An Eye-Douching

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, urged senators on Thursday not to strip the central bank of its authority to supervise the country’s largest banks, warning that to do so would pose a “grave mistake.”

I agree with Mr. Bernanke on that front, they strip the Fed of those powers, then they’ll make up an inefficient committee that won’t know what they’re doing or even where to begin. It would be filled with random nobodies and lobbyists from already random committees that don’t do a God damn thing for anything Seriously, Washington is full of a fuck ton of committees, we don’t need another that won’t even get the job done. Yes the Fed has made mistakes, but to try and take away its authority and hand it over to an incompetent group of people would be more than a grave mistake.

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Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, two of the nation’s biggest banks, announced plans on Tuesday to drastically overhaul their debit card programs by lowering or eliminating fees, changing the way they credit transactions and allowing customers to opt out of overdraft protection.

Fucking win. I’ve only overdrafted once, and it was a mistake, I really don’t remember how it even happened. I hate that this sounds like I’m describing a violent crime that happened. But that’s what it feels like when it happens.

[Via NYT]

Weekly Review

After months of negotiation by the bipartisan “gang of
six” in the Senate, Senator Max Baucus unveiled his
$776-billion health-care reform bill, which is supported
by none of the gang’s three Republican members and
received a lukewarm response from Democrats. Baucus’s
plan, which includes member-run insurance co-operatives
but no public option, would mandate that all Americans buy
insurance and would provide subsidies for those who can’t
afford it. The subsidies would be paid for in part by an
excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans,
including those provided to firefighters, coal miners, and
many other union workers. “That’s not really a smart
idea,” said Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller. The bill
will now be taken up by the Senate Finance Committee,
whose members have already drafted at least 564
amendments. One year after the collapse of Lehman
Brothers, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that
the recession is “very likely over.” He added that many
people will continue to “find that their job security and
their employment status is not what they wish it was.” A
North Carolina man had surgery to remove a plastic spoon
that had been in his lung for two years. “There was an
object down there, and it had writing on it,” the man
said. “It spelled out ‘Wendy’s’ on one side and
‘hamburgers’ on the other.”

A quarter of the votes in Afghanistan’s presidential
elections were under review for fraud, including hundreds
of thousands from polling stations where every vote went
to incumbent Hamid Karzai; General Stanley McChrystal,
America’s top commander there, said that without
additional troops the war “will likely result in failure,”
adding that Afghans have “little reason to support their
government.” President Barack Obama said that sending more
troops would put the cart before the horse. An Australian
quadriplegic who had won a landmark “right to die” court
decision exercised that right, and France announced plans
to factor happiness into calculations of its gross
national product. Sultan Kosen of Turkey was named the
world’s tallest man. “The first thing I want to do is have
a car that I can fit in,” said Kosen, who is 8′1″. “But
more than that I want to get married.” One-time child
music prodigy Helen Goddard, now a music teacher in London
and known as “jazz lady,” was sent to jail for having sex
with a 15-year-old female student who she claimed had
pressured her into the relationship. Actor and dirty
dancer Patrick Swayze, folk singer Mary Travers, shopping
mall pioneer Melvin Simon, and Irving Kristol, the
“godfather of neo-conservatism,” died, and South Africa’s
sports minister threatened to start “a third world war” if
hermaphrodite runner Caster Semenya was barred from
competition. Later, the president of Athletics South
Africa admitted that the organization had administered
earlier gender tests on Semenya and that the team’s doctor
had recommended that she withdraw from races.

FBI raids in Denver and New York led to the arrest of
three men alleged to have links to Al Qaeda and to have
been planning terrorist attacks on targets in New York
City. A college student in Baltimore killed a burglar in
his off-campus home with a samurai sword, a Wichita couple
were robbed at knifepoint while attempting to have sex in
a dumpster, and a man in Wisconsin was arrested after
planning to slash the face of the woman he loved and torch
her Toyota in order to “be there for her.” It was revealed
via Twitter that President Obama called Kanye West a
“jackass” and that a coyote ran off with Jessica Simpson’s
maltipoo. Based on a single fossil smuggled out of China,
paleontologists announced the discovery of the Raptorex, a
roughly human-sized version of the Tyrannosaurus
rex. Researchers determined that watermelon may help men
get erections, and John Edwards was said to be
contemplating a public admission that he did in fact
father a child with his mistress, whom he allegedly
promised a rooftop wedding in New York City, with a
performance by the Dave Matthews Band.

– Christopher R. Beha

This video is so f’n epically classic. It’s a Christian girl trying to convert her friend, who is Indian, into a Christian. As I’m writing this, I’ve only seen the first minute of this 10 minute marathon[UPDATE - I'm watching the rest of this shat, it's so ridiculous, my lord everyone needs to watch this. I feel sorry for the Indian girl, IDK why she's friends with these people]. I’ll try and watch as much of it as I can but the first minute has so many quotables, I got post-happy. *I watched the whole thing.

“I had 2 friends over, one regular one and one indian one.”
“I guess like indians are Hindus.”*
“She’s Indian, It’s like an African country in Asia.”

Seriously, this is epic ignorance at it’s finest, DEAR GOD THIS IS HILARIOUS AND SAD AT THE SAME TIME. Sorry for the caps but lord this is a gold mine. The greatest youtube vid of all time after the jump.

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Weekly Review

Congress defied President Barack Obama and adjourned for
the summer without passing a health-care-reform bill. The
House Energy and Commerce Committee approved its own
version of the bill 31-28 (with five Democrats and all 23
Republicans voting against it); its bill is one of five
already produced or soon to be produced by the House and
Senate. President Obama and congressional Democrats
planned to tour the country to talk about the issue, while
Republicans planned to identify the health-care plan as a
failure akin to the $787 billion stimulus package, which
after six months has yet to reverse unemployment.
Health-insurance companies, described by House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi as “immoral” and “the villains in
this,” were spending $1 million a day to lobby
lawmakers. A poll found that 60 percent of Americans
disapprove of Congress. Thirty-nine million Americans were
on food stamps. The remains of Captain Michael “Scott”
Speicher, whose plane crashed in Iraq in 1991 and whose
status had been changed from “killed in action” back to
“missing in action” and then, under pressure from
Congress, to “missing-captured,” were found in the Anbar
province of Iraq, where he was buried by the
Bedouin. Computer records showed that Venezuela was
offering assistance to Colombian FARC rebels, and Hugo
Chavez revoked the licenses of 34 radio stations. Corazon
Aquino died.

Twenty-eight people died in mosque bombings in Iraq, and
Iranian authorities announced that 20 people would be
tried for protesting election results. Two people died in
Tel Aviv when a gunman opened fire at a gay club, and 50
Palestinians were evicted from their East Jerusalem homes,
some at gunpoint; Jewish families moved in soon
after. “Now our future,” said one evictee, “is in the
streets.” Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey appeared
at a hearing on Capitol Hill to speak out against the
“eco-evangelical hysteria” about climate change. “If the
Lord God Almighty made the heavens and the earth,” said
Armey, “and he made them to his satisfaction and it is
quite pretentious of we little weaklings here on earth to
think that, that we are going to destroy God’s creation.”
Sea levels continued to rise. Scientists in Georgia found
that eating too much fructose makes a rat forgetful, and
scientists in St. Louis were driving fruit flies
crazy. The Obama Administration was shopping for a new
prison to hold the Guantanamo Bay inmates, either in
Kansas or in Michigan, and the Army’s base in Fort Irwin,
California, was invaded by wild burros. A Hartford man
smashed his SUV into parked cars after baby snakes escaped
from his pockets. A researcher found evidence that haggis
is British, not Scottish, and British Children’s Secretary
Ed Balls put forth a plan to monitor 20,000 “problem
families” with 24-hour video surveillance, or “sin bins,”
at a cost of $677 million. Michael Jackson’s nose was
missing.

A court in India issued a warrant for the arrest of Warren
Anderson, head of Union Carbide in 1984 when a leak at the
company’s plant in Bhopal killed 10,000 people and injured
555,000. “This is 25 years of unfair treatment,” said
Anderson’s wife, Lillian, from their home in the
Hamptons. Researchers found that organic food is no
healthier than regular food, and that the swine-flu
medication Tamiflu gives children nightmares. Swedish
sperm banks were facing shortages due to high lesbian
demand, and Germans were hoarding incandescent bulbs
before they are banned. An Alabama woman was arrested with
$13,000 of methamphetamines in her bra; an unemployed New
York woman was suing her college for $70,000 for not
trying hard enough to help her find a job; and a
Pennsylvania woman had plans to marry the rollercoaster
she loves. New York City was giving out one-way plane
tickets to the homeless, and a 90-year-old discotheque
impresario and Auschwitz survivor named Felix Brinkman was
found strangled in Manhattan. Medical official Shi Bing
Bing said that China’s astronauts can be disqualified for
100 different reasons, including runny noses, ringworm,
and bad breath. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata revealed
that for a month in space he wore the same underwear,
which was flame-resistant, controlled odors, killed
bacteria, and absorbed water. Wakata said that he also ate
a number of curries. “My station crew members never
complained,” he said, “so I think the experiment went
fine.” A federal appeals court in Texas ruled to permit
the sacrifice of goats.

– Paul Ford

A blog I used to visit ages ago used to post up the Harper’s Weekly Review, which is just a round-up of the previous weeks news. So I’m gonna jack them for the idea. You can read previous Weekly Reviews, as far back as 2000, or you sign up for the weekly email from Harper’s here if you’d rather get it yourself. NAH MEAN SON!

Weekly Review

Swine flu, renamed under pork-lobby pressure to “influenza
A (H1N1) virus, human,” and referred to as “killer Mexican
flu” by anti-immigration activists, had infected 985
people, or 0.0000145 percent of the world’s
population. Twenty countries reported infections; one
death from the flu was confirmed in the United States; and
25 people had died in Mexico, where a cute five-year-old
boy named Edgar Hernandez was presented to the media as
“patient zero.” Mexico shut down for five days to contain
the illness, China began to quarantine Mexicans, and Vice
President Joe Biden appeared on television and counseled
U.S. citizens to avoid airplanes, subways, and classrooms,
which led to protests by the travel industry. “I think the
vice president misrepresented what the vice president
wanted to say,” explained Press Secretary Robert
Gibbs. Egypt, which has no cases of the flu, ordered all
its pigs killed, especially slum pigs; police at Manshiyat
Nasr slum fired tear gas and rubber bullets at rioting
Coptic Christian pig farmers. Geneticists continued to
sequence the flu’s genes. “Atgaaggcaa tactagtagt
tctgctatat,” read the opening line of the segment-four
hemagglutinin gene. “Acatttgcaa ccgcaaatgc agacacatta.”

Recalling September 11, New Yorkers panicked as a spare
Air Force One 747, accompanied by a fighter jet, flew low
near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan for a White
House photo op. President Barack Obama, who is reading the
novel Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, ordered a review of
the $328,835 flight. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter
rejoined the Democratic Party after more than 40 years as
a Republican. “There’s more than being reelected here,” he
insisted. “There’s the factor of principle.” Jack Kemp
died, and Republicans launched an organization called
National Council for a New America. Former Florida
Governor Jeb Bush urged his party to “listen a little bit,
learn a little bit”; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt
Romney called the Democrats “the party of the
monarchists.” Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced
that he was retiring, a decision some attributed to his
hatred for Washington, D.C., which he has called “the
world’s worst city,” and Mr. T was called for jury duty in
a drug case in Cook County, Illinois. “If you’re innocent,
I’m your best man,” he said. “But if you’re guilty, I pity
that fool.” Mine That Bird won the Kentucky Derby despite
50-1 odds. The New York Times Company decided not to close
the Boston Globe, and dollar stores were selling more
food. Guided by the Obama Administration, Chrysler filed
for a bankruptcy from which it plans to emerge in two
months, when it will be purchased by the United States,
Canada, the United Auto Workers union, and Italian
manufacturer Fiat, which plans to merge with Opel, part of
General Motors Europe, to create a massive new car
conglomerate. The new company will be rechristened
Chrysler but will probably not honor its outstanding car
warranties. The United Kingdom pulled its troops out of
Iraq.

Sweden recognized same-sex marriages, and a senior
Buddhist monk in Thailand named Phra Maha Wudhijaya
Vajiramedhi vowed to teach gay and transgender Thai monks
better manners, which would include the elimination of
their pink purses, their sculpted eyebrows, and their
revealingly tight robes. South Korea bioengineered four
fluorescent beagles. Child-injury researchers demonstrated
a 40 percent rise since the early 1990s in the number of
childhood injuries brought on by falling furniture, and a
food-service industry survey found that schoolchildren
would like to replace lunch ladies with robots. Sri
Lanka’s army reportedly killed 91 people at a hospital
inside a civilian safe zone; officials blamed the bombing
on the Tamil Tigers. Pakistan’s army killed as many as 60
Taliban, and Kenyan women’s organizations called for wives
to boycott sex, and for prostitutes to be paid not to
work, until leaders in the coalition government stop
feuding. Veronica Lario, wife of Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, announced plans to file for divorce
after learning that her husband had attended the
eighteenth birthday party of a budding lingerie model to
whom he has given jewelry and who calls him “Daddy.” “That
surprised me,” said Lario, “because he never attended the
eighteenth birthday parties of his own children, even if
he was invited.” Archaeologists searched sites near
Alexandria for the tomb of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, and
the Italian container ship Jolly Smeraldo, at sail off
Somalia, was able, through evasive maneuvers, to ward off
pirate attacks twice in successive days, despite taking on
bazooka fire. Nine people died when a pleasure boat
capsized off Malaysia; the lone survivor, a 14-year-old
boy, stayed afloat by using his mother as a
raft. Officials in New Delhi were investigating the case
of Shanno Khan, an 11-year-old girl whose teacher
allegedly forced her to stand in the hot sun for two hours
as a punishment for not doing her homework, ignoring Khan
when she promised to learn her alphabet and begged for
water. The girl fainted and was hospitalized. “I never
want to go to school again,” she told her mother, and died
a day later.

– Paul Ford

Why I wouldn’t step foot in Mississippi. I heard about this when it happened, last summer, but I totally forgot about it. It’s so fucking ridiculous, I’m glad it happened, but seriously, why the fuck did it have to take so long?

The same week an African-American family moves into the White House, a movie about a Mississippi high school’s first integrated dance debuts at the Sundance Film Festival. What’s most significant about “Prom Night in Mississippi” is not that an interracial prom was organized, but that the historic events took place less than a year ago.

Via CNN

So I’ve got sources, and I want to clear up what I wrote, and what most of the media is saying about their bailouts.

The media has it a little wrong. The fed didn’t give us another $40b…They bought a chunk of AIG for $40b. So we were originally given $85b, then like another $35b. That’s a total of $115b. Out of that total, AIG only used up $60b. Since the fed bought AIG stock worth of $40b, it’s like we “used” only $20b of that $60b.

So there, it doesn’t make them any less douchey, but there’s always room for clarification.

Everyone is talking about how hot Sarah Palin is, “Ohhhh she’s such a milf, oh man she’s so hot”. FUCK THAT! Cindy McCain, ALL DAY.