http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/stewart_protestors_treated_praying_muslim_like_he_was_shooting_free_throws_video.php

Second Russian PAK FA Prototype Makes First Flight

Not worth almost $25 US

But the Covent Garden based creamery is selling breast milk ice cream:

When a well-stocked ice cream parlour says they sell every flavour, there are usually limits.

But one restaurant in London is selling breast milk ice cream which is being served to customers in a cocktail glass.

Icecreamists, based in Covent Garden, have named the £14 dish Baby Gaga.

Victoria Hiley, 35, from Leeds provided the first 30 fluid ounces of milk which was enough to make the first 50 servings.

But the company are looking for more women to provide breast milk – and are providing £15 for every ten ounces extracted using breast pumps.

The recipe blends breast milk with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest, which is then freshly churned into ice cream.

A costumed Baby Gaga waitress serves the ice cream in a martini glass filled with the breast milk ice cream mix. Liquid nitrogen is then poured into the glass through a syringe and it is served with a rusk.

A rusk is a sort of biscotti, apparently.

It just goes to show you that jet wash can be a real bitch (About 20 s into the vid):

H/t the DEW Line

Two thoughts actually,

First, I will have to leave my cell phone in my car when at work, which makeds me feel kind of naked.

Second, one of the guys at the orientation session had the WORST comb over that I have EVER seen in my life.

Seriously. We have his fingerprints all over the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, over the firing of US Attorneys who refused to engage in political witch hunts, and on the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

Well, now it appears that Karl Rove is involved in the sexual assault charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange:

These days, Sweden and the United States are apparently undertaking a political prosecution as audacious and important as those by the notorious “loyal Bushies” earlier this decade against U.S. Democrats.

The U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks, if successful, could criminalize many kinds of investigative news reporting about government affairs, not just the WikiLeaks disclosures that are embarrassing Sweden as well as the Bush and Obama administrations. Authorities in both countries are setting the stage with pre-indictment sex and spy smears against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, plus an Interpol manhunt.

“This all has Karl’s signature,” a reliable political source told me a week and a half ago in encouraging our Justice Integrity Project to investigate Rove’s Swedish connection. “He must be very happy. He’s right back in the middle of it. He’s making himself valuable to his new friends, seeing the U.S. government doing just what he’d like ─ and screwing his opponents big-time.”

The theory here is that Rove has something to cover up that Wikileaks has.

That’s possible, but I am more concerned about the possibility that someone in the Obama may have affirmatively sought him out in order to set something up against Assange and Wikileaks.

If that is the case, then we are in a much bigger world of hurt than previously imagined.

^*A plot by Catholics in 1605 to blow up parliament.

Yesterday was a mixed day for news.

On the plus side, we had:

• Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing index rose sharply.
• April auto sales Rose.
• Personal spending rose for the 6^th straight month.

On the minus side:

• Private construction spending fell in March, though overall construction spending rose because of public spending (stimulus).
• The latest Fed survey shows weaker loan demand, even though banks were not tightening lending standards.

Additionally, we had US Treasurys falling, and their yields rising, but that is largely on reduced concerns about Greece following the successful implementation of a bailout package.

Of course, Shell is based in Holland, where those socialists Dutch people allow for the owners of a company to vote on matters of importance to their investment, but still the fact that Royal Dutch Shell felt compelled to curbe pay to upper managment is a good thing:

Royal Dutch Shell Plc said it was overhauling its pay practices for top management, including a pay freeze for its chief executive, Peter Voser, and a limit on bonuses, after a shareholder revolt last year.

The head of Shell’s remuneration committee said salaries for Voser and Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry, which are 20 percent lower than their predecessors’, were being frozen until 2011.

Directors will not, this year, be allowed to award management bonuses if they fail to meet pre-agreed targets.

Top management received bonuses for 2008, despite not hitting targets, prompting 60 percent of Shell investors who voted, to oppose the 2008 remuneration report.

Hans Wijers, Chairman of Shell’s Remuneration Committee told investors in a letter, a copy of which was published on Shell’s web site on Tuesday, that he wanted to “demonstrate appropriate restraint in the current economic environment”.

I still think that a non-binding “say on pay” is weak tea, but it managed to shame a huge company into doing the right thing, so it is an improvement.

It appears that the statement that Harold Ford never paid nor filed New York State income taxes is, to quote former Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, “Inoperative.”

What they meant to say is that this April will be the first time that Ford has filed his taxes as a New York State resident.

Play him off, bugs

By bare of the ShorSkoolbus BBS:

How to piss off a wingnut, Going Rouge

Postby bare on Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:54 pm
Stopped in for a quick one at the tavern last night only to be accosted by my favorite wingnut foil. He was commenting on having ordered Palin’s new book. I said “Oh, going rouge? Why, is she going to get all red-faced and apologize for her actions of late?” “The name of the book is going rogue,” he said pronouncing it roge. Uh-uh sez I, it’s rouge (pronounced rooge). We argued back and forth a bit until I finally called for the dictionary we keep there for settling bar bets. I looked up rouge and showed it to him he took on a rouge tint himself and shut up.

Take full advantage of republican’s spelling problems and rename Palin’s book Going Rouge.

Sir/Madame/Elder God/Outer God/Great Old One/Dog (you can never tell, it’s the Internet), I salute you

H/t The Big Picture

Also h/t The Big Picture

The big news today is that Fed’s Open Market Committee has issued its regular statement (here), though the cartoons are just ducky.

They left their benchmark interest rate unchanged, but issued a rather positive statement about how things are getting better, and that they would be phasing out their purchases of mortgage backed securities:

To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt. The Committee will gradually slow the pace of these purchases in order to promote a smooth transition in markets and anticipates that they will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

(emphasis mine)

Their announcement that the purchase program will be terminating in about 6 months has increased demand for Treasuries, driving their yields down today, but over the past week, before their announcement, mortgage rates have fallen below 5% for the 30 year fixed (!), pushing mortgage applications are up.

I don’t think that the low mortgage rates, or the level of mortgage apps will remain where it is for long, now that the Fed is shutting down its program to bid the rates down.

Meanwhile, in the only non-corrupt petro-state on earth, the Norwegian Central Bank has kept deposit rates at 1.25%.

I’m not sure what this means for real estate, though because the US and the rest of the world seem to be going in separate directions, with Manhattan rents dropping 8% over the previous year, and the Paris, France office market showing signs of a real revival.

It confuses the hell out of me.

In any case we do have some numbers heading in the same direction, with the European manufacturing and services industries index rising to 50.8, with any number above 50 being expansion, and US seen vehicle miles driven, as reported by the DOT are up too.

On the flip side, we have credit card defaults hitting 11.49%, in August, up almost a full percent from July’s 10.52%, the 25 biggest US retailers looking to cut back on holiday hiring, and mass layoffs in August rose to 2,690 with 259,307 people losing their jobs.

In energy and currency, oil fell on rising inventories, and the dollar remained near yesterday’s lows.

First, it was Giant Gicrobes^®, and now we have ParticleZoo^®, foam filled representations of subatomic particles.

They found the former at a museum, and I am honor bound to notify them of the latter, and so they will demand the fuzzy harbingers of entropy….I find this all a bit….strange.^*

In any case, I feel like I am the victim of some sort of twisted physics related drive-by.

They also have a physics Lolcat page, go there if you dare.

In fact, some researchers at CERN actually used a special order Particle Zoo plushie in their roll-out of the single-top quark:

^*It’s a physics pun.^†
†But no, this is not just a vehicle for a pun, my kids are heavily into Giant Microbes^®

More of the wisdom of Hunter S. Thompson here.

And here they are, ordered, and numbered.

38. Cooperative Bank, Wilmington, NC
39. Southern Community Bank, Fayetteville, GA
40. First National Bank of Anthony, Anthony, KS

Full FDIC list

Calculated Risk: Case-Shiller: Prices Fall Sharply in March

Yeah, and there is a spoiler or two.

I haven’t seen the movie, but this is funny.

Leon Panetta: C.I.A. Director.

What is interesting here is two things, he does not have previous intel experience, being Clintons Chief of staff for a time, and that he has Panetta op/ed forcefully stated his opposition to warrantless surveillance and torture.

Clearly, as a former CoS, he will know how to run a bureaucracy, and how to get the President’s attention, which should be helpful, though I still find it an odd pick.

We also have some more appointments at the Department of Justice

• David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General;
• Elena Kagan, Solicitor General;
• Tom Perrelli, Associate Attorney General;
• Dawn Johnsen, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.

No knowledge of them, though Glenn Greenwald is generally happy over the above appointments, and positively ecstatic over Dawn Johnsen.

Greenwald also reveals that Sen. Dianne Feinstein^* and Sen. Jay Rockefeller are upset because they Panetta is not an “intelligence professional”, and because they feel that they were not consulted sufficiently.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers.

Well, it looks like they have found some more uncounted ballots in Minnesota, specifically, 171 absentee ballots that were discarded for no reason, which bolsters the case of the Franken camp for a review of why ballots were rejected.

Also, this Franken video which puts faces on legal ballots that were rejected, keeps the pressure up too:

Minnesota: Coleman-Franken still too close to call, and Bachmann wins.

Alaska: It looks like both current felon, Stevens, and felon to be, Young, are going to be reelected. What is wrong with that state?

Washington State: Reichert-Burner still close to call.

California: It looks like the hate amendment wins, though they are still calling it close.