By Steve Rhodes
1. Best Sam Hurd tweets.
jbooks_23
Sam Hurd has only caught “8 Balls” this season #ironic
Peyton’s Head
BREAKING: NOLA Hornets sign Sam Hurd. Team source says “He’s the only guy I know that distributes the rock better than Chris Paul.”
2. Most important NDAA tweets:
RT_America
Sen Graham on #NDAA: “Citizen or not, you can hold them without telling them they have a right to a lawyer and reading…Miranda rights”
@FearDept
#NDAA cancels some or all of 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amend. Any chance you can get it to Obama’s desk today? #BillOfRightsDay
Mike Riggs
Fuck off RT @whitehouse: Happy Bill of Rights Day! US continues to stand with citizens & govs around the world who empower free expression.
Glenn Greenwald
For those falsely claiming the bill the President is about to sign doesn’t codify indefinite detention – even (cont) tl.gd/eo8jcq
More Greenwald from Salon: Three Myths About The Detention Bill
3. Best SOPA tweet:
Declan McCullagh
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in Google+ post, says #SOPA would put U.S. “on a par” with China, Iran, Libya: plus.google.com/u/0/1098138967… #cnet
4. Oh, hell. Here’s more Greenwald on NDAA:
Obama to sign first indefinite detention bill since the McCarthy era into law is.gd/i6Nu7O // Lots of myths about this bill & Obama
Obama apologists on the detention bill will completely ignore what the ACLU & HRW have said about the President (cont) http://www.twitlonger.com/show/eo57p4
Obama-is-always-right apologists face a serious dilemma with the detention bill – in cartoon form: is.gd/3TVHsS
5. “All it took for former state Rep. Robert Molaro to nearly double his public pension was spending one month as an aide to Ald. Ed Burke, the powerful chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee,” the Tribune reports.
“Among Molaro’s duties: Write a 19-page white paper about Chicago’s ailing pension funds. For his services, the former lawmaker was paid $12,000.
“That paycheck sent his pension soaring, as many lawmakers’ benefits are based on 85 percent of their final pay on the last day of service. When Molaro officially retired on Jan. 1, 2009, his pensionable salary would be calculated at $144,000 – the amount he would have earned had he worked for Burke for a full year.”
Can’t Patrick Fitzgerald find a way to prosecute these guys for fraud?
6. As crazy as I and others thought he became about the Iraq war, Christopher Hitchens taught a lesson that all journalists should never forget: Mother Teresa said she loved you and he checked it out.
7. Right. It didn’t occur to him to take sleeping pills. Show me the liquor store receipts.
*
And require Patti and the children to attend Al-Anon.
*
And don’t leak to Sneed if you want to be taken seriously.
8. “The recent flooding in Thailand has disrupted more than exports of cars and PCs. It also has knocked out supplies of a popular toy at the height of the holiday season,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Inventories of Magna-Tiles, which are magnetic connector toys, have disappeared, says its manufacturer, Valtech LLC. Flooding in the suburbs of Bangkok, where the Chicago-area company’s factory was located, destroyed the machinery that makes the square- and triangle-shaped tiles used to construct rocket ships, roadways and skyscrapers.”
What I’d like to know – but isn’t addressed in the story – is if a factory in, say, Chicago, would have had more stringent regulations than required in Thailand that would have had the added benefit of protecting its equipment in a flood, as well is how much Valtech pays its workers in Thailand compared to what the labor cost in Chicago would be and how much of its Illinois tax bill it finds a way to evade. Then I’ll decide if I feel sorry for them.
9. Dear Cardinal George: You could at least acknowledge that our mayor is Jewish.
10. “But the administration’s careful strategy – which has marked its approach to other hot-button issues such as smog regulation and emergency contraceptives for teenage girls – is stoking frustration among Obama’s allies.
“Many consumer and patient advocates who championed the law had hoped the administration would use its new powers more aggressively to remake the nation’s healthcare system.”
11. “Barbara Crowder, a Madison County, Ill., judge recently removed from the court’s sole asbestos docket after plaintiffs lawyers on her call gave $30,000 to the jurist’s re-election campaign, stated yesterday that she plans to return the donations in question.”
Better: Order her home to be insulated with asbestos.
12. “Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s communication chief Chris Mather is moving on, after launching a City Hall press shop yielding Emanuel enormous positive local and national coverage almost every day since he was sworn-in on May 16,” Lynn Sweet reports for the Sun-Times.
“While the press corps might not believe it, I have thoroughly enjoyed working with them and consider many of them my friends,” Mather said.
Please name names so we can insulate their homes with asbestos.
13. Daley Named To Coca-Cola Board; Threatens To Pound A 2-Liter Up Reporter’s Ass
14. The Week in Chicago Rock.
15. The Week in WTF.
–
The Beachwood Tip Line: Get to a better state.
Posted on December 16, 2011