Last of the real TV newsmen

Sorry to read that Walter Cronkite has died, he was 92. Seems like one of those people who should go on forever...

Good collection of video here. His reporting of President Kennedy's death is still emotional to watch, after all these years. And the reporter in the field who confirmed his death at the hospital was Dan Rather.

And somehow the use of the word negro, in reporting Dr. King's assassination, seems jarring now.

To be continued...

Funny question/comment seen on the web:

I need to know which Version of Windows 7 that will give me the Ultimate features for my Basic needs at Home and in the Office. Also when traveling Lite, the OS should easily interface with our Advance Corporate Office Network system, which I don’t have the need for at Home. But the OS price should be competitive with my Home budget but not exceed my nearly limitless Corporate IT budget.

In da newz

A North Texas man has a 17-figure credit card statement after a bank glitch resulted in an eye-popping charge. A banking glitch turned a charge from Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck into a whopping 17-figure credit card charge.

This is what it looks like: $23,148,855,308,184,500.00.

Visa said the technical glitch that resulted in the giant charge only affected some customers with prepaid Visa cards.
"A temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts," said Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said in a written statement. "The technical glitch has been corrected, and all erroneous postings have been removed.”
Steale was not the only Visa Buxx cardholder to see the huge charge on his statement. A New Hampshire man found the $23 quadrillion charge after buying a pack of cigarettes at a gas station.

This is the only part that surprises me:

A Visa representative said affected customers will also have the $20 overdraft fees removed.

Best example why so called "tort reform" is a bad idea. Mostly aimed at reducing personal injury claim amounts, large money damage awards are the only way to deter these companies.

40 years dead

WASHINGTON – Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral secretary of defense vilified for his role in escalating the Vietnam War, a disastrous conflict he later denounced as "terribly wrong," died Monday. He was 93.

18 versus 93
Wonder how many years Donald Rumsfeld gets to enjoy? Will he too, in the end, say how "terribly wrong" it all was?

Let the feeding frenzy begin...

Meanwhile, lucky fans celebrated when they got an e-mail saying they had scored the hottest ticket in town. "Congratulations, your application was successful," said the message sent to Deka Motanya, 27, of San Francisco.

She immediately Twittered: "OMG OMG OMG OMG i got tickets to the michael jackson memorial service!!!"

27 years old you say?

Love, love, love... well, thats like hypnotizing chickens

Mothers, hide your children

It's all relative

OLYMPIA — The Washington State Patrol says about 1,500 people attended an anti-tax rally on the Capitol campus on Independence Day. Organizers of the Taxed Enough Already event had told the Olympian they expected several thousands of people to attend.

FREMONT — Zombie walk: 3,848 zombies had officially registered, although organizers with Fremont Outdoor Movies believed that as many as 6,000 flooded the neighborhood.

SEATTLE —Lines were already forming at the entrances in preparation for tonight’s Chase Family Fourth fireworks show. Organizers are expecting as many as 50,000 people.

Delusional

The right wing Republicans seem to think Sarah Palin is the New Ronald Reagan. This is why they want the country to fail, so she can ride in and save us all.

Here she comes...

Zombie Walk

zombie |ˈzämbē|
noun
1 originally, a snake-deity of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti.
2 a soulless corpse said to be revived by witchcraft, esp. in certain African and Caribbean religions.
• informal a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings.*
3 a tall mixed drink consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice.

*not to be confused with your average American



All the really cool zombies will be there

There's something about Bristol

All this Palin stuff reminds me of something I noticed a while back but didn't post...


That's Bristol on the left, Mary on the right

WTF x 2

N.Y. Times:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Thursday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, allowing her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012

A number of things are wrong here, besides the fact this is Friday and not Thursday. Nobody resigns a position of power in 2009 to run for another position of power in 2012. Even this screwball. Perhaps she has been offered a Fox News position.. she would fit right in. Perhaps there is a scandal yet to be revealed. Maybe she shouldn't have messed with Letterman.

It stinks, just don't know what the smell means yet...

Looks like the Times updated the story and they now realize what day it is.

Update | 4:34 p.m. Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, which would allow her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

However, they have yet to figure out how to spell barracuda.

Known as Sarah Barricuda when she played basketball in high school, Ms. Palin used point guard analogy in explaining her decision, saying she knows “exactly when to pass the ball so the team can win.”

Maybe in another update. And how was her ball passing skills during the last presidential election?

Spell check update.. they now correctly spell barracuda. If it weren't for me this would all be down the memory hole ;)

Fremont summer art

That's not a real person but a neon sign of the artist-in-residence in the Fremont Bridge

There's the real artist, Kristen Ramirez, highlighted in this story...

Lot's of vitriol in the comments section.

Oscar Wilde said it best with this quote: All art is quite useless. Indeed, like wilderness.. land of no use. True, but what a grim and barren world it would be without these things.

What the father did to the son

You can take the boy out of the man, but you can't take the man out of the boy... Neverland...

Link-O-Rama

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Or, more to the point, Where in the World is Barack Obama? Like so many other U.S. Presidents, he has become the de-facto leader of the free world. As such, his time is constrained dealing with all the crisis, near crisis, and other political hoo haw. And what do Americans really care about?

"It's the economy, stupid" Remember that phrase?

Paul Krugman can explain it better than anybody.

Let's hope Obama has the courage to really deal with this. The Republicans were scared to death that his economic policies would work and pushed the meme that Obama has over-reached.

On one side we have a number of conservative Republicans wanting to do nothing -- leave the status quo -- on the other side there are many Democratic progressives wanting to reform the whole system, which would require a much more massive involvement of government -- meaning money -- to solve these problems. What Obama has done is to try to satisfy both sides. It cannot be done, and will never work. One side or the other needs to prevail, or ex president Bush's long national nightmare for the middle class has barely begun...

Sex Ed 101

Police: Conn. Teens Mishear Sex Screams, Beat Man

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TORRINGTON, Conn. (AP) -- Police say a Connecticut girl overheard her mother's screams during sex and thought she was being assaulted, so she rounded up some friends to attack the woman's companion. The 16-year-old girl, two boys and a 19-year-old man were arrested Tuesday and arraigned Wednesday on assault and conspiracy charges.

QOTD

"Though the legislature failed to solve our budget problem yesterday, rest assured that solving the entire deficit remains my first and only priority, and I will not rest until we get it done. I will not be a part of pushing this crisis down the road -- the road stops here." Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California.

The Democrats vote for a budget, the outnumbered Republicans vote against it -- it passes, then the Governator vetoes it. Fiscal disaster results.

Republicans. Ideology over reality every time.

To be continued...

"We'll never tell" quoth the UBS AG

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the fifty two thousand.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the fifty two thousand.

apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson

MIAMI – Swiss bank UBS AG "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

Glowing article in the NY Times about Acer.

This year, Acer appears poised to overtake Dell as the world’s second-largest seller of personal computers, which would put a real dent into one of America’s favorite dorm-to-empire business stories. And if this comes to pass, Acer would trail only Hewlett-Packard; no computer company based outside the United States has ever climbed so high.

It will fall just as fast. Selling crap netbooks to the cheap and clueless is not a viable long term strategy. These marketing guys will never get it. I suppose as long as they take the money and run, they don't care.

To be continued...

The Penguins have hit town...

Resign

AP NewsBreak: SC gov considered resigning, won't.

By TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press Writer

SULLIVANS ISLAND, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford considered resigning from office after his extramarital affair came to light, the Republican revealed Sunday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.

When these people stop trying to tell me how I should live my life, I will do the same for them.

To be continued...

6-23-2009 - early morning fire



not a false alarm - what happens when someone drinks too much - decides to cook - then proceeds to fall fast asleep

Very Public Idiots

These people are just plain weird...

AP INTERVIEW: SC 1st lady told him to stop affair
By BRUCE SMITH

South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford sat in her oceanfront living room Friday, recalling how her husband repeatedly asked permission to visit his lover in the months after she discovered his affair.
... Sanford said she discovered her husband's affair early this year after coming across a copy of a letter to the mistress in one of his files in the official governor's mansion.
... The first lady said she confronted her husband immediately, and he agreed to end the affair. She said she wasn't sure Friday whether he had done so.
"I guess that's what we will have to see. I believe he has," she said. "But he was down there for five days. I saw him yesterday and he is not staying here. We'll just see what kind of spirit of reconciliation he has himself."
The governor declined to discuss details of the letter and how he handled it with his wife.
"This goes into the personal zone," Sanford said Friday. "I'd simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process."

The personal zone? What zone have they been in all week?

About an hour after Jenny Sanford talked of her pain and feelings of betrayal, her husband brushed aside any suggestion he might immediately resign, citing the Bible and the story of King David — who continued to lead after sleeping with another man's wife, Bathsheba, having the husband slain, then marrying the widow.

David and Bathseba? He thinks he is King David? WTF?

So, if I understand this part, the guy plans on continuing to lead? Not sure who he is going to slay though.

If you wish, read the whole thing here...

SCOTUS news

The Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the court to conclude that the strip search of Savana Redding did not violate the Fourth Amendment. He asserted that the majority’s finding second-guesses the measures that educators take to maintain discipline “and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge.”

Clarence Thomas never met a totalitarian measure he didn't like...

How do you spell sophistication?

With an e...

Nixon - Unreconstructed

Excerpts from The New York Times regarding recently released audio from the National Archives of Nixon's secret tapes.

On abortion, after Roe v. Wade:

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

One of his enablers in his attempt to obstruct justice:

...after Nixon precipitated the resignations of two top Justice Department officials and forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he heartily approved.

Peace with honor:

Nixon telling his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, that to get (South Vietnam’s president) Thieu to sign the treaty, he would “cut off his head if necessary.” Mr. Hughes said the conversation bolstered his view that Nixon, Thieu, and Mr. Kissinger all knew at the time that the ceasefire could not endure, and that it was not “peace with honor,” as Mr. Nixon described it, so much as a face-saving way for the United States to get out of the war. In 1975, North Vietnam would violate the ceasefire and conquer Saigon.

The Jew 'problem':

...after Israel shot down a Libyan civilian passenger jet, killing 113 people, Nixon talked about his views of anti-Semitism in America in a phone conversation with the evangelist Billy Graham. Mr. Graham complained that Jewish-American leaders had denounced efforts to promote evangelical Christianity, like Campus Crusade, and Nixon and Graham agreed that the Jewish leaders risked bringing anti-Jewish sentiment to the surface. “What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up,” Nixon said. At another point he said, “It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”

Nixon, Reagan, Bush 2. What a legacy.

What a Maroon...

have you seen me?


UPDATE: Yahoo news sez...

Governor takes a hike
For days, S.C. leaders had no idea where Mark Sanford was — and neither did his wife. The explanation came late Monday night from his spokesman: The second-term chief executive was hiking along the Appalachian Trail "to kind of clear his head after the legislative session."

Lots of people have told this guy to take a hike. Guess he took them seriously.

UPDATE pt2: Guess he wasn't hiking...

Don't cry for me Argentina
ATLANTA (Reuters) - South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford returned to the United States on Wednesday from a secret private trip to Argentina, ending days of speculation over his whereabouts and raising questions about his judgment.

It gets even worse

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday he's been having an affair with a woman he visited on a secret trip to Argentina and said he'll resign as head of the Republican Governors Association. Sanford, a rumored 2012 presidential candidate, refused to say whether he'll leave office.

Two sides of Seattle

The Fremont Solstice parade... check out the comments. Some of the more disturbed perhaps should have taken the cruise (see following story). As usual, the naked bike riders started it off... a great cheer went up, people laughing and smiling, a good time was had by all.

Now, across town, we had this:

SEATTLE - Two police officers were assaulted by women as they responded to a huge brawl aboard a cruise ship early Sunday on the Seattle waterfront.

The officers responded to the scene at about 1:40 a.m. after receiving a 911 call about a large-scale disturbance aboard a cruise ship docked in the 1100 block of Alaskan Way.

When police arrived, they found a chaotic scene of more than 100 people on the dock, many of them shouting and arguing. Officers then learned that some passengers were still physically fighting aboard the ship.

Officers moved to the dock to begin clearing the ship, where they found a small group of people blocking the gangway and preventing passengers from leaving the vessel.

The officers ordered the group to clear the gangway to allow others to leave the ship, but they refused to do so and officers were forced to physically move the group out of the way.

While police were moving the group off the gangway, a woman in the group suddenly assaulted a male officer by jumping on his back, grabbing his throat and scratching him. She was arrested.

A second woman in the group assaulted a female officer, grabbing and scratching her throat. The second woman was also arrested.

Both women were booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault on an officer.

The officers treated their wounds at the precinct headquarters.

The original cause of the onboard fight was not definitively determined beyond consistent reports that four women started fighting onboard and the fight escalated from there into a huge free-for-all.

Think there may have been some drinking involved?

Some of these people look like they are being cast for a zombie movie. Real Fox news supporters... don't bother watching more than half.

QOTD

Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.

Alice Neel

What twitter is good for

Chirp...

Interesting video from the scene...

Bush/Gore redux

What Americans should have done after the selection of Bush by the corrupt Supreme Court:

TEHRAN, Iran – More than 100,000 opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defied an Interior Ministry ban Monday and streamed into central Tehran to cheer their pro-reform leader in his first public appearance since elections that he alleges were marred by fraud.

"This is not election. This is selection," read one English-language placard at the demonstration. Other marchers held signs proclaiming "We want our vote!" and raising their fingers in a V-for-victory salute.

The problem then was, most Americans had it pretty good, complacency had set in and the press was nothing but tabloid crap.

So here we are. Sure hope that beer with G.W. Bush went down well...

About time...

WASHINGTON – Congress sent legislation to the White House Friday granting the federal government unprecedented authority to regulate and restrict cigarettes, the single largest cause of preventable death.
President Barack Obama quickly expressed his support, appearing in the Rose Garden almost immediately after the House gave final approval to the bill giving the Food and Drug Administration control over tobacco production, marketing and sales.

Predictable response from the idiot class...

Opposition in the House came from Republicans concerned about government intrusion in private enterprise and tobacco state lawmakers. Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., said people in his state believed "allowing the FDA to regulate tobacco in any capacity would lead to the FDA regulating the family farm."

Iran

If he wins, this will be big...



UPDATE: Guess the fix was in. No real surprise.

The 33% factor

Note that this is 33% of 33%

The findings of a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll underscore the perilous state of the GOP.

According to this poll: One-third of Republicans now say they have an unfavorable opinion of their party.

Well, no...

I ran across one of those Yahoo! Answers...this one asks:

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Voted Best Answer as chosen by the asker:

Well sound is: "the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium."

So technically, if the energy vibrations that would cause sound never reach the 'organs of hearing', then no- it does not make a sound.

With that logic, the answer to the following would be yes:

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to see it, is it invisible?

You have to kiss a lot of Princes before you find your frog

Golden frogs (Phyllobates terribilis) embrace in a wooded area in Explora park in Medellin


Xinhua/Reuters Photo

This could get interesting

Hope there is a followup to this story. I hate this airport, along with London's Heathrow. It all feels modern yet medieval at the same time. Crowded, complicated and confusing, creepy. I am always happy to be as far away from both of these airports as soon as possible.

AP:PHILADELPHIA — A US Airways employee and a passenger boarding a flight to Phoenix are being questioned after authorities at Philadelphia International Airport found a handgun on the plane.

Police say someone waiting to board Flight 1195 around 7 a.m. Thursday noticed another passenger handing a carry-on bag directly to the airline employee, bypassing a security screening.

The witness alerted officials with the Transportation Security Administration.

Philadelphia police say a TSA employee boarded the plane, located the bag in an overhead compartment, and found an unloaded 9 mm handgun inside.

The plane was searched and has been grounded while federal and local authorities continue investigating.

UPDATE: Looks like the guy just couldn't do without his gun. Dumb. Dumber yet? That US Airways employee!

PHILADELPHIA, PA -- The FBI charged a US Airways employee with helping his roommate get a concealed, semiautomatic handgun onto a plane departing Philadelphia early Thursday.

Customer service agent Roshid Milledge switched black carry-on bags with passenger Damien Young at the gate so Young could board the 7 a.m. flight to Phoenix with the unloaded 9 mm weapon, the FBI said in an affidavit.

Young, 29, was moving to Phoenix and had asked Milledge about the procedures for transporting guns. Milledge, 38, instead agreed to carry the bag through an employee entrance so it would not be screened by security.

An alert fellow passenger saw the switch and, sensing that Milledge seemed "fidgety," raised concerns. Young, already on the plane, allegedly denied to a US Airways manager that he had switched bags with anyone. The plane then started to taxi, but was soon called back to the gate so Young could be removed.

To be continued...

What is Twitter?

So what?

Just read where some poll finds that just over half of Americans say torture is at least sometimes justified to thwart terrorist attacks. A third of Democrats and two thirds of Republicans come down on the side of torture. No surprises there.

But, so what? Why even poll such things? You can get the same results polling about whether murder is ever justified, or any number of other long settled issues that any civilized nation has codified into law.

Vigilantism, mob rule; these things will always be ready to overwhelm the rule of law when things get tough or scary. Doesn't make it right.

Financial Markets

The NY Times reports on another brilliant financial markets scheme.

Richard W. Fields says he has come up with a win-win financial strategy for the downturn. He is investing in lawsuits.
Mr. Fields is chief executive of Juridica Capital Management. which runs a fund that invests in one side of a lawsuit in exchange for a share of any winnings. “It’s always a good time to invest in litigation,” Mr. Fields said.

Making money with money. Moving it around, nothing more. Find investors. Take from one side, give to another.

Notice here that there is no real product, nothing being produced.

Is there no end to this nonsense?

Pay attention class

What does this sentence mean?

The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

Would you be locked in for the first 5 years?

The answer is, no. That second comma “allows for the termination of the [contract] at any time, without cause, upon one-year's written notice”. So said the regulators with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, ruling in a dispute between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc.

That comma cost Rogers $2.13-million.

Welcome (back) to the neighborhood!

Archie Mcphee has returned home, bringing Mr. Bendy with them.

145 and dwindling...

In the news

In a letter to be delivered to Senate Republicans Tuesday, more than 145 conservatives – including Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie and Gary Bauer — call for a filibuster of Sotomayor’s nomination if that’s what it takes to force a “great debate” over judicial philosophy.
But in an interview with POLITICO, Manuel Miranda – who orchestrated the letter – went much farther, saying that Mitch McConnell should “consider resigning” as Senate minority leader if he can’t take a harder line on President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee.

Here is the best part:

Miranda accused McConnell of being “limp-wristed” and “a little bit tone deaf” when it comes to judicial nominees.
Miranda, now the chairman of the conservative Third Branch Conference, served as counsel to McConnell’s predecessor, then-Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist. He left that job in 2004 amid allegations that he improperly accessed thousands of memos and emails from Democratic staffers

Limp-wristed? Does he mean gay? Probably.

What must a room full of these "conservatives" feel like?

Pretty creepy...

Grace

What a Dick

Dick Cheney on, basically, torture...

"I'm a strong believer in it," Cheney told a National Press Club audience. "I thought it was well done."

He was asked about the use of waterboarding.

He also says this:

"I looked at the world the morning after 9/11, and what I saw was 16 acres of ashes in downtown New York City," he recalled. "You could, if you looked closely enough on television, see footage of American citizens jumping out of windows on the upper stories of the Trade Center because it was better than being burned to death."

I was in Spain (Madrid) when this happened. I saw those same images on the TV there. Pretty horrible. I wish however, that Americans would stop saying that nearly 3000 "Americans" died in the attacks. The dead included nationals of over 90 different countries. I really don't know the nationality of those poor souls who jumped, all I know is they were human beings. Cheney doesn't know their nationality either, but when he says, "I looked at the world the morning after 9/11, and what I saw was 16 acres of ashes in downtown New York City,..." he is saying the world consists of the United States. This is the reason we lost the support of all the countries after the attack on our soil. They knew it was an attack on humanity, but we said, nobody matters but American citizens. No wonder he can rationalize torture. As long as it is being done to "them".

Unfortunate, or just dumb?

NEW YORK The publisher of a Pennsylvania newspaper that ran a classified ad appearing to call for the assassination of President Barack Obama said it was "unfortunate" the ad made it into the paper. He also said it drew dozens of phone calls to the paper and a likely visit from federal officials.

The ad stated: "May Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley & Kennedy!" All four of those presidents, of course, were assassinated in office. Elchert said when the ad was taken, the staffer who took it "did not make the connection of what tied those presidents together."

The staffer may have thought Garfield was a cartoon character and McKinley a mountain (somewhere)... but even the clueless should wonder exactly what was the point of the ad. Would this staffer have questioned an ad for a "bike, excellent condition, missing front wheel..."?

I am sure the Feds will want to know who placed the ad, but probably can do little but let him/her know they are watching.

What a moment in this young girl's life!

President Obama ordering a cheeseburger at the Five Guys near Nationals Park...

From Z to A

The Tamil Tigers have been declawed, and I hope their remnants can be part of the political process. I also hope the same results can happen as regards the Taliban.

The Return of Harry and Louise

Best response to Paul Krugman's opinion piece Blue Double Cross in The New York Times:

"The current system may cause premature death and may bankrupt you. Please consult your physician before using this system."

A turd by any other name... would smell as foul?

Of course it would. Enhanced Interrogation Technique? You mean, the technique formerly known as torture?



Another look at the "why"...