Well, you're in a position to do something about it

This sounds all Atrios-y, but I'm glad somebody in some bit of charge is saying something.

Yellen took over from Bernanke just as the recovery in the jobs market appears to have stalled. In January, the US added just 113,000 new jobs, up from an even more disappointing 75,000 in December. Both figures were well below economists’ forecasts. Last year, the economy added an average of 194,000 jobs per month.

“I was surprised that the jobs reports in December and January, the pace of job creation, was running under what I had anticipated. But we have to be very careful not to jump to conclusions in interpreting what those reports mean,” she said. She said the extremely cold winter may have affected the numbers.

Oh sweet Jesus on the last part.

So, nevermind then.

Meet the 21st Century

It has a depressingly familiar look about it.

Hundreds of Eritrean refugees have been enslaved in torture camps in Sudan and Egypt in the past 10 years, enduring weeks or months of violence and rape and extorted by traffickers often in collusion with state security forces...

The report, I Wanted to Lie Down and Die: Trafficking and Torture of Eritreans in Sudan and Egypt, says state authorities have failed to identify and prosecute perpetrators, and have often colluded with them in the kidnap and abuse of refugees.

Golly, I wonder if there's a government we are familiar with that provided aid to Egypt the last decade without doing something about this...like even complaining? [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

But...of course

Having cheered for others to be rushed into wars...while personally rushing to defend Roman Polanski...Richard Cohen must have watched Doubt on Netflix or something because America's Concern Troll states...

The New York Times makes a rush to judgment on Woody Allen story

Because Richard Cohen knows humor AND sexual harassment (he really does, just ask him)...and apparently who is and isn't a pedophile...well really he just knows who isn't.

And really, how can you not trust a man so thoroughly sound in his judgment?

Naturally

They are after all the "creators"*

With Only $93 Billion in Profits, the Big Five Oil Companies Demand to Keep Tax Breaks

*of wars and ecological disasters

Live and never, ever, learn

Against all logic and evidence...and hardly for the first time, the GOP and its base seem determined to refight all the old battles they have lost before and in the most inappropriate way.

Because this time it will definitely work!

Priebus said Monday on MSNBC that the Monica Lewinsky scandal is fair game when it comes to evaluating Hillary Clinton's potential presidential bid. "I think everything's on the table," Priebus told Andrea Mitchell.

Because there is no more aspirational idea for the Republicans than the sanctity of the family unit...other than, of course, Bill Clinton's terrorist unit.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

And I just watched "42" yesterday...

I always figured an already established NFL player would come out first, but props to prospective draft choice Michael Sam for having the guts to do so before he even has a career.  It's very big deal someone at that stage would have the guts to come out.

Good luck to him!

That's strange

That family is so very famous for its scrupulous honesty.

New official reports reveal that former Wyoming Senate candidate Liz Cheney (R) dramatically oversold how much money she raised during her insurgent primary challenge against Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY).

Naturally

As there are "officially" no gay people in Sochi, why not have fake-lesbians perform in the opening ceremonies, right?

In a provocative choice, Russian singers Tatu will perform before the 3,000 athletes march through a stadium on the shores of the Black Sea, one of the many newly built facilities in the most expensive Olympics in history.

The women in Tatu put on a lesbian act that is largely seen as an attention-getting gimmick. It contrasts with the very real anger over a Russian law banning gay "propaganda" aimed at minors that is being used to discriminate against gays.

But how are we expected to "eat fresh" without it?

Well, I've always thought their bread was poor in comparison to Jimmy John's or Quiznos for some reason...maybe this explains it...or not.

Subway announced this week that eventually it will stop using azodicarbonamide — a chemical used in yoga mats and shoe rubber — as an ingredient in its bread.

But representatives for Subway, which apparently does not use the chemical in its European or Australian markets, would not say when the company would actually effect the changes.

On the other hand, "Five dollar yoga mat" does not have the same ring, nor does it make teenagers giggle.

Carne Assuage-ada

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen would have been there with another pair of machine guns by Danny Montana's side if she could have, so the only surprise is these two are not Cuban.

Sen. Robert Menendez is under federal investigation for his advocacy on behalf of two Ecuadorian bankers convicted of embezzlement. Turns out he wasn’t the only prominent lawmaker accepting donations and doing favors for the brothers.

 

Florida Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, while she was Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter to federal agencies on behalf of two Ecuadorian bankers convicted of embezzlement who were seeking U.S. residency. She also advocated for their family members, who donated over $20,000 to her campaign.

Sochi may be a $50 Billion shithole still

But, hey, so much for things we were told were certainly not to be seen in Russia at present.*

And yes, I do feel about 13-years old right now.


(Russian is a language more full of irony than I expected)

*I realize there's something inherently off-putting about western journalists going somewhere and complaining about not being sufficiently feted.

Yeah, because somehow only he gets an exemption!

I mean, how dare the twitterati right?

Because Twitter is only good for judging all other things, but this one, obviously.

Hopefully, this is going to be about 20 days of mildly subversive hilarity

Touche!

Norway’s Minister of Health and Care Services, Bent Høie, has decided to comment on the Russian propaganda laws by taking his husband, advertising exec Dag Terje Solvang, to Sochi. Bent Høie, who holds a position in the Norwegian government comparable to our Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, waved his status like a red cape before a bull, daring the Russians to object. Minister Høie doubled down on his strategy, telling Norway’s Stavanger Aftenblad newspaper, that it is a normal for a cabinet minister to travel with a spouse on an official visit.

I hope somebody tells Anders Behring Breivik too. Because, as ever, fuck that guy.

It took a year...a year!

And the surprising thing is...there may be some sort of assignment of responsibility. Maybe.

Last year, in the immediate wake of the murder of three Los Angeles Officers by Christopher Dorner, this happened.

At some point, the officers received a report that a pickup truck resembling Dorner’s was seen in the area of the house they were guarding. Shortly after 5 a.m., a truck turned onto the street. As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the truck. When the shooting stopped, they realized their mistake. The truck was a different make and model. The color wasn't gray, as Dorner’s was, but blue. And it wasn't Dorner inside the truck, but a woman and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times.

A tragic, but clearly foreseeable event. And those officers, the Chief of Police, Charley Beck,  decided after a year...violated Departmental policy.

Or to be tragically cynical, did they?

A panel of high-ranking police officials that reviewed the shooting urged Beck to clear the officers of wrongdoing

Yes, those two now dead (Ed: they lived, so, uh....whoops?!) people should have known not to drive a vehicle as uncommon in America as a pick up truck.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

I know it's hard to believe

As this never happens, except pretty much every...single...time.

But "Beltway Wisdoms" true love, Robert Gates.

Awful human being -- almost always wrong...but always wrong in the "right" way...

On his book promotion tour, when fielding curiously softball questions from Jon Stewart, Gates assumed the admonitory tone of a statesman in saying that presidents are perhaps too quick to reach for military solutions to foreign policy problems. This from a defense secretary who lobbied for and administered the military escalations of two wars, one of which US troops are still fighting! One wonders whether this statement derived from his certainty that he could con Stewart, or from an autistic lack of self-awareness. In any case, Stewart did not follow up.

Another gift from the First World to the Third

Let's just add this to the top-five or so reasons the next time somebody asks "why do they hate us?"

The incidence of cancer globally has increased in just four years from 12.7m in 2008 to 14.1m new cases in 2012, when there were 8.2m deaths. Over the next 20 years, it is expected to hit 25m a year – a 70% increase.

The biggest burden will be in low- and middle-income countries. They are hit by two types of cancers – those triggered by infections, such as cervical cancers, which are still very prevalent in poorer countries that don't have screening, let alone the HPV vaccine, and increasingly cancers associated with more affluent lifestyles "with increasing use of tobacco, consumption of alcohol and highly processed foods and lack of physical activity", writes the World Health Organisation director general, Margaret Chan, in an introduction to the report.

And as tradition dictates in the West, we'll cash their checks and say "You're welcome".

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

As I watched the most entertaining part of THIS year's Super Bowl

The commercials, the big question is which commercial caused the angriest outrage amongst the morons?

The bi-racial Cheerios family?

Or the multilingual "America, the beautiful" Coke ad?


I'm guessing it is both a tie, and the rage tweeters had a large, large, overlap.

...Or maybe Missouri Officials are the worst?

What's the hurry? Afraid you won't get to flip the switch?

It is 2014, not 1964 or 1914, and yet on Wednesday night a black man in Missouri, a black man convicted by an all-white jury, was executed before his federal appeals had been exhausted. He was executed just moments after reportedly being hauled away by prison guards while he was in the middle of a telephone call discussing his appeals with one of his attorneys. He was executed even though state officials knew that the justices of the United States Supreme Court still were considering his request for relief.

Addiction is the worst...part infinity

What an amazing actor. You could spend a great deal of a day debating what Philip Seymour Hoffman's greatest performances were.

This time, with even less feeling

Since it has gone down the memory-hole as other nation's civil wars and other more important news (Bieber!) have occurred, let us return to austerity's poster-country, Greece. For the last half-decade's worth of its citizens being brutalized by international bankers IS...NOT...ENOUGH!

Germany has signalled it is preparing a third rescue package for Greece – provided the debt-stricken country implements "rigorous"austerity measures blamed for record levels of unemployment and a dramatic drop in GDP.

Because making the national-sport/way-of-living dumpster diving is not enough austerity for those who exploited it into that position. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]