Best Obama Magazine Cover

And the winner is.....ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Rolling Stone, July 10-24, 2008

Really? A category for Best Obama Magazine Cover? Cult of personality?

Why Does CNN Even Bother?

Sad state of affairs for the network that invented 24 hour news:

For the 7th consecutive weekday, CNN finished fourth on cable news in the prime time A25-54 demographic. It was the 77th time CNN finished 4th in that category this year. FNC was way out in front, followed by HLN just edging MSNBC by 1,000 viewers.

• Fox News’ total viewer average during prime time of 2,735,000 beat the other three cable news networks combined. Bill O’Reilly, who had the top show, had more than 1,000,000 in the demo.

• The top non-FNC show was Countdown with Keith Olbermann in both categories at 8pmET for MSNBC.

The Fascism of Long Ago

Life Magazine article on Italian Fascism from 1938. Interesting read. It starts on page 31.

Question: Which party in America does it sound more like?

House Dems now represent richest regions

This won't fit well with the whole, "Republicans are for the rich" meme:

Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation's wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts.

A USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found that Democrats represent a far different constituency today than they did in 2005, when they were the minority in the House, or in 1990, when they were the majority.

The Democratic-controlled House is now an unusual combination of the richest and poorest districts, the best and least educated, and the best and the worst insured. The analysis found that Democrats have attracted educated, affluent whites who had tended previously to vote Republican.

Democrats now represent 57% of the 4.8 million households that had incomes of $200,000 or more in 2008. In 2005, Republicans represented 55% of those affluent households.

I guess this means the Republicans represent the middle class.

Susan Klebold Essay

Susan Klebold, mother of Dylan Klebold who was responsible for the massacre at Columbine High School, has written an essay for O Magazine:

Parents and survivors of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School are saying good things about an essay released Tuesday by the mother of shooter Dylan Klebold.

Susan Klebold made the most detailed public remarks by any parent of the two Columbine killers in an essay published in O, The Oprah Magazine. She said in the essay she had "no inkling" her son was suicidal or depressed.

The shooters' parents have said little in public since the massacre. They gave depositions in a lawsuit filed by victims' families, but a judge in 2007 ordered those depositions sealed for 20 years after the case was settled out of court.

Survivors and their families have been left wondering about the boys' parents in the decade since the shootings.

"You know, I always wondered how she felt and what she went through. 'Cause I know I went through a living hell, and I was always sure she did, too," Michalik told The Associated Press.

Michalik, who has never met Susan Klebold, said reading the essay answered some of her questions about the Klebold family.

Jaycee Dugard Today

Here is the first picture of Jaycee Dugard, the girl that was kidnapped and held prisoner for 18 years:

Elizabeth Edwards - "I Hope You Die"

Apparently, Elizabeth Edwards is not fond of her husbands concubine.

"When Elizabeth found out Rielle had shown up in North Carolina to look at houses, she went ballistic!" a close source told The ENQUIRER.

"She demanded that John give her Rielle's cell phone number. John was in the room when Elizabeth called Rielle and screamed into the phone, 'How dare you move here?'

"Without giving Rielle a chance to respond, Elizabeth continued her tirade, shouting, 'Leave my family alone!'

"Then, clearly beside herself with rage, she blurted out, 'I hope you die!' and slammed down the phone.'"

Dear Gov. Schwarzenegger, She Did It Again

Apparently, the Govenator's wife continues to talk on her cell phone while driving, even though Schwarzenegger signed a law which makes that illegal.

The Daily Show makes fun of CNN for fact-checking SNL

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Whiner-in-Chief

President Obama sure does have some thin skin:

The White House's logic seems to be that there's no point in trying to be fairly portrayed on Fox News. Even if they send administration officials to try and reason with its hosts and viewers, the way the information gets presented eliminates any net benefit.

But there are plenty of negatives to this take-no-prisoners approach. To begin with, each regular Fox News viewer does not only represent one vote lost to President Obama.

So if Team Obama ignores Fox, it just gives the network's talent the chance to further caricature him as a socialist, foreign, effete, America-hating Other. It isn't a racist portrayal, necessarily, but is certainly one that gives actual racists a lot of comfort. Not countering that will help Fox viewers conveniently forget that Obama is intelligent and well spoken.

Barack Obama himself doesn't need to answer all of the insane rhetorical questions asked of him by Glenn Beck and his compatriots. That would obviously be a mistake. But legitimizing Fox News in this manner seems nearly as bad. Either way, he's playing their game.

Nobel Jury Defends Itself in Giving the Nobel to a Noaccompliment

When the general consensus is you made a wrong decision, it's pretty clear you made a wrong decision. But since the Nobel Peace Prize is really just a popularity contest, Obama does deserve it for being the prettiest belle at the ball.

Members of the Norwegian committee that gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize are strongly defending their choice against a storm of criticism that the award was premature and a potential liability for the U.S. president.

Three of them rejected the notion that Obama hadn't accomplished anything to deserve the award, while the fourth declined to answer that question. A fifth member didn't answer calls seeking comment.

"We simply disagree that he has done nothing," committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP on Tuesday. "He got the prize for what he has done."

Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

"All these things have contributed to — I wouldn't say a safer world — but a world with less tension," Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

America's Best Young Entrepreneurs 2009

Here is a list of America's best young Entrepreneurs. We have everything from Online collaboration tool to Internship placement consultancy to Online marketplace for class notes to a Microblogging platform.

Soak it in while it last because at the rate we are going, entrepreneurs will be a thing of the past.

Government To Protect You Against Forks and Spoons

It's a good thing we have the government to protect us against ourselves....of maybe, possibly, misusing a fork and spoon.

Six-year-old Zachary Christie was so excited to become a Cub Scout that he brought his camping utensil to school. The tool serves as a spoon, a fork and a knife, and Zachary wanted to use it at lunch.

What Zachary didn't know was that the gizmo violated his school's zero-tolerance policy on weapons. And now the Christina School District in Newark, Del., has suspended the first grader and ordered him to attend the district's reform school for 45 days.

I don't know about you, but I feel much safer.

What Should Be In the Health Care Bill - But Won't

Good article on what is really needed for health care reform:

The market for health-care services is a lot like the market for cellular phones: It is driven by technology and innovation and, because the capital costs of building a cellular network or a hospital MRI clinic are substantial, the markets tend to be more efficient when there are larger numbers of participants. If you could take an iPhone back to 1982, it would seem like something out of science fiction. But a 2009 visit to the doctor’s office is depressingly similar to a 1982 visit to the doctor’s office, and in many ways is worse: It’s more expensive, the insurance and billing systems are even more frustrating, and the record-keeping is frequently defective. The system is plagued by fraud, waste, and malfeasance. There have been some great innovations in medical technology, but there has been regress when it comes to affordability, freedom of choice, and transparency.

Here are ten things that would go a long way toward getting that done:
1) Insurance Choice. The third-party-payer problem isn’t limited to insurance companies and government programs.
2) Real Competition: A National Market for Health Insurance. Insurance companies are not your friend.
3) Price Transparency. Here’s an experiment for you: Pretend that you need a particular medical service — anything from a heart stent to having a broken finger set — and then call around to your local hospitals to see what it would cost. You will have a hard time getting an answer, and in many cases will not be able to get one at all. Why? Because doctors and hospitals don’t answer to you — they answer to your insurer, and they have important financial reasons to obfuscate and mislead when it comes to pricing... But markets cannot function without prices; if consumers are going to be empowered make their own health-care decisions, providers must make real prices available.
4) High Ceilings for HSAs (and No Taxes). Some things will probably always have to be paid for by insurance: That’s why we have insurance, after all — for catastrophic developments like heart failure, cancer, or car wrecks. But at present we use insurance to pay for everything from flu shots to sex-change operations. The best way to get rid of third-party-payer problems is to have consumers spend their own money — not their insurers’ money, not taxpayers’ money.
5) Insurance on Your Insurance. What is needed, as John H. Cochrane of the Cato Institute has argued persuasively, is a two-pronged approach to insurance: health insurance of the familiar sort, and what he calls “health status” insurance, which is, essentially, an insurance policy that keeps you covered in the event you develop a chronic condition that would normally render you uninsurable.
6) Tort Reform. The plaintiffs’ bar is an infection in the health-care industry, and there is a cure. States such as Texas have experimented with such commonsensical measures as reasonable limits on non-economic damages (the “pain and suffering” awards) and pre-trial review of medical malpractice claims by a panel of doctors.
7) Non-Physician Competition. The physicians could stand a little more competition, too. Medical-licensure laws and the AMA’s cartel status mean that full-on physicians — expensively trained and often highly specialized — have a monopoly on performing procedures that could be done just as well, at a lower cost, by non-physicians.
8) Approval/Patent Reform for Drugs and Treatments. A streamlined FDA approval process and better patent protection would make pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medical devices less expensive.
9) Provisions to Force Medicare and Medicaid to Compete. Market-based reforms will go a long way toward making health care more accessible, less expensive, and more secure for the great majority of Americans, but government programs are not going away, and the very poor, the very sick, and the otherwise vulnerable will still need some form of public support.
10) CHIP Registration for Eligible Kids. CHIP, the Children’s Health-Insurance Program, is another imperfect entitlement regime, but it’s the one we have and it is unlikely that we will replace it.

Read the whole thing...

Hey Homo's - Governing Is Hard

White House refers to Gay Lobby as "fringe" that "needs to take off the pajama's and get dressed"

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

UPDATE: Nevermind, the White House hearts the gays.

The White House is strongly denying a report making the rounds that it views gay critics and bloggers as part of an “Internet left fringe,” with a senior adviser asserting to me that this sentiment “does not reflect White House thinking at all.”