DailyDisgust has moved to wordpress.  It is my hope that my legion of fans will follow me there.

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While the DailyDisgust does approve of the baby name Blue Ivy, it does not approve of the way the little people were treated while Beyonce birthed Jay-Z’ baby.

After Beyoncé Gives Birth, Patients Protest Celebrity Security at Lenox Hill Hospital from the New York Times, Jan. 9, 2012

“The couple were visiting their twin daughters in the neonatal intensive care unit at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on Friday night, as they have done daily since the babies’ premature birth on Dec. 28. But when they tried to leave the sixth-floor unit to go home to Brooklyn at about 11 p.m., the new mother, Rozz Nash-Coulon, recalled, a burly security guard suddenly blocked their way.

…

It was just the first of a series of indignities that they and several other noncelebrity maternity patients say they experienced over the weekend, as Lenox Hill Hospital went all-out to protect the privacy of Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z, whose daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, was born there on Saturday.

At one point, another father, Edgar Ramirez, 25, said, security guards kept him out of the neonatal unit for three hours while his wife and newborn were waiting for him. At another point on Saturday, a guard declared that “the floor is on lockdown,” Ms. Nash-Coulon said, and told her that if she left the neonatal unit, she would not be allowed back in to see her babies.”

Reblogged from the only Tumblr I follow thus far:

officialssay:

Fmr. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, getting in an argument with a reporter who pointed out that one of Romney’s top advisors is a lobbyist — right after the GOP candidate stated that lobbyists were not running his campaign.

“You’re out of line,” Romney’s spokesperson told the reporter later. “Save your opinions and act professionally. Don’t be argumentative with the candidate.”

…and that is disgusting whichever definition you use!

Rick Santorum says ‘Game on’ after second-place finish in Iowa caucus from the Des Moines Register, Jan. 4, 2012

When there is a disagreement between developers and, well, anyone else, my natural inclination is to distrust the developer.  Recently a local developer, Allen Homes (about whom I admittedly know nothing about), created a local shit-storm when they gave thirty-day notice to vacate to two local businesses located in homes they had purchased for redevelopment.  While the developer was clearly within their rights to do so given the month to month rental arrangements the businesses had, the fact that the businesses were the Red Avocado and a book store led many locals to be up in arms.  Fair enough.  The opponents talked about preserving the historic nature of the homes, but clearly they were mainly just upset about seeing two beloved small businesses displaced.  Again, fair enough.  This is not what disgusts me.

What raises my ire here is that in seeming retaliation for this move, a local bookseller began an online petition that led to the same developer backing out of a planned building on the northeast corner of Linn and Bloomington Streets.  The project would take three relatively run down rental houses and replace them with a multi use building including first-floor retail space and seventeen one and two bedroom apartments (which, conventional wisdom dictates are less popular with students than larger three to five bedroom units).  Great, you might think.  Just what a city needs—infill development that provides more business space in the quasi-hip northside neighborhood.  Better this than yet more megalopolis sized apartment complexes and single story retail development at the outskirts of town, you might say.  Well, I certainly would agree with you.  Someone who wouldn’t is the owner of the Haunted Bookshop who started said online petition.  This would be up the street from her bookstore, and her opposition ostensibly is that it would be out of place in the neighborhood. 

Here’s the thing, though.  The development at the corner of Market and Linn built a few years back could similarly be described as being out of place in that very same neighborhood.  It has fist-floor retail space and apartments up above.  In fact when they started putting the building up, I thought it was just more of the same bland new development.  But when that first-floor retail space was filled with such great local businesses as T-Spoons, The Motley Cow, and RSVP, I realized what a great addition to the northside business district this was.  And in fact I have found myself visiting that area even more.  In fact, on a number of occasions I have even shopped at the Haunted Bookshop just because I was in the neighborhood due to those new businesses. 

I’m all for opposing development, but let’s oppose the ones that are actually harmful.

Allen Homes withdraws proposal from the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 6, 2012

…but I would still call it disgusting.  This is the story that inspired the DailyDisgust…belatedly posted, because it turns out that being the father of an infant makes one fairly busy:

Congress: Trading Stock on Inside Information? from CBS 60 Minutes

One example from the story:

“In mid September 2008 with the Dow Jones Industrial average still above ten thousand, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were holding closed door briefings with congressional leaders, and privately warning them that a global financial meltdown could occur within a few days. One of those attending was Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, then the ranking Republican member on the House Financial Services Committee and now its chairman.

…

While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering, he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts.”

While a decent respect for decency would of course call for any elected official to recuse themselves from votes in which their investments are concerned and vice versa, apparently there is no legal reguirement for members of Congress to do so.

Some levity is brought to the issue by the Wall Street Journal which points out that “Analysis Shows That Some Members of Congress Should Elect Not to Trade”:

Lawmakers Lose in Markets from The Wall Street Journal

Quoting from Gawker quoting from the paywall restricted WSJ article:

“Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) made more than 200 trades in stocks and bonds in 2010, and says he has lost money trading in each of the seven years he has been in Congress.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, made dozens of trades in stocks and mutual funds, including two instances in which he bought and sold a fund in the same day, even though the share price of mutual funds doesn’t fluctuate within the same day.”

Tom Coburn, eh?  I guess it couldn’t happen to a nicer fella…