Unpossible

This is a post-racial world.

Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to wind up in the more onerous and costly form of consumer bankruptcy as they try to dig out from their debts, a new study has found.

Good Morning

Really, it's not a tragedy when your coffee maker gives up the ghost. It just feels like one.

Grrrr.

Friday Cat Thread

Oops. Let's try that again

Flashback

Wow, that lasted less long than I remembered.

Friday Evening

Have a movie.

Oy

Evan's gone, Joe's on his way out... just stay away, Bob.

Happy Hour Thread

Have a video.

Have Another

Pre-Happy Hour Thread

Aw, the hell with. We can have an early happy hour and one later on, as well.

SOPA PIPA

I think the not quite made enough point about these types of laws is that they're really not about stemming piracy, they're about big media companies declaring that the internet is ours now, bitches!

Mostly Good News

So that's a thing.

Hating Gay People And Abortion For Some People

It's been somewhat sad watching CNN, always imperfect at best but not always awful, become the worst cable news network.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the South, the heart of the Republican Party, where tradition lives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY (R-MA.), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The strongest military in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: And values matter.

Values.

As you know, your ex-wife gave an interview to ABC News and another interview with "The Washington Post." And this story has now gone viral on the Internet.

In it, she says that you came to her in 1999, at a time when you were having an affair. She says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage.

Would you like to take some time to respond to that? GINGRICH: No, but I will.

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.

(APPLAUSE)

Look Forward

No I don't know precisely why massive criminal fraud by the banskters has been allowed to continue, but it's good that people are talking about it.

Really Horrible People

"Abstinence education" is stupid regardless, but it takes a worst person of the world level caliber person to propose it only for girls.

MPs will debate a controversial bill on Friday calling for teenage girls to be given lessons in sexual abstinence.

The bill, proposed by Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, would require schools to offer extra sex education classes to girls aged 13 to 16 and for these lessons to include advice on "the benefits of abstinence".

One day, maybe, this impulse to screw up teenage kids (especially girls) as much as possible will fade. I hope.

Austerity Bites

Hopefully the IMF increasingly realizes that its other pet policy issues, whatever their merits, are rather unimportant compared to the deliberate imposition of mass poverty on the citizens of wealthy nations.

Early Morning Thread

Overnight

Enjoy