Month: March 2006

This is a really stupid poll. Republicans apparently, are happier people than Democrats.

What “A” List?

In a recent “post” on Arianna Huffington’s “blog”, Actor George Clooney outed himself as a pure bred liberal and had other colorful things to’say about his’fellow Democrats. His statement made headlines and generated traffic to Ms. Huffington’s site which has made great hay over adding Clooney’s name’to a growing list of celebrities and other’A-listers making literary appearances on The Huffington Post.’Readers seem to love’the blog posts from their idols’as evidenced in comment sections that run deep with accolades, whoops, and various kudos’of agreement.’It’s clear that these people really believe’they are responding to the actual personality, and that’eventually, that personality will respond directly to them. That might be true, if the famous, the celebrity, the activist, the politician and the personality actually write the blog post.

Today we find out that Clooney never blogged for Arianna. He didn’t write the post’at all.’A publicist’was handed a sample of a blog article written by someone working with’the’Huffington Post and was asked if they could get it to Clooney so he could rewrite the thing in his own words. A few days later the publicist’OK’d the’sample, and Huffington published it as if it was written by Clooney.’This would be no big deal if the post read’something like, “George Clooney was interviewed recently and’said…” But it wasn’t published that way. It read like his own words.

This calls into question EVERY post on Arianna’s’“blog”. How many of the’articles were written by the people their attributed to? How many were written with the permission of the people attributed?’How many blog posts were written just like’Clooney’s?”

Arianna calls this an “honest misunderstanding”. I call it fraud.

UPDATE: Clooney: “I feel abused”.

At least there’s one Democratic Senator who is willing to go out and speak the truth of what his party believes. There is a serious deficit of this kind of personal responsibility among congressional Democrats. While each and every one of them will call a news conference to chastise the Bush administration on it’s response to Hurricane Katrina, it’s decision to take us to war with Iraq, the budget, etc., etc., etc., you’d be hard pressed to find anyone today standing up with Senator Feingold to support Senate Resolution 398. The Senator from Wisconsin introduced the resolution yesterday calling for the censure of President Bush over his warrantless wiretapping program. Everyone knows that a motion to censure is the least of what Democrats want. Ever since Bush won the White House, the Dems have wanted to kick him out of office. Behind closed doors, their mantra is “Stop him!” Yet none of them have the guts to stand up and tell the truth about how they feel. Why? They fear reprisal in GOP states, the very states they must take away from Republicans if they have any hope in winning a majority. Without a majority in Congress, the Democrats have no hope of doing the ultimate deed – impeaching the president.

Do you see how meaningless their actions are? Can you hear the vacancy in their rhetoric?

Gutless.Punks.

Sen. Russ Feingold agrees.

More: Dana Milbank | Shailagh Murray |
Video: Feingold censure speech |
The Defense: Democrats were caught off guard |

Could this be Noah’s Ark? (full story)

President Bush visited with Jason McElwain, an autistic high school senior who made headlines recently when he sunk six three-pointer shots and a single shot for a total of 20 points in the last three minutes of a high school basketball game (video). The AP covered the visit today, which took place on an airport tarmac at Greater Rochester International Airport. Among the photos published by the news service, there were these which at first glance, look rather bizarre.

I had to look twice before I saw what was going on with this. Apparently, someone was offering cardboard cutouts of Jason’s ‘game face’ on a stick and that’s what the president is holding as he hugs the flesh and bones Jason. Yet with this 2 dimensional photo spread, it just looks weird.

The AP took a memorable moment for Jason and created a skewed perspective. Why would they run such strange looking photos?

I’m one of those hybrid computer users. I use a Windows laptop at work, I have a Mac mini on the desk as well. At home, I have a new iMac Intel machine in my living room, a Windows machine in my bedroom, my daughter has a Mac mini, my son has a Windows machine in his room, and my wife uses a Windows laptop. More and more though, I’m using the Mac, not because I’ve been drinking any kool aide, but because it’s new, it’s different, and I’ve used Windows machines since ‘94. There’s a lot of things to like about the new iMac, but I do ‘work’ on my Windows machines.

But enough about that…

I got a kick out of this today. If you’ve ever watched a keynote speech by Apple founder Steve Jobs, you’ll appreciate the fun in Keynote4 – the Steve Jobs Soundboard. It’s a flash driven site that lets you click on memorable phrases uttered by Jobs through the years and create your own keynote speech.

Ironically, Apple’s web browser (Safari) won’t run Flash correctly if you’re using a new iMac Intel machine. Apple blames Macromedia (Adobe) for not building a ‘Universal’ version of the Flash software. You can easily bypass this by running Firefox. 

For all you fans of Brad and Angelina, Memeorandum now has WeSmirch.com, a new gossip aggregator.

Mike Wallace will take a permanent vacation from ‘60 Minutes’ this spring.

If you’re flying on Delta in the next few weeks, you might want to rethink your plans.

They said he looked pretty good on TV too, but as for the rest of his message…

Democrats distanced themselves Monday from Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold’s effort to censure President Bush over domestic spying, preventing a floor vote that could alienate swing voters. 

Cheney said Monday, “The outrageous proposition that we ought to protect our enemies’ ability to communicate as it plots against America poses a key test of our Democratic leaders.”

“The American people already made their decision,” Cheney added. “They agree with the president.”

Yes, they do.

And Russ, you can go home now.