Controversial Cover of the Day: Weezer covers Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.” Love it or hate it, it still happened. [ weezer .] Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Daily What Discovery Date : 27/05/2011 22:29 Number of articles : 5
Continue reading …Sarah Palin’s ‘unconventional’ route to the presidency: The power of messianic delusion
May 31, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Everyone in the press and the Republican establishment seems equally confused by Sarah Palin’s bizarre run-up to her near-certain presidential run . What they don’t get is the depths of Palin’s messianic delusion: She really believes she’s been sent by God to save America, and she can run any way she wants. Karl Rove was on Fox News yesterday morning (actually working on Memorial Day!) pointing out the stark contrast between Michele Bachmann’s run-up to her presidential bid — making nice with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, building connections with local Republicans, and all the traditional things that are part of a presidential run — with Palin’s: ROVE: Sarah Palin — much different, which is: ‘I’m gonna conduct a bus tour, where I go not to — ‘ I mean, she’s about ready, sometime in the next couple of weeks, to make her first visit to New Hampshire in over two years. That’s, that’s really unusual. And then you’ve got the situation of — you know, she’s going to Antietam and Gettysburg and to Philadelphia. And I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar that those visits to those areas are not preceded by courtesy phone calls to the local Republican Party chairmen and a request that they generate volunteers. She’s just gonna announce her schedule and show up. So that’s what I mean by unconventional. That’s right: Palin is not concerned about any of the ordinary aspects of running for the presidency, especially not the party-building that has been successful Republican nominees’ bread and butter since the days of Nixon. She has bigger fish to fry. She’s on a mission from God. The WaPo’s Chris Cilizza seems equally taken aback: The trip, which was announced via her political action committee website Thursday, resembled nothing so much as an episode of “Amazing Race” — a helter-skelter series of stops at historical sites with little (if any) advance notice given of her plans. The lack of details left reporters confused and scrambling, and the political world wondering just what she was up to. Which is, of course, exactly how Palin likes it. Asked about a potential 2012 campaign on Sunday night, Palin said “it would definitely be non-conventional and untraditional,” a comment that amounts to the political understatement of the year. Palin added in an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren (one of her go-to members of the mainstream media): “I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media … I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this, and that would include not necessarily telling them beforehand where every stop’s going to be.” That translated into Palin punking the reporters following her on the tour: Palin reportedly faked out reporters at her Gettysburg, Pa. hotel Tuesday morning. She snuck out early with her family and a few staffers, leaving her unmistakeable bus behind and giving the press the impression that she was still readying for the day ahead. When her staff came out to load luggage into the bus, reporters and tourists swarmed to get a glimpse of the former Alaska governor herself, but she was long gone, off to the historic battlegrounds. As Cilizza observes, Palin is trying her own formula here: Instead of communicating via the media, Palin will use her massive Internet and social media presence to push her message out. Rather than a regimented schedule of travel to early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Palin seems likely to opt for a more fluid schedule that allows for surprise drop-ins on average Americans. No presidential campaign in the modern era has been run in such a manner and succeeded. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson sought to minimize his travel to early states and focus on communicating with voters through cable televison and web videos. He didn’t win a single primary or caucus. Meantime, rumors are that Palin may punk Philadelphia, too . In Sarah’s world, of course, this lack of conventionalism makes perfect sense. The press isn’t a free publicity on the hoof (the way, say John McCain treated them) — they’re Satan incarnate and the more they can be bedeviled, the better. Because Sarah speaks directly to the people you know — so long as they don’t ask her any tough questions. And party-building doesn’t matter when the Lord is going to make everyone come together behind her. It’s more important she get her message out to as many people as possible. There are folks who think all this is really proof that Sarah’s not running. All I can say is: Wait and see.
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CAIRO (AP) — Activists and bloggers are pressing Egypt’s military rulers to investigate accusations of serious abuses against protesters, including claims that soldiers subjected female detainees to so-called “virginity tests.” (Scroll down for video) Bloggers say they will hold a day of online protest Wednesday to voice their outrage, adding to criticism of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control of the country from ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February. The accusations of virginity tests first surfaced after a March 9 rally in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that turned violent when men in plain clothes attacked protesters and the army intervened forcefully to clear the square. One woman who was arrested spoke out about her treatment, and Amnesty International further documented the abuse allegations in a report that found 18 female detainees were threatened with prostitution charges and forced to undergo virginity tests. They were also beaten up and given electric shocks, the report said. Egypt’s military rulers have come under heavy criticism from the youth protest movement, which is upset at the pace of reforms that they hope will lead Egypt to democracy. Since Mubarak’s fall on Feb. 11, the military has led crackdowns on peaceful protests, and critics accuse it of failing to restore security in the streets or launch serious national dialogue on a clear path forward for Egypt. The military council denied soldiers attacked protesters at the March 9 rally. But one general used a press conference to make negative remarks about women who mingle with men during the sit-ins and suggested lewd acts were taking place in protest camps. Advertisement “There were girls with young men in one tent. Is this rational? There were drugs; pay attention!” Gen. Ismail Etman, spokesman of the council, said at the end of March. He confirmed then that the military police arrested 17 female protesters among 170 others at the March 9 rally. He said the women were among a group of protesters given one-year suspended prison sentences. “We secure the people. We don’t use the violence,” he said. One of the women arrested, Salwa al-Husseini, gave a detailed account at a press conference in March of her treatment and said she was made to undergo a virginity test. She said she was slapped in the face and electrocuted in her legs in Tahrir Square before being taken to a military prison. “When we went to the military prison, me and the girls, we were placed in a room with two doors and a window. The two doors were wide open,” she said in March. “The girl takes off all her clothes to be searched while there were cameras outside filming to fabricate prostitution charges against us later on,” she added. “The girl who says she is single, she undergoes a test by someone; we don’t know if he is a soldier or some kid on their behalf,” she said. Amnesty said in its report that one of the women told her jailers she was a virgin but was beaten and given electric shocks when the test supposedly proved otherwise. “Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable,” the Amnesty report said. “Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women.” The military council has promised to return the country to civilian rule after elections later this year, but some Egyptians fear the council is adopting the same autocratic ways that characterized Mubarak’s rule. They point to what they say are attempts by the council to make any criticism of the military an untouchable taboo. On Tuesday, the military prosecutor questioned a prominent blogger along with four other media people over their criticism of the performance of the council and military police. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, in a statement issued Tuesday, accused the council of trying to silence critics and create “an atmosphere of fear.” It warned, “The military council is committing a grave mistake if it continues to shut the mouths of those criticizing it. The council is not made up of angels.” The group also referred to virginity tests, saying that the military council is aware that “those belonging to it have practiced torture against the youth of the revolution and has subjected women to virginity tests.”
Continue reading …Krugman: The Feds Could Take Action To Help Unemployed. Bernstein: Not Gonna Happen!
May 31, 2011 No CommentPaul Krugman, who’s been pushing for government intervention all along (this video is from 2009) points out that our so-called “leadership” on both sides of the aisle is missing in action on policies that might actually help the unemployed : So there are policies we could be pursuing to bring unemployment down. These policies would be unorthodox — but so are the economic problems we face. And those who warn about the risks of action must explain why these risks should worry us more than the certainty of continued mass suffering if we do nothing. In pointing out that we could be doing much more about unemployment, I recognize, of course, the political obstacles to actually pursuing any of the policies that might work. In the United States, in particular, any effort to tackle unemployment will run into a stone wall of Republican opposition. Yet that’s not a reason to stop talking about the issue. In fact, looking back at my own writings over the past year or so, it’s clear that I too have sinned: political realism is all very well, but I have said far too little about what we really should be doing to deal with our most important problem. As I see it, policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue: the more they fail to do anything about the problem, the more they convince themselves that there’s nothing they could do. And those of us who know better should be doing all we can to break that vicious circle. Dave Dayen has some thoughts on the response to Krugman’s column by Jared Bernstein, the liberal economist who recently left Joe Biden’s policy team. Bernstein says it was the White House, not the Republicans, who would not consider any kind of direct jobs program. He also says the White House was concerned about the political drawbacks of the “wrong” type of people getting a mortgage modification: Now, the most interesting thing about this is that the Obama Administration, through federal regulators, are RIGHT NOW attempting to negotiate a program of mortgage modification with the country’s major banks, as part of the foreclosure fraud settlement. This raises very troubling issues about what the eligibility would look like on that deal. Clearly, the White House is preoccupied with the “right” type of person getting help; Obama has mentioned this on several occasions. Yet who is that “right” type of person when the banks have engaged in systematic fraud? They didn’t just defraud those deserving of aid, whatever “deserving” means; they defrauded everyone, with their fake documents and breaking of the chain of title and fee pyramiding and the like. There’s no way to slice the salami at this point, and divy up the “deserving” from the “undeserving” of a mortgage modification. That simply doesn’t make sense in this case. However, it is driving the thinking inside Washington, and will almost certainly be a preoccupation with any settlement (if there even is one at this point). That makes a settlement even less valuable. Bernstein adds that “there are ways outside of federal legislation to encourage principal write-downs” and that he will write about them later. Maybe he’s talking about federal and state enforcement actions. But the same artificial constraints of Tea Party rhetoric about deadbeat borrowers applies there as well. And instead of attacking that ludicrous constraint, Bernstein accepts it. Or rather, he reports that his former bosses in Washington and policymakers on the Hill have accepted it. Good to know.
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More than 2 years after US Airways Flight 1549 made a near-miraculous landing in the Hudson River, passengers and crew reunite to unload parts of the plane at a North Carolina museum. (May 31)
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The former chairman of one of Egypt’s major banks has been arrested on charges of sexually abusing a maid at a Manhattan hotel. Police say Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar was arrested at the Pierre Hotel Monday morning. (May 31)
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Stacey Dash and Lisa Raye Get Into It While Filming “Single Ladies” VIDEO Lisa Raye On Wendy Williams Talking Stacey Dash Beef And Ex Husband Cheatin’ (VIDEO) Celebrity Drawings BabiTthai says: Lisa Raye Wow'
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Moby VS Britney 2 Britney Spears VS Moby Moby-Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad (Britney Spears Moments) HeavyMetalGuard says: I couldn't have said it better myself. Moby: 'Britney Spears, Ke$ha songs aren't music' http://t.co/Q2nH9Q9
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Melissa McCarthy talks about ‘Bridesmaids’ – a gross-out comedy that follows the trials, tribulations and triumphs of a group of women on the lead up to their friend’s wedding. (May 31)
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