alternative hippopotamus

His Pantloadness:

What’s particularly odious about Obama’s scare tactics is that he’s using them for the mother of all bait-and-switches. He justifiably scares people about the magnitude of the financial crisis, but uses that fear not to sell them on a solution to the crisis but to trick them into signing up for a new Great Society. It’s like convincing someone he’s got cancer and then telling him that’s why he needs to buy a new car.

My thoughts: what a stupid analogy, particularly when you justified Bush using 9.11 to invade Iraq. And, isn’t it great that elections have consequences, e.g., your irrelevance?

From New Album 1/22/09 12:41 PM

That’s Isaiah Poole from Campaign for America’s Future that Chris is speaking to.

Washington Post:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracked the protest plans of a peaceful Washington area antiwar group and passed the information to the Maryland State Police, which had previously labeled the activists as terrorists in an intelligence file.

The federal agency obtained two e-mails containing plans for upcoming demonstrations at a military recruiting center in Silver Spring in 2005, the first indication that DHS might have worked with the police to monitor advocacy groups. The notification by DHS appears in a state police file on the DC Anti-War Network, or DAWN, provided to The Washington Post under the Public Information Act.

For future reference. Those who want to argue that Obama is 2% less evil than Bush, please spare me the aggravation of your whining tone.

A couple of days ago I bought an HTC Touch Diamond. I also have an iPod Touch, and figured that by this point the Windows Mobile apps would look similar to what’s available on the iTunes App Store. As it turns out: not so much.

One of the weird things is that few of the Windows Mobile apps use the accelerometer built in to the HTC. Here, I started to wonder if maybe this was a recent addition, and Science and Technology had not yet caught up with it.

As it turns out, HTC had released Windows Mobile phones using the accelerometer before Apple released the iPhone. Interesting, I guess it takes a company like Microsoft to keep a potentially interesting product mediocre.

Riverchucky:

If the progressive blogosphere is now sober and alarmed, I have a proposition for it. Now is the time when we put aside our differences. We will try to turn the other cheek and put aside the fact that you guys acted like f%^*ing @$$holes towards us for the past year. If you are fully alarmed and ready to do some real activism, it is time we had some REAL unity and coordinated our messages. We can offer amnesty, so long as you acknowledge to yourselves that you were mislead about us. There was a reason why the split was engineered in the party. It is to keep us from getting enough critical mass to take the oligarchical bastards on. The way back to power is to first admit that you were had. You don’t have to do this publicly. I’m sure you know what barriers to success you have to remove.

It sounds like you may not have understood the gist of Sirota’s STFU post. You don’t really have a role in progressive politics. The progressive blogosphere likes you where you are: in quarantine.

Lambert today:

NOTE I should say that stalking really is a serious problem for women, as this story in today’s Times reminds us. That’s why Sirota’s appropriation of the term to describe his feelings when posters link to him and disagree with his writing, is not merely wrong, and risible, but appalling. Another victory for the progressive brand!

Lambert one month ago:

Pathetically, stalker and troll dmd76 shows up again. I can imagine no better way for an obot to prove that he (?) is, in fact, in obot, than for him (?) to stalk another poster for a Godwin’s Law misdemeanor from seven months ago. Ironically, online stalking is also a fine way to prove the thesis of the post! The primaries ended a long time ago. I’ve gotten over them and moved on. Sadly, some have not.

Quelle surprise!

Yes, many have noticed how Lambert has moved on from the primaries. Like Ahab moved on from Moby Dick.

Extra credit: how many grown-up types still use the word “obot”?

Random Wingnut:

# 22: The Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years [S.T. Karnick]

Brazil (1985): Vividly depicting the miserable results of elitist utopian schemes, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil portrays a darkly comic dystopia of malfunctioning high-tech equipment and the dreary living conditions common to all totalitarian regimes. Everything in the society is built to serve government plans rather than people. The film is visually arresting and inventive, with especially evocative use of shots that put the audience in a subservient position, just like the people in the film. Terrorist bombings, national-security scares, universal police surveillance, bureaucratic arrogance, a callous elite, perversion of science, and government use of torture evoke the worst aspects of the modern megastate.

Do they really not see how the very aspects of Brazil that they mention are precisely a condemnation of them?

Broadcasters, ever mindful that the “Public” in “Public Airwaves” is a mere technicality, note: (WaPo)

President Obama’s desire to talk — and talk, and talk — to the American public could cost broadcast networks millions, and millions, and millions of prime-time TV dollars.

Broadcasters are bracing themselves for the likelihood of three prime-time interruptions in three weeks, totaling at least three hours of prime time — and ad breaks — yanked.

“His economic stimulus package apparently does not extend to the TV networks,” one network exec noted.

Here’s a thought: suck it up.

Prof. Warren:

Prof. WARREN: Well, they’re trying to push money into banks and the question the oversight panel was asking is, `are you getting an equivalent amount back?’ And so that’s what this was about. Now there could be lots of policy reasons that Treasury might decide that it wanted this money to be in the banks. But our question is the one we put to Secretary Paulson, and that is, `are you putting it in and getting back assets that are worth equivalent value?’ He told us yes; our independent investigation said no
CHEN: So are you saying he was lying?

Prof. WARREN: Well, I’m telling you he told us yes and our independent investigation said no.