Merry, blessed Beltane to all Pagans. Happy May Day to all. Is the great flood over yet? It is still pouring over here at Howler Acres. Lots of water on the ground, standing water….shudder! Just so Bull Run doesn’t creep up here.
Beltane falls between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. In ancient days, it was cause for great celebration and often celebrated as a rite of spring time and fertility. Couples and farm animals jumped the Beltane fires and ran off for an evening of merrymaking and lust, like all good spring rituals.
Do you have special plans for this evening? [raised eyebrow, inquiring look]
Kick back and enjoy Barbara Allen, an old folk tune, performed by Art Garfunkel.
Rachel Maddow had a great program last night about
the botched execution in Oklahoma. I find it hard to understand
the we, in 2014, are trying to find “cocktails” that cause
immidiate death. BBC also mentioned the case. Europe is astounded by USA
and the death penalty / as am I!
What’s wrong with the guillotine? No doubt about instant death there.
And, it ought to happen in daylight and in a public square rather than
hidden away in a dark chamber.
I don’t have a problem zapping some criminals. I used to when I was first out of college. No more. I do have a problem if there isn’t evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt, like DNA proof, etc.
I am still wondering about the dogs and cats question. Have we been lied to and they really do suffer?
I don’t even care if some of these people suffer. I just don’t think the state should inflict the suffering.
There are some real dirty dogs out there and if society says that people who do certain things simply can’t live, for now, I am ok with it.
One issue is that the Pharma’s refuse to sell drugs to Corrections if the intent is to use them for the death penalty – requiring the Corrections to go to other drugs and pharmacists to mix up a cocktail.
Virginia Extends In-State Tuition to DREAM Act Students
Students typically came to the country as children, graduated from Va. schools
By Kristin Wright | Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 | Updated 1:54 PM EDT
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Mark-Herring-Press-Conference-257162081.html
This is good.
@Starryflights
Yes, it is a good thing.
I will read it when I have time. Making soup for Elena now.
@Starryflights
This is NOT good. The attorney general does not have the power to arbitrarily change the interpretation of residency. Somebody needs to sue him for misuse of power. The DREAM Act was not passed by the General Assembly and signed into law. The failure of the governor and attorney general to get their way does not entitle them to skirt the democratic process.
Talk about skirting the democratic process–denying kids who have graduated from a Virginia high school the right to go to college as an in-state student without recourse is about as undemocratic as you can get.
If you live here, that pretty much determines residency unless you are playing with weasel words.
I am glad to see Herring showing this initiative. Cuccinelli certainly had no problem using his elephant nads to waste our money. Let’s go for an AG who tries to help people rather than knock people back down a peg or two.
In the immortal words of HAL, “would you like to play a game?”
I would … who is the attorney general in question in the paragraph below?
The attorney general has refused to defend laws he deems unconstitutional. One of his spokesmen stated, “If the attorney general’s analysis shows that a law is unconstitutional, he has a legal obligation to not defend it.” He also said in a debate, “I will not defend what I, in my judgment, deem to be an unconstitutional law.” “If I determine it not to be constitutional,” he explained then, “I will not defend it. My first obligation is to the Constitution and the people of Virginia.”
Answer: Ken Cuccinelli.
Why is this important? Because just maybe ideology and value-laden statements should be set aside long enough to know why an elected official did/said/didn’t do something first. Politics aren’t sports; you don’t have to root for an individual (or against) because he/she is (or is not) “on your team”.
Excellent find, Confused!
U.S. economy adds 288,000 jobs in April; jobless rate falls to 6.3 percent
By Ylan Q. Mui, Published: FRIDAY, MAY 02, 8:53 AM ET
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/02/u-s-economy-adds-288000-jobs-in-april-jobless-rate-falls-to-6-3-percent/
More good news. Despite all the repugs efforts to wreck the economy, it is still strong
It would have probably worked sooner if certain jobs bills had passed the House.
Thanks for that positive report, Starry.
Confused,
HAL never said “would you like to play a game?” That was the W.O.P.R. from Wargames.
HAL was the creepy voiced computer from 2001. “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” And that chilling scene where he’s disconnecting HAL and it becomes almost child-like in its attempts to stay alive/on-line.
Both good movies, but 2001 is hard to follow if you didn’t read the book or aren’t stoned.
Furby, are you a clone of Rick?
Furby – yes, my mistake.
I’m pretty sure Rick and I are far from clones. I’m just an SF fan.
Wargames holds up pretty well today, but more as a period piece movie now. Kind of like the FX show The Americans. The computer tech is outdated but realistic for the time period. (Other than the semi-AI W.O.P.R.) It’s even one of the rare movies to show hacking realistically.
There were a lot of good SF movies in the early 80s. Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Wrath of Kahn, Terminator, ET (I didn’t like it but it was very popular) plus a bunch more. It even had Raiders, but that’s not really an SF movie.
@Moon-howler
Nobody forced the parents to cross the border illegally and bring their kids. What is undemocratic is forcing tax payers to subsidize the costs related to illegal immigration. The failure of non-citizens to consider the impact on their kids should not be the problem of tax payers.
They might be saying that about Syrians also.
Actually your argument has nothing to do with the Dream Act and shows mean-spiritedness. Those kids lived in a home that paid local taxes. The kids went to school, graduated, and did what they were supposed to do. Now you want to keep them out of college on a technicality?
You can’t even blame the kids. They were brought by their parents. No one is asking you to subsdize them. Their parents and in most cases the students themselves pay into the tax system, same as the rest of us.
There is a cure. Let’s give all those kids a status adjustment. Problem solved. Let them become legal residents. Then no one will have anything to bitch about.
@Starry flights
The 288K jobs added is a measly number compared to the 800K that dropped out of the labor force. The much smaller number in the denominator of the labor rate is the reason that unemployment “plunged.” It is really a dismal report that is disguised by the apparent drop in unemployed people ACTIVELY seeking jobs.
Of course, one has to read several paragraphs of the article linked by Starry to figure out that the overall employment rate continues to decline under Obama. I am sure that the ACA has nothing to do with this however.
Lowest level of US workforce participation since 1978. GDP growth of 0.1% in first quarter of 2014 . Not just the weather. Exports dropped; inventories climbed at a slower pace; non-residential fixed investment dropped; downturn in state and local government spending not offset by increased federal spending. Economy is still crawling slowly.
Blame Obama! It started the day he took office and will be over the day he leaves office.
Economic facts are what they are.
So what are you trying to say? I think maybe we need to examine what we are calling a fact.
@Starry flights
US adds 800,000 MORE people to the unemployed. Jobless rate somehow drops to 6.3. UNEXPECTEDLY.
92+million unemployed….but the gov’t trying to blow smoke up you know where with faulty a job rate.
Examine away.
@Wolve
Yet….we recovered in the summer of 2009…because Obama was focused on Jobs! Like. A. Freaking. Laser.
@Moon-howler
Everything he said was a fact coming from government economic reports.
What on earth will you do when he is out of office?
🙄
Then there was that jobs bill that never made it through the house. ….more crickets
Also a 1st quarter deceleration in personal consumption expenditures (PCE).
Compare us to Europe. What do you see?
crickets…….
If there are truly 92+ million unemployed, then why isn’t the unemployment rate 29%? Why is it that if you encounter the random working-age person on the street, one in three of them is not unemployed? Because your numbers are fantasy. 92+ million unemployed in the US would be catastrophic: our economy would seize and we would go into deep depression and economic contraction. Your numbers are crap.
Because the unemployment rate is measured only by those seeking unemployment benefits.
The rate drops either by people getting jobs or by not seeking unemployment benefits.
@Confused
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/05/02/report-more-than-92-million-americans-remain-out-of-labor-force/
Tell that to CBS.
“The amount (not seasonally adjusted) of Americans not in the labor force in April rose to 92,594,000, almost 1 million more than the previous month. In March, 91,630,000 Americans were not in the labor force, which includes an aging population that is continuing to head into retirement.”
@Moon-howler
Why crickets?
Takes a while to compare to Europe.
Also…which part of Europe?
“Not in the labor force” – this means that they are not a part of the employment/unemployment equation. Your argument is invalid. @Cargosquid
@Confused
this means that they are not a part of the employment/unemployment equation.
If they are not employed…they are unemployed.
And its not only my argument. I mean…don’t you believe the media?
The number is rising so quickly because so many have dropped out looking for work.
Either way…there are 92 million+ Americans NOT working. Out of 227 million adults in the country.
@Confused
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-02/one-million-people-dropped-out-labor-force-april-participation-rate-plummets-lowest-
This tells you what is happening.
We lost 1 million. We gained, according to the White House, roughly 200,000 jobs.
But then, the White House has been known to…….be inaccurate.
As have bloggers, especially those who want to promote their own political views.
@Moon-howler
The US has always had a more vibrant economy than most of Europe. The more apt comparison is with China, whose economy just overtook the US economy as the world’s largest for the first time ever under Obama’s watch. Just a crazy idea here but maybe Obama should consider approving the Keystone pipeline.
Don’t care about the European stats. I am worried about a sputtering American economy, which was nearly in the GDP horse latitudes last quarter, if you recall the term. When you have so many “new” jobs actually being part-time jobs, the economy is not exactly booming.
Examining the stats to refute?……………. crickets.
Even Meteor Blades, the economic analyst at Daily Kos Labor, calls the massive April drop of 806,000 people from the civilian labor force a “cloud” over the 288,000 jobs added and the fall to a 6.3% unemployment rate.
Meteor Blades also noted that the labor participation rate has returned to its lowest level in 37 years (1977-1978).
A new court challenge to Obamacare is set to be argued this week. None of us conservatives have forgotten that Justice Roberts saved Obamacare by creatively interpreting the individual mandate as a tax. However, that interpretation may cause the ACA to run afoul of the origination clause, which holds that revenue bills must be passed first by the House. The Senate completely changed both the name and the content of the original House Bill from which the ACA derived.
It will be interesting to see if the DC Court of Appeals judges that the ACA, which was first passed in the House as a tax credit for the Armed Forces, satisfies the origination clause. My guess is that the Court will find a way to say that the Origination Clause does not apply in this case.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-next-affordable-care-act-challenge/2014/05/02/c0150da8-d159-11e3-a6b1-45c4dffb85a6_story.html
The government has been calculating the unemployment rate consistently for decades, long before Obama took over. So all of a sudden the calculation methodology is challenged when the black guy takes over? Please.
Well, it does certainly appear that they were calculating the labor participation rate back in 1977-1978. Otherwise, how would anyone be able to compare it with 2014? 1977-1978 was the Carter economy. Try again.
What does “black” have to do with it?
@Starryflights
The point is that the employment rate drops when people stop seeking unemployment.
A) when the get jobs.
B) when they drop out of the labor force.
The current system is B. You cannot take the unemployment rate in isolation. Under Bush…the rate dropped to 5 and 6% because people found jobs…they hadn’t given up looking for work.
And why are you injecting race into a simple economics discussion.
The Correspondents Banquet was horrible. Who picks the guest comedians? He was tasteless and hideous to both Democrats and Republicans.
Sometimes we need a good story to distract us from all the bad. This one comes from the Medstar Georgetown University Hospital Spring 2014 newsletter called “My GeorgetownMD.”
Mr. Clyde Horton, 64, lives in Gaithersburg, MD. He is a leadership trainer and coach, the head of his neighborhood association, and a very involved family man. He also happens to be Black. He had struggled with kidney problems going all the way back to his 20’s. When his kidney function fell below 20%, he was in need of help: either frequent dialysis or a transplant. Clyde started his own search for a possible transplant match, and a dozen or more people responded positively. The Medstar Georgetown Transplant Unit (MGTI) tested everybody and fund a good match.
The good match turned out to be Clyde Horton’s neighbor, Joe Wolken. Well, Joe Wolken just happens to be White. That surprised the heck out of Clyde, who thought he would have to have an African-American donor for medical/anatomical reasons. Clyde said: “I thnk this shatters all the illusions about our differences.”
So, Joe Wolken gave Clyde Horton one of his kidneys. And Clyde Horton now has a normal kidney function and is once again full of energy. He has run a 5K race with his son, Benjamin. He has also gone back to school to get an advanced degree. And, in January, he traveled to Texas to attend the wedding of Joe’s daughter.
On the cover of the newsletter is a photo of neighbors Clyde and Joe with their arms around each other. I would suggest that it might help to have such a story on the front pages of the MSM once in awhile as a counter to all the sensationalized conflict over race.
Perhaps because most of us think stories like that are routine. We tend to help out our friends and neighbors. If someone is our friend, who looks at race? Would this story have made it past the small, local papers if a black and a white man weren’t involved? No. Probably not.
Wolverine, I also think too much is made over race. Then you have some knuckle-head like Bundy speak out and try to tell me about the Negro…and another jerk like Sterling….no quotes needed. Why do we have sensationalized conflict stories? Because there are still too many people out there who are trumpeting racial problems. Yes, it does go both ways.
When one looks at the participation rate and the unemployment rate – one also needs to consider the expiration of the extended unemployment which stopped in December. There were 1.3 million people getting the benefits.
Is anyone happy with the economy – No. But the trajectory continues to improve. What we need to get away from is the ‘juiced’ economy that we have had since 2000. Net new jobs from 2000-2009 was very low, financial returns low to loss and same for real estate – they are not calling it the lost decade for nothing. One can pick a time frame and find good data in it, but one needs to look at the facts and longer trends to get a true picture.
I thought that Bundy meltdown would give political huckster pause…
Apparently the newest touchstone for social conservatives is Justina Pelletier…a sick 15 year old with some monstrous family issues. I wouldn’t jump on that anti-government bandwagon…unless one wants to be labeled “pro-child abuse”.
“2001 is hard to follow if you didn’t read the book or aren’t stoned.”
That’s a valid way to look at it, but …
2001 was a masterpiece, IMO, because Kubrick tapped deeply into the zeitgeist of the times – the trippy psychedelic art that made you feel primal things, and had seeming complexity, and even timelessness, but no literal meaning. Art that was heavily influenced by drug culture, yes, but also a somewhat logical culmination of art movements and advertising styles to that point in time.
He, with Arthur C. Clarke, fashioned a story that was deliberately vague and not precise. I know that Clarke subsequently fashioned the story into a book, but the screenplay came first, and it deliberately avoids explanation.
It’s movie that, like the art and visual stylings of its time, you FEEL more than understand. Preferably with a loud sound system blaring the sound at you. Great use of really creepy modern music in that film, which was imitated widely afterwards (“The Exorcist” and 1000 other films aspire to the same effect).
I do think it is a great film and the work of a real art genius. Plays too slow for a mass audience these days, but it’s a great dated acid trip of a movie.
Netflix?
The use of the music in 2001 is the most powerful use of music in film that has been done, I think. And one’s perception of that movie varies with how deeply immersed they were in that screeching booming music. Which is one big reason that the film works well in a theater.
On another subject, did anyone else watch John Oliver’s HBO show the last 2 weeks? HORRIBLE. Really bad.
It rips off The Daily Show at every turn, suffers from Oliver’s contempt for America’s disinterest in international news, and is generally unlikeable.
I enjoy Oliver very much on “The Bugle”, which is a really great podcast that I recommend to everyone. But his HBO show looks like a flaming disaster to me.
I haven’t been able to force myself to watch it yet. I generally don’t think John Oliver is all that funny. In fact, I dropped Jon Stewart last summer when John Oliver took over for him. Not funny. Maybe its cultural. I generally don’t think Brits are all that funny unless they have been Americanized.
He’s very funny on “The Bugle” where his straightforward approach is cut with his broadcast partner Andy Zaltsman’s whimsy. But I agree that he wasn’t very good as TDS host, and he’s worse now.
Bloomberg, 5-7-2014
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress today, 7 May 2014, that the economy still requires a strong dose of stimulus because unemployment and inflation are well short of the Fed’s goals. Yellen highlighted weaknesses in the labor market, such as the number of long-term unemployed, despite an improved economic outlook. She called the unemployment rate of 6.3% “elevated” and said the share of the labor force unemployed for more than 6 months, as well as the number of part-time workers who want fulltime jobs, are at “historically high levels.”
Said the Chair: “We’ve never seen a situation where long-term unemployment is so large a fraction of unemployment.”
What is your point? The Great Recession began in 2008. It is now 2014. How long was the Great Depression? Do you have a solution? It has to go a little deeper than blame Obama.
Thank goodness we are able to better handle these economic problems today than we were 80 plus years ago. 6.3% looks a lot better to me than 25% did then. It might take another ten years to fully recover from that hit back in 2008. If it weren’t for fast work from some of our economic leaders like Hank Paulson and yes, George Bush, and Congress, things might be far worse. Obviously trickle down economics is just a myth.
Didn’t Janet Yellen make the point for you? The Fed is still much concerned about continuing problems with unemployment and is looking at a necessary continuation of their stimulus program. As Janet said, the US is in uncharted waters vis-a-vis the level of long-term unemployment. The points made by Yellen were precisely those made by some of us in response to Starry’s reading of the numbers.
What would I do? Get a government which gives investors confidence maybe? Recently heard an economist opine that there is a lot of investor money out there which is being held back from the production sector because the big investors have a low level of confidence in the federal government. Not enough investment in production? Not enough good jobs to lift us out of the economic swamp. What confidence could such an investor have in a government which had a billion dollar stimulus package handed to it and then POTUS admitted in an interview a couple of years later that it didn’t work because the “shovel-ready jobs” weren’t as shovel-ready as they thought. Hummmph!
Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) at the Joint Economic Committee session remarked to Fed Chair Yellen that businessmen in Indiana had told him that their businesses are underperforming at this time because of the uncertainty they felt as a result of federal taxation and regulatory policies.
Yellen’s response: “So, I agree with you. My own discussions with businesses, I hear exactly the same things you are citing: concerns with regulations, about taxation, about uncertainty about fiscal policy.”
Yellen’s suggestion was to put fiscal policy on a sustainable course. And to do it with a package of genuine reforms which will help confidence. Although we have had some short-term deficit reduction, she believes that a combination of demographics, the structure of the entitlement programs , and historical trends in health care costs will cause long-term deficits to rise to unsustainable levels relative to the economy.
Yea, Apple and Google are such great examples of under-performing companies. Oh wait, those aren’t in Indiana.
Yay!
I have a whole 10 days until class starts.
Just had my final exam.
So far, I have 1 A, 1 possible A, and two unknown grades…..possibly A’s or B’s
So far so good.
It’s MILLER Time! Except I’m drinking Sam Adams.
Copperheads are back out in force, just saw the 2nd one in as many days. Big, fat one – almost got one of my dogs. Large for a copperhead, about 3.5 ft. Be careful if you’re pulling weeds at dusk.
Thanks for the warning. That’s scary. Maybe it should be a warning to kids running around barefooted and bare legged.
@Cargosquid I’m right there with you. Finals last week, two courses start up next week. Ugh, I’m sick of being in school now.
May the force be with you! Are these nursing courses?
@Emma
You and me both…..I almost took a break this summer, but I’m sssoooooooo close to graduating. I just want to get it over with.
@Moon-howler I’ve been working on my masters degree in public health since spring 2011. I’m pushing it now and doubling up so I can graduate next spring.
Great! I know you are putting in a lot of long hours of hard work. We are rooting for you from the blog!!! @ Emma.
Congrats to you both. People who make sacrifices to improve service to the public are extra special.