Daily Nonsense

Randy Pausch star of the YouTube video Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, passed away on July 25th.  The 48 year old Carnegie Mellon University professor became an overnight sensation when his upbeat final lecture was posted on both YouTube and at the Carnegie Mellon web sites.

Today I came across a web page which had distilled a lot of that final lecture into 20 inspirational quotes.  Nowhere near a substitute for the one hour and sixteen minute lecture, the list does embody the underlying simplicity that marked Randy’s talk.

Use this in conjunction with the lecture, not in lieu of the lecture.

1. Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day, because there’s no other way to play it.
2. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
3. We don’t beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well.
4. It’s not about how to achieve your dreams, it’s all about leading your life. If you lead your life in a right way, karma will take care of itself. And dreams will come to you.
5. If I only had three words of advice, they would be, tell the truth. If I got three more words, I’d add, all the time.
6. The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!
7. Be good at something. It makes you valuable. Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.
8. Better to fail spectacularly than do something mediocre.
9. Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
10. When there’s an elephant in the room introduce him.
11. Be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.
12. Find the best in everybody. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting.
13. Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.
14. Don’t complain. Just work harder. That’s a picture of Jackie Robinson. It was in his contract not to complain, even when the fans spit on him.
15. Get a feedback loop and listen to it. Your feedback loop can be this dorky spreadsheet thing I did, or it can just be one great man who tells you what you need to hear. The hard part is the listening to it.
16. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.
17. If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it.
18. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.
19. I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones that I did accomplish.
20. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.

[Thanks, Be Life Savvy]

You can buy Randy’s book at Amazon.

Man, you gotta’ figure that when the Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN won’t hold a cell phone to his head there might just be something to that old rumor about tumors.  I wonder if Teddy Kennedy was a habitual cell phone abuser?  His particular type of tumor, a glioma, is featured in this scary story from a medical site!

Again, all I can say is YIKES!  (I wonder if that blue tooth headset is helping or contributing to the issue??)

Why Brain Surgeons Are Avoiding Cell Phones

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cell phones next to their ears. Dr. Keith Black, Dr. Vini Khurana, and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta all maintained that the practice could be unsafe.

Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cell phone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite the debate about cell phones and cancer.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, three large epidemiology studies since 2000 have shown no harmful effects. However, that the average period of phone use in those studies was about three years, which provides no information about the long-term exposures that could lead to cancer.

“What we’re seeing is suggestions in epidemiological studies that have looked at people using phones for 10 or more years,” says Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, an industry publication that tracks the research.

Sources:

New York Times June 3, 2008

[Thanks, Mercola.com]

Some of you might remember that I favored an Obama/Edwards ticket.  So much so in fact that I created their bumper sticker for them.

Well, an article that I stumbled across this morning seems to indicate that John Edwards might have changed his mind regarding that all important number 2 slot on the ticket.  The article was from Sunday and I’m not sure just how I missed this the first time around, but here it is below.

If there is any one Democratic ticket that is strong enough to crush McCain and his legions of darkness it’s this one.

Edwards not ruling out new VP bid under Obama

1 day ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said Sunday he would have to "seriously" consider another shot at the job if asked by White House hopeful Barack Obama.

But the former North Carolina senator, who unsuccessfully ran for the party’s nomination this year and was on John Kerry’s ticket in 2004, reaffirmed that he was not actively seeking to be Obama’s running mate.

Two prominent Republicans also denied they were in the hunt to be the VP candidate of Senator John McCain, Obama’s opponent in the November election.

Edwards told ABC News: "I’d take anything he asks me to think about seriously, but obviously this is something that I’ve done and it’s not a job I’m seeking."

The comments of the anti-poverty crusader appeared to leave open some wiggle room, after he had told Spanish newspaper Vanguardia earlier this month that "the vice presidency is not a position that I desire."

Obama has been stepping up a discreet search for a running mate, although the process has been hampered by the departure of his chief vetter, Jim Johnson, in a controversy over favorable mortgage terms.

Others tipped for the Democratic VP job include senators Joseph Biden and Jim Webb, along with Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.

Obama’s primary foe, Hillary Clinton, says she is not in the running.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the 37-year-old son of Indian immigrants, said media speculation touting him as a potential running mate for McCain was "flattering."

"The reality is, I’ve got the job that I want," the Republican rising star told CBS News. "We’ve got the chance to make once-in-a-lifetime changes and reforms in our state. I want to be a part of turning Louisiana around."

Other names in the Republican frame include former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who dropped out of the Republican White House race in February, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Obama spent a rare day with his family in Chicago, and addressed parishioners in the largely African-American Apostolic Church of God to demand greater responsibility from absentee fathers.

In a Father’s Day speech at the church, Obama also pressed for government action to help struggling parents, through tax breaks, job training and family-friendly employment laws.

The African-American Illinois senator amplified one of his campaign themes in condemning missing fathers who have "abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men."

"You and I know how true this is in the African-American community," Obama said, recapping government statistics showing more than half of all black children live in single-parent households.

Such children are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison, he said.

"And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it," said Obama, who dwelt on his own challenges growing up with a single mother from the age of two after his Kenyan father abandoned them.

In the week ahead, Obama and McCain are likely to rejoin battle over the economy as Americans reel from home foreclosures, rising gasoline prices and job losses.

John Boehner, the minority leader in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, acknowledged on CNN that Republicans have "a steep hill to climb" this election year.

But his party’s tax-cutting platform was "a much better prescription than what Barack Obama and the liberal Democrats want, which is higher taxes, bigger government in Washington and more control from Washington," Boehner said.

[Thanks, AFP & Google]

We took a little vacation these past few days.  We have some company in town and have been quite busy running around town, getting my daughter on early trains to Portland, canoeing in the Arboretum, and watching a close loss by the Mariners to the dastardly Red Sox.

This morning it was Rudy Giuliani (and good riddance!) this afternoon it’s John Edwards.  Returning to the 9th Ward, literally blocks away from where he originally announced his candidacy, John declared his bid for the Democratic nomination was at an end.

He plans to throw his support behind the candidate that can convince him that fighting poverty, in battered New Orleans as well as across America, is central to their campaign.  I think that Barack can effectively incorporate this poverty message into his already strong bid, and hopefully, get John Edwards as his running mate.  I believe that would be a fearsome  team!

Edwards ends 2008 presidential run
By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — Presidential hopeful John Edwards exited the race for president Wednesday in the same place he entered it — in an impoverished corner of New Orleans, amid signs of the ravaged city’s rebuilding.

Flanked by his family and half-built homes in the city’s Upper 9th Ward, Edwards said he was dropping out of the presidential race but stirred visions of a Democratic victory in November.

"It’s time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path," Edwards said. "We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What we do know is that our Democratic party will make history."

Edwards, dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue button-down shirt, didn’t offer specific reasons for ending his run. He was consistently third in polls and primaries behind Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Edwards said he had not yet decided whether to endorse another candidate and that the decision would hinge on whether the other candidates would embrace his anti-poverty and equality platform. Edwards said he had spoken with both Clinton and Obama and both had pledged to make ending poverty central to their presidential campaigns.

"I want to have very serious, very substantive conversations with them," he told reporters after his speech. "But this is a conversation that needs to be done privately."

Edwards’s anti-poverty platform didn’t win the widespread support he had hoped for. But it resonated loudly in New Orleans, whose economy and people were battered by the devastating floods unleashed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Edwards visited the city several times since the floods, promising to keep federal attention and funds flowing into the area. He declared his presidential candidacy blocks away in the Lower 9th Ward in December 2006. On Wednesday, he spoke on a stage in the muddy construction site of Musicians Village, an initiative conceived by Habitat for Humanity and New Orleans musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis. The village offers affordable housing to displaced musicians.

"I began my presidential campaign here to remind people that we as citizens and as a country have a moral responsibility to each other," Edwards said. "What we do together matters. We must do better."

The event, initially scheduled as a speech on poverty, drew about 250 supporters who shouldered a cold, cloudless day to attend and applauded frequently during his 11-minute speech. The attendees ranged from college students to retirees and some carried signs, such as "USA Don’t Forget NOLA," or donned T-shirts exclaiming, "John Edwards is Good!" and "FEMA Sucks."

"He cared about our city," said Barbara Adler, 72, a retiree, who attended with her husband, Rick Adler, 82. "He was going to do the things that haven’t been done here. He provided hope."

Laura Singer, an economist with the federal government, said she believed Edwards would help rebuild New Orleans. "He was making this city a priority," said Singer, 23, who used a lunch break from work to attend. "I’m surprised and incredibly disheartened by this."

After his speech, Edwards, along with wife Elizabeth and his children, chatted with community leaders, hugged residents and toured some of the half-built homes of Musicians Village.

"This is not the last time you’re going to see us in New Orleans," Elizabeth Edwards said, "though I suspect it’s the last time you’re going to see us with quite so many cameras around us."

[Thanks, USA Today]

Fred Thompson, more widely known for his stint on Law and Order than his record as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee, has quit the political arena in his latest bid for the White House.  Following yet another poor showing in the South Carolina primary, Fred ended his campaign as he started it.  With little fan-fare and not too many people noticing.

As it stands today, there are five candidates left in the race with no clear leader among them.  Pitiful crop this year.

Some articles:

• Thompson Ends Campaign for G.O.P. Nomination
• Fred Thompson Drops Presidential Bid
• Thompson abandons White House bid
• Fred Thompson Quits. Why Now?
• With Thompson Out, Who Benefits Most?

With a huge potential for degrading into a ‘he said, she said’ kindergarten type feud, Barack Obama has tried to quell the seemingly inevitable confrontation between his camp and that of the Clinton’s.  Referring to some mud-slinging that started due to a poorly crafted speech by Hillary giving props to Lyndon B. Johnson and not Martin Luther King for the advancement of civil rights issues, Obama states “We’ve got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness. I expect that other campaigns feel the same way.”

Read the N.Y. Times article:

Obama Tries to Stop the ‘Silliness’

By Jeff Zeleny

RENO, Nev. – As he campaigned in northern Nevada on Monday, Senator Barack Obama said he was concerned that a heated discussion of racial issues in the presidential campaign could divide the Democratic Party.

“I don’t want the campaign at this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this,” Mr. Obama told reporters at a news conference here. “We’ve got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness. I expect that other campaigns feel the same way.”

Mr. Obama was seeking to be seen as taking the high road in the ongoing feud between his campaign and that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. First, he conducted three back-to-back interviews with the major television networks here. Then, he hastily called a news conference at the Reno Events Center.

After speaking to hundreds of Nevada voters at a rally here, Mr. Obama urged Democratic voters not to become embroiled in racially-charged or motivated discussions.

“If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading or in some way is unfair, I will speak out forcefully against it,” he said. “I hope the other campaigns take the same approach.”

On a day that initially was devoted to speaking about the economy, he held a nine-minute news conference. Before taking questions, Mr. Obama mentioned his rivals by name and praised them.

“I think that I may disagree with Senator Clinton or Senator Edwards on how to get there, but we share the same goals. We’re all Democrats,” Mr. Obama said. “We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. We all believe that regardless of race or gender that people should have equal opportunities.”

He continued, saying: “They are good people, they are patriots. They are running because they think that they can move this country to a better place.”

Asked whether he believed either Mrs. Clinton or former President Bill Clinton had shown racial insensitivity in recent days, he said: “I don’t want to rehash that. I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues. I think they care about the African-American community and that they care about all Americans and they want to see equal rights and justice in this country.”

News conferences are a rarity for Mr. Obama. The last formal one – with chairs for reporters and a flag backdrop for him – was a month ago in Iowa. It was not immediately clear why he called one today, except to be seen as taking the high road heading into a key debate in Nevada on Tuesday with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards.

That is what our beloved nation needs to endure.  Just 53 more weeks.

I found an article over at the Huffington Post that breaks down what we can expect from the current administration and from whom.  Compelling reading and hopefully NOT the roadmap to disaster for our national parks and military reservations that it appears to be.

What’s Next? Part One

by Carl Pope

San Francisco, CA — There are fifty-three weeks left in the Bush era. What can we expect from this final year? What’s the White House, in particular, going to be up to on the way back to Crawford, Texas?

What was the center of Bush’s term — Karl Rove’s obsession with building a permanent majority — has collapsed, leaving behind a confused and divided Administration. Having a Republican in the White House in 2009 is not necessarily a high priority — Dick Cheney is not lusting to watch John McCain take the oath of office. The president wants to leave an international legacy in the Middle East, Treasury Secretary Paulson would like to straighten out the economy, and the vice-president simply wants to defend empire and presidential unilateralism.

So, environmentally, the most energized crew are the remaining junior shock troops of the right — folks who came as proteges of Gale Norton, or John Graham, or were members of Rove’s Politburo. These twenty- and thirty-somethings arrived as true believers, and remain as ideologues. Many of their ideas — drilling the Arctic, privatizing the civil service, selling off the public lands, getting rid of Social Security and Medicare, repealing the Clean Air Act, turning the National Parks into commercial amusement centers — have been discredited. They are acutely aware that if John McCain, Mike Huckabee, or God help them, a Democrat, wins the next election, their ideas are finished.

There’s no path that will get them to Rove’s political realignment. Since they don’t have his adult supervision to reign them in, they will be itching to create as many unpleasant realities on the ground as they can. I imagine there will be a raft of last minute regulatory changes designed to help Bush’s campaign contributors. But regulations can always be undone by the next Administration, as the Bush team understands very well. Other kinds of executive acts cannot so easily be reversed. Expect huge efforts to lease public lands for mineral and oil development, because leases are property rights, and expensive to buy back. Cheney and Gale Norton’s remaining acolytes at the Department of the Interior are unlikely to get Congress to approve the funding for the coal companies that they want, so instead they will strive to lock in thirty year Department of Defense purchase contracts for coal-to-liquids as a means of ensuring irrevocable subsidies for Peabody Coal.

The federal government remains the enemy. In the last seven years, there has been an enormous erosion of the government’s sheer capacity — its ability to measure things, develop new knowledge, enforce the rules, shape the economy, deliver services, protect the public. EPA’s current administrator has no evident desire to carry out the regulatory responsibilities he has sworn to "faithfully execute" — but even if Steve Johnson woke up tomorrow and wanted EPA to start a comprehensive program to catch up on its backlog of public health decisions ,the agency no longer has the staff depth to do so. It’s not clear how much more damage the next year can yield. After all, public-minded civil servants who have held on this long are unlikely to walk out the door in the last few months, and Congress, through the budget, is already undoing some of the more obvious efforts to destroy government competence and assets — the EPA regional libraries, for example, are being reopened, rural schools got funded, and the cutely titled programs to privatize the Park Service have been shut down.

The other driving desire of the myrmidons of the reckless right will be to ensure that the business of actually governing — the kinds of things that worry Treasury Secretary Paulson, Interior Secretary Kempthorne and Secretary of State Rice — doesn’t get in the way of their ideological legacy. At the UN Global Warming Conference in Bali, it was clear that there were forces inside the Administration that wanted America to rejoin the world, and they were stalemated. With the economy teetering, there will be talk of bipartisanship, but the president will have to take sides against Cheney if he wants anything to really happen, because cooperating with Congress would threaten Cheney’s sense of the imperial. Johnson’s recent decision, for example, to deny California’s clean car standards makes almost no policy or political sense — the California rules are roughly consistent with what Bush had said he wanted, and California Governor Schwarzenegger, who was slapped down by Johnson, will be crucial in this year’s election, but it appealed to the administration as one more way of showing that the Executive is still in charge.

As for the long-term problems facing the nation — fire policy in the West, hurricanes and flooding on the coasts, water supply almost everywhere — Republican governors and perhaps the Republican presidential candidates may be incubating some new approaches and reaching out to their Democratic colleagues. But when the White House’s James Connaughton told the Washington Post, in Bali, that global warming could wait for the next Administration, he might as well have been speaking about any other long-range challenge facing America. What remains of Rove’s White House is a wrecking crew. Put up the storm shutters.

[Thanks, Huffington Post]

Female voters spurn Clinton’s advance

Elana Schor in Washington
Saturday January 5, 2008
The Guardian

Hillary Clinton has poured time and money into courting female voters. But, despite emotional appearances in Iowa beside her mother and her daughter, the former first lady won only 30% of women voters in the caucus to Barack Obama’s 35%.

The female swing to Obama was one of many shocks from surveys of Iowa caucus-goers conducted for the Associated Press and US television networks. Clinton, Obama and John Edwards have sparred for months over who would be the most electable in November against the Republican nominee, but only one of every 10 Democrats ranked that their top concern.

About half of Iowa Democrats said they chose the candidate who best represented change. Obama, with his message of unity and "post-partisan" politics, took just over half those voters. Clinton won over those who sought experience, while Edwards was seen as caring about ordinary people.

The Joe Public candidate on the Republican side, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, coasted to victory over Mitt Romney on the strength of Iowans who identified as very conservative. A former Baptist minister, Huckabee also took almost half of evangelical Christians and most Republicans who wanted a candidate with similar religious beliefs.

Religious voters are far less of a factor in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. Six in 10 Iowa Republicans identified themselves as born-again or evangelical, but only two in 10 New Hampshire Republicans said the same.

[Thanks, Guardian]

Remember how Clinton was ahead of Obama this morning by that crazy 1 percent?  Well the tables have turned this afternoon!  (It’s all still statistically insignificant, remember that!)  Obama has now surged ahead of Clinton.  A poll today had Barack at 34% and Hillary at 33%. 

The tables are turning!

Polls: Obama, McCain hold edge in New Hampshire
Democrat John Edwards tells NBC he’s in White House race for the long haul

By Kate Gibson, MarketWatch
Last update: 1:25 p.m. EST Jan. 6, 2008

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) – With just two days to go before New Hampshire’s primary, two polls of voters in the state have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a virtual dead heat, while John McCain appears to be edging ahead of Mitt Romney.

Iowa caucus winner Obama and Clinton are backed by 33% of Democratic primary voters in the poll conducted by CNN and WMUR by the University of New Hampshire.

A separate survey conducted for the Concord Monitor by Research 2000 had 34% of likely Democratic primary voters opting for Sen. Obama, D-IL, and 33% favoring Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y.

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards netted 20% in the CNN/WMUR poll, while the Concord Monitor poll had Edwards garnering 23% of likely Democratic voters.

On the GOP side, Sen. McCain was backed by 35% of likely Republican voters, while Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was backed by 29% in the Concord Monitor survey, with Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee selected by 13%, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 8%.

The CNN/WMUR survey offered similar results, with 33% backing Sen. McCain of Arizona, and 27% supporting Romney. Huckabee was backed by 11%, with the former Arkansas governor trailing former mayor Giuliani, who garnered 14%.

Sunday’s televised news shows featured some, but not all, of the front-runners, with Edwards telling ABC that he’s in the race for the long haul. "I am in this through the convention and to the White House," Edwards told ABC’s ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos.’

Appearing on the same show after Edwards, Huckabee predicted he would do "better-than-expected in New Hampshire," and win upcoming contests in South Carolina and Florida.

On NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ McCain reiterated past statements that he would not run as an independent should his latest bid for his party’s nomination falter.

[Thanks, MarketWatch]

You’ve already heard it a hundred times if you watch TV, but here it is again, New Hampshire has more voters registered as Independent than either Democrats or Republicans.  What will that mean in the upcoming election?  It will probably mean a real freedom of choice for the residents of The Granite State.

For the Democrats, this means that Hillary’s commanding 6 point lead in the polls has been whittled down to a 1 point lead.  1 percentage point is statistically insignificant in a business where the error rate is considered to be 3.4 percent.  So the current value of 31 percent for Hillary could actually be be anywhere from 27.6 to 35.4 percent.  While the 30 percent of the vote for Obama could actually be somewhere between 26.6 to 34.4 percent.  What I’m trying to say here is that there’s no telling at this stage of the game.

The one thing that I’m 100% sure of is that Hillary has lost an enormous amount of ground to Obama and it’s getting kind of late to be able to pick that back up, especially since her ’supporters’ don’t want here to come off message and try to appeal to a more diverse group of voters.

Clinton, Obama in New Hampshire dead heat

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama has pulled into a virtual dead heat with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire two days before the state’s presidential nominating contest, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday.

Republican rivals Mitt Romney and John McCain are also essentially deadlocked as the White House races in both parties tightened ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

About half of the polling in the four-day tracking survey was conducted after the Iowa caucuses last Thursday, when Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee sailed to easy wins in the opening test of the U.S. presidential campaign.

Obama, an Illinois senator vying to be the first black president in U.S. history, pulled within one point of Clinton in the state’s Democratic race — a statistically insignificant lead. The poll in both races had a 3.4 percentage point margin of error.

[Thanks, Reuters]

Additional Reading:

Will Anyone Notice Wyoming Caucuses?
Romney wins in Wyoming
At Debate, Two Rivals Go After Defiant Clinton
In This Race, Independents Are the Prize

I read this article and the only thing that came to my mind was that Bush and Cheney want to have more troops on the ground in Pakistan so that their eventual violent overthrow of that government will go a little easier that Iraq has.

I’m pretty sure that these same people don’t sit around discussing the eventual placement of troops in Great Britain or Spain.

U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

By STEVEN LEE MYERS, DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.

Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.

[Thanks, NYTimes]

I found this posted out on the Interwebs today. I think it’s brilliant although you need to put the visuals and audio track with it to get the full effect. Watch the opening credits of Trainspotting at YouTube. Click -> HERE.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.

Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?

In a move that brings a tear of joy to my eye, the State of New Jersey Senate approved a measure which would REQUIRE the state’s electors to actually vote based on the national popular vote winner.

The electoral college is part of a system of indirect elements in the process of electing the president.  In practice, this nation has enjoyed the results of a faulty system since the Presidential Election of 2000 when Democratic candidate Al Gore won the plurality of the national vote, but failed to win the majority of the Electoral College.  Thanks a lot…..

N.J. lawmakers OK Electoral College move

Friday, January 4, 2008

By MICHAEL RISPOLI
Gannett State Bureau

TRENTON

On the same day the presidential race kicked off with the Iowa caucuses, the state Senate gave final legislative approval to adding New Jersey to an interstate compact to skirt the Electoral College by requiring the state’s electors to cast their vote for president and vice president based on the national popular vote winner.

The compact might never take effect, and electors chosen this year will still back the winner in New Jersey.

The legislation, passed 21-12, in effect circumvents the Constitution without an amendment by changing the way presidents are elected. The bill, passed by the Assembly in December, now heads to Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who is expected to sign it.

Supporters of the bill say the current system disenfranchises voters because presidential candidates ignore smaller states or states where one political party has a clear advantage.

Chris Pearson, who sits on the board of directors for National Popular Vote, a group pushing for the legislation, said New Jersey voters are treated "like an ATM machine" because candidates come to the state to raise funds but rarely address the needs of the state’s voters.

"We sit on the sidelines and we watch a few states receive all the attention," said Pearson, who also is a member of the Vermont state Legislature. "Every American should have an equal say in the process."

New Jersey would join Maryland as the only states signed onto the compact. The agreement would take effect only if enough states come aboard to produce 270 of the 538 votes currently needed decide a presidential win — making it highly unlikely the agreement would affect this year’s presidential election.

Although Electoral College reforms may be needed, the interstate compact is "a disservice to representative government," said Sen. Joseph Kyrillos Jr., R-Monmouth.

"It is inexplicable to me that we would punt away our ability to have the people of New Jersey represented how they vote on the general election day," Kyrillos said.

Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance, R-Hunterdon, said if the states want to change the Electoral College, it "should be done in the appropriate manner" by amending the Constitution.

Only four times since the Electoral College was established in 1789 has the winner of the popular vote not won the presidency. The most recent was 2000, when George W. Bush won the election despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore.

Action on the bill was delayed in December when four Democratic senators — all members of the New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus and from North Jersey — held their votes because caucus chairman Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, wanted to further examine the potential impact the agreement would have on black voters.

"We don’t see it being extremely harmful for us," said Rice, who was absent for the vote. The other senators who did not vote in December voted in favor.

Reach Michael Rispoli at mrispol@gannett.com

[Thanks, Courier Post Online]

On December 29th, my radio station of choice, KEXP, posted their top 90.3 albums of 2007.  {KEXP is 90.3 MHz on your radio dial here in Seattle}  Appearing on that list are a couple of very exciting bands that I had originally discovered listening to the ‘John in the Morning’ show as I walked to work.

Coming in at number 8 are The Shins with Wincing The Night Away, number 12 is Beirut with The Flying Club Cup, number 23 is Andrew Bird with Armchair Apocrypha, and number 41 is The Avett Brothers with Emotionalism. All of these artists made my top 20 for the year 2007.

KEXP’s full list can be found HERE.

You can actually stream this list from the KEXP web site HERE.

As soon as Santa recovers from his globe-spanning exertions and starts checking up on the news, he’s gonna’ be pissed!  Microsoft has been granted a patent on wishlists that go beyond a single store.  If little Johnny wants a Tonka from Amazon and an iPod from the Apple Store, he can’t ask Santa for them in the same Christmas list.  Kinda’ bites for little Johnny, doesn’t it?

Microsoft Patents Making A List For Santa

from the but-not-checking-it-twice dept

theodp writes "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But making a list for him may now constitute patent infringement. USPTO officials were busy over the holidays wrapping up the paperwork to grant Microsoft its wish for a patent on the Wish List, which was issued to the software giant on New Year’s Day." Admittedly, the actual patent goes into a bit more detail than theodp’s summary. It involves making a wishlist that goes beyond just a single store, which can include categories rather than just products and which also pulls in additional shopping info. Even with that additional info, it’s difficult to see why this is deserving of a patent, as it really just seems to be combining a bunch of things that were easily done before online — and we had thought that the Patent Office had issued new guidelines, as per the Supreme Court’s ruling, to avoid such combinations.

Thanks, Techdirt]

Would a federal prosecutor from Connecticut qualify as an ‘outsider’?  Doesn’t a federal prosecutor from Connecticut frikkin’ WORK FOR Mukasey?  Or am I missing something here?

I wonder exactly what kind of abilities Deputy United States Attorney John H. Durham brings to the table in a case that is as potentially explosive as this one.  Is he a staunch, card carrying Aryan Republican party brown-noser?  Will Mukasey, and more importantly Bush and Cheney, ever have cause to regret this decision?  I’ll bet not!

Justice Department opens criminal investigation over CIA tapes

By MATT APUZZO Associated Press Writer
Article Last Updated: 01/02/2008 11:39:31 AM PST

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case.

The CIA acknowledged last month that it destroyed videos of officers using tough interrogation methods while questioning two al-Qaida suspects. The acknowledgment sparked a congressional inquiry and a preliminary investigation by Justice.

"The Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation," Mukasey said in a statement released Wednesday.

Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to oversee the case.

[Thanks, InsideBayArea]

In keeping with my new-found decision to allow other, more prolific and articulate writers to comment on the state of the administration I give you thins:

A LONG-AWAITED NEW YEAR

Wednesday, January 02, 2008
David Sarasohn

The question began to pop up early, maybe in 2005, on bumper stickers and T-shirts and various items offered on liberal Web sites: Is it 2008 yet?

The question, so thin and forlorn at the beginning, has become ever more pressing in the years since. Back in 2005, it was hard to imagine that we would enter 2008 on these particular news cycles.

Today’s front page story is congressional outrage over the CIA destroying tapes of interrogations, despite explicit instructions — and laws — saying that it shouldn’t do so. People supposed to be in charge of the CIA — like the agency director at the time, and the president — insist they had nothing to do with the decision.

The concern isn’t, of course, about the tapes, which hardly anyone would have had the security clearance to see. The concern is about the widespread certainty that the tapes showed American agents doing things that just about anyone would describe as torture, despite solemn insistences that the United States doesn’t torture people.

Of course, back in 2005 we wouldn’t have imagined ourselves in an extended national discussion over waterboarding — forcing water into a prisoner’s lungs to make him think he’s drowning — which Sen. John McCain points out has been considered torture for centuries, but on which our new attorney general told senators he didn’t have any real legal clarity.

(That was an advance over Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who explained on national television about waterboarding, "There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke.")

Or that after the administration spent a year failing to defeat the McCain amendment banning cruel or degrading treatment, the White House would respond to the amendment’s becoming law with a signing statement declaring, "The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief."

In other words, glub, glub.

In 2005, Americans thought Attorney General John Ashcroft had been uniquely dangerous to civil liberties. Since then, we’ve learned that compared to his successor, Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft was an ACLU poster boy. In fact, we learned that after Justice Department lawyers had refused to approve White House demands for extended warrantless surveillance, Gonzales went to Ashcroft’s hospital room to get him to overrule his lawyers, and Ashcroft threw him out.

It turned out Ashcroft was more constitutionally sensitive while under sedation than Gonzales was while fully alert. Of course, we don’t know exactly the extent of his alertness, since Gonzales repeatedly told Congress he doesn’t remember much about his time as attorney general — a state of grace that the rest of us can only envy.

But only in the past two years did we learn how extensively the administration has viewed its authority to listen in on Americans’ phone conversations, notably conversations with one party out of the country — despite the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Entering 2008, the Senate is tied up over the renewal of FISA. There’s some question about when, if the law says you need a court order to tap a telephone, you actually need a court order to tap a telephone. The legislation, which the White House says is vital for our protection, is being held up largely by the administration’s insistence that it include immunity for telephone companies that seem to have illegally provided the government with information about their customers.

Of course, if the White House doesn’t get what it wants from Congress, it can always issue a quiet signing statement that it’s not actually bound by any laws it doesn’t like. Since 2005, we’ve learned from the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage that the Bush White House has issued hundreds of these, declaring its immunity from any legislation that might be in its way.

Since the time when Americans began asking bleakly if it was 2008 yet, all kinds of news has intensified interest in the calendar. So now there’s a revised question, adjusted for the New Year and for all the things that have happened — or been revealed — since the initial question first came up:

It’s 2008.

Do you know where your government is?

David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or davidsarasohn@news.oregonian.com.

[Thanks, Oregonian]

Far be it for any candidate to run solely upon his or her merits.  That would be unthinkable in this day and age.  With instantaneous mass communications, candidates can get their message out to more voters in less time.  The voter today is besieged with an over abundance of information not only about the candidate’s  ‘platform d’ jour’, but why you shouldn’t vote for the other guy.

With a legacy strengthened by Karl Rove and his bag of dirty tricks, the candidates have started sniping their opponents in Iowa.  And from my point of view, the whole thing sucks.  Don’t bother trying to tell my why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy, tell me why I should vote for YOU!

The voter today is very confused, they have too much information and not enough time to process the deluge.  When you add the seemingly unlimited number of presidential hopefuls, the disgust that so many people have for the state of the union today, and the ambiguity of some of the messages sent by the various candidates, both Democratic and Republican, I think that this election is going to be even screwier than the last two.  We can only hope that the person with the popular vote actually gets elected this year!

The gloves come off in ‘08 political ads

BY HELEN KENNEDY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, January 2nd 2008, 4:00 AM

DES MOINES – Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men is so last week – at least when it comes to political attacks in Iowa.

"Santa Obama" is shown dumping coal into stockings hung by a roaring fireplace in an ad that accuses him of sending jobs overseas, increasing credit card rates and giving billions to polluters. The unusual Noel attack ad – paid for by an independent group with ties to John Edwards – is quite a departure from the warm ‘n’ fuzzy holiday spots the candidates aired over Christmas.

But the gloves are off now, and with a day to go to the crucial caucuses, the airwaves are choked with commercials for the leading candidates.

"Enough is enough," Obama says in one of his ads.

No kidding. Analysts say the candidates spent nearly $34 million on advertising heading into the Iowa caucuses – compared with $10 million four years ago – and the TV frenzy has gone wall-to-wall in the final days.

There’s a Hillary Clinton ad with inspiring West Wing-style music promising she will "solve our problems." There’s Obama whipping up a crowd, proclaiming, "Our moment is now."

Mike Huckabee is talking about God and the Founding Fathers, while Mitt Romney calls Huckabee soft on illegal immigrants and murderers.

Then there’s Huckabee’s scathing ad attacking Romney that he pulled before it hit the airwaves – but still showed to reporters.

Adding to the deluge, Clinton and Obama have bought two minutes of TV time tonight to speak directly to Iowans before the caucuses, while Edwards will air a one-minute ad tonight and tomorrow.

It’s all a blur. With American flags. "I don’t recall that we’ve had this many candidates before and I guess they all want to get on TV," said Democrat Ed Kail, 57, of Humbolt, Iowa, who said he ignores the din.

"I don’t pick my candidate based on ads," he said. "I’ve met all the candidates now, on both sides."

The same group behind the Santa Obama ad also whacks Clinton, portraying her as a flimsy cardboard cutout falling over at the slightest sneer from Rudy Giuliani.

In general, Iowans are pretty stoic about the ads, reserving their ire for the flood of negative correspondence clogging mailboxes and the endless phone calls.

"I had one automated call from one campaign, and then the call waiting kicked in and it was another campaign on the line. I just hung up on both of them," said Cheryl Watson, 58, a homemaker from Anita, Iowa. "The calls are so much worse than the ads on TV."

[Thanks, NYDailyNews]