Latest on twitter:
I’d be inclined to reblog and endorse a post that applauds intelligent Republicans and lists their accomplishments. Again, that shouldn’t be too hard to do. But this is not that post, and thus it must be smacked down.
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(via ericmortensen)
I want a real check and balance, unfortunately at this moment we have a bunch of clowns on the right. Our country is stronger when both parties have smart people coming up with real solutions. I don’t hear any reasonable voices coming from the conservative party, and I actually really wish there were.
Gabourey Sidibe, star of “Precious,” on The Tonight Show talking about how she wanted to be a psychologist because of Growing Pains.
Showtime Rattled By Rival EPIX Arrival
Showtime CEO Matt Blank is rattled by the launch of EPIX — that new premium entertainment service owned by Viacom, Paramount, Lionsgate and what’s left of MGM. So much so that he’s instructed his marketing team to buy Showtime online advertisements on Google every time someone searches for Epix information. How funny is that? It’s not just that EPIX is a rival to Showtime. It’s also that Showtime lost those Epix studios after playing hardball on the license feesd, which totaled about $300 million in 2008.
I don’t think anyone is going to want to meet with a man who shamed his family and children that way. In reality TV, there’s a definite line you don’t cross, and that’s tormenting children.
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Irad Eyal, vice president of development at True Entertainment talking about balloon boys parents.
Glad he cleared that up, I was getting really, really, really, worried.
(via hipsterdiet)
People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn’t allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country’s 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.
It’s only America’s Right that is too scared of the Terrorists — or which exploits the fears of their followers — to insist that no regular trials can be held and that “the safety and security of the American people” mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it’s the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of “strength” and “courage” to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose “leaders” — people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts — cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it’s hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate — it’s too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists — is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.
It’s only America’s Right that is too scared of the Terrorists — or which exploits the fears of their followers — to insist that no regular trials can be held and that “the safety and security of the American people” mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it’s the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of “strength” and “courage” to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose “leaders” — people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts — cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it’s hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate — it’s too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists — is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.
- Glenn Greenwald, The Right’s textbook “surrender to terrorists”
It’s just that it’s mind-boggling to me how many people I encounter every day struggling to subsist on a diet of bad advice about fake solutions to nonexistent problems. And, then they rend garments, gnash teeth, and impotently curse the clouds for God’s having abandoned them to wander the land in sackcloth — an inextricably sad tomato.
I guess I just look at someone like Marco and see a guy who figured out, at least for now, how to hook his wagon to a horse that was running in a direction that seemed interesting. And, now, somehow, he’s a man who types things that turn into stuff that makes my and your world a little better.
Given the choice, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t immediately dump every bit of bullshit you can tolerate dropping in order to locate your nearest horse. Might be just outside. Right now. Maybe?
Only you and the horse know.
- Merlin Mann, Three things about Marco Arment
Carrie Prejean Has More Sex Tapes Than John McCain Has Houses
That’s how your write a headline folks.
Matt Drudge Is A Fucking Dickbag, Part XXIII.
And it’s such a weird objection, isn’t it? I don’t get it.
If George W. Bush had bowed to, say, the King of Saudi Arabia, we’d make all sorts of justifiable snark about how oil interests were the subtext. But if the Left went so far as to say the King of Saudi Arabia was the dominant partner in that relationship, they’d be laughed out of the room. Right?
So what are the wingnuts actually saying here? That Obama is what? Supplicating himself to the Japanese? Really?
The President of the United States is the most powerful person on Earth. That’s not nationalistic chest thumping, that’s a literal statement of fact. The American president controls the most massive military force ever seen. This is to say nothing of the American economic empire, which is arguably the farthest reaching in human history. Culturally, technologically, even with Japan, there is no contest. The relative power disparity between the man bowing in this picture, and the person he is bowing to, isn’t just yawning, it’s staggering.
I mean, do the wingnuts think rogue states will see the bow as a sign of weakness and become emboldened? What is this, 1456 AD?
And the complaint gets even crazier when one considers that Obama is visiting Japan to negotiate the presence of said military force on Okinawa, which detonated not one, but two nuclear bombs on the Japanese mainland. That base is strategically valuable, and they want us gone yesterday. Legally, the Japanese can boot us from their shores any time they please. It’s a situation which calls for diplomacy.
And it’s so clearly an attempt to be culturally sensitive. Some cultures bow; others don’t. You never see Obama bowing to Angela Merkel or Benjamin Netanyahu. By the same token, if the Japanese head of state refused to shake hands with the American head of state, I’d be genuinely offended. Wouldn’t you? And look, there’s the Emperor, shaking hands.
Look, I get the whole America-Bows-To-No-One thing. I really do. Obama is the representative for all Americans, and the United States is a soverign state, subordinate to no one. But the Japanese are a sovereign state, too. They have something we need. And if some Americans are seriously concerned about our status vis-à-vis the Japanese, they’ve got an inferiority complex that bears no relation to reality.
That said, Obama does that double-kiss thing with Sarkozy and we’ve got a problem.
Oh my God, you're FORCING me to buy insurance!
This is my favorite cockamamie argument against universal insurance.
The same people who hate paying taxes have no problem paying for the uninsured, instead of forcing EVERYONE to buy insurance.
We don’t deny medical care to ANYONE in this country, regardless of insurance coverage.
Why not make sure EVERYONE is already covered so YOU don’t have to pay for someone else’s irresponsibility?
Why not mandate that everyone purchase a product that’s:
- twice as expensive as it should be and rising 150% every 10 years
- misaligned with your desire to be healthy
- painfully inadequate providing you with a convenient experience
- exempt from antitrust regulations
- etc…
Soup…how much of our nation’s healthcare costs are due to the uninsured taking advantage of the system that doesn’t deny them? Very little. 75% of healthcare costs in America come from insured chronic illness. 25% of healthcare costs come from acute illnesses. Our current system is set up to purchase as much possible care for as much possible chronic illness. Until that bottomless money pit business model is changed, I cannot support a mandate that will bankrupt the average person and the average small business.
It truly doesn’t matter anyway. In just about 5 years, only the wealthy companies and individuals will be able to afford traditional insurance the government mandates. It’s not in the insurance industry’s profitable interest to offer low cost, high-deductible plans. I haven’t seen any regulations out there mandating that insurance companies must offer a certain percentage of affordable high deductible plans.
Are they mandating affordability for the average person? Or are they mandating a bailout of a completely unsustainable business. Imagine a bailout of the automobile industry but multiply that by 1000 every year.
Jay, I am with you 100%, my point is more towards folks who say “health care isn’t a right” while the current system, the one they want to keep, provides what they don’t want everyone to have ALREADY, and they’re paying for it.
I’d love to know the rationale for this line of thinking, it boggles my mind.
We provide health care to everyone, we only charge some of us for it. I am not advocating that simply forcing everyone to purchase insurance fixes healthcare. There is no competition for insurance so prices never fall. If we continue on the same path we are on now, we are going to go bankrupt.
There are multiple things wrong with the system, this happens to be one of them.
