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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens. March, 2012. Photo credit: joanneleon
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
-- Albert Einstein
News
Republicans Reveal that Entire Presidential Race was a Prank
April Fool’s Day Announcement Brings Practical Joke to an End
– In an April Fool’s Day announcement that took the political world by storm, the Republican Party revealed today that its entire presidential race had been an elaborate prank.
“April Fool!” exclaimed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum at a press conference in Washington, where they were joined by fellow merrymakers Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain.
Scalia Unable To Name All 9 Supreme Court Justices
WASHINGTON—Associate Justice Antonin Scalia struggled to recall the names of all nine active Supreme Court justices while playing a trivia game Thursday, sources confirmed. "Let's see, there's Breyer, um…Ginsburg. Pretty sure that's one.
An Argument Against Healthcare
From the National Alliance of Funeral Directors
– The following message was released today by the National Alliance of Funeral Directors:
This week, several Republican Supreme Court Justices have argued that the Affordable Care Act supported by the Obama Administration is unconstitutional. At the National Alliance of Funeral Directors, we couldn’t agree more.
It was Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry who said, in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death.” From that moment on, legal scholars have agreed that the Constitution guarantees every American the liberty to be dead. Here at the Alliance, we will fight for your right to be dead to the death.
Let’s take a look, if you will, at the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which protects every American’s right to shoot another American. It says nothing about giving the person who is shot health insurance to prevent him from dying. This cherished constitutional right to shoot people and make them dead is currently recognized in all fifty states, most recently Florida.
OWS Officially Endorses Dr. Ron Paul for 2012
The General Assembly has agreed to officially endorse the Paul presidential ticket. If Paul wins the nomination he can carry the OWS endorsement only if Dr. Cornel West is accepted as Vice President. Read the minutes.
Tom Lehrer, 1967.
Stephen Colbert @StephenAtHome
Here's another joke for Romney: "Knock-knock. Who's there? I don't know -- my butler answers the door."
Yet another free joke for Romney: "Why is it that water crackers come in packs of 20, and caviar comes in packs of 500? I mean, come on!"
Another free joke for Romney: "Back in college, I partied so hard, I'd sometimes stumble into a dorm building that wasn't named after me!"
Glad conservatives are reaching out to the youth, but they should only focus on the ones getting the top 1% of allowances.
Free question for Justice Scalia to use against Obamacare: Why doesn't everyone just get a lifetime appointment with free healthcare?
Harry Potter made its e-book debut. I camped out all night in front of my Kindle for it.
Romney built an elevator in his home for his car. I hope it's tall enough to fit the dog on top.
After a drone delivers my taco, any chance I could get a firefighting plane to drop 24,000 gallons of soda in my mouth?
Andy Borowitz @BorowitzReport
As an April Fool's prank, Fox News will switch to an all-truth format for the day.
That $640 million jackpot might sound like a lot of money, but it's still not enough to get you elected President.
There are some people on the Supreme Court I wouldn't trust to judge a cat show.
Justice Alito compared the healthcare plan to burial insurance, which coincidentally is the Republican healthcare plan.
If you compare cave drawings to tweets it's shocking how far backwards we've fallen.
Google introduces:
Motley Fool career opportunity:
Senior Creative Accountant
The Senior Creative Accountant (SCA) position is a key role that reports directly to our Controller, or to our CFO, when expedient. The SCA is responsible for making accounting fun! And also for making sure that the Controller is not quite so controlling .
Beyond a working knowledge of debits and credits, the SCA should have strong interpersonal skills, comfort with circumlocution, and a good answer to why the accountant crossed the road.
Primary Responsibilities and Objectives:
Maximize our top and bottom lines as we go through the initial public offering [AC1] process.
Work with our CEO, CFO, and Controller to solve high-level accounting issues. Often the answers involve innovations that extend generally accepted accounting principles. When it comes to accounting, we want someone who can "think different" from those who get handcuffed by the traditional accounting standards. Put another way, we have a "mind the GAAP but trust your gut" mentality around here.
[ ... ]
Core Competencies:
Must be able to keep secrets.
Must have solid understanding of financial statements and their interplay.
Must have a working knowledge of Ponzi schemes.
Page Prank: The Best Online April Fools' Day Jokes
The first day of April often sneaks up on us. It isn't until you sit on a whoopee cushion that you realize it is, indeed, April Fools' Day. But whoopee cushions and ketchup-covered "severed fingers" are pranks of the past. Over the last decade, the Web has become an increasingly popular place to play April Fools' Day pranks, tricks, and hoaxes.
Top 100 April Fool's Day Pranks
The Museum of Hoaxes, a San Diego-based website dedicated to jokesters and urban legends, has chronicled the best hoaxes of all time.
Fake royals, spaghetti harvests and left-handed hamburgers: Happy April Fool’s Day!
Hahahahahahahaha. Okay, now for some serious news. (Boooooo!)
Unfunny. And hey, it's profitable! But it is just being used to save lives. They would never abuse this. April Fools!
Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
[ ... ]
In California, state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.
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Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect, records show.
Laughter clubs catch on in stressed-out Hong Kong
“Hong Kong people don’t laugh because they are under constant pressure to make more money, to make life better,” says Yu, who has founded 11 Laughter Clubs in the southern Chinese city since 2007.
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The 35-year-old trained hypnotherapist set up Hong Kong’s first laughter club in 2007, after he discovered the concept of laughter yoga — made popular as an exercise routine by Indian physician Madan Kataria in 1995.
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“Ho ho, ha ha ha,” the group of 30 students recite. They combine the exercise with deep yogic breathing, give each other high-fives, clap and waddle like penguins, all in the name of laughter.
Whose fears are they referring to? Anyone in their right (and not corrupt) mind had overwhelming fear for the marine population in the Gulf, and all living things.
Gulf's dolphins pay heavy price for Deepwater oil spill
The research follows the publication of several scientific studies into insect populations on the nearby Gulf coastline and into the health of deepwater coral populations, which all suggest that the environmental impact of the five-month long spill may have been far worse than previously appreciated.
[ ... ]
The NOAA study has been reported at the same time as two other studies suggesting that the long-term environmental effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill may have been far more profound than previously thought.
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The US government is still pursuing a case against BP despite a deal the company reached at the beginning of March with the largest group of private claimants. That $7.8bn deal, however, does not address "significant damages" to the environment after the spill for which BP has not admitted liability. And it has not only been the immediate marine environment that has been affected. A study of insect populations in the coastal marshes affected by the catastrophe has also identified significant impact.
Harry? That makes no sense.
Obama's healthcare Catch 22
'Obamacare' is an electoral liability for the president if upheld by the supreme court. But if struck down, there's still no upside
After the second day of oral arguments went quite badly for the Obama administration, Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid argued that a supreme court decision finding the president's healthcare law unconstitutional would be a political benefit to his party. "There's a significant school of thought that the administration is – puts them in a better position for the election if it's turned down," Reid told reporters Tuesday.
One can forgive a bit of wishful thinking on Reid's part, but the fact remains that a supreme court decision repealing "Obamacare" would not good news for the Democrats and it would not be good news for Barack Obama's re-election chances. To believe that nullifying the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would somehow trigger a new level of enthusiasm among Obama's base, you would have to believe that right now, there is a certain amount of complacency about re-electing the president among Democrats.
Libyan tribal clashes kill at least 147 people
Health minister[ calls for urgent medical supplies for remote town of Sabha, where fighting has left 147 dead and 395 wounded
Six days of tribal clashes in a remote desert town in southern Libya have killed 147 people, the country's health minister has said.
[ ... ]
The clashes in the oasis region some 400 miles south of Tripoli highlight the fragile authority of the Libyan government, particularly in the isolated settlements that dot the southern desert.
With only a nascent national army and police force, Libya's ruling National Transitional Council relies on militias composed of former rebels to keep the peace, and the country's vast distances make it difficult to deploy them to trouble spots.
Masked Figures Invite Riders at 8 Subway Stations to Ride Free
A group of masked individuals gave subterranean vandalism an activist tinge this week: They tampered with subway entrance equipment with the aim of letting commuters in Manhattan and Brooklyn ride free, the police said on Saturday.
At eight different subway stations before the morning rush on Wednesday, the unidentified suspects chained open emergency gates and posted signs on which they had scrawled: “Customers ride for free.”
Student protests on Tuesday. It seems that the student uprisings are slowly and steadily increasing.
RUSA president among arrested in student debt protest
Police arrested 36 students yesterday, including Rutgers University Student Assembly President Matt Cordeiro after a four-hour rally outside of Sallie Mae Corporation headquarters on 7th Street in Northwest, D.C.
“Sallie Mae, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side,” protesters chanted from the streets outside the headquarters with about 300 students blocking the street in front of headquarters.
Taliban target Afghan security forces
Regional Taliban commander tells Al Jazeera that Afghan forces are priority targets now, rather than US forces.
The Taliban are not only targeting police and soldiers, but also seeking out their family members in a campaign to persuade them to defect.
Will we be ruled by April fools?
Danny Schechter
We are living in a time when absurdity is no longer confined to one day, but is established as a lasting condition.
New York, NY - The United States - and much of the rest of the western world - celebrates April 1 as April Fools' Day. It is a time for playing jokes or making up news or events followed by a "gotcha" smile and the exclamation: "April fool!"
Online, there are April Fools websites packed with pranks you can try to get a big laugh. What's not worth chuckling about, however, is that the gap between what's true and what we think is - or should be - true is growing. And there's nothing really funny about that.
US politicians have been playing April Fools games for months. You can't make up all the gaffes that ooze out of their motor mouths.
Whose Recovery? Many Americans Remain in Critical Condition
by Robert Reich
Luxury retailers are smiling. So are the owners of high-end restaurants, sellers of upscale cars, vacation planners, financial advisors, and personal coaches. For them and their customers and clients the recession is over. The recovery is now full speed.
But the rest of America isn’t enjoying an economic recovery. It’s still sick. Many Americans remain in critical condition.
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Yet it’s almost a certainly that all the gains went to the top 10 percent, and the lion’s share to the top 1 percent. Over a third of the gains went to 15,600 super-rich households in the top one-tenth of one percent.
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The top 1 percent got 45 percent of Clinton-era economic growth, and 65 percent of the economic growth during the Bush era.
According to an analysis of tax returns by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Pikkety, the top 1 percent pocketed 93 percent of the gains in 2010. 37 percent of the gains went to the top one-tenth of one percent. No one below the richest 10 percent saw any gain at all.