The hallmark of a fad is that it is decidely short-lived.  Perhaps the most famous example is the pet rock.  It's not surprising that it was the brain child of an ad man.  After all, advertising can create demand.  Can it sustain demand?  Not, apparently, for pet rocks.

I'd like to take some time to address something that I have seen on the Internets.

Please watch the following video.  It will take about two minutes.

Submitted for your approval is this footage of Jane Harman on MSNBC:

Seriously, I'm crying over here.  This is thoroughly magnificient stuff.

Well, it just so happens that your boy, DF, was able to move some things around and get down to the mass teabagging that took place on the steps of California's Capitol Building in Sacramento.  Fox News had dispatched Big, Bad, Business-Is-My-Business Anchor, Neil Cavuto, and Lesser Blogosphere Harpy, Michelle Malkin.  I took a bunch of pictures at the event.  Sadly, these pictures were taken with my phone and aren't the best quality, but hopefully they will provide a sample of the flavor of the afternoon.

I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet.  The basic point I want to drive home is this: Climate change is occurring, but "cap and trade" policies will not stop it.

While "cap and trade" seems to offer a sensible policy prescription for reducing carbon emissions, marginal, near-term reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide will not put a halt to climate change.  In order for me to explain why, I'm going to set down a few of the facts about climate change so that we're all on the same page.

After much speculation on the matter, Diebold has issued its mea culpa:

Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) admitted in a state hearing Tuesday that the audit logs produced by its tabulation software miss significant events, including the act of someone deleting votes on election day.

The company acknowledged that the problem exists with every version of its tabulation software.

No, not New Orleans.

I've been sitting on this one for a bit now, but I feel it's time to break the silence.  For those that don't read him, Glenn Greenwald has been quite persistent in covering this story.  For my money, he's the best read on the topic.

So, I'm assuming that plenty of people have seen this gem by now:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

From the Guardian:

In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.

The work has been hailed as a major step forward by scientists and welcomed by pro-life organisations, who called on researchers to halt other experiments which use stem cells collected from embryos made at IVF clinics.

I didn't really believe the headline when I read it, but here's the deal:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries in California.

So, I've gotten kind of impatient with waiting for Geithner or Bernanke or someone to explain exactly what they're going to do with the banking system.  I know that nationalization is way too scary to contemplate, despite the fact that the process the word actually refers to in this context has been ongoing with smaller banks and doesn't represent anything even remotely approaching permanent government ownership of these institutions, but what is the "public-private partnership" of which they speak?

The U.S. Presidential election of 2000 still evokes uncomfortable memories of election regularities, former Secretaries of State waxing legal and some stodgy butthole named Chad.  Even though the whole debacle had to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which seemed to take for-eh-ver, the resolution was reached in a tidy 38 days.

In contrast to my last post, I'm going to keep this one brief.

There's been no shortage of lot of talk lately about bipartisanship as a way forward.  Of course, we all know that the President has made this one of his central themes in assuming office.  Over the course of watching the stimulus legislation, many pundits have been all too happy to pronounce this notion DOA.  If you want to be completely cynical about it, you could say that it was a naive notion to begin with.

It is with great pleasure that I take the time to comment on the running clusterfuck that is California's state government.  Here at DagBlog, we've gone back and forth a bit about the possible ramifications of expansive fiscal policy that has now been signed into law by President Obama.  If you want a real lesson in when deficits get sticky, look no further than the Golden State.

On January 29th, Bennie Ross "Hank" Crawford, Jr., passed away.  Though he left his mark on music in a very direct way, both through his own recordings and compositions and through working with legends like Ray Charles, Etta James, Lou Rawls and B.B. King, Crawford's musical legacy extends into the realm of hip-hop as well.

Like some of you, I've wondered if Karl Rove really is some sort of evil genius.  However, I've seen some new evidence that gives me cause to question this conclusion in the form of this link.  As the explanation goes, Obama read some choice, in-character lines for the audio book version of Dreams From My Father (not Dreams for my Father).

The following passage is from one of my all-time favorite books.  The book is Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, which was published the year that he passed, 1996.  The passage is found in the book's second chapter, Science and Hope.  In my edition, it begins at the bottom of page 36 and continues onto page 37 thusly:

From the Eccentric_Billionaire++ department:

The 2009 TED talks are going on this week.  Apparently, during his talk on fighting malaria, Bill Gates unleashed a jar full of mosquitoes genetically engineered to implant nano-bots in their victims.  Gates laughed maniacally and revealed the details of his plot, phase one of which involves the nano-bots infecting their hosts with a fanatical devotion to Windows Vista.

So, I'm doing my typical morning thing, which includes staples such as black coffee and Google News.  I like Google News for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the sort of "smart" aggregation that can sometimes lead to interesting or amusing juxtapositions.  It would be fun if someone did a more Burroughs-Gysin style news presentation.  The technology is there.  I'm just sayin'.