By Donal on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 10:08pm | Technology
In 2005, I read the books, Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (who was all over public TV with Guns, Germs and Steel) and A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. I found them fairly similar in theme, both dealing with Easter Island and other collapsed societies.
Barack Obama's re-election bid has launched and I guess that means the silly season is upon us. We all have to band together to beat Michele Bachmann or some such nonsense. So how are you all feeling about this, Daggers? Too soon? I know it's too soon for me.
Representative Paul Ryan is in the news today saying that the Democrat offers to cut Medicare aren't enough: he wants to abolish the whole program. Medicaid too. He thinks that makes him all conservative. I say, it's STILL NOT ENOUGH! We also need to make those old pikers pay back the money that the government's given them. And while we're at it, make employees pay back those employers contributions that companies have been extorted into giving. That will really stimulate the economy! God bless America! (and go get 'em Huskies)
Once again I'm drawn to the story of the Maine Labor Murals. They're safely hidden out of sight where no one will be corrupted by those images for a while, but that doesn't mean they won't be talked about. Judy Taylor, the artist who painted the murals is offering to hang her father's war medal on one of the empty walls:
Over the last two weeks, I got to watch a fair number of matches from the Sony Ericsson Open - another big tournament near a wealthy enclave, combining both the men's (ATP) and women's (WTA) tours. It has had a number of different sponsors and names - Lipton, Ericsson, and now Sony Ericsson - but is also known as the Miami Masters, or just Key Biscayne. CBS commentators called Key Biscayne the unofficial fifth major today, but the Tennis Channel called Indian Wells the fifth major a few weeks ago, so enough of that.
Bernie Sanders forced the Fed to release this information, which apparently was only produced after lawsuits by news organizations, Sanders website:
A Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law already had forced the Fed last Dec. 1 to name banks that took trillions of dollars in emergency loans during the crisis.
The Democratic Party is Either Asleep at the Switch, Intimidated, or in Collusion with the Domestic Enemies of America
Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Democratic Party as the party of the people. Its primary mandate became protecting the average American from all those who sought to do them harm. But the current Democratic party is falling down in that regard in a very big way. When historians look back upon this period - and due to the election of the nation’s first Black president, they’re definitely going to scrutinize this period like no other - history is going to reflect that during one of the most brutal internal assaults on America since the Civil War Democrats were more interested in their individual careers than they were the American people. So at this point I’m going to do something that I’ve never done in print before - I’m going to speak strictly as a Black man.
None of this should have surprised anyone, particularly those who could not bring themselves to vote, or otherwise support candidates whose election would have gotten in their way. The handwriting was on the wall, plain for everyone to see or, perhaps, to read. But either the President disappointed, or did something with which the voter disagreed and they got elected.
There isn't a single news story these days that isn't framed around the word "jobs." Political parties make their cases couched in phrases such as "job killing" or "job creation." They tell us unemployment is a persistent problem that will take years to solve. The truth is they don't want to solve unemployment.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.
I hope that all the fine folks that populate this blog community will indulge me for writing about something non-political and not particularly humorous. It is a subject that is close to my heart.
In 1985, I was diagnosed with a chronic degenerative inflammatory disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). Most likely, you have never heard of it, or, if you have, it’s because you either know someone that has it or you are a Rheumatologist.
From Brad Delong today, quoting Henry Farrell, quoting Alan Greenspan and a whole series of commenters. Here's an excerpt and a link to Delong's Blog where it's embedded.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post at Alan Colmes Presents Liberaland where I attempted to strongly point out that Donald Trump's talk of running for Presidency was a ploy and that Trump had no interest in holding any political office, let alone the Presidency.
By William K. Wolfrum on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 8:48am | Politics, World Affairs
While I have more or less been clear about my feelings toward war, I am nonetheless a realist. I understand that the War in Libya is happening and won’t end until all objectives are met.
Thus, when President Barack Obama gave his speech this week explaining the humanitarian reasons for the U.S.-led UN-Approved No-Fly Zone War on Libya, I, like many liberals, stood behind my President 100 percent. And while Obama did not lay out any type of exit strategy, I have my own modest expectations on how this humanitarian war effort will proceed:
In the Victorian age, the British once sang – “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do/ We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” The Libyan intervention feels like a last reprise of that old tune, rather than a bold statement for a new age. Gideon Rachman - Financial Times
The president seemed to provide little guidance for what position he would take in other, more vital nations in the region now roiled by an “Arab Spring” of popular uprising. Nor did Mr. Obama’s speech on Monday shed light on whether the president would use force in other trouble spots. - New York Times
We now have an "Obama Doctrine", which after Guantanamo and Afghanistan, might be defined, paraphrasing Groucho Marx, "This is my doctrine, if you don't like it, I've got others".
This "doctrine" has all the rigor of something that doctors in British emergency rooms call the "Dirt Index", which is arrived at by multiplying the number of the patient's tattoos by the number of the patient's missing teeth, which gives us the exact number of days since the patient last had a bath. This is just a way of making a joke of a bad smell that has to be dealt with.
So let's take a moment to read BBC on the latest from our fearless leaders:
On Tuesday, the Obama administration and British foreign secretary suggested the UN resolution authorising international action in Libya could also permit the supply of weapons.
This message was reinforced by Mr Cameron in parliament on Wednesday.
I took a chance with my column this week and wrote about something other than Libya. I'm always more comfortable with social and financial topics anyway as I totally hate relying on my B.A. in Theatre with an emphasis in dramatic writing when people ask my what qualifies me to bicker with generals over combat strategy.
