Wankette | Friday, 3rd of July 2009 at 08:02:00 PM
– and, since I don’t have any inside info, I’ll assume that half a million dollars in debt, two infants, and general press-gang press abuse was enough for her to draw a line under her governorship and say, This is where I get off.Do you need to say more about this woman than, she finally got people to stop talking about Michael Jackson?
I’ve been reading some of the speculation, until my eyes rolled back in my head. Most say she’s finished politically, whatever her motives. I myself don’t think anyone’s ever “finished politically” — this is the Land of Reinvention, after all, and a famous plagiarist is now Vice President of the United States!
A lot of what’s floating around pisses me off. Everyone who’s a regular here, knows I’m a fan, but besides that, it angers me that part of the attack now is that this is a sign of weakness, because, you know — she’s a mother.
That she’s a mother, yes. That this makes her unfit for higher things — maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it doesn’t have a goddamned thing to do with it! Is there a politician with a penis that they’d call a wuss for stepping down “because of family”? Some of those blowhards at NRO could cut down on the carbon emissions if they’d just stop yammering on that point. (Amy Holmes, you’re one of them — seriously, you think it’s strange that she made lunch for her family while wearing a business suit? The woman comes home from the office to make lunch, and you want her to change into something — I don’t know — “hotdog appropriate”? SHUT UP!)
What I have always admired most about Governor Palin is her ability to take the abuse and still keep doing…all of it.
Maybe today she said, “I can’t do it all right now, and keep doing it well. So I’m just going to do…some of it.”
More here, and just about everywhere else on the Internet, including Threedonia’s Friday Open Thread.
(And for the record; we are all in a bar, celebrating Independence Day Eve. Kriskey caught the news on one of those scrolls when he looked at the bar TV to check on the score of the BoSox-Mariners game (tied up in the 10th). We chugged jaeger bombs to see who would have to leave the bar, run to the internet cafe down the street and do this post and yours truly lost.)
I am a beginner political activist.I’m doing everything wrong too, but at least I’m doing. I called Howard Berman, and told his assistant to vote “NO” on the Hate Crime thing. She belched, “Are you aware that Howard Berman is the one who created the bill?” I said, “No, I wasn’t aware of that, but tell him he’s wrong. All crimes are hate crimes. It’s just an attempt to push the gay agenda.” Then, I hung up red faced, but committed. I called Nancy Pelosi and when I got her voice mail, I said, “Please vote to keep Freedom of Speech, especially Conservative and Christian, on the radio and T.V. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry!” When I hung up my cell phone, my husband the cop screamed from across the car, “Who were you calling?!” He almost crashed. I said, “Nancy Pelosi.” He said, “You just threatened Nancy Pelosi?!! The Speaker of the House?!! The third in line?!!” I started shouting, “I didn’t threaten her life, I was just trying to be emphatic! I just meant that if she eliminates conservative and Christian talk radio, all that will be left will be Howard Stern, and filth, and porn, and everything will be dark and bad, and icky!” My husband the cop shouted back, “They take threats seriously, Vicki!!” So, I called her voice mail back, and told her my name and apologized and said that I was a beginner political activist and hadn’t worded my message right. I just wanted my freedom not to go away.” My husband shouted, “You just told her your name!”
Yesterday, Mark Hemingway linked to a Politico article detailing a plan by the Washington Post to charge corporations tens of thousands of dollars to arrange “access” to Post reporters, executives, and powerful government officials. I’d link directly to the original Politico article, but it doesn’t appear to be there anymore. Luckily, Mr. Hemingway copied the relevant bit himself.
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.
And it’s a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.
“Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate,” says the one-page flier. “Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. … Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders.”
“An evening with the right people can alter the debate.” You bet it can.
With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, [Washington Post publisher Katharine] Weymouth said in an email to the staff that “a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do.”
Weymouth said the paper had planned a series of dinners with participation from the newsroom “but with parameters such that we did not in any way compromise our integrity. Sponsorship of events, like advertising in the newspaper, must be at arm’s length and cannot imply control over the content or access to our journalists. At this juncture, we will not be holding the planned July dinner and we will not hold salon dinners involving the newsroom. “
She made it clear however, that The Post, which lost $19.5 million in the first quarter, sees bringing together Washington figures as a future revenue source.
[Executive Editor Marcus] Brauchli emphasized that the newsroom had given specific parameters to the paper’s business staff that he said were apparently not followed. He said that for newsroom staffers to participate, they would have to be able to ask questions and that he would “reserve the right to allow any information or ideas that emerge from an event to shape or inform our coverage.” That directly contradicts the solicitation to potential sponsors, which billed the dinner as “off-the-record.”
Charles Pelton, The Post business-side employee listed as the event contact, seemed to dispute Brauchli’s version of events.
Pelton was quoted by Post ombudsman Andy Alexander in an online commentary as saying that newsroom leaders, including Brauchli, had been involved in discussions about the salons and other events.“This was well-developed with the newsroom,” Pelton told Alexander. “What was not developed was the marketing message to potential sponsors.”
I know times are tough, but the Post looks a little too desperate here, no? CEOs and Executive Directors generally expect their prostitutes to have a modicum of discretion.
If any of you teachers or homeschooling parents ever need a real world example to help your students understand the meaning of the word, “shameless” simply point them to this thread at Big Hollywood:
JohnFN | Thursday, 2nd of July 2009 at 12:38:59 PM
Mike noted the war between McCain staffers and Bill Kristol over the latest Vanity Fair hit piece on Sarah Palin. Eight months after the election, when Palin has left Alaska a total of four times, she continues to inspire such hatred is a question many on the right would like answered. The frothing her name generates on mention amongst liberals is a strange phenomenom, even to cause Vanity Fair, one of the respected posts of magazine journalism, to jaunt to Alaska to bring back more dirt. CBS is even work on a book.
Jim Geraghty discussed this trend on Hugh Hewitt yesterday, here are some tidbits. The conclusion – Sarah Palin is the absolute antithesis of what a successful human being, especially elite politician should be. Not to mention a happy adult.
Hugh suggested it tied to the contrast between her lifestyle and her critics: “She is the embodiment of the anti-choice, the opposite of every choice that lefty elites have ever made — as to going back home instead of moving to the west coast, having children, having a child with Downs, staying married to one man the whole time, choosing rural or suburban over urban and living a generally conservative lifestyle, working with her hands… That everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it’s not just enough to say, ‘I disagree with you,’; she has to be repudiated and crushed.”
Which is something those of the moderate-to-left and high-class right are helping with. The one thing Kathleen Parker and Daily Kos have in common is their lifestyle choices. Sarah Palins are thought not to be possible, because in the feminist worldview, strong women don’t exist in this realm. They are meek, they are barefoot and pregnant. They don’t lead, they don’t have success.
Today almost everyone faces some sort of challenge in balancing work and family; I don’t know too many people who believe there are sufficient hours in a day. And then along comes this woman who’s made all of these “conservative” choices and now has an amazing career, a supportive husband, a beautiful family, great health and appearance, and she bears it all, including the inevitable hard times, with pluck and a smile, as far as we can tell.
A simple fact – continue to question her intelligence, her fortitude, or mental stability or even her children’s parentage (lets even say all of the dismissals are true), the truth is most people have a lot more work to do to live up to Sarah Palin’s standards than she does of living to theirs.
A short while back, Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum suggested, only half-jokingly, that actress Angelina Jolie’s “entire Oscar-winning, serial-adopting, Brad Pitt-snagging, plane-piloting, unattainably hot-looking existence makes women around the world feel hopelessly inadequate and therefore unhappy.” Perhaps Sarah Palin is the Angelina Jolie of the political world.In her opponents’ minds, Palin’s made all the wrong choices, and cannot, they insist, be very bright. Yet she’s happy and successful. She is an anomaly that invalidates their worldview, and for that, they attempt to immiserate her — regardless of whether she wishes to run for national office again.
Instead, any and every insult is thrown upon her. Of the shallow Vanity Fair piece, here’s the worst.
More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy” — and thought it fit her perfectly.
Nothing says fact-based reporting like a little anecdotal mudslinging. Even Media Matters called this shot ridiculous. It’s also not a smidgen original. From Mark Hemmingway:
To wit, a Google search of the Huffington Post for “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” and Sarah Palin returns some 752 results. Obviously, not all of those results are relevant but in just the first four pages of Google results I found five different comments from the website which reference Sarah Palin having narcissistic personality disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and all were written well before Purdum’s profile.
I’d like to think the press narrative is coming from some Ivory Tower on up from high, not the comments section from the Huffington Post, but hey, let the pajama revolution take hold. Hemmingway comes to the right conclusion.
It appears this is a meme that gained currency among those on the far left who actively despise Palin and posess no special insight into her. Either Purdum is far too credulous and should have investigated the claim, or Purdum deliberately wrote up baseless claims of narcissistic personality disorder to make it sound like the diagnosis came from Alaska insiders and in the process made the claim far more salacious. Either way, I don’t think Purdum’s reporting is to be trusted.
Two senior Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama on Wednesday expressing concern over reports that the administration negotiated “directly or indirectly” with terrorists for the release of British hostages in Iraq.
In a letter made available to The Washington Times, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said that the U.S. release last month of Laith al-Khazali, a member of a militant Shi’ite group called Asaib al-Haq, may have been part of a deal to gain freedom for three British hostages held since 2007. On June 21, the group sent the bodies of two British hostages to the British Embassy in Baghdad. The other three are still being held.
The White House has denied negotiating with terrorists and repeated that denial Wednesday.
Wankette | Thursday, 2nd of July 2009 at 10:00:05 AM
Well, smack me on the ass & call me Shirley! Go, Helllll-en!
(CNSNews.com) – Following a testy exchange during today’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.
“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.
“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”
Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.
“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.
“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well—for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”
An interesting piece at Politico gives us a little behind-the-scenes look at the last days of the McCain campaign. Remember the repeated leaks from “top campaign staffers” which sought to discredit Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin? William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, implies that they came from Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager.
Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.
Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”
Kristol’s charge was seconded by Randy Scheunemann, a longtime foreign policy adviser to McCain who is also close to the Standard editor and was thought to be a Palin ally within the campaign.
“Steve Schmidt has a congenital aversion to the truth,” Scheunemann said. “On two separate and distinct occasions, he speculated about Governor Palin having post-partum depression, and on the second he threatened that if more negative publicity about the handling of Governor Palin emerged that he would leak his speculation [about post-partum depression] to the press. It was like meeting Tony Soprano.”
Schmidt said Scheunemann’s charges were “categorically untrue.”
“It is inappropriate for me to discuss personnel issues from the campaign,” Schmidt continued. “But suffice it to say Randy is saying these things not because they’re true but because he wants to damage my reputation because of consequences he faced for actions he took.”
Schmidt is alluding, without saying so directly, to the stories that emerged after the campaign that Scheunemann had been fired.
Scheunemann said Schmidt did try to fire him but added: “I’ve got a pay stub through November 15th.”
The questions about Scheunemann being terminated are central to the larger battle about who was trashing Palin, something that quickly came to the surface in the back and forth between Schmidt and Kristol on Tuesday.
The nasty back-and-forth between the two well-known Republicans and re-litigating of internal backbiting underscores the degree to which the internecine and very personal battle over last fall’s ticket between those seen as Palin allies and Palin detractors still rages on nearly six months into President Obama’s term.
Now, I can see why Schmidt might lie about his involvement in the leaks. It makes a certain kind of sense to trash the person whose campaign you’ve mishandled.
I can’t figure out why Kristol would lie, though. Apparently he’s a friend of Scheunemann, but for him to risk his reputation as a journalist for absolutely no reason and at this late date (it’s not like Scheunemann has been under attack, after all) strains credibility.
Outlaw13 | Wednesday, 1st of July 2009 at 03:00:43 PM
Eva watering the lawn
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I apologize for my extended absence, but the lack of reliable INTERNET access and a constant schedule has prevented that. Maybe I can contribute a little more now that things are a little more organized around here. With that I present a little piece I wrote in 2005, it still rings true today…for me at least. Hope you enjoy it.
This goes out to Eva Longoria and any other actress/model out there who is posing for or wants to pose for what a friend of mine so eloquently called “AAFES Porn”. You know magazines like FHM, MAXIM or STUFF.
For those who may not understand the Army Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is prohibited by General Order #1 in Kuwait, Iraq and other middle eastern vacation spots from selling magazine that contain nudity. Boys being boys magazines like Maxim are VERY popular here.
When you do the little interview that they do with the photo spread don’t mess with the fantasy. You know what I mean. We don’t want to hear about your boyfriend, husband or significant other. Honestly I’m glad you’re happy and everything, but I didn’t walk 2 miles through a dust storm across a gravel pit in my flack jacket and helmet to stand in line behind 40 other Joes with the same magazine at the checkout to walk the 2 miles back to my trailer to read about how happy you are to be shacked up with Marice. I’ve got plenty of reality here in my world sister, just allow me the fantasy for once. Is that too much to ask?
Here’s an example of what I mean…In a recent edition of MAXIM magazine Eva Longoria told everyone about her work in the last election for a certain candidate and her displeasure about how stupid some folks were that voted the way that they did. This was sandwiched in between the pictures of her in her underpants so you may have missed it.
Eva, do you really think people picked up that magazine off the rack and said, “Wow look Eva Longoria is in there I wonder what she has to say about politics?” Yeah, maybe if they had been hit the head by a brick just before going to the store. In the immortal words of a senior aviation Warrant Officer, “know your audience.”
We get it, you have a brain. That is great, but no one buys those magazines for their pithy political insight or social commentary and they certainly don’t buy them to read interviews about your boyfriend/husband.
Maybe this rant should be directed at the dork who asked the question, but hell, all you had to say was, “Are you stupid?…I’m not answering that.” I mean you’re smart…you’ve got all these opinions and stuff, you’d think you figure out that if you start running your yap about politics that you’re going to piss off 50% of the population…that is if they can read that stuff while holding the magazine with one hand. But I think you get my point. Please in the future stick to how much you love puppies and how you secretly fantasize about soldiers!
JohnFN | Wednesday, 1st of July 2009 at 01:11:20 PM
The venerable actor is dead. Malden became famous later for his American Express commercials, but was a huge screen presence in the movie realm, going tit-for-tat with George C. Scott as General Omar Bradley, a performance nearly as cherished as Scott’s Patton. A former Indiana steel-mill worker (how many actors can boast that type of background?), Malden was also featured in A Streetcar Named Desire. His resume is a Hollywood checklist of greatness – Fear Strikes Out, On The Waterfront, Birdman of Alcatraz, How The West Was Won, The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith and a hundred episode run as a detective in The Streets of San Francisco. He continued to work until 2000, showing up in an episode of The West Wing.
Other than Patton, my personal Malden favorite – Wild Rovers as the gritty ranch owner. Malden as his scene-chewing best in a by-the-books Western with William Holden and an out-gunned Ryan O’Neal. A good ranching antitode to Brokeback Mountain.
Western masochism about other people’s “culture” often obscures this obvious fact. Think of the things that we all have to do now, like submitting to humiliating searches at airports, or showing our ID to people who have no “probable cause” for demanding it. Can we turn up at airport security wearing a bag over our heads? Can we produce a photograph that shows only our eyes through a slit? Of course not. Nor can anyone in a Muslim country (though of course in Saudi Arabia an unchaperoned women cannot turn up at the airport anyway).
Maybe a bit off the point, but I liked this shot:
One reason we have to undergo such indignities is because of faith-based suicide attacks on our civil aviation, and so far the perpetrators of this nightmare have not been caught wearing crucifixes or Stars of David around their necks.
But there is a problem. Religion and public life is a different in whole in American than in France.
In France, the government already says that when you are in school you leave your religious identity behind. Many young Muslim women support this ban because it gives them legal protection against cruel and illegal pressure to wear items of dress that they have not chosen.
Which may be true, by why subjugate yourself in the first place? It’s easy, if you don’t want to wear the veil, don’t be a Muslim. If you live in fear, go to the cops. Leave. Essentially, it’s that battered woman question creeping up again.
Religious life in America is different than France. You can carry your religion with you, be it in public or at school, at least in theory (don’t get me started on speech codes and the like). And given in theory were supposed to be living in a nation with a limited government, whose to stop anyone from doing so?
The consequences of banning any religious garment are profound. Once the veil is banned, how long before some enterprising atheist goes after Priests or those in Hasidic dress? I can see Little Green Footballs firing up on that one already.
I have no problem with making everyone show their face in a bank or on a driver’s license. It’s pure common sense. That said, if a woman wants to subjugate herself, she has the right to. Doesn’t make it any more or less right, but it does make it law.
The Washington Examiner has a good editorial up about some recent puzzling comments made by President Obama.
While promoting his new cap-and-trade energy tax bill, which passed the U.S. House last week, President Obama revealed in a White House address on Monday his model for the nation’s economy – California. “In the late 1970s, the state of California enacted tougher energy-efficiency policies,” Obama said, noting that the state and its residents use less energy today per capita than the national average. “Think about that,” he said, “California producing jobs, their economy keeping pace with the rest of the country and yet they’ve been able to maintain their energy usage in a much lower level than the rest of the country.”
Obama might want to rethink his choice of a model state because it is easy to understand how California has curbed its energy use. Between 2000 and 2007, before the current recession, the state shed nearly 21 percent of its manufacturing jobs, driving down its industrial electrical consumption by 21 percent. California’s industrial users pay electric rates twice as high as their Midwestern counterparts – which helps explain why so much heavy industry has fled the state. In addition to alienating its industry, California has also curbed energy use through exorbitant residential electric rates (50 percent higher than the national average) and massive net out-migration. Between 2005 and 2007, 2.14 million Californians moved to other states, while only 1.44 million people from elsewhere moved to the Golden State, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Don’t be surprised when the 2010 Census finds even more people leaving to escape California’s 11.5 percent unemployment. And, as jobs and residents fled California, its tax revenues have declined, while its politicians went on a spending binge, creating a severe budget crisis.
And I guess if driving industry out of the United States doesn’t bring our electrical use down to Obama-approved levels, we could always institute rolling blackouts. That could be fun! Like doing the wave at a ballgame!
I don’t know what’s in Mark Sanford’s heart, but I can certainly judge what he’s said and how he’s conducted himself since his affair has been exposed.
The governor said he “never crossed the ultimate line” with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has derailed his once-promising political career.
“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford said. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”
During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife. Continue reading Mark Sanford Becoming Even MORE Repellant
My beloved Sox were up 10-1 in the 7th last night, and lost. I remember listening to them blow a 10-0 lead in the 7th to the Blue Jays while driving to my sister’s house twenty years ago. (It can’t really be twenty years, can it?)
That was worse because it seemed like an omen. (And also because Marty Barrett injured his knee hustling to first base in extra innings. He was never the same after that.) But after a couple of World Series wins, it feels more like a blip.
"C'mon, Porvaznik, you know damn well you still have and wear the combo. 'fess up, lad!"
Recently mentioned in these here interweb parts how Facebook’s good for more than catching up with old classmates. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to simply jog through old memories. Ridiculous “Can you believe we got away with that?” moments interspersed with remembrances of first kisses, first heartbreaks, naive first times we never thought we’d experience emotions we’d actually visit time and time again. We — OK, mainly I — also do our best to forget the clothes or hairstyles, and I definitely hope nobody from my St. Mary’s Middle School days has any snapshots of me wearing the above attire, a Christmas gift in ‘83 I sadly wore to basketball practice on more than one occasion (Mr. Rossi, you should have kicked me out of practice). I’ll never shy away from a near-thirty-year love affair with the boys from Sheffield’s music, but some things are better left unseen. Huh, what do you know, I guess there are ways of embarrassing me after all, just not with this week’s Better Late Than Gone Forever selection … Continue reading It’s showtime!!!!
While vacationing in my relatively unknown place I had the pleasure of going to a local bakery (because it’s relatively close to the isolated place we’re staying) called Bread Not Bombs (after the old liberal (Greenpeace?) slogan). The place was so righteous, so sincere — so earnest — in its capitalistic greed to charge me $4.75 for a cup of joe and a blueberry Danish. Hypocrites. I hope Obama shuts their liberal asses down — but not before I get some more Danish — best Danish this side of Kierkegaard.
Wankette | Tuesday, 30th of June 2009 at 05:03:41 PM
Aha!
What I lacked in physical strength or skill I made up for in determination and endurance. So if it were a long race that required a lot of endurance I’d win.
In yesterday’s Best of the Web, James Taranto remarks upon the Supreme Court’s decision in the Ricci case. Specifically, he notes a little sparring between Justices Alito and Ginsburg regarding the role of “sympathy” in the justice system.
…an exchange between Justice Ginsburg (writing for the dissenters) and Justice Samuel Alito (joined in his concurrence by Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas) provides an interesting angle on President Obama’s call for “empathy,” a quality he says Sotomayor possesses.Ginsburg opens her opinion by observing that “the white firefighters who scored high on New Haven’s promotional exams understandably attract this Court’s sympathy.” To which Alito replies:
“Sympathy” is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law–of Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.
Presumably if the plaintiffs belonged to a group for which Ginsburg had “empathy,” she would have been more inclined to rule in their favor. “Sympathy,” by contrast, is an empty sentiment offered to disfavored classes in lieu of equal protection. Such distinctions between classes of people cannot be reconciled with equality under the law. “Sympathy” is the new “separate but equal.”
You know what the Supreme Court really needs? A wise latina to show them the way.
With today marking the final day for peak tornado activity, USA Today reports that the death toll has fallen from 121 people this time last year to 21 in 2009.*
Now, tornado death tolls—like hurricane property damage—is largely a matter of chance, and depends on whether or not these storms hit populated areas or not. But the number of tornadoes is also down so far this year, with 690 tornadoes so far versus 770 on average at this point.
Is this the “good kind” of climate change?
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*Wait a second. How could there have been only 121 deaths from tornadoes last year, when 10,000 people in Kansas died in a single storm? Karl Rove must have covered those deaths up, somehow.
Wallabies snacking in Tasmania’s legally grown opium poppy fields are getting “high as a kite” and hopping around in circles, trampling the crops, a state official said.Tasmania Attorney-General Lara Giddings told a budget hearing Wednesday that she had recently read about the kangaroo-like marsupials’ antics in a brief on the state’s large poppy industry. Tasmania is the world’s largest producer of legally grown opium for the pharmaceutical market.
“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” The Mercury newspaper quoted Giddings as telling the hearing. “Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”
After this lovely rant from the Black Entertainment Awards, I should be relieved I now get to save money by not seeing anything starring Jamie Foxx in the future. Not much of a problem, really, considering I can’t recall doing so anyway since Ray.
However, Michael Jackson spends the better part of his lifetime non-divisively entertaining on a global level, in a manner of which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been proud, and my stomach can’t do much more than disappointingly turn at Mr. Wanda’s narcissistic “sharing” of someone else’s talents.
For the love of God don’t make me wish a heavy metal/funk band will write a song called “Michael Is Dead,” ’cause I truly want MJ’s 70s/80s legacy to last a long, long time.
Meant to catch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen by now, but the EGR valve on the FN-mobile went kaput, meaning an afternoon of scrapped knuckles, bloody fingers and greasy pants. With Public Enemies debuting tin two days, which film would the loyal Threedonia-ites care to read about first? Transformers? Public Enemies? I’m planning on something for Wednesday. I’ll eventually make it to both, but given my indecisiveness, I thought I’d offer myself up for some suggestions.
Nobel economist and sham columnist, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, has labeled anyone opposed to the Democrats behemoth crap-and-trade legislation as a “traitor to the planet.” Even as President Obama has relented on some of the finer points of the legislation, Krugman has pushed it a step further. Here’s something you rarely get in the media from a liberal op-ed – brutal honesty. Steve Spruiell of The Corner dug this tidbit up at Krugman’s blog:
The goal of Waxman-Markey is make the cheapest form of energy we have more expensive, consequently making everything produced in this country more expensive. It would defeat the purpose of this legislation to allow U.S. consumers to evade this energy tax by purchasing products from countries like China that choose not to adopt a similar tax. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to restrict Americans’ access to products from these countries, and the president is wrong to oppose such restrictions. What about that don’t you dumb hicks understand?
All in the name of climate change, a phenomena that remains a mystery even to those who profess its existence. Can’t wait to read that blurb in the campaign ads in 2010 – the purpose of this legislation is to make everything more expensive. If politicians, specifically those class warriors on the left, were this upfront they would no longer exist.
Obama remains popular, but for how long? His waffling on Iran was extremely weak, as is his mish-mash retort to the Honduran coup de tat. Couple that with increasingly unpopular legislation (which is resoundingly bemoaned in polling, so much for that center-left new majority) and the immediate failure of his first stimulus bill, his administration is getting bogged down before it can even start. Obama right-hand David Axlerod readily admitted the economy remains stagnant despite the voluminous stimulus package, and says a second may be on the way in the fall. If at first you don’t succeed …
Leave it to the Democrats to make Republicans seem competent.
Jeff Jarvis takes on Connie Schultz, columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Schultz wants a re-writing of copyright law allowing newspapers to keep stories exclusive for a 24-hour period before others can reprint or link to them. Jarvis begs to differ, and points out that Schultz is the wife of Senator Sherrod Brown. It goes downhill from there.
First note well that Schultz is married to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown as she calls on her newspapers and employer (my former employer, Advance Publications) and fellow columnists to influence Congress to remake copyright. She should be registered as a lobbyist. No joke.
Schultz says that David Marburger, an alleged First Amendment attorney for her paper, and his economics-professor brother, Daniel, have concocted their own dangerous thinking, proposing the copyright law be changed to insist that a newspaper’s story should appear only on its own web site for the first 24 hours before it can be aggregated or retold.
Incredible. So if the Plain Dealer reported exclusively that, say, the governor had just returned from a tryst with a Argentine lady, no one else could so much as talk about that for 24 hours. A First Amendment lawyer said this.
Schultz responded in the comments …
My basic argument is that news organizations should be able to recoup their investment of time, energy and resources before their work product is grabbed by aggregators who pay little or nothing to these originators of news coverage. I have no beef with Google News, for example, which posts a headline and a link to the original story. My objection is to aggregators who post such significant rewrites or summaries that readers to their sites lose any interest in going to the original stories. Nor am I arguing that the copyright exists in perpetuity. I suggested a 24-hour window – and this is up for debate, of course – to allow the originators of the coverage to exploit the full commercial value of their product. Hardly a dangerous proposition.
Jarvis fired back, then sent a press inquiry to Brown’s office wanting to know his position on his wife’s column. Got to love the internet.
Well, you are lobbying Congress and you cannot ignore your uncomfortable position. I’m quite serious: You should register and disclose as a lobbyist. Read your column again. You are trying to influence Congress. Whether your husband is a sponsor of this effort at changing copyright law is irrelevant. Will he vote on it? Will he recuse himself? What is his stand? I want answers to those questions. Will you and he provide them?
You do not deal with the substance of my argument at all. News when it is news is fact and fact in discussion is not subject to the protection you seek to bring to it. Links to newspapers’ news benefit the newspapers.
I suggest you start by studying the new realities of the internet and try to understand how to take advantage of that rather than protect against it and the future.
And I question the credentials of Mr. Marburger, esq., for good reason as he is seeking to protect the business of dying newspapers, such as yours, over the rights of the people in the First Amendment.
I mean what i say: Your argument and that of the Marburgers is outright dangerous to the First Amendment and the future of journalism.
Here’s what Jarvis fired to Brown:
Please consider this a press inquiry:I want to know Sen. Brown’s stand on his wife’s column in the Plain Dealer on attempting to rewrite copyright law to give newspapers a 24-hour period of exclusivity on the news they report.
Does the senator support this legislation?
What will the senator vote on this legislation?
Will the senator recuse himself from voting on this legislation, considering his wife’s role in lobbying Congress on the issue?
Is his wife registered as a lobbyist?
I might as well quote as much of this while I still can (Ok, just joking).
Truth is, newspapers need a model for profit on the internet. Heck, everyone needs a model. Getting traffic is extremely difficult and making money off that traffic is even more difficult. Just ask Floyd or Rufus about the millions they’ve made off Google and Amazon ads on this site. A site bringing in 1,000 uniques a day will still lose money over the long run. These facts are no different for newspaper sites, which not take an army to run, but an army of writers to feed continually with content. The economy and technology are taking the biggest bite out of the group filling the content, supplying a newspaper/site with its heart. A cyclical cycle of hell.
As much as I like Jarvis, I find his First Amendment haranguing a bit dubious. Shouldn’t newspapers be allowed the same rights granted other creators and manufacturers of the products they offer? It gets into the entire debate of peer-to-peer, fair use and the rest that the internet gods failed to resolve before the technology took off. I’m not sure I’m for Schultz’s draconian approach, but for a free market to exist, there needs to be more market than free.
My solution to copyright would be simple. Before anyone can link a story, they must work as a reporter for a 24-hour period, having to call sources, sort facts and interview people who don’t want to be interviewed. If at the end of all that work, they have no problem letting people take it and use it as their own, without a byline or a paycheck, so be it.
With actual data showing no evidence of global warming for years–despite increasing CO2 levels–the Al Gores of the world have shifted their terminology (and bogeyman) to “climate change.”
Of all the myriad natural occurrences they lay at the doorstep of human-caused climate change, their favorite is the melting of ice in the arctic circle. That’s because we humans find polar bears so cute and cuddly.
Oops. Wrong photo.
Let’s try that again. (Ahem.) We humans find polar bears so cute and cuddly.
Liberals, you have only yourselves to blame for making AlfonZo Rachel the internet phenom and PJTV mainstay he’s become. We on the right thank you … a lot.
Zo lets loose on how God has shined His blessings down on his rapid rise to prominence as a spokesperson for the conservative movement, the power of the echo chamber effect, and his upcoming appearance at the La Crescenta Cañada Tea Party of July 3rd.
Kneel before Zod? No. All praise to the man above for giving us Zo!!!
From time to time, I revist this article from Cracked about five real-life soldiers, comparing them to on-screen counterparts who can’t really compare at all. My brother re-linked me to it today, so here it is, again, if you have read it before.
First, Simo Haya …
Simo Hayha had a fairly boring life in Finland. He served his one mandatory year in the military, and then became a farmer. But when the Soviet Union invaded his homeland in 1939, he decided he wanted to help his country.
Sounds pedestrian enough. Proceed …
Since the majority of fighting took place in the forest, he figured the best way to stop the invasion was to grab his trusty rifle, a couple of cans of food and hide in a tree all day shooting Russians. In six feet of snow. And 20-40 degrees below zero.
Over the course of 100 days, Hayha killed 542 people with his rifle. He took out another 150 or so with his SMG, sending his credited kill-count up to 705.
Remind me never to f*** with farmers. Another favorite, and aptly named, “Fighting” Jack Churchill.
He volunteered for commando duty, not actually knowing what it entailed, but knowing that it sounded dangerous, and therefore fun. He is best known for saying that “any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed” and, in following with this, for carrying a sword into battle. In WWII. And not one of those sissy ceremonial things the Marines have. No, Jack carried a fucking claymore. And he used it, too. He is credited with capturing a total of 42 Germans and a mortar squad in the middle of the night, using only his sword.
He was eventually captured.
When the Germans found him, he was playing “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” on his bagpipes. Oh, we didn’t mention that? He carried them right next to his big fucking sword.
After being sent to a concentration camp, he got bored and left. Just walked out. They caught him again, and sent him to a new camp. So he left again. After walking 150 miles with only a rusty can of onions for food, he was picked up by the Americans and sent back to Britain, where he demanded to be sent back into the field, only to find out (with great disappointment) the war had ended while he was on his way there. As he later said to his friends, “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!”
A reporter friend became enamored with “Band of Brothers.” After watching the series, he took in the book and, as many reporters are wont to do, became a bit cynical. He read the heroics of one Dick Winters, and believed much of his story was all for show. My response: He must not have read much about war. It’s why it’s much easier for people to believe an F-15 took out Flight 93 instead of reality, that a bunch of passengers took on the terrorists.
More from the “They don’t care about facts and they sure as hell need a Econ 101 course” files, courtesy RiseUpAmerica’s Dick McDonald…
Raging Liberal Ragging on Obama
Bob Herbert, the black op-ed columnist, noted for his raging socialist views and support for everything liberal and populist is asking economists (and by proxy his savior Obama) why the unemployment rate is climbing and climbing and looks as if it will keep climbing even in a modest recovery.
Now why doesn’t he ask his brain-dead management at the NYT or political allies in the Democrat party why the job creators shut their pocketbook and fire employees when maniacs like himself and Barack Obama assume control of the national economic engine. Continue reading Obama good. Big Business Baaaaaaaad!!!
Do you need to say more about this woman than, she finally got people to stop talking about Michael Jackson?
.
Because
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