How have Americans benefited from all this war? How have the Chinese suffered these 20 years by not having been in on the action?
Excellent questions, for which I have yet to hear answers.
February 29th, 2012 at 07:56am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Afghanistan,Foreign Policy,Iraq,Republicans,WarAmazing what you can do with just 12,000 sheets of construction paper…
(h/t Laughing Squid)
February 27th, 2012 at 07:24pm Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingProbably my favorite Sparks song:
February 27th, 2012 at 11:27am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingApparently wanting everyone to have the benefits of a college education is the height of snobbery now. I’m sure Rick Santorum’s anti-sex, anti-education message would go over really well in a general election.
February 27th, 2012 at 07:30am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Education,Elections,Politics,Republicans,WankersObama’s former budget director Peter Orszag accidentally spills the beans:
A weak labor market, like the one we’ve experienced since the financial crisis in 2008, imposes enormous stress on people. Given the added anxiety created by a weak economy, you might think life expectancy would decline. Oddly, though, during recessions, exactly the opposite tends to happen: Life expectancy rises.
Now we know: Obama’s stimulus was actually a stealth death panel! Why does Obama hate Grandma so?
February 23rd, 2012 at 07:07am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Economy,ObamaAh, the delightful Chris Christie. Such a breath of fresh air:
During a discussion with CNN’s Piers Morgan about tax rates, Christie made it known that he’s just about had it with Buffett, the world-famous investor who lent his name to a proposed tax hike on the rich.
“He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie said. “I’m tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the ability to write a check — go ahead and write it.”
So… in other words, Warren Buffett should give up more of his money to pay the freight for less-wealthy individuals who don’t want to contribute their fair share? Isn’t that exactly the sort of thing Republicans are always complaining about lower down on the income scale?
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:27am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Politics,Republicans,Taxes,WankersFirst it was former House Speaker and K Street lobbyist historian Newt Gingrich calling himself a Washington outsider, now it’s Rick Santorum:
Rick Santorum told a crowd of Arizona Republicans today that he was “an outsider when he was inside” Washington, arguing he fought corruption and wasteful spending during his 16 years in Congress.
(…)
Santorum said that despite his time serving both in the House and Senate, he was never part of the Washington establishment.
“When we came to Congress, we came and we shook things up to its very core,” Santorum said about himself and former Rep. Frank Riggs, who now serves as the campaign’s Arizona state chairman.
From Santorum’s own campaign website, right before his list of legislative accomplishments:
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 at the age of 32, and from 1995 to 2007, served in the US Senate. In 2000, he was elected by his peers to the position of Senate Republican Conference Chairman.
The number three leadership position in the Senate Republican caucus doesn’t sound very “outsider” to me, but what do I know.
February 22nd, 2012 at 07:25am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Elections,Politics,Republicans,WankersHere’s an interesting little tidbit from Engadget:
Well, it turns out Ubuntu now runs on multi-core Android devices and your handset can grant a full desktop experience when docked with a display and a keyboard. It’s a customized version of Ubuntu that plays nice with Android, the two OS’s sharing data and services while running simultaneously. So, you can still access telephony and texts from the Ubuntu environment while enjoying all the computing capabilities it has to offer, including: Ubuntu TV, virtualization tools for running Windows applications, desktop web browsers, and Ubuntu apps built for ARM. It isn’t clear exactly what hardware you’ll need to run Ubuntu on a handset, but Canonical has said it works on multi-core devices with HDMI and USB connections.
As the owner of a multi-core Android device, this certainly piques my interest, but other than the Oh Cool! factor, being able to connect my phone up to a keyboard and monitor doesn’t really buy me much unless it’s in the form of one of those Atrix-style laptop/docking stations. Which means that this opens up a whole new market for third-party manufacturers to start making generic docking stations that any multi-core Android phone can use.
I don’t know if they necessarily will, but they can. I’m pretty sure a bunch will make a go of it, but I can’t predict how successful they’ll be. I know I would definitely be interested in being able to turn my phone into a netbook running a full-fledged (or close to it) desktop OS which can access the internet from pretty much anywhere.
It’s a funny thing: It used to be that smartphones ran scaled-down mobile OSes because they had tiny displays and nowhere near enough power to run a desktop OS. But now modern smartphones have dual (and soon quad) core processors, and even GPUs, that give them more than enough power to run a desktop OS. They just don’t have the screen real estate to display it (or in most cases, a keyboard to interact with it). With a bit more RAM, they could probably even run Windows 7.
So if you have a phone with netbook-class internals (or better), then why not give it the ability to actually be a netbook when the occasion arises? If my phone yearns to spread out and become a PC every once in a while, then who am I to deny it?
February 21st, 2012 at 06:33pm Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Coolness,TechnologyThis is simultaneously horrifying and awesome.
Wow. Just… wow.
4 comments February 20th, 2012 at 11:11am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingMore Berkeley industrial grunge.
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February 17th, 2012 at 11:29am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingIf only progressives could be as humble as conservatives, who are always so willing to admit that they don’t have all the answers, especially when spouting lies and outright nonsense.
I guess this is why only Democratic governments produce unintended consequences like endless military quagmires, increased Muslim extremism, and economic collapses.
February 17th, 2012 at 07:19am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Economy,Media,Politics,Republicans,WankersPerhaps Mitt is looking past the primaries and ahead to the general election, when being the NewsMax/Fox News/Weekly Standard candidate is just maybe not as great an asset as they think it is.
February 16th, 2012 at 07:31am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Elections,Media,Politics,Republicans,RomneyShorter Rick Santorum: I’m not familiar with that quote because I put my wife to work writing the chapter about how women shouldn’t work.
February 14th, 2012 at 07:58am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Politics,Republicans,Sexism,WankersSparks is (are?) just terribly under-appreciated.
February 13th, 2012 at 11:27am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingIf the anti-taxes, anti-spending conservatives can tell pro-tax billionaires to voluntarily pay the government more money, then surely we can tell them to voluntarily forgo all the government benefits they’re sucking up, right?
February 13th, 2012 at 07:54am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Politics,Republicans,Taxes,WankersThis week’s quote is from one of the Coen Brothers’ best films (which is saying something), Miller’s Crossing:
He’s just a cheap political boss with more hair tonic than brains.
And, of course, there’ll be other people’s porcupines…
Teddy is awesome.
February 10th, 2012 at 08:16am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Friday Quote & Cat BloggingObamacare shill Jonathan Gruber, on Bell Curve author Charles Murray’s latest book about the moral decay of working class white America:
Charles Murray took the economic concept of moral hazard – the concept that if you reward people for bad behaviour then they behave badly – and turned it into prose. Reading the book moved me a notch to the right. It posed a challenge to liberals – to get more rigorous in our analysis. It showed the simple facts didn’t look so good for us and that we needed to address questions like, “Is welfare causing women to become single mothers?” Murray really challenged the way I thought.
What about questions like “Are bailouts and deregulation causing corporations to become more reckless and criminal?” Or “Are lax campaign finance laws giving politicians more incentive to betray their constituents than to represent them?”
February 8th, 2012 at 07:23am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Corruption/Cronyism,Economy,WankersConclusive proof that the 1980s were the ultimate pinnacle of American civilization.
Also, New York Giants Superbowl champs WHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
February 6th, 2012 at 11:31am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Monday Media BloggingMore grungy industrial goodness.
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February 6th, 2012 at 07:06am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: PhotobloggingThis week’s quote is from Overnight Delivery, which I have absolutely no recollection of watching…
And when I went home, I looked up the word “remiss.” That’s when I knew I was in love.
And, of course, there’ll be other people’s throwing cats…
Fetch: You’re doin’ it wrong.
February 3rd, 2012 at 07:21am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Friday Quote & Cat BloggingWell, this should certainly help Mitt with his image as an uncaring 1% patrician…
“I’m in this race because I care about Americans,” Romney told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning after his resounding victory in Florida on Tuesday. “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”
“I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”
It’s kinda hard to believe that he has any intention of fixing the poor’s safety net if he’s not concerned about them. Not to mention the fact that he is, well, a Republican, and cutting up the safety net is kind of what they do.
Also apparently the very poor are not the heart of America, and are not struggling. (True, he says the very rich aren’t the heart of America either, but unlike the poor they have our entire political system at their beck and call, so I think they’ll be okay.)
February 2nd, 2012 at 07:26am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Economy,Politics,Republicans,Romney,WankersWhy is it that when it comes to spending, no cut is too petty or small for Republicans, yet when it comes to taxes, any increase that doesn’t instantly wipe out the deficit in one stroke isn’t worth the bother?
February 1st, 2012 at 11:23am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Republicans,Taxes,WankersThis little snippet jumped out at me from a story about how Republicans hate Obama’s decision to defer a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline because he hates America:
Jim Oddie, a scuba instructor… ticked off the reasons Obama might have nixed the pipeline. “He doesn’t play for our team,” he said. “He wasn’t raised in the mainland of the United States. He doesn’t think America is exceptional. Come on—he grew up in Hawaii in 1961 when it had been a state for less than two years. Spent time in Indonesia.”
I wonder if this guy came out with this himself, or if these are the new talking points circulating around in right-wing Tea Party-land. They grudgingly admit that yeah, Obama was born in the US, but it doesn’t really count because Hawaii is barely part of America, and he spent time in another country!
Unlike full-on birtherism, this narrative has the virtue of being factually correct, but it still arrives at the same ridiculous place. I’m sure the many middle-aged Hawaiians (and probably Alaskans) will be surprised to hear that they’re not really Americans because they weren’t “raised in the mainland”.
February 1st, 2012 at 07:23am Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Obama,Republicans,Wankers
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