Poor Mojo Newswire

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The True Story of a Wall St. Investment Banker Who Had No Idea What He Was Doing

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

Posted in (K)apital, Labor, (K)ommerce and Economic(k)s. Posted by Mojo at 05:31 PM | Permalink

Colbert Report Round-Up: November 12, 2008

Posted in The Poor Mojo Theater. Posted by Mojo at 05:18 PM | Permalink

Joe the (unlicensed) Plumber signs country music deal

Joe the Plumber pursued for record deal - Jeffrey Ressner - Politico.com

Are you as sick of Joe the Plumber as I am?

“Joe” — aka Samuel Wurzelbacher, a Holland, Ohio, pipe-and-toilet man — just signed with a Nashville public relations and management firm to handle interview requests and media appearances, as well as create new career opportunities, including a shift out of the plumbing trade into stage and studio performances.

On Tuesday, Wurzelbacher joined country music artist and producer Aaron Tippin to form a new partnership that includes booking-management firm Bobby Roberts and publicity-management concern The Press Office to field the multiple media offers he’s received over the past few weeks.

Posted in Music(k). Posted by Mojo at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The inconsistencies of Star Trek

Star Trek inconsistencies: part 3

Laboriously and hilariously captured here.

Seriously, Data can dodge lasers but not arrows?

Posted in (K)inetascopic, both filmic and televisual. Posted by Mojo at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Daily Show Round-Up: November 12, 2008

Posted in Politic(k)s. Posted by Mojo at 04:30 PM | Permalink

Are you sick of Sarah Palin yet?

Think Progress -- Potholders, Caribou, And Snow Machines: Greta’s Hard-Hitting Interview With Sarah Palin

Here are highlights from her Fox News interview with Greta Van Susteren.

Posted in Politic(k)s. Posted by Mojo at 04:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Georgia's "Non-Citizen" Voting Controversy: A Recap

TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Georgia's "Non-Citizen" Voting Controversy: A Recap

One of the things I always look at when reading about methods to "clean-up" voter rolls is the number of false positives. If the politicians in charge of the process in each state are genuine in their regard for the process they will want the fewest number of false positives (which is to say, people who legally can vote having their franchise revoked) while those who are merely trying to suppress voting across the lower-income and minority peoples will want as many false positives as possible.

For example: Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000 is on the record as crafting policies that would create more false positives so as to suppress voters in her state.

The method employed in Georgia also resulted in thousands of false positives.

First, GOP Secretary of State Karen Handel, based on an interpretation of federal election law, purged around 50,000 newly registered voters from the rolls, based on discrepancies between the information on their voter registration form and that in state databases. About 5000 of those voters were purged because the state found that they had checked a box on their drivers license application indicating that they're non-citizens.

Voting-rights groups sued Handel, claiming that the purge violated federal voting laws, and that the procedure for identifying non-citizens was flawed. For instance, the plaintiff in the case, Jose Morales, had applied for his drivers license while a non-citizen, but had become a naturalized citizen before the election. Since the drivers database is not automatically updated in such cases, he was still flagged as a non-citizen.

Posted in Politic(k)s. Posted by Mojo at 03:55 PM | Permalink

Bush has never given the New York Times an interview

Think Progress -- Nine years later, NYT still waiting for an interview with Bush.

He's never given me an interview either, but to be fair I haven't asked him.

The New York Times, for instance, has had a standing request to interview President Bush since well before I came on this beat in May 2006. So far, no interview — and the reason why is hardly a secret. White House officials are quite open about the fact that we have not gotten an interview because they don’t like our coverage. I get e-mails to that effect from them all the time. But the request still stands, and we are hoping for an interview before Mr. Bush leaves office.

Posted in Politic(k)s. Posted by Mojo at 03:36 PM | Permalink

Zero Punctuation reviews Fable 2

The Escapist : Video Galleries : Zero Punctuation : Fable 2

Posted in The Poor Mojo Theater. Posted by Mojo at 02:39 PM | Permalink

These are the spiders in Stephen Fry's bedroom

TwitPic - Share photos on twitter

I think i would die of fright if I saw that.

Posted in Graphic(k) Art. Posted by Mojo at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Kanye quotes are golden on his new album

Daily Kanye: New Leaks And Lulz - Stereogum

# "The whole album is shit that 50 would rap over, but I'm trying to put them Phil Collins melodies when I rap to them."

# "My job is to give y'all shit that have the model bitches runnin' around going crazy."

# "All the hurt that I've felt within the past year from all the losses that I've endured, have sort of settled me into being this fucking super-famous alien, where everywhere I go, somebody wants a fucking photograph."

# "I created a thing I call 'Heartbreak,' that's like a mixed drink. It's Auto-Tune meets distortion, with a bit of delay on it and a whole bunch of fucked up life."

Many more awesome quotes available at the link.

Posted in Music(k). Posted by Mojo at 01:26 PM | Permalink

Happy Birthday, Fritz!

Today is the birthday of Mojonaut Prime, Fritz Swanson.

Please stop by the comments section and leave him a few kind words. My kind words are: clover, moonbeam, mother, rascal and strawberry. These words now belong to Fritz. I have gifted them to him. If you wish to use these words, there will be a small surcharge payable upon utterance to him.

Seriously though, happy birthday.

Posted in PMjA News. Posted by Mojo at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

HBO ordering pilot for "A Game of Thrones"

Not A Blog - Huge, Huge News

George RR Martin's "Song of Ice & Fire" is to fantasy novels what The Wire is to cop dramas on TV. I am terribly excited about this.

They will be filming the pilot episode of A GAME OF THRONES.

It's just the pilot so far. They'll need to see that before they decide whether to proceed with a full season's episodes. So let's all hope the pilot will kick serious ass.

It should. David Benioff and Dan Weiss did a terrific job with the script. And yes, all of you can relax, it's very faithful. Dan and David will be the executive producers for the pilot and (we hope) the eventual series.

More details when I have 'em. The news is very fresh. HBO just issued their own press release, which should be up on their website soon, if it's not there already.

Winter is coming to HBO. Hot damn.

Posted in (K)inetascopic, both filmic and televisual. Posted by Mojo at 01:44 AM | Permalink

German doctor accidentally cures man of AIDS

A Doctor, a Mutation and a Potential Cure for AIDS - WSJ.com

The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hutter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn't an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The development suggests a potential new therapeutic avenue and comes as the search for a cure has adopted new urgency. Many fear that current AIDS drugs aren't sustainable. Known as antiretrovirals, the medications prevent the virus from replicating but must be taken every day for life and are expensive for poor countries where the disease runs rampant. Last year, AIDS killed two million people; 2.7 million more contracted the virus, so treatment costs will keep ballooning.

While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke, David Baltimore, who won a Nobel prize for his research on tumor viruses, deemed it "a very good sign" and a virtual "proof of principle" for gene-therapy approaches. Dr. Baltimore and his colleague, University of California at Los Angeles researcher Irvin Chen, have developed a gene therapy strategy against HIV that works in a similar way to the Berlin case. Drs. Baltimore and Chen have formed a private company to develop the therapy.

Posted in Scientific(k). Posted by Mojo at 01:21 AM | Permalink

DHL has destroyed this town as surely as if they had bombed it

Ohio community devastated by DHL job cuts - CNN.com

3,000 people in a town of 12,000 have been laid off. What can they possibly do now?

Residents in Wilmington knew DHL was going to cut jobs, but Monday's confirmation has delivered a devastating blow to the community. DHL is the area's largest employer.

"It's pretty bad," Wadsworth said. "We've been kind of figuring something's gonna happen, and as it stands now, we know that it's gonna shut down."

About 3,000 residents of Wilmington and Clinton County work at the DHL hub, with the rest of the workers coming from five surrounding counties.

Wilmington, which has a population of 12,000, will be dealt the biggest blow in terms of job loss.

Posted in (K)apital, Labor, (K)ommerce and Economic(k)s. Posted by Mojo at 01:11 AM | Permalink

Woman murdered for backing out of KKK ritual

Police: Woman slain as she tried to leave KKK rite - Yahoo! News

COVINGTON, La. – An Oklahoma woman invited to a rural Louisiana campsite for a Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual was shot and killed after she asked to be taken back to town, the sheriff of a New Orleans suburb said Tuesday.

Eight people were arrested after authorities found the woman's body hidden under some brush, on the side of a road several miles from the remote campsite where the initiation was planned.

Investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes at the campsite, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said in a news release.

Posted in (K)ulture. Posted by Mojo at 01:06 AM | Permalink