After weeks of speculation, the mystery guest that trumps the President-elect and his family has finally been revealed. The White House offered the house to John Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia who is set to receive a Medal of Freedom. Instead of arranging other accommodations for Howard’s one-night stay, the Bush administration told the Obama family to stay in a hotel for two weeks. (Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who are also receiving the Medal of Freedom, opted to find other accommodations.)
... more on ThinkProgress after the click.
My comment: Blair House is the residence in DC that the president-elect is extended by the previous administration during the transition as a courtesy. The fact that no one was booked for Blair House at the time the Obama's made the original request is interesting. I suppose the debate now would be over whether this maneuver is more or less petty than when the Clinton administration swiped all the "W"'s from the White House keyboards on the way out.
Personally, I find the missing "W"'s an amusing puerile prank and was, as such, a reflection of the administration. This seems to typify the current administration equally well ... arrogant, petty ... and smaller than life.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Porn Industry Bailout?
An article in next month's Atlantic asks, "Is porn recession proof?" According to porn magnate Larry Flynt and "Girls Gone Wild" king Joe Francis, the answer is no.
TMZ reports that the pornographer pair is heading to Washington to ask for a $5 billion porn bailout:
"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind," Flynt says. "It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America."
Francis sees his industry like the big three automakers, only BIGGER: "Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses; we feel we deserve the same consideration."
... and there's more on HuffPo after the click.
My comment: It makes more sense than some of the things that have been done lately!
TMZ reports that the pornographer pair is heading to Washington to ask for a $5 billion porn bailout:
"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind," Flynt says. "It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America."
Francis sees his industry like the big three automakers, only BIGGER: "Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses; we feel we deserve the same consideration."
... and there's more on HuffPo after the click.
My comment: It makes more sense than some of the things that have been done lately!
Labels:
culture,
economics,
life,
simply interesting
Monday, January 05, 2009
Apes that write
Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology -- and how much by cultural exposure.
Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has made startling breakthroughs in her lifelong work with chimpanzees and bonobos, showing the animals to be adept in picking up language and other "intelligent" behaviors.
... check it out on TED.
My comment: Maybe we're not as unique as we like to think ... when we look in the mirror. What is it that makes YOU so different?
Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has made startling breakthroughs in her lifelong work with chimpanzees and bonobos, showing the animals to be adept in picking up language and other "intelligent" behaviors.
... check it out on TED.
My comment: Maybe we're not as unique as we like to think ... when we look in the mirror. What is it that makes YOU so different?
Sunday, January 04, 2009
The Next Next Things
The Washington Post
With its power to send knowledge around the globe at lightning speed, information technology has vastly changed our world — unleashing the Internet along with a global economy of knowledge workers and even, some would say, sparking the fall of communism and the rise of terrorism. Computer power has increased exponentially since 1980, when machines less sophisticated than your cellphone filled entire rooms. And we can expect similar mindboggling advances in the coming decades.
... boggle your mind a little with the Washington Post after the click.
My comment: Its hard to see the changes from day to day. It seems you have to step back a little to get a bit of perspective. My father was born in 1912 and passed away in 1991. During the course of his life he witnessed two World Wars, The Great Depression, the Atomic Bomb, the advent of the computer age and man walking on the moon. When he was born, flight meant a noisy biplane with a flight range on the order of the wing span of today's 747 and an altitude you could throw rocks at. In 1990, the year before he died, the SR-71 set a flight speed record of 2,124 mph and a sustained altitude record of 85,069 feet on a coast-to-coast, NY to LA flight. As a boy, he made hay and plowed fields with a team of horses. Today, the family farm is pretty much a thing of the past in "developed" countries; replaced by "agri-businesses" and factory farms. The house he lived in as a child was heated by wood and the wood came from a twenty acre wood lot at the far end of the 140 acre farm he lived on. The "bathroom" consisted of an outhouse behind the wood shed and a galvanized tub filled with water boiled on the wood cook stove in the kitchen. Running water involved a pump handle that one exercised in an up and down motion ... with some effort. I know because that's where my life started in 1945.
My generation invented the Internet, digital watches, compact discs, MP3 files, cable and satellite TV as well as a host of other "necessities" that didn't exist, even in dreams, when I was born.
The change that occurred during my father's lifetime was significantly faster and more far reaching that the change that effected his father and the previous generation. But as different as things were comparing life at the beginning of my father's journey with the way things were at the end, the change we are experiencing now is even greater and moving much faster ... with no sign of letting up any time soon.
I wonder what price we've paid for the gain.
With its power to send knowledge around the globe at lightning speed, information technology has vastly changed our world — unleashing the Internet along with a global economy of knowledge workers and even, some would say, sparking the fall of communism and the rise of terrorism. Computer power has increased exponentially since 1980, when machines less sophisticated than your cellphone filled entire rooms. And we can expect similar mindboggling advances in the coming decades.
... boggle your mind a little with the Washington Post after the click.
My comment: Its hard to see the changes from day to day. It seems you have to step back a little to get a bit of perspective. My father was born in 1912 and passed away in 1991. During the course of his life he witnessed two World Wars, The Great Depression, the Atomic Bomb, the advent of the computer age and man walking on the moon. When he was born, flight meant a noisy biplane with a flight range on the order of the wing span of today's 747 and an altitude you could throw rocks at. In 1990, the year before he died, the SR-71 set a flight speed record of 2,124 mph and a sustained altitude record of 85,069 feet on a coast-to-coast, NY to LA flight. As a boy, he made hay and plowed fields with a team of horses. Today, the family farm is pretty much a thing of the past in "developed" countries; replaced by "agri-businesses" and factory farms. The house he lived in as a child was heated by wood and the wood came from a twenty acre wood lot at the far end of the 140 acre farm he lived on. The "bathroom" consisted of an outhouse behind the wood shed and a galvanized tub filled with water boiled on the wood cook stove in the kitchen. Running water involved a pump handle that one exercised in an up and down motion ... with some effort. I know because that's where my life started in 1945.
My generation invented the Internet, digital watches, compact discs, MP3 files, cable and satellite TV as well as a host of other "necessities" that didn't exist, even in dreams, when I was born.
The change that occurred during my father's lifetime was significantly faster and more far reaching that the change that effected his father and the previous generation. But as different as things were comparing life at the beginning of my father's journey with the way things were at the end, the change we are experiencing now is even greater and moving much faster ... with no sign of letting up any time soon.
I wonder what price we've paid for the gain.
Labels:
future,
life,
opinion,
science,
simply interesting
Bush's Accomplishments - Smaller Than Life
This document is the literary correlative to “Mission Accomplished.” Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving “market economy” (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a “democratically elected president” (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He “led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief” (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).
If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. Desperate for padding, they devote four risible pages to portraying our dear leader as a zealous environmentalist.
But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage.
... the rest from Frank Rich after the click.
My comment: He was a stellar president ... if you ignore just about everything he did.
I remember some spirited debates with a good friend in the run up to the 2000 election. In actuality, neither of us could muster much enthusiasm for either candidate. We voted our separate ways ... both holding the opinion that it really didn't matter all that much. It seemed that Democrats and Republicans looked a lot alike at that point. The press threw its glowing support behind the smug little draft dodging frat boy and mocked the socially uptight intellectual to the extent that it was hard to distinguish fact from fiction. In the meantime, how much difference could one man make ... particularly in a democracy with checks and balances? Then I watched in "shock and awe" as the next eight years worth of news reels unfolded.
How wrong we were. One man can make a heck of a lot of difference ... particularly when the spin machine has half the population hood-winked ... twice over.
They say that history is written by the victor. Maybe that's not always the case. We are witnessing an attempt to write history ... by a consummate looser.
If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. Desperate for padding, they devote four risible pages to portraying our dear leader as a zealous environmentalist.
But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage.
... the rest from Frank Rich after the click.
My comment: He was a stellar president ... if you ignore just about everything he did.
I remember some spirited debates with a good friend in the run up to the 2000 election. In actuality, neither of us could muster much enthusiasm for either candidate. We voted our separate ways ... both holding the opinion that it really didn't matter all that much. It seemed that Democrats and Republicans looked a lot alike at that point. The press threw its glowing support behind the smug little draft dodging frat boy and mocked the socially uptight intellectual to the extent that it was hard to distinguish fact from fiction. In the meantime, how much difference could one man make ... particularly in a democracy with checks and balances? Then I watched in "shock and awe" as the next eight years worth of news reels unfolded.
How wrong we were. One man can make a heck of a lot of difference ... particularly when the spin machine has half the population hood-winked ... twice over.
They say that history is written by the victor. Maybe that's not always the case. We are witnessing an attempt to write history ... by a consummate looser.
Labels:
culture,
history,
tax dollars at work
Friday, January 02, 2009
The Law of Unintended Consequences
The New Second Amendment: A Bark Worse Than Its Right
In June, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, D.C. v. Heller. For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias, like the National Guard. In a long-awaited victory for the gun rights movement, the Court reversed course and held that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to own guns for personal self-defense.
So far, the victory hasn't turned out exactly as the gun rights folks had hoped.
As many legal scholars predicted, the Supreme Court's decision led to a tidal wave of Second Amendment challenges to gun control. Every person charged with a gun crime saw the Supreme Court's decision as a Get Out of Jail Free Card.
To date, the lower federal courts have ruled in over 60 different cases on the constitutionality of a wide variety of gun control laws. There have been suits against laws banning possession of firearms by felons, drug addicts, illegal aliens, and individuals convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. The courts have ruled on the constitutionality of laws prohibiting particular types of weapons, including sawed-off shotguns and machine guns, and specific weapons attachments. Defendants have challenged laws barring guns in school zones and post offices, and laws outlawing "straw" purchases, the carrying of concealed weapons, possession of an unregistered firearm, and particular types of ammunition. The courts have upheld every one of these laws.
Since Heller, its Gun Control: 60, Individual Right: 0.
... there's more on HuffPo after the click.
My comment: Another case of "be careful what you wish for".
Anyway, this suggests some questions to me ... and I pass them along to you.
1.) Is this a case of "activist judges" that the right is so ... um ... up in arms about? And if it is, given the historic precedents (to wit: "For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias"), is it the lower court judges who are being "activists" by upholding the history of precedents or the hand picked and packed right wing Supreme Court, bucking the precedents that represent the dreaded "activism"?
2.) Or could this just be another of those right-wing despised situations of trial lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits that waste the court's time and public's resources?
In June, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, D.C. v. Heller. For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias, like the National Guard. In a long-awaited victory for the gun rights movement, the Court reversed course and held that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to own guns for personal self-defense.
So far, the victory hasn't turned out exactly as the gun rights folks had hoped.
As many legal scholars predicted, the Supreme Court's decision led to a tidal wave of Second Amendment challenges to gun control. Every person charged with a gun crime saw the Supreme Court's decision as a Get Out of Jail Free Card.
To date, the lower federal courts have ruled in over 60 different cases on the constitutionality of a wide variety of gun control laws. There have been suits against laws banning possession of firearms by felons, drug addicts, illegal aliens, and individuals convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. The courts have ruled on the constitutionality of laws prohibiting particular types of weapons, including sawed-off shotguns and machine guns, and specific weapons attachments. Defendants have challenged laws barring guns in school zones and post offices, and laws outlawing "straw" purchases, the carrying of concealed weapons, possession of an unregistered firearm, and particular types of ammunition. The courts have upheld every one of these laws.
Since Heller, its Gun Control: 60, Individual Right: 0.
... there's more on HuffPo after the click.
My comment: Another case of "be careful what you wish for".
Anyway, this suggests some questions to me ... and I pass them along to you.
1.) Is this a case of "activist judges" that the right is so ... um ... up in arms about? And if it is, given the historic precedents (to wit: "For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias"), is it the lower court judges who are being "activists" by upholding the history of precedents or the hand picked and packed right wing Supreme Court, bucking the precedents that represent the dreaded "activism"?
2.) Or could this just be another of those right-wing despised situations of trial lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits that waste the court's time and public's resources?
Labels:
culture,
irony,
simply interesting,
US Constitution
America Greets 2009 By Going Insane
from Wonkette
A nut in a World War II Nazi military uniform aims his bayonet-tipped rifle at Seattle cops and is shot dead. A distraught guy fires a gun in the air from his garage and three Los Angeles police cut him down. An angry old Colorado ski bum plots an epic four-pronged terror attack on the rich people of Aspen, but he shoots himself in his Jeep Cherokee before detonating the four bombs. Across the country, wrecked Americans chose to go completely insane on New Year’s. Welcome to 2009. It’s going to be awful.
Maybe it’s just that there’s no “real” national news on January 1, or maybe America is collectively leaping off the foreclosed skyscraper of destiny, but the amount of full-on crazy suicidal behavior over this New Year’s holiday is enough to make calm people hide in their basements with a sack full of assault rifles.
And the number of cops ready and willing to shoot and kill anything acting a bit weird is a very grim reminder that the Militarized L.A. Cop is now a national menace.
... read the list of New Year's incidents on Wonkette after the click.
My comment: To quote Janis Joplin, "Freedom's just another word for nuttin' left to loose."
A nut in a World War II Nazi military uniform aims his bayonet-tipped rifle at Seattle cops and is shot dead. A distraught guy fires a gun in the air from his garage and three Los Angeles police cut him down. An angry old Colorado ski bum plots an epic four-pronged terror attack on the rich people of Aspen, but he shoots himself in his Jeep Cherokee before detonating the four bombs. Across the country, wrecked Americans chose to go completely insane on New Year’s. Welcome to 2009. It’s going to be awful.
Maybe it’s just that there’s no “real” national news on January 1, or maybe America is collectively leaping off the foreclosed skyscraper of destiny, but the amount of full-on crazy suicidal behavior over this New Year’s holiday is enough to make calm people hide in their basements with a sack full of assault rifles.
And the number of cops ready and willing to shoot and kill anything acting a bit weird is a very grim reminder that the Militarized L.A. Cop is now a national menace.
... read the list of New Year's incidents on Wonkette after the click.
My comment: To quote Janis Joplin, "Freedom's just another word for nuttin' left to loose."
Labels:
culture
Thursday, January 01, 2009
The Top 10 Rightblogger Stories of 2008
Excited (not to say deranged) by the long Presidential campaign, conservative bloggers -- rightbloggers, in our affectionate parlance -- were in top form this year, and outstripped the sleepy Main Stream Media in every way. If mainstream Republicans were content to call Obama a socialist, rightbloggers insisted that he killed his grandmother. If the GOP lashed out at Al Gore, rightbloggers denounced his cartoon avatar Wall-E. Rightbloggers turned even the dullest political fodder into comedy gold, and we honor their achievements with a year-end top ten.
... read the Top Ten eye rollers from the right in the Village Voice after the click.
My Comment: The Village Voice nails it once again. I'm glad someone is keeping track of all the silliness. For once, the right-wingnuts prove useful -- worth at least four belly laughs, three beaming chuckles, two broad grins and a partridge in a a pear tree ....
... read the Top Ten eye rollers from the right in the Village Voice after the click.
My Comment: The Village Voice nails it once again. I'm glad someone is keeping track of all the silliness. For once, the right-wingnuts prove useful -- worth at least four belly laughs, three beaming chuckles, two broad grins and a partridge in a a pear tree ....
Labels:
Family Values Party
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