from little kara and erik v, some time in the distant past.
Happy Halloween, friends!
In a NYTimes Op-Ed, Joe Nocera reported on an office Halloween party in a Buffalo suburb, thrown by the Steven Baum firm, New York’s largest “foreclosure mill”, abetting banks in foreclosing on and evicting homeowners. The fun-loving firm represents virtually all the giant mortgage crooks: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. A former firm employee sent Mr. Nocera snapshots of the company party, that exemplifies the “appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against”. Here are a few (WARNING: MAY CAUSE INTENSE FEELINGS OF RAGE):
Here we have two of Baum’s lower management hags dressed like – hardyharharhar – homeless people. The mean looking one with the bad perm holds a bottle of liquor in a bag. You know, what bums do. The other has a hiLARious sign around her neck mocking the “typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a proceeding that will render him/her homeless. You know what else will be hilarious? Watching their pinheads bounce down Broadway after they fall off of the guillotine platform. [click to continue…]
And I will love you forever.
The great thing about Twitter and politicians is the extreme danger of masks slipping, leading to moments of hilariously unexpected candor (see: Anthony Weiner/crotch shot, Dane Deutsch/Hitler, Scott Walker/Obama/Soul Train, or Sarah Palin’s random mutterings/word salad any day of any week). Here’s yet another example of how Twitter is facilitating the self-destruction of politicians by encouraging the posting of every idle thought:
“Phil Mitsch”: smarmy, smug-mugged Republican Senate candidate from Camden, New Jersey. The 62 year old former real estate broker/snake oil salesman and Wayne Newton/Roger Miller/Tom Ridge/Pete Rose hybrid, has been getting slammed for a (non ironic) tweet he sent out to his 44,000 followers:
Question: What do our troops do when they’re stuck in some god-forsaken, outpost firebase in Helmand province, with no tv, spotty internet access, having worn the print off their one copy of Mad magazine, read and re-read Catcher in the Rye, and then receive a welcome box of books from a random stateside do gooder, eagerly tear it open and find 40 copies of Pinheads and Patriots?
(I wonder if these burned shard will be counted as sales on the New York Times best sellers list?)
Add another win in the win column for “the greatest health care system in the world”!
Wahoo! A new study by Gallup shows that 86% of full-time employed Americans are missing 450 million days at work due to being either fat, or for having chronic health problems or both (not even including the days workers feel ill and don’t take time off). The cost? $153 billion in annual “lost productivity” dollars. With this knowledge, business folks can stand up and take notice and stop hiring fat and sick people, if it didn’t include, well, basically everybody.
The $153 billion in annual lost productivity costs linked to unhealthy workers in the United States is more than four times the cost found in another sickly, fading obesity-racked empire, the pasty, United Kingdom. Even with their weak and beleaguered constitutions, their autosomal recessive bloodlines and Haemochromatosis, their fried codfishes and chips and socialist deathcare panels, the UK has far fewer unhealthy workers. Only 14% of full-time U.S. workers are of a normal weight and have no chronic illness, compared with 20% in the U.K. But those complacent feather-bedded layabouts get guaranteed paid vacation/leave, etc/ while we Americatards get a smattering of random Mondays off to sit on the couch and watch The Price is Right and eat loose sandwich meats.
The upshot is, the high percentages of full-time U.S. workers who have crap health are a significant drain on productivity for U.S. businesses. Presumably, the employees and employers could increase productivity by addressing the health issues plaguing the workplace. By making it a national priority to have affordable healthcare available to all? By banning Hot Pockets from the office microwave? Or by firing their current employees and hiring healthy people from India? Or better yet, IN India?
You know, they’ve been squeezing uncompensated-for “productivity” out of us for decades, and now they’re complaining that we’re too fat and sick from lack of time and healthcare to squeeze even more work out of us? Are we supposed to feel bad? I mean, I’m no LeeAnn Rimes (sp?) , and I sometimes get a headache, and I could sure use a day off. But do I really have to be sick and fat to get one?
He won his senate seat by a mere 200 votes, then was unseated in a recall election stemming from Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-public employee union legislation in August, yet still thought he could get away with driving shitfaced. Sunday night, jaundiced former Wisconsin state Sen. Randy Hopper was arrested while drunkenly careening his black Suburban down a highway. He’s like an alcoholic, modern day Paul Revere! I love that the party of “family values” is always good for a sleazy sex scandal and/or drunk driving arrest once a month! Not only did this depraved Republithug help pass an illegal bill stripping workers of basic labor rights, he wasn’t even living in his own district when he did it! He’d been caught shacking up with a 25-year-old lobbyist for a firm whose clients include organizations funded by the Koch Brothers by the name of – get this – “Persuasion Partners” (I’m sure her parents are happy that they only have one daughter to lay down for their country, er, state!) The best part of this story: This information became public when protesters gathered outside of Hopper’s Fond du Lac home and Hopper’s own maid came out and signed the recall petition. Then his wife came out and told the crowd that Hopper wasn’t there because he was living in Madison with his mistress! He faces charges of perjury and voter fraud. And theft. I bet this is totally being investigated, because Republicans are always talking about cracking down all all that voter fraud out there. Family Values Republican, ditching his wife and kids to shack up with a lobbyist half his age and getting her a plum job. Then pulls a DUI with aforementioned climber/home-wrecker. Really, the true classics never go out of fashion.