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24 Aug 2009 22:24

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Politics: A prescription for what ails Obama: A move to the right?

  • For months polls have shown a huge gap between the popularity of the president and the unpopularity of his policies. Sooner or later, one of these had to give.
  • Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn • Discussing Obama’s health care policy in the wake of his declining poll numbers. McGurn says that by letting go of the fight, Obama will strengthen his position as president – just like Bill Clinton did in 1994. Regarding Clinton, McGurn notes: “Though he continues to deny GOP contributions to his success, after his 1994 health-care defeat, Mr. Clinton did what all smart pols do: He appropriated the most appealing parts of his opponents’ agenda.” Our counterpoint: If Obama does that and loses the battle, we all lose health care reform. One would argue that if Obama actually pulls it off. his legacy will be even greater. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 22:00

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U.S.: This swine flu number should scare the bejesus out of you

  • 90,000 swine flu deaths predicted this fall source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 3 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 21:21

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Biz: Cricket legend R. Allen Stanford has to stay in jail, guys

Oh, beyond playing cricket in Antigua, he supposedly defrauded investors out of billions in a fraudulent ponzi scheme. That’s why he’s in jail. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 21:09

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Tech: Jakob Nielsen, usability’s stickler, makes the perfect Tweet

  • LAS VEGAS (October) and BERLIN (November): venues for our biggest usability conference ever http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek
  • The Perfect Tweet • So designed by five rounds of Jakob Nielsen and his usability nerds. With this tweet, Nielsen considered everything: Wording, timing, the capitalization of letters, the number of characters, the visual impact of the line of text, the use of a bit.ly URL, and so on. We think he’s crazy and needs to throw in some hashtags. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 21:01

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Biz, U.S.: Cash for Clunkers deadline extended. Here’s a monster truck video.

  • Car dealers have until noon tomorrow to get all that paperwork in, thanks to server problems on the government’s end. Which is the not-fun part of the Cash for Clunkers program. Above? The fun part.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 20:41

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Culture: Does “Inglourious Basterds” play too fast and loose with WWII?

  • The great, sick joke of the film’s grindhouse logic is that even though what it shows us didn’t happen, in a larger, almost abstract sense it did happen. (I mean, it’s not as if the Nazi high command, in the end, wasn’t destroyed.)
  • Entertainment Weekly film reviewer Owen Gleiberman • Discussing the possibility that Quentin Tarantino’s latest film might be the birth of a backlash. He notes that one of his reviewer friends found the end of the movie to be extremely offensive. Glieberman’s unnamed friend “thought Tarantino had stepped over a line of historical veracity, and that audiences, especially younger ones, might be led by Inglourious Basterds to embrace the idea that World War II was just another meaningless pulp fantasy.” Our thought? Tarantino’s only doing what his inspirations did – play fast and loose with history for entertainment’s sake. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 3 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 20:31

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Culture: Michael Jackson’s death a homicide: The news cycle explodes again.

  • The L.A. Coroner’s office says Michael Jackson (who still hasn’t been buried yet) was given a lethal dose of propofol, which he was taking to help him sleep. source
  • Considering that his daughter, Paris, didn’t inject her dad with a huge dose of a powerful sedative, Dr. Conrad Murray is probably the main suspect. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

24 Aug 2009 20:20

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Tech, U.S.: That “Skanks in NYC” blogger broke an obscure cyberstalking law

  • Could we have a less vapid free speech hero, please? When NYC fashion school grad student Rosemary Port anonymously posted her harsh diatribes against model Liskula Cohen, she broke the law. The obscure cyberstalking law she broke says she could be sentenced to up to two years in jail and fined for using the internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person.” It’s the kind of law that angers bloggers like us because it completely goes against free speech. We can’t imagine the idea of Port fighting this law up to the Supreme Court over calling some girl she didn’t like a “ho.” It makes our brain hurt. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 11:31

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Tech: Google outed the “skank” blogger. Now the skank plans to sue

  • $15 million after making a model really, really mad source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 3 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 11:23

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World: Discrimination against AIDS is still alive and well in Vietnam

  • We survived the French bombings and the American bombings … I’d rather be bombed to death than die slowly of AIDS.
  • Nguyen Thi Thuoc • Thuoc, a 70-year-old Vietnamese woman, kept her grandchildren out of school because of 15 new students who were HIV positive. Discrimination against the HIV-positive is widespread in the country; this is just one example. “You can have wonderful policies and wonderful legislation,” notes Vietnam UNICEF representative Jesper Morch, but without a the right education campaigns, “you’ll have trouble enforcing them.” • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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