The first #scrabble game I ever won: http://yfrog.com/h3g1wdj
January 2011
December 2010
“But I expected that even as he inevitably compromised, Obama, with his famously long view of things, would steadily try to push the public in a more liberal direction. As Mike says, this may mean eventually compromising on a policy that appeals to the broad middle of the country, but doing it in a way that hurts your opponents and energizes your friends for battles to come. Obama seems to have done exactly the opposite. It’s hard to understand.”
—Kevin Drum, Losing Well | Mother Jones
Just completed Week 5 - Day 2 of #C25K with @c25kapp #c25kapp
Without a pair, even TDD can lead to major design bloat. (Back to the drawing board, again.)
“Arnold Schwarzenegger became the worst governor in California history through his unwavering commitment to a far-right economic agenda, his fealty to the large corporations who helped elect him back in 2003, and his pursuit of a shock doctrine attack on the state’s institutions and prosperity in the service of his ideology and of his wealthy backers.”
—Worst Governor Ever
RT @flickrexport: FlickrExport 4.0.1 for iPhoto and Aperture is now available: http://gsfn.us/t/1yuzh
Just completed Week 5 - Day 1 of #C25K with @c25kapp #c25kapp
“Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, one of the chief architects of Portugal’s new drug strategy, says he was inspired partly by his own experience of helping his brother beat addiction. “It was a very hard change to make at the time because the drug issue involves lots of prejudices,” he said. “You just need to rid yourselves of prejudice and take an intelligent approach.”
—Portugal’s drug policy pays off; US eyes lessons - Health AP - MiamiHerald.com
“According to the data, whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita. It doesn’t matter how big the city is; the law remains the same. “This remarkable equation is why people move to the big city,” West says. “Because you can take the same person, and if you just move them to a city that’s twice as big, then all of a sudden they’ll do 15 percent more of everything that we can measure.”… “What the data clearly shows, and what [Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities] was clever enough to anticipate, is that when people come together, they become much more productive.”
—A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation - NYTimes.com
“Look, we all know that every city is unique. That’s all we talk about when we talk about cities, those things that make New York different from L.A., or Tokyo different from Albuquerque. But focusing on those differences misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what.”
—A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation - NYTimes.com
Health Overhaul's Biggest Failing Could Be Lack Of A Catchy Name - Health News Blog : NPR →
npr.org
[Seriously. I’ve been saying this from the beginning. This is as good an example as any of how Democrats suck at messaging.]
Thanks for the Tax Cut! - (NYTimes.com - not The Onion) →
nytimes.com
Thanks for the Tax Cut! By LARRY DAVID Published: December 20, 2010
THERE is a God! It passed! The Bush tax cuts have been extended two years for the upper bracketeers, of which I am a proud member, thank you very much. I’m the last person in the world I’d want to be beside, but I am beside myself! This is a life changer, I tell you. A life changer!
To begin with, I was planning a trip to Cabo with my kids for Christmas vacation. We were going to fly coach, but now with the money I’m saving in taxes, I’m going to splurge and bump myself up to first class. First class! Somebody told me they serve warm nuts up there, and call you “mister.” I might not get off the plane!
I’m also going to call the hotel and get another room so I don’t have to sleep on a cot in the kids’ room. Don’t get me wrong — I love a good cot. The problem is they tend to take up a lot of room, and it’s getting a little tougher in my advancing years to fold it up and drag it to the closet. I mean, I’d do it if I had to, but guess what? I don’t! Not with this windfall coming my way. Now I get to have my own room with a king-sized bed. And who knows, maybe I’ll even get some fancy bottled water from the minibar. This is shaping up to be the best vacation I’ve had in years.
When I get home, thanks to the great compromise, the first thing I’m going to do is get a flat-screen TV. Finally I can throw out the 20-inch Zenith with the rabbit ears, the one I inherited from my parents when they died. The reception is terrible and I’m getting tired of going out to bars every time I want to watch a game. Last month, the antenna broke and I tried to improvise one with a metal hanger and wound up cutting myself. Every time I see that scab, I say to myself, “If, God willing, those Bush tax cuts are restored, I’m going to buy a new TV.” Well, guess what? They have been!
It’s also going to be a boon for my health. After years of coveting them, I’ll finally be able to afford blueberries. Did you know they have a lot of antioxidants, which prevent cancer? Cancer! This tax cut just might save my life. Who said Republicans don’t support health care? I’m going to have the blueberries with my cereal, and I’m not talking Special K. Those days are over. It’s nothing but real granola from now on. The kind you get in the plastic bins in health food stores. Did someone say “organic”?
The only problem is if, God forbid, the tax cuts are repealed in two years, how will I ever go back to Special K and bananas? Well, I did quit smoking, so I’m sure if push came to shove I could summon up the willpower to get off granola and blueberries. Of course, I suppose with the money I managed to save from the “Seinfeld” syndication, I probably could continue to eat granola with blueberries, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Life was good, and now it’s even better. Thank you, Republicans. And a special thank you to President Obama and the Democrats. I didn’t know you cared.
Rockin’ out to some streamin’ funk while waiting for http://poliscifiradio.com to start! #psfr
Just completed Week 3 - Day 3 of #C25K with @c25kapp #c25kapp
“The problem, however, is not Obama’s advisers. It is the man who appointed them — and his failure to know how to fight and lead as a progressive. Let’s stop pretending. Barack Obama is a disaster as a crisis president. He has taken an economic collapse that was the result of Republican ideology and Republican policies, and made it the Democrats’ fault. And the more that he is pummeled, the more he bends over.”
—Robert Kuttner: What Now for the Democrats?
“Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs. The delays represent a marked departure from the first two years of the Obama presidency, when the E.P.A. moved quickly to reverse one Bush environmental policy after another. Administration officials now face the question of whether in their zeal to undo the Bush agenda they reached too far and provoked an unmanageable political backlash. Environmental advocates are furious.”
—
E.P.A. Delays Tougher Rules on Emissions - NYTimes.com
Obama caves again. As I see it, this is another case of the tail wagging the dog: Obama is simply unwilling (scared?) to make the political case for sane regulation, so he folds before the flop.
The “backlash” was not unmanageable; it was simply unmanaged. The Democratic leaders totally dropped the ball on messaging. Even this week, when Obama has given them a *perfect* talking point, none of the Democrats I’ve seen interviewed on TV or radio are calling the Republicans hostage-takers. “Tone-deaf” doesn’t begin to cover it — they are simply senseless.
RT @wikileaks: Sarah Palin says Julian should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden—so he should be safe for at least a decade.
“
Such was the frustration among the wonks [in the Obama administration] that, when asked to explain their tax-cut strategy, they’d morbidly joke that there was no strategy, just an “approach.”
The [political] operatives were rightly put off by the cowardice of Senate Democrats. What they didn’t grasp was the structural advantage of a White House in framing a debate. The West Wing’s reluctance to exploit this advantage was a bitter irony given that polls showed Obama to be highly effective on the tax question as a candidate. “Obama thinks there are campaigns and there’s governing, and never the twain shall meet,” laments one Democratic consultant.
” —Barack Obama, Tax Cuts, 2012, And David Axelrod: Inside A Divided White House | The New RepublicJust posted my talk and slides for “Off The Rails” to https://github.com/alexch/Off-The-Rails #ruby #rails #sfruby
