It’s been a while since we oggled the hotties- scifi edition

So this is Jason Momoa, who used to be on Stargate Atlantis (and also has one damn sexy voice) and may be the only thing in the universe that could convince me to watch a remake of Conan the Barbarian.

Daniel Dae Kim, formerly of Lost, currently of Hawaii 5.0

And we can always use another shirtless Tahmoh Penikett picture. ALWAYS!

So hetero ladies and non-hetero dudes, what boys have got your panties moist?

Hear fucking hear to Vermont’s Single Payer Law!

So the idea is to promote Vermont’s new law as much as possible, so maybe the big boy lefty blogs see that us unterbussen don’t give a shit that they think the deficit is an actual problem.

I read the Corrente post just after reading a brief update from Arthur Silber, who is easily the most moral person I have ever read. And dammit, he’s going to die sooner than he should ever have to because he can’t get medical care. I can’t help but think that is some seriously fucked up shit. Kill of the morally righteous so that douchebags in tacky blue suits can give bigger douchebags in fancy Italian suits fatter paychecks. (I can’t find it now, but a year after “health care reform” the insurance companies are getting record level profits because poor Americans can’t afford the copays and deductibles. So they skip getting treatment. FUCKERSSSSSS- the health care companies, not the people. Obvs)

Medicare for all is the only moral, economical, and efficient way to combat this shit.

The Incredible Turbomuffin

I just had a lovely lunch date with a very charming guy who has the sexiest voice I have ever heard on a man. So sexy, in fact, that using that voice he was able to convince me to do the silly voices I normally reserve for entertaining children and terrifying drunks. At one point, I forgot a really simple word (regulation) and spent a good 2 minutes trying to figure it out. “It’s like oversight, it’s what the EPA does, blah blah blah.” He responded with “turbomuffin?”, hence the blog post. Now if he googles the word he’ll be able to figure out who I am. (And yes, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to discuss Adam Smith on the first date.)

Not that long ago, I decided to stop giving potential dates the blog name because it gave them a bit of an unfair advantage. They’d know way more about me than I would about them. And while this little blog is pretty open and honest about who I am and what I believe, it loses something in translation from 3 dimensional Lizzie to 2 dimensional Red Queen. So sexy-voiced dude, if you google and decided to read ahead, remember that. I like to think I’m more charming in person.

Dating and Politics

I’ve never been a believer in unrequited love. Well, it’s not that I don’t believe in it, it happens I am sure. I just refuse to waste any time or consideration on anyone who isn’t at least as interested in me as I am in them. The biggest turn off in the world to me is disinterest.

Depending on your views of romance, this has served me pretty well. I haven’t spent huge chunks of time pining for someone who would never love me back. I also haven’t had lengthy psuedo-relationships with manipulative asswipes who run hot and cold. perhaps this is what made it relatively easy for me to spot Obama’s corporatism and general assholery early on.

Just like in a romantic relationship, my loyalty to a political party or candidate is based purely on their concern for people like me. But that doesn’t render me heartless. I feel for poor Cornell West, just like I lend a shoulder to friends who find they’ve been taken in by a cad.

So to all my brothers and sisters who’ve been thrown under the bus and know it, here’s a shoulder. To those who still refuse to admit it, despite the glaring lack of interest Obama and the Dems at large show for the disemployed, the foreclosed, the uninsured, the uterine possessed and anyone who isn’t a board member of a corporation or a bankster it’s time to admit the ugly truth. He’s just not that into you.

So the chief of the IMF got arrested for rape

And of course there are conspiracy theorists of all stripes screaming about how Sarkozy set him up because Dominique Strauss-Kahn was all set to run against him as the French Socialist party candidate.

Yes folks, you read that shit right. The head of the IMF, bastion on neoliberal policies designed to screw over the poor and benefit the rich, is a French Socialist.

But here’s the thing: once again a powerful man is accused of rape and the world jumps on the woman (see Assange, Julian or Spitzer, Elliot- thought at was prostitution and not rape). This isn’t the first time Strauss-Kahn has been in trouble cause of his penis. He had an affair with a subordinate a few years ago that resulted in an investigation and SHE got the can.

It is possible that 1)He’s a fucking rapist with a history AND 2) He got set up. At the same time, those things can be true.

But the one thing I am damn sure of is that no one who runs the IMF should call themselves a socialist. While his arrest may look like a good thing for Sarkozy (fucking Sarkozy) in the long run it’s a better thing for the French Socialist Party. He could have been their Tony Blair, the best thing to happen to English Tories, or their Obama, the best thing to happen to kleptocrats ever.

How to be a Great Artiste

1) Do not dip dirty paintbrush in your drink glass instead of your dirty paint water glass. Paint is not refreshing (we learned this last week)

2) Be careful that the balaclava you are painting looks like a balaclava and not black face. A balaclava is a ski mask. Black face is always racist.

3) If it looks like crap, stop fighting it and paint over. Even if it means you’re losing the things you liked about it.

4)Wine really does help, as long as you’re not going for super precise tiny painting. Drink up!

That is your lesson for the week.

It’s Friday and We Need Some Fun!

This is the Go!Team, who I learned about years ago from Ad Boy (the boy who literally broke my vagina. It’s fixed now, but the story is funny as hell).

And this is a little interview with Ninja, the lead singer. It’s just so cute and charming I had to include it.

I’ll be shaking my ass this weekend at Honk!Fest to the tunes of radical marching bands. Weird, yes.

The Problem With Defunding Higher Ed

This story involves the Koch brothers, so you’ve been warned that by the end you will want to kick someone, hard.

In exchange for a 1.5 million dollar grant to Florida State’s Economics department, Charles Koch gets to screen and sign off on any new hires.

You want to know why economists are such doouchenoodles (both in theory and in real life)? This is why. No one who has a different opinion from the standard “give rich people everything and suffer the small folks” can get hired. But because we’ve massively defunded education publicly, universities gotta make up the difference somehow. And people are catching on that maybe needing to take out 50k worth of loans to get an basic bachelor’s degree and still not get a job is a bad idea, so schools can’t wring any more cash out of their students. So corporate shitbags get to set the agenda from the very beginning by making sure that the only theories out there are theories that benefit them. They pay off the theory makers and educators. Students never see another side.

This story gets a h/t to Ruth, who didn’t know until she went to college that people had died for the right to organize their labor. She didn’t get that info in the very good public schools she attended as a kid, even though she was a geek like me and read all of the assigned history books. She got a different view of how the world could be from a community college prof. If the Koch brothers, or even Miscrosoft, was funding that school, she might never have learned about it.

In other higher ed news, the other day 50 University of Washington students stormed the president’s office to protest the fact that the school contracts with Sodexo, known for their human rights abuses. 25 of them got arrested.