Happy Friday to you all.  We have another overcast day with intermittent light snow.  Nothing much on the agenda for today.  Let's see if there is anything worth noting on the 'net.

This isn't good considering that Easter isn't that far off.

I remember an old quip from workers in the old Soviet Union: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.  This is half of that.  I do so wish we could get the other half and pretend to pay these clowns for their pretend work.

This chart makes me wonder why our politicians are arguing about so-called entitlements in the same breath as 'deficit.'
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I could have posted this yesterday but was lazy.  Mom is fighting a cold so we aren't doing anything.

How often over the last few years, especially when George II was in office, were we told that we should rely on private giving and aid instead of government?  I know I have lost count.  Is this what happens when we do??

The TINA (There Is No Alternative) argument seems to dominate government and has since Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan were kissing each other's butts three decades ago.  Here it is again.  The argument (if you really want to call it that) is fallacious.  It assumes the end result is agreed by everyone to be desirable and necessary, that the proposed means of achieving that result are the best available and that the benefits of the result outweigh the costs.  I say the assumptions are bogus all the way around. It is obvious to anyone not totally blind that the ends are not agreed on.  I don't see the necessity.  From what I have read, the oil that reaches the Gulf from the tar sands will be sold to overseas buyers so it won't help the U.S. oil supply and it may even take product from parts of my area raising the cost here. And they tell us that the U.S. energy production is ramping up to make us 'energy independent' in relatively short time.  Either way someone is lying to us.  Just north of us a couple of years ago a similar pipeline leaked.  They are still dealing with the results and the company has been fighting the local landowners to increase the size of the pipe.  Which means appropriating more of the land and paying the owners pittances for the damage and the land.  The court case against BP for its Macos blow out almost three years ago is just now going to court.  Over that time the public has been fed a steady diet of pablum from the company and from the government on just what the consequences of the contamination are and will be.  The only beneficiaries I can see are the Koch brothers whose company is a major player in the project.  So farmers lose, the land loses, consumers lose but the billionaires win. Unfortunately this isn't baseball--they have had their three strikes and should be out but they are poised to win.

I am increasingly disgusted with the news coverage.  I just watched the segment on the sequester impasse and Obama's comments on it.  Does it really matter that Obama merged Star Wars and Star Trek in his comment about not being able to use a 'jedi mind meld' on the Repthuglicans?

Chris in Paris has it totally right: the political trolls out there suffer nothing from the political impasse.  It occurs to me that we have two classes of parasites who disproves the old notion that people are paid for good results: the politicians and the bankers.  They get paid handsomely no matter what.  I am sure this won't go far but I applaud it.

This is hilarious.  In Iceland authorities tested 'meat' pies for horse meat and found not only no horse meat but no meat of any kind.  Thanks to Undernews for the link.