I don’t quite know what to make of this, but a Google search shows already 2,680 results for “VPILF”. A Google blog search shows 246 results in the last 24 hours.
Color me unimpressed with the millions of cracks in the glass ceiling.
August 2008 archive
Aug 30 2008
Random Japan
MATTER OVER MIND
Brazilian psychic Jucelino Nobrega da Luz had some Tokyo residents on edge when he predicted a 6.5-magnitude earthquake would hit the metropolis on August 6. Didn’t happen, fortunately, but a minor quake did rumble the city a couple of days later.And here’s hoping that another of Jucelino’s predictions fails to come true: he’s on record as saying that an 8.4 quake will rumble through Tokyo and Yokohama in September 2010, killing 70,000 people.
In a bit of good news for semi-blind flyboys, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces announced it would relax some of the physical requirements for aircraft pilots due to a drop in the number of applications. People wearing glasses are now free to apply.
Wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was in charge when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and who was executed for war crimes in 1948, was not the type to go quietly into the night. In recently released papers written during the final days of World War II, Tojo made it clear he thought government leaders and the general population were “spineless” for supporting unconditional surrender to the allies.
Nippon TV was left with egg on its face when it overstated the amount of food that competitive eater Tomoko Miyake quaffed down on its News Real Time program. After a weekly magazine accused NTV of padding its stats, the network went to the videotape replay and subsequently downgraded the number of plates wiped clean from 48 to 39.
Aug 30 2008
Drop Out Pony Party
Aug 30 2008
Democratic National Convention outlines policy of wider war
Original article via wsws.org:
After going through the formality of a roll call vote ending in the preordained nomination of Barack Obama as its presidential candidate, the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday turned to the question of “national security,” portraying itself as more competent than the Bush administration in defending the interests of US imperialism abroad, while making it clear that it is prepared to launch new and even bloodier wars than those carried out over the past eight years.
Aug 30 2008
Friday Night at 8: Perspectives
Obligatory YouTube — Coltrane doing “My Favorite Things” (coutesy of Astrotype):
I didn’t watch the entire Democratic Convention, but I watched enough to be very affected by many of the speeches, especially Michelle and Barack Obama’s words and presentation. I was very impressed by both of them.
But then the production, the media production itself, disturbed me, from the music to the pageantry. Seemed cheesy like the Academy Awards, which is so strange, because those awards are for some of the most talented directors and cinematographers and set designers and yet it always looks so cheesy on the teevee.
Aug 30 2008
Friday Philosophy: creative control or censorship?
Another semester begins, to yet one more time drain the life out of multitudes of college teachers and their students. This year begins with the periodic political campaign speech which, if it addresses education at all, displays no knowledge of life from the perspective of a college teacher.
One of the problems with being a college professor is that one is likely to be swamped with many ideas at once from time to time, which causes them not only to divide one’s time in an often futile attempt to resolve the different issues but also to consider how those issues might overlap…and why they happen to come up now, at this point in the life of a person or the history of the world.
So I’m going to carefully unwrap the twines of my reaction to the acceptance speech vis-a-vis education from another event that occurred yesterday. More time and more thought need to go into any tirade about students who would be better served not going to college and the rest of us remodeling society so that such people could have their own form of a better life through a different vehicle than attending school not because they want to do so but because they are told to do so. And about the amount of destruction done to educational realms when people think that the point of an education is to get a better job instead of, you know, learning something.
More time and more thought also need to go into anything written about the effects of that destruction and the destruction caused by No Child Left Behind…which has been every bit the storm Katrina was and is ongoing…on any effort to create an army of new teachers who actually have the skills and passion to teach. The infrastructure of our education system has been neglected just as much as the infrastructure of our highways and byways…and surely for just as long, if not longer.
Aug 29 2008
Four at Four
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The Times-Picayune reports Gustav forecast still aimed at central Louisiana coast. “This morning’s first National Hurricane Center forecast still has Tropical Storm Gustav arriving at the Louisiana coast just south of Morgan City and Houma at 1 a.m. Tuesday as a major Category 3 hurricane with top winds of 115 mph.”As noted in yesterday’s Four at Four, the LA Times reports the Storm could postpone Republican convention. “Party officials are discussing the possibility of postponing convention proceedings if the threat to New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas grows. If there is serious damage in the Gulf Coast, images of Republicans partying in Minneapolis-St. Paul could be an embarrassing reminder of the Bush administration’s delayed response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago… A damaging hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico also could highlight the risk of offshore drilling in the area at a time when McCain is championing the practice.”
And just as a reminder about Republicans, here’s a story from the AP from May: Alaska will sue over polar bear listing, Palin says. “[Palin] and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts… Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.” Palin will be the excuse John McCain needs to flip-flop his support to be pro-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Four at Four continues with walruses and the shrinking Arctic sea ice, long overdue “dirty war” justice in Argentina, and the lost ‘cities’ of the Amazon.
Aug 29 2008
A heartbeat away
Today we saw who John Airbus McCain picked for as his Vice Presidential candidate. The selection of Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin effectively negates further discussion about Barack’s so-called lack of experience. The talking heads are say that at the end of the day it’s who is at the top of the ticket that folks will be voting for. That is true, but I think that misses something very important.
Aug 29 2008
One 72 Year Old, Post Cancerous, PTSD’d Heartbeat Away from the Presidency
Joh McCain turns seventy two today. Older than Reagan when he won. When……..IF………. he finishes his second term he will be eighty years old. He has had several operations for cancer, refuses to release his medical records for full scutiny, and in case you hadn’t heard, was a tortured POW, which does not speak well to his mental or physical health. Plus he is a type A personality with a temper. Who shows serious signs already of being disconnected from reality.All of this speaks to his ability to survive complete his term of office. By all reports one of the most stress filled jobs in the world. It may be “cruel” or “insensitive” to bring this up, but there has never been an older and less healthy candidate elected to the Hot Seat.
If all of his health problems overcome him and he either expires from the stress or old age, or even if he is just rendered physically or mentally incompetent…..here is the person who will become President of the United States of America.
Lest I be accused of sexism, here is the wiki bio of our potential next President:
Palin born in Idaho and raised in Alaska. In 1984, she was the runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant (she was disqualified for wearing a two-piece swimsuit), receiving a scholarship that allowed her to attend the University of Idaho, where she received a degree in journalism. After working as a sports reporter at an Anchorage television station, Palin served two terms on the Wasilla, Alaska, City Council from 1992 to 1996, was elected mayor of Wasilla (population 5,470 in 2000) in 1996, and ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor in 2002.
It is not her gender that is of interest (other than as a gross and transparent appeal to PUMA’s) but her total lack of qualification to become the Leader of the Free World. In cased you missed it in her bio, before becoming governor just two years ago, her highest political office was mayor of Wasilla (population 5,470 in 2000).
Wow!
Aug 29 2008
Biden’s World
Gareth Porter and Lawrence Korb, talking with Paul Jay shortly after Joe Biden’s speech at the DNC the other day, analyze Obama’s pick of Joe Biden as his running mate as positioning the Obama-Biden ticket to the right of John McCain.
August 29, 2008 – about 15 minutes
Panel discussion with Gareth Porter and Lawrence KorbGareth Porter is a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Lawrence J. Korb is the Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Senior Adviser to the Center for Defense Information. Korb served an advisor to the Reagan-Bush election committee in 1980 and was then appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics) from 1981 to 1985. In that position, he administered about seventy percent of the Defense budget. For his service he was awarded the Department of Defense’s medal for Distinguished Public Service.
Aug 29 2008
The Counter Narrative of Barack Obama: “The Promise of America”
As someone who at times was critical of Barack Obama during the primaries, I was very impressed with Barack Obama’s speech last night, with his thinking as much as his delivery.
Obama provided a counter narrative of America, a narrative that stands in contradistinction to that of Reagan selfishness. It’s a truly progressive narrative of America in which the history of America is seen as increasing expansions of democracy. He drew perhaps on his understanding expressed in his Philadelphia “race” speech of “a more perfect union” in articulating this Promise.
It was summed up in this line:
That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours – a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.
It’s an America that is a community and which includes, rather than excludes. Workers, women, men, blacks, whites, hispanics, asians. It is a promise based on an expansion of democracy and fairness.
More, after the fold.