All Things in Moderation

Tresspassers William did a great cover of “Rainbow Connection”:

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I’m a long time fan of Apple products, and prefer to exist in the Apple ecosystem. And that’s not going to change—I’m going to be using an iPhone 10 years from now, I have no doubt.

However, there is one area where I envy the Android-toting rebels and misfits: Google maps for Android. It is light-years ahead of the map functionality on iOS. It just is.

3D models of city areas, information on the indoors of certain places, restroom information, etc. Not to mention, vector data so it’s wicked fast and much easier on your dataplan. Sigh.

Ah, well. I’ve got nothing to complain about. I long wished for a device that combined music player, telephone, and PDA, and now I have it—plus it’s also a still camera and a video camera and a video game device! And an acceptable GPS. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: I feel blessed to have been born when I was. But I still would like to see Google Maps for Android on iOS. But, I won’t, because they’re competing or something.

I have many favorite movies. One of them is Fight Club.

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Surprise! Anders Behring Breivik is not right in his head.

Much TV watching, playing of checkers in his future. Just punishment for the brutal murder of 77 innocent young people.

Too bad they couldn’t have moved the trial to Texas.

Prosecutors said Breivik, a self-declared anti-immigration militant, believed he had staged what he called “the executions” out of his love for his people. “The conclusion … is that he is insane,” prosecutor Svein Holden told a news conference on Breivik’s psychiatric evaluation. “He lives in his own delusional universe and his thoughts and acts are governed by this universe.”

If the court accepts the psychiatrists’ conclusions, Breivik would be held in a psychiatric institution rather than in a prison. Norwegian courts can challenge psychiatric evaluations or order new tests but rarely reject them. Breivik could be held as long as he poses a threat to society, but may be released if found to be healthy.

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U.S. Lags Other Countries in Wellness and Medical Care. But, you know, it still looks to me like we’re pretty well off.

Americans smoke at a far lower rate than in other countries, but in addition to its level of obesity, the U.S. rate for diabetes is among the developed world’s highest. And though Americans are living an average nine years longer than 50 years ago, 26 other countries outpace the U.S. in life expectancy.

Why are US tax payers still handing out big money to already wealthy companies in the form of Ag subsidies?  This makes no sense to me. The government needs to get out of the business of handing out money to farmers. It’s a drop in the bucket, perhaps, but we still don’t need to be doing it.

Under America’s lavish subsidy system, farmers collected $260 billion in taxpayer money between 1995 and 2010. In theory, this money is supposed to help small farmers survive in a volatile and risky sector. In reality, most of this money goes to the biggest agrarian operations. Since 1995, the top 10 percent of farmers collected 75 percent of all farm-bill subsidies, according to analysis by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

Employs of mortgage foreclosure firm that made fun of  people losing their houses are now losing their jobs. But is it fair?

On Oct. 28, published photos from the firm’s annual Halloween party showed employees wearing costumes mocking people who had lost their homes.Following the revelation of the crass photos, the national mortgage servicing giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae blacklisted the Baum firm and forbade servicers of their mortgages from using Baum and his colleagues, a move which essentially sounded the death knell for the firm.

Occupy Wallstreet, hell. Occupy Congress!

That’s because 250 members of Congress — or 47 percent — have a net worth of more than $1 million, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The study, which analyzed data from legislators’ financial disclosure forms, found the average senator had a net worth of about $2.63 million last year. That’s up 11 percent from $2.38 million in 2009 and 16 percent from $2.27 million in 2008.

One of the way congresscritters get rich is by being able to legally trade on inside information, something no one except elected congresspersons can legally do. However, the STOCK Act looks to put a stop to that.

Such trades have proven remarkably lucrative. A newly released study by the Center for Responsive Politics found that members of Congress saw their net worth rise by over 25 percent since the financial crisis of 2008, while average Americans have seen their net worth plummet.

“It should be illegal for them to trade off of this kind of information,” Alan Ziobrowski, an associate professor of business at Georgia State University, told The Daily. “There’s no reason that Congress should be able to do what corporate executives can’t.”

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BTW: I’m out for the rest of the week. I may comment here or there, but posting is going to be out of the question, probably until next Monday. So, any Bits & Pieces are going to have to come from Michigoose, lmscina, Okie, Scott, QB, Mark, or somebody. Not trying to suggest that some of you 99% are mooching off as top 1%, but . . . you know what’s going on.

Name a Man’s name that begins with “K”:

Have you ever seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog with Neil Patrick Harris, and Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer? It’s awesome. There are several parts, here’s one:

— KW

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But none of them is willing to make even a token gesture in order to demonstrate the sincerity of their position.

I hope the video embed works. Behind the firewall, I can’t check it:

If not, view it at The Daily Caller, where they say:

Two dozen “patriotic millionaires” traveled to the Capitol on Wednesday to demand that Congress raise taxes on wealthy Americans. 

The Daily Caller attended their press conference with an iPad, which displayed the Treasury Department’s donation page, to find out if any of the “patriotic millionaires” were willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Hot Air also covers the video, where they say :

So what’s the lesson here? True patriots won’t volunteer, but insist on being drafted before coming to this nation’s service? That’s certainly a unique view of “patriotism,” isn’t it? That’s because “patriotism” isn’t what drives this message — it’s ideology. It would be equally “patriotic” to demand that the federal government return to a level of spending that we had just a few years ago, when the federal government spent one out of every five dollars rather than one out of every four in the American economy.

Listening to it, I don’t think these people are very serious about their cause, or they are all remarkably tone deaf. If they are super rich, they couldn’t be bothered to toss off a grand or two (at least while the cameras were rolling) in order to make a show of putting their money where their mouth is? I can’t listen to it now, but I recall one of them saying that everybody needs to pitch in, including the middle class (that will go over well) and another excusing themselves from making any sort of donation because they do “significant” private charity. Uh-huh.

Didn’t hear anything about what they were proposing. We’re they proposing pumping up capital gains, or personal income tax? And I’d be curious how hard any of these folks, who couldn’t even toss of some pocket change just to set a good example toward their cause, actually be impacted by the increased taxes. If they were arguing for increased income taxes, while they themselves profit mostly from capital gains, they could have all been entirely full of shiznits.

While I understand the argument that a correct policy prescription is collective, and that to make a difference the effort needs to be collective, as a layperson with no axe to grind against the super-wealty, all these rich guys come off (perhaps it’s the video editing, but it does not feel like that) as completely full of crap, and out to swindle regular old working joes like me, busy living the American dream of just getting by.

Whether the arguments themselves are inherently hypocritical, the unwillingness, to a man, for any of them to part with what would, quite honestly, be for them the equivalent of pocket change for you or me, just to make a point—that’s speaks volumes to me. And what it says is that this isn’t what they claim, that these people are full of crap, and this so-called tax on the rich is going to leave them largely untouched while funneling cash out of the pockets of the Kevins, Marks, Scotts, QBs, and lmsincas and even yellojkts of the world.

My sense of just their reactions in the video, and I can’t imagine how additional context would help, is that these folks are being dishonest or duplicitous. The most charitable interpretation I can imagine is that they are simply not serious, and posing for fun and for a war story to take back to their friends at the next cocktail party.

Patriotic millionaires. Hmmph.

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Cops open up the Natalie Wood case. Robert Wagner may have done her in, after all.

Is innovation in Silicon Valley to blame for killing jobs while enriching the already hyper wealthy?

If that sign is any indication of what your resume looks like, I’m thinking I might know why you’re having trouble with your job search. Also, nothing against propellor hats, but . . .

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The class divisions of Occupy Wall Street:

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