad “newspaper” feature a “Two Minutes Hate”?
Textspeak masquerade
Daily goodthoughts shinybright
Pocketcommander
As far as I’m concerned, the Murdoch thing is yet another argument in favor of the Kindle.
Justin’s fans don’t know
Wire-monkey skill set becomes
Carpet-monkey fame
Will Murdoch’s iPad “newspaper” feature a “Two Minutes Hate”?
More like a 24/7 Hate.
Who is Justin Bieber? Rhetorical in nature as I really don’t need to know.
————
Please, we all know that the N/S Korea is all Obama’s fault – look he went to Indiana after being briefed. You are aware the President can not do more than one thing at a time, aren’t you?
Well, at least that’s what Murdoch’s minions would have us believe.
My question is (which is actually multi faceted): How do we get credible reporting back into the mainstream?
Is it possible? Or, have we as a nation that has become fixated on “Reality TV” unable or unwilling to actually deal with real news?
I’m sorry but I don’t view the North Korea action as an issue that pertains to us unless the war profiteers see it as an opportunity poke their noses into a new market.
I hate to use The Caribou Barbie Show as an example but I have to honestly ask: How in the hell did that ever get to TV?
I guess people really are dumb panicky animals.
The Daily Show addresses issues that no one else will touch. They do it under the guise of comedic satire which, makes it even more biting.
I still maintain that as long as people have realitivly cheap gas for their humvees and fast food they will never be outraged enough to seek out the real issues.
vinyl, totally with you there. We are too f’g comfortable and the me, me attitude won’t change unless and until that is shaken up – $6/gallon gas ought to do that, oughtn’t it? Or it should.
$6 per gallon gas would be blamed on Obama, just like the current fiscal crisis.
The state our economy is in right now $4 a gallon gas would cripple us.
I’m not sure it would cripple us but it would leave a dent.
But part of the problem is who’s profiting if it becomes $4 or $6?
If we were to raise the gas tax by about $2/gallon (not necessarily right now, abut at some point), it would do several things:
1) It would lower demand
2) It would provide additional revenue for the government
3) It would reduce the amount of wealth we send to other countries
It’s the old adage, we have to pay ourselves first. But the way gas prices work, we pay the oil company profits, and the oil producing countries (some of whom aren’t all that friendly to us).
hooda, gas in the Bay Area is nearing $3.50/gallon. Then again we’re always higher because of our anti-pollution blends.
zxbe, we’ve ‘played both sides to the middle’ so many times. (Iran-Contra comes to mind).
Indirectly overthrowing regimes that we assisted, monetarily, to install…
Where are my manners:
Hello! EV! How’s employment working out?
With the extension of UE benefits dying and heading into both the holiday and winter heating season, many Americans are going to feel the bite at $3/gal. Push it up another buck and it really starts to impact the transportation businesses. The summer of 08 was along those lines without the increased unemployment or winter heating.
It would leave a helluva mark.
House, this little fellow seems to be looking for your address.
[“This is a rare bird here: Lake Guntersville in NE Alabama.”]
2ebb,
If he’s in Guntersville, he missed me by forty miles to my southeast.
house, the Bunting seems to be in need of a new GPS – maybe he can head west…
I’ve never laid eyes on a Snow Bunting.
Now if this is the way to instill confidence the TSA is doing a ‘bang up’ job on security.
I’d feel ‘safe’ if the sky marshal actually had the weapon/ammunition on its hip.
Hmmm…wonder if North Korea knows Republicans are ascending to power and have vowed to do whatever it takes to destroy…
the President of the United States: holding endless investigations into anything and everything; shutting down the federal government through lack of funding; and generally obstructing everything the President wants to/needs to do.
2ebb, thanks for asking. It is a godsend. It should have happened much earlier. Nice people, interesting things to do. Just not as much time for the Zoo 😦 (which isn’t work’s fault but mine, I have procrastinated like a pro before the job offer came in and now I pay the price.)
EV, glad to hear things are working out with the job. Now if we can just spread some of that luck to the rest of the Zoosters currently seeking employment.
$6? Not enough. When its between drive your Hummer, feed your kids of heat your house…
I can’t stand Babs, poisonous dam of wastrels and parasites, but here ‘I hope she stays in Alaska’ comment sticks.
I do think Palin is going to run, but she’s only doing it for narcissism and for the $s
At $6 per gallon, it would cost about $1000 to drive a Hummer one way to Miami from NYC. The return trip would be about the same and that excludes overnight accommodations and meals.
Taking Amtrak would be $277 each way. Airfare starts at $320 round trip.
I’d like to see gasoline prices indexed, kinda like taxes, but where they hit the rich dudes REAL HARD! Like in, say, $25 bucks per gallon for my cousin (who inherited a million or two) and $0.25 for me (who didn’t, who gets by on S.S.). Fair’s fair, right?
High gas prices hurts commuters that don’t live near public transportation. Without good train connections, people are stuck in their cars. When I was working, I had to drive and because of where I live and where I worked, there wasn’t anyone near me that I could ride share with. So what do the Republicans want to do about funding more public transportation? Nothing. I’m afraid things are going to get worse before they get better. Communal living is beginning to sound appealing.
frugal, I still have a hard time understanding how 2 aspects of American life and economy critical to its continued existence, health care and fuel, are controlled by private companies making exorbitant profits. There are several others but those two really stick in my craw.
“I’m sorry, you can’t heat your home unless someone is making a ridiculous profit.”
OIMF’s second amendment Hummer revision…if you really need to drive around in an overpriced quasi military vehicle you are required to be prepared to respond to natural disasters and the odd terrorist attack. Carry a first aide kit, several gallons of purified water, a spare tire, and a case of MREs.
Oh, and quit parking in the handicapped spaces at the post office. You bought the foolish thing, it’s not our fault you can’t steer it into a normal parking space.
Geez, Outstanding, now I have this vision of some Republican yuppie responding to a natural disaster by calling their broker to see what impact it is having on their investments. While wearing a hardhat with a blinking blue light on it. With a tub of HandiWipes to keep the mud off their Gucchis.
It’s not just Hummers. I was in a grocery store parking lot late yesterday, in a freezing downpour, just trying to get my groceries to my car. Some idiot in a huge SUV was trying to get out of a parking space and out of the lot and kept stopping and starting, moving a few feet at a time–like a 14 y.o. struggling with a stick shift.
If you do not know how to drive a vehicle that big, don’t buy one!
Sorry about the republican visual, though seriously, why do they buy them? Because around here it’s mostly women driving their kids to school. You can do that in a Tercel.
My boss explained that one to me, Outstanding. He said he needed an Urban Assault Vehicle because he sometimes has to take his kids to soccer and volleyball games. I guess minivans just aren’t manly enuf.
“Because around here it’s mostly women driving their kids to school. You can do that in a Tercel.”
You can do that with a Vespa with a milk crate on the back for the books. It is all about conspicuous consumption (thank you — or not — Thorsten Veblen.)
Hooda, I concur completely. Energy profits would be more reasonably invested in research to make energy more efficient, less environmentally invasive, and less expensive. That sorta means I’m not a big fan of the energy-for-profit industries. I remember in Arizona when the big electric utility, Arizona Public Service, decided to build a nuke plant. Within, say, three or four years, electricity costs about tripled, and then they went up from there.
On the Hummer: funniest thing I EVER saw was the night a massive rainstorm fell on the watershed north of the Phoenix area. A Hummer, full of dumb shits, tried to cross Cave Creek Wash on one of the many roads without a bridge (drove around the ‘road closed’ signs). The Hummer got swallowed up in the torrents, and a helicopter had to be called in to rescue the passengers. It was later noted that the driver — a youngish twenty-something apparently spoiled brat — figured that since he was driving a Hummer, nothing could go wrong. I believe he was also charged for and had to pay the rescue costs.
I smiled.
Yeah, the attitude seems to be that because it is big — BIG — physics no longer matters. Of course, you can be driving something as big as a freight train, but if your exhaust pipe is only 6″ off the ground, that is how deep the water can be that you can drive through.
I remember being flooded from access to my apartment by the Merrimack river (I was living in N. Andover, working at Merrimack College). Other people had gotten through the water on the road, but I was driving a LeBaron. I literally thought the words to myself: “Gary, you just don’t have to be that stupid today.”
I went up and parked in the nearby strip-mall lot, and waited for the Sheriff’s truck to ferry me and the other folks up the hill to my apartment,.
frugal, I have often wondered where America would be today if back in the 60’s we had passed a law that capped profits at 15%. Anything a company could make past that had to be reinvested.
I have nothing against a reasonable profit. I have a whole lot of animosity for, however, UNreasonable profits. See Exxon, et al., the last number of years. Tens of billions of profit simply because the price at the pump was way too high. That’s wrong. Plus, they didn’t do anything useful with the profit, only tried to weasel out of paying any taxes on it.
I’d support legislation to demand either reinvestment in the future, or lowering the cost of the commodity sufficient to reduce profits to 15%.
Yup. If I got a 15% raise every year I’d be a happy camper.
I wonder what gas prices at the pump would be if oil companies were held to 15% profit? And where would the rest of our economy be if they weren’t sucking up all the gravy?
Don’t you think it a bit odd – with that major f-up disaster in the Gulf that BP and/or other oil cos. didn’t raise the price of gasoline to ‘cover costs of clean-up’?
There’s something ‘behind the scenes’ garbage going on. It used to be that if the weather sneezed gas prices would go up… there was always some lame excuse to raise the price.
Then after GoM – gas prices have remained fairly even – just recently beginning to rise.
ebb, I think the oil companies learned that there is a limit to their greed and stupidity in the summer of 08.
I thought the driver of gas prices in 2008 was the Wall Street speculation bubble on crude oil. The oil companies took that price, added on for refining and transportation, which resulted in $4+ a gallon for gas. The speculators were betting on record demand that collapsed in the worldwide recession as Wall Street panicked in September 2008.
Gas prices didn’t go up during the Gulf disaster because production wells weren’t affected, and only BP lost money on the cleanup. Shell, Conoco, Exxon-Mobil, and Texaco-Chevron weren’t included in the losses.
What is really peculiar is the amount of Texaco gas stations turning into BP gas stations virtually overnight down here in the south.
BP doesn’t have the money to pay out claims to people who’s livlihood has been stripped away but they can always afford another takeover.
Hmmmm
House, that’s just it – it used to be all for one and one for all: you raise your price, we’ll raise ours. They never really needed a verifiable reason.
2ebb, they still can’t raise the price much because of weak demand. The speculators have it just over $80 a barrel, while it remained in the low $70s all summer. Even people who don’t need gas to drive to work need heating oil in winter, so oil rises as winter approaches. We’d have $4 a gallon gas if we didn’t have so many people out of work.
Over to the really important news – how’s Bristol doing?
I’m going to bid you folks a brief ‘bye, and a long Happy Holidays! I’ll be on the road starting tomorrow morning, and such online time as I have will be devoted to my online class (where all the students will be ignoring their class work because of turkey day).
Y’all be well, and I hope you’re able to enjoy your time with the people you want to enjoy your time with!
Just breaking – Bristol finished third.
Where’s Muttley?
“Y’all be well, and I hope you’re able to enjoy your time with the people you want to enjoy your time with!”
And you as well, Gary. Safe journey west.
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House, yes, you are correct – I see now..
Enjoy your holiday Gary.
I am so happy that I no longer need heating oil this winter, having installed a geothermal system this year. That 30% tax credit really helped and I reckon I helped keep the installers employed, works for everybody.
OIMF,
Aren’t you worried about global cooling? 😉
If you have the time, inclination or just feel the need to be —-
go to TP Gop opt out of healthcare and flag
“wrstnytmare”
who is none other than the fake ‘dr’ motormouth. Did you notice the cute way to spell out ‘your worst nightmare’?
I don’t even bother reading – just flagging just because I can!
Yeah ebb, I’ve been flagging for the same reason. I wonder if nondoc has a hummer with the license plate “wrstnytmare”? To be fair, a world populated by selfish self-centered arrogant a-holes who contribute nothing to the common good is sort of my worst nightmare, so he may have earned the moniker.
Outstanding,
Unfortunately we may well be on the way to that nightmare – what with the repugnant gop elbowing in to take over the government. (shudder)
We will be there to stem the tide –
OIMF and ebb,
The two fuck-ups on TP have more time than I do. I need my beauty rest. Good-night all.
Outstanding – you have me literally in stitches – and I’ve scared the cat from sustained, out loud, laughing. He’s gone ‘undercover’ – and he’s never, every done that!