Yearly Archives: 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012

God Only Knows Accounting

Here’s the latest excuse from the Romneys on why they won’t release their taxes:

“Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”

Religion has always served as a convenient excuse for bad behavior that — ironically — usually goes against the teachings of the faith. How many times have people tried to get away with gay-bashing, supporting slavery, oppressing women, shooting up a shopping mall, or running for president because God told them to? Once is too many, and if there really was a god that lived up to his billing, he wouldn’t let charlatans and cowards get away with doing shady and rotten things in his name.

Briefly Noted

Via the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The Rev. Grant Storms, the former “Christian patriot” pastor whose marches against homosexuality at New Orleans’ Southern Decadence festival briefly put him in the national spotlight, was convicted of obscenity Wednesday, for exposing himself while masturbating at Lafreniere Park last year.

[…]

In his confession, Storms told Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Kevin Balser he had taken a break from his grass cutting business to sip a beer in the park, where he said he became “horny.” He said he put his hands into his underwear, but he never exposed himself.

What a jerk.

Tropical Storm Isaac

It looks like Isaac hasn’t gained much strength over the last couple of days, and it also has shifted again to the south and west. It will hit the south claw of Haiti, then track up Cuba, and emerge to cross the Keys and head for the Gulf. That’s where it could become a hurricane, and then head for Mobile, Alabama. As of now, it looks like Miami will be just outside of the cone of the track.

Today marks 20 years since Hurricane Andrew. In fact, it was just about this time of the day — early morning on August 24, 1992 — that it made landfall. I wasn’t here, but the house I’m living in was in the part of Miami-Dade County that got the full force of the storm. A lot of my friends have a lot of stories to share about that night and the days, weeks, and months that followed. Some places never recovered, and a lot of people who lost their homes moved away.

We here in South Florida joke and talk about hurricanes as if they are something to be dealt with as a part of the price we pay for living in a subtropical climate, along with the summer humidity and the bugs. But Andrew left a footprint that went far beyond the loss of life and property. There’s an edge to how people view the weather forecasts in the summer, and while we’ve had storms since like Katrina and Wilma that once again put us through the days and nights of darkness and destruction, there’s always the sense of foreboding — even for those of us who only know of the tales from the Andrew survivors — and everyone knows exactly where to look on the computer for the latest hurricane tracker map.

Talk To The Hand

The Romney campaign told Shaun Boyd, a reporter for a TV station in Denver, that she could not ask him certain questions.

“They said, you know, ‘the only stipulation is we don’t want you talking about the Akin issue,’” Boyd recalled. She also said the Romney staffer told her the campaign didn’t want questions for Romney about ‘the whole abortion controversy.’”

Boyd said she resisted.

“I said to them, ‘Look everybody’s talking about this. It’s going to seem awkward if I don’t ask about it,’” she said. “And they said, ‘Well he’s said all he’s going to say about it. He doesn’t have anything more to say, you won’t be getting any new information so we don’t want to talk about that.’”

“It was pretty clear: ‘Here’s our one stipulation,’” she recalled.

Okay, so Mitt Romney doesn’t want to talk about abortion and Todd Akin, Bain Capital, his tax returns, his investments, his term as governor of Massachusetts and his healthcare reform, immigration, marriage equality, or Seamus the Irish setter.

What does that leave us with? His vacation pictures from Europe?

Erin Go Rant

I think I’ve run this clip before, but it’s been going viral again, so why not?

It’s Irish President Michael D. Higgins going off on the Tea Party in a May 2010 interview with American talk-show host Michael Graham.


Does he even draw a breath?

HT to JMG.

Short Takes

France backs the Syrian no-fly zone.

Austin Tice, a U.S. freelance journalist, is missing in Syria.

General: The Taliban is involved in the “insider” killings in Afghanistan.

Mitt Romney trotted out his energy plan while campaigning in New Mexico.

Stocks fall when the Fed doesn’t come through with new stimulus ideas.

Tropical Update: Other than Isaac, there’s Tropical Storm Joyce out in the Atlantic, but it will stay away from the U.S. mainland.

It took eleven innings, but the Tigers beat the Blue Jays for the sweep.

Question of the Day

From the Faithful Correspondent:

Julian Assange: Is he a hero of a free press without which a democracy can’t survive? Or is he a grandstander who has betrayed the appointed representatives of the people in service to the diplomatic corps by publishing private correspondence both to the wider public and the world?

God Only Knows Accounting

Here’s the latest excuse from the Romneys on why they won’t release their taxes:

“Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”

Religion has always served as a convenient excuse for bad behavior that — ironically — usually goes against the teachings of the faith. How many times have people tried to get away with gay-bashing, supporting slavery, oppressing women, shooting up a shopping mall, or running for president because God told them to? Once is too many, and if there really was a god that lived up to his billing, he wouldn’t let charlatans and cowards get away with doing shady and rotten things in his name.

Briefly Noted

Via the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The Rev. Grant Storms, the former “Christian patriot” pastor whose marches against homosexuality at New Orleans’ Southern Decadence festival briefly put him in the national spotlight, was convicted of obscenity Wednesday, for exposing himself while masturbating at Lafreniere Park last year.

[…]

In his confession, Storms told Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Kevin Balser he had taken a break from his grass cutting business to sip a beer in the park, where he said he became “horny.” He said he put his hands into his underwear, but he never exposed himself.

What a jerk.

Tropical Storm Isaac

It looks like Isaac hasn’t gained much strength over the last couple of days, and it also has shifted again to the south and west. It will hit the south claw of Haiti, then track up Cuba, and emerge to cross the Keys and head for the Gulf. That’s where it could become a hurricane, and then head for Mobile, Alabama. As of now, it looks like Miami will be just outside of the cone of the track.

Today marks 20 years since Hurricane Andrew. In fact, it was just about this time of the day — early morning on August 24, 1992 — that it made landfall. I wasn’t here, but the house I’m living in was in the part of Miami-Dade County that got the full force of the storm. A lot of my friends have a lot of stories to share about that night and the days, weeks, and months that followed. Some places never recovered, and a lot of people who lost their homes moved away.

We here in South Florida joke and talk about hurricanes as if they are something to be dealt with as a part of the price we pay for living in a subtropical climate, along with the summer humidity and the bugs. But Andrew left a footprint that went far beyond the loss of life and property. There’s an edge to how people view the weather forecasts in the summer, and while we’ve had storms since like Katrina and Wilma that once again put us through the days and nights of darkness and destruction, there’s always the sense of foreboding — even for those of us who only know of the tales from the Andrew survivors — and everyone knows exactly where to look on the computer for the latest hurricane tracker map.

Talk To The Hand

The Romney campaign told Shaun Boyd, a reporter for a TV station in Denver, that she could not ask him certain questions.

“They said, you know, ‘the only stipulation is we don’t want you talking about the Akin issue,’” Boyd recalled. She also said the Romney staffer told her the campaign didn’t want questions for Romney about ‘the whole abortion controversy.’”

Boyd said she resisted.

“I said to them, ‘Look everybody’s talking about this. It’s going to seem awkward if I don’t ask about it,’” she said. “And they said, ‘Well he’s said all he’s going to say about it. He doesn’t have anything more to say, you won’t be getting any new information so we don’t want to talk about that.’”

“It was pretty clear: ‘Here’s our one stipulation,’” she recalled.

Okay, so Mitt Romney doesn’t want to talk about abortion and Todd Akin, Bain Capital, his tax returns, his investments, his term as governor of Massachusetts and his healthcare reform, immigration, marriage equality, or Seamus the Irish setter.

What does that leave us with? His vacation pictures from Europe?

Erin Go Rant

I think I’ve run this clip before, but it’s been going viral again, so why not?

It’s Irish President Michael D. Higgins going off on the Tea Party in a May 2010 interview with American talk-show host Michael Graham.


Does he even draw a breath?

HT to JMG.

Short Takes

France backs the Syrian no-fly zone.

Austin Tice, a U.S. freelance journalist, is missing in Syria.

General: The Taliban is involved in the “insider” killings in Afghanistan.

Mitt Romney trotted out his energy plan while campaigning in New Mexico.

Stocks fall when the Fed doesn’t come through with new stimulus ideas.

Tropical Update: Other than Isaac, there’s Tropical Storm Joyce out in the Atlantic, but it will stay away from the U.S. mainland.

It took eleven innings, but the Tigers beat the Blue Jays for the sweep.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Little Night Music

Claude Debussy would have been 150 years old yesterday. And since there’s a tropical storm heading towards Florida, what better way to mark the occasion.

Tropical Storm Isaac

Isaac’s projected path has shifted to the south, meaning that it will probably shift to the west so by the time it gets to Florida the core might miss the land entirely. (Maybe it just doesn’t want to mingle with the Republicans in Tampa.)

A Little Night Music

Claude Debussy would have been 150 years old yesterday. And since there’s a tropical storm heading towards Florida, what better way to mark the occasion.