"Green Czar" Steps Down For Telling the Truth.

Van Jones, who was Obama's "green jobs tsar", has been the subject of a campaign by conservatives ever since they uncovered a video from last year in which he described Republicans as "assholes". The public airing of such a view is awkward for Obama at a time when he is trying to win over Republicans in support of health and energy reforms.

No siree, wouldn't want any awkwardness. No prob when the Pres and VP candidates refer to a reporter as a "major league asshole" (and never apologize, but did regret that people were offended), but when an environmentalist, civil-rights activist, and (gasp) brown person has correctly referred to republicans as assholes at some point in his past... well! We mustn't have that. I gather Beck has been having conniptions over this for several days.

Assholes...

Surplus Population

"If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Two articles in the NYT caught my eye this morning. The second was on the budgetary problems arising in districts with large numbers of homeless kids. An unfunded 2001 federal law requires districts to provide a number of services for such kids.

The instability can be ruinous to schooling, educators say, adding multiple moves and lost class time to the inherent distress of homelessness. And so in accord with federal law, the Buncombe County district, where Charity attends, provides special bus service to shelters, motels, doubled-up houses, trailer parks and RV campgrounds to help children stay in their familiar schools as the families move about.

Still, Charity said of her last semester, “I couldn’t go to sleep, I was worried about all the stuff,” and she often nodded off in class.

I'm sure the republicans feel that home-schooling would be the best solution for homeless kids.

And the first was on the emerging new thang on Wall Street: buying life insurance policies from the elderly and ill at a reduced rate, bundling them and selling them as securities to pay off when the original policy holders die.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person.

(...)

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

This strikes me as beyond disgusting, but then everyone knows I'm a prude. Still, there are some moments of levity...

Critics of life settlements believe “this defeats the idea of what life insurance is supposed to be,” said Steven Weisbart, senior vice president and chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group. “It’s not an investment product, a gambling product.”

Well, ummm... insurance of any kind is a gambling product. I guess what he's really saying is "Hey we're supposed to make the profit on this, not someone else."

Dickens

I'm looking for a particular Dickens quote for a piece I'm think about tossing together... if I had a dead tree version of the NYT this morning, I would have wadded it up and thrown it across the room. I haven't found the quote I'm looking for, but I did find this one, which seems perfect for the rage I've been feeling this summer:

“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth”

I like.

Vulture Day

At first I thought this was sort of a gag, but it looks like it's serious: today is "blog about a vulture day."As far as I can tell, no one has picked Turkey Vultures yet. I sure don't know why...Well, yeah, there is that. But the fact is, you can make anybody look kinda bad if you're trying to. Check out this one. Tell me that's not one stylin' dude.
And seriously, if you've never noticed them in flight, you're missing a treat. Few birds have the incredible grace of vultures; fewer still have the ability to stay aloft for hours at a time with only occasional adjustments of their wings, and still fewer flaps.
Turkey Vultures seem to be pretty much everywhere in the US. Look up!

Saturd80's

We Belong- Pat Benetar, who showed us children of the Seventies that women could be tough and feminine at the same time they rocked you to pieces. This is gentler and sweeter than much of her music, but it's one of my favorites.

Original (unembeddable) MTV video here.

Smoking Gun- Robert Cray, who hailed from Portland. My Portlandian roommate from 81-85 was several years older than me, and unlike me, was very fond of the bar scene and live music. As soon as Cray's first album came out, he had it.

Save It For Later- English Beat didn't produce a whole lot of music, but I was very fond of what they did create. I think a couple of them formed the group that had the giant hit, "She Drives Me Crazy." But that's for another Saturday

So today we have Saturd80s, Caturday, and Vladurday. Are we done with gratuitous puns for the time being? Yes, my oh-so-patient friends, yes, we are.

Caturday

My kitty has become a little chubby over the summer. A creature of changing habits and preferences, we have concluded one thing: her favorite food is Meow Mix.

We have also concluded that she is very fond of belly and chest scratches. Her favorite, though, is hanging off the side of my chair, with no feet on the ground, while I scratch her spine.

She's a silly animule, but she has me trained well.

What He Said

My Facebook comment on this issue was that I thought Obama should tell kids whose parents objected to just drop out and give up. It's very likely that the mental impairment arising from having such parents would prevent them from ever succeeding academically.