Not sure why, but this guy is counting to one million, live, on his webcam.
It will take him quite a while. He started Monday and he’s up to 55,000. He’s not doing it non-stop — he sleeps, answers viewer questions, and so on. A few radio interviews.
It’ll take him about 3 months.
Oooh. He just started up again. He wants to know out another 1,000 (from 55,000 to 56,000) before another interview.
They now have highly-sophisticated arson capabilities:
High-wire squirrels torch man’s home twice in 8 days
If you think Alan Turcott has bad luck, just think of the squirrels in his neighborhood.
For the second time in eight days, Turcott’s Blue Island home caught fire when squirrels knocked high-voltage wires loose from a utility pole and onto his three-story house, fire officials said.
"This is unbelievable," Blue Island Fire Chief Robert Copp said. "I’ve seen where squirrels have shorted things out or blown a fuse, but nothing like this before."
Two scorched squirrels were found after the fires, confirming the critter cause, Copp said.
It appears they transferred power from one line to the next as they bounced across the wires June 9 and 17.
"It’s like a battlefield around here," Turcott said as he pointed to his plywood-patched home. "I think it’s a total loss. It’s just a big nightmare."
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Unbelieveable.
Executive Order 12958, amended and endorsed by Bush, requires the National Archives to oversee a uniform system within the executive branch for protecting classified information. Under that order, the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives is charged with the task of inspecting federal agencies and the White House with making sure that safeguards regarding classisfied information are taking place.
As part of that process, the Oversight Office knocked on the door of the Vice President’s Office, back in 2004. They were sent away.
Why?
Because according to the Office of the Vice President, the Vice President is "not an entity with the executive branch" of government.
What a completely moronic statement. The Vice President is only second in line to the keys to the kingdom. What branch of government is his office in? The legislative branch? The judicial branch? No! It’s a branch unto itself, FREE AT LAST from constitutional oppression and nasty things like, oh, you know, laws.*
And if he’s NOT part of the executive branch, does this mean Cheney and his staff cannot claim executive privilege? Ever?
The Vice President’s office’s refusal to comply with the executive order and the National Archives’s request prompted the National Archives to file a complaint with the Attorney General’s office. But the Justice Department has not followed up on the Archives’s request.
And when the Information Security Oversight Office went to the Justice Dapartment, what did Cheney do? He tried to eliminating the agency’s existence!!
Waxman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has the details and documents. He is urging the White House not to pursue this:
I question both the legality and the wisdom of your actions. In May 2006, an official in your office pled guilty to passing classified information to individuals in the Philippines. In March 2007, your former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements for denying his role in disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent. In July 2003, you reportedly instructed Mr. Libby to disclose information from a National Intelligence Estimate to Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter. This record does not inspire confidence in how your office handles the nation’s most sensitive security information. Indeed, it would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials.
This isn’t the first time Cheney and his office have tried to avoid government oversight:
Essentially, the Vice President’s Office is the black hole within which the Bush Administration itself can conduct busines without accountability and oversight.
* While it is true that the Vice President has powers that are within the legislative branch (i.e. braking ties in the Senate), his office clearly falls within the Executive Branch, as the government itself acknowledges.
Ten years ago, the American Film Institute members voted on and ranked the top 100 American films of all time.
This year, they did the same thing, taking a new vote:
In the CBS special "AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Movies — 10th Anniversary Edition," "Citizen Kane" held the same No. 1 billing it earned in the institute’s first top-100 ranking in 1998.
It’s actually a good movie for those millions who have never seen it. Rosebud is his sled. Oh, shit. Spoiler alert!
There were notable changes elsewhere, though, with Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece "Raging Bull" bounding upward from No. 24 in 1998 to No. 4 on the new list and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller "Vertigo" hurtling from No. 61 to No. 9 this time.
Charles Chaplin’s 1931 silent gem "City Lights" jumped from No. 76 to No. 11, while the 1956 John Ford-John Wayne Western "The Searchers" took the biggest leap, from No. 96 all the way to No. 12.
"City Lights" is one of my all-time favorite films, and I’m glad it got the hugh bump. I’ve never seen The Searchers though.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 epic "The Godfather" ranked No. 2, up one notch from 1998, switching places with Michael Curtiz’s 1942 favorite "Casablanca," which dipped from second-place to third.
Both 1967’s "The Graduate" and 1954’s "On the Waterfront," which ranked Nos. 7 and 8 respectively in 1998, fell out of the top 10, "The Graduate" coming in at No. 17 and "On the Waterfront" finishing at No. 19.
The other five films in the new top 10 also were among the original 10 best, though they shuffled positions: 1952’s "Singin’ in the Rain (No. 5 now, No. 10 in 1998), 1939’s "Gone With the Wind" (No. 6 now, No. 4 in 1998), 1962’s "Lawrence of Arabia" (No. 7 now, No. 5 in 1998), 1993’s "Schindler’s List" (No. 8 now, No. 9 in 1998) and 1939’s "The Wizard of Oz" (No. 10 now, No. 6 in 1998).
Any new films this time around?
Older films that did not make the cut on the 1998 list broke into the top-100 this time, led by Buster Keaton’s 1927 silent comedy "The General" at No. 18. Others included 1916’s "Intolerance" (No. 49), 1975’s "Nashville" (No. 59), 1960’s "Spartacus" (No. 81), 1989’s "Do the Right Thing" (No. 96) and 1995’s "Toy Story" (No. 99).
Yay for "The General", another classic. Not sure about "Toy Story" though.
Films that dropped out of the top-100 this time included 1965’s "Doctor Zhivago," which had been No. 39 on the 1998 list; 1984’s "Amadeus," which had been No. 53; 1977’s "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," which had been No. 64; 1990’s "Dances With Wolves," which had been No. 75; and 1927’s "The Jazz Singer," which had been No. 90.
What? So "Toy Story" gets on, but NOT "Close Encounters"? WTF???
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s — it’s –it’s —
The Dramatic Chipmunk!
…a Starbucks barista or a member of the Iraqi police? From NPR:
For now, these men get only eight days of training and at the end of it, they get to keep their gun and their uniform.
According to Aravosis, it takes seven days to complete training as a Starbucks barista.
Which explains a lot.
The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of 14 American troops, including five killed in a single roadside bombing that also killed four Iraqis in Baghdad.
Elsewhere in Iraq, a suicide truck bomber struck the Sulaiman Bek city hall in a predominantly Sunni area in northern Iraq, killing at least 13 people and wounding 70, an Iraqi commander said.
The U.S. deaths raised to at least 3,545 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The Vatican, in perhaps a slightly sacreligious way, has issued a Ten Commandments For Drivers to combat road rage:
1. You shall not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
10. Feel responsible toward others.
While not biblicly-based, these are all reasonable and commonsensical. But why limit it to ten? Other good suggestions from Mustang Bobby at Shakesville:
1. No talking on cell phones. Ever.
2. You paid for the turn signal. Use it. Then remember to turn it off.
3. The “fast lane” means more than 35 mph on an interstate highway.
4. Not everyone is a fan of 120db rap music that is loud enough to vibrate the moulding off the car next to you. Close your windows and deafen yourself. (My next career is to open a hearing-aid shop. I’ll make a fortune.)
5. Today’s cars are marvels of modern engineering. Therefore, if you make a right turn onto a side street at a speed in excess of 15 mph , it will not tip over.
6. Owning a 4×4 dual-wheel Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup truck with monster tires when you work as a CPA in Miami doesn’t mean you’re a stud. It means you have size issues. Likewise, putting a spoiler and a hood scoop on a Subaru is the equivalent of a teenaged boy stuffing a sock in his pants.
7. When you’re stuck in traffic, the other line does not move faster. It just seems that way.
8. Applying make-up while driving is dangerous. And that goes for women, too.
9. Try being conscious while driving. It makes things easier.
10. Some people were just meant to take the bus.
So NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was a lifelong Democrat before he ran (and won) as a Republican in 2001, is now leaving the GOP to start a bid as the "independent" candidate for President. As a man literally made of money, he can mount a huge campaign. No, he’ll never be president, but he can become a Naderesque spoiler.
But a spoiler for who? Will Bloomberg take votes away from the Dems of the GOP?
This Pollster.com poll is illuminating, looking at a Clinton-Guiliani matchup both with, and without, a Bloomberg third party candidate:
| State | Clinton | Giuliani | Spread | Clinton | Giuliani | Bloomberg | Spread | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 41 | 53 | R+12 | 39 | 46 | 11 | R+7 | D+5 |
| California | 49 | 44 | D+5 | 45 | 40 | 10 | D+5 | 0 |
| Iowa | 47 | 41 | D+6 | 42 | 37 | 11 | D+5 | R+1 |
| Kansas | 41 | 53 | R+12 | 36 | 47 | 8 | R+11 | D+1 |
| Kentucky | 44 | 47 | R+3 | 41 | 42 | 10 | R+1 | D+2 |
| Massachusetts | 52 | 42 | D+10 | 47 | 37 | 9 | D+10 | 0 |
| Minnesota | 50 | 41 | D+9 | 48 | 37 | 7 | D+11 | D+2 |
| Missouri | 46 | 47 | R+1 | 44 | 39 | 10 | D+5 | D+6 |
| New Mexico | 50 | 44 | D+6 | 45 | 41 | 8 | D+4 | R+2 |
| New York | 56 | 38 | D+18 | 49 | 32 | 15 | D+17 | R+1 |
| Ohio | 49 | 46 | D+3 | 47 | 41 | 8 | D+6 | D+3 |
| Oregon | 48 | 44 | D+4 | 44 | 38 | 11 | D+6 | D+2 |
| Texas | 37 | 54 | R+17 | 34 | 48 | 10 | R+14 | D+3 |
| Virginia | 44 | 48 | R+4 | 40 | 45 | 9 | R+5 | R+1 |
| Washington | 44 | 47 | R+3 | 42 | 41 | 11 | D+1 | D+4 |
| Wisconsin | 47 | 46 | D+1 | 44 | 40 | 10 | D+4 | D+3 |
| Average | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | D+1.73 |
Obviously, while there is a slight overall effect which favors Democrats (i.e., Bloomberg will pull votes from Republicans overall), the breakdown is a little more complicated on a state-by-state basis. For example, Virginia carries with it many electoral votes, enough to swing an election, and the Bloomberg effect might make it swong Republican (just as the Nader effect theoretically gave Florida to Bush in 2001).
It’s early in the season, but this could become a major factor in the 2008 elections.
We’re used to corrupt Republican politicians who solicit bribes, take kickbacks and have online sex with boys, but now they have cocaine dealers in their midst?
[South Carolina] State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted on federal drug charges Tuesday and was suspended from office by Gov. Mark Sanford.Ravenel, 44, and Michael L. Miller of Mount Pleasant are charged with one count each of conspiracy to possess and intent to distribute cocaine.
What’s worse — he’s the South Carolina campaign manager for Rudy Giuliani.
Anyone who knows anything about the political blogosphere knows of Digby, the witty writer of Hullabaloo.
Many is the time when other bloggers (including myself) have written posts with the title "What Digby Says" and simply linked to, well, what Digby said. Insightful and witty, with the ability to focus on with laser-beam accuracy on the issues of the day (and usually in less than 100 words!) — that’s Digby.
Of course, for years, nobody knew who Digby actually was!
But yesterday, Digby made a public appearance at a Take Back America conference, with other blogger all-stars. He speaks well, too.
Uh, did I say he?
|
Video from the Gala Dinner at Take Back America 2007 in Washington, DC – June 19, 2007. The blogosphere’s most famous unknown makes herself known, and accepts the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award on behalf of the entire progressive blogosphere. What Digby says indeed. Her speech, like her posts, is noteworthy, as Greenwald notes. |
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Some interesting facts about red vs blue states:
The Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states’ performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004.
***
Minimum wage levels also vary significantly from state to state. Unsurprisingly, many of the "bluest" states lead the way in exceeding both the previous ($5.15 an hour) and recently passed ($7.25) federal requirements, with Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut mandating wages as high as $7.93. Only one of the 21 states (New Hampshire) mired at $5.15 an hour voted for George W. Bush in 2004. (Click here to view a map of the minimum wage by state.)
Not only do blue states fare much better in health care, minimum wage, and education, but they also fare better when it comes to supposedly "conservative" principles of law & order, and "family values":
8 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are squarely in Red America. 7 of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were in the Kerry column. (Interestingly, six of those states have no death penalty statute.) The 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 1998 all went for Bush in 2004. Red states constituted 9 on the top 10 in terms of out-of-wedlock births. And the Bible Belt has the greatest percentage of births to women under age 20, with the worst 15 states nationwide all among in the GOP ranks. By almost any measure of societal breakdown that so-called Republican "values voters" decry, it is Red State America where moral failure is greatest.
Makes you wonder why values voters vote GOP.
Yes, the stock market is playing with all-time highs. Yes, unemployment is low.
But…
7 in 10 Americans believe the economy is getting worse — the most negative reading in nearly six years.
Only one in three Americans rate the economy today as either excellent or good, while the percentage saying the economy is getting better fell from 28% to 23% in one month.
What gives? Are Americans stupid?
Hardly. For most Americans, "economy" isn’t a function of the Dow Jones, the GNP, the trade deficit, or macro-figures like that. It’s their wallet and checkbook. If the nation’s CEOs are getting record high pay and salary, of COURSE that’s going to make the economic figures look good. But if average shmucks like me and you are struggling to make car payments, mortgages, or simply filling our gas tank, those are economic variables that are not reflected in the Dow Jones industrial average.
Or a better example: Unemplyment may be down, but is that because people have to take on two jobs in order to make ends meet?
So be wary when someone throws big numbers at you in the election year, saying how "great" the economy is. America’s economy may be strong, but that just means that a small number of Americans (and corporations) are doing extremely well, while the rest of us are treading water or sinking.
Someone at CNN needs to fix this dangling modifier:
Toddler missing after flooding kills 5
I took that to mean that a toddler, who was missing after a flood, apparently went out and killed 5 people.
UPDATE: Well, they changed the headline. It’s grammatically correct now, but much much worse.
This guy is an idiot:
Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge’s passing remark – "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ " – got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.
The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.
"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."
Unfortunately, there IS an absolute at play here, and that’s the law. The law is the law. And — assuming that Jack Bauer is not a fictional character on television — the real world answer is "YES, you are going to convict Jack Bauer". He broke the law!
Carpetbagger gets deep into it:
I’ll spare you the tirade on why torture is morally indefensible, and why torture doesn’t provide useful information anyway, and why relying on fictional characters to justify real-life crimes is patently ridiculous, but will instead focus on two points.
First, Bauer-like scenarios don’t happen.
We’ve all watched ‘24′ and rooted for Jack Bauer as he breaks all the rules in a desperate attempt to save lives.
The problem with this scenario (as many others have pointed out) is that it makes a number of assumptions that are empirically dubious. First, the ticking-bomb scenario assumes not only that we have knowledge of an imminent attack, but also that we have the right guy in custody, i.e., a person with information that can prevent that attack from happening. In real life, our intelligence is never even close to that good. Intelligence, as the WMD fiasco makes clear, is far from an exact science. A significant percentage of the people we’ve detained as suspected terrorists have turned out to be people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Should someone who may or may not be a terrorist and may or may not know anything useful be tortured based solely on intelligence “chatter” about an upcoming attack? This is much closer to the type of situations that actually present themselves in real life.
Second, Bauer-like scenarios offer the wrong lessons.
The grossly graphic torture scenes in Fox’s highly rated series “24″ are encouraging abuses in Iraq, a brigadier general and three top military and FBI interrogators claim.
The four flew to Los Angeles in November to meet with the staff of the show. They said it is hurting efforts to train recruits in effective interrogation techniques and is damaging the image of the U.S. around the world, according The New Yorker.
“I’d like them to stop,” Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the magazine.
Finnegan and others told the show’s creative team that the torture depicted in “24″ never works in real life, and by airing such scenes, they’re encouraging military personnel to act illegally.
“People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen,” said Tony Lagouranis, who was a U.S. Army interrogator in Iraq and attended the meeting. “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about ‘24′?” Finnegan said.
Apparently, it’s not just the kids — dangerous Supreme Court justices have come to the same conclusions.
It’s amazing how quickly the "rule of law" goes out the window with conservatives. Just as it was before the 2006 elections, it is the party of lawlessness, the party of arrogance, the party where rules don’t apply to them.
…and their supporters have lousy taste in music.
This is a send-up of the "Sopranos" final episode, starring (for real) Hillary and Bill:
It’s part of her silly "fun" campaign to have regular Americans (you know, people like you) help decide what her campaign song should be. The winner, as it turns out, is this Celine Dion song, "You and I".
For those of you wanting a reason to not vote for Hillary, I think we just found one.