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A co-chairman of Hillary’s Michigan campaign and has a line that’s sure to drive a whole bunch of red state governors up the wall:

“Superdelegates are not second-class delegates,” says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. “The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic.”

I thought Texas counted as a “red state”. I guess that means Hillary won’t campaign there?

She does?

hmmm…

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Werknemers moeten makkelijker vanaf hun 65e verjaardag kunnen kiezen voor deeltijdpensioen. Nu is het volgens minister Piet Hein Donner (Sociale Zaken) nog te veel “alles of niets” als je de pensioengerechtigde leeftijd bereikt.

Volgens hem moeten pensioenfondsen en cao’s meer mogelijkheden bieden om in deeltijd door te werken en deels pensioen uitgekeerd te krijgen.

Dat concludeerde de CDA-bewindsman uit gesprekken met 65-plussers die nog aan het werk zijn en uitzendbureaus voor ouderen, zo bevestigde zijn woordvoerster dinsdag een bericht hierover in het Financieele Dagblad.

Donner werkt nog aan een notitie over langer doorwerken, die hij nog voor de zomer naar de Tweede Kamer wil sturen.

Ik krijg nog steeds elk jaar een overzicht van een pensioenfonds waarin me lovend wordt verteld van de bedragen die ik vanaf mijn pensioenering, op m’n 63e, ga krijgen. En pensioenvoorlichters reageren nog steeds verbaasd als ik ze vertel dat ze liegen. Misschien dat een notitei van donnert daar wat aan gaat veranderen, maar ik betwijfel het – er is teveel geld bij elkaar gelogen.

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Focusing on Barack Obama’s “inexperience” and “undisciplined messaging” are two ways to ensure that the senator from Illinois doesn’t get to be president, according to honchos at the Republican National Committee.

Well, they can get some of the old signs out of storage then:

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MSNBC reporter, columnist, and author Bob Sullivan has explored the erosion of the social contract through the lens of what he smartly calls “gotcha capitalism”–how big businesses use inscrutable agreements, hidden fees, and “gotcha” penalties to wring extra profit from the consumer in everything from credit cards to cable TV contracts, taking advantage of nonexistent regulatory oversight to work their will. As Sullivan writes:

Fundamentally, “Gotcha Capitalism” is a story about the death of the price tag, about the constant bait-and-switch tactics that layer on fees and surcharges long after we’re in a position to bargain over them. It’s about rampant false advertising, about the explosion of small print and asterisks and about the seeming disappearance of federal authorities working to keep our marketplaces fair. It’s about a threat to our economic system, which was designed to reward good companies with innovative products, low prices and smart employees, but now benefits cheating companies who hire the best liars and create the most misleading ads and confusing fine print.

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The nation’s foreclosure crisis has led to a painful irony for homeless people: On any given night they are outnumbered in some cities by vacant houses, and some street people are taking advantage of the opportunity by becoming squatters.

Foreclosed homes often have an advantage over boarded-up and dilapidated houses abandoned because of rundown conditions: Sometimes the heat, lights and water are still working.

“That’s what you call convenient,” said James Bertan, 41, an ex-convict and self-described “bando,” or someone who lives in abandoned houses.

While no one keeps numbers of below-the-radar homeless finding shelter in properties left vacant by foreclosure, homeless advocates agree the locations — even with utilities cut off — would be inviting to some. There are risks for squatters, including fires from using candles and confrontations with drug dealers, prostitutes, copper thieves or police.

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Today, if you ask any V.P. of human resources or peddler of mass spectrometers why the drug testing industry needs to conduct 40 million pop quizzes each year, he’ll enthusiastically explain how drug testing can increase workplace safety and productivity, reduce absenteeism and worker’s compensation claims, and generally make our factories, offices, and strip malls happier, healthier, more profitable engines of commerce. It’s a bottom-line issue, he’ll tell you, not a law enforcement issue.

[..]

And around the country, emergency rooms have reported an increase in niacin overdoses, especially among teens. Various websites suggest that taking large amounts of niacin can prevent the detection of THC, marijuana’s main psychoactive ingredient. In fact, it’s mostly just a good way to overdose on niacin.

Observers still debate how much safer and more productive drug testing makes the workplace. But there’s at least one outfit that has no complaints about its efficacy. Forty million drug tests at an average of $30 a pop equals a $1.2 billion subsidy the federal government receives from the private sector each year to help prosecute its endless War on Drugs.

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My issue of Domino arrived a few days ago. Domino is a home decorating magazine, aimed at a young, urban demographic. This month’s issue is devoted to green living. From this magazine, I learned how I could save the earth by buying $1,950 cement garden chaises, a $65 wicker hamper, or a $1,695 tree stump fashioned into an end table. I don’t mind when the magazine does its usual promotion of products, but this green issue is simply absurd. How many trees were killed to produce this glossy package of hypocrisy?

You want to save the earth? Here’s a little hint. Don’t. Buy. Shit.

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Mass fingerprinting, biometric passports, identity cards and international identity databases will not protect Britain and other European countries from terrorists or criminals.

This startling admission comes in a leaked European Commission report prepared for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and other EU Home Affairs Ministers.

The report undermines Gordon Brown’s claims about the need for controversial new passports and identity cards to protect the country from terror attacks.

It raises new questions about the true purpose of Government databases, which will store intimate details of everyone in Britain, including their picture, fingerprints and confidential personal information.

The EU report, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, says most people behind terror attacks in the UK and Europe were living in the EU legally and so would not be affected by increased security measures.

It says: “None of the policy options contribute markedly to reducing terrorism or serious crime.

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How do can you tell if a Republican legislator is a pervert or not? No, not because he’s breathing; don’t be a smart-ass. Usually it’s the ones who scream and shout the loudest about perversion threatening the American family who are the guiltiest of whatever it is they’re obsessing over.

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Unless you’re from Maryland, you probably never heard of anti-child porn crusader Robert McKee, a long-time right-wing member of the House of Delegates from rural Washington County in the western part of the state. According to today’s Washington Post, McKee, one of the Maryland leaders of the Romney for President campaign, has abruptly resigned today. Easy to guess that McKee, who also resigned as Executive Director of Big Brothers Big Sisters, is a child porn fiend.

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Hilarious.

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For years now, ISPs have been searching for alternative revenue streams to avoid just being “dumb pipes.” A few years ago, they picked up on the fact that they have a tremendous amount of data about what you (yes, you!) do online. A bunch of ISPs then started selling your clickstream data to companies that could do something useful with it (though, those ISPs probably neglected to tell you they were doing this). Late last year, we heard about a company that was trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history — and now we’ve got the first report of some big ISPs moving into this realm. Over in the UK three big ISPs, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced plans to use your clickstream data to insert relevant ads as you surf through a new startup called Phorm.

These same ISP’s were resistant to monitoring before, but now that they’ve found a monetary reason to do it, they’re all over it.

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Cartoon characters have it so much easier than we do. Laws of cartoon physics say that if you run out of space on your hard drive, you can just jam a funnel into the top, dump in a few more drive mechanisms from a big metal bucket, and then you’re right back in business.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present the Drobo storage system. This $499 USB storage device is made by Data Robotics, Inc. (Drobo.com), but I’m pretty sure that DRI is actually a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ACME Corporation.

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The Dallas County district attorney’s office has unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse.

It includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins.

And conspiracy theorists will rejoice over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the mafia wanted to “get rid of” his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.