Holiday Open Thread and GIF Attack :)

mire December 29, 2011 2:45 pm

@60th Street: that’s a good image, 60th, i like it, it fits these scumbags; they’re the john birchers who changed name because, you know, they do not want to seem racists, lol

what d’ya know, the sun disappeared behind clouds as soon as i finally dressed down and settled in the lounging chair… still nice temperature though, just a matter of coming in to fetch a tshirt and check the blog before i go out again….

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toniD December 29, 2011 2:45 pm

Iranian TV Shows War Games, U.S. Carrier

Images from Iranian TV show its naval forces conducting war games in the Persian Gulf near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Also broadcast: aerial footage showing a U.S. aircraft carrier steaming through the Gulf. (Dec. 29)

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trapper December 29, 2011 2:58 pm

@60th Street: Not it their wearing their Lipton tea bag water wings! ; }

I hear they are all the rage at the inflatable pool parties.

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toniD December 29, 2011 3:46 pm

GlennThrush Glenn Thrush
Michele Bachmann reminds herself of Maggie Thatcher: “As President, I want to be America’s Iron Lady!” she says in fund pitch

MaddowBlog Maddow Blog
Bachmann letter: “Margaret Thatcher took the country by the reigns with her conservative policies and was nicknamed, the “Iron Lady.” /+

That Iron she talks about is an iron pole up her butt!

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toniD December 29, 2011 3:51 pm

Cuts to Block Grant Program Hurting Cities

Cities are already suffering from budget shortfalls, decreasing tax revenues, foreclosures, and unemployment. Now they’re being hit hard by cuts to the federal block grant program. From the New York Times:

The shrinking federal program, called Community Development Block Grants, was devised by the Nixon administration to bypass state governments and send money directly to big cities, which were given broad leeway to decide how to spend it. This year the federal government is giving out just $2.9 billion — a billion dollars less than it gave two years ago, and even less than it gave during the Carter administration, when the money went much further.

and

Cuts to the block grants program were cited in a recent report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, which noted that the number of vacant properties in America has jumped to 10 million from 7 million in 2000, threatening to attract crime and cause blight. “With sustained high foreclosure and unemployment rates and further declining home values, local officials said that continued, flexible C.D.B.G. funding would help them maintain efforts to address vacant properties in their areas,” the report noted.

[more]

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toniD December 29, 2011 3:56 pm

POLL: ‘Progressive’ Is The Most Positively Viewed Political Label in America

By Josh Dorner on Dec 29, 2011 at 2:40 pm

A new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press out yesterday shows that “progressive” is the most positively viewed political label in America, with 67 percent holding a positive view compared to just 22 percent who view the term negatively:

The poll found that the term progressive is viewed positively by a majority of all partisan groups — including 55 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of Independents, and 76 percent of Democrats.

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toniD December 29, 2011 3:58 pm

I knew she would. She is stubborn along with Stupid!

JohnFMoore John Moore
RT @AP: Michele Bachmann vows to stay in GOP race despite top adviser’s defection to rival Ron Paul’s team: apne.ws/rFIDEV -CJ

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toniD December 29, 2011 4:02 pm

benpolitico Ben Smith
Things I’m looking forward to: Foreign press coverage when Paul wins Iowa.

[Should be very interesting from the foreign press!]

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toniD December 29, 2011 4:06 pm

Are journalists US 2012 campaign insiders?

As the media coverage of the US presidential campaign intensifies, we ask if “embedded” journalists can do their job.

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 4:14 pm

toniD December 29, 2011 12:15 pm
…the point of view which comes down, it seems, genetically.
—————
I constantly struggle with the nature/nurture conundrum. It is much easier to examine the influences of nature and nurture on one individual than to apply the influences to an entire group like rural conservatives. The conclusions drawn about one individual might not be correct but the volume of evidence requiring review is much less than the volume of evidence for an entire group.

To clarify the terms as I’m using them; nature is innate and/or genetic while nurture is influences from outside of the individual.

But what if nature has created a proclivity to be steered by the outer influences of nurture? For example, what if a person is born with an innate tendency to please others? If he believes as his parents believe, the specific lessons from parental nurture don’t really matter—the kid was programmed to want to follow in their footsteps.

On the other side, what if nature created a proclivity toward independence (or a weaker desire to belong to a group)? It is possible that parental nurture of a belief system is the first belief system that the kid will reject.

My guess is that innate tendencies are shaded in gray. Some people are born with a stronger “group joining” urge than others. A strong urge to identify with a group (the first of which is parents) suppresses independent thinking.

Most people who believe a religious myth believe the religious myth of their parents. If we could conduct an experiment using the exact same baby born to Muslim parents and born to Catholic parents, the chances are better than good that the Muslim child will be Muslim and the Catholic child will be Catholic. Or, if the child rejects the belief system of Muslim parents, its counterpart is likely to reject the belief system of its Catholic parents.

This experiment, if it were possible, would strengthen both the nature and nurture arguments so we’d be right back where we started: Is the kid Muslim because of Muslim nurture, or is the kid Muslim because the kid was destined by nature to be steered by nurture?

We all know adults who are very different from their parents. It is difficult to believe that, in every case, parental nurture (or a deficiency of parental nurture) is the primary cause. We all know adults who are very similar to their parents. It is difficult to believe that, in every case, parental nurture is the primary cause.

I think that there is a powerful social element in human nature but it varies from person to person. I think that nurture has a powerful influence, too, but we all know that the parenting environment varies wildly. As science discovers more and more about human brains in utero and shortly after birth, I think the “free will” argument will give up some ground to the unsettling concept of destiny. Nobody, certainly not me, wants to believe that biology was pulling the decision-making strings before we had a sense of self, but it’s beginning to look that way.

Certainly nurture can and does customize what nature has wrought but nurture is limited by the cards dealt to it by nature.

How does this relate back to rural conservatism? If we stipulate that nearly everyone is born with an innate proclivity to belong to a group (in varying degrees), and we place some of them in a rural environment that nurtures clone-like compliance and limits access to outside people and ideas…well, breaking away will be the exception rather than the rule.

We can see something similar happening with people who are attracted to their own gender. Their nurture environment is comprised of opposite-sex attractions, so their natural-born same-sex proclivity is at odds with their natural-born social proclivity to belong to the group surrounding them.

Some of them break away from the nurture environment that dictates opposite-sex attractions. Some don’t. Certainly the biology of sexual attraction is deeply ingrained by nature. I suspect that the biology of social belonging is as deeply ingrained.

So the kid with the same-sex tendency from nature or the kid with the independent sense of self from nature has an uphill battle in a rural conservative environment. The nurture of rural conservatism demands that we all think and act alike. There are few, if any, role models in rural conservative communities for a kid whose nature is to act or think outside of the box.

Anyone who did, or does, left town on the first bus to anywhere and, in so doing, helped to maintain the purity of the rural conservative environment.

I removed two–count ‘em, two! –good puns that interrupted the continuity. Being serious is hard work. It’s hard. Work.

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toniD December 29, 2011 4:36 pm

Judge Rules Against Wis Dems Intervention In GOP Recall Lawsuit

Eric Kleefeld December 29, 2011, 4:18 PM 369 4

A judge in Wisconsin has ruled that Democratic recall organizers cannot challenge a lawsuit brought by the state GOP against election officials — a suit that claims Gov. Scott Walker’s constitutional rights are being violated by the state’s petition review process.

This means that barring a hypothetical appeal, any continuing litigation in this matter will be conducted exclusively between the state GOP and the election board’s attorney, without the Dems themselves being able to participate and present legal arguments.

“I was a little surprised,” said Jeremy Levinson, the attorney for the recall committee, in an interview with TPM. “It’s the first time I can recall — let me rephrase — it’s the first time I’m aware of a recall-related lawsuit where only the official who is being targeted for recall gets to be a party, and the folks who are working to recall that official are shut out of the process.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

In denying Levinson’s motion to intervene, Davis cited reasons including the need for speed in the case, with the signatures coming in by Jan. 17; the possibility for “chaos” or a “free-for-all” if the new parties were allowed into the case; and that the recall groups’ position will be adequately represented by the accountability board and its lawyers. Lewis Beilin of the state Department of Justice is representing the board.

“This is the kind of case in which timeliness is especially weighty and critical,” Davis said.

After the hearing, Joe Olson, an attorney for Thompson and the Walker campaign organization, called the decision “reasoned and articulate.”

As for the overall case, he said, “We want some clarification from the court for what the GAB is supposed to do when it gets signatures that are invalid on the face of the petition.”

The state GOP’s lawsuit filed two weeks ago against the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in the state, claims that Walker’s 14th Amendment rights of Equal Protection are violated by putting a burden on his campaign to review and challenge petition signatures within a ten-day period. Instead, they say, the GAB must thoroughly search for and directly strike out duplicate signatures, and invalid names and addresses.

The board’s director has in fact said that the board will flag suspicious petitions that it receives, but under the law they do not directly strike signatures based only on the face of the petition. The petitions will be filed in mid-January, which will then kick off the review process. The same procedures were used in a series of state Senate recalls, on both sides of the aisle, earlier this year.

[more]

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toniD December 29, 2011 4:46 pm

@Crank Bait: Almost a cult like atmosphere when the kids are protected from the outside world.

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 5:07 pm

@toniD:

It is what it is. I shouldn’t let it bother me as much as it does.

There are reasons, beyond sheer chance, behind the statistics reflecting the social fabric of rural America.

Urban areas have their own unfortunate statistics but they don’t seem to extrapolate from one urban area to another as consistently as the rural stats do.

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toniD December 29, 2011 5:31 pm

@Crank Bait: It is interesting though. Maybe that’s why they want to go backwards instead of forward. They don’t like and can’t take change easily because they haven’t had to change much.

It bothers me too. There could be some great minds with great ideas who never have the chance to do much unless they have that independent gene that allows them to escape.

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mhappenow December 29, 2011 6:28 pm

@Crank Bait: IMO it is a fallacy to separate nature and nurture. It is a false dichotomy. It is all karma. We have been mind fucking ourselves for years over it….because it is a false dichotomy.

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toniD December 29, 2011 7:13 pm

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 7:15 pm

@mhappenow:

Are you identifying a false dichotomy in the sense that nothing is purely the result of nature or purely the result of nurture?

If that’s your contention, I’m pretty much on board. However, there are powerful influences at play on the nature side in specific aspects of specific people.

For instance, I believe that people are born with a limited intellectual capacity. People who are born with less capacity have a different permanent influence than people who are born with more.

It’s not a qualitative distinction. It’s a distinction between innate influences. One is not like the other. We all don’t begin life with the identical set of tools.

People who are born to be short in stature will never be asked to reach for the item on the top shelf. Whether we are discussing grey matter or the rest of the body, you get what you get, and what you get influences everything thereafter.

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toniD December 29, 2011 7:24 pm

BorowitzReport Andy Borowitz
POLL: Given Choice Between Romney and Paul, Most Voters Choose Suicide

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toniD December 29, 2011 7:30 pm

@Crank Bait: When you’re short you just learn to put things lower or ask taller people to reach them for you if they are there. A step ladder helps as well.

Even my downs syndrome step niece asks for help. But she may not think to put things on a lower shelf.

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toniD December 29, 2011 7:38 pm

Nouriel Nouriel Roubini
Soros Sees Gold Prices on Brink of Bear Market. Bloomberg bloom.bg/tCD3ni

garonsen Gavin Aronsen
Police just arrested a 14-year-old girl. “You are trampling on our 1st Amendment rights,” 16-year-old Heaven yelled. #occupycaucus #iacaucus

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toniD December 29, 2011 7:52 pm

Occupy Our Food
Peter Rothberg on December 28, 2011 – 9:44am ET

On this past December 4, food activists from across the country joined the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March for “a celebration of community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food.”

The rally began at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardens where urban and rural farmers talked about the growing problems with the industrial food system and the solutions based in organic, sustainable and community based agricultural production. This was followed by a three-mile march from the East Village of Manhattan to Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This video by Anthony Lappe offers an inspiring glimpse into this new movement. Check it out and then go to Food Democracy Now, a grassroots community dedicated to building a sustainable food system, to find out how you can help.

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 8:03 pm

toniD December 29, 2011 5:31 pm

@Crank Bait: It is interesting though. Maybe that’s why they want to go backwards instead of forward. They don’t like and can’t take change easily because they haven’t had to change much.
——————–
I think part of it (a big part) is the same phenomenon that causes a person to speak highly of a new purchase. I have long forgotten the term for it.

It is the tendency for a person to find very little fault with the product because to find fault with the product would reflect on his ability to choose a good product.

If you live in the sticks, you gotta tell yourself and everyone else that it’s wonderful. Otherwise it opens the question, “Why are you there?”

If your kids graduate from high school and move away, it implies that your rural choice isn’t good enough. Rural parents have a weird investment in having their kids stay rural to prove them right.

Unless a bunch of Lefties move out to the country and paint their mailboxes blue, rural America will probably stay conservative.

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toniD December 29, 2011 8:08 pm

Lieberman’s Internet “Kill Switch” makes a return
By Gaius Publius

Lieberman proposed this once before. He’s back at it, just in time for the SOPA and PIPA debates. CBS News (h/t Amanda Marcotte; my emphasis):

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.
…
Instead, Milhorn said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the point of the proposal is to assert governmental control only over those “crucial components that form our nation’s critical infrastructure.”

Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. … The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government’s designation of vital Internet or other computer systems “shall not be subject to judicial review.” Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include “provider of information technology,” and a third authorized the submission of “classified” reports on security vulnerabilities.

So there are two parts to this story. The first is the obvious — Mr. Security, Sen. Joe Lieberman (along with colleague “moderate” Republican Susan Collins), would like to hand tons of power to the president.

Do you wonder what a “cyberemergency” is? Or what the president could do if he declares one? Well, that’s nicely unclear:

President Obama would then have the power to “issue a declaration of a national cyberemergency.” What that entails is a little unclear, including whether DHS could pry user information out of Internet companies that it would not normally be entitled to obtain without a court order. One section says they can disclose certain types of noncommunications data if “specifically authorized by law,” but a presidential decree may suffice.

Read the last sentence again. It says what you think it says — domestic snoopage.

[more]

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 8:09 pm

toniD December 29, 2011 7:30 pm
…When you’re short you just learn to put things lower or ask taller people to reach them for you if they are there.
——————
My mom: “Will you get that down for me?”
Me: “What do I look like, Michael Jordan?”
My mom: “You’re taller than I am!”
Me: “I’m tall enough to go find a ladder.”

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toniD December 29, 2011 8:16 pm

Kitteh Time…

Cat Attacks Singing Birthday Card

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toniD December 29, 2011 8:20 pm

@Crank Bait: My family all seem to be giants next to me. I am the shorty in the family. Even my daughter is 5’7″. I must have got the recessive gene. My grandmother on my father’s side was only 5′ tall.

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toniD December 29, 2011 8:24 pm

emptywheel emptywheel
Might make @lizzwinstead feel better abt corn dog season RT @GregMitch: Hoping, praying, for “Santorum Comes fr Behind” headline next week.

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toniD December 29, 2011 8:38 pm

JohnWDean John Dean
AMAZING: Virginia GOP Will Require Voters To Sign ‘Loyalty Oath’ abcn.ws/vmekGl (via @ABC)

MaddowGuestList MaddowGuestList
Thursday 12/29 on #Maddow: Dave Weigel, Slate; Karen Tumulty and Ezra Klein of The Washington Post; Spencer Ackerman, Wired’s Danger Room

upwithchris Up w/ Chris Hayes
The Iraq war is over, but continues to shape U.S. policy and politics. Join us Saturday morning at 7AM EST as we take a closer look. #uppers

chrislhayes Christopher Hayes
Topics tonight: Iowa Caucus and the end of the Tea Party (?) the allure of goldbuggery and the democratic challenge of a secret drone war.

NorahODonnell Norah O’Donnell
RT @petermaercbs: President Obama will have his own say on Caucus night in Iowa. Details:bit.ly/sCf04i #Iowa

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 8:45 pm

@toniD:

I saw the film Whip It recently. Ellen Page’s character (Babe Ruthless) used her smallness to slip through the roller derby pack.

The film is more formulaic than I had hoped but the derby names will make you giggle if nothing else does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_It_(film)

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toniD December 29, 2011 9:00 pm

Chris Hayes sitting in for Rachel Tonight.

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toniD December 29, 2011 9:03 pm

@Crank Bait: It’s not all bad to be on the small side. It’s easy to play the tall people to get them to do things for you and people seem to want to protect me. The runt of the litter.

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mhappenow December 29, 2011 9:10 pm

@Crank Bait: yes that is what I meant. IQ is very genetic but it can be affected by drugs, starvation, abuse etc. We are on the same page..

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Crank Bait December 29, 2011 9:33 pm

@mhappenow:

My excuse is all those years riding a bicycle without a helmet.

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toniD December 29, 2011 10:19 pm

Factory Jobs Gain, but Wages Retreat
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Manufacturers are hiring again in America, softening a long slide in factory employment. But for a new generation of blue-collar workers, even those protected by unions, the price of employment is likely to be lower wages stretching to retirement.

That is particularly true of global manufacturers like General Electric. With labor costs moving down at its appliance factories here, the company is bringing home the production of water heaters as well as some refrigerators, and expanding its work force to do so.

The wages for the new hires, however, are $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on staff — with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future. Such union-endorsed contracts are also showing up in the auto industry, at steel and tire companies, and at manufacturers of farm implements and other heavy equipment, according to Gordon Pavy, president of the Labor and Employment Relations Association and, until recently, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of collective bargaining.

“Some companies want to keep work here, or bring it back from Asia,” Mr. Pavy said, “but in order to do that they have to be competitive in the final prices of their products, and one way to be competitive is to lower the compensation of their American workers.”

The shrunken pay scale for newcomers — $12 to $19 an hour versus $21 to $32 an hour for longtime workers — threatens to undo the middle-class status of even the best-paid blue-collar jobs still left in manufacturing. A similar contract limits the wages of new hires at a nearby Ford Motor Company stamping plant, but neither G.E.’s 2,000 hourly workers nor Ford’s 2,900, nor their unions nor the mayor, Greg Fischer, have objected.

Quite the contrary, all argue that job creation must take precedence over holding the line on wages, given that the unemployment rate in this Ohio River city is above 9 percent and several thousand people apply for every unfilled, $13-an-hour factory job. “The trade-off is absolutely worth it,” Mayor Fischer said, arguing that while the city is actively subsidizing G.E.’s expansion here, mainly through tax rebates, that is not enough. “You must have a globally competitive wage to create jobs,” the mayor insisted.

The generational setback implicit in a “globally competitive wage” is evident at G.E.’s Appliance Park, the complex of factories where G.E. makes refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and other household appliances. Six years into the adoption of lower wages for new hires, half of the hourly workers are paid at the reduced scale.

[more]

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toniD December 29, 2011 10:27 pm

thinkprogress ThinkProgress
“Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) #quotesof11

JeffSharlet JeffSharlet
Still hearing lefties defending Ron Paul. Here are 50 – 50! – newsletters. Paul & staff spew, you decide. mrdestructo.com/2011/12/game-o…

whisper1111 mike fogelsanger
Paul assured a majority of white-in votes

AP The Associated Press
BREAKING: North Korea tells rival SKorea and other nations not to expect any change, despite new leader

[Gee, what a surprise!]

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dan December 30, 2011 5:24 am

@toniD: did you ever wonder why the middle class gets reset and rebooted every 50 years and has to start over while the 1% just get to keep accumulating all the wealth. its like sisyphus and that damn rock.

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mhappenow December 30, 2011 8:46 am

@Crank Bait:

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toniD December 30, 2011 9:44 am

DCdebbie DC Debbie
IRONY: Gingrich attacks the judiciary, now needs a judge to put him on the Virginia ballot huff.to/tVkarn ^@MichiganDems

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toniD December 30, 2011 9:50 am

BorowitzReport Andy Borowitz
Other countries care for their mentally ill. It seems cruel to just let them wander around Iowa.

daveweigel daveweigel
Gingrich, like Romney, says unlimited contributions/full disclosure would fix campaign finance. #iacaucus

KagroX David Waldman
RT @LisaDCNN: BREAKING: Ron Paul to take the weekend off from campaigning, spend New Year’s w/ his wife in Texas || Try windsurfing.

nytjim Jim Roberts
Tennessee tourist unwisely thought she could carry a loaded gun into the Ground Zero memorial. bit.ly/rtx6jX

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toniD December 30, 2011 9:55 am

We should do our own year in review here. I have a topper in the hopper, just waiting for a picture but it isn’t a year in review.

But what I’d like to do is maybe have another topper where everyone here can post the most memorable stories that happened this year.

Videos and audios are welcome.

What do you all think?

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toniD December 30, 2011 9:58 am

Cenk and Matt Taibbi on Obama administration’s fear of fraud prosecutions

Cenk talks with “Rolling Stone” contributing editor Matt Taibbi about his new piece on the Obama administration’s lack of prosecutions for white collar crime. “If they pushed all these prosecutions, investors worldwide would see how epidemic corruption is on Wall Street,” Taibbi says. “They’re afraid of what the international reaction would be.” Cenk says while he doesn’t think President Obama is personally corrupt, “It’s the system that corrupts all these politicians.”

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toniD December 30, 2011 10:10 am

How Banks Cheat Taxpayers
Taibblog
by: Matt Taibbi

A good friend of mine sent me a link to a small story last week, something that deserves a little attention, post-factum.

The Bloomberg piece is about J.P. Morgan Chase winning a bid to be the lead underwriter on a $400 million bond issue by the state of Massachusetts. Chase was up against Merrill for the bid and won the race with an offer of a 2.57% interest rate, beating Merrill’s bid of 2.79. The difference in the bid saved the state of Massachusetts $880,000.

Afterward, Massachusetts state treasurer Steven Grossman breezily played up the benefits of a competitive bid. “There’s always a certain amount of competition going on out there,” Grossman said in a telephone interview yesterday. “That’s good. We like competition.”

Well … so what, right? Two banks fight over the right to be the government’s underwriter, one submits a more competitive bid, the taxpayer saves money, and everyone wins. That’s the way it ought to be, correct?

Correct. Except in four out of five cases, it still doesn’t happen that way. From the same piece [emphasis mine]:

Nationwide, about 20 percent of debt issued by states and local governments is sold through competitive bids. Issuers post public notices asking banks to make proposals and award the debt to the bidder offering the lowest interest cost. The other 80 percent are done through negotiated underwriting, where municipalities select a bank to price and sell the bonds.

By “negotiated underwriting,” what Bloomberg means is, “local governments just hand the bid over to the bank that tosses enough combined hard and soft money at the right politicians.”

There is absolutely no good reason why all debt issues are not put up to competitive bids. This is not like defense contracting, where in some situations it is at least theoretically possible that X or Y company is the world’s only competent manufacturer, say, of armor-plated Humvee doors, or some such thing. It’s still wrong and perverse when companies like Halliburton or Blackwater get sole-source defense contracts, but at least there’s some kind of theoretical justification there.

But this is a bond issue, not rocket science. In most cases, all the top investment banks will offer virtually the same service, with only the price varying. Towns and cities and states lose billions of dollars every year allowing financial services companies to overcharge them for underwriting.

It gets even worse in the derivatives markets, where banks routinely overcharge state and local governments for things like interest rate swaps, for one very obvious reason – swaps are not traded on open exchanges, so only the banks know how to price them.

Imagine what NFL gambling would be like if the casinos didn’t publish the point spreads every week, and you’ll get a rough idea of how the swap market works. If you couldn’t look it up, how many points would you give the Dolphins against the Jets next week? Two? Five? Seven? The big casinos know, because they’re taking all that action, that the real number is one point.

[more]

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toniD December 30, 2011 11:21 am

@dan:

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Crank Bait December 30, 2011 11:45 am

@dan:

In Greek mythology, Ethon or The Eagle Kaukasios was a gigantic eagle born of the monsters Typhon and Echidna. As punishment for stealing fire from Mount Olympus, Zeus had Prometheus chained to Mount Caucasus, where Ethon was set to gnaw on his liver. The liver would regenerate each night, only to be eaten again by Ethon. Ethon was eventually slain by Heracles and Prometheus was released.

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Ethon.html

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toniD December 30, 2011 11:56 am

Tom Tomorrow
tomtomorrow Tom Tomorrow
2011 in review, parts one and two: thismodernworld.com/archives/6538

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toniD December 30, 2011 12:03 pm

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toniD December 30, 2011 12:08 pm