During the presentation of tough new austerity measures at the Spanish parliament, and more specifically of a cut in unemployment benefits (with unemployment currently standing at 24%), and as her fellow conservative MPs clapped,
Andrea Fabra yelled "Fuck 'em all!". Hilarity has predictably
ensued...
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posted by Skeptic
on Jul 13, 2012 -
50 comments
In June of 1984, the UK latched onto a single by three London mates which openly challenged Thatcherite-era attitudes toward homosexuals, and gave the ball of social change a huge push as the single climbed to #3 on the charts. The band was Bronski Beat, the song was
Smalltown Boy, and as the song charted around the globe, the world was introduced to singer and gay rights activist
Jimmy Somerville.
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posted by hippybear
on Apr 28, 2012 -
60 comments
“Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow.’”
Just ahead of the
Iowa Caucus, New Jersey native turned University of Iowa Professor
Stephen Bloom has published a
piece in The Atlantic that
has caused quite a stir in the heartland. The piece, which is very critical of the Hawkeye State and her inhabitants, has a lot of
Iowans on the defensive, with one article calling Bloom the
"Michelangelo of hick-punching." Stephens has said the
"feedback has been frightening," but he stands by his story. Perhaps a
1971 Harper's piece on Iowa captures the state with a bit more nuance.
posted by Lutoslawski
on Dec 13, 2011 -
134 comments
Betting Against the American Dream. In 2005, just as Wall Street started to get cold feet about the housing market, the
Magnetar hedge fund helped create a new wave of billion-dollar mortgage-backed securities, pushed bankers to include riskier sub-prime mortgages, and then shorted the securities, making millions when the bubble finally burst. Traders on both sides of the deals pocketed enormous fees even if their banks went under when the securities failed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica,
This American Life, and NPR's
Planet Money track down some of the big winners in the housing/financial crisis. No time to read or listen? It seemed so much like a scheme from
The Producers, they even recorded
a show tune to explain it all. (
Previously,
2,
3)
posted by straight
on Apr 15, 2010 -
30 comments
Fox News, keeping it classy, recently aired a comedy segment ridiculing the Canadian military's efforts in Afghanistan. On the
overnight programme, host
Greg Gutfeld and friends joked about Canada's plan to pull out troops in 2011 to "do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white Capri pants." He also suggested invading Canada seeing as how they "have no real army", and mocked the last name of one of the Canadian generals as being unmasculine.
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posted by spoobnooble
on Mar 24, 2009 -
138 comments
The Demure du Chaos (french language) in Lyon looks like something in between a junkyard, a museum, a work of modern art, a manufactured tourist attraction and a black hole of attention grabbin' for
his allegedly wealthy, outofordinary owner ; who just got a €200000 fine from a Lyon court for violating town planning laws (
here a direct link to a photoset of DdC). How could a neighbor possibly be pissed by that ?
posted by elpapacito
on Sep 14, 2006 -
8 comments
