insight-less:

So Long

2009-02-19T21:13:00.001-05:00

To eliminate the likely possibility of saying things that could come back to bite me professionally (or God forbid politically) this will be my last blog post. I’ve just been muttering to myself here and based on the quality of recent legislation and its effect on my investments I’m likely to just come off as unhinged. So, so long, good luck and buy gold!!!

If only he was Bush economically...

2009-02-18T07:28:00.003-05:00

WASHINGTON - Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush ’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda .
In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A. ’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.
The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

I'm sure Obama is just doing this to be nice; give Bush something for his tattered legacy to cling to.

I'm sure it wasn't that he knew all along that most of the rhetoric against these polices wasn't in any way realistic.

Imagine if Brit Hume gushed like this about Bush

2009-01-25T16:46:00.005-05:00

(Fast forward to the last minute)

Fox News certainly has its biases but I cannot think of anything it's done that approaches this.

Does the traditional media know it's best days are behind it; that it now has nothing to lose by coming out of the closet, dropping that phony mask of objectivity, and letting their leftist sympathies out for the world to see?

Could someone please explain to me how the 4th estate is in any way doing it's job by collectively fellating the leader of the 2nd?

They see but they do not believe!

2009-01-23T06:56:00.002-05:00

Such impertenance! How can one doubt when it is all written in the Book. Brother Gibson didn't!

The Ruprect of the States

2008-12-31T11:06:00.003-05:00

As someone who came from Racine and lived in Milwaukee for a good while during the presidential race I was certain that some journalist somewhere would notice that the Democratic presidential nominee came from the state with probably the greatest possible embarrassment potential. For my entire life I heard stories of hilarious Chicago corruption from the corpse resurrection machine politics of “Da Mare” to the authoritarian antics of junior (shutting down Meigs fields with airplanes still in flight). Instead journalists were so enamored with Obama they failed to pay any mind to the banging of pots and pans in the guest house out back.

Now on the eve of the fanciest ball since Camelot, Blago the monkey boy is on the loose spitting applesauce and pissing his pants for the world to see. Eager to quiet this embarrassment and maintain the narrative that Blagojevich is some sort of unfortunate outlier unreflective of Obama and Illinois as a whole, stories proclaiming the futility of nominating Roland Burris abound. These stories hinge on the misinformed belief that the Illinois secretary of state can refuse to certify Blagojevich’s replacement, not understanding or choosing not to acknowledge that the secretary of state’s powers are merely ministerial. Unless the nomination happened counter to state statute, which no one is suggesting it did, the Illinois secretary of state must certify. Harry Reid’s insistence that the Senate can choose to not seat Burris due to Article 1 Section 5 is again is again, mistaken.

The net effect of all of this is that this controversy will go on long after Obama’s inauguration and the media’s attempts to staunch the resulting bleeding will be put to a Goebbels-like test. Their lack of integrity will be repeatedly demonstrated as one freakish product of the incestuous union of political power and special interests reveals itself after another.

Enjoy! I know I will.

Gutless Wonders

2008-12-16T22:50:00.001-05:00

During today's press conference, President-elect Baracj Obama brushed off a question from Chicago Tribune reporter John McCormick about the Blagojevich scandal, and what interaction any advisers had with the Illinois governor.

"I don't want you to waste your question," Obama said.

McCormick asked another Blago-related question, and Obama said he wouldn't confirm a report in the Tribune from this weekend. Obama also said that the U.S. attorney's office asked his team to withhold an internal review until next week.

After a few attempts, the reporter finally followed up by asking who had the better jump shot: Obama or incoming education secretary Arne Duncan?

This guy is awesome

2008-11-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

Are the refs blind?

2008-11-23T10:19:00.003-05:00

Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the
Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election. "It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

So is Obama a make up call?

The refs can't get fired fast enough.

Well that’s a mandate

2008-11-05T06:56:00.002-05:00

While I do honestly wish Obama the best and will wait to judge him on his actual actions as President, his Reagan-esqe margin (330+ electoral votes? wowza!) of victory could embolden him and quasi-Marxists in the Democratic Party to abandon the pragmatism that made Clinton so politically successful and move directly on:

1.) Withdrawing from Iraq without appropriately considering security implications.
2.) Implementing confiscatory tax rates on the “rich” (is that 150k or 250k?) that will cause a flight of capital into tax shelters limiting economy sustaining investment and tax revenue.
3.) Implementing carbon cap ‘n trade that will slow the economy, produce negligible environmental benefits and vastly subsidize a poorly understood and poorly regulated carbon market.
4.) Begin to transition private 401k assets into the Social Security Administration.

Well that’s all that comes to mind right now. Off to my sure to become workers paradise!

In the Tank

2008-10-23T04:38:00.003-05:00

Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain, from the conventions through the final presidential debate, were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negative — the least favorable coverage of any of the four candidates on the two tickets.

The study, by The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan journalism watchdog organization, examined 2,412 stories from 43 newspapers and cable news shows in the six-week period beginning just after the conventions and ending with the final presidential debate.

[...]

Obama’s numbers, in fact, are in line with past presidential candidates around the same time periods in the 2000 and 2004 races. It’s McCain’s coverage that has been extraordinarily negative in tone.

On the plus side this election has pretty much revealed mainstream "journalism" for the fraud it is. The argument moves from whether the institution is in the tank to what newsources are most dishonest about their motives.

This is damning:

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Racial Preferences in Education

2008-10-21T19:41:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting interview segment discussing the aftermath of the elimination of racial preferences in the UC educational system. I was in school when a lot of overheated rhetoric was flying around motivated by fears similar policies may come to pass in other states. Like welfare reform this now seems like a relatively consequence free policy change.

Gahhhhh!

2008-10-14T22:08:00.001-05:00

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

egads

2008-10-14T06:34:00.002-05:00

“Do you believe in the American dream?” a local plumber asked.

Obama said he did.

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream."

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

The wagons are circled

2008-10-05T10:50:00.004-05:00

It’s clear the MSM is going to fight to the last man to see their guy gets elected.

This AP "news" piece alleges Palin’s recent comments pertaining to Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers “was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.”.

1. It is documented that Obama was recruited by Ayers to Chair the Annenburg challenge where the two collaborated for several years. Obama kicked off his political career with a party at Ayers home. Palin's "paling around" comment may very well be rhetorical excess but it's hardly "unsubstantiated".

2. Is there some codex that everyone else has that I don’t? How does anything in Palin's remarks have anything to do with Obama’s race? Does any criticism of a black man implicitly have a “racial tinge”?

If Obama doesn't win by landslide with an unpopular war, bad economy and Pravda-like media he could quite possibly be the worst politician of all time.

Obama isn't exactly courting the press either:

If so, I would love to have someone from Obama's campaign explain why the entire press corps, the Secret Service, and the local police idled for two hours in a Miami hotel parking lot recently because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. It was not an isolated case.

The national headquarters in Chicago airily dismisses complaints from journalists wondering why a schedule cannot be printed up or at least e-mailed in time to make coverage plans. Nor is there much sympathy for those of us who report for a newscast that airs in the early evening hours. Our shows place a premium on live reporting from the scene of campaign events. But this campaign can often be found in the air and flying around at the time the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" is broadcast. I suspect there is a feeling within the Obama campaign that the broadcast networks are less influential in the age of the internet and thus needn't be accomodated as in the days of yore. Even if it's true, they are only hurting themselves by dissing audiences that run in the tens of millions every night.

The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who've been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.

The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time*. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.

*Wow and with an army of emo-hippies too. Who woulda thunk it?

Godwin’s Law Bait

2008-10-01T05:54:00.003-05:00

Must resist!

Why the next 2-4 years are going to suck

2008-09-27T13:12:00.001-05:00

Everything is dependant on the efficient flow of capital and from everything I’ve read it’s probably going to be at least 2 years for the markets (yes that’s markets not self-important halfwits that need glossaries for basic financial terms) to discover the actual values of mortgage backed securities so confidence can be restored. There are financial halfwits on both sides of the aisle but after what has happened in the last year democrats should be banished to the financial kiddie table permanently.

Why? Despite all the vagueness and allusions to vast complexity by the media (Are they stupid? In the tank for Dems? Both?) when describing the origins of this crisis it’s really pretty simple. Very much like today, in 1938 there was a glut of housing inventory of the market. Banks didn’t want to take them as collateral because they were essentially worthless. FDR nationalized this risk by creating Fannie Mae to buy up these risky loans and repackage them as risk free securities. Concerned about little more than appearances of his vastly growing government (war on poverty/war) LBJ turned Fannie Mae into a semi-private, for profit, “special purpose entity”. It was little more than a shell game which simply converted real liabilities into implied liabilities (think Enron). In 1977 the Carter Administration signed the Community Reinvestment Act which threatens banks with delays in regulatory approval if an insufficient number of loans are not made to poor (high risk) borrowers. In the early 90’s with the stated objective of “expanding lending to low-income, minority communities” the democratic congress passed bills that allowed Fannie Mae to only keep 2.5% of assets in reserve against liabilities (all banks are required to have at least 10%) and in 1994 the Clinton administration further expanded the Community Reinvestment Act forcing lending institutions to demonstrate they were actively engaged in finding subprime borrowers to lend to. Comparatively unburdened by oversight and asset requirements Fannie Mae purchased and bundled the vast majority of this risky loans. By 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market.

All the while was happening Republican Congressional members and the Bush Administration repeatedly tried to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under control only only to be repeatedly resisted by Democratic house members.

Are they throwing this?

2008-09-13T07:41:00.002-05:00

My cautious but growing glee at the apparent meltdown occurring in the bucolic realm of “hopey changey” is being replaced with confusion and pity.

Surely there must be better arguments to be made against McCain than this:

I mean that ad seems to say little more than McCain’s old and he doesn’t do technology.

The worst part is that this line of attack will backfire horribly for the Obama campaign if they continue pressing this:

Boston Globe, 2000:

McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

Which begs the real question: Can anyone in Obama’s campaign use the internet?

Change I believe in

2008-09-12T05:50:00.003-05:00

Barack Obama addressed the wide distaste for government -- and the fact
that he and John McCain are running against Washington -- at the forum on
national service at Columbia University.

"Our campaign from the beginning has been about changing government," he
said, recalling some great accomplishments of American government: Civil rights
legislation, the interstate highway system, and the National Park
system.
Obama would, he said, "transform Washington" and "make
government cool again".

There has been a distinct lack of coolness at all levels of government for at least the last 230 years. Thank god Obama has decided to take on this pressing issue! Many have tried, and failed but they were probably not cool enough for the task at hand.

I can only hope that when Obama's done changing our current uncool government into a cool government I will be cooler by association.

Ruh Roh

2008-09-09T19:24:00.006-05:00

(Is his emo/hippy army scaring donors away?)

Obama’s decision to be the first candidate to ever turn down public financing may turn out to be a huge strategic blunder.

Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply
worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee,
calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”
At a convention-week meeting in Denver of the campaign’s top fund-raisers, buttons with the image of a money tree were distributed to those who had already contributed the maximum $2,300 to the general election, a subtle reminder to those who had failed to ante up...
But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.
A spokesman said that August was its best fund-raising month yet and that the campaign’s fund-raising was on track. But the campaign finished July with slightly less cash on hand with the Democratic National Committee compared with Mr. McCain and the R.N.C. The Obama campaign has also been spending heavily, including several million more than the McCain campaign in advertising in August.A California fund-raiser familiar with the party’s August performance estimated that it
raised roughly $17 million last month, a drop-off from the previous month, and
finished with just $13 million in the bank.

Could this be why he’s now gone back on his pledge against coordinating with 527 groups?

Update: Obama has record $66 million dollar August! But only nets about 16% of that.

I realize he had his convention in August but a lot of that was covered by the DNC. What on earth is he doing to burn through 50 mil in a month? I didn’t think emo’s cost that much? Do they?

Time to pass the hat.

The Real Sullivan

2008-09-01T10:12:00.005-05:00

You would think someone who was publicly outed as an aficionado of unprotected gay group sex with complete strangers and proceeded to present himself as a victim of “Sexual McCarthyism” would have some qualms about being party to exposing someone else’s (particularly a child’s) embarrassing private sexual affairs.

Nope.

This speaks volumes about his character not to mention his judgment/intellect for letting this rumor pass through his BS filter.

What a douche.

The Speech

2008-08-29T06:33:00.001-05:00

I watched a good deal of Obama’s big speech last night and have to say I was generally impressed. I was skeptical about whether the venue would work but it turned out to be pretty spectacular. I liked the bits about “trimming unnecessary government programs”.

The one line I thought was particularly cringe-worthy was Obama’s suggestion that if people are questioning whether his judgment is suitable for the presidency “he’ll take that debate”.

Well to date he’s clearly done the opposite. He’s rejected all but the minimum 3 debates (and the idiotic Rick Warren faith “debate”) this fall, his campaign has threatened boycotts of TV stations airing critical ads, his campaign is attempting to silence a 527 through the justice department, his campaign recently instructed supporters to interfere with a Chicago radio station interviewing a researcher looking Obama’s chairmanship of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

To date when challenged Obama has not responded with anything resembling a “debate” but instead has resorted to litigation and bullying tactics.

Maybe Michael Klonsky taught him too well.

The Lightworker

2008-08-28T05:55:00.002-05:00

Pray to him*:

Here (4:48):

*Prayers are apparently most effective when using the Cher effect.

Obamanomics

2008-08-22T11:44:00.002-05:00

Well this clarifies things:

If you talk to Warren [Buffet], he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle
in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute
it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re
achieving equity on the back end.” He continued by saying that he thought there
was some merit in Buffett’s argument.

Antioch

2008-08-15T20:54:00.002-05:00

Living up to type:

To bad the man did this:

Greatest...show...ever

2008-08-13T22:04:00.000-05:00

Obama's in this for Obama

2008-07-30T17:57:00.005-05:00

Here’s a pretty good breakdown of this NYTimes summary of Obama’s professorship at the University of Chicago by a current law professor at UW Madison.

The take-away sentence:
Obama either sought to avoid making a record of what he thought or he actually lacked opinions.

Obama may actually have an ideology but it's unlikely we’ll never see it. Instead we'll get months (or years!) of the political equivalent of the color beige; reasonable sounding reasonableness coated in illiterative prose and preachers cadence.

Ideas are apparently secondary to Obama's long held political apirations.

Auditory Allusion

2008-07-28T22:18:00.004-05:00

Nope, it's not a quote from either of our presidential candidates. It's something I've never heard before.

Listen to the included clip a few times in a row. It's what's called a Shepards Tone. "A tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower."

Weird and awesome at the same time.

Speaking of which, I'll be in Indiana on Wednesday. We land at 9:40 am and purchase a sampling the best tamales in the world shortly thereafter.

Hat tip: Boing-Boing

Does pandering even matter?

2008-07-24T09:24:00.001-05:00

During the ‘04 campaign I remember a lot of sympathetic media lamenting how damaging charges of “flip-flopping” were to Kerry; that the differences in position changes were actually small, that his words were taken out of context, that “everyone does it” and that his position changes suggested an “open mind”. I recall thinking that if this line of thought was taken to its logical conclusion the necessity for having an executive branch may have passed and that governance through referenda may ultimately be what people desire.

Do we really want a president who is simply better at researching and reacting to public opinion or do we want a president that leads with conviction?

Has communication technology given us the ability as a society to collectively know what policies are sound? Do we no longer need the leadership of an individual?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. Are our choices ultimately between another Clinton or another Bush?

McCain Tax Policy Shifts

2008-07-24T01:27:00.004-05:00

Talk about pandering:

youtube video of Meet the Press

Another 3 position pivot

2008-07-23T20:11:00.003-05:00

This is just additional context to the discussion in the previous post moved here per Ben's request.

Position 1:
Hawkish rhetoric recognizing the threat of Iran and the ongoing need from troops in Iraq:

A reduced but active presence will also send a clear message to hostile countries like Iran and Syria that we intend to remain a key player in this region…Make no mistake, if the Iranians and Syrians think they can use Iraq as another Afghanistan or a staging area from which to attack Israel or other countries, they are badly mistaken. It is in our national interest to prevent this from happening.

But what about the withdrawal?

Position 2:
Campaign commercial intended to subtly attack Hillary for supporting the Kyl-Lieberman amendment; a bipartisan measure that urged the U.S. government to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. This allowed the US greater ability to apply sanctions and tighten restrictions through the global financial system.

It passed this spring 76-22. Obama strongly opposed it with his signature rhetorical restraint:

Obama today also penned an op-ed in The Manchester Union-Leader warning that Congress -- including, notably, rival Hillary Clinton -- has given Bush the pretense to invade Iran by approving a recent Senate amendment. "When you give this president a blank check, you can't be surprised when he cashes it," Obama writes. "I strongly differ with Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment.

But perhaps aware of his fickleness he again opted not to record this position and just didn’t vote because he couldn’t make it.

Position 3
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/23/1218024.aspx
It was remarkable in terms of the strong language Obama used repeatedly to demonstrate the depth of his support for Israel, saying at one point that he had an "unshakeable commitment to Israel's security." His message appeared to be directed at American Jewish voters, an important voting bloc and one that has been wary of Obama's commitment to Israel.
On Iran, Obama said he would take no options off the table in dealing with the potential Iranian threat.
"A nuclear Iran would be a game changing situation not just in the Middle East but around the world," he said. "Whatever is- remains of our nuclear non-proliferation framework, I think would begin to disintegrate."
The senator argued that as other Middle Eastern countries, some with ties to terrorist organizations, sought nuclear weapons of their own that would increase the likelihood that loose nuclear materials could falling into the hands of terrorists.

"That is our single most important threat to Israel but also to the United States of America. So this is something that we're going to spend a lot of time working on," he said.
Obama said his goal was to mobilize the international community to offer big sticks and big carrots to Iran to end its nuclear program, urging the country to take advantage of what he called "the shift" in Bush administration's approach to direct talks.

Obama made a mistake when he began to list legislation he's supported to show that "vote after vote" he had been a friend to Israel.
"This past week we passed out of the US Senate Banking committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon," Obama said

There are lots more of these: FISA, NAFTA, Gun Control....

Sunlight is the best disenfectant.

2008-07-21T21:21:00.002-05:00

The following article in the Chicago Sun parallels foolish moves made on the part of two politicians early in their careers. Worthy of note:

Amid crumbling bungalows on Chicago's South Side or ranch-style homes in the Phoenix suburbs, an ambitious politician can still get too close to a wheeler-dealer developer.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama admits it "was a boneheaded move" for him to buy property from his friend and donor Tony Rezko's wife after headlines proclaimed federal investigators were looking into Rezko's manipulation of state pension boards for his own profit. Rezko was later convicted on 16 fraud counts.

John McCain admitted he made a "serious error" in not reporting free trips to the Bahamas he took on friend and donor Charles Keating's private jet.

Republican candidate John McCain admitted he made a "serious error" in not reporting free trips to the Bahamas he took on friend and donor Charles Keating's private jet. McCain was one of the "Keating Five" senators who met with federal regulators to ask them not to crack down on Keating's failing Lincoln Savings and Loan.

Keating's political hardball bought him an extra two years. During that time, the cost to tax-payers of bailing out his thrift grew from $1.2 billion to $3.4 billion.

Both Obama and McCain, as up-and-coming office-seekers, attracted the attention of these friend-mentor figures early in their careers.

Which candidate was more naive? Did Obama and McCain show poor judgment by getting close to multi-millionaire businessmen accused of collecting office-holders to advance their interests? Which candidate¹s alliance with a donor hurt taxpayers more?

Deep

2008-07-20T12:16:00.001-05:00

The Onion? Oh Yeah!

2008-07-19T13:13:00.003-05:00

Sherwood said he was granted full access to the candidate, and was permitted by
chief strategist David Axelrod to ask any question he desired—an opportunity the
reporter used to lob the easiest softballs at Obama yet, ranging from how happy
he felt when he met his wife to what songs are currently on his iPod playlist.
Sherwood was also fearless in his effort to paint the candidate as someone who
is "surprisingly down to earth," a phrase that is used a total of 26 times
throughout the feature.
"If we were going to get the story we wanted, it was
my responsibility as a journalist to ask the really tough questions to his two
young daughters," said Sherwood, who grilled Malia and Sasha Obama, 9 and 7,
about whether they were "proud of [their] daddy." "I also had to capitalize on
every opportunity to compare the story of Obama's upbringing and rise to power
to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and John F. Kennedy's, no matter how
suspect those parallels really are."
According to the Time reporter, work on
the profile was often harder than he had anticipated, with Obama at times
dodging questions about whether or not he played a musical instrument, and about
what Monopoly piece he thought best represented his candidacy and why.
"Situations like these are when you have to get on the phone and talk, not
only to his mother, but to his aunt, his uncle, a Boy Scout leader, or maybe
even one of his camp counselors growing up," Sherwood said. "And if they don't
return your call, you turn to Sunday school teachers and former
babysitters—anyone who is willing to go on record and say that Barack Obama was
a really good kid who was destined for great things."
Added Sherwood, "It's
all about getting the factoids out in the open."
Readers have so far
responded favorably to the piece, with sales of the latest issue of Time nearly
tripling that of an issue last month featuring a 36-page exposé that tore apart
and vilified former candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan.
"I'm not
quite sure how he intends to turn around the economy or get us out of Iraq,"
said California resident Geoff Mills, an ardent Obama supporter who read the
Time story. "But any man who prefers his steak cooked medium-rare has my vote."

Onion? No.

2008-07-17T09:12:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday, Barack Obama promised to shift our narrow-minded focus on Iraq to deadly "terrorist sanctuaries" in Pakistan.
He said it forcefully, folding his arms gently, as if to say everything is going to be just fine. And for a moment, you could tell that his audience felt the same way.
Something was in the air — and, in his forearms. Looking at them, it was clear that the senator has been working out more. His chest looks firm and he seems to have more definition in his rock-hard biceps. I bet he does preacher curls — free weights only, none of that Bowflex crap.
But that's not the only muscle Obama has been flexing. Earlier this week, he received a standing ovation at the NAACP convention, saying that blacks need to assume more individual responsibility.
When he took this stance, one word came to mind: courage. Also, quads. You couldn't help but notice how powerful they are. You can see the strength emanating upwards from Obama's strong calf and thigh muscles — the kind I could put lotion on, over and over again.
No doubt they are well toned by playing tag with his lovely daughters. Even the word "adorable" does not do them justice. Perhaps a word needs to be invented to describe something more adorable than adorable and then we can apply that to his daughters.
Until then, allow them their privacy.
But speaking of those angels, they must have been proud, when their father spoke to La Raza last Sunday. There he boldly said how disappointed he is in McCain's new stance on immigration. You could hear a piñata drop it was so quiet, and the silence seemed to illuminate his hair, like a halo.
His sensibly styled mane seems to have been graced with a touch of grey, not unlike a younger Morgan Freeman, giving him an air of wisdom extremely rare for a man of such a young age. It's like he has all the experience of a John McCain, without the nasal hair.
This is a guy you could definitely have a beer with or marry or cohabitate with, if you're gay.
And if you disagree with me, you're probably a racist.

Still not the Onion

2008-07-09T17:34:00.004-05:00

Six percent of the population having 25% of the wealth. Half the world’s oil consumption and now 100% of Obama? What kind of God only smiles on the fortunate? Aren’t there other parts of the world more deserving of numinousity? Is it just that only Americans can bask in his mysterium tremendum? People that are so…ugh… American?

This is not the Onion

2008-07-02T17:38:00.002-05:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Perhaps it isn't fair to judge a candidate by his supporters, but I'm very much making an exception in this case.

Influence Peddling

2008-06-27T17:18:00.003-05:00

Obama secured state tax dollars for local slum lords. Those slum lords provided the financial backing for his 2004 senate run, hold senior positions within his campaign and can look forward to federal dollars should Obama become president.

The spin

Influence Peddling

2008-06-24T20:35:00.001-05:00

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-te.md.ci.dixon24jun24,0,7363358.story

Prosecutors are investigating whether Baltimore Mayor
Sheila Dixon received thousands of dollars in gifts - including fur coats -
from a prominent developer whose projects benefited from tax breaks and zoning
changes she supported as City Council president, a document obtained by The Sun
shows.Court records, drafted by the state prosecutor's office in November,
indicate that Dixon also went on lavish trips to Boston, the Bahamas, Chicago
and Colorado with the developer, Ronald H. Lipscomb. In one instance, the two
left Baltimore for New York by train hours after she had voted to approve a tax
break for one of his company's largest projects.

I wish I could remember that other large Midwestern city where this sort of thing is de rigeur.

Intentional?

2008-06-21T14:37:00.002-05:00

What could go wrong?

2008-06-18T17:46:00.003-05:00

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President
Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White
House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of
US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of
Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain,
try something else.
Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security:
“Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”
He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could
learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate
superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football
fans.

I don’t think Zen Mind, Beginners Mind is going to cut it on national security for most people.

Farrakhan Flashback

2008-06-14T14:44:00.000-05:00

Due to the low profile he’s kept in recent years I think people forget just how evil this guy is.

Is this why Hillary is sticking around?

2008-06-01T09:56:00.002-05:00

But
the real reason for Obama’s extraordinary freakout is that he fears the
release of the videotape, reported here, of Michelle Obama in the pulpit of
Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church railing against “whitey.” And we don’t mean
Whitey Ford. Four Republican sources have told me that the tape exists. I’ve
also been informed that Karl Rove and his allies have a copy of it and are
using it to raise funds for independent expenditure groups. The tape, I’m
told, will be disclosed as the GOP October Surprise. It’s a ticking time
bomb. And I’ve learned that a right-wing Republican billionaire has put a
$1 million bounty on the video. He doesn’t want John McCain to win, like a
number of conservatives, and thinks Obama is a pathetically weak candidate.
The billionaire wants that video released now.

New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I’ll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours. Now I know why people who have seen the videotape say it is stunning. Barack’s headaches are only starting.

We’ll find out tomorrow.

This is more like it!

2008-05-12T19:28:00.001-05:00

Age-Progression Technology Indicates Missing Child A Prostitute By Now

The Onion is getting back its edge.

It's the simple things...

2008-04-23T20:45:00.001-05:00

Less Oprah. More Military Channel Nelson.

2008-04-08T22:07:00.007-05:00

"McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they (the missiles) get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues"

Laser-guided weapons were first developed in the United States in the early 1960s. The USAF issued the first development contracts in 1964, leading to the development of the Paveway series, which was used operationally in Vietnam starting in 1968.

On his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam later in 1967, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese.

I want one!

2008-04-05T14:50:00.002-05:00

This is the coolest thing I've seen all day. I'm now seized with the desire to buy a painting by an elephant...

but we bought 5 seasons of Climate Connections...

2008-03-19T09:49:00.001-05:00

I got a good chuckle from this story this morning on th drive in.

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

Or maybe climate models predicting a climatic apocalypse are just plain wrong.

Climate science: where Occam’s razor doesn’t apply.

Sullivan’s Latest Crush

2008-03-18T08:21:00.001-05:00

Here’s a pretty good demonstration of Andrew Sullivan’s latest bout of intellectual inconsistency:

Remember this next time someone on the religious right says something vile. “The full record of _____’s oratory is much broader, more complicated and more nuanced than the handful of quotes from a few inflammatory sermons.”

Also, where was this guy when Fallwell blamed 9/11 on gays? “When will people accept that strongly worded condemnations of the United States are a fundamental part of our literary tradition–as they should be of any vibrant democracy?”

And then there’s this: “Because I think that the kind of politics that ensures that someone’s pastor’s rhetoric trumps every other issue in a campaign is waning.” Why, just a few days ago John McCain’s fleeting association with John Hagee was worth mentioning.

I wonder why Sullivan doesn’t understand that the full record of Hagee’s oratory is much broader, more complicated, and more nuanced than the handful of quotes from a few inflammatory sermons. When will he accept that strongly worded condemnations are a fundamental part of our literary tradition–as they should be of any vibrant democracy?
Why did Sullivan make such an uproar about Hagee, but so little uproar about Wright? Doesn’t the answer have to be about race?

How can anyone take this guy seriously when his value system seems entirely dependant on whether he likes someone or not?

strange website

2008-03-16T21:19:00.002-05:00

(karla here, who can't remember her password)

I found this strange website.

May I suggest using all cowboy, all diarrhea.

Femocrats gone wild

2008-03-03T07:29:00.003-05:00

“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot
down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do
wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a
captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the
audience.
McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five-and-a-half
years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in
captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to
be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

I wonder how hot Gloria was when she worked as a Playboy bunny......

Obama's Red State Strategy

2008-02-24T11:37:00.001-05:00

Climate Change Takes a Vacation

2008-02-22T09:11:00.002-05:00

The last 12 months have seen the largest global temperature drop since 1875. This brief trend certainly isn’t dispositive of most AGW claims but it certainly doesn't help their argument. The most infamous Hansen Hockeystick trend (itself a product of dodgy math), presented in Inconvenient Truth, isn't much longer.

The Idiocracy Candidate

2008-02-17T10:45:00.004-05:00

Here’s a few key parts Obama’s economic plan. If you’re poor, lazy and/or stupid, he’s your guy. (The fair trade part is so bad it's not even worth discussing).

Create Fund to Help Homeowners Avoid Foreclosures: In addition to taking important steps to prevent mortgage fraud from occurring in the future, Barack Obama will establish policies to help Americans currently facing foreclosure through no fault of their own. For instance, in communities where there are many foreclosures property values of innocent homeowners are often also negatively impacted, driving them toward foreclosure, too.Obama will create a fund to help people refinance their mortgages and provide comprehensive supports to innocent homeowners. The fund will also assist individuals who purchased homes that are simply too expensive for their income levels by helping to sell their homes. The fund will help offset costs of selling a home, including helping low-income borrowers get additional time and support to pay back any losses from the sale of their home and waiving certain federal, state and local income taxes that result from an individual selling their home to avoid foreclosure. These steps will ensure that individuals who have to sell their homes will be able to quickly regain stable financial footing. The fund will be partially paid for by Obama’s increased penalties on lenders who acted irresponsibly and committed fraud.

I certainly don’t think banks are innocent in this but most homeowners certainly aren’t either. Any one who thinks it’s realistic to get a $300,000 mortgage for less than $1000 a month doesn’t need a bailout they need a refresher course on reality.

Create a Universal Mortgage Credit: The tax code is supposed to encourage home ownership with a mortgage interest deduction, but it goes only to people who itemize their tax deductions. Like so much in our tax code, this tilts the scales toward the well-off. The current mortgage interest deduction excludes nearly two thirds of Americans who do not itemize their taxes. Barack Obama will ensure that anyone with a mortgage,not just the well-off, can take advantage of this tax incentive for homeownership by creating a universal mortgage credit. This 10 percent credit will benefit an additional 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year. Non-itemizers will be eligible for this refundable credit, which will provide the average recipient with approximately $500 per year in tax savings.

Yes, the 11.5 minutes it took us to claim our mortgage information in our tax return was a real killer. You truly are the next Jonas Salk, Obama.

Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimated in 2004 that it took more than 28 hours for an individual to complete his/her tax filing, and that half of the taxpayers filing the “easy” forms ended up paying a tax preparer to do it for them. Barack Obama will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than 5 minutes. Currently, the IRS receives Americans’ financial information directly from employers and banks. Obama will ensure that the IRS uses this information to give taxpayers the option of a pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return to the IRS or online. This will eliminate the need for Americans to hire expensive tax preparers and to gather information that the federal government already has on file. Experts estimate that the Obama proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.

Honestly, who would think further empowering lazy, incompetent, union IRS workers to do our taxes will reduce “work and aggravation” for taxpayers?

Create Automatic Workplace Pensions: Currently, 75 million working Americans – roughly half the workforce – lack employer-based retirement plans. Even when workers are given the option of joining employer-based plans, many do not take up the option because it requires considerable work to research plans and investment portfolios, and enroll in the plan. Barack Obama’s retirement security plan will automatically
enroll workers in a workplace pension plan. Under his plan, employers who do not currently offer a retirement plan, will be required to enroll their employees in a direct-deposit IRA account that is compatible to existing direct-deposit payroll systems. Employees may opt-out by signing a written waiver. Even after enrollment, employees will retain the right to change their savings levels, reallocate investment portfolios or end contributions to the account. Obama’s plan will give options to the self-employed and new small businesses to access new easy-to-enroll savings plans and direct the IRS to deposit tax refunds into those savings plans for people who choose to save some of their refunds. Under the Obama plan when employees change jobs, their savings will be automatically rolled over into the new employer’s system to ensure continued savings. Experts estimate that this program will increase the savings participation rate for low and middle-income workers from its current 15 percent level to around 80 percent.

Not blowing your income on that new set of wave runners is hard. Choices in general are hard. Obama’s going to take those away from you so you can discover other inconveniences in your life he can promise to take away in his second term.

Obamulous

2008-02-13T15:52:00.006-05:00

Barak Obama's interview with the Politico folks is well worth watching. Especially if you're a fan.

Black History Month

2008-02-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

Just something I happened to stumble upon...

"'Movie People' might intermarry [but] good people, upright
people didn't do this", a remark suggesting that the college was as concerned
about its reputation as Cunningham's.

New song

2008-01-24T13:57:00.000-05:00

Here's a song I just finished making for my mom's 60th birthday.

For those interested, there are 5 tracks total in the song:

1. Upright bass (plucking)
2. Upright bass (using a bow)
3. Banjo
4. Guitar
5. Dobro

Happy listening,

Mark

Hugo, call your office

2008-01-20T10:53:00.000-05:00

Most people seem to dislike Hillary Clinton because of some perceived character flaw; that she’s too ambitious, dishonest, artificial or just plain mean. While all these things may be true I think it would be a pity if they were the cause of Hillary not being elected.

No, what should keep her out of all positions of power are her appallingly bad ideas.

I heard about her most recent plan on my way home from work and almost blew a red light trying to comprehend the sheer stupidity of it. Basically she wants to freeze mortgage rates for 5 years.

She might as well battle the high price of milk by capping the price below market value.

This fortune article sums up the consequences of such an idiotic plan:

Interest rates on new mortgages would skyrocket - perhaps past 8 percent, as the
mutual funds, pension funds and other investors who typically provide capital to
the mortgage market shift their money into other investments where the
government isn't impairing returns. With higher mortgage rates eroding buying
power, the downward pressure on home prices would only increase. Lower home
prices would lead to even more defaults, as more folks who'd lost the equity in
their homes choose to walk away from their mortgages.

In short, if you are cool with not being able to sell your house for at least 5 years Hill might be your gal.

Thought Crimes

2008-01-13T11:18:00.000-05:00

People from both ends of the political spectrum have long (and often sloppily) made allusions to 1984 when accusing the other side of using state organs for political persecution. But this is simply amazing.

It’s like the whole country is being run by a university administrator run amok.

Simply Profound

2008-01-08T07:26:00.000-05:00

If I were president, he would be my speech writer.

Now I like Obama and think he’s a smart and nice enough fellow – certainly to the degree of the current President – however up to now his political proposals have been little more substantive than your typical beer commercial. In the coming days he needs to fill in the policy holes New Hampshire voters perceived (and Iowa voters didn’t) and risk taking more controversial centrist positions (school choice?) to reassure independent voters that despite his troubling liberal pedigree he is the best “agent of change” the Democrats have.

Hillary’s already done these things but will never get an NBC man (or woman) crush.

Gag me

2007-12-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

This morning NPR had an interesting story about how uneven care for the mentally ill is within US territories. Basically, if vacationing to the Virgin Islands, you should wait to get home before going crazy because they’ll just park you in a jail indefinitely if you do; even though doing so has resulted in the territory repeatedly being held in contempt in US federal courts.

Good information. The kind of fact based, objective reporting that allows me to tolerate the gentry liberalism of NPR.

But of course NPR never stops with just the facts. Knowing that their listener base generally has an impaired capacity for reason, NPR proceeded to communicate the “emotional truth” of the story with all the subtlety of a (fair trade) double espresso.

Naturally the fact that the most sympathetic victim* of these unjust detentions does not speak is no problem to these artisans of advocate prose who so routinely conjure the hopes, dreams and wishes of similarly communicative glaciers and polar bears:

He's wearing a red T-shirt. He looks unremarkable, one face among thousands of
young black men in prison — except for his eyes. They are like the weather
changing — going from clear, to foggy, to dark and raw, to soft and then clear
again.

His smile is like lightning, a bright flash out of nowhere.

Yes, freaky weather eyes and spontaneous smiling really highlight the human cost for me. Thank you Libby Lewis. Why don’t you just finish that bodice ripper we know you’re working on and leave information collection – what I’m paying you for -- to people with brains that haven’t degenerated into flaccid, sentimental mush?

*So this guy is essentially a mute who’s greatest advocate – his sister – is terrified of his capacity for violence. Just how non-radio-friendly are the other guys?

If you don't already like Obama...

2007-12-13T19:43:00.000-05:00

watch this.

Hat tip, Andrew Sullivan.

Greatest political ad ever or greatest ad ever?

2007-11-19T18:52:00.000-05:00

At least I now know that Mike Huckabee has a sense of humor.

Most amusing.
(Hat Tip: Ezra Klein)

Wolf’s the Man

2007-11-16T07:30:00.001-05:00

I was slightly worried last night about Hillary but Wolf got her through intact. He really didn’t do any of the stupid horserace stuff like Russert. All Hillary needs is an even playing field and she’ll cruise through the primaries to the nomination…so long as the media knows their place.

The Wolf hunts in a pack.

Good Job Teen Wolf!

Update: The AP reminds us of what a badass Hilary is:
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - When the hostages had been released and their
alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of
calm in the face of crisis.

Also being modest I'm sure Hillary swore Glen to secrecy after she snuck in through the back to "negotiate" with the bomber with a gun taped to the back of her pantsuit only to castigate him with voice as cold as Krupp steel sucking the hope of success out of his very soul.

Aww, isn't he just the sweeting thing?
The pitch […] presents him as deeply sensitized to the needs and
aspirations of women, raised by a single mother, “a man comfortable with strong
women in his life,” [..] committed to the issues they care about.

Conlict of Interest

2007-11-10T08:12:00.000-05:00

I do want to expound a bit on my objection to the Public Broadcasting public/private funding model.

Imagine one day Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke walks into his office and is like “This job is bull crap! I know I have a charter from the federal government to use all the financial tools at my disposal in an impartial way but I make the same amount as that Citibank-guy-who-golfed-all-day’s executive assistant and I can now only invest in T-bills. I’m going to get sponsored!” He then dons a NASCAR suit and peppers his Fed minutes with Excedrin testimonials as the “Chairman of Headache Relief”.

Ridiculously inappropriate right?

Well this is precisely what NPR has been doing since their financial crisis in 1983; using their government supplied pedestal to hawk other wares; albeit in a manner far less gauche. Instead of acetaminophen and caffeine they compliantly push the agendas of primarily leftist advocacy groups.

These agendas may be perfectly valid just as Excedrin may be the best product for relieving headaches but both should have the same barriers to the marketplace as their alternatives.

The only option to resolve this clear conflict of interest is to either move public broadcasting to 100% public funding or defund entirely.

Defund!

2007-11-04T08:50:00.001-05:00

There are many studies like this. Many of them have better methodologies. What makes this one unique is that it comes from the journalism institution journalists respect most.

Mainstream news sources are biased and that’s okay. I believe the market is in the process of sorting this out. However there is one institution that is outside the market. I again come back to the question: Why am I compelled to fund -- with my income taxes – an overtly political organization? Why can’t an angel investor like George Soros take over NPR and make it the slightly more reasonable cousin to Air America listeners want it to be?

UPDATE: Here are the exact findings as they pertain to NPR:

NPR—Morning Edition – more time for the Democrats
Like the media overall, the first 30 minutes NPR’s Morning Edition produced more stories about Democratic candidates than Republicans (41% vs. 24%). What was different was how little negative coverage Democrats received, especially compared with all other media. Stories about a Democratic candidate were more seven times more positive than negative: 41% positive vs. 6% negative. The majority of coverage, 53% of stories, was neutral.
Looking at specific candidates, stories about Barack Obama carried a clearly positive tone two-thirds of the time. Not a single Morning Edition story was negative. Furthermore, 43% of Hillary Clinton’s coverage was positive vs. 14% negative.
Stories about one of the Republican candidates was more evenly split in tone: 30% positive to 20% negative and 50% neutral. Similar to its public broadcasting counterpart, the NewsHour, NPR devoted more attention to lesser-known candidates. Mitt Romney, the candidate running third for the GOP nomination in most national polls, was the most covered Republican figure, tied with Mike Huckabee, a mostly unknown candidate at the time. Often considered the GOP front runner, Rudy Giuliani, only had one story devoted to him and John McCain had none.
NPR was also the one outlet where there was a marked difference between the total amount of airtime vs. total number of stories. While 24% of the campaign stories were about a Republican candidate, just 15% of the total airtime was spent on them. This suggests that stories about the Republican candidates were brief, creating an even greater gap in the total coverage of Republicans and Democrats.

Update: Fox News and NPR are equally biased

By a margin of 33% to 16%, Americans say that CNN has a liberal bias. The nation’s adults say the same about NPR by a 27% to 14% margin.
There is one major exception to the belief that media outlets have a liberal bias—Fox News. Thirty-one percent (31%) of Americans say it has a bias that favors conservatives while 15% say it has a liberal bias.
When it comes to delivering news without bias, 37% believe NPR accomplishes that goal. Thirty-six percent (36%) say the same for Fox and 32% believe it’s true of CNN. As noted earlier, just 25% believe the major broadcast networks deliver news in an unbiased manner. Results for other media outlets will be released over the next week.

Mrs. Mohammad Farooz

2007-10-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

My Mom has quite a few friends not unlike Mrs. Farooz. I’ve found that by and large they are usually pathetic, wholly unimpressive people that are seemingly driven by nothing other than a poor understanding of feminism and an undesirable hormone situation that belatedly take a misguided but committed stab at finding purpose.

You’ve come a long way baby.

Murdoch vs. Sulzberger

2007-10-19T06:17:00.000-05:00

French Still Sucking

2007-09-20T22:39:00.000-05:00

Exhibit 1:
- one million French citizens never brush their teeth
- half of all French do not brush their teeth in the evening
- 57% of French children under five have never brushed their teeth
- the average French citizen uses between one and two toothbrushes in a year

Exhibit 2:

I'm at a loss for words. Really

They don’t know how the world works…

2007-08-12T12:21:00.000-05:00

“yet tell us how it ought to work”. A quote from Mort Zuckerman, owner and contributor to U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic and the New York Daily News, about journalists in the July 27 issue of the New Yorker.

It’s this combination of ignorance and arrogance that so irritates me about journalists. There has been no issue that better illustrates this than climate change; an unfathomably complex problem trivialized into good vs. evil by self-righteous idiots. This was in plain view in Newsweek’s last issue which Robert J. Samuelson, a Newsweek contributor, took them to task for.

NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability. (The company says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.)

Exacerbating the problem is that the typical journalist, steeped in obsolete Marxist orthodoxy in college, becomes calcified in this manner of thought when surrounded by those nearly all think the same way. This causes a maddening blinders effect to data that doesn’t support the original narrative.

Take for example this new study from the journal Science:

Abstract

Previous climate model projections of climate change accounted for external forcing from natural and anthropogenic sources but did not attempt to predict internally generated natural variability. We present a new modeling system that predicts both internal variability and externally forced changes and hence forecasts surface temperature with substantially improved skill throughout a decade, both globally and in many regions. Our system predicts that internal variability will partially offset the anthropogenic global warming signal for the next few years. However, climate will continue to warm, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.

Anyone with an open-minded, fully functioning brain can see that the conclusions of this study are somewhat ambiguous. The study acknowledges that previous models excluded such non-trivial factors such as the Ocean (oops) but produced new better models that suggest that AGW will kick in for real in 2009 – never mind that such claims of better model accuracy get made on a regular basis. Every researcher thinks they’ve figured it out until the model doesn’t fit.

Reuter’s predictable take on the subject.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.

Except that new data that Reuters should have been aware of was available before this article was written that shows that 1998 was not “hottest year on record”. Sloppy work from NASA was discovered which skewed recent temperature data and has been officially corrected.

We’ll never see it reported though. Our self-anointed, under educated fixers of the world have predictable, simplistic narratives to write elsewhere.

It's so sad that things like this have to exist.

No Comment

2007-07-29T10:17:00.000-05:00

Tethered for a cause
South Bend -- A 19-year-old college student spent 12 hours chained to her family's porch Saturday as part of a national protest against confining dogs for long periods of time.
Jenny Lawson wore her dog collar from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. as part of a national "Chain Off 2007" event that involved 99 people in 32 states.
Protesters chained themselves to doghouses or in yards, according to Dogs Deserve Better, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that campaigns against chaining or penning dogs for long periods of time.
Lawson, a sophomore at Earlham College in Richmond, said she collected pledges and planned to donate the money to the advocacy group.
"I kind of didn't want to do this at first because I didn't want to seem crazy, but then I realized it's about all I can do for chained dogs right now," she said.
Lawson said friends stopped by to keep her company, and she did allow herself to go inside for bathroom breaks.
"I'm not crazy," she said.

Like a Humanities Discussion

2007-07-27T07:04:00.000-05:00

In The Know: Is Our Wealth Hurting Africa's Feelings?

I wish.

900-odd Philipino Prisoners do Thriller

2007-07-22T12:22:00.001-05:00

And they're pretty good at it to boot.

Link, via Boing-Boing/PoeTV

Share your playlist!

2007-07-19T08:04:00.000-05:00

Wow, two posts in one day!

This is pretty interesting, Boing-Boing noted a beta program by Simplify Media that allows you to share your iTunes tracks or view/listen to a friends music when online. If yer a pal and you're interested, lemme know, I'd be eager to try this out.

Simpsonize yourself

2007-07-19T07:30:00.000-05:00

I just found this (via Wired) and it looks pretty amusing. Go to simpsonizeme.com and simply upload a picture of a person's face (according to the article, you should use a hi-ish res straight on head-shot), and voila. I haven't actually tried this, but figured I'd put it out there to see is anyone would.

Empty what is full. Fill what is empty. Scratch where it itches.

2007-07-13T12:17:00.000-05:00

If you can, see "Rescue Dawn" by Werner Herzog and featuring Christian Bale. Over the past few weeks I've been re-newing my appreciation for Werner's films and found myself incredibly excited at the idea of seeing him in narrative mode again.

I'm going to post a series of video clips that, with any luck, will clearly demonstrate why I think Werner is an amazing filmmaker/storyteller and general bad-ass.

First, an interview with Bale on Charlie Rose where they discuss Bale's career, Rescue Dawn and Werner.

Antioch College 1852-2008

2007-06-16T13:42:00.000-05:00

If ever there was any doubting the expression “don’t let the patients run the asylum” one only has to look to G.L.C.A. member Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH. Like most institutions founded for the greater good it had a noble charter. It was one of the first colleges that codified gender equality for both students and faculty. Also like most institutions created for the greater good its idealism often came at the expense of practicality. The school had chronic enrollment problems and was forced to operate on a shoestring until the middle of the 20th century.

Parasitism always involves a certain degree of opportunism frequently in the form of selecting hosts uniquely weakened or compromised in some way. Being dirt poor with a history of bucking convention made Antioch a perfect host for the post WWII communist academics and their Marxist ideology. Under this banner Antioch was remade into the preeminent source of leftist student radicalism in the country. When investigated by the House Unamerican Activities Committee they responded:

“freedom begins not in suppressing unpopular ideas but in holding all ideas up to the light”

This sort of thing was extremely popular in the 60’s and enrollment soared to over 2,000 bringing financial prosperity for the first time. Unfortunately this didn’t result in the improvement in the curriculum which to this day has students create their own study plans which are not graded and remains almost entirely focused on social activism.

The school degenerated into a freak-show in the 90’s attracting national attention when under pressure from feminist activists imposed "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy" which enforces severe penalties on male students if explicit permission isn’t received at each stage of sexual activity. “Do you want to have sex?” is far too ambiguous.

The goal is 100 percent consensual sex, and it works like this: it isn't enough to ask someone if she'd like to have sex, as an Antioch women's center advocate told a group of incoming freshmen this fall. You must obtain consent every step of the way. "If you want to take her blouse off, you have to ask. If you want to touch her breast, you have to ask. If you want to move your hand down to her genitals, you have to ask. If you want to put your finger inside her, you have to ask."

Then in 2000 it had convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal give the commencement address.

Today with funds nearly dried up and only a few hundred believers remaining the college announced its closing but is leaving open the possibility it may reopen:

The school hopes that alumni will provide financial help, that it will attract investors and that it can develop more partnerships with the Yellow Springs community, said Mary Lou LaPierre, vice chancellor for university advancement.

Yeah I'd love to be making those Alumni fund raising calls. Talk about blood from a rock.

UPDATE: Here's a good NYTimes Op-Ed from an NPR reporter that went to Antioch in its heyday that comes to the same conclusions:

Each semester, the college seemed to create a new program. “We need to take education to the people” became a mantra, and so satellite campuses began to sprout around the country. Something called Antioch University was created, and every faculty member whose marriage was going bad or who simply couldn’t hack living in a village of 3,000 people and longed for the city came up with a proposal to start a new campus.
“It was liberalism gone mad,” a former professor, Hannah Goldberg, once told me, and she was right. The college seemed to forget the pragmatism that had been a key to its ethos, and tried blindly to extend its mission beyond education to social reform. But there were too many new programs and too little cash reserve to deal with the inevitable growing pains.

Cool Map

2007-06-14T06:09:00.001-05:00

States are renamed as countries with similar GDP.

Russia, India and China don't really fit any State but for for comparison's sake Russia and India are closest to Florida but about $100 Billion smaller. China is currently equal to the sum of California and Nevada ($2.5 ~~billion~~ trillion).

Germany's economy, despite having less than 8% of China's population is still $350 Billion larger than China's.

Left not so honest with Macroeconomics either

2007-06-03T13:10:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week NPR had a story about Argentina’s once abysmal economy roaring back with 8.5% annual GDP growth crediting the resiliency and innovativeness of the Argentine people in creating a booming export market. The individuals profiled were a boot maker with less than 10 employees and a member of a collective of seamstresses. Both had found relative prosperity in the foreign market for their goods. As I was thinking about what a great comeback story this was I heard the following which naturally made me suspicious.

"..Neighborhood assemblies, leftist parties and the militant students inspired us. I learned about Marx and Trotsky, and workers' control."

NPR is notorious for having a soft spot for leftist Latin regimes and frequently skew their reporting on economic issues based on the regime in power. For example continued emphasis will likely be placed on Mexico’s economic failure now that free market oriented Felipe Calderón is in power while successes are more likely to be featured for those with leftist leanings. This story is no exception and demonstrates cherry-picking in the tradition of Walter Duranty.

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner is highly regarded in leftist circles for replacing two right wing justices with women on the Argentine Supreme Court – one an Atheist no less – and rejecting the market liberalizing recommendations made by the IMF during the economic crisis. Instead of advancing policies making trade easier Kirchner is an unapologetic protectionist boasting:

"We had our own recipe," President Nestor Kirchner said last week, verbally thumbing his nose at those outside Argentina, such as the IMF, whose prescriptions he has rejected. "If we had followed ... the Fund and all the rest," he added, "we know how we Argentines would have faired."

What is that recipe? NPR would like us to credit the policies of this plucky Socialist but in reality they are little more than a speed bump to the colossal market forces projected by China.

Two years after hitting rock bottom, Argentina's economy is on the rebound.
Although the 10-month-old government led by President Nestor Kirchner has taken
credit, economists are praising the soybean — a small, round legume packed with
protein that is at the margin of Argentina's beef-heavy cuisine but at the heart
of its economy. Soybean prices have soared to their
highest levels since 1988, bringing in billions of dollars in foreign currency
and powering the economy's 8.7 percent growth last year. Taxes on soybean exports, meanwhile,
have been a godsend for the cash-strapped government, providing a huge chunk of
its budget surplus. In recent years, soybeans have swept
across Argentina's vast plains, replacing other crops and cattle to become the
nation's top export. The nation's once formidable
industry is still in ruins, and widespread unemployment in sprawling, urban
slums remains, but the small towns that dot the sparsely populated pampas are
bustling. An emerging group of soybean-growing
businessmen equipped with cell phones and sport utility vehicles is driving the
boom. They have amassed huge tracts of land, building expansive agro-industrial
operations that have begun displacing the region's gauchos and small-scale
farmers. But a growing chorus of economists, agronomists
and environmentalists is warning of the dangers of the soybean bonanza, which is
occurring to a similar degree in neighboring Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Never before has Argentina's agricultural production
been so concentrated in one crop, a tendency observers say is favorable only as
long as soybean prices remain high.
From sugar cane to coffee, monoculture
economies historically have spelled ruin in Latin America, as boom inexorably
has been followed by bust. In addition, Argentina in
recent years has become increasingly dependent on imports of other agricultural
products, from milk to potatoes. Agronomists, meanwhile, caution that the
expansion of soybeans is leading to deforestation and causing soil depletion as
many farmers neglect to rotate the legume with other crops.
Argentina is the world's third-largest soybean producer
behind the United States and Brazil. Most of the soybeans are exported to China
and other Asian countries, where they are crushed into a meal used as feed for
livestock.

In short Argentina’s economy is a one trick pony being buoyed solely by China’s ravenous demand for cattle feed. Soybeans can grow almost anywhere and it won’t be long before much greater supply comes online, reducing soybean prices and reversing Argentina’s fortunes. When this happens I’m sure we can look forward to another hit piece on the perils of globalization rather than the short sighted protectionist economic policies of a socialist regime.

more on poverty and inequality

2007-05-29T10:11:00.000-05:00

On the subject of poverty and inequality, here's a good article about the value of early childhood education in reducing them.

The article pretty much echos the conclusions that I reached (using the same data, largely) from a research project last year on the role of the education system in reducing or perpetuating poverty and inequality.

Another Stupid Pew Study

2007-05-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

The Pew Charitable Trust just released a study recently that shows that median income for those in their thirties has fallen generation over generation for the first time in modern history and concludes that it shows that the “American Dream” is imperiled by “CEO salaries” and “income inequality” -- among other things -- and that our only salvation is through government intervention.

My goodness! Imagine a lefty think tank concluding that! That’s like the oil industry being opposed to climate change legislation. Its no wonder every major news source will reprint the report’s conclusions without an iota of skepticism.

It goes without saying that the economists working at a think tank like Pew believe capitalism unchecked will invariably end with the great many of us serving a few thousand czars that own everything; that no matter how well read or credentialed they become they still see the world with the same lazy Marxism they were first exposed to by the hacks teaching their first freshman survey courses.

While I think there is plenty in the study that leaves room for concern I also see a great over-eagerness to again take a single negative metric, frame it in such a way to be “unprecedented”, suggest that it demonstrates that market freedom imperils us and through intellectually dishonest slight of hand and a stupid, complicit media transform correlation into causation. I defy anyone to explain how Steve Jobs getting paid $260 million dollars this year directly depressed any thirty-something’s income. It’s simply a retarded conclusion.

A more realistic, less ambitious explanation for the income drop is that people are simply starting their careers later. This is a very well known phenomenon and has been reported on by NPR on several occasions. Microeconomics is basically the study of how people make decisions. Until our generation the decision to work was largely driven by necessity. The unprecedented wealth of our parents now makes work more optional. Many 30 something’s have used this additional discretion to do things such as acquire more education (or be lazy) that would have been economically unfeasible in previous generations.

In short the same argument lefty econs use to explain away the income discrepancy between the US and Europe can be employed here: the same or greater opportunity to make money exists; they are just choosing to work less.

Rest in pieces

2007-05-16T12:03:00.000-05:00

I just read the best obit of Jerry Falwell that I could imagine, by Christopher Hitchens. A taste:

"The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot." The first such category consists of those who expected Falwell (and themselves) to be bodily raptured out of the biosphere and assumed into the heavens, leaving pilotless planes and driverless trucks and taxis to crash with their innocent victims as collateral damage. This group is so stupid and uncultured that it may perhaps be forgiven. It is so far "left behind" that almost its only pleasure is to gloat at the idea of others being abandoned in the same condition."

It only gets better from there.

For a complete(ish) listing of Hitchens articles, look here, it's some good readin'.

Save us Plankton!

2007-05-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

On the theme of climate whatnot, I recently came accross an interesting article in Wired about a new method of modeling phytoplankton which should have quite an impact on the long-term climage change predictions. I.e., make those predictions less of a wild-ass guess. Faster please.

Which reminds me,Plankton farming strikes me as a reasonable way to take care of that CO2 we're pumping out, keeping this in mind of course:

"Some Silicon Valley technocrats are betting that it just might. In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow vast floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction — and some scholars think that is where it belongs.

But even though many questions remain unanswered, the first commercial project is scheduled to get under way this month when the WeatherBird II, a 115-foot research vessel, heads out from its dock in Florida to the Galápagos and the South Pacific...

The idea is similar to planting forests full of carbon-inhaling trees, but in desolate stretches of ocean. “This is organic gardening, not rocket science,” said Russ George, the chief executive of Planktos, the company behind the WeatherBird II project. “Can it possibly be as easy as we say it is? We’re about to find out.”

For Mr. George, this is not just science and environmentalism but business, possibly big business. Around the world, new treaties and regulations are forcing corporations to look for ways to offset their carbon emissions, and Planktos and its competitors may be able to charge millions of dollars for their services."

Global Warming: Post Shark Jump

2007-05-06T14:17:00.000-05:00

More evidence from the New York Times that in the marketplace of ideas climate change hysteria is increasingly being put in the half-price bin:

I was running errands the other day when a pleasant young woman with a
clipboard tried to stop me. “Do you have a moment for the environment, sir?” she
asked.“No,” I barked as I evaded her, “I don’t!” I felt guilty, but also
vindicated. I mean, of course I have a moment for the environment. Saying you’re
not for the environment right now is like saying you’re not for education,
children, world peace, Africa or a cure for cancer. These days you would have to
be a fool or a lobbyist to dismiss global warming and natural resource issues.
But is it possible that all this marketing is cheapening the cause?Must every
hotel, restaurant, shampoo, detergent and beverage that is environmentally
responsible talk so much about it? Yuban “sustainable development” coffee. Paul
Mitchell “protecting our planet for generations to come.” Levi’s Eco jeans.How
much green-standing can we stand? It’s enough hot air to melt Antarctica. In no
time, an inconvenient truth has become an obnoxious one. But from what I can
see, there’s as much selling as thinking going on. The other night I attended a
magazine party in a photography studio that had been turned into an elaborate
garden with 10-foot-high privet hedges fashioned from shrubbery trucked up from
the South. After the party, the walls of greens went into a chipper for
recycling.“It’s giving back to the environment in a good way,” the decorator
told me.

De-evolution of a Beard

2007-04-24T17:10:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post this for a month and haven't gotten around to
it, so allow me to present the creative trimming of a winter coat.

This is kind of a scary picture, but unfortunately
the only one I took of myself with the whole deal. My goal: to attain
the longest chin whiskers possible during the official winter months.

This look could be categorized as "Olde Tyme Bartender" or US President circa 1860-1900. I sported this business for one entire day and it felt ridiculously uncomfortable. I spent the entire day desperately wanting this off of my face.

This one was alright. Not nearly as uncomfortable as
the previous incarnation, but still weird (for me at least). This went
on for about five days. Apparently, it lookeddisappointingly normal.

This is only slightly different than the last. Notice the subtle narrowing of the handle's?

And here, finally, is the full blown Ben-stache. Yay.

GPA and SAT Imply False Precision and Authority

2007-04-14T10:14:00.000-05:00

I was very amused to hear that my favorite alma mater is thinking about discontinuing its cooperation with well known college rankings magazines. Of course the decision is based only on the highest principles. Of course….[cough]

So in light of this brave stand I hope they are willing to reciprocate the trust the absence of impartial data demands of prospective students. Why I think the following would only be fair:

Dear Admissions Committee:

Thank you for your inquiry about my high school and SAT transcripts. It is no mistake that you have not yet received them. I have decided not to recognize the false precision and authority of these artificial measures. Your admissions selection process is too important to be based on data from an outside, synthetic measure that is so fundamentally flawed and incomplete. Does a weather report convey all that is beautiful about a sunny fall afternoon in Vermont? Of course not! A four digit number is just as insufficient to describe all the character, culture and beauty contained in all the welcoming hallways and anterooms that dwell within my mind. Look over there past my shrine to Donald DeFreeze. There is a tire swing hanging from rafters reclaimed from an old barn with multi-hued bears frolicking with much merriment. Why even my whimsy exudes acceptance and tolerance! Oh if only some day I could have friends of such diversity in which to share my gaiety. But I digress…the SAT is nothing more than a construct of the corporate machine which seeks to grade our wonderful, unique, free-thinking minds like cuts of beef. Like a blast of poisonous carbon monoxide thousands of for-profit corporations like Kaplan and Princeton Review seek to extract payment with the promise that we can outperform our peers. How is it moral to take money to make someone else a loser? I suppose others can receive absolution from that pagan creed of Capitalism but I know as Friends we’re simply too good for that. It’s a pity others can’t be as concerned about social-justice as we are. There are just so many greed-battered souls that litter this Caligula’s wasteland of Amerikkka it shouldn’t be a surprise that I had so many as my high school teachers. So oppressed were they by this controlling, paternalistic society and so deprived of the sensitive, worldly and engaging re-education within your walls are they that they seek to damn all free spirits in their charge to their sad fate. As my llama power animal has often told me, hurt people hurt people. In consideration of this truth I proudly view my grade point average with the same regard as a tattoo marking the forearm of a Survivor; a mark of unspeakable oppression.

Absent of my brands of conformity I’m sure you’d like to have some information about me in which to base your consideration. I descend from principled, non-conformist, English stock who were among the first to lead the fight against slavery. Through determination and hard work they left my parents with a legacy of world renown. My parents did their best to build on what their progenitors left them and pushed forward with an agenda of non-violent, compassionate progressivism. As they were somewhat less industrious than their forbearers their accomplishments were rather modest but their passion was just as strong! My upbringing in this environment has influenced me greatly. I value peace in this world more than anything. So much so that I sold all the land my grandparents left me to allow my family and I to tour the country converting the ignorant to our culture of peace in our new bio-diesel bus and help fund a yearly trip to Palestine to help me understand peace even better. Included with this letter is a tastefully designed view book constructed of paper I made myself filled with autumn pictures of me trying to impose peace on others through high decibel wisdom and colorful signage. I also included a video of me helping my Palestinian peace friend Khaled build the beautiful, traditional “Katyusha” firework for a peace festival in his basement.

Some lesser institutions of learning might receive the enclosed with some skepticism. "How can any of this information be verified? Even if it is true, how does this demonstrate that you've received a legitimate education? ", they may ask. To which I'll respond with righteous outrage, "Did you not read my essay on my impressive values? Did you not see the pictures of me with friends of many colors and creeds...smiling....in the fall!? Are you so obtuse as to not see that my quality is self evident?!" I know you will let me tell you the story of me using my tongue of tolerance rather than the imposed language of greed to which other institutions will only listen.

Thank you for your consideration,
Earl M. Coolege

Update: I wonder if this is the type of student they're now shooting for? They seem to approve....

Thailand's off the list

2007-04-07T14:26:00.000-05:00

As a rule I despise country music. In the rare instances I actually allow myself to pay attention when it's played in grocery stores or Jiffy Lubes I always find I can predict what the lyrics are going to be despite never hearing the song before. Unfortunately doing so triggers a deep sense of self loathing because somehow these odes to morons apparently somehow resonates with me. The rather crappy movie The Beach was sort of the same way. As a rule I also hate hippies and this movie was all about hippies being hippies but for some reason the movie made we want to visit Bankok until the following changed my mind:

Khao San Road is where WTO protesters go to vacation. It is a collection of
cheap hostels, Internet cafes, semi-legit massage parlors, disreputable travel
agents, nightclubs, and endless stalls manned by Thai merchants willing to cater
to the desires of the First World's spiritually confused, culturally eclectic
youths. And what do they want? Primarily, tattoos, henna, and dreadlocks. As I
walked past a Thai grandmother braiding Bob Marley hair into a twentysomething
Japanese head while a Thai man was needling Superman's symbol onto his shoulder,
I thought: If this is where peace, love, and understanding lead, then let's give
war a chance.

UPDATE:

The Crawford Peace House recently lost its corporate charter with the state, and a former member who now has rights to the name is threatening legal action because the group continues operating.

Sara L. Oliver and some others are calling for a state investigation as to why only $14,700 is now in its bank account, saying tens of thousands donated during Cindy Sheehan's 2005 war protest are unaccounted for.

Why the surprise? Everyone knows Cindy Sheehan needs to train with Bangkok masters for her Ping-Pong Show for Peace.

Andrew's gonna love this

2007-04-05T13:36:00.000-05:00

I followed a link from Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful things) that featured this picture of Hillary lookin freaky. But things get really good if you follow through to Something Awful. Some folks have photoshopped her head into all manner of amusing settings.

This one was my favorite.

"watching her dreams of an atmosphere on mars fade away, or is it just a memory???"

Update: So apparently there's no linking from wherever that one came from. That's sad cause it was damn funny. This one will do however.

Updated update: Got around the no linking thing so here you go...

Karla's blog

2007-03-21T19:56:00.000-05:00

Though she hasn't posted anything lately, Karla has a blog and you should check it out. It's called That Crafty Karla. According to some, it's more interesting than this one. But then their biases are rather transparent. It certainly makes up for this blog's gross neglect of crafty things.

Another NASA Jackass

2007-03-20T10:08:00.000-05:00

For the last few years this jackass has been at the vanguard of those alleging that the Bush administration is waging a “war on science” by “stifling” views on climate change counter to their own. He accused the Bush administration of threatening him through mysterious back channels and forcing NASA to deny him access to the media*:

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the
University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that
government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for
Senator John Kerry.

[…]

He said he was particularly
incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not
through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

[…]

After that speech and the release of data by Dr.
Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a
century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned
public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would
be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr.
Hansen said in interviews.

He also compared the White House to a “propaganda office” and said "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States."

Inconvenient to this conspiracy narrative was a revelation yesterday that during the time period where Dr. Hansen alleges being “muzzled” he participated in over 1,400 (!!!) on the job interviews and that the real reason he was denied permission to give an interview to NPR (the only documented “muzzling” – he proceeded to give 15 more interviews later that month) was that NASA was sick of him giving interviews all the time without following procedure rather than doing his job.

Mr. Deutsch, who was 23 at the time, said Mr. Hansen was prohibited from doing
the interview because of his prior refusal to notify NASA officials when he was
granting interviews, not for political reasons.
Citing
what he called his "constitutional right" to give interviews, Mr. Hansen
admitted violating NASA's press policy but defended his actions.

*Note how the NYTimes never questions Hansen’s version of events and treats them as fact despite there being no known evidence to support the allegations. In addition, prior to this article he was a paid advisor to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and was given $250,000 by Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Heinz foundation. Nothing to see here…

jackass

2007-03-15T12:49:00.000-05:00

Gavin Schmidt, one of the more odious advocates for radical political and economic solutions to the “Global Warming Crisis” before a recent debate on the subject:

I'm quite looking forward to this, but I have to admit to conflicting thoughts. Does participating help perpetuate the idea that global warming per se is still up for debate? Is this kind of rhetorical jousting useful for clarifying issues of science that most people there will only superficially grasp? Can this be entertaining and educational? Or does it just validate the least serious opposition? Is it simply a waste of time that would be better spent blogging?

It certainly appeared like quite the opportunity to preach to the choir: NPR hosted the event and produced an audience that agreed with his position nearly 2-1 (57-30%).

Except that by night’s end the previously friendly audience didn’t seem to find the Gavin’s arguments all that convincing with only 42% still agreeing (46% disagreeing) with his apocalyptic assessment.

Naturally the reaction to his poor showing has been to criticize the intelligence of the audience and lament that “Science isn’t a popularity contest”. However when considering that Gavin and his “scientific consensus” have the news media, Hollywood and the EU on their side one must begin to question if salesmanship is really the problem and conclude that they’re just peddling crap.

Update: Science isn't a popularity contest

I can't tell them apart!

2007-03-14T17:31:00.000-05:00

Global Warming jumps the shark…

2007-03-13T08:49:00.001-05:00

NY Times is walking their rhetoric on the subject back.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that
questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some
reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming. Geologists
have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with
ignoring such rhythms.
“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of
the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental
change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook
University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any
evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its
historical pattern of constant change.” In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar
points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr.
Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental
shift remotely similar to this” threatened change. Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook
told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for
the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval
warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the
warming in the past century.” Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s
assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had
corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook
told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”
Biologists, too, have gotten into
the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects
and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur
Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as
spreading malaria.
“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against
the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald
Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they
continue to ignore the facts.”

So like those foreign exchange students in high school sporting the acid wash jeans it appears the Europeans have again bought heavily into a fad that has likely run its course.

Milwaukgineering

2007-03-08T19:38:00.000-05:00

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - The funniest bloopers are right here

Of Democrats and Dialect

2007-03-05T20:25:00.000-05:00

This weekend in Selma Alabama while commemorating the Selma March Barack Obama, who is as southern as I am, increasingly picked up the cadences of a evangelist preacher. Hillary sounded like an alternating mix of Foghorn Leghorn, Rosanne and Nell. I was forced to relive this inexplicably asinine behavior repeatedly while listening to NPR gush at Hillary and Barak’s thoughtfulness and political acumen for using tragedy opportunistically while running errands this weekend. Over and over I wondered why southern black people don’t feel slighted when people who don’t typically talk like them start doing a bad MLK or Mammy impression. If Bush started talking like one of the Mario Brother’s when addressing the Order Sons of Italy in America, delivered a speech pronouncing his “W’s” as “V’s” when addressing Germans in Milwaukee or larding up a town hall meeting with “you betcha’s” with a clothes-pin on his nose in Brainerd would people hoot and holler in appreciation? Probably not. People would probably rationally assume the man was brain damaged or an unbelievable fraud.

Big Fat Phoney

2007-02-27T12:06:00.001-05:00

This has been getting a lot of play on drudge and Instapundit but I still feel the need to share an observation. A friend of the family built a 7000sqft+ home in Wisconsin a few years ago. Despite being over 3 times larger than my house (2200sqft) his average monthly energy costs are only 60 percent more than mine ($200 vs $125). His house is well insulated, has good windows and I’m assuming a decent furnace/AC unit but it’s by no means a “green” home with the 3ft mud and straw walls and whatnot. For Gore’s home in much milder Nashville to be using over $1000 in natural gas and $1300 in electricity per month is absolute insanity however many carbon offsets, cfl’s and token solar panels he buys. This is the lifestyle of an energy company profiteer (he is!) seeking to assuage guilt over excess not the worlds most famous environmentalist. It reeks of the elitist hypocrisy: “rules are for the little people”.

I’ll recycle (come on, Kansas screams landfill) and get a Prius when Gore gives up the outdoor hot tubs and the dual Sub Z’s. Till then I’m going to continue pursuing my dreams of having 10 hp for every year I’m alive (I’ll make it). I’ll just plant a tree and get one of those solar cell phone charger thingies.

UPDATE: The Heinz-Kerry’s have also jumped onto the “save the earth” hypocrisy fad. They just wrote this book about:

The environment, and the movement that grew up to protect it, is under attack--concerted and purposeful [!!!].

Of course the Kerry’s are thinking globally but acting locally:

But soon it was clear that maintaining Heinz's property would need more water. So she and her neighbor, Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, applied for a permit to build a pipeline and take water from the Big Wood River, which is adjacent to her property, up the hill to water her lawn and maintain her landscaped greenery. But the county had just passed a new policy and ordinance preventing that type of transfer.

Marti Bridges, then-water policy head for Idaho Rivers United, told the Boston Herald at the time that the amount of water Heinz and Wynn wanted to divert would fill ten large municipal swimming pools each year, a volume that she said "could be the difference between a fish population making it through summer during spawning or rearing."

Mmm’kay maybe not…but of course Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz Kerry is more equal than the unwashed commoners this book is being marketed to.

Based on the leaders the educated left currently holds en vogue I secretly suspect that in their heart of hearts they do not believe in the workers-of-the-world-unite populism they evoke so readily. FDR, Kennedy, Gore, Kerry…Clinton was an aberration (and I’m not certain he’s that idolized). I think on some deep, dark, unacknowledged level they want to be courtesans of King Louis 14^th where they can let live the fantasy there are betters to aspire to and where power is gained through cultural and political influence rather than merit. If the left had any real understanding of the wealthy in this country they’d see that it’s much more mundane and populist than anything they would find in academia or Hollywood. They reject this reality of course because it would mean they are owned by their intellectual and cultural inferiors.

UPDATE: To see just how unevenly the news media holds democrats and republicans accountable to charges of hypocrisy, in six months count how many stories there are about Al's house and compare it to the number of stories about Dick Cheney having lesbian daughter. As of today NPR alone has done 7 stories on this otherwise unremarkable person while right now Al is getting a pass.

Oh what side will I choose?

2007-02-22T22:58:00.000-05:00

Yes if everyone shared the genetic material of this unfortunate hipplet I’m confident the human race would end with his generation because there would be 8 billion angst ridden Starbucks baristas and no one to continue the ridiculous rate of technological improvement everyone who is allowed to watch channels other than PBS and ingest refined sugar is awestruck over. Anyone with an iota of perspective would realize that the human race did okay against an ice age, numerous plagues and a cold war. Is 5-6 degrees in 93 years really worth getting your sponge-bob skivvies in a knot?

At least Captain Euro is on his side....

NYTimes Doing Something about their Retards

2007-02-12T16:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently the stable of typewriter-chained Corkys maintained by the Sulzberger family is becoming something of an embarrassment. NYTimes Ombudsman/part-time-censor Byron Calame writes the following after the Times publishes a ridiculous story purporting that the majority of women in the US are living single for the first time ever!....after including 15 year olds in their data:

It was discouraging to find yet another article with an unusual angle that
didn’t seem to encounter many skeptical editors as it made its way to the front
page.

As a result:

In the wake of this controversy, Bill Keller, the executive editor, has decided
to meet with staffers with expertise in statistics and demographics to create a
“vetting network to help with the editing of articles dealing with those
subjects,” Craig R. Whitney, an assistant managing editor and the standards
editor, said Thursday.

Translation: Tard handlers.

If only Reuters and AP followed suit…

UPDATE: Uh oh! Looks like someone didn't get their snack pack...

$35,000 a year for making the Royal w/ Cheese

2007-02-12T11:22:00.000-05:00

For anyone that’s read this blog it should not be a surprise that among the developed world I consider France to be the Pinnacle of leftist economic stupidity. It really seems as if they’re really on some suicidal mission to single handedly prove the superiority of the free market system.

The newest twist comes as the country considers Chirac’s replacement. Naturally the French consider the antidote to economic malaise resulting from crippling entitlements and regulation is even more entitlements and regulation. This idiocy is embodied in Ségolène Royal who among other things wishes to raise the French minimum wage to the equivalent of $2000 a month (that’s $24k a year if you’re a journalist). Considering that French per-capita GDP is $30,000 while the US is $43,500 that would translate into a US minimum annual income of nearly $35000 a year.

God I hope she gets elected.

Kyoto Cost Benefit

2007-02-01T20:02:00.000-05:00

This is the only cost benefit analysis I've seen to date on Kyoto. If anyone else has different numbers I'd love to see them. I seriously doubt we'll get anything other than agitprop from the Boxer committee.

The sloppy logic of the Kyoto advocates is surprising. The protocol would demand the biggest international financial commitment in history, yet it rests on an elementary fallacy: it compares the total costs of potential damage with the marginal costs of slightly ameliorating the problem. Even if every industrial country met the Kyoto goals of reducing carbon emissions 30 percent by 2010, the impact would be tiny. By 2100 that would have postponed global warming by a mere six years. The guy in Bangladesh driven from his home by rising sea levels would have to move in 2106, instead of 2100.

This makes little sense. The best estimates of the cost of implementing Kyoto run between $150 billion and $350 billion a year. The best estimates of the damage from global warming reach about $500 billion annually in 2100. Proponents argue that paying $150 billion to avoid $500 billion in damages is a good deal. But that's not what's on offer. We still have to pay the $500 billion, only six years later. So the real offer is: we pay $150 billion each year for 100 years to postpone payment of $500 billion annually, starting in 2100. All economic models show this to be, as the Copenhagen Consensus put it, a "bad" deal.

Journalists are Retarded cont.

2007-01-31T10:59:00.000-05:00

In reporting how those noble French are teaching us about sacrifice by turning off the lights on the Eiffel Tower for 5 whole minutes Reuters reports the following:

The Eiffel Tower's illuminations are one of the most notable features of the French capital's skyline and account for 9 percent of the 7,000 megawatts consumed hourly by the structure.

7,000 Megawatt hours! Holy crap! That’s more power than is generated by all of Iraq and more than has ever been consumed by customers of Duke Energy – the largest energy provider in Indiana.

Most likely the sum total of the editors education on all things electric came from Back to the Future.

To make matters worse over 75% of electric generation in France comes from nuclear generation which has zero net effect on greenhouse gas emissions. So this entire action/story is meaningless.

UPDATE:According to this site, the lighting system at the tower is 120KW. Assuming the AP/Reuters article is correct in stating that lighting is 9% of total power usage then we can surmise that total consumption is 120KW(100 *.09) = 1.08MW. A bit lower than 7000.

UPDATE: CNN’s corrected the obvious mistake. Apparently assuming it was a simple order of magnitude issue (KW vs. MW – I’m not so sure. These dummies still have the original version.)