1/ Charles Blow with some interesting statistics for Mitt Romney, or Mr. Roboto as he calls him........Romney has yet to win a "conservative" state primary, and he just doesn't appeal to the right side of the party......but it's likely he will win.....
If you are still interested in Republican politics, and I certainly understand if you're not, this is a good one to read......
The slugfest between the Robot, “the Rooster,” the rascal and the renegade will drag on.
That was one of the clear messages from Super Tuesday. After the results came in, all four remaining Republican presidential candidates signaled that they would continue in the race.
Another message was that of the remaining candidates the presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney (the Terminator-esque “Rominee,” as some have called him online), has both the greatest strengths — organization, money and endorsements, and the greatest weaknesses — an inconsistent record and an absolute inability to connect with people, including the current Republican Party bases.
Romney won the most states and the most delegates on Tuesday, but he won ugly.
He has yet to win any of the most conservative states.
In a report issued early last month, Gallup identified 21 states as having an above average conservative advantage when considering self-described political ideology.
..............................
Things do not look good for Mr. Roboto.
Romney is wooden and awkward. His convictions range from fickle to flimsy. He is ineloquent and dispassionate. His past actions and comments are completely at odds with his current advocacy. Most of us call this flip-flopping, but my colleague Jim Rutenberg last week had a more erudite expression for it: “ideological migration.”
One could hardly design a worse candidate. Even Rick Santorum, with his nether region obsessions, ignites passion, and Newt Gingrich, with his truckload of baggage, is a skillful debater. And yet there is a certain inevitability in the money and the math that suggests that the worst candidate will win the nomination.
If the battle for the Republican nomination trudges toward the convention with the current crop of contenders, Romney could earn the dubious distinction of being the first Republican candidate in recent history to win the nomination while losing nearly all of the most conservative states, particularly those in the south.
2/ This is Kony video that has gone viral, amazing for a 30 minute clip to get 56 million hits.......it's allegedly a documentary about Joseph Kony of Uganda, head of the Lord's Resistance Army whose claim to fame is to enslave children, to make the boys fight, make the girls sex slaves and other extreme nastiness.....
I couldn't watch the whole thing as it's more about the filmmaker than Kony......
So in this case we report, you decide......this is a hot video on Facebook......interesting opening sequence though.....
3/ Greece has been suffering under EU imposed austerity for about a year now and the result is normal life is beginning to break down under the strain.....
Nicolas Kristof with a column on how draconian cuts won't fix your economy.....
In the United States, Republicans lambaste President Obama’s stimulus package as a failure and insist on bone-crunching budget-cutting. If you want to know how well that works, come visit Europe — especially Greece.
Yes, Greece needed a wake-up whack and economic reform, but Republican-style austerity knocked the patient unconscious. Contrast the still-shrinking economies of Europe with the stirrings of recovery in the United States, and you feel lucky to be an American and a beneficiary of President Obama’s stimulus.
It’s stunning here in Athens to see many traffic lights not working, to see beggars pawing through garbage for food, to see blackened ruins of shops burned in rioting. I was even greeted by a homeless man who spoke impeccable British-accented English.
That man, Michael A. Kambouroglou, 35, claims that he studied English literature at Cambridge University and worked for years in the tourism industry, most recently at a five-star hotel. He told me that he had enjoyed a good life, visiting the United States and traveling around the world, until the day nearly a year ago when the collapsing economy caught up with him, and he was laid off.
“To be honest, I never thought it could come to me,” he recalled. “It happened in a flash.” Kambouroglou says he goes out every morning, knocking on doors and looking for work, but in this economy it seems hopeless. The overall unemployment rate here is 21 percent — 48 percent among young people — and the European Union forecasts that the Greek economy (and all of the euro zone)will shrink further this year.
When Kambouroglou’s savings ran out, he moved under a bridge in Athens.The suffering is widespread. Some 250,000 Greeks now receive free meals from churches or shelters, according to the Greek Orthodox Church.
There’s no doubt that Greece had been living recklessly and needed structural reforms. While much of Europe was fundamentally healthy until the crisis hit — the caricature Americans hold of a socialist Europe in decline is a vast exaggeration — Greece truly was a mess. For example, if you’re a business owner, taxation often works like this: Instead of paying a tax bill of, say, $100,000, you pay $40,000 to the state, hand a $20,000 bribe to the tax collector, and keep $40,000.
Republicans are right to see in Greece some perils of an overgenerous government: The state sector was bloated, early retirements and pensions were sometimes absurd, and rigid labor markets undermined Greece’s competitiveness. But the problem was not a welfare state — Greece has much less of a safety net than northern Europe. Rather, it was corruption, inefficiency and a system in which laws are optional.
4/ The title of this is "Extreme Shepherding with LED's", with a subtitle of Welsh hill folk having fun......actually quite cool.....love those dogs.....3 minutes.....
5/ Fox News hosts have been touting a Breitbart video as a big deal, revealing how President Obama had a meeting to urge Harvard to hire more black professors....woop woop......great scoop Hannity.....
Jon Stewart gets this stupidity in perspective........good one.....7 minutes.....
Sean Hannity revealed his exclusive, ground-breaking video this week of Barack Obama speaking at a protest for controversial Harvard professor Derrick Bell. Even though the video was already released by Buzzfeed earlier, Hannity promised an uncut, unedited glimpse of Obama's radical ties to Professor Bell.
This ultimately turned out to be a few extra seconds of video in which Obama and Bell hugged on stage. Or, as Jon Stewart put it on Thursday night, "a terrorist chest bump."
6/ Health care costs are a major problem, and Ezra Klein in the Washington Post has done the obvious - compared prices - and comparable services and drugs are way more expensive here than other countries. The reason? The big consumers of health care either aren't allowed to or don't bargain.....
There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher.
That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish. Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive.
There are many possible explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that we’re sicker. Or that we go to the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories. As Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt, Peter Hussey and Varduhi Petrosyan put it in the title of their influential 2003 study on international health-care costs, “it’s the prices, stupid.”
As it’s difficult to get good data on prices, that paper blamed prices largely by eliminating the other possible culprits. They authors considered, for instance, the idea that Americans were simply using more health-care services, but on close inspection, found that Americans don’t see the doctor more often or stay longer in the hospital than residents of other countries. Quite the opposite, actually. We spend less time in the hospital than Germans and see the doctor less often than the Canadians.
“The United States spends more on health care than any of the other OECD countries spend, without providing more services than the other countries do,” they concluded. “This suggests that the difference in spending is mostly attributable to higher prices of goods and services.”
7/ Whitney Houston's best song was "I Will Always Love You", and here it is sung by 16 year old Jessica Sanchez on American Idol......because it's Idol it's the 2 minute version, but she nails it.....wow......
Interesting to see the subtle changes to Idol.....we don't watch it any more.......
LOS ANGELES -- Gutsy "American Idol" contestant Jessica Sanchez took on Whitney Houston's biggest hit, delivering a performance that awed the show's judges.
When host Ryan Seacrest asked the panel to name Wednesday night's top two singers among the 13 finalists, Steven Tyler was ready.
"Jessica Sanchez and Jessica Sanchez," Tyler said.
The 16-year-old San Diego high school student's assured version of "I Will Always Love You" was "just amazing. I don't even know what to say," Jennifer Lopez exclaimed during the performance show.
8/ Rick Perry's Texas has declared war on Planned Parenthood because of their alleged abortion link and many of the clinics have closed down......but for poor women in Texas there is often nowhere else to go for all of the other services Planned Parenthood supplies....
The war on women, particularly poor women, continues. What a horrible state Texas is, filled with stupid bigots..........
Leticia Parra, a mother of five scraping by on income from her husband’s sporadic construction jobs, relied on thePlanned Parenthood clinic in San Carlos, an impoverished town in South Texas, for breast cancer screenings, free birth control pills and pap smears for cervical cancer.
But the clinic closed in October, along with more than a dozen others in the state, after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.
Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.
Although Texas already bars clinics that take such money from performing abortions, the new law is intended to prevent any state money from benefiting Planned Parenthood. “Planned Parenthoods across the country provide abortions, are affiliated with abortion providers, or refer women to abortion providers,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Mr. Perry.
9/ On Super Tuesday Stephen Colbert served up a batch of trans-vaginal margaritas......a very amusing three minutes.....
As is often the case with election days, "The Colbert Report" taped on Super Tuesday well before anyresults began to come in. But that didn't stop Colbert from opening his show by focusing on the drama and excitement of the day's events:
"It's like the Super Bowl of politics, if the Super Bowl was one team slowly destroying itself."
Of course, what would any Super Tuesday be without a good, old-fashioned tailgate party? Colbert broke out the brats, 10-layer dip (one for each state) and his famous Republican salsa, which is "mostly mayonnaise with a dash of Miracle Whip."
And to drink, the host was serving up a batch of margaritas... with a twist reflecting our current political climate: "I could not find my blender so instead I'm using a transvaginal ultrasound wand."
We're filing this away as one of the most hilariously disturbing sight-gags in recent memory.
10/ Floriduh's university system is being slashed and burned by the legislature in this round of budget cuts.....noteworthy in this story is the role of Senator JD Alexander, who is having a vicious fight with USF......
MIAMI — With three days remaining until the end of the legislative session, Florida lawmakers are moving forward with a $70 billion budget that would create the state’s 12th university and cut hefty amounts of money from higher education.
The House and the Senate are expected to vote this week on the budget, which also includes a $1 billion increase for prekindergarten through high school, a priority of Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican. Mr. Scott’s position on the overall budget bill, with its plan for a new university, is unclear.
For weeks the budget has been tangled in a disagreement between State Senator JD Alexander, the Republican chairman of the budget committee, and the University of South Florida.
Mr. Alexander, who must leave the Legislature this year because of term limits, had lobbied vigorously to turn the University of South Florida’s Lakeland campus, in his district, into an independent state polytechnic school. But the University of South Florida opposed the move, and then found itself fighting off a 58 percent reduction in its budget. Many saw the move as punitive.
Students organized protests, and a flood of e-mails poured into the Legislature asking the House and the Senate to save the campus and pare back the cuts.
After a frantic series of meetings, a compromise was struck this week. Mr. Alexander would get his Florida Polytechnic University, and the University of South Florida would face a less severe drop in financing.
11/ A wonderful story - Tea Partier Marco Rubio just had a very bad week........yippee.....
He's such a phony.....
The shimmering dreams of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio have taken a few hits in the last week.
He voted for -- no, he co-sponsored and voted for -- that nutty amendment that would have permitted any employer to refuse to insure any procedure or drug he had moral objections to. Not just religious objections, and not just contraception. Moral objections, whatever they are.
Need treatment for diabetes? How about heart trouble? What if your boss decides you’ve failed to take care of yourself and doesn’t want to be financially responsible for what he considers your bad choices?
Don’t look to Marco Rubio for relief.
This is what you do when you want to be vice president. You tilt so far to the right you nearly fall over in nonsense about protecting religious institutions from that un-Christian president.
Then along comes the case of Daniela Pelaez. Pelaez is the North Miami High School valedictorian who faces possible deportation back to Colombia later this month because she came here illegally when she was four. Pelaez is a poster child for the Dream Act, which would have allowed her to attend college at in-state rates. With protests beginning to grow on her behalf, Rubio now is having to spin, spin, spin his hypocrisy over a teenager at his alma mater.
12/ The stunningly beautiful Medina with "Addiction"......a typical "I'm a busy pop star/model" video but she has the charm and poise to carry it off.....and having a great song helps too.....
13/ Climate change is real no matter what Fox News says, and this has been a week of tornadoes and extreme weather events all over the center of the country. This story is about how the insurance industry is taking notice.....
When you want to find out if something is serious, follow the money......
Remember - you may not believe in climate change, but climate change believes in you........
s southern Indiana, Kentucky and other Midwestern states woke Saturday to devastated communities and a rising death toll, the world again was treated to pictures and video of mother nature's ferocious power and the merciless power of her most precise and terrifying storm, the tornado. Most striking to some is the early arrival of this year's tornado season, which usually begins later in the spring and runs into summer. For climate scientists, who have long predicted longer or more powerful storms and less predictable seasons, the events are an affirmation that offer no comfort.More striking this week, however, was a little noticed hearing - just a day before these massively destruction storms - where the nation's insurance and re-insurance companies came together to recognize the impact that climate change is having on their industry, a direct measure of the financial costs on US taxpayers and private businesses.
Reuters reports:
Powerful tornadoes raked across a wide swath of the Midwest and South on Friday, killing at least 28 people in four states and bringing the death toll to at least 41 from a week of deadly late-winter storms.
The twisters splintered homes, damaged a prison and tossed around vehicles across the region, leaving at least 13 people dead in southern Indiana, another 12 in neighboring Kentucky, two more in Ohio, and one in Alabama, officials said. In all, the latest line of storms battered a band of states from Ohio and Indiana on southward to Alabama and Georgia.
"We are no match for Mother Nature at her worst," Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said in a statement, adding that he would visit the stricken southeast corner of the state on Saturday.
And the New York Times adds:
The storm systems stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and were so wide that an estimated 34 million people were at risk for severe weather, said Mike Hudson of the National Weather Service regional office in Kansas City, Mo. At one point, the storms were coming so fast that as many as four million people were within 25 miles of a tornado.
Why So Many Tornadoes?
According to the Associated Press:
While the main tornado season runs from spring to early summer, this year's early outbreaks show that tornadoes can form under a variety of conditions and strike during fall and winter, too. This year's mild winter and warm start to meteorological spring has upped the risk of dangerous storms.
"We've been in a very warm pattern all winter," said meteorologist Mark Rose of the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala. "Because it has been so mild, it increases our chances for severe weather."That's the meteorologist explanation. Meteorologists as a professional class, however, have been very reluctant by and large to discuss the science behind global warming and climate change, as noted recently by Marvin Meados at the Huffington Post.Climate scientists, though, are not, and their peer-reviewed research speaks volumes. Notably, a landmark 2007 study by NASA's Goddard Institute on Climate Science publishedthis report, predicting larger and more violent thunderstorms and tornadoes in the United States as global warming trends continued. In part (emphasis added):
14/ Book review - "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo....and I have never read a more enthusiastic critique of a book by Entertainment Weekly.....one for the book club ladies.....sounds incredible.....
Let's skip the formalities: What's it going to take for you to read a book about a Mumbai slum that sits on the edge of a lake of sewage? Keep in mind that it's nonfiction, so nobody goes on a game show, nobody becomes a millionaire, nobody dances to ''Jai Ho.'' Would reading an unqualified rave be enough? If so, here you go:Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a riveting, fearlessly reported portrait of a poverty so obliterating that it amounts to a slow-motion genocide. Right now the book is sitting on my shelf making all the other books feel stupid.
Maybe you need the added inducement of knowing that Beautiful Forevers will be one of the year's big books — a conversation starter, an award winner. It will be. Maybe you want to be promised that the book isn't a screed, that it isn't a guilt trip, and that no children you care about will die in pitiless circumstances. It isn't, it isn't...and I wish I could lie about that kid thing.
Beautiful Forevers was written by Katherine Boo, a New Yorker writer with a Pulitzer, among other things, to her credit. The book plays out like a swift, richly plotted novel. That's partly because Boo writes so damn well. But it's also because over the course of three years in India she got extraordinary access to the lives and minds of the Annawadi slum, a settlement nestled jarringly close to a shiny international airport and a row of luxury hotels. Boo gives even the broadest themes (the collateral damage of globalization, say) a human face. And there are half a dozen characters here so indelible — so swept up in impossible dreams and schemes — that they call Dickens and Austen to mind.
But we're careful here at DDD, so just to check this is indeed a good read I found another review for you......
Yup......a good one....
15/ Movie review - a big budget extravaganza opens this week - "John Carter", which seems to be an old fashioned western set on Mars [?]......suspend disbelief, and wow at the 3D.....
The cast of “John Carter” includes a bunch of actors best known for the parts they play on television — DetectiveMcNulty from “The Wire,” Walter White from “Breaking Bad” and, most prominently, Tim Riggins from “Friday Night Lights” (Texas forever!) — but the movie itself evokes a much older vintage of popular culture. Directed by the Pixar fixture Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo,” “Wall-E”) and based on a 1912 magazine serial by Edgar Rice Burroughs, it is a potpourri of arcane and familiar genres. “Mash-up” doesn’t begin to capture this hectic hybrid; it’s more like a paintball fight.
Messy and chaotic, in other words, but also colorful and kind of fun. The movie begins in an atmosphere of Victorian spookiness: an old manse with dark paneling, a sealed tomb out back and many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore piled up in the study. In the blink of an eye we’re in Arizona Territory just after the Civil War, which is to say classic western territory, with monumental rock formations, beleaguered cavalrymen, bellicose Apaches and a dark saloon into which a taciturn stranger comes a-moseying.
That would be John Carter himself (Taylor Kitsch), a Confederate veteran with a knack for mortal combat and a gloomy aversion to same. But the fight finds him, first in a box canyon on loan from a John Ford picture and then — nonspoiler alert! — on Mars. The red planet resembles the Old West both geologically (a lot of dusty red rocks) and thematically.
"John Carter" trailer with an intro from the director......very cool special effects.....
16/ On HBO this Sunday is "Game Change", the story of the McCain/Palin candidacy with Julianne Moore in the Sarah Palin role........gets a decent review in the Times......
There is something so old-fashioned and romantic about servants, or aides, who put loyalty above their own self-interest.
“Game Change,” an engaging HBO docudrama on Saturday night, is told through the eyes of the advisers who developed the losing strategy of Senator John McCain of Arizona and Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. In this iteration Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson), the senior adviser, is the war hero, and Senator McCain (Ed Harris) comes off as a crusty old soldier who follows orders but can’t help grousing.
There are some cracks in Julianne Moore’s portrayal of Governor Palin: she leaves out the sexy sassiness. But considering the challenge — not to mention the incomparable Tina Fey parody — Ms. Moore plays the candidate with surprising finesse. This is a sharp-edged but not unsympathetic portrait of a flawed heroine, colored more in pity than in admiration. Ms. Palin’s detractors will consider it generous, and her advocates have already dismissed it as a liberal smear job.
The real tribute is that it exists at all. It’s been four years, and the country is now enmeshed in a volatile and impassioned Republican primary fight that does not include Ms. Palin. This moose-hunting Alaskan hockey mom was polarizing in 2008, but few would argue that she cost Senator McCain the election; the economy and his own miscalculations did the trick.
“Game Change” is based on a best-selling campaign book of the same title by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, but it leaves out often juicy material about John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to focus on the behind-the-scenes efforts to train and contain Ms. Palin.
"Game Change" trailer....Julianne Moore is a ringer for Caribou Barbie......
Todays video - maybe the best Bud Lite commercial ever.......
Todays bartender joke
A guy came into a bar one day and said to the barman, "Give me six double vodkas."
The barman says, "Wow! You must have had one hell of a day."
"Yes, I've just found out my older brother is gay."
The next day the same guy came into the bar and asked for the same drinks.
When the bartender asked what the problem was today, the answer came back, "I've just found outthat my younger brother is gay too!"
On the third day the guy came into the bar and ordered another six double vodkas.
The bartender says, "Geez! Doesn't anybody in your family like women?"
"Yeah, my wife..."
Todays Microsoft joke
For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way
computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo
(COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto
industry and stated,
'If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we
would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.'
In response to Bill's comments, Ford issued a press release stating:
If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving
cars with the following characteristics :
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash........twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a
new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would
have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the
car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some
reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your
car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to
reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable,
five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five
percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be
replaced by a single 'This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation' warning
light.
7. The airbag system would ask 'Are you sure?' before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and
refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned
the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to
drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same
manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the 'Start' button to turn the engine off.
PS - I'd like to add that when all else fails, you could call 'customer
service' in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language
how to fix your car yourself!!!!
Todays Socrates joke
Keep this in mind the next time you are about to repeat a rumor or spread gossip
In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about Diogenes?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied, "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.
"That's right," Socrates continued, "Before you talk to me about Diogenes let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "Actually I just heard about it."
"All right," said Socrates, "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about Diogenes something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "You want to tell me something about Diogenes that may be bad, even though you're not certain it's true?"
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued, "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about Diogenes going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me or anyone at all?"
The man was bewildered and ashamed. This is an example of why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.
It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was banging his wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment