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The Morning Grumpy – 2/10/2012

All the news and views fit to consume during your morning grumpy.

1. This week is CPAC week, during which young fascists, liberty fetishists, and christian conservatives descend upon Washington D.C. to discuss such topics as “Political Correctness & The Wussification of America”

It’s also one of the highlights for the gay hustler scene in America. Male prostitutes flock to D.C. to service the needs of the closeted as documented on Craigslist.

These were all posted within the last day or two. We did not plant any of them or alter them in any way. And we’re genuinely rooting for this lot, hoping all these guys score — it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you sit on, or what you sit on, everyone’s entitled to some lovin’ they prefer.

2. The Mexican government seized 15 tons of pure powder methamphetamine at a ranch outside of Guadalajara, the meth had a street value of nearly $4BN.

3. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to sponsor 20 Republicans in the 2012 Senate and House elections.

Most of the Senate races targeted by the Chamber are those Republicans hope will bring them the four seats needed to win control, including in Wisconsin and Missouri where Republicans haven’t even picked a candidate. The ads in those states, which criticize Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, are designed to weaken the Democratic candidate.

Funds for the Chamber campaign come from its member firms. It is not required by law to disclose the amount of the donations or what companies provide them.

Just what this election season needed, more unaccountable money.

4. Sign of the coming housing recovery.

The above from Calculated Risk shows that existing home inventories are way down from 12 months ago and basically back to where they were in mid-2005 before we were slumping. We should be primed for a return to something like long-term average levels of residential investment and construction employment. For the past few years we’ve been seeing historically low levels of these things, so even a very meh 2012 would involve a lot of growth and take a meaningful bite out of joblessness.

5. Seems like, in many corners of the country, Republicans are obsessed with re-engaging with policy wars they lost long ago. In New Hampshire, Republicans would like to kill off mandatory lunch breaks for employees. I mean, what a pain in the ass for employers! Right?! The rationale appears to be that employers will give lunch breaks out of the goodness of their hearts.

“This is an unneeded law,” [Republican state Representative Kyle Jones] said. “If I was to deny one of my employees a break, I would be in a very bad position with the company’s human resources representative. If you consider that this is a very easy law to follow in that everyone already does it, then why do we need it? Our constituents have already proven that they have enough common sense to do this on their own.”

Of course, this ignores that many employers like Wal-Mart, Pyramid Breweries, and Embassy Suites have all been cited and fined in recent years for denying breaks to their employees.

Fact Of The Day: The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, composited from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 24, 2003, through to January 16, 2004. It is the deepest image of the universe ever taken,looking back approximately 13 billion years (between 400 and 800 million years after the Big Bang), and it will be used to search for galaxies that existed at that time. The HUDF image was taken in a section of the sky with a low density of bright stars in the near-field, allowing much better viewing of dimmer, more distant objects. The image contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies.

Or, ya know, the world was created in seven days by a magical wizard in the sky. Whatever.

Quote Of The Day: “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Looney Tune Of The Day: With the Buffalo Auto Show in full effect and a recommendation from a reader named Ian, here is “Car of Tomorrow” by Tex Avery.