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A mystery

Monday, October 10, 2011

From Firedoglake:

When Barack Obama ran for president he promised to respect the states’ medical marijuana laws. But since tak ing office Obama has been steadily using more and more parts of the federal government to wage a war on medical marijuana.

His Administration’s actions as of late have become so aggressively anti-medical marijuana that the Drug Policy Alliance has recently labeled Obama as worse than George W. Bush ever was towards medical marijuana.

Besides being a total waste of money, this is both bad politics and bad policy. Where is the upside for Obama? Does he really think anyone who favors his policy would be likely to vote for him primarily because he is against medical marijuana. This gets him no votes, but it is yet another turnoff for his early supporters, who won’t likely vote for his opponent, but might not bother to vote at all.

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Didn’t see this coming

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Our puppet government in Iraq is not responding to the strings, and is now siding with Iran and with Syria, against the people of Syria. This was something that the war opponents predicted way back when: not the specific situation but the probability of the two countries making common cause. Yet another reason why making war on Saddam was so stupid. He represented absolutely no threat to us, and he was a useful counterweight to both Iran and Syria. Really, if you’re going to play realpolitik, you really ought to have some reality based view of your own interests.

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Same as it ever was

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Or, if you prefer, more of the same. Or, alternatively, deja vu all over again.

Under cover of a consent decree easily wrested from a Federal government eager to make the fraud case against the banks go away, the banks are now hiring robo-auditors to determine whether their customers were harmed by robo-signers.

Care to guess whether they’ll find anything?

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Friday Night Music

Friday, October 7, 2011

I was thinking of posting this a couple of days ago, but didn’t, and then Krugman used the opening lines to open his column this morning, so I decided that I would put it up. Not completely germane to the present occurrences in New York and elsewhere, but close enough. This version of For What It’s Worth, was on the Smothers Brothers Show. You’ll have to excuse the attempt at humor in part of it. It does appear to be live, and it’s a kick seeing young versions of Stephen Stills and Neal Young.

So that was dedicated to the kids. This is dedicated to the press. Hard finding a live version of this, but I managed to do it.

Finally, a little video of the students, faculty and workers at NYU parading down a street in New York, sans permit and apparently sans arrests. Why I am I showing this in particular? Because, if you could zoom in on the very beginning of this mass, you would see my son, leading the charge after having organized it, along with a couple of his friends.

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The New Iphone

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I find I must weigh in on the new Iphone. The political punditry game is growing stale, considering that everything happening right now is pretty much déjà vu all over again, with the glorious exception of those kids on the street, about which I have had my say. As to what’s left, how many times can you point out that the Republicans are crazy or that we’re being devoured by Wall Street, or that we are attempting to solve our economic problems using time tested nostrums that have failed every other time they’ve been tried.

So, on to the Iphone, which has apparently left a lot of folks cold.

First, I have a confession. While I am a tech fan of the first order, I consider a phone, even the marvelous little Iphone, in the same category as my car. So long as it continues to work, I’ll use it until I run it into the ground. Now, computers, cameras, Ipads, are all different, for reasons I don’t care to articulate because in truth there is no sensible distinction.

Now, back to the Iphone. We can gather from the 4s moniker that a 5 is probably around the corner, but I ask those folks looking for a blockbuster advance on current technology: what more can you reasonably expect, from a hardware standpoint, out of a device small enough to fit in your pocket? As a matter of physics (optics subdivision) the camera on a device as thin as an Iphone can only get so good. You can add all the pixels you want, but after a certain number, they don’t make a difference. After a while, it’s the size of the sensor that counts, and that’s limited by the distance of the lens from the sensor. Display quality is already pretty good, and making it better is probably not going to enrich the user experience very much. Other than near field technology, which may or may not be a good thing, and 4g compatibility, neither of which is that exciting in my book, what was anyone expecting? A different shape, so everyone would have to go out and buy new cases? More storage? No one is really talking about that. The future appears to be in the cloud, and everyone seems to be going in that direction. I’d be for more storage in the Ipad, but in my phone, who cares?

For the most part, future advances are going to be under the hood. Faster processing; faster Wi-Fi, better software, better battery life, etc. That’s where the action is. On those fronts, the new phone delivers quite well, For my own part, I’m more interested in IOS 5 than in Iphone 5. So long as my 3g (or is it 3gs) can run the latest software ( I don’t need a talking digital assistant, so that’s no attraction) I’m fine with it. Most of the changes to the OS were announced months ago, so they’re old news, but that’s where the real improvements will be coming on these devices. I’ve had an Ipad since they first came out. I like my Ipad 2. It’s lighter and thinner, and it has a camera I never use. But the real advance since the device’s first appearance is the evolution in the software as developers learn how to make the device more useful and a possible replacement, in many circumstances, for a regular computer. When I first got my Ipad, I searched for months for blog editing software that would do something as simple as embed a link. Now I have two programs that will do pretty much everything I need. In fact, I haven’t written a post on my computer in months, because my old Mac based blog editor won’t run anymore, and the only replacement I’ve looked at cost $50.00, as opposed to the $4.99 I spent on software for the Ipad.

By the way, for Hitler’s reaction to the new Iphone, go here.

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The Kids Are Alright

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

First they ignored them, and that didn’t work. Then they mocked them, and that didn’t work. Then they arrested them, and that didn’t work. The kids in New York and throughout the country who are following their lead, have the most to lose from the rise of the oligarchs. We oldsters can fade away, a bit more impoverished than we expected, but probably allowed our Social Security crumbs, but the kids will be under their thumbs for the rest of their lives, and their kids, if they can afford to have any, will suffer even more. What’s truly inspiring and encouraging, at least so far, is the absence of any generational rancor, so far as I can detect it. The right has often sought to turn the young against the old, trying to convince them that Social Security, Medicare, etc., are a generational con game. That hasn’t taken hold, except with the Dartmouth Review types. These kids know who’s responsible for the rising inequality and the new normal of high unemployment, low wages and worker oppression. It may be too late to wrest the nation from the grip of the oligarchs. Citizens United may truly have been the last nail, but it’s great to see that they’re trying. If they keep it up the Democrats may have no choice but to try to figure out some way to appease them, and when that day comes lets hope they are as demanding as the teabaggers.

I can’t end this without linking to this piece, written by my younger son, who is involved in urging NYU students to leave their classes and hit the streets. As a parent, I’m a bit worried that he’ll be entrapped by New York’s finest, but I ‘m more proud than anxious.

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Fox reporter gets slammed

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Okay. I’m jealous. Wouldn’t you love to do this good a job if you were interviewed by Fox?

The kids in New York and in other cities seem to be doing it: forcing these issues into the conversation. Now, if only the politicians who call themselves Democrats would tap into this discontent and actually advocate policies to stem the rise of the oligarchs, we might get somewhere.

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Where do these people come from?

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

I know that Newt and his wife have long since become mere caricatures, but I can’t resist piling on. I ask you, of the two entities depicted here, which looks more like it’s not quite real. Barbie looks more lifelike than Callista.

From TPM.

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Want the media’s attention? Stop Making Sense

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Here’s an enlightening video:

And here, to prove the point, is a picture that appears twice in this morning’s New London Day, once as a teaser and once as a half page picture accompanying an article about the protests.

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Obama moves left

Monday, October 3, 2011

So, the Obama campaign is tacking left in order to win the presidential election, after spending the past three years tacking right in pursuit of the White Whale, otherwise known as the mythical homogeneous independent voters.

So, we’ll be hearing a lot about Obama protecting Social Security and Medicare, which is probably good, because it will make him reluctant, at least for now, to return to talk about grand bargains consisting of cutting those programs in order to reward Republican intransigence. We also may be hearing some stuff about Wall Street, if his ratings continue to go South.

I hope it works, considering the alternative, but I question whether the people who have been paying attention will believe a word of it. But then, those people are like me: nowhere to go. This election is about the people who aren’t stupid or political enough to become tea partiers, but are too stupid or inattentive to know what’s being done to them by the corporations and plutocrats running the country. Those people know a few things: they love them some Social Security and Medicare, and they probably don’t like banks. Who knows, Obama may benefit, in a back handed way, from the ludicrous charge that he’s a socialist, since his new found commitment to Social Security, Medicare and tax equity does have a faint, albeit very faint, whiff of Socialism about it. The uniformed may actually believe he’s in character.

It all makes you wonder: where would Obama be in the polls had he stood up for these principles all along? It is impossible to believe he could be lower than he is today had he been constantly making the case that the lower 99 shouldn’t be carrying the burden for the upper 1%. Who knows, maybe he would even have accomplished something had he successfully painted the Republicans as the protectors of the rich that they are. Oh well, better late than never.

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