Mobtown Shank

Free Taxis In Baltimore Tonight

Yellow Cab is offering free rides home tonight to those who have too much to drink and live within the Baltimore area, according to co-sponsors AAA Mid-Atlantic and the Maryland Department of Transportation's State Highway Administration.

But anything over $50 - that's on you.

Remember, there's gonna be a lot of drunken revelers in need of a ride - so don't be a cab hog.

Call: 1-877-963-TAXI

Source.

Ironic News Roundup

Man who campaigned to protect sharks was eaten by a shark.

NPR Correspondent got laid off while reporting on layoffs.

And from the "It's Ironic Depending On Your Perspective Department:
Iranian Prime President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered BBC's Channel 4 alternative Christmas address calling for "happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity".
Pretty ironic coming from a Holocaust denier and homophobe.

Bipartisanship? Not With These Republicans

by Benn  Ray

Recently, I was talking to a liberal friend who commented that he was looking forward to a new era of bipartisanship in our government so that we can get stuff done.

I was confused. Bipartisanship? What the hell does that even mean?

For liberals to be calling for bipartisanship is the same as offering someone you are negotiating with all the concessions you are willing to make before you even sit down at the table. It just doesn't make sense. Plus, now is not the time of bipartisanship, the past 8 years should have been a time of bipartisanship and weren't. Now's the time for sweeping liberal reform to fix the past 8 years of unchecked Republican rule.

Plus, just take a look at how congressional Republicans have been behaving. They are not interested in bipartisanship, they are interested in obstructionism.

On Face The Nation this week, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman puts an end to the bogus notion of bipartisanship.

"He’s [..] not going to get bipartisan consensus. He may be able to get some moderate Republicans votes. He may be able to get the moderate Republicans in the Senate – both of them -- to go…vote with the Democrats. The point is, you look at what John Boehner is doing in the House right now, the House Republican Leader. He’s dead set against doing anything constructive right now. He’s actually soliciting on his website, saying if there are any credentialed economists who are willing to you know, say negative things about stimulus plans, please contact me. So no, it’s not going to be bipartisan, in the sense that leaders of both parties are going to get together. Reaching out across the aisle, trying to find some sensible people on the Republican side is not the same thing."

Source.

Shocker! Virginity Pledges Don't Work

Teens who take virginity pledges, it turns out, are just as likely to have sex as teens who do not.

However, there is one thing virginity pledge teens do less of than other teens, that's use any form protection against pregnancy or STDs.

This comes as an added surprise to those who thought teens were not only a bastion of purity, but also a model of truth and promise keeping.

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

Can we stop wasting our tax money on Abstinence Only bullshit now?

Source.

Hey Chicago, Thanks For The Economics!

If you want to pin the blame on our current economic meltdown to a region, one need look no further than Chicago. Specifically, the University of Chicago - even more specifically, The Chicago School of Economics. This is the school forged by the now disproven theories of Milton Friedman and his Free Market Economics.

At the University of Chicago, once ascendant free-market acolytes are finding themselves in an unusual role: They’re battling a wave of government intervention more sweeping than any since the Great Depression as the U.S. struggles with the worst recession in seven decades.
...
For half a century, Chicago’s hands-off principles have permeated financial thinking and shaped global markets, earning the university 10 Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences starting in 1969, more than double the four each won by Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Chicago’s laissez-faire imprint underpins everything from U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts and the fall of communism that decade to quantitative investment strategies.

In 1972, Friedman helped persuade U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz, former dean of Chicago’s business school, to approve the first financial futures contracts in foreign currencies.

Such derivatives grew more complex after Chicago economists created the mathematical formulas to price them, helping spawn a $683 trillion market that’s proved to be a root of today’s financial system breakdown.

So, can we now unceremoniously bury The Chicago School, the acolytes of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics in a ditch in the back yard and let the grownups start discussing economic theories again?

Source.

Christmas Is Over

Yikes.

Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending, according to new data released Thursday.

Despite a flurry of last-minute shoppers lured by the deep discounts, total retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell over the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December through Christmas Eve, according to MasterCard Inc.'s SpendingPulse unit.

...

But considering individual sectors, "This will go down as the one of the worst holiday sales seasons on record," said Mary Delk, a director in the retail practice at consulting firm Deloitte LLP. "Retailers went from 'Ho-ho' to 'Uh-oh' to 'Oh-no.'"

The holiday retail-sales decline was much worse than the already-dire picture painted by industry forecasts, which had predicted sales ranging from a 1% drop to a more optimistic increase of 2.2%.

I wonder how many of these suffering and in peril businesses (get ready for the list of bankruptcy announcements) supported the Republenomics that got us all to this point

Happy Xmas!

Christmas "Classics" On iTunes

Would you consider homophobe pastor Rick Warren's The Purpose Of Christmas a holiday classic?

How about wingnut Fox commentator Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater?

Yeah, neither would I. But on the front of the Audiobooks section of iTunes, they are ranked in 2 out of the 3 top slots of "Holiday Classics" section.

In your face Dickens!

What exactly is your definition of "classic", iTunes?

TARP Application

This holiday season, why not take the time to fill out a TARP application and ask the federal government for a couple million dollars in taxpayer funds, no strings attached.

TARP Application [.pdf]

Why should the banks get all our money? If you actually get some money and feel guilty about it, just go buy a new car. Just make sure it's American.

Bank Execs Are Getting $1.6 Billion Of Your Money

So why is it that auto workers are expected to make salary concessions in order to get government loans to keep the auto industry afloat while bank execs are getting $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and benefits?

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

Remember, this is OUR tax money - the struggling working masses - that was given to the financial industry no strings attached.

Source.