The Bigsibling Blog

Buxom, voluptuous, rubenesque, whatever you want to call ‘em, chicks with curves are AWESOME! Now, a new study shows they may actually 1) be more intelligent and 2) produce smarter kids. Who’d a thunk it?

Curvy women may be a clever bet

Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.

Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests – as did their children.

The bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and hips the better.

Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.

In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman’s own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.

Men respond to the double enticement of both an intelligent partner and an intelligent child, the researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California said.

The findings appear to be borne out in the educational attainments of at least one of the UK’s most famous curvaceous women, Nigella Lawson, who graduated from Oxford.

But experts are not convinced by the findings.

"On the fatty deposits being related to intelligence front, it’s very hard to detangle that from other factors, such as social class, for instance, or diet," said Martin Tovee of Newcastle University.

"And much as we logically like the idea that men are interested in the waist to hip ratio, it actually features relatively low down the list of feature males look for in a potential partner."

source

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I found this on SoHo’s blog. She comes up with the greatest stuff.

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan’s holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

Read the rest of it over at her place.

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It’s coming, at least that’s the way it looks. I’ve always been an opponent to so-called "network neutrality." The concept sounds good on paper – but then again, so does Communism. The basic premise is this: All internet traffic is delivered at the same speed, with the same priority as all other traffic. Internet providers are not allowed to filter content, nor alter in anyway the speed in which it is delivered. Like I said, it sounds good on paper. The whole reason this net neutrality came about is people feared that ISPs would begin charging not only the end user (you and me, folks) but also the content originator (folks like google.com, foxnews.com, abc.com, etc.) – and we just can’t have that, I mean, the gall of some people, trying to maximize profits like some greedy capitalist!

Actually, they are afraid that the bigger content providers will pay the likes of Comcast, Time-Warner and AT&T to have their content delivered faster than their competitors content. They purport that this will stifle free speech. Free speech will be stifled, because the YouTube delivers a video 15 or 30 seconds faster than, say, moveon.org can deliver a video. Mind you, they are not afraid that a provider will filter content, that a provider will bar you from seeing certain things, make them totally undeliverable…no, that isn’t it. What they are afraid of is that the super-evil providers will allow content creators with deep pockets to get to you faster.

Now, my position is this; I pay my provider for, say 3Mbps access. That is, I can download content at roughly 3Mbps, give or take, as conditions allow. Now, if my provider wants to deliver search results from bing.com to my computer at 6Mbps, and google.com at only 3Mbps (the agreed upon speed that I pay for) because bing.com pays the provider a premium delivery fee, why should I care? Why should you care? Why should any end user give a hoot? Why should I be against the provider making a few extra bucks off content providers that can afford to pay for express delivery? Is the post office wrong for charging a premium fee for delivering a package overnight, I don’t think so. Now, if the provider began to charge EVERY provider for delivery, regardless, then I’d have a problem with it, and would promptly switch providers.

See, this is what some proponents of Net Neutrality don’t understand. They think that without it, AT&T and Cox and Comcast et al will begin to filter the internet based on who pays for delivery. I would present this as a poor business model, and nothing a sane business that wants to earn a profit would engage in. If content is filtered in such a way by the current crop of providers, we’ll see new providers rise up – ones that will not filter the data stream – to take their places. It’s called ‘free market’. Broadband internet is largely unregulated, and largely available to vast majority of Americans in one form or another. Remember the days before the small, 1 meter satellite dishes? Back when you had two options for TV? Over the air, or one cable company serving an entire city? No choices, you paid what the cable company wanted you to pay, and you got what they gave you. Period. No exceptions.

Obama has mentioned before that he sees broadband as a utility, much like power, and gas and water. Do you really want the government to regulate your internet? Do you want the folks who arbitrarily decide what news organization is actually a ‘news organization’ to decide what size of pipe you get, and how much you pay for it? Do you want to go back to the closed, government sanctioned monopolies of cable TV? How about electricity, water and gas? How much competition is there for those utilities? Think of there were two gas companies you could buy your gas from, that maybe you’d have a lower gas bill? I’ll bet you would, not to mention better customer service.

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Construction drawings released: Flight 93 crescent now points less than 3° from Mecca

From Error Theory: The original Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 faced less than 2° from Mecca. That made it a mihrab, the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed-arch shaped, but the classic mihrab is crescent shaped.) The Park Service dismissed concern about the Mecca-oriented crescent on grounds that the construction drawings had not yet been finalized. “Those trees could move fifty feet, or three hundred feet,” said Project Manager Jeff Reinbold in the Spring of 2006, as if this kind of "tweaking" would make any difference (Crescent of Betrayal Ch.8 p.145-6). The construction drawings have now been released, and yes, they moved the lower tip of the half-mile wide crescent about 300 feet, enough to change the orientation of the crescent by about 4.5°. Instead of pointing less than 2° north of Mecca, the giant Islamic-shaped crescent now points less than 3° south of Mecca. Here is the original Crescent of Embrace:

"Qibla" is the direction to Mecca, which you can verify using any online Mecca-direction calculator (just type in Somerset PA). A person standing between the tips of the giant crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) would be facing 1.8° north of Mecca, ± 0.1°. Here is one of the new construction drawings:

Instead of facing a titch north of Mecca, the giant crescent now faces a titch south of Mecca (2.7° south ± 0.1°). As with the original Crescent design, the upper crescent tip is the end of the 50’ tall Entry Portal Wall and the lower crescent tip is the last of the 50’ tall Maple trees on the bottom. The landscape overlays make the details hard to see in the thumbnail image above, but at full resolution they are fully legible. (Copy of source PDF, without the superimposed orientations lines here. Large file warning. Graphic is on p. 30 of 233.) The Park Service was SUPPOSED to remove the Islamic symbol shapes When architect Paul Murdoch’s winning Crescent of Embrace design was announced in September 2005, it appeared to show a bare naked Islamic crescent and star-flag planted atop the crash site:

Burned by the resulting firestorm of protest, the Park Service to agreed to get rid of the Islamic symbol shapes, but they never did. They added an extra arc of trees, and they call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent. This is explained on the Park Service’s own website. The extra arc of trees is explicitly described as a broken off part of the circle:

In summary, the memorial is shaped in a circular fashion, and the circle is symbolically "broken" or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site.

Those two breaks are the two ends of the extra arc of trees:

The extra arc of trees extends from blue circle to blue circle, marking the two “breaks” in the circle referred to in the Park Service’s official explanation of the broken-circle design. One is where the flight path breaks the circle (left), the other is near the crash site (center). What is symbolically left standing (the unbroken part of the circle) is just this:

Remove the symbolically broken off parts, and you get the original Crescent of Embrace design. The only change is that the crescent has now been rotated clockwise a few degrees. In the construction plans it faces slightly south of Mecca instead of slightly north of Mecca. For a parallel, imagine airline security discovering a terror bomber, then playing with the fit his suicide vest before escorting him to his plane. They said they were going to remove the giant crescent. They claim they HAVE removed it, but they haven’t. Symbolically, the design remains completely unchanged. The terrorists are still depicted as smashing our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca. The giant crescent is actually a mihrab Here is the mihrab at the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just like the crescent memorial to Flight 93:

Confronted with evidence that the Crescent of Embrace is actually designed to be the world’s largest mosque, the Park Service sought advice from a pair of Muslim scholars. Both acknowledged the almost exact Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent and both offered overtly dishonest excuses for it. One said not to worry about the likeness to an Islamic mihrab because no one has ever seen a mihrab this BIG before:

…most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience.

Right. That’s why everybody scratches their head at Mt. Rushmore. No one has ever seen Abraham Lincoln so BIG before. They just can’t figure it out. To be fooled by this excuse, you have to really really want to be fooled. The other Muslim scholar said not to worry, the crescent cannot be seen as mihrab unless it points exactly at the Kaaba:

Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.

In fact, a mihrab does NOT have to point exactly at Mecca, for the simple reason that, throughout most of Islamic history, Muslims in far-flung parts of the world had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. As a result, it was established as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca. This was recently affirmed by Saudi religious authorities, after Meccans realized that even most of their local mosques do not face directly towards the Kaaba. “It does not affect the prayers” assured the Islamic Affairs Ministry. Faced with evidence of an Islamic plot, why would the Park Service send this evidence exclusively to Muslims for appraisal? Have they forgotten who attacked us on 9/11? The Service has long since been apprised of the patent dishonesties retailed by its two Muslim advisors but they don’t care. They wanted to be lied to, they knew where to go to be lied to, and they got what they wanted. Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey So where are the patriotic stalwarts like Michelle Malkin whose objections were instrumental in getting the Park Service to agree to remove the Islamic symbol shapes in the first place? If they knew in 2005 that the symbolic outcome of 9/11 should not be a giant Islamic shaped crescent why are they silent about this exact same symbolism today, after THEY were promised that this perversion would be removed? Ed Morrissey urged his readers "to tell the National Parks Service and the Secretary of the Interior to rethink their plans," promising for his own part that "as long as that crescent remains in the design, I’m not donating a red cent to the memorial." Well Ed, the crescent does remain in the design, so please rejoin the fight. The desertion of Malkin et. al. makes a difficult gap to fill, but we had better fill it, or the Flight 93 crash-site will soon be home to the world’s largest mosque. To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

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With the massive $700 BILLION dollar bailout of the biggest, and wealthiest financial institutions over the last year (this isn’t all Obama’s doing – the bailout began under Bush – BTW), a new report reveals the program has created “anger, cynicism and distrust” in American taxpayers, of both the program AND the government.

The huge problem most taxpayers have is lack of oversight, and lack of knowing what happened to the money. We hear the stories, how Bank of America paid millions and millions of dollars to executives as bonuses who put the company in such financial distress that it required the American taxpayer to bail them out. And that’s the real story here. The federal government didn’t bail these Wall Street tycoons and robber barons out, the American taxpayer did – you and me and our neighbors and “Joe Sixpack”.

If one were to ask the Treasury, who distributed the funds, what did theses banks do with them – they’d get a dumbfounded blank stare as a response. Why? Cause the T doesn’t know WHAT the banks did with the money. Well, we know SOME of what they did. We’ve all heard the stories of lavish parties for corporate officers. Lavish bonuses. Heck, BofA even has a policy that ENCOURAGES their folks to travel on private jets…PRIVATE JETS!!! ON OUR FRAKKING MONEY!!!!

It’s all crap. We, the taxpayer, paid these robber barons for a job poorly done. Do you think they learned their lesson? Heck no, but then, all this plays into the “we need more regulations” ploy, and paves the way for government takeover of the largest banks – just like they took over General Motors – and yes, they did take it over, the US Government now owns 61% of GM – that’s called a majority shareholder folks.

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Burnett radio interview about 9/11 and the Flight 93 memorial

Tom Burnett Sr. and his wife Beverly did some 9/11 interviews the last couple of days, remembering their son Tom Jr., who was murdered by Islamic terrorists aboard Flight 93. Mr. Burnett has been trying for several years to stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic-shaped crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. In their interview with WSAU radio in Wisconsin, the Burnetts were joined half-way through the hour by Alec Rawls (the author of this blogburst post), who has written a book about the terrorist memorializing Crescent of Embrace design. Mr. Burnett’s words are always heartfelt, yet marked by a constant scrupulousness. Emotion never carries him to utter a word beyond what he actually has grounds to assert. Highly recommended listening, perhaps especially for those who are better at judging people than facts. Let’s face it, show some people the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, and they just aren’t sure what they are looking at. Point out that the central feature of every mosque is a Mecca-direction indicator, and somehow the pieces don’t fall together in their brains:

What is that? Just a mysterious diagram to some. Yet these folks can still be good judges of character. So judge the Burnetts. The WSAU interview begins with host Pat Snyder asking Mr. Burnett if America is doing enough as a nation to remember 9/11. Most of us, on being asked any question, will try to answer it, but Mr. Burnett immediately defers, and in the most polite way:

Well, I’m not a very good judge of that. We are tucked away here in the southeast corner of Minnesota…

But if he isn’t interested in passing judgment on how much America should do to remember 9/11, he is very concerned that we don’t honor the wrong people, and starts right in on the Flight 93 memorial (which Mr. Snyder puts off to later). Both the Burnetts have a sophisticated understanding of American liberty. Talking about the generosity of Americans towards each other and the world, Beverly notes the change that has taken place in her lifetime, where assistance used to be all private, but now the government has gotten involved. She passes no explicit judgment on this development, but just notes what should remain constant (at 17:22):

I think about all the programs we have in the government. I come from a different generation, and my mother and father, and Tom’s, that we never really looked to the government all the time. We looked to our neighbors and churches and friends for things. But our government should be there to make sure we’re SAFE.

Instead, as Tom and Bev both note, our elites don’t even want to acknowledge that it was Muslim terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. It is these same elites who don’t want to acknowledge the Islamic symbol-shapes in the Flight 93 memorial. To witness this symbolism would be to tie Islam to 9/11, which to these people is some unconscionable bigotry, regardless of the truth. There is the rub. As Mr. Burnett put it (at 25:16):

All we want–Alec, and the thousands of Americans who back us–we want the truth. What happened? [How did we end up with an Islamist design?] And we want to honor the 40 people. I don’t want anything to do with the Islamic fanatics, anything at all.

Mr. and Mrs. Burnett are very thoughtful, careful, rational people. So who is it who is "too far out"? People like the Burnetts, who are skeptical that the architect of a memorial to Flight 93 could plant a giant crescent and star flag on the crash site by mistake? Or is it the people who somehow convince themselves that a crescent and star flag is just fine, so long as we can’t prove that it is intentional?

Actually, we CAN prove that the Islamic symbolism is intentional. Architect Paul Murdoch does not want history to be able to deny his achievement, so he included extensive redundant proofs of intent, such as the following. Murdoch says the crescent comes from the terror attacks breaking the circle (leaving only the giant Islamic-shaped crescent still standing, hmmm). Remove the parts of the crescent that stick out past the point where the flight path (coming down from the upper left) symbolically breaks the circle, and what symbolically remains standing is a giant Islamic-shaped crescent pointing EXACTLY at Mecca.

The full Crescent of Embrace points 1.8° north of Mecca ± 0.1°. Remove the parts of the Entry Portal walls that extend past the flight path at the upper crescent tip and the remaining “true” or thematic crescent points exactly at Mecca, ± 0.1°. All the supposed redesign did was add an extra arc of trees that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle, leaving Murdoch’s circle-breaking crescent-creating theme completely intact. The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a precisely Mecca-oriented crescent, the centerpiece for the world’s largest mosque.

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Most of the time you get junk from political parties, and it’s just that…junk. Sometimes though…they send out stuff that just makes you go “hmmmm”. Here is one such piece that found its way into my inbox this morning from Angela Sailor, RNC Coalitions Director.

OBAMA’S I.O.U.

After Eight Months In Office, Obama Still Paying Down Debt To Big Labor And Specter

View This Research Briefing At GOP.com

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ROAD TRIP TODAY: "Obama will first meet with workers at a GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, to discuss the economy. He will then travel to Pittsburgh, where he will deliver remarks at the AFL-CIO Convention in the afternoon. Later on Tuesday, he plans to attend a fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter in Philadelphia." ("Obama Visiting Pittsburgh, Philadelphia On Tuesday," The Associated Press, 9/11/09)

TIME TO PAY THE DEBT?

Obama: "Even If You’re Not A Union Member, Every American Owes Something To America’s Labor Movement." (President Barack Obama, Remarks At AFL-CIO Labor Day Picnic, Cincinnati, OH, 9/7/09)

Vice President Biden To Labor Union: "[W]e Owe You." (Michael O’Brien, "Biden To Labor Group: We Owe You," The Hill’s "Blog Briefing Room", 5/12/09)

BIG LABOR HAS MADE A MAJOR INVESTMENT IN OBAMA, AND OBAMA KNOWS IT

SEIU President Andy Stern: "We Spent A Fortune To Elect Barack Obama — $60.7 Million To Be Exact — And We’re Proud Of It." (Michael Mishak, "Unplugged: The SEIU Chief On The Labor Movement And The Card Check," The Las Vegas Sun, 5/10/09)

Over His Political Career, President Obama Has Received At Least $826,372 From Labor. (The Center For Responsive Politics Website, www.opensecrets.org, Accessed 7/10/09)

Since 1989, Vice President Biden Has Received At Least $345,249 From Labor. (The Center For Responsive Politics Website, www.opensecrets.org, Accessed 7/10/09)

Unions Active In Pushing Obama’s Agenda For Government-Run Health Care. "Gov. Howard Dean joined with hundreds of labor unions and thousands of health reform supporters in Washington, DC …" ("Howard Dean Fights For The Public Option In DC Rally," Daily Kos, 6/26/09)

• Several Unions Part Of "Health Care For America Now," A Group Supporting Government-Run Health Care. (Health Care For America NOW! Website, http://healthcareforamericanow.org/, Accessed 7/10/09)

• SEIU Packing Town Hall Meetings With Supporters. "This summer, as high-decibel opponents have crowded into town hall meetings to denounce Mr. Obama’s reform effort, Mr. Rivera, working with other unions, has sent hundreds of labor activists to such meetings to counter opponents. ‘We’re running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health care reform,’ said Mr. Rivera, whose union is hugely resented by Republicans for doing so much to elect Mr. Obama." (Steven Greenhouse, "Dennis Rivera Leads Labor Charge For Health Reform," The New York Times, 8/26/09)

UNIONS SAW A RETURN ON INVESTMENT IN CHRYSLER AND GM DEALS

Under New Plan, UAW Will Own 17.5 Percent Of Reorganized GM. "Under the new UAW terms, the union’s health-care trust would own 17.5% of a reorganized GM, in exchange for retiree health-care concessions." (John D. Stoll, Jeff McCracken, and Neil King Jr., "GM-Union Deal Raises U.S. Stake," The Wall Street Journal, 5/27/09)

• UAW Will Receive $10 Billion In Assets, $2.5 Billion Note, $6.5 Billion Preferred-Equity Stake, And As Much As 20 Percent Of GM Shares Over Time. "Now, GM plans to give the UAW $10 billion in already-set-aside assets, a $2.5 billion note, a $6.5 billion preferred-equity stake and 17.5% of GM’s shares with the option for up to 20% over time." (John D. Stoll, Jeff McCracken, and Neil King Jr., "GM-Union Deal Raises U.S. Stake," The Wall Street Journal, 5/27/09)

• "In Addition, The UAW Will Get A Seat On GM’s Board." (John D. Stoll, Jeff McCracken, and Neil King Jr., "GM-Union Deal Raises U.S. Stake," The Wall Street Journal, 5/27/09)

UAW "Big Winner In The Chrysler Bankruptcy Saga." "The United Auto Workers union would appear to be the big winner in the Chrysler bankruptcy saga, having exercised its considerable political muscle to win a 55% stake in the country’s third-largest automaker." (Tom Krisher and Dave Carpenter, "UAW Wins Big Chrysler Stake But Can’t Run Company," The Associated Press, 5/2/09)

• Chrysler Debtholders Argue UAW "Unfairly Rewarded" After Spending $5 Million To Help Elect Obama. "The UAW spent nearly $5 million in independent expenditures to promote Obama’s campaign, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, and some Chrysler debtholders contend that the union was unfairly rewarded for that support." (Tom Krisher and Dave Carpenter, "UAW Wins Big Chrysler Stake But Can’t Run Company," The Associated Press, 5/2/09)

BUT UNIONS NOW WANT MORE FROM OBAMA: THE SO-CALLED "EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT"

EFCA "Is The Top Priority For Unions, Who See It As A Means Of Replenishing Membership." (Karoun Demirjian, "’Card Check’ On Hold," CQ Today, 3/11/09)

Obama Claims EFCA Will "Level The Playing Field." "That’s why I support EFCA — to level the playing field so it’s easier for employees who want a union to form a union. Nothing — nothing wrong with that. Because when labor is strong, America is strong. When we all stand together, we all rise together." (President Barack Obama, Remarks At AFL-CIO Labor Day Picnic, Cincinnati, OH, 9/7/09)

• Candidate Obama Last Year: "Let Me Tell You Where I Stand. That’s An Easy One. The Employee Free Choice Act I Am A Strong Supporter Of." (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At Town Hall Meeting, Martinsville, VA, 8/20/08)

EFCA WOULD INCREASE UNION, GOVERNMENT POWER OVER BUSINESS …

"Binding Arbitration" Provision In EFCA Would Cover "Literally Every Issue," Increasing Union Control Over Workplace. "[A] company forced into binding arbitration will be frozen for two years (the duration of the initial contract) from making any changes to any aspect of its business that is covered by the contract. Literally every issue — from its 401(k) contributions to its reliance on outside labor — could potentially become subject to review by a government panel that has neither the company-specific knowledge nor the incentive to turn a profit." (Shikha Dalmia, "The ‘Free Choice’ Act And Binding Arbitration," The Wall Street Journal, 7/11/09)

EFCA Would Give Government Power To "Impose A Legally Binding Two-Year Contract" On Any Business. "Mr. Spencer [Executive Director of The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Workforce Freedom Initiative] said the bill’s ‘real job-killing potential’ rests in the power of a government-appointed arbitrator to impose a legally binding two-year contract on both parties if a company’s management and the newly formed union fail to agree to a first contract within 120 days… ‘In our opinion, binding arbitration is actually much more dangerous [than card check],’ Mr. Spencer said. ‘It may be a contract that the employers simply can’t live with.’" (Kara Rowland, "Business vs. Labor: Round 2 For C ard Check," The Washington Times, 6/9/09)

AND CRUSH THE ECONOMY

EFCA Will Increase U.S. Unemployment Rate By 1% For Every 3% Gained In Union Membership. "The precise effect on unemployment will depend on the degree to which EFCA increases union density, but for every 3 percentage points gained in union membership through card checks and mandatory arbitration, the following year’s unemployment rate is predicted to increase by 1 percentage point and job creation is predicted to fall by around 1.5 million jobs." (Anne Layne-Farrar, "An Empirical Assessment of the Employee Free Choice Act: The Economic Implications," SSRN.com, 3/4/09)

National Black Chamber Of Commerce President Warns Government Arbitrators Would Hurt Businesses. "Less publicized but equally concerning to the African-American community is that EFCA would allow government arbitrators to dictate labor contracts if unions and employers cannot reach their own agreement within a 120-day period. Currently, only 2 percent of minority-owned businesses are unionized. The passage of EFCA will further reduce the rights of an overwhelming majority of African-American employers by introducing government arbitrators with final decision-making authority into the collective bargaining process." (Harry C. Alford, Op-Ed, "EFCA Will Hurt Black-Owned Business Growth," Roll Call, 4/20/09)

AFTER SWITCHING PARTIES, DID SPECTER FEEL HE OWED OBAMA ON EFCA?

Facing Republican Primary Challenger In March, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) Announced He Would Oppose EFCA. "Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) decision to vote against the Employee Free Choice Act, a reversal of a position he took just two years ago, is evidence of the seriousness with which he views the looming primary challenge from former Rep. Pat Toomey." (Chris Cillizza, "Specter To Oppose Employee Free Choice Act," The Washington Post’s "The Fix" Blog, 3/24/09)

Then Specter Switched Parties In April And Obama Announced His "Full Support" For Specter. "President Barack Obama will throw his ‘full support’ behind Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday." (Jonathan Martin, "Obama Gives Specter ‘Full Support,’" The Politico, 4/28/09)

Two Months After Becoming Obama Democrat, Specter Promised Union Leaders They Would Be Happy With His Position On EFCA. "But even before then, Specter had promised union leaders in June that they would ‘be satisfied’ with his eventual vote." (Karoun Demirjian, "Specter Changes Tune, Will Back Cloture On Union Bill," CQ Today, 8/14/09)

In August, As Democrat With Obama’s "Full Support," Specter "Unequivocally" Said He Would Support Cloture On EFCA. "Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., unequivocally told a conference of bloggers Friday that he would support a cloture motion on a controversial bill to make it easier for unions to organize, removing any remaining doubt about whether the converted Democrat will be a road block to the bill." (Karoun Demirjian, "Specter Changes Tune, Will Back Cloture On Union Bill," CQ Today, 8/14/09)

• Specter: "No Doubt" I Will Vote For Cloture For EFCA. "When asked during a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation conference whether he intended to vote to limit debate on Democratic bills so they could proceed to up-or-down votes, Specter stated that there was ‘no doubt’ that he would support a cloture vote on three critical issues – climate legislation, health care that includes a public option, and the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the card check bill (S 560, HR 1409)." (Karoun Demirjian, "Specter Changes Tune, Will Back Cloture On Union Bill," CQ Today, 8/14/09)

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It was 8 years ago, does not seem that long really. Eight years ago today that the tragedy which came to be known as 9/11 occurred.

A friend of mine made this video shortly after that horrific day.

We should never, ever forget. Never.

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False AP report: Obama did NOT say that Iran must respect voters’ choice Obama’s comments were mushy, yes, but at least he said the most important thing, according to AP:

He said it’s up to Iran to determine its own leaders but that the country must respect voters’ choice.

Why then have reputable people continued to pass harsh judgment? And why would AP paraphrase what would have been Obama’s key statement? Turns out Obama said no such thing. What he actually said is that the VOICES of the Iranian people should be heard and respected, not their votes:

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

This is consistent with the rest of Obama’s remarks. He never said a word about respecting votes. Obama did mention "the democratic process," but far from saying anything about this process having to meet any standards of integrity, he instead implied strongly that he will accept whatever result the "process" followed by the Mullahs produces:

I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football…

Democracy means that Iranian sovereignty lies with the Iranian people and that a regime that rigs an election is NOT sovereign. Yet Obama is explicit that he will continue to treat the mullahs as the Iranian sovereign no matter how they judge the election. He even goes so far as to suggest that the only reason he is bothering to comment on the competing claim to sovereignty at all is because it would be unseemly for him not to:

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days.

The only operative concerns that he mentions are for: "free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent." When he talks about the "democratic process" going forward, all he urges is that the process be peaceful and that dissent be allowed. He says nothing about the process being honest:

…there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

It is no accident that Obama ended with the statement that AP paraphrased so egregiously (equating his call for bloodless suppression with a demand for legitimate elections). This was his theme throughout. He views the honesty of Iran’s democratic process as something to be judged by the mullahs, who he clearly accepts to be the sovereign power, regardless of the merits of competing claims. AP covers its tracks, just like they did with the Flight 93 memorial AP’s fraudulent report about Obama demanding respect for voters’ choice was the primary print report on Obama’s comments. Now that it has already misled millions of people, AP has covered its tracks by filing an update that overwrites the errant statement. This is what AP does when it gets caught putting out misinformation. To avoid issuing a correction, they flush the misleading story down the memory hole by using the same url for a completely different story. (Google only finds AP’s original article still posted at Fox News.) AP did the same thing last year after it was taken to task for failing to check the most basic facts in a story about the controversy over possible Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial. Ramesh Santanam reported a number of conflicting factual assertions, like the 44 blocks:

Opponents also claim there is a plan to have 44 glass blocks, for the 40 victims and four hijackers, in the design. "That’s an absolute, unequivocal fabrication that is being portrayed as fact," said Edward Felt’s brother, Gordon Felt, president of Families of Flight 93. "It’s misleading and helps drive the conspiracy theory."

When it was pointed out that Santanam could have found the four extra blocks just by opening up the design drawings and counting, AP quickly filed a completely different story (about fundraising for the memorial), under the same url. It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with AP using subject feeds that automatically update with their latest offering. It is that AP is systematically using this system to dodge corrections. This is actually their official policy:

For corrections on live, online stories, we overwrite the previous version. We send separate corrective stories online as warranted.

Except AP virtually never issue corrective stories, for the simple reason that AP has no established correction procedure. They just do the overwrite thing and say "too bad." Well this time the overwrite thing is not good enough. Demand a corrective story about AP’s false paraphrase of Obama’s words Associated Press obviously understands the importance of Obama saying that Iran must respect voters’ choice or they wouldn’t have bothered to pretend that he said it when he didn’t. They don’t just fail to mention Obama’s glaring omission on this crucial point, but actually tell the public via false paraphrase that he did say what he glaringly omitted. This cannot stand. Faced with our new president’s key statement on a historic crisis, AP reports a photo negative of what Obama actually said. There may be no established procedure for AP corrections, but anyone can still send a pre-written email to AP CEO Tom Curley, Editor Kathleen Carroll, the reporters who worked on the story (the egregious Jennifer Loven, along with Anne Gearan and Robert Burns), plus a smattering of other AP editors and bureaucrats. Who knows. There may even be a limit to how disingenuous some of these people are willing to be. To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Stumble it!

For the past…oh..year and a half at least, when watching the television, I’ve had to sit through crappy, tacky public service announcements about how on 17 February, 2009, people who have old TVs and don’t have cable or satellite hooked up to them, are going to have problems.

17 Feb. 09 is when the television stations, by decree of the fine and upstanding *cough* people in Congress, all television signals must be broadcast digitally. Buh-bye analog signals. The whole idea is to move the country forward technologically. Doing this, frees up all those frequencies used now by broadcasters, for use by internet broadband companies, and emergency responders (you know, the cops, the firemen..those kind of folks).

Now, just to be sure, this date was set almost 4 years go, waaaaay back in 2005. There’s been nearly four years..that’s FOUR YEARS…that’s 1,460 days folks, for everyone to get their act together. The government’s been offering coupons to help the poor buy digital converter boxes. Our tax dollars at work (and hey, at least this time it is for something useful).

But the candidate of ‘change’, President-elect Barack Hussein Obama, doesn’t want that kind of change. Nnooooo, his idea of change, is not to move America forward, embracing new, better technology, but to change the switch date. To postpone it. Until when? Who knows? That part isn’t in the details…of which there are few.

Why does he want to do this? Because it might adversely affect poor, elderly and *cough* rural folks. Really? Rural folks? I can see the poor, if there wasn’t the government basically handing out converter boxes. I can see the elderly certainly, because many of them ( and no offense to you oldsters out there) just don’t have the technological savvy to know what the frack it’s all about. But rural folks? What the hell is that about? Is Obama saying people who choose to live outside the city limits are too poor to afford satellite, AND too stupid to understand the myriad of television commercials. Sheesh. I suppose, these are the same people who cling to their guns, and their religion (which, makes me think he believes to be a myth) because they’re bitter.

The thing is, if we postpone this vital transition, when will me move forward? When will the change Obama promises us, actually do something beneficial,  instead of just changing plans, so we stand still?

A very wise man once told me, "Not all change is good, because not all movement is forward." Though, with this change, we’ll not be moving anyway, we’ll be standing still.

source

Stumble it!

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