Fighting Off Depression

PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 4, 2009

Yeah, I know, I never link to Krugman. This one scares the bejeezus out of me. It's a good thing I had a good day and saw my kid.

The whole world is watching

The propaganda war continues also.

Iran says 70,000 volunteer for Israel fight
January 5, 2009 02:04 PM EST

Hamas rockets rain on Israeli towns
Only three civilian fatalities to date, but a climate of fear pervades Israel's southern communities.
By Joshua Mitnick Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the January 7, 2009 edition

To Rid Slums of Drug Gangs, Police in Rio Try War Tactics
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 6, 2009; A08


How. Can. I. Not. Laugh?

Or, maybe I'm laughing at last night's Daily Show


hat tip to Jersey Cynic

The Cost of SLAPPing Down Journalism

Alan Rusbridger, who edits the British Guardian, thinks fear of libel lawsuits from big corporations may have contributed to journalists' failure to adequately report on the dangerous economic decisions that led to the recent implosion of the global financial system. In an article for the New York Review of Books, he recounts his own paper's "most recent serious brush with the British defamation laws" earlier this year when it was sued for libel by Tesco, one of the largest public companies in Britain and the fourth-largest retailer in the world.

Hmmmm. It's nice that someone is on the ball with this and reporting this. I wish it didn't feel so eh feh, ho hum, they dragged us into a war didn't they? Why should we believe anything (including the sale price advertisements) that we read in the papers anymore?

Frankly, the only reason the four major papers are on my blogroll is that the Prof wanted us to read them regularly in a class I took a sememster ago. Unless I go back and re-do the blogger blogroll, I can't get anything off of my blogroll. I can add, but not subtract. Blogrolling is still screwed up from the Islamist dickhead who hacked it.

sitemeter sez

today's popular post is DIME weapon.

They using that shit in Gaza again? Somehow I doubt it, but people are looking for information on it. These hits ain't coming from Gaza either, they're coming from large European cities.

50 facts about 9/11

I got nothing today. The headline looked amusing. I wish I could take naps, this cold is really getting boring.


Oh, looks like I found something.


By Aaron Glantz, New America Media. Posted January 3, 2009.
Did You Know 200,000 Vets Are Sleeping on the Streets?

What a silly question. It doesn't freeze in San Diego in the winter. Here's last year's "One Day Homeless Count" from last January. According to it 17% of 7,582 were vets. That's a minimum estimate and doesn't count at least another thousand migrant workers in a county of 3 million.

Violent returning GI's is a surprise?

A Focus on Violence by Returning G.I.’s
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and DAN FROSCH
Published: January 1, 2009
FORT CARSON, Colo. —


This is a surprise?

Good God, all the time I used public transportation I warily eyed vets who'd lost their damn minds. They were usually easy to spot because they wore fatigues, which are really cheap in the thrift stores here. The war never left them alone. Their country didn't help them, the military culture forbids it. Oh, no fucking way, no head case shit in the service jacket. My counselor treats PTSD. I have it. There should be no way I can get an appointment, but I do, it's easy because the guys never get treated, unless you consider "drunk" a form of "treatment." Their girlfriends and wives end up in treatment a LOT, not to mention the fucking emergency rooms, or Mary Kay parties to learn how to cover the bruises. I didn't hang around long enough to learn how to use make-up to cover bruises, the only time I ever got the living shit beat out of me by a boyfriend he was ex-Army. Demolition to be exact.

What, now that most of the homeless whacked out Vietnam Vets are dead or dying, we need a whole new crop?

*sigh*

Someday maybe what our government does will make sense, but it sure isn't there yet.

Got tuh git er done quick-like, before the new sheriff comes to town

End of the Year Brings A Burst of Settlements With Justice Department

Justice's Matthew Friedrich announces Siemens's guilty plea to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The German company recently agreed to pay $450 million in fines. (By Chip Somodevilla -- Getty Images)

The Justice Department has reached more than a dozen business-related settlements since the presidential election, with more in the pipeline for January, prompting lawyers and interest groups to assert that companies are seeking more favorable terms before the new administration arrives.

happy New Year

yeah like that there. I think somebody is shooting in my neighborhood, totally illegal, I'm in the suburbs.