Poverty in the USA: Actually not that bad?
Updates from July, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Jehuda
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Jehuda
Hmm. My wife and her mom flew to L.A. this weekend; and I was quite worried about them being there during this particular weekend because of Carmageddon. But looks like it hasn’t lived up to expectations (via Instapundit).
Funny how closing the busiest freeway in the country can’t screw up traffic like a visit by Obama can. Last summer – while still living in L.A. – it took me 3 hours to get home while Obama was visiting for a fundraiser.
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Jehuda
Breaking Bad returns for Season 4: I suppose sooner or later my wife and I will get around to it. I saw a little bit some years ago and it reminds me of the Mexican Cartel Wars a little more than I’d prefer. But I like Bryan Cranston, so I thought I’d link to this interview with him.
AMC is launching Season 4 of the show tomorrow. The crews just wrapped production a few days ago, actually. Here’s a picture I took of Stage 1 at Albuquerque Studios – where much of the Season 4 shoot took place – the day the Breaking Bad crews cleaned up and left for the season:
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Jehuda
Is American influence around the world in decline? Probably not in Bulgaria, though this is no way to treat a war memorial, whether it’s Soviet or not…
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Jehuda
Eerie video – and background – at the link. The reality is very different, especially this weekend as Carmageddon is unleashed across the City of Angels.
Via Gizmodo.
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Jehuda
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee blames the budget impasse on…RAAAAACISM!!
Of course! Can’t come to an agreement because agreement is a…person of color? How would that work? Not sure.
But if Dems have to play the race card to get some traction in the budget debate, then House Republicans must be on the right track…
UPDATE: Liberal group warns Obama on cuts. The base is restless…
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Jehuda
I’m intrigued by this collection of essays titled Law and Magic, which “explores a unique and interesting area of legal study that covers a breadth of topics from the historical persecution of alleged witches to contemporary cases of intellectual property law surrounding magic tricks.”
I just learned a former professor of mine wrote one of the essays in it – one about copyright protection for magic tricks and performances. Who knew?
It’s available through Amazon
:
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Jehuda
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Jehuda
FilmLadd: “I don’t care who you are. There were all sorts of ways to tackle the story, and with a dancing stripper and rappers thrown into the mix, there’s just no damned excuse for ignoring it, and everyone knows it.”
Personally, I think we could always use a little more relentlessness…
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Jehuda
WSJ: McConnell’s Debt Ceiling Plan Gets Support From Harry Reid.
If that isn’t the kiss of death…
An opposing view from Tom Maguire, here.
I just think we need to do something about our fiscal situation, not just have Republicans avoid blame for the consequences of continuing this mad Keynesian spiral of spending money that doesn’t exist…
UPDATE: Related: Don’t leave mad! Obama throws a fit as he tries to do an impression of a great American president (he couldn’t pull it off). Plus a dispatch from the Mirror Universe via Esquire (when did they write that piece? 2009?) . So, I guess no debt deal…
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Jehuda
Stacy McCain is aggregating like a MoFo on the special election over there.
Could a Republican win this so-called safe Democratic seat? It could happen. I lived in that district for about 5 years, I recently realized. When I moved to L.A., it was a Democrat who represented it. But the GOP took it soon after, before it went Democrat again (staying that way for over a decade). Maybe it’s time for a change again…
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Jehuda
Obama’s very own Valerie Plame scandal? New York Observer: “The Associated Press brought the mysterious analyst’s role to light on July 5, after which a mere two days elapsed before The Observer managed to learn the identity of this super spy, type it into Google and track the poor guy to a quiet subdivision in Northern Virginia.”
Couldn’t leave bad enough alone, I guess. It’s not all the White House’s fault, though. Or the Observer’s. A charming Julian Assange wannabe also played a role. And he definitely sounds more than a little proud of his contribution: “If I had the name, I’d put it up. I’m an absolutist.”
‘Absolutist’ is not quite the word I had in mind, though it also starts with the letter ‘a’…
And who knows how many other official missteps had something to do with this? It’s not like they promised us Hope and Change and Competence, right?
UPDATE: Post of the Day at Legal Insurrection. Thanks!
It’s been over 12 hours since this story broke on The Observer. But if you Google “CIA agent outed”, you get a bunch of Valerie Plame references. This story doesn’t seem to be getting any traction anywhere. Perhaps, as with war, outing CIA agents is bad only when a Republican occupies the Oval Office…
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Jehuda
Now and Then: Hobo With a Shotgun vs. Dirty Harry.
I haven’t seen Hobo yet, but Amazon Instant Video has it for rent for only $3.99
– if you’re interested…
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Jehuda
Yes.
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Jehuda
Or wobbly. Same thing. Democrats would act similarly, were they in the GOP’s position. Well done, Speaker Boehner.
The opportunity to be partisan is a privilege which feeedom has afforded us. And it’s a good thing, whatever side of the aisle it comes from. ‘Partisan’ is not the dirty word the Left has made it out to be. The one it often invokes whenever they find themselves out of power.
You want to live in a country where everybody absolutely, always must be on the same side of an issue? I hear Cuba and North Korea are beautiful this time of year…
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Jehuda
Ed Driscoll: Hamas Declares War On Male Hairstylists.
I wish it was Ed’s version of an Iowahawk piece. But no. He’s commenting on actual news…
UPDATE: Ed links back. Thanks! He’s actually quite right about radical Muslims mistaking art for life. Who can forget about the deaths of American servicemen that have been linked to De Palma’s Redacted. And in case you don’t know who the Zohan is (and as much as I admire Adam Sandler, who can blame you?), this is the movie I was talking about.
MORE: That link about Redacted was bad. Just fixed it. Sorry! Sure get a lot of those since I started blogging on the WordPress app for Android…
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Jehuda
Sounds like MoveOn feels cheated by Obama on the Social Security cuts issue.
(Via TOM)
Yesterday, it was Frank Rich who was bellyaching about something or other regarding Obama. How long before #DudeWhere’sMyUtopia becomes a trending topic on Twitter?
Related: Debt deal in sight? Plus, how cutting Social Security would work.
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Jehuda
WyBlog: “It’s not often that Progressive Democrats openly admit their failures. But the Newark, NJ city council has given up on its police force, and their city.”
The sad thing is they don’t think they’re giving up. They are convinced they’re doing the right thing, when in fact the policies at issue couldn’t be more bone-headed. Hey, kinda like Janice Hahn’s policy gems!
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Jehuda
Incidentally, Dr. Wife and I really liked Salt, which is steeped in Cold War themes. Much better movie than I anticipated (although the main character’s physical prowess stretched credulity a couple of times). I never would have considered it if it wasn’t for reading about it on Libertas.
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Jehuda
Shilling for Janice Hahn: “Can the Los Angeles Times be bothered to do some actual reporting of its own, rather than mere public relations stenography for Democrats?”
Well, that would require the actual practice of journalism.
Janice Hahn’s approach to policy is obviously pretty boneheaded. But she’s a cunning politician. L.A. politics requires a lot of coalition-building given the size of the city and the diversity of its populace. What better way to ingratiate herself with the African American community than “let’s do something about gang violence”? Of course, she expanded that concept into “let’s take some city money and throw it around to do something about gang violence, regardless of who gets it”.
True, Janice is the daughter of former L.A. City Councilman Kenneth Hahn, who was an ardent supporter of the civil rights cause back in the 60′s. So the Hahn name has plenty of cred with the African American community in Los Angeles already. But that might not have been enough…
UPDATE: Thanks to R.S. for linking back. Oh, and for a collection of all my ‘Journalism Is Hard’ posts through the few years this blog’s been around, you can click the link on the Rhetori-Hub, on the left side of the screen…
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Jehuda
Twilight of the Rubes: Frank Rich on Obama’s Original Sin: “The president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second.”
I suppose that’s what Rich meant in 2007 when he described Obama as an apostle of “a unified, live-and-let-live democracy”. But I can’t help to wonder why he sounds so outraged and surprised. Maybe Rich also failed to notice all the Wall Street money Obama raised around that time. And then there’s the matter of those AIG bonuses.
Plus this from Matt Taibbi: “Rich’s thesis is that this issue is becoming important not just to reporters, but to voters, and that Obama may soon pay for his failures at the polls.“ Taibbi, I think, is only partly right. I’d bet good money that voters found this issue important some time ago. But when he writes that the issue is just becoming important to reporters, I think he is correct.
Implicit in Taibbi’s words is also another point worth noting: that reporters were aware of the issue, but they just didn’t think it was important; and thus they didn’t write about it. Now that Obama’s re-elections prospects look grim, now it’s a problem. Hope and Change don’t quite spring eternal, I suppose…
Crossposted at Conservative Commons.
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Jehuda
A shocking instance of female victimization in Dublin made me wonder if Ireland would soon be added to the list of the Five Most Dangerous Countries For Women.
But after a moment, I stopped wondering. The Dublin incident somehow couldn’t hold my attention…
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Jehuda
…people out there would probably be a lot more satisfied with the verdict.
Other than that, there’s little that’s comforting about federal criminal law…
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Jehuda
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Jehuda
Who is Kerwin Swint?
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Jehuda
According to a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of gender specialists.
Compare and contrast the plight of women in those countries with the “plight” of one Mac Mcclelland: “All of Port-au-Prince is suffering from PTSD and I’m supposed to care about some woman who parachutes in for a couple of weeks and has the luxury to leave whenever she wants because she’s been inconveniently traumatized?” Evidently, yes. You are. (via TOM)
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Jehuda
Or maybe the Democratic Party? Political Clown Parade.
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Jehuda
To be replaced with AC360, which will be changing airtimes.
Makes sense. If Spitzer on the broadly distributed CNN couldn’t beat Olbermann – whose show airs on a network with a market penetration about the size of my pinky - then he has no business being on the air, on any network.
You could say Spitzer is Olbermann’s first casualty. Though, to paraphrase Aeschylus, I think it’s safe to say Olbermann’s first casualty was the truth, which he strangled long ago with epistemic closure…or something…
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Jehuda
Prof. Douglas: L.A. Times shills for communists on Business section front page.
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Jehuda
I remember seeing the movie when I was a kid, on TV. It starred Charles Bronson and the invaluable Yaphet Kotto.
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Jehuda
And to be tried by court martial.
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Jehuda
Film School has been a bad deal for a long time, actually, but it may be easier to come to that same realization in these tough economic times.
As I’ve said before: go to the library instead, it’s cheaper.
Take it from me. I graduated from one of the university film schools mentioned in the article almost 20 years ago. I’m still paying the student loans, have been working in the industry for over 15 years; and realized about a decade ago that the degree itself contributed little or nothing to my career. No one in the biz really cares about what your diploma says, anyway. It’s all about what you can do.
UPDATE: Link was bad. Just fixed. Sorry about that!
MORE: Related: John Stossel on the College Scam.
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Jehuda
Everybody’s a comedian…or a hacker, but this hack is funny because it’s true:
“1. Politicians and other public servants lie,” reads the event description provided on the Obama campaign website. “2. Politicians tell you what you want to hear and offer to provide things for ‘free’ to get votes. 3. When government buys, the people pay.”
The emperor has no clothes, in meatspace or cyberspace… -
Jehuda
But he’s still beating MSNBC and CNN in the same time slot, which for Current TV is a very big deal because – well – Current has never had that many viewers (is ‘many’ even the right word?) before…
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Jehuda
WSJ: Flying Car Maker Gets Regulatory Clearance.
Hmm. I don’t know. That looks too much like a small airplane to me. A flying car is supposed to be a car that can fly, not a “roadable aircraft”. It’s 2011, already! Why can’t it be like these flying cars?
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Jehuda
Sorry I haven’t blogged in so long. Dr. Wife and I had a very busy month of June (in which weekends were taken over by multiple home improvement projects and a visit from my father-in-law), which we capped off with a trip to Mexico to see my mother over the long weekend. We had a good time and were able to catch up on our sleep. I personally feel as if my batteries have been “recharged”.
Blogging to return soon!
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Jehuda
To commemorate his 100th birthday.
But “Margaret Thatcher says Reagan ‘brought millions of people to freedom’”? Seriously? As if it was a matter of debate? It’s not just Thatcher’s opinion. It’s a fact.
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Jehuda
And Happy Independence Day, readers!
