4.17.2010

11 updates!

Woohoo. I guess it's been a while since I booted up Vista.

Oh well, there goes the rest of the afternoon.


But not in Texas schools

...as usual, Thomas Jefferson, whose birthday we celebrate this week, had it right. Back in 1816, he wrote, "I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

link: Bill Moyers: Crocodile Tears on Wall Street


OK, but don't forget Nazi

"Socialized health care" is on its way. The "socialist agenda" is taking over America. And best of all, Barack Obama, a "committed socialist ideologue," is in the Oval Office.

Billy Wharton, co-chair of the Socialist Party USA, sees no reason to celebrate. He's seen people with bumper stickers and placards that call Obama a socialist, and he has a message for them: Obama isn't a socialist. He's not even a liberal.

link: Ask the card-carrying socialists: Is Obama one of them? - CNN.com

"To be honest," says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, "the most socialist candidate in the 2008 election was Sarah Palin."


Now poorcare

Health insurers are starting to sell policies that largely bar consumers from receiving medical care at popular but expensive hospitals such as Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s — a once radical idea that is gaining traction as a way to control soaring health care costs.

link: Some health networks drop elite hospitals - The Boston Globe


4.15.2010

The end of civilization has arrived

SAN FRANCISCO — If you tweet this, it will be in the Library of Congress, which said Tuesday it has acquired every public tweet since Twitter's service started four years ago.

The Library of Congress put it simply today in its own tweet, "Library acquires ENTIRE Twitter archive. ALL tweets."

link: Library of Congress to archive all public Twitter tweets - USATODAY.com

Really. This time I mean it. No joke.


4.14.2010

I'm just wondering...

BOSTON – The cross-country Tea Party Express tour built toward a climax Wednesday with a rally steeped in anti-tax symbolism and an exhortation from one of the few politicians it has embraced, Sarah Palin.

link: Palin rallies tea partiers with anti-tax message - Yahoo! News

...how it is that all these anti-tax protesters keep holding their anti-tax protests in public parks.

Rent a room.


And there was a real drug store across the street

The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly proudly and purposefully limited what it would stock on its shelves. But it turns out that no birth control pills, no condoms, no porn, no tobacco and even no makeup added up to one thing:

No customers.

link: Petula Dvorak - Virginia pharmacy had plenty of moral convictions, few clients


Ooops, didn't work

An Army doc who refuses to go to Afghanistan until President Obama produces a birth certificate will face court-martial.

link: 'Birther' Lt. Col. Terry Lakin to be court-martialed for refusing order to deploy to Afghanistan


One Hand, One Vote

Photo: Phil Compton

4.12.2010

You have to ask?

Are the Cubs doomed already?

link: Chicago Sun-Times


How to speak Wisconsin

Miss Pronouncer: Hear how to pronounce; The Wisconsin pronunciation guide for cities, counties, Indians & lawmakers

And BTW I went to a summer camp in Oconomowoc once (or twice) so I got that one without even trying.


Let's let bygones be bygones says Vatican, hopefully

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has finally made peace with the Beatles, saying their drug use, "dissolute" lives and even the claim that the band was bigger than Jesus are all in the past — while their music lives on.

link: Vatican makes peace with Beatles after 40 years - Yahoo! News


In San Francisco, "reality tourism"

“We offer a kind of grittiness you can’t find much anymore,” said Randy Shaw, a longtime San Francisco housing advocate and a driving force behind the idea of Tenderloin tourism. “And what is grittier than the Tenderloin?” ...

Mr. Shaw, who plans to open a $3 million museum in the Cadillac, believes that baby boomer music fans — and particularly baby boomer Deadheads — will be a core demographic for the Tenderloin, as well as those interested in the neighborhood’s “rich vice history,” which includes gambling dens, speakeasies and pornographic-movie houses.

“Most of which are gone,” the museum’s brochure notes, almost sadly.

link: San Francisco’s Unlikely Tourist Stop - The Tenderloin - NYTimes.com


No fooling around in New York

American Memory Digital Item Display - 98518675


From the Arcata police log

• Wednesday, March 3 3:14 a.m. One can only imagine the nature of the festivities in progress at the five-person “party” in Room 425 at the cheapest of cheap motels in Valley West. A fairly impressive number of police officers interrupted their game of charades or Perquackey or whatever pastimes they had been engaged in and hung around while they cleared the area.

link: She Was A Wrong-Fool Woman In a Black Dress – April 4, 2010 | The Arcata Eye


4.11.2010