1/ Always a challenging column from Thomas Friedman, and this one is about the ferment in the Arab world and why we are sending hundreds of billions to corrupt, nasty governments that hate and use us....
I think we are doing this idiotic strategy because that's what the military industrial complex wants us to do, and because they are powerful oligarchs benefiting from these wars, our government jumps to it...........
When one looks across the Arab world today at the stunning spontaneous democracy uprisings, it is impossible to not ask: What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we’re applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?
Now the people themselves have taken down those regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and they’re rattling the ones in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman and Iran. They are not doing it for us, or to answer bin Laden. They are doing it by themselves for themselves — because they want their freedom and to control their own destinies. But in doing so they have created a hugely powerful, modernizing challenge to bin Ladenism, which is why Al Qaeda today is tongue-tied. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Al Qaeda’s answer to modern-day autocracy was its version of the seventh-century Caliphate. But the people — from Tunisia to Yemen — have come up with their own answer to violent extremism and the abusive regimes we’ve been propping up. It’s called democracy. They have a long way to go to lock it in. It may yet be hijacked by religious forces. But, for now, it is clear that the majority wants to build a future in the 21st century, not the seventh.
In other words, the Arab peoples have done for free, on their own and for their own reasons, everything that we were paying their regimes to do in the “war on terrorism” but they never did.
And that brings me back to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last October, Transparency International rated the regime of President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan as the second most corrupt in the world after Somalia’s. That is the Afghan regime we will spend more than $110 billion in 2011 to support.
And tell me that Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, which dominates Pakistani politics, isn’t the twin of Hosni Mubarak’s security service. Pakistan’s military leaders play the same game Mubarak played with us for years.
2/ A followup to yesterday's Michael Moore speech in Wisconsin, which was brilliant....this is his blog explaining how he came to write and give the speech. As I said yesterday, judge his words, his message and not the messenger.
There's a link to the speech in this blog at the bottom in case you missed it....remember you won't see it on the corporate media.....
As I had just written it and had no time to memorize it, I read from the pages I brought with me. I wanted to make sure that the words I had chosen were clear and exact. I knew they had the potential to drive the haters into a rabid state (not a pretty sight) but I also feared that the Right's wealthy patrons would see a need to retaliate should these words be met with citizen action across the land. I was, after all, putting them on notice: We are coming after you, we are stopping you and we are going to return the money/jobs/homes you stole from the people. You have gone too far. It's too bad you couldn't have been satisfied with making millions, you had to have billions - and now you want to strip us of our ability to talk and bargain and provide. This is your tipping point, Wall Street; your come-to-Jesus moment, Corporate America. And I'm glad I'm going to be able to be a witness to it.
3/ Quite fascinating story of a billionaire that has made up his mind he is going to live to be 125 years old, and the way he is going to do it is to eat optimally, only fruit, vegetables and the finest protein. To get the best results he has built himself a research laboratory to make sure he has a perfect diet. He's a billionaire, and this is his hobby. Of course his main corporation is Dole Foods [Hawaiian pineapples] so anything the research turns up will benefit the business.....
But the man himself is interesting, and his obsession isn't hurting anyone and may indeed benefit us all. If a billionaire is going to have an obsession let it be one like this. Otherwise you get the Koch brothers and their hobby - trying to destroy the American middle class......
One morning in early January, David Murdock awoke to an unsettling sensation. At first he didn’t recognize it and then he couldn’t believe it, because for years — decades, really — he maintained what was, in his immodest estimation, perfect health. But now there was this undeniable imperfection, a scratchiness and swollenness familiar only from the distant past. Incredibly, infuriatingly, he had a sore throat.
“I never have anything go wrong,” he said later. “Never have abackache. Never have a headache. Never have anything else.” This would make him a lucky man no matter his age. Because he is 87, it makes him an unusually robust specimen, which is what he must be if he is to defy the odds (and maybe even the gods) and live as long as he intends to. He wants to reach 125, and sees no reason he can’t, provided that he continues eating the way he has for the last quarter century: with a methodical, messianic correctness that he believes can, and will, ward off major disease and minor ailment alike.
So that sore throat wasn’t just an irritant. It was a challenge to the whole gut-centered worldview on which his bid for extreme longevity rests.
..............................
Murdock loves to collect things: animals, orchids, Chippendale mirrors, Czechoslovakian chandeliers. He keeps yet another black Welsh flock at one of his two homes in Southern California, a 2,200-acre ranch whose zoological bounty extends to a herd of longhorn cattle, about 800 koi in a manmade lake and 16 horses — down from a population of more than 550, most of them Arabians, 35 years ago — with their own exercise pool. He has five homes in all, one on the small Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he owns almost in its entirety. He shuttles among them in a private jet. Forbes magazine’s most recent list of the 400 richest Americans put him at No. 130, with an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion, thanks to real estate development and majority stakes in an array of companies, most notably Dole. Five years earlier the estimate was $4.2 billion, but the recession took its toll.
His affluence has enabled him to turn his private fixation on diet and longevity into a public one.
4/ A missing child, a distraught mother - Today Now tries to put a face on a 13 year old that went missing four years ago. Unfortunately it isn't pretty as she is probably now a child prostitute.....Onion News reports....2 minutes....
5/ Boy it's scary what computers can do. The title of this article is: "Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software", but before you start celebrating, the software can be programmed to search for patterns within corporations, by the government, etc etc. There's also the white collar job loss issues, as law firms will be unable to hire many of the the young lawyers getting out of law school.....but there's one consolation, at least the jobs aren't going to China....yet.....
Here's the lawyer bit.....
Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts — like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East — even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents.
“From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” said Bill Herr, who as a lawyer at a major chemical company used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.”
Here's the scary bit.....
Engineers and linguists atCataphora, an information-sifting company based in Silicon Valley, have their software mine documents for the activities and interactions of people — who did what when, and who talks to whom. The software seeks to visualize chains of events. It identifies discussions that might have taken place across e-mail, instant messages and telephone calls.
Then the computer pounces, so to speak, capturing “digital anomalies” that white-collar criminals often create in trying to hide their activities.
For example, it finds “call me” moments — those incidents when an employee decides to hide a particular action by having a private conversation. This usually involves switching media, perhaps from an e-mail conversation to instant messaging, telephone or even a face-to-face encounter.
“It doesn’t use keywords at all,” said Elizabeth Charnock, Cataphora’s founder. “But it’s a means of showing who leaked information, who’s influential in the organization or when a sensitive document like an S.E.C. filing is being edited an unusual number of times, or an unusual number of ways, by an unusual type or number of people.”
The Cataphora software can also recognize the sentiment in an e-mail message — whether a person is positive or negative, or what the company calls “loud talking” — unusual emphasis that might give hints that a document is about a stressful situation. The software can also detect subtle changes in the style of an e-mail communication.
A shift in an author’s e-mail style, from breezy to unusually formal, can raise a red flag about illegal activity.
“You tend to split a lot fewer infinitives when you think the F.B.I. might be reading your mail,” said Steve Roberts, Cataphora’s chief technology officer.
6/ A DDD favourite
BT - "The Emergency"....I love this video for a number of reasons....
- You can choose the 1080p HD
- It's ultra widescreen
- The girl's face has a stunning profile - absolutely beautiful - nice bikini too
- I can see the ladies would think he [BT] is sexycool as well
- The setting sun scene towards the end had to be shot in about 5 minutes - the sun goes down fast over Lake Dora! [kidding, it's Miami]
- It's a really good song
7/ Kiss the 30 year mortgage goodbye folks - it's going to be history. Good riddance you exclaim - "damn government interference in the mortgage market", the Tea Partiers might say if they had a brain, but here's the real point of Fannie/Freddie leaving the mortgage market.
The entire housing market starts at the bottom - young couple get married, want to buy a house.....the whole chain leading upwards in value starts with the starter homes. Theory being after a few years the young couple sell their first house and get a 3 bedroom because of the kids.....mom and apple pie, right? Well anything that makes it more difficult for our mythical young couple stalls the chain, and without the government guarantee that F/F gives a mortgage these young-uns are at the tender mercies of the bastards at Bank of America.....
But let's not be too negative yet - maybe the Republicans have a plan......HA......
WASHINGTON — How might home buying change if the federal government shuts down the housing finance giantsFannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loan, the steady favorite of American borrowers since the 1950s, could become a luxury product, housing experts on both sides of the political aisle say.
Interest rates would rise for most borrowers, but urban and rural residents could see sharper increases than the coveted customers in the suburbs.
Lenders could charge fees for popular features now taken for granted, like the ability to “lock in” an interest rate weeks or months before taking out a loan.
Life without Fannie and Freddie is the rare goal shared by the Obama administration and House Republicans, although it will not happen soon. Congress must agree on a plan, which could take years, and then the market must be weaned slowly from dependence on the companies and the financial backing they provide.
8/ I thought this was a really "nice" short story....it'll take you 3 minutes to read it....
9/ Beautiful video of some wonderful dancing.......2 minutes....
Ah Florida.......the corruption is just astonishing.....and they're blatant about it.....
10/ An excellent Carl Hiaasen article on the gutting of our environmental protections in favour of the big polluters - he illustrates this story with an example of the St. Lucie river that's now clean, and a Republican that wants to pollute it again.....
A few years ago, residents along the eastern St. Lucie River watched in disgust as the waterway turned green with a foul slime that wouldn’t go away.
Health officials warned people to stay away from the river. Birds and fish got sick. Property values dived to new lows, while politicians holding jarfuls of crud grimaced for the TV cameras and vowed to take action.
The mystery ooze was caused by nutrients dumped into Lake Okeechobee from farms, groves and ranchlands, churned by hurricanes and then pumped out by state water managers at the rate of 26,000 gallons per second.
It was a suffocating act of pollution that could easily happen again, because the polluters still steer water policy, and the politicians.
U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, a Republican from Tequesta, recently tacked a rider on the federal budget package that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from enacting tighter restrictions on the amount of phosphorous and nitrogen that may be flushed into Florida’s public waters.
The EPA rules, devised in conjunction with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, have been the subject of several public hearings. Public comments were 10-to-1 in favor of the regulations.
Critics say compliance would be too expensive for farms, small business and public utilities. State agriculture officials estimated a potential loss of 14,000 jobs, a sky-is-falling prediction that will never come to pass.
Rooney’s lead role in trying to block the pollution guidelines is interesting because he supposedly represents all those folks along the St. Lucie who got slimed back in 2005.
In a lame oped column defending his position, the congressman wrote that the new EPA rules “could cost our state’s economy about $2 billion, and would double the average family’s water bill.”
It’s a preposterous statement, pure fiction, but the aim isn’t to inform people. The aim is to scare them. The script (and dire predictions) come from lobbyists for Big Agriculture, municipalities and corporate interests who freely use Florida’s lakes, bays and rivers as a latrine.
11/ When "60 Minutes" did a piece on childhood poverty and middle class families falling over a cliff financially they came, of course to Florida - Seminole County, part of Greater Orlando. Just bear in mind these now poor people are the ones the Republicans in the House and Rick Scott, our wonderful Governor, want to screw to the wall and take away some of their meager safety net.
The "60 Minutes" segment is 13 minutes.....powerful stuff.....
When correspondent Scott Pelley wanted to document the historic slide of children from middle class lives into poverty, he came to Florida -- Seminole County, near Orlando -- where he notes the school buses stop at dozens of cheap motel rented by families week to week.
The story he told Sunday was jarring and surprising -- the best qualities of a good 60 Minutes' piece. Under everyone's noses, kids are forced to try and get through school while coping with homes lost to foreclosure, parents' jobs lost to layoffs and incomes slashed by wage cuts and work slowdowns.
This is the face of poverty that some politicians prefer the public not consider; people left underemployed, unemployed or homeless through no fault of their own -- hard workers trying to carve a life out of the most unforgiving economy for a working man (and woman!) since the Great Depression.
Pelley predicted that within a year, the poverty rate for children will get close to 25 percent -- one in four children. In an Overtime segment, he describes choking up as the bulk of a roomful of children in Seminole County raised their hands after he asked: "Who in here has had the lights turned out in their homes?" Check out other kids' stories here and here.
12/ You've heard of the "pill mills"in South Florida, where they prescribe thousands of Oxycontin and Vicodin, which are sent all over the country? The feds recently raided a few of the facilities and arrested over 100 scumbags.
But Governor Scott recently cancelled plans for a database which would at least slow down this abuse, and now Dean Cannon, one of the most powerful men in the state is bringing legislation to repeal the database.
Folks - they are protecting drug dealers. They are in cahoots with actual drug dealers. It's amazing......
Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, today made further strides in doing away with Florida’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, announcing at a press conference that legislation will soon be introduced to officially repeal it.
The program, which would create a database that would track the prescription of painkillers in an effort to thwart “pill mills” and drug overdoses, has been supported by a wealth of politicians in Florida and beyond. But some have come out strongly against it, including newly minted Gov. Rick Scott, who cited privacy and cost concerns in his announcement of a decision to repeal the program.
http://floridaindependent.com/
13/ The car columnist for the Times is funny, and he also gets to the essence of the car he is reviewing. Here he looks at the new Mini Countryman, and as I have taken one on a test drive I agree with his conclusions.....not nearly as nippy as a Cooper S, but a lot more useful.
Don't forget - even this version gets in the 30's for mpg....and that's going to be very, very important in the next few years.....
When Porsche introduced the Cayenne S.U.V. as a 2004 model, purist fans reacted as if the company had announced it was branching into unicycles andJustin Bieber merchandise. “That’s not a Porsche!” cried many people who have never bought, nor will ever buy, a Porsche.
Ditto Lotus’s recent announcement that it might one day build cars that weigh more than a Honda Ruckus scooter. Heresy! Silvio Berlusconi probably wishes Ferrari would announce a new pickup truck, just to provide a distraction.
Just as the aforementioned companies have long histories of building sports cars, the name Mini evokes sprightly front-wheel-drive two-door hatchbacks.
So the new Mini Cooper S Countryman All4 — an all-wheel-drive four-door — is a pretty significant departure. And yet I’m not sensing much righteous frothy indignation among the faithful.
14/ The travel section did a "36 Hours in Orlando" article, and here it is. They were impressed with Winter Park, visited the Ravenous Pig [great restaurant] and even came up to Mount Dora to visit Renningers.....
PEOPLE who live in the Orlando area will tell you that there is life here beyond the theme parks, gator farms and citrus groves. You can’t go far without stumbling upon a picturesque lake, and the area abounds with small regional museums like the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in nearby Eatonville. Downtown, the new Amway Center, home of the Orlando Magic, has given a boost to the night-life district on Church Street, and Orlando’s many neighborhoods are home to lounge acts, bars, vintage fast-food joints and brick-paved streets.
Todays video - if we had an Italian President
Todays miniskirt joke
As the bus stopped and it was her turn to get on, she became aware that her skirt was too tight to allow her leg to come up to the height of the first step of the bus.
Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg.
She tried to take the step, only to discover that she couldn't.
So, a little more embarrassed, she once again reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little more, and for the second time attempted the step.
Once again, much to her chagrin, she could not raise her leg.
With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to take the step.
About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up easily by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus.
She went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and yelled 'How dare you touch my body! I don't even know who you are!'
The Texan smiled and drawled,
'Well, ma'am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured we were friends.'
Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg.
She tried to take the step, only to discover that she couldn't.
So, a little more embarrassed, she once again reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little more, and for the second time attempted the step.
Once again, much to her chagrin, she could not raise her leg.
With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to take the step.
About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up easily by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus.
She went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and yelled 'How dare you touch my body! I don't even know who you are!'
The Texan smiled and drawled,
'Well, ma'am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured we were friends.'
Todays Irish joke
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Todays male chauvinist jokes
WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED:
· Men Are Just Happier People—
· Your last name stays put.
· The garage is all yours.
· Wedding plans take care of themselves.
· Chocolate is just another snack.
· You can never be pregnant.
· Car mechanics tell you the truth.
· The world is your urinal.
· You never have to drive to another petrol station toilet because this one is just too dirty.
· You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
· Same work, more pay.
· Wrinkles add character.
· People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
· New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet..
· One mood all the time.
· Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
· You know stuff about tanks and engines.
· A five-day holiday requires only one suitcase.
· You can open all your own jars.
· You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness..
· Your underwear is £8.95 for a three-pack.
· Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
· You never have strap problems in public
· You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
· Everything on your face stays its original colour.
· The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
· You only have to shave your face and neck.
· You can play with toys all your life.
· One wallet and one pair of shoes - one colour for all seasons.
· You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
· You can 'do' your nails with a pen knife..
· You have freedom of choice concerning growing a moustache
· You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.
No wonder men are happier....
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