"It’s A Class War
And We’re Winning!"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaires_for_Bush
I wonder if the Billionaires for Bush have any public events scheduled in the near future?
Month: September 2008
Bookmarks for September 29th
Some additional reading September 29th from 15:27 to 18:08:
- Jackson Votes "No" on Flawed Bailout Bill – "We have gone from Roosevelt's New Deal, to Reagan's Raw Deal, to Bush's Quick Deal. The American People are demanding a Fair Deal and on November 4th will elect Fair Dealers."
- Orcinus – What Goes Around – "By their own standards and rules of evidence, Sarah Palin's association with New Apostolic churches and her admitted personal associations are serious issues that cast a long shadow on her intentions for this country. If the GOP ticket wins, there's a one-third chance that the world's most powerful country — including the biggest army the world has ever seen — will end up in the hands of a woman who believes that God put her where she is; and subscribes to a religion that is overtly and unapologetically raising its children to destroy American democracy."
Takwin
alchemy experiments in the park
Bookmarks for September 29th
Some additional reading September 29th from 07:27 to 10:27:
- Daily Kos: More egg on the wingnutosphere's face – "Tracy Jopek of Merrill told The Associated Press on Sunday she was honored that Obama remembered Sgt. Ryan David Jopek, who was killed in 2006 by a roadside bomb.
Jopek criticized Internet reports suggesting Obama, D-Ill., exploited her son for political purposes."I don't understand how people can take that and turn it into some garbage on the Internet," she said.
Jopek acknowledged e-mailing the Obama campaign in February asking that the presidential candidate not mention her son in speeches or debates. But she said Obama's mention on Friday was appropriate because he was responding after Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, said a soldier's mother gave him a bracelet."
- Guess who's not coming to dinner :: rogerebert.com :: News & comment – Roger Ebert disinvites John McCain from any future dinner parties:
"I do not like you, John McCain. My feeling has nothing to do with issues. It has to do with common courtesy. During the debate, you refused to look Barack Obama in the eye. Indeed, you refused to look at him at all. Even when the two of you shook hands at the start, you used your eyes only to locate his hand, and then gazed past him as you shook it.Obama is my guy. If you are rude to him, you are rude to me. If you came to dinner at my house and refused to look at or speak with one of my guests, that would be bad manners and I would be offended. Same thing if I went to your house. During the debate, you were America's guest."
- Notable figures remember Paul Newman – some good anecdotes here
Palin and Six Thousand Year Old Earth
I would be very interested if Sarah Palin was asked, point blank, in the upcoming debate if she believes the Earth is 6,000 years old. If she has conviction of her beliefs, she shouldn’t lie in response just to obscure and deny her religion, but have the courage to actually say what she believes.
[Dinosaur Invasion – click to embiggen, if you aren’t easily frightened]
ANCHORAGE — Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago — about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct — the teacher said.
After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.
Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,” Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks,” recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The idea of a “young Earth” — that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on — is a popular strain of creationism.
Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based “intelligent design” to be taught along with evolution in Alaska’s schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say.
[From Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy – Los Angeles Times]
Palin has not sought yet, but she’s probably just biding her time.
Polapan Castles in our minds
Wicker Park, I believe
playing with film emulation again
Pumpkins Weigh Here
Near Madison, WI, last October
Bookmarks for September 28th
Some additional reading September 28th from 00:15 to 10:37:
- The Next Up-and-Coming Neighborhoods – BusinessWeek – My photo got republished by BusinessWeek, with a half-assed photo credit. Is it really so hard to use my real name? I guess if they don't, they don't have to pay, right? oh well. Still cool.
- James Fallows-on Strategy and Tactics – But Obama either figured out, or instinctively understood, that the real battle was to make himself seem comfortable, reasonable, responsible, well-versed, and in all ways "safe" and non-outsiderish to the audience just making up its mind about him. (And yes, of course, his being a young black man challenging an older white man complicated everything he did and said, which is why his most wittily aggressive debate performance was against another black man, Alan Keyes, in his 2004 Senate race.) The evidence of the polls suggests that he achieved exactly this strategic goal. He was the more "likeable," the more knowledgeable, the more temperate, etc.
- How McCain Stirred a Simmering Pot – Maybe why McCain was so pissed at Obama
" Obama then jumped in to turn the question on his rival: "What do you think of the [insurance] plan, John?" he asked repeatedly. McCain did not answer.One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a "game plan" aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans. "They had taken McCain's request for a meeting and trumped it," said this source."
Ha ha, McLame's plan turned into a trap
Casa Aztlan Republished
1831 S. Racine, Pilsen.
Not sure who the figure being repainted is
Republished in Business Week
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0924_artsy_neighborhoods/1.htm
Dedicated to all the Illford Delta 3200 fans in the house
Ilford Delta 3200 film stock emulation
Bridge in Motion
Bridge in Motion, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
Happened upon a bridge opening while walking the other day
Bookmarks for September 26th through September 27th
A few interesting links for September 26th through September 27th:
- The Capitol Fax Blog » Not that you may care what I think, but… – "both candidates have no real clue how to execute pivots on a regular and effective basis. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were masters of this. Both need to watch tapes of those two guys. After McCain made the point about a federal earmark to study the DNA of bears, Obama could’ve come back with Gov. Palin’s request of a federal earmark to study the DNA of harbor seals. It would’ve been a great comeback line, and set up next week’s veep debate as well. The Obama zinger about Spain’s prime minister and McCain’s attenuated line about Obama’s fake presidential seal didn’t work because nobody in the target audience really understood what was going on.
Sharp pivots – when a candidate takes a big hit, turns it around and throws it right back at his opponent with devastating impact – usually end up being “grand slam” debate moments. Learning to pivot means you’ve learned how to win a debate."
- What Is This Money Even For? – "1% of all mortgages — the amount now in default — comes out to $111 billion. Triple that, and you've got $333 billion. Let's round that up to $350 billion. So even if we reach the point where three percent of all mortgages are in foreclosure, the total dollars to buy all those mortgages would be half of what the Bush-Paulson-McCain plan calls for.
a purchased mortgage isn't worth zero..come with property attached. Even with home prices falling and some of the homes lying around unsold, it's safe to assume that some portion of these values could be recovered. Then the real outlay for taxpayers would be $175 billion.Which, frankly, is a number that Wall Street should be able to handle without our help. After all, the top firms on Wall Steet payed out $120 billion in bonuses alone between 2000 and 2006. why do they need us to step in now? And why do they need twice as much as all the mortgages that are even likely to implode?"
Paul Newman: RIP
We knew Paul Newman was ill and 83, and yet the news of his death is still shocking. Long a favorite actor of mine, Newman had made over 60 films; I’ve probably seen 53 of them. Not all were classics, mind you, but enough were so that his performances will be studied and celebrated for as long as film is a viable medium.
Paul Newman, a sublime actor and a good man, is dead at 83. The movie legend died Friday at his home in Connecticut, a family spokeswoman said. The cause of death was lung cancer. Newman reportedly told his family he chose to die at home.
He lived a long and active life, encompassing acting and directing for stage and screen, philanthropy, political activism, auto racing, and the “Newman’s Own” line of foods.
After serving in World War II as a tail gunner, including missions in the Pacific from an aircraft carrier, Newman studied acting at Kenyon College and quickly found stardom on the stage. His Broadway career began in 1953, co-starring in the hit play “Picnic,” and as recently as this spring he was planning to direct a summer theater production of “Of Mice and Men,” until illness prevented him.
…
An outspoken liberal, Newman placed 19th on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” and cited that as one of his proudest achievements.
How can you choose Newman’s best roles? He almost always had his choice of films, working with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Martin Ritt, Richard Brooks, Otto Preminger, Arthur Penn, Alfred Hitchcock, George Roy Hill, Robert Altman, and the Coen brothers.
He had a huge hit in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), co- starring with Robert Redford. They teamed again in “The Sting” (1973). His acting nominations came for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958), “The Hustler,” (1961), “Hud” (1963), “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), “Absence of Malice” (1081), “The Verdict” (1982), “The Color of Money” (1986), “Nobody’s Fool” (1994) and “Road to Perdition” (2002).
Other important performances were as Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (1956), as Billy the Kid in “The Left-Handed Gun” (1958), “Exodus” (1960), “Torn Curtain” (1966), “Slap Shot” (1977), “Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989), as Huey Long in “Blaze” (1989), with Woodward in “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” (1980), and the Coens’ “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994).
“The Long, Hot Summer” (Martin Ritt)
The New York Times obit concludes:
Decency seems to have come easily to Mr. Newman himself, as evidenced by his philanthropic and political endeavors, which never devolved into self-promotion. It was easy to take his intelligence for granted as well as his talent, which survived even the occasional misstep. At the end of “The Drowning Pool,” a woman wistfully tells Mr. Newman, I wish you’d stay a while. I know how she feels.
Courteous Shade Sold
Courteous Shade
I don’t think I mentioned that I sold a print of the above photograph to Faulkner + Locke, Inc. They are working on a project in Elk Grove, Illinois1 and requested a 30″ x 40″ of Courteous Shade to be hung in a conference room. I asked a professional photographer I know for advice on pricing, and print shop recommendation. He highly praised Printmakers Chicago, and I was quite pleased with how friendly and efficient they were. I certainly would use their services again in the future.
I had a brief moment of panic when the image file I initially sent had too low of a DPI to be printed out that large (my Photoshop file was probably 12″ x 7″), but per the instructions in Scott Kelby’s Photoshop for Digital Photographers I changed the pixel dimension (9600 wide, and somewhere around 6428 tall), the resolution to 360 pixels/inch, and used the Bicubic Sharper sampling algorithm. This did the trick, and the print came out looking sharp, and if I say so myself, beautiful. I shipped the print out last night.
So if you are ever in a building in Elk Grove, and see the above photograph, please let me know, I’d like to see how they framed the photograph.
Footnotes:- a hotel, presumedly, though I don’t know the details. Also, Faulkner + Locke was quite pleasant to work with as well [↩]
Palin is flailing
One of the most compelling reasons not to vote for John McCain is because of his perplexing selection of a neophyte as Vice President. Sarah Palin should not be anywhere near the levers of power in Washington, especially with Cranky John looking fairly old already, and the election hasn’t even occurred.
Bob Herbert transcribes the train-wreck Palin Couric interview from this week:
When asked again this week about her puerile linkage of foreign policy proficiency and Alaska’s proximity to Russia, this time by Katie Couric of CBS News, here is what Ms. Palin said she meant:
“That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada.”
She went on, but lost her way midsentence: “It’s funny that a comment like that was kind of made to — cari — I don’t know, you know? Reporters …”
Ms. Couric said, “Mocked?”
“Yeah, mocked,” said Ms. Palin. “I guess that’s the word. Yeah.”
It is not just painful, but frightening to watch someone who could become the vice president of the United States stumbling around like this in an interview.
Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin to explain how Alaska’s proximity to Russia “enhances your foreign policy credentials.”
“Well, it certainly does,” Ms. Palin replied, “because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there—”
Gently interrupting, Ms. Couric asked, “Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?”
“We have trade missions back and forth,” said Ms. Palin. “We do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to our state.”
It was surreal, the kind of performance that would generate a hearty laugh if it were part of a Monty Python sketch. But this is real life, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. As Ms. Palin was fumbling her way through the Couric interview, the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, the collapse of Washington Mutual, was occurring.
[From Bob Herbert – Palin’s Words Raise Red Flags – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]
Not to mention that the trade missions allegedly conducted with Russia are so top secret, nobody will discuss them on the record.
I spent some time on the Governor’s Web site seeking more details about her trade negotiations with Russia. There’s a press release about Gov. Palin’s meeting with a trade mission from the Yukon, but nothing about Russia anywhere in the archives. Tony Knowles, a Democrat who was governor from 1994-2002, led a trade mission — back in 1997, while Palin was running Wasilla — to the remote island of Sakhalin, off the coast of Siberia. That seems to be about it for Russia-Alaska trade missions lately.
When asked for examples of trade missions with Russia that have taken place under Palin’s watch, gubernatorial spokeswoman Kate Morgan refused to answer the question. Morgan said she could not legally discuss any trade missions with me because she’s a state employee and I had first heard this claim through the Couric interview, which was part of Palin’s campaign for the vice-presidency. When I pointed out that any trade missions that occurred would have been official state business, Morgan again noted that I had learned about them in the context of the campaign. “The law is very stringent,” she said, and recommended that I contact the McCain-Palin campaign. Two spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.