Daily Archives: December 22, 2011

10 posts

Financial Blogger to Jamie Dimon – ‘What We Hate are the Predators’

How does an oligarch spend his time prior to the holidays? Buying out entire floors of FAO Schwartz? Flying in a plane full of hookers and coke?

Well, if the oligarch in question is JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon, you complain to anyone who listens that the mean folks whose economy you helped crash and homes you foreclosed while pocketing $23M in 2010 are being mean to you.  Continue reading

Same Sex Couple Kisses at Navy Homecoming, World Does Not End

US Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta greets her girlfriend, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell in a traditional Navy homecoming.

I can be kind of a cynical person, and sometimes I see things–like the idea of “President Gingrich“–that make me think the future is just doomed. Then things happen that make me think, hey, the future might be OK. Like when we elected that black guy President.  Or when people realized that the Newt Gingrich running for president was THAT Newt Gingrich, the disgusting space-pig that resigned in disgrace back in the Nineties, and not some other guy with that same perfectly common name. But nothing recently has made me think, maybe things have changed–for a little bit, at least–for the better quite like this picture of a traditional Navy homecoming at a pier in Virginia Beach. Continue reading

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Historically, when a female character takes on the role of hero–especially that of action hero–her motivation is singularly feminine: to protect her young. Whether it’s Ellen Ripley shouting, “Get away from her you bitch!” to divert an alien’s attention from her surrogate daughter or Beatrix Kiddo embarking on a bloody revenge odyssey to punish those who robbed her of her unborn child, women are generally only allowed to take on a traditionally masculine role when there’s a feminine motivation to offset it. Continue reading

Republican Congressman Sensenbrenner Overheard Talking about Michelle Obama’s “Large Posterior”

Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, has drawn some attention to himself after FishbowlDC reported an overheard phone conversation at Reagan International Airport.

A “Democratic operative” reportedly heard the “very loud” conversation between Sensenbrenner and someone on his staff about comments that the representative had made at a church event three weeks ago. After a woman at the event praised the first lady in conversation with him, Sensenbrenner told the staff member that he responded that Michelle Obama “lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.” Continue reading

Corruption in Chinese Soccer and Beyond

On Monday 19 December 2011, China commenced the trials of about 60 players, referees and officials over allegations of corruption and match-fixing, after a crackdown that began in January 2010 (see above video). Besides match-fixing for gambling syndicates linked (inevitably) with organised crime in East Asia, the trials cover more petty forms of corruption such as the sale of positions in the Chinese men’s national soccer team, which has gone from qualifying for the World Cup in 2002 and making the final of the Asian Cup in 2004 to not qualifying for any World Cup since then. To put this in perspective, North Korea qualified last time and China did not. Continue reading