More of the new politics we’re gonna get from Barack Obama, this time in a form that by rights should be infuriating his supporters, but they’re so drunk on Obamaade they’ll never even notice how ironic it is.

During President Bush’s term, he’s developed a reputation for controlling every single minute aspect of a press event including how the crowd looks. Many have ripped into him on numerous occasions for manipulating the audience behind him, for example, to make his crowd look more “diverse” (ie: to make it look like there are more black people at his speeches; let’s be honest; diversity = more black people) and more blue collar (people wearing ties were asked to remove them to create that warm fuzzy folksy look). Here’s an example of a libtard website that went way deep into analyzing Bush’s “theater”

So what does this have to do with Barack Obama and his new politics and all that hope stuff? Well, apparently his pitbull wife was having a little get together, but the crowd behind her was a little too black for her tastes.

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’?” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

It isn’t supposed to be, Shayna. It’s supposed to be “new politics” and change, hope, etc. and so on.

Instead, it’s just more of the same.

Does spelling the words of your title wrong mean anything?

*cough*

If you want to watch the whole video, check it out. I advise against it, though.

So Dave Winer thinks he’s funny. He also thinks he’s relevant. I know what you’re thinking, but stick with me here.

Anyway, Dave thought it would be funny to play with the error screen on Twitter (which we’ve all seen so much of lately). I wanted to see just how much fun it was. You know what? The man has a point. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Here’s my interpretation.

A real knee-slapper if you ask me.

Now this is interesting… Oprah hasn’t started the trend everyone thought she was going to when she started nursing at the teet of everyone’s favorite clean and articulate black man…

Her two most favorite authors, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, have not opened their pocketbooks yet for Obama. (Angelou has traditionally been a Clinton supporter.)

Neither has Spike Lee nor Denzel Washington, although the latter’s wife Pauletta sent Obama $2,300. Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr. has put his bucks in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as has Quincy Jones.

Also missing from Obama’s list of donors in the current election cycle is BET Chairman and Founder billionaire Robert L. Johnson. The regular Democratic donor did give Hillary Clinton $4,600 in 2007. The last time he sent a check to Obama was in 2006, for $2,100.

Obama’s celeb donors include the recently controversial Will Smith, but not Chris Gardner, the multi millionaire whom Smith played in “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Obama did receive donations from the newly married Eddie Murphy and the always funny Chris Rock.

But neither Sean “Diddy” Combs nor Shawn “Jay Z” Carter has pitched in for the Illinois senator as of yet. Jay Z’s fiancée Beyonce Knowles has also remained silent. Her father, Mathew, last sent Obama $1,000 for his senate campaign.

Winfrey, meanwhile, may like Obama but hasn’t put the weight of her fortune behind him yet.

Oprah and boyfriend Stedman Graham, according to federal campaign records, donated only $2,300 each to Obama’s campaign at the party held at Winfrey’s Montecito, California mansion last September. They could have donated twice that amount.

[...]

Even now, her endorsement of Obama hasn’t led to any contribution to the Democratic Party in any form. Maybe she’s waiting to see if Obama is the official candidate.

Either that or she doesn’t really believe in him at all and was just doing her job as a black entertainer to get the black man elected?

GASP…

How horrible that I suggest such a thing. Oprah’s motives are as pure as the driven snow, dammit.

The Lower East Side has a Pathmark. That Pathmark might be closing down to make room for some condos. Now normally, Pathmark would be one of the first things people would try to keep out of their neighborhood. In New York City, it’s just not cool to shop at a supermarket. You’re supposed to spend $22.99 for a box of cereal at Julio’s Corner Bodega if you want real street cred.

Anyway, Gothamist, with barely any sense of irony to them, points out that the sale would change the neighborhood for all the “old-timers”:

Now, while a Pathmark Supermarket isn’t exactly a charming home-grown New York institution, it is relied on by many on the LES, particularly the old-timers, because it’s the only (non-Asian) affordable supermarket in the area. Located on Cherry Street, the Pathmark seems to be standing in the way of some dope new luxury condos!

The only dope here is the one writing the article.

Why not implore the “old-tmers” to shop locally? After all, that’s what the protestors told people when the Pathmark on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx was being built. We heard about how it would decimate local businesses, kill the neighborhood, bring in traffic, and kill kittens.

Okay, so it didn’t bring in traffic, but still, why is it okay to decimate Asian businesses? Oh right… For the same reason it’s okay to shut down Korean businesses in Harlem. Those slanty-eyed people just don’t belong here. We only care about brown-skinned people and their local businesses.

Seeing Gothamist come out swinging against the potential (not finalized) closing of a Pathmark really was the ironic highlight of my week.

What happened to all that “writer solidarity” and such? Guess all that strongarming isn’t turning out so well…

An unfair labor practices complaint filed against Hollywood studios is a bid to force them back to the negotiating table with striking writers, guild leaders said.

But a studio alliance responded with disdain to the claim it illegally broke off talks, as alleged in Thursday’s filing by the Writers Guild of America with the National Labor Relations Board.

The “baseless, desperate NLRB complaint is just the latest indication that the WGA’s negotiating strategy has achieved nothing for working writers,” the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement.

Negotiations in the six-week strike collapsed Dec. 7 when the alliance refused to bargain further unless the union dropped proposals that included the authority to unionize writers on reality shows and animation projects.

The labor board did not immediately return a call to its Los Angeles office.

I have no dog in this fight either way, but the fact that they’re trying to get the NLRB involved, in my mind, means they’re weakening. They didn’t have much of an argument to begin with and this strikes me as the last desperate moves of a union dying to prove it’s still relevant to its members.

And, while the union postures and postures and postures, writers are still out of work. Five bucks says that the folks in charge of the union, however, are still getting paid, which is the problem with unions to begin with. They exist solely for the preservation of themselves. Anything additional is a happy little bonus.

I’m sure you remember when I posted this video…

Apparently, Stew Leonard’s is getting into the vegetarian genocide act…

Oh the irony of feeding a bunch of skinny prematurely-aged hippies with bad hair to a cow just so I can have a better steak…

Technorati Tags: stew leonard’s, vegetarian, irony

Dateline: August 2004, New York City

People are outraged that the Republicans are coming to NYC to hold their annual convention. Protestors from around the country, none of whom have any real jobs, come from near and far to smash windows, tip cars, and intimidate convention goers all in the name of preserving the right to protest and dissent. Anarchists from around the world are infiltrated and broken up by the NYPD and people are utterly outraged that any Republican candidate would dare come to this city to have a convention seeing as it would be like capitalizing on tragedy.

Democrats, despite bargaining with Mayor Bloomberg to exclusively have their convention here, they unleash a salvo of attacks against the city for hosting such a hate-filled propaganda fest. Democrats around the country are outraged at the vicious evil fascist Rethuglicans for even bringing up 9/11 at the convention. Apparently, they would’ve been happier had the largest news event in many of our lifetimes just gone unmentioned so as to keep things “fair.”

Now fast forward.

Dateline: September 2007, New Orleans Louisiana

After a shocking display of ineptitude in New Orleans, the same schmucks running the local government are still in place. President Bush, Condi Rice, and Michael Brown are blamed left and right while Governor Blanco and Mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin got to play victim and perpetuate the same tired old myth that nothing was being done to rebuild New Orleans because the population was mostly black, or in the words of Wolf Blitzer, “So poor, and so black.”

In a shocking amount of acceptance for using the site of a few thousand deaths as a political podium a mere three years after such things were frowned upon in NYC, John Edwards has been pounding pavement in New Orleans and pandering to people left and right in the hopes of turning the devastated city into a few cheap votes.

In today’s e-mail from the Edwards campaign, I learned the following:

Dear Vincent,

John is going to help rebuild New Orleans—and he wants you to join him.

Soon, John will be taking a break from the campaign trail to work in an area of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina. He’ll need some help—so we’re going to send five supporters like you with him.

We are going to select five supporters to join John in New Orleans. And if you make a contribution by the end of the third quarter on Sunday, September 30, one of them could be you!

This campaign is about real change—about rolling up our sleeves and working together to build One America. And there is no better way to work towards that goal than by dedicating some time and energy to rebuilding areas of New Orleans still struggling to recover from Katrina.

Help John rebuild New Orleans with a contribution today. By giving between now and the end of the quarter on Sunday, September 30, you—and four other supporters—could have the opportunity to work alongside John.

Working hard to create real change—those are our values, not Washington values. The system in Washington is rigged to serve special interests and big corporations—and ignore hard-working people struggling to get by.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Bush administration’s disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath—and in the fact that two years later, they continue to ignore the needs of the hard-working people there still struggling to rebuild.

Rebuilding New Orleans is one of the most critical challenges we face today—and it’s a challenge John cares deeply about. John led over 700 college students on an alternative spring break to help rebuild a New Orleans neighborhood in 2006. He announced his candidacy there in January. He’s returned numerous times since then to meet with people who are struggling to rebuild their lives, and to raise awareness of the sad state of recovery efforts and the continued incompetence of the Bush administration.

This campaign is about creating big, bold change on the issues that matter—so we’re not offering you gimmicks. We’re not offering you a fancy dinner. And we’re not offering you the chance to hobnob with celebrities and former presidents.

We are offering you the chance to roll up your sleeves and make a difference—to help move us a little closer to creating One America for all of us.

We’ll pay to get you there. All you need is your two hands and a desire to make the world around you a better place. If you make a contribution by Sunday, September 30, you could be joining John in making that happen.

And together, we can create the change we need to see in this country.

John Edwards is literally building a campaign atop a crumbled city. Go back and re-read the highlighted paragraph. John has been there numerous times, shaking hands and kissing babies. He announced his candidacy there, has given speeches there, and makes sure to keep showing face there.

Where’s the outrage?

If George W. Bush did this, he’d be capitalizing on tragedy. He was accused of as much by everyone left of center simply for having his campaign in the same city as a tragedy. John Edwards is actually giving speeches, repeatedly visiting, and announcing his candidacy from the heart of where the tragedy actually happened, and yet the outrage-o-meter is eerily not registering anything right now.

I should clarify that I don’t necessarily think that either campaign or party acted outside the realm of decency. NYC needed an infusion of cash and the RNC brought with it a hell of a lot of tourism (both from the people attending and the morons intent on intimidation) and New Orleans could use someone other than the dumb fumble-tongued racist idiot that runs the city or the inept Governor who had more buses underwater than on the road speaking for them. But, with that being said, why is speaking from the location of one tragedy wrong and offensive, but speaking from another just everyday business?

That’s a question we need to answer.

Technorati Tags: katrina, 9/11, rnc, dnc, john edwards

Consumer Reports is unimpressed with the voice quality of the iPhone.

From their blog:

In voice-quality tests, the iPhone’s performance has been undistinguished at best. Quality when listening to a call was fair. Calls from the iPhone heard on another phone were good in quality. By comparison, among the AT&T-compatible smartphones in our current Ratings (available to ConsumerReports.org subscribers), only the Palm Treo 680 scored that low in voice quality. The best-sounding AT&T-compatible phones, the Samsung BlackJack and Cingular 3125, scored good and very good respectively in listening and talking modes. And all those phones cost $100 to $200, compared with the $499 and $599 price tags for the iPhone.

I’ll go beyond the fact that they don’t even disclose what their testing measures are (methinks they were somewhat subjective based on some guy making and receiving calls) and just say that Wirelessinfo.com, who has equipment specifically designed to check the audio quality of phones scientifically (not subjectively) is probably in a better position to comment on the voice quality of the iPhone. Here’s their review of the voice quality of Apple’s new phone:

The iPhone performed exceptionally well in this test; the frequency curve of the phone was right between the limits, only coming close to them at a couple of points. This means that people talking to you over the phone will sound clear and bright, with well-balanced sound that should accurately represent what they sound like in person.

This compares extremely well to other phones. The iPhone scores higher on this test than all of the five comparison phones, and only one phone that we have tested so far (the BlackBerry Curve) scored higher. Whatever Apple is doing with the small speaker inside the iPhone, they are doing it right.

That’s quite a far departure from “undistinguished” and there’s plenty of scientific backing for their claims. Of course, Consumer Reports probably never even had one in their hands to begin with as evidenced by this absolutely asinine line:

Other ways in which the iPhone could use a little more polish as a phone: It has no voice-activated dialing and offers no easy way to access frequently called numbers

Proof positive that they didn’t even have one in hand to test at the time. If they did, they’d notice that in the lower left corner of the screen, there’s a button marked FAVORITES. I wonder what this guy thought those were?

Of course, there’s plenty of FUD about the iPhone out there from this review that says the Treo is a better phone (and that’s probably why so many people I knew who bought the iPhone switched from… TREOS!) all the way around and that the Palm OS (surely you remember Palm OS?) is more user-friendly than the iPhone, to this tub of tripe that claims that instead of buying your iPhone, you should invest in a 401k (no, I’m not shitting you; apparently the iPhone is the only purchase you’ll make this year and you’d be better off investing it in something like a 401k or an $800 Windows Mobile device).

The iPhone is not without its issues. I’ve discussed them on Information Salad with Ryan Block just this past Friday. It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s got a long way to go. That being said, for everyone bitching about the fanboyism of anyone who dares say it’s a great device, there’s a publication like Consumer Reports or the Street or even the formerly relevant Joshua Quittner who’s returning his iPhone (not not buying one, returning one) because it doesn’t have a removable battery and because his Treo is great and there’s no Flash support on the iPhone (as John Gruber points out, is there Flash support on the Treo?). He even says the plans are too expensive ($59.99 with unlimited data, rollover minutes, 200 txt messages and 5000 night and weekend minutes is apparently more expensive than Verizon’s $80 equivalent).

If anyone who likes the iPhone is a fanboy, what does it make those who consistently beat on it?

And this time it’s the resident genius of the Senate, Joe Biden…

DES MOINES — Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat running for president, is a man of strong opinions. During a campaign event in a Des Moines backyard today, Mr. Biden had some choice words for President Bush and two of the Republicans running for the White House.

“This guy is brain dead,” Mr. Biden said to surprised applause and laughter from the crowd. “I know I’ll be quoted, I’ll be killed for that.

Way to elevate the debate, Senator. Seriously.

I won’t even get into how dumb it is for Joe Biden to be calling anyone dumb.

Man, it doesn’t take much to get the New York tabloids to preach from the mountain.

Take for instance this story yesterday.

June 25, 2007 — A Brooklyn mother and father got the shock of their lives when school officials informed them their brilliant 11-year-old girl was denied admission to an elite public school - solely because she’s of Indian descent.

“I feel bad because I would have gotten in if I was white,” Nikita Rau lamented over her failed bid to attend the Mark Twain School, IS 239, in Coney Island, a magnet school for gifted students.

It turns out Mark Twain - unlike all but one other city public school - admits students according to racial quotas established in 1974 by a federal judge who ordered the school’s desegregation.

Under those quotas - which originally were intended to boost minority enrollment - 60 percent of Mark Twain’s student body is set aside for white students, while 40 percent is set aside for minorities.

Oh well. Case closed, right? I mean, the girl certainly isn’t white, and we’re certainly following right along the lines of quotas that were established 33 years ago, so this is certainly not racism. After all, when quotas are called affirmative action and they get black students into the University of Michigan ahead of people with better grades, that’s called increasing diversity!

When Nikita recently applied to Mark Twain, she took an admission test geared toward music students and scored a 79.

In May, the Education Department sent her parents a letter that said Nikita was not accepted - even though white students who scored lower on the same test were admitted.

Officials told the Raus that because Nikita is classified as a minority, she would need to score at least 84.4 to be accepted, while white students needed to score 77 or more.

Her mom, Dr. Kanchan Rau, said that when she discussed the disparate treatment with Schools Regional Enrollment Director Paul Helfman, “he said, ‘I agree with you: It’s not right; it’s not fair - but there’s nothing I can do.’ “

Heh… Powerless to overtake the crushing and demoralizing feeling you get when you get dumped because of a quota. I love it.

Mind you, I’m not in favor of quotas that work in any direction. For years I’ve written here against affirmative action and quotas because I believe that every system that involves competing for anything be it school admissions, job positions, or loans to start a business, should be done on the basis of merit not skin color. For years and years, New York has done things like this, and for years and years, white kids have been rejected from stuck-up “I’m better than you” schools like Mark Twain so some poor black or hispanic kid can get in. After all, if you aren’t white, you’re certainly more entitled to a good education.

Now, after 33 years, people are realizing how ridiculous the system is. Not because anything’s changed, mind you, but because the system that was designed to get Nikita Rau into the school has now kept her out of it.

The true shame here is that the system has always been unbalanced and unfair. What rubs me the wrong way is that it took a minority student being on the wrong side of that system for it to be deemed unfair.

Nothing has changed, people, save for the prism you see the story through.

With a little luck there will be a lawsuit, and the system will be abolished. Then the best, brightest, and most deserving students in the city will get into “I’m better than you” schools like Mark Twain based on their intelligence, their drive, and their skills, rather than their skin color.

Technorati Tags: nikita rau, racism, quotas, affirmative action

The ACLU has bent over backwards to justify spending $25,000 worth of public funds on footbaths for Muslims at the University of Michigan in Dearborn. I love how the ACLU can spin the shit out of this stuff with a straight face:

Kary Moss, director of the Detroit branch of the ACLU, said its review concluded the plan is a “reasonable accommodation” to resolve “safety and cleanliness issues” that arose when Muslims used public sinks for foot cleaning before prayers, which often spilled water on bathroom floors.

“We view it as an attempt to deal with a problem, not an attempt to make it easier for Muslims to pray,” said Moss, who likened the plan to paying for added police during religious events with huge turnouts.

Wow… That’s deep. It really is astonishing how the ACLU can turn the religious outrage switch on and off so easily. I can’t imagine having the same common-sense type attitude about public funding being spent on anything for Christians. The example of “added police” is bullshit. Police function as crowd control officers in many cases. Controlling any crowd for any function is not relevant in this case.

Now on to Barrack Obama. Senator Obama seems to think that Christianity has been hijacked. That’s right. Christianity has been hijacked by bomb-wearing murderous suicidal thugs in pursuit of 72 virgins. Okay, not exactly, but imagine what would’ve happened if, say, Hillary Clinton, had said Islam was hijacked by radicals hell-bent on the annihilation of everyone that they perceive as a kafir? Anyway, here’s what Barry O had to say about Christianity and it being hijacked…

“Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a 30-minute speech before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ.

“Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us,” the Illinois senator said.

“At every opportunity, they’ve told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design,” according to an advance copy of his speech.

Now, I’ve seen this said numerous times about Islam and every time someone says it, they’re immediately rebuked as if they’re uninformed heathens, silenced, and told to get educated about the faith. Why isn’t there an outcry from those same people now that Saint Barrack of Obama is now saying something astonishingly similar?

Oh right… It’s Christianity he’s saying it about, and you can say whatever you want about Christianity in this country. In fact, it’s quite in vogue. Bashing Islam makes you an uninformed and poorly educated bigot while bashing Christianity makes you an educated free thinking smart and informed person.

Hell, it even qualifies you to run for the Presidency.

Ironic doesn’t even begin to describe this one, folks…

Dan Rather: “You know, she tried to change networks, which is always difficult and change the programs at the same time. They’ve done all of the usual things. They changed the set. They changed the executive producers. They changed the graphics person, lately, forced out a guy who had been there, Ned Steinberg, for many, many years. They make all those kind of the superficial changes. I do want to say that, I think, under Rick Kaplan, that they have tried to harden up the broadcast in recent days, but that is a relative phrase, harden it up. That , you know, the trend line continues, as I say, dumbing it down, tarting it up, going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage.”

While Dan Blather^tm may have a point, the idea that he should be telling anyone about the damage they did to network news is not only hypocritical, it’s hollow and meaningless. I’ve said before that Ms. Couric couldn’t possibly be more useless in any position (aside from maybe veterinary technician) but it’s not like Dan Blather^tm was Mr. Integrity either.

via Newsbusters

Technorati Tags: dan rather, katie couric, cbs, news

While the lazy bastard scientists in the US with bloodlust for embryos wring their hands over not being able to get federal cooch for their little escapades, yet another scientist in another part of the world has made a stem cell advancement that doesn’t involve the destruction of embryos.

Research reported this week by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice1, 2, 3. The race is now on to apply the surprisingly straightforward procedure to human cells.

If researchers succeed, it will make it relatively easy to produce cells that seem indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, and that are genetically matched to individual patients. There are limits to how useful and safe these would be for therapeutic use in the near term, but they should quickly prove a boon in the lab.

“It would change the way we see things quite dramatically,” says Alan Trounson of Monash University in Victoria, Australia. Trounson wasn’t involved in the new work but says he plans to start using the technique “tomorrow”. “I can think of a dozen experiments right now — and they’re all good ones,” he says.

In theory, embryonic stem cells can propagate themselves indefinitely and are able to become any type of cell in the body. But so far, the only way to obtain embryonic stem cells involves destroying an embryo, and to get a genetic match for a patient would mean, in effect, cloning that person — all of which raise difficult ethical questions.

As well as having potential ethical difficulties, the ‘cloning’ procedure is technically difficult. It involves obtaining unfertilized eggs, replacing their genetic material with that from an adult cell and then forcing the cell to divide to create an early-stage embryo, from which the stem cells can be harvested. Those barriers may have now been broken down.

“Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I’ve never worked with either,” says Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, who has pioneered the new technique.

Apparently the federal funding of embryos isn’t the real problem with the shit research coming out of this country; instead it’s the singular blinder-induced implications that without starting with embryos, research can never progress. It’s about time our “finest” scientists got off their ass and started catching up and stop whining about why they can’t. As of right now, the rest of the world is running circles around us and they aren’t using embryonic stem cells to do it.

Source: Nature.com

Technorati Tags: stem cells

Well, lately it seems like the right is all a twitter over the immigration bill, but some right-wingers are still all about Bush and what he says goes and we need to support him because of 9/11 and the conservative movement will suffer from a big spending debt-inducing fuck up being criticized.

DJ Drummond over at Wizbang cites an article that’s just full of crap. He makes the best choice for a pull quote, too, because it demonstrates just how fucking ridiculous the arguments can get.

Jonah Goldberg for instance, just a few days ago wrote that if you “look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal”. But back in 2003, Goldberg wrote this about the President:

“Georrge (sic) W. Bush has proved that he’s a Reaganite, not a “Bushie.” He may not be a natural heir to Reagan, but that’s the point. The party is all Reaganite now. What better sign that this is now truly and totally the Gipper’s Party than the obvious conversion of George Bush’s own son?”

Was Goldberg lying then, or is he lying now? That is, after all, how the Liberals will cast it, and it’s hard to claim Goldberg was honest in both places.

Okay. Explain that to me. Why is it hard to believe that he was honestly happy 4 years ago and isn’t now? I don’t even see where the two aren’t reconcilable, but apparently Drummond agrees with Glenn Greenwald in that if you once supported Bush, you must always or you’re dishonest.

Why does Jonah Goldberg have to be lying? In 2003, you could make the case that Bush was pretty conservative. Sure we were at a deficit, but it was in the midst of a war and two years after a catastrophe that wreaked havoc on the economy. Sure we were fighting a war, but it was Afghanistan and we didn’t ask for it; we had no choice.

Fast forward to 2007. El Presidente hasn’t vetoed any spending bills except for one that came with a “we’re not just going to keep opening the Treasury for you without some kind of exit strategy for Iraq” string. In the end Bush vetoed his first bill, the Democrats pussied out, and now he gets his money and still has no timetable. In other words, the clustefuck continues with no end in sight because ending this would be somehow admitting defeat.

The deficit has steadily climbed higher and higher with no sign of it ever decreasing. Despite the Bush administration jumping up and down about revenues being up, we still don’t have any better a handle on the deficit. Tax breaks may be working, but their benefit isn’t being felt by anyone right now, and our man in the White House is still spending his ass off.

Then there’s the immigration bill. Greenwald rather non-ironically claims that “none of the reasons for conservative discontent” are new and that Bush’s immigration position is old hat. Why yes, Glenn, it is old hat, but until 2007 he never acted on it. Imagine that. People didn’t react to the President’s views until he acted on them. Oh yeah, and Greenwald doesn’t even mention that Bush called his conservative base (the same people Greenwald can’t seem to understand the turn from) fear mongerers for daring to call his amnesty plan amnesty. Nope, he doesn’t even mention that at all, because that would ruin his plan of painting anyone that disagrees with Bush as a hypocrite and flip-flopper.

Instead Greenwald goes out of his way to pull quotes from people from years ago before the Iraq war was a mess, before the immigration bill was out there, and before the President turned on every person who stuck with him no matter how fucking dumb he was acting, and then proceeds to imply that in the intervening time nothing changed except the people who made the original quotes.

It’s intellectually dishonest in the worst possible way, and Drummond not only falls for it, he adds to the fire in a spiteful way:

I understand the frustration among Conservatives. I am still a Conservative myself, though many of the Bush-haters have pretended otherwise. And that’s the problem. We know there are many more Conservatives than Liberals, and we know that any serious consideration of the Conservative vs. Liberal arguments would prove the superiority of the Conservative position. We also know that the American people will follow a Conservative leader, indeed are hungry to do so. The only way Conservatives can lose, therefore, is when they allow themselves to become fragmented and factionalized. The only way that regular people can come to believe that Democrats are a better choice for leadership than Republicans, is if Republicans attack other Republicans and prove they cannot seek answers and solutions.

It’s too much, perhaps, to expect apologies from the people who have poured gasoline on the fire. But at least the rest of us can try to work with the other Republicans, and the other Conservatives, for the good of the nation and the hope of the future. Because if we do not, History shows us how painful the price of that hubris can be.

What a bunch of disingenuous bullshit. The only way we can prove what great leaders conservatives are is to worship at the alter of the guy who called people acting in a conservative manor bigots and fear mongerers? Are you kidding me?

Conservatives aren’t “allowing themselves” to become fractionalized. Quite the opposite, actually. They’re rallying behind principle before they rally behind someone who’s abandoned it.

If that isn’t a demonstration of both leadership and fortitude, I don’t know what is, and Drummond comes off as nothing more than a “toe-the-line” partisan. The ironic part is that no one is ever going to confuse that kind of person with a leader.

Technorati Tags: dj drummond, glenn greenwald

So it’s a problem if you call a black chick a nappy-headed ho. It’s okay if you call her an Uncle Tom. Of course both are okay if you’re black, a liberal, or both, but whatever.

Note to idiots: I do not have a problem with Kathy Griffin demonstrating her stupidity; I’m only pointing out the inherent contradiction of what is and isn’t considered racist / hateful and how that prism is fully dependent on the person who says the comment.

Yep… Hurricane season is upon us again…

With the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season a few hours away, researcher William Gray released his newest forecast Thursday still showing an expectation for 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, five of them intense.

Gray, based at Colorado State University, described it as a very active season. He said there was a 74 percent chance of a major hurricane making landfall somewhere on the U.S. coast.

There is a 50 percent chance of a major hurricane making landfall on the East Coast, including the Florida Peninsula, according to the new forecast; the long-term average is 31 percent.

The chance of a major hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast between the Florida Panhandle and Brownsville, Texas, is 49 percent; the long-term average is 30 percent. There is also an above-average chance of a major hurricane making landfall in the Caribbean, according to the forecast.

They made the same predictions last year. Thankfully, WINS actually points out that last year, when they made those same predictions, it was a historically quiet year:

The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, averages 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes per year.

There were 10 named Atlantic storms last year and five hurricanes, two of them major. None of the hurricanes hit the U.S. Atlantic coast.

None.

Zero.

Zip.

Zilch.

Nada.

And last year was supposed to be huge. In the post-Katrina world, that seems to be the MO. Scare people shitless, predict disaster, and then just move along and do the same next year despite being completely, totally, and utterly wrong the prior year. Kinda like Katrina truthers.

via 1010 WINS

Reuters: Straight pub wins right to ban gays

An Australian hotel catering for hetrosexuals has won the right to ban homosexuals from its bars so as to provide a comfortable venue for straight men not wanting to associate with homosexuals.

In what is believed to be a first for Australia, the Victorian state civil and administrative tribunal ruled last week that the Peel Hotel in the southern city of Melbourne could exclude patrons based on their sexuality.

Australia’s equal opportunity laws prevent people being discriminated against based on race, religion or sexuality.

But Peel Hotel owner Tom McFeely said the ruling was necessary to provide straight men with a homosexual-free atmosphere where they may be free of increasingly aggressive advances by emboldened homsexuals.

“If I can limit the number of homosexuals entering the Peel, then that helps me keep the safe balance,” Peel told Australian radio on Monday.

McFeely said that, while the hotel welcomed everyone, its straight clientele had expressed discomfort over the number of homosexuals coming to the venue in the past year.

He said there were more than 2,000 venues in Melbourne that catered to homosexuals, but his hotel was the only one marketing itself exclusively to heterosexuals.

Tone down the outrage-o-meter… It didn’t quite happen that way…

via Stop the ACLU

(Amazing how it suddenly became okay after you followed the link explaining it, huh?)

Nancy Pelosi has hired a guy who’s ethics are in question…

Bob Brady. He is most well-known at present for coming in third in the Philadelphia Mayoral primary last week and making a complete fool of himself when he failed to report his pension on his nominating petitions.

More disgusting, however, is Brady’s close ties to the boss of South Philadelphia, State Senator Vincent Fumo. The later was indicted by a federal grand jury in February on 139 counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, obstruction, and filing a false tax return. Among the more heinous of Fumo’s misdeeds was misusing $1 million of state funds and also misappropriating $1 million from a charity of his and diverting it to personal use or campaigning. He apparently also commandeered yachts from the Philadelphia Seaport Museum for personal travel.

For a Congress that’s supposed to end the culture of corruption and usher in a new era of ethics, they sure aren’t doing a very good job thus far.

Technorati Tags: corruption, washington, pelosi, brady

Cloaking is the act of sending different data to search engine crawlers than to users of a page. You can usually see cloaking in action on shady sites that have a bunch of keywords at the bottom of a page that are the same color as the background text. In the end, those keywords aren’t part of actual content, but designed to inflate search engine stats. Cloaking in the age of Google also involves linking those keywords to increase Page Rank, the stats by which a page moves up or down in Google.

Cloaking is something that search engines frown upon and even ban you for. Yahoo, according to a blog, has actually been caught cloaking.

Below is what you, as a user see (click to embiggen):

And here, below, is what a search engine crawler sees (click to embiggen):

He also points out four ways in which Yahoo! is violating its own guidelines for sites:

# Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

# The use of text that is hidden from the user

# Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees

# Pages built primarily for the search engines

Not Good, Yahoo!. Not good at all.

via Threadwatch