This cracked me up

Geithner Sees “Perception Problem” With Jamie Dimon on NY Fed Board of Directors

TRMS with G&Ts; dinner in my brother's smoker; all dogs and chickens accounted for.  Life is good.

 http://www.mothersdaycentral.com/about-mothersday/history/

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamaition of 1870

The first North American Mother’s Day was conceptualized with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having penned The Battle Hymn of the Republic 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers. With the following, she called for an international Mother's Day celebrating peace and motherhood:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
 
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
 
"We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
  
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
 
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
 
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
 
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
 
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.

I liked this post on Firedoglake.

Late Night FDL: Swinging From the Trees

By: cocktailhag Thursday May 3, 2012 8:00 pm

Swing! (photo: debs/flickr)

As I watch President Obama and his minions mercilessly tout his genius and bravery as a “War President,”  presumably to attract “swing” voters, my only consolation is that I can now delete his incessant money-grubbing emails without a trace of guilt.  Actually, it’s become a pleasure to do so, and it saves money, too.  Never mind the creepy grave-dancing involved; the most galling part is how easily he slipped into this role, even resorting to tinny Bushisms about Bin Laden being “brought to justice.”
What’s next, “dead or alive?”  Oops, never mind.  Obama’s unseemly embrace of Bush’s ridiculous “War on Terror” has gone from mild flirtation to Roman orgy in just three short years, and I shudder to think of the long-term consequences.  Because these things work like a ratchet; every time a Democratic President give the righties an inch, they take a mile, and come up with something more outright fascist to demand next time.  With Obama, they get a mile up front, and then demand a light year five minutes later.
I no longer care to speculate whether Obama recognizes this; not being a drooling nitwit, he surely does by this point.  He caved in on FISA, and now the Republicans want to tap everyone’s data, all the time.  He gave up on EFCA, and now Republicans insist all unions must be hounded out of existence.  He coddled and covered for BP after the Horizon disaster, and now Republicans bleat that he’s hamstringing oil development. He summarily executed Bin Laden, and now Republicans are demanding scalps from Iran and Syria to China and North Korea.
Meanwhile, these serial capitulations are treated in Serious circle-jerks as wise and timely nods to “swing voters.”  What, pray tell, are they swinging from, the chandeliers or the trees?  Who are these people, and why must only Democrats bother appealing to them?  Right-leaning swing voters are thought to care about the deficit, but their candidates merely offer budget-busting tax giveaways to the wealthy, and call it a day.  They are thought to be uncomfortable with abortion on demand, but their candidates respond by seeking to ban birth control and sex education.  The list goes on.
Democrats in general and Obama in particular take an entirely different and inherently infuriating approach.  Their swing voters are thought to care about the deficit, so Democrats offer to slash Social Security and Medicare while holding the wealthy harmless.  They’re thought to be skeptical of foreign intervention, so Democrats offer them death by drone instead.  They are thought to care about the environment, so Democrats decide to “study” the latest death-dealing toxic endeavor before approving it anyway.  See a pattern?
The presence (which I’m convinced is largely fictional) of “swing” voters is just the latest excuse for Democrats to be just as big of corrupt sellouts as the Republicans, only (until now, anyway) slightly less blusteringly proud about it.  Surely that explains why Bill Clinton has suddenly jumped on board with both expensively clad feet.  At one point in 2007, Slick Willie might have actually though Obama might be some sort of liberal boat-rocker; any such fears are now well and truly assuaged, as the banksters, war profiteers, and every other criminal one percenter has been brought comfortably into the fold.
For Democrats, the base is treated as an annoyance which can be safely ignored in order to win elections with  uninformed, vacillating “swing” voters.  For Republicans, the base, no matter how lunatic, writes the platform, swing voters be damned.  Which approach is working best?

Department of Recycled Plots

ABC News: Terrorists may be plotting to surgically implant non-metal body bombs