Open Thread–12/18/2013

I’m writing for tomorrow, and although I still feel sick as a dawg, I have to be up, waiting for service people, so you get a real Open Thread.  Tomorrow, I have to be out, so I doubt I shall have much. 

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Update:

Here’s the updated Playoffs Bracket from our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Kudos to the winners.  Sadly, I do not number among you.  All of my starting running backs, and wide receivers at the beginning of the year were out with injuries by last weekend.

Short Takes:

From my Senator’s campaign by email: There is good news for those who want a safe and sound financial system that doesn’t blow up our economy. Last week regulators finalized a rule authored by Senator Merkley along with Senator Carl Levin of Michigan to rein in the big bets by banks on Wall Street. The rule will ban risky trades by banks that take taxpayer-insured deposits. The rule, dubbed the Volcker Rule, after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would create a firewall between traditional banking and hedge fund-style gambling.

Hedge fund-style trading at our nation’s largest financial firms was a high-risk, conflict-ridden activity that played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. Banks should be in the business of serving customers on Main Street – including taking deposits from and making loans to ordinary families and businesses. It’s fine for people to make speculative investments, but it needs to happen outside of banks so if the bets go bad they don’t imperil the lending so critical to our economic growth.

To read more about Jeff’s efforts, check out this story in the New Republic.

Way to go Jeff! Once again, Oregon leads the way!

From Upworthy: If You Need An Example Of How Silly Our Standards Have Gotten For How Women Look … Ta-Da!

 

The way I see it, this is what a woman needs to have great legs. They have to be just long enough to reach from her ass to her ankles.

From Right Wing Watch:

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan is completely enamored with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and is particularly excited about his anti-gay crackdown. In his syndicated column today, Buchanan lauds [hate propaganda delinked] Putin as a leader of “conservatives and traditionalists in every country” who are resisting “the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite” who push “abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.”

Putin is a champion of “conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries” and has taken up their fight “against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West,” Buchanan writes.

Republicans just love their Pootie (R-RU). Why? Republicans love to hate.

Cartoon: