We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget inquiry is coming to us from Garren, who isn’t ashamed of being picky about his next laptop. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com . ” I’m a college student looking for a new laptop, but almost all of my media I receive digitally. I’m looking for a laptop, not a netbook, without an optical drive, and budget sensitive. The optical drive will just be a waste of space, when I can have thinner laptop. What’s out there? ” Any of you digital junkies care to chime in? If so, comments are welcoming one and all down below. Ask Engadget: best full-size laptop without an optical drive? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 May 2011 22:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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enlarge Credit: Carl Mydans When the rains came. Click here to view this media With the news the past several days about the epic floods going on throughout the area of the Mississippi River, and reports citing this as the worst flooding since the Great Flood of 1937 , I thought it would be fitting to run those on-the-scene reports, some of the first of their kind in broadcast history, during the great Ohio and Mississippi River Floods from January 23-25, 1937. The damage and loss of life was no doubt greater in 1937 than it is today, mostly because our warning systems are a lot more sophisticated now than they were in 1937. But the destruction loss and urgency of the moment are very much the same. Here is a one hour rundown of the Great Flood as it happened between January 23rd and 25th 1937 via various NBC Red and Blue Network Radio outlets in Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee. History, as you’ve noticed, repeats and repeats often.
Continue reading …John King and Ed Gillespie Ignore That Voters Might Care What Ended Gingrich’s First Two Marriages
May 13, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media CNN’s John King talked to former Bushie and Republican operative Ed Gillespie about whether we should actually take flame thrower Newt Gingrich’s presidential run seriously and they focused in on whether it might bother voters that he’s been married three times. What they failed to note is that the details of his two divorces and how that somehow squares with him being a so-called “Christian conservative” are completely at odds with each other and that hypocrisy might bother voters quite a bit more than the number of marriages he’s had. The HuffPo laid out a timeline of Gingrich’s divorces and affairs here — Newt Gingrich: Marriages, Divorces, Affairs Timeline . And our corporate media continues to ignore that he left one of his wives while she was recovering from cancer surgery. So much for those family values . And as John wrote about here earlier this year, David Frum criticized Gingrich for not just dumping one sick wife, but two . Fox “News” can attempt to clean up Gingrich’s image all they want along with some of their fellow enablers in our corporate media as CNN did here, but I don’t think there’s enough lipstick out there to cover up this pig. Gingrich is nothing but a huge flaming hypocrite who says inflammatory things every chance he gets and I don’t think he’s any more a serious candidate for president than Trump was. Transcript via CNN : KING: We asked about Newt Gingrich, opinion of Newt Gingrich in our poll — 30 percent favorable, 44 percent unfavorable, 26 percent, unsure. A 44 percent unfavorable is not a good place to start a campaign for president. GILLESPIE: I think that 2012 is going to be a very big election. It’s going to be over big things — the direction of the country, the economy, national security, the war on terror, all the things that are in play. And the bigger, the better, I suspect, for Speaker Gingrich. You know, he’s someone who revels in big ideas. And so, you know, I think some of these concerns, legitimate concerns. He’s going to have to address them. But I think his bet is, though people will look past some of those concerns because — because he has the kind of big ideas that the country’s looking for now. KING: Do you think a concern they will look past — and you hear this when you talk to social conservatives in Iowa, social conservatives in South Carolina, is the that fact he’s been married three times? GILLESPIE: That will be an issue for a segment of the Republican primary electorate, in particularly, in the two early states you mentioned, in Iowa and South Carolina. But, look, you know, if the concern over, you know, a third marriage is disqualifying in the voters’ minds, Gingrich is not going to be able to convince them otherwise. They’re outside his reach from the get-go. I don’t think they’re a majority of the voters though and he’s got to piece together a coalition of voters who don’t have that, don’t consider that to be disqualifying in order to capture the nomination. And, you know, the fact that the rules have changed in the Republican primary in a way where many of the states, you know, in March, are proportional delegates, you know, that may mitigate against that in some ways.
Continue reading …John King and Ed Gillespie Ignore That Voters Might Care What Ended Gingrich’s First Two Marriages
May 13, 2011 No CommentClick here to view this media CNN’s John King talked to former Bushie and Republican operative Ed Gillespie about whether we should actually take flame thrower Newt Gingrich’s presidential run seriously and they focused in on whether it might bother voters that he’s been married three times. What they failed to note is that the details of his two divorces and how that somehow squares with him being a so-called “Christian conservative” are completely at odds with each other and that hypocrisy might bother voters quite a bit more than the number of marriages he’s had. The HuffPo laid out a timeline of Gingrich’s divorces and affairs here — Newt Gingrich: Marriages, Divorces, Affairs Timeline . And our corporate media continues to ignore that he left one of his wives while she was recovering from cancer surgery. So much for those family values . And as John wrote about here earlier this year, David Frum criticized Gingrich for not just dumping one sick wife, but two . Fox “News” can attempt to clean up Gingrich’s image all they want along with some of their fellow enablers in our corporate media as CNN did here, but I don’t think there’s enough lipstick out there to cover up this pig. Gingrich is nothing but a huge flaming hypocrite who says inflammatory things every chance he gets and I don’t think he’s any more a serious candidate for president than Trump was. Transcript via CNN : KING: We asked about Newt Gingrich, opinion of Newt Gingrich in our poll — 30 percent favorable, 44 percent unfavorable, 26 percent, unsure. A 44 percent unfavorable is not a good place to start a campaign for president. GILLESPIE: I think that 2012 is going to be a very big election. It’s going to be over big things — the direction of the country, the economy, national security, the war on terror, all the things that are in play. And the bigger, the better, I suspect, for Speaker Gingrich. You know, he’s someone who revels in big ideas. And so, you know, I think some of these concerns, legitimate concerns. He’s going to have to address them. But I think his bet is, though people will look past some of those concerns because — because he has the kind of big ideas that the country’s looking for now. KING: Do you think a concern they will look past — and you hear this when you talk to social conservatives in Iowa, social conservatives in South Carolina, is the that fact he’s been married three times? GILLESPIE: That will be an issue for a segment of the Republican primary electorate, in particularly, in the two early states you mentioned, in Iowa and South Carolina. But, look, you know, if the concern over, you know, a third marriage is disqualifying in the voters’ minds, Gingrich is not going to be able to convince them otherwise. They’re outside his reach from the get-go. I don’t think they’re a majority of the voters though and he’s got to piece together a coalition of voters who don’t have that, don’t consider that to be disqualifying in order to capture the nomination. And, you know, the fact that the rules have changed in the Republican primary in a way where many of the states, you know, in March, are proportional delegates, you know, that may mitigate against that in some ways.
Continue reading …Right-wingers’ panties get in a knot over Obama calling them out on immigration — especially because every word was true
May 13, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Republicans inside the Beltway were all bent out of shape this week over the fact that President Obama, in his speech on immigration earlier this week, called them out over their absurd gamesmanship on the issue: PRESIDENT OBAMA: So, here’s the point. I want everybody to listen carefully to this. We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I’ve got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time. You know, they said we needed to triple the Border Patrol. Or now they’re going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol. Or they’ll want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. (Laughter.) Maybe they want alligators in the moat. (Laughter.) They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics. This caused quite the huff among Republicans, who have been nothing if not crassly and openly partisan in their handling of immigration issues during Obama’s tenure, abandoning all the pretense of bipartisanship they had adopted during the Bush years (see especially John McCain in this regard ). And it gave an excuse for the last of the “bipartisan” crowd, Sen. Richard Lugar, to join the Tea Party element in opposing the DREAM Act : In a statement, Lugar spokesman Mark Helmke blamed Democrats for turning immigration into a partisan issue. “President Obama’s appearance in Texas framed immigration as a divisive election issue instead of attempting a legitimate debate on comprehensive reform,” wrote Helmke. “Ridiculing Republicans was clearly a partisan push that effectively stops a productive discussion about comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act before the 2012 election.” Actually, the shoe is on the other foot: As long as Lugar’s fellow Republicans insist on calling the DREAM Act “amnesty for illegals” and denouncing any effort to do something that is so clearly a no-brainer in the Right Thing To Do Department, then it’s clear Obama can count on having a productive discussion about these issues from Republicans for the foreseeable future — that is, until at least sometime after the 2012 elections. Even more noteworthy is that Obama wasn’t really saying anything controversial — he was pointing out the cold reality on the ground. There was a remarkable exchange in this regard the other morning on Fox News, when Alisyn Camerota — filling in Megyn Kelly on America Live — had a following conversation with reliable RightWingabot Monica Crowley on the subject. And Camerota (uncharacteristically for most Fox hosts) wanted to know exactly how Republicans could respond to Obama’s salient points here. And Crowley sputtered. At first she tried to deflect the answer into the familiar ground of “he’s talking up immigration to help his re-election chances,” but Camerota kept pushing — and Crowley pretty much came up blank, sputtering an incoherent garble of whatever fake “facts” she could grasp out of the thin air: CAMEROTA: OK, so to his point: More deportations, more boots on the ground, reinforcing the fence, and they’re never satisfied. What do Republicans want? CROWLEY: Well, I’m sure that that bit of sarcasm there with that bit about the moat with the alligators will go a long way to getting Republican support for whatever he wants to do. He’s looking at his poll numbers, first and foremost, because, as I said, there’s no way the the DREAM Act or any comprehensive immigration reform is gonna make it through, certainly before 2012. And what’s happening, when he’s looking at his core constituency, he’s seeing a pretty significant dropoff among Hispanic voters. He won the Hispanic vote by two thirds in 2008. It is now down among Hispanics, his support is down to low to mid-50s, Ali, so what he’s seeing is a need to shore up that core constituency, because he cannot win re-election without it. CAMEROTA: OK, but to his point — what more do Republicans want than what he has done? CROWLEY: The … [sigh] … He deserves credit for what he has done so far. However, that does not solve the problem. The chaos on the border has actually gotten worse over the last many years than better. And so if you look and you talk to law-enforcement officials, where they’re on the front lines, you talk to folks who are living on the front lines in Arizona and New Mexico and Texas — they will tell you that the violence spillover — 35,000 people have been killed in recent years over the border — that violence spillover — illegals coming across the border still at an unprecedented rate — a lot needs to be done. In reality, of course, there has been a sharp decline in border crossings in recent years, particularly as the U.S. economy his spiraled downward in a recession and unemployment has skyrocketed. But then, reality has never stopped people like Crowley from misreporting fake “facts” on Fox. It’s a feature, not a bug. Look, we’ll never, NEVER be able to have an honest conversation with right-wingers about immigration, because they refuse to argue it honestly. Their recent tactic has been to demand that “first we secure the border, then we can talk reform.” And then when all their demands are met, they just keep changing the goalposts. And then when they get called out on that, they claim we’re just being unfair and uncivil. Screw that. It’s time to figure out how to move on without them.
Continue reading …Tahrir Square fills again as Egypt holds Mubarak’s wife for crimes against state
May 13, 2011 No Comment
Largest rally in recent weeks comes on day ousted president’s wife detained on suspicion of illegally acquiring wealth Tens of thousands of Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday in a show of national unity against sectarian tension, and to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinian people. The largest rally to be held in the Egyptian capital in recent weeks took place as Suzanne Mubarak, wife of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, was detained by investigators for 15 days on suspicion of illegally acquiring wealth. Cheers erupted in the square as news broke of Mrs Mubarak’s incarceration. The 70-year-old former first lady now joins her husband, two sons and more than 20 other ministers and business figures from the Mubarak regime on the list of those being investigated for crimes against the state. Last week former interior minister Habib Al-Adly was sentenced to 12 years in prison for financial fraud. He also stands accused of having ordered the killing of peaceful protesters, a charge that can carry the death penalty. In a sign of how vibrant and fragmented Egypt’s political landscape has become since the toppling of Mubarak in February, protesters came together on Friday to support a multitude of causes from local anti-corruption campaigns to unity with Arab uprisings elsewhere in the region. Following a week of sectarian violence in Cairo in which at least 15 people were killed in clashes at a church in the poor neighbourhood of Imbaba, many demonstrators held aloft placards depicting the Christian cross and Muslim crescent, and chanted: “We are all Egyptians.” On Wednesday the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he was disturbed by the religious fighting, warning that it could threaten progress towards a “more free, just and harmonious Egypt”. Egypt’s Coptic Christian community comprises about 10% of the population, and claims it has long been the target of severe discrimination in the Muslim-majority country. “I think there are two themes playing out in Tahrir today,” said Hossam Bahgat, a human rights campaigner and director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “One is the search for a lost moment: in every speech on the stage and on every leaflet handed out there are words to the effect of ‘do you remember [the anti-Mubarak protests in] January and February when we stood here together? What happened to that moment?’ “The second is the realisation that even if we succeed in re-creating that moment, we need to build a bridge between on the one hand that sentiment of unity which once overwhelmed Tahrir, and on the other the poorer rural and urban neighbourhoods, where it takes only the slightest thing or most absurd rumour to unleash large-scale communal violence.” Egypt’s interim government has arrested almost 200 suspects in the aftermath of the Imbaba violence, charging 23 of them with terrorism and premeditated murder. The clashes began when Salafist Muslims marched on a church where they claimed a female Copt who had converted to Islam was being held hostage, prompting a street battle in which shots were fired and Molotov cocktails thrown. An inquiry blamed hardline Salafists for the attacks, but hinted that elements of the old regime seeking to sow discord may also have played a part in the violence. “The policies of the Mubarak regime did actively contribute to a rise in sectarian tension,” argued Bahgat. “But at the same time we need to acknowledge that whoever has been involved in incidents of sectarian violence over the past few weeks are the same people that have been engaging in such violence for years. They are not hired thugs, they are not organised Islamic entities, and they are not elements of the previous regime – they are us. And until we recognise that they are us, the solution will remain elusive.” Protesters in Tahrir also hoisted aloft Palestinian flags to demonstrate their support for a recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement signed in Cairo, just two days before a planned march to the Gaza border to mark the 63rd anniversary of the “nakba” – an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” which is used to describe the founding of Israel. As part of a region-wide set of demonstrations in favour of Palestinian refugees being allowed to return home, protest leaders in Egypt have called for a “third intifada” to be launched on Sunday, with a mass march from Cairo to the Rafah border post. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has discouraged the event, arguing that in its present state of transition Egypt cannot carry the “burden” of a “direct clash with the Zionist entity”. The Egyptian government has put all entry points to the Sinai Peninsula on high alert in an effort to stop the march. “Our chants against sectarian tension and in support of the Palestinians are not side-issues,” said Ibrahim Houdaiby, 27, a political activist who was formerly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Without solidarity between Christians and Muslims, without justice for Palestine, our revolution will die. Today you’re witnessing an attempt to keep it alive.” Egypt Hosni Mubarak Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Africa Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk
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Former Labour MP is released from jail and says his treatment was inconsistent with that of David Laws The former Labour MP Eric Illsley, who was jailed in February for wrongly claiming £14,500 in expenses, has been released, highlighting differences between his treatment and that of the former Lib Dem cabinet minister David Laws. Within hours of leaving jail, Illsley made pugnacious comments about his imprisonment, comparing it to the treatment of Laws. Laws is to be suspended from parliament for seven days but will ultimately be allowed to carry on with his career. Leaving prison on Friday Illsley said he had been made a scapegoat. A year-long inquiry ruled that Laws “seriously and extensively” broke the rules to claim rent which was paid to his partner over a period of seven years. He has already paid back nearly £60,000 and was forced to apologise to the Commons. In February, Illsley pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting, admitting to dishonestly claiming payments for insurance, repairs, utility bills and council tax at his second home between 2005 and 2008. Speaking at his home in Pogmoor, the former MP for Barnsley told Radio 5 Live: “It does seem rather strange that I have done that and then the next person who was found to have broken the rules in relation to expenses is simply allowed to carry on with his career by apologising to the House. “I ask the question, why couldn’t I have been taken the same way?” “What a lot of people didn’t know, and still don’t know, is that only a handful of MPs were ever investigated. My case didn’t allow me to highlight the fact that I hadn’t done anything different from a lot of other MPs who had simply kept their heads down and carried on with their careers and were quite happy to see me as a scapegoat.” Illsley went to jail for claiming on a second home £100 more per week than he was entitled to, over a three-year period. He will serve out the rest of his 12-month sentence under home curfew. Eric Illsley MPs’ expenses David Laws House of Commons guardian.co.uk
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Former Labour MP is released from jail and says his treatment was inconsistent with that of David Laws The former Labour MP Eric Illsley, who was jailed in February for wrongly claiming £14,500 in expenses, has been released, highlighting differences between his treatment and that of the former Lib Dem cabinet minister David Laws. Within hours of leaving jail, Illsley made pugnacious comments about his imprisonment, comparing it to the treatment of Laws. Laws is to be suspended from parliament for seven days but will ultimately be allowed to carry on with his career. Leaving prison on Friday Illsley said he had been made a scapegoat. A year-long inquiry ruled that Laws “seriously and extensively” broke the rules to claim rent which was paid to his partner over a period of seven years. He has already paid back nearly £60,000 and was forced to apologise to the Commons. In February, Illsley pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting, admitting to dishonestly claiming payments for insurance, repairs, utility bills and council tax at his second home between 2005 and 2008. Speaking at his home in Pogmoor, the former MP for Barnsley told Radio 5 Live: “It does seem rather strange that I have done that and then the next person who was found to have broken the rules in relation to expenses is simply allowed to carry on with his career by apologising to the House. “I ask the question, why couldn’t I have been taken the same way?” “What a lot of people didn’t know, and still don’t know, is that only a handful of MPs were ever investigated. My case didn’t allow me to highlight the fact that I hadn’t done anything different from a lot of other MPs who had simply kept their heads down and carried on with their careers and were quite happy to see me as a scapegoat.” Illsley went to jail for claiming on a second home £100 more per week than he was entitled to, over a three-year period. He will serve out the rest of his 12-month sentence under home curfew. Eric Illsley MPs’ expenses David Laws House of Commons guardian.co.uk
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Business, environment and ‘big society’ projects running months behind schedule only six months after they were published The government’s legislative agenda appears to have slipped in the last six months as it publishes business plans showing 87 revised deadlines and targets missed. The second publication of the government’s progress reports – an innovation devised by David Cameron to make government more efficient and transport – shows its business, environment and “big society” projects to be running months behind schedule only six months after their timetables were originally published. The documents also link for the first time the long awaited public services white paper – which it admits will eventually be six months late – has been held up by the “pause” and “listening exercise” taking place in the NHS reforms. First launched last November, the new regimes were heralded as a power shift from the centre to the people who would have a new ability to scrutinise the progress of government work. The No 10 website suggested the second round of plans had been reframed to reflect the government’s growing focus on social mobility and economic growth. “They also now include actions on growth and social mobility, and some minor presentation changes, including incorporating milestones into the main section of the business plans,” it says. The cabinet office was the department whose agenda had slipped the most with 17 rearranged targets. Next the business department with 11; education with 10, transport with 9 and Defra with 8. Delays include: • Plans for a new Public Data Corporation, to bring together all data services across government, are delayed from last month to the end of the year • Legislation to allow loans to be paid to people in further education have slipped from September 2011 to May 2012 • A white paper to reduce regulatory burdens on industry is delayed from May this year to October • The full establishment of the “big society” bank, using dormant bank account funds to invest in social enterprises, is delayed a year. An interim fund will be put in place. While the government reflected the well known pause in the NHS as it conducts a “listening exercise”, for the first time it made explicit there was a link between the newly imposed “pause” in the NHS reforms and the long awaited and much delayed wider public service reform white paper. It had been expected in January but now the business plan reveal it will be published in July. For the first time the documents acknowledge that it is on hold while the NHS reforms are on hold, suggesting that the two are inextricably linked. There has been some speculation that the link is Lib Dem opposition to privatisation. Not all date changes are delayed. A move towards individual voter registration, to tighten up the security of the electoral system, is being fast-tracked. Public services policy Health NHS Public sector cuts Health policy Education policy Allegra Stratton Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Business, environment and ‘big society’ projects running months behind schedule only six months after they were published The government’s legislative agenda appears to have slipped in the last six months as it publishes business plans showing 87 revised deadlines and targets missed. The second publication of the government’s progress reports – an innovation devised by David Cameron to make government more efficient and transport – shows its business, environment and “big society” projects to be running months behind schedule only six months after their timetables were originally published. The documents also link for the first time the long awaited public services white paper – which it admits will eventually be six months late – has been held up by the “pause” and “listening exercise” taking place in the NHS reforms. First launched last November, the new regimes were heralded as a power shift from the centre to the people who would have a new ability to scrutinise the progress of government work. The No 10 website suggested the second round of plans had been reframed to reflect the government’s growing focus on social mobility and economic growth. “They also now include actions on growth and social mobility, and some minor presentation changes, including incorporating milestones into the main section of the business plans,” it says. The cabinet office was the department whose agenda had slipped the most with 17 rearranged targets. Next the business department with 11; education with 10, transport with 9 and Defra with 8. Delays include: • Plans for a new Public Data Corporation, to bring together all data services across government, are delayed from last month to the end of the year • Legislation to allow loans to be paid to people in further education have slipped from September 2011 to May 2012 • A white paper to reduce regulatory burdens on industry is delayed from May this year to October • The full establishment of the “big society” bank, using dormant bank account funds to invest in social enterprises, is delayed a year. An interim fund will be put in place. While the government reflected the well known pause in the NHS as it conducts a “listening exercise”, for the first time it made explicit there was a link between the newly imposed “pause” in the NHS reforms and the long awaited and much delayed wider public service reform white paper. It had been expected in January but now the business plan reveal it will be published in July. For the first time the documents acknowledge that it is on hold while the NHS reforms are on hold, suggesting that the two are inextricably linked. There has been some speculation that the link is Lib Dem opposition to privatisation. Not all date changes are delayed. A move towards individual voter registration, to tighten up the security of the electoral system, is being fast-tracked. Public services policy Health NHS Public sector cuts Health policy Education policy Allegra Stratton Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
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