Puppies and Flowers

When you've just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there may be a few ways of recovering from the gaffe. But turning to her and giving her a sly wink is probably not included in any book of royal etiquette. Link to article

"CNN International's CNN Today program, airing at midnight Eastern, led with the graphic 'Bush Resigns.' Of course, they meant 'Blair Resigns.' Freudian slip on the part of a network accused of anti-Americanism?" Link

Wolfowitz resigns as World Bank president

Paul Wolfowitz resigned as president of the World Bank effective June 30, the bank's directors announced Thursday. The bank will launch an immediate search for a new president. Directors had been negotiating with Wolfowitz to step down after an internal review found that he violated the bank's code of conduct by engineering a pay raise for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. "We are grateful to Mr. Wolfowitz for his service at the bank," the directors said in a statement. "Much has been achieved in the last two years."

Link to MarketWatch article

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates May 23, 2007, 11:58 a.m. ET · The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.

Link to Flash website

Get used to making that face...
Link to article

Link to article on Slate.com

The headline says it all...

Watch the video, thanks Miss Cellania 

photo: KuriousEye 

or is it fearmongering?

From article: 

Fearing complacency among the American people over possible terror threats, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in Chicago Tuesday that the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer.

"I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board in an unusually blunt and frank assessment of America's terror threat level.

"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of al-Qaeda. "We do worry that they are rebuilding their activities."

Still, Chertoff said there are not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the current threat levels nationwide. And he indicated that his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaeda statements, and intelligence he did not disclose.

Continue reading article at NewsDay

Meanwhile other articles like this start showing up:

TSA inspectors find the bottled water yet miss the fake planted bomb:

Federal inspectors were able to slip a fake bomb through a checkpoint at Albany International Airport during a test of the facility's Transportation Security Administration screeners, according to individuals familiar with the incident.
     
The unannounced inspection by TSA officials took place early last week. The airport's security measures failed in five of seven tests, most of the problems occurring at the passenger checkpoint, the sources said.

In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints.

The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. In all, the inspectors slipped four banned items through the main checkpoint during the test, sources said.

or the scare about tennis balls in a lake:

Strouds Run State Park was closed for several days last week over a scare caused by six tennis balls placed in Dow Lake.

The balls sank when they were placed in the lake, which aroused suspicions that they contained an unknown, potentially hazardous substance. However, it turned out that the only substance in the balls was water.

and now senior U.S. intelligence officials tell ABC News new intelligence suggests a small al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here:

The White House has convened an urgent multi-agency meeting for Thursday afternoon to deal with the new threat.

Top intelligence and law enforcement officials have been told to assemble in the Situation Room to report on:

--what steps can be taken to minimize or counter the threat,

--and what steps are being taken to harden security for government buildings and personnel.

"It suggests they have information that the cell or cells coming this direction want to attack a government facility," Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent and ABC News consultant, said.

Law enforcement officials say the recent failed attacks in London have provided important new clues about possible tactics.

Update: Keith Olberman explaining Michael Chertoff’s counterterrorism stomach

photo: National Archives)

From NPR:

A bit of national history occurred Wednesday morning when 11 1/2 hours of previously unreleased tapes from Richard Nixon's presidential years were released to the public.

The release was part of a change in oversight for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Previously run by the Nixon Foundation, which was made up of Nixon family and friends, the library now falls under the domain of the National Archives. Continue reading

From Yahoo:

"This is a great day for history. The hallmark of this new institution will be true acceptance and love for history — the good, the bad and the ugly," said Timothy Naftali, the museum's new federal director.

"The challenge is to present a controversial, traumatic and important story in a fair and historically accurate way," he said.

For nearly 20 years, library visitors were told the Watergate scandal was really a "coup" by Nixon's rivals and the investigative reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein offered bribes for their nation-shaking scoops. Continue reading

If you need a presidential sized laugh after reading these click here 

photo: Genocide Intervention

From Radar Online:

Cheadle, co-author of Not On Our Watch, about the genocide in Darfur, was recently called in to talk to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the issue. And he wasn't impressed.

"She wanted to tell me what the U.S. was doing," Cheadle said. "First she said, 'We're doing all we can, but it's not us, it's the United Nations. They're bogged down with red tape, and trying to push anything through just takes forever. The bureaucracy is almost insurmountable, and it's the United Nations, not the U.S.' And then she said, 'It's like when we had this crisis in Lebanon, I had to send someone down specifically to push through all of our legislation and make sure that everything moved through efficiently.' I'm thinking, I thought you had no control over the United Nations. But I didn't say that, 'cause I wanted to leave!" more

More information about the Sudan divestment movement.

How far can the gobshite go? from Yahoo news:

WASHINGTON - President Bush ordered former counsel Harriet Miers to defy a congressional summons, even as a second former aide revealed new details Wednesday about administration dismissals of federal prosecutors.

Contempt citations against both women were a possibility.

House Democrats threatened to cite Miers if she refused to appear as subpoenaed for a Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday. The White House said she was immune from the subpoena and Bush had directed her not to appear, according to Miers' lawyer. Democrats said her immunity ended when she left her White House job.

Across the Capitol, meanwhile, former White House political director Sara Taylor found out what Miers may already have known: It's almost impossible to answer some committee questions but not others without breaching either the subpoena or Bush's claim of executive privilege.

After first refusing to answer questions about Bush's possible role in the firings, Taylor later told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she knew of no involvement by the president. Further, she said, she knew of no wrongdoing by administration officials in the controversy that has hobbled the Justice Department and imperiled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.   more

photo/art: Buddy Stone

Snow attacked proposals to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, claiming:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe. And sooner or later it would come to our shores, to a shopping mall near you.  more

source: Think Progress

previously about fearmongering on P&F 

Photo: Courtesy of the Operation Alesia Joint Information Center

From news article: 

California -- The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.

"Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said.

After touring gardens raided this week in Shasta County, Walters said the officers who are destroying the gardens are performing hard, dangerous work in rough terrain. He said growers have been known to have weapons, including assault rifles.

"These people are armed; they're dangerous," he said. He called them "violent criminal terrorists."

read more at Redding.com 

Photo: KimTheWolf

From CNN:

The House on Wednesday evening overwhelmingly rejected President Bush's plan to eliminate the $420 million federal subsidy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The 357-72 vote demonstrated the enduring political strength of public broadcasting. The outcome was never in doubt, unlike a fight two years ago when Republicans tried but failed to slash public broadcasting subsidies.

The move to kill subsidies for the CPB, which make up about 15 percent of its budget, was launched by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado.

"Taxpayers are being asked to pay more in taxes because Congress is not willing to make hard choices and balance our spending with our income," Lamborn said.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

From Wonkette:

It’s almost too depressing to mention again, but let’s recap the Pat Tillman revelations from Army medical examiners and internal Pentagon reports released last week and find out what happens when famous football stars turned Army Heroes become anti-war critics:

• He was shot three times in the forehead at close range with an American M-16.
  
  
• This was after he was shot in the chest, legs and hand.
  
  
• And this was after he screamed to the “friendlies” that he was Pat Tillman and please stop shooting him.
  
  
• But they didn’t; they executed him.
  
  
• They were Americans.
  
  
• There wasn’t even an “enemy” around; not only was nobody shot by “enemy fire,” no equipment was shot by “enemy fire.”
  
  
• “Members of Tillman’s unit burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent attempt to hide the fact that he was killed by friendly fire.”
  
  
• Army medical examiners tried to get a criminal investigation opened, but they were shut down.
  
  
• The Army brass who conspired to shut down any criminal investigation into the U.S. assassination of Pat Tillman sent “congratulatory e-mails” to each other after shutting down the snoops.
  
  
• The Pentagon heavily promoted Tillman’s enlistment and service as both a recruitment tool and a domestic propaganda tool.
  
  
• The Pentagon maintained for long after his murder that Tillman died in combat, finally admitting to his family that “friendly fire” killed him — which wasn’t exactly true, either.
  
  
• Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, who commanded Tillman’s base in Afghanistan at the time of his assassination, dismissed Tillman’s family’s attempts to find out what happened. Why? Because Pat Tillman was an atheist, like his family, so they were having “a hard time letting it go.”
  
  
• In his writings — Tillman wrote constantly in letters and diaries and e-mails — the NFL star who became an Army Ranger after 9/11 had concluded the Afghanistan War was fake and the Iraq War was a criminal setup.
  
  
• The Pentagon still has his diary that he kept with him in Afghanistan, where he was killed, and they won’t release it to his family.
  
  
• Tillman had even arranged a meeting with anti-war icon Noam Chomsky about how to go public with a veterans-against-the-war movement.
  
  
• Such a movement would’ve had an interesting effect on the Iraq Occupation and the then-upcoming 2004 election; Tillman had already been encouraging his fellow soldiers to vote against Bush.
  
  
• Just today, Donald Rumsfeld refused to testify on the subject of Tillman’s assassination before Congress on Wednesday.
  
  
• White House Counsel Fred Fielding has, of course, already “refused to issue certain documents to the committee because of executive privilege.”
  
  
• What is the White House doing with “certain documents” about Pat Tillman’s murder?
  
  
• Says Pat Tillman Sr.: “The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons. This cover-up started within minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that people in the field do.”

 

Funny, but it sounds exactly like why the US shouldn't have invaded in 2003. 

Link 

Link to video

Photo: aremac

From Yahoo News: 

A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.
ADVERTISEMENT

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert.

Link to Wired article by Ryan Singel via boingboing

From Rolling Stone Magazine: 

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

Continue reading (links to video also)

This is a very strange story of a Corporation in Florida with its own currency:

Not content with printing its own "private dollars," a Kissimmee company under federal investigation for issuing fraudulent checks announced it is now going to print actual U.S. dollars.

Angel Cruz, chairman of The United Cities Corp., said Friday that he has given notice to several federal agencies about his new plan.

He is also calling for the Department of Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as well as the Federal Reserve System -- which he has called "Satan's banking system"-- "to prove or retract their false claims within 48 hours" about his company issuing "worthless" checks.

found photo: Tariq's Fantasy World

From article:

A former CIA operative and Cuban exile plans to auction what he says is a lock of Che Guevara's hair, snipped before the Argentinian revolutionary was buried in 1967.

Gustavo Villoldo, 71, was involved in Guevara's capture in the jungles of Bolivia.

He plans to auction the hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago.

The scrapbook also holds a map used to track down Guevara in Bolivia, photos of Guevara's body, intercepted messages between Guevara and his rebels and a set of Guevara's fingerprints taken before his burial.

The collection will be put on the block Oct. 25-25.

Continue reading

``It's very sad that the president has chosen to veto a bill that would provide health care for 10 million American children for the next five years. ... I don't think the president wants to say to the American people that he as the decider, the self-proclaimed decider, wants to decide what children get health care and which children do not.'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

---

``The Republican Congress created SCHIP a decade ago to give millions of low-income, American children access to high-quality health care - not as a trial balloon for government-run health care or as a way to provide government benefits to adults and upper-income families who can afford private health insurance.'' - House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

``Never has it been clearer how detached President Bush is from the priorities of the American people. By vetoing a bipartisan bill to renew the successful Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), President Bush is denying health care to millions of low-income kids in America.'' - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Link to Slate.com Video 

Clip:

DULUTH, Minnesota -- Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement  in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury.

Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.

They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, AFI, Aerosmith and others.

After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters.

Continue reading

Clip from c|net:

A new Senate bill would protect not only telephone companies from lawsuits claiming illegal cooperation with the National Security Agency. It would retroactively immunize e-mail providers, search engines, Internet service providers and instant-messaging services too.

The broad language appears in new legislation that a Senate committee approved by a 13-to-2 vote on Thursday during a meeting closed to the press and public. It enjoys the support of the panel's Democrats and Republicans.

It goes further in crafting an impenetrable legal shield than similar proposals in the House of Representatives, such as the so-called Restore Act (PDF), which immunizes only "communications service providers." Bowing to pressure from President Bush, House Democrats postponed a vote on the Restore Act last week.

The broader Senate bill (PDF) would sweep in Web sites, e-mail providers and more. "My suspicion is the scope of the immunity provision is the most revealing way to assess the scope of the underlying authority," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Link to c|net article 

The Raw Story is reporting that Comcast has a pricing structure for installing FISA wiretaps:

Comcast, which is among the nation's largest telecommunication companies, charges $1,000 to install a FISA wiretap and $750 for each additional month authorities want to keep an eye on suspects, according to the company's Handbook for Law Enforcement. Secrecy News obtained the document and published it Monday.

Link to the raw story report

Clip from ABC News:

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

Link to article 

Link to more 

found image of Taleban (similar) ignorance

A SENIOR Tibetan lama and Chinese government advisers have defended contentious rules banning reincarnations of "living Buddhas" without approval.

The rules are apparently aimed at empowering China to name the next Dalai Lama when the 14th and current Dalai Lama dies.

Last July, China's State Administration of Religious Affairs issued regulations banning reincarnations of living Buddhas, or holy monks, who failed to seek government approval, ostensibly to manipulate the centuries-old practice and legitimise future appointments by the atheist Communist Party.

Link to article

Previous Tibet related on P&F:

China frees 3 Canadian activists after Tibet protest

Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chairman Mao Zedong made what Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States.

"You know, China is a very poor country," Mao said, according to a document released by the State Department's historian office. "We don't have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands."

A few minutes later, Mao circled back to the offer. "Do you want our Chinese women?" he asked. "We can give you 10 million."

After Kissinger noted Mao was "improving his offer," the chairman said, "We have too many women ... They give birth to children and our children are too many."

"It is such a novel proposition," Kissinger replied in his discussion with Mao in Beijing. "We will have to study it."

Headline: Everyone Makes Mistakes

Advertising Agency: Grey Hong Kong
Executive Creative Director: Keith Ho
Creative Director: Paul Chan
Art Director: V Lau
Copywriters: Paul Chan, Kennex Ma

via The Creative Blog

I've long been a fan of Frank Zappa and I'm sure he'd be proud of this use of his music… 

Previously on P&F about Zappa 

Not George Bush, San Francisco is proposing naming a sewage plant after him!

"Looking to honor the forty-third President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, the recently formed Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is looking to change the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility. It seems the group would like to rename the SF Zoo adjacent facility to the 'George W Bush Sewage Plant,' SFist reports.

Link to gallery, scroll down to 'Multimedia' link.

The slogans are are even better than the art:

“Let's take revenge a thousand times on the US imperialist wolves!”

“Our missile programme is a guarantee for world peace and security.”

'Let's all become perfect swimmers" — this one had me scratching my head a little bit.

Link

From The Sun:

RAF Top Guns have blown up the world’s biggest drug haul – in desert trenches in Afghanistan.

Harrier jets dropped three 1,000lb bombs on almost 237 tons of cannabis unearthed by Britain’s Special Boat Service and local commandos.

The haul – weighing more than 30 double-decker buses and spread over a site the size of two football fields – had a street value of at least £225million.

Last night a delighted Whitehall source said: “It was unbelievable – truly staggering.”

Link to full story with more pictures. 

From The Onion:

Our morning show's political correspondent offers tips on how you can seem informed about politics without picking up a single newspaper.

Link to clip

Link

YouTube has been ordered by a New York Federal Judge to hand over viewing data that includes how often users watch videos, how much time they spend doing it, their Username and their Internet Protocol addresses.

Viacom demanded to review all of YouTube's logging information to prove that copyrighted clips are more popular than amateur videos on the site.

His dis-Honorable sagaciousness declared:

For every video on YouTube, [he] required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P. or Internet protocol address.

When Google argued that:

"We see no reason why Viacom and the other plaintiffs seek or require such information," Google said in a letter filed with the court. "Given plaintiffs' stated reason for seeking information from the logging database ... potentially personal identifiable information should be irrelevant." 

The right dis-Honorable Judge Stanton said in his ruling:

“A markedly higher proportion of infringing-video watching may bear on plaintiff’s vicarious liability claim, and defendants’ substantial noninfringing use defense”

Consider this:

The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube. 

Why? you ask yourself, would Viacom need such detailed information on viewers, just to make their case?

Viacom wants the viewing data in part to help it determine the extent to which YouTube’s success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site.

"oh, I get it" and yet Google continues to reason with Viacom's lawyers:

In a letter sent Thursday, Google’s lawyers pressed their counterparts at Viacom to accept a more limited set of data. “We request that plaintiffs agree that YouTube may redact user names and I.P. addresses from the viewing data in the interests of protecting user privacy,” wrote David H. Kramer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

“Users should have the right to challenge and contest the production of this deeply private information,” said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group.

That right is protected by the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, Mr. Opsahl added. Congress passed that law in 1988 to protect video rental records, after a newspaper disclosed the rental habits of Robert H. Bork, then a Supreme Court nominee.

Here's where the Judge becomes a stand-up guy:

While the judge said Viacom has a legitimate need for the users' information, he rejected Viacom's requests for Google to disclose its search engine source code.

I'm just sayin', WTF? Slippery slope.

Sources:  sfgate   NYT

Arrests as Burma marks uprising

At least 20 people have been arrested in the Burmese town of Taunggok after staging a silent protest on the 20th anniversary of a major uprising.

They were detained after marching while wearing T-shirts which referred to the date of the uprising - "8/8/88".

Activists outside Burma are marking the anniversary with demonstrations.

The 1988 protests drew hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets, but ended with a violent clampdown and the deaths of at least 3,000 civilians.

The date 8 August 1988 was significant for the numerologically minded Burmese, and marked the start of six weeks of rallies against military rule.

The anniversary prompted tightened security in the main city, Rangoon, with police and pro-government militias stationed at strategic points, including Buddhist monasteries.

Continue reading at the BBC

"Technically, had I meant it [the way the McCain campaign spun it], she would be the lipstick, the failed policies of McCain would be the pig."

This clip shows Obama's statement in context and McCain referring a Hillary Clinton policy, using the same expression.

Political Pumkin Patterns, shown here the Sarah Palin pattern.

See more here with downloadable PDF files. 

I like that Ted Kennedy is 'Sunburn'!

Secret Service codenames are a throwback to the period before electronic transmissions were encrypted. Although they serve no practical security function today, the US Army Signal Corps still assigns codenames (mostly out of tradition).

Source

From Mother Jones:

The Treasury Department is all about efficiency these days. The original bailout plan that Secretary Paulson proposed, which has been quietly dumped, was just three pages. I guess it's no surprise, then, that the application to get some sweet, sweet bailout bucks from the TARP Capital Purchase Program is just two pages. No joke, Taxpayers for Common Sense actually got a hold of the thing. If you're interested in landing a spare billion, give it a shot. It won't take you more than five minutes.

Wasn't one factor in the housing crisis the fact that lenders gave home loans to people without checking credit and obtaining documentation of assets, salary, and other signs of financial health? And yet you get piles of cash from the Treasury with less paperwork than what goes into car loans, student loans, and most credit cards?

Source

Thanks Brady!

Xeni over at BoingBoing has put together a compilation of shoe-tossing GIFs. Hilarious.

Link to collection

UPDATE:

Link to Shoe Toss game—Thanks Brady

On the night of Saturday, December 6th, two Special Guards of the Greek police clashed with a small group of young men. The exact details of what took place are still unclear, but it is known that one of the Guards fired three shots, and one of those bullets caused the death of 15-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos - whether the injury was made by an accidental ricochet or deliberate shot remains to be determined. The two Guards are now in jail awaiting trial, the shooter charged with homicide.

This undated photo made at a unknown location shows 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Some of the worst riots Greece has seen in years began within hours of the fatal shooting of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night in the central Athens district of Exarchia. (AP Photo/Eurokinissi)

Link to Boston.com's photos.

From Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid:

Timed with today’s Inauguration, Bush Street signs in San Francisco were changed to Obama down the entire length of Bush Street from Presidio to Battery.

Link to "obamastreetsign" flickr set

This shot was taken yesterday by a co-worker/friend of mine, Heath T, the line is for a job at Specialtys, a cafe and bakery chain.

I love Flickr. While looking for some reference material I came across this excellent collection. The prints look like lino-cuts or wood blocks.

From Oldtasty's Flickrset

This is an outstanding collection of Cultural-Revolution era imagery and propaganda, made available with thanks to Webster University (for use of their scanning station) and Flickr. Translations will be added over time.

Link to Flickrset

Xeni Jardin over at BoingBoing has an interesting piece on the Tibetan New Year's protest over Chinese human rights abuse:

Today, February 25, 2009, is the date on which Tibetan New Year -- Losar -- begins. Many Tibetan exiles around the world are observing Losar in a different manner this year. Some are forgoing traditional observances to instead protest human rights abuses by the Chinese government inside Tibet. There are reports that Chinese authorites are effectively making Losar celebrations inside Tibet compulsory, and reactions have led to violent clashes.

Creative director Steve Juras led designers Aaron Draplin and Chris Glass in the assignment to create two logos, one for projects completed under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and the second for the  U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) team. ModeProject.com

Believe it or not, this little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

And $1 BILLION dollars

What one Trillion looks like…

These pallets are DOUBLE stacked.

cortesy of Laughing Squid

cortesy of Laughing Squid

cortesy of Laughing Squid

cortesy of Michael Bolger

From MSNBC:

DES MOINES, Iowa - The Iowa Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Friday finding that the state's same-sex marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples, making Iowa the third state where gay marriage is legal.

In its decision, the court upheld a 2007 district court judge's ruling that the law violates the state constitution. It strikes the language from Iowa code limiting marriage to only between a man a woman.

"The court reaffirmed that a statute inconsistent with the Iowa constitution must be declared void even though it may be supported by strong and deep-seated traditional beliefs and popular opinion," said a summary of the ruling issued by the court.

Mia Farrow has been chronicling her hunger strike on YouTube for eight days, and she says that's just the beginning.

The actress and activist has committed to three weeks of an all-water diet in support of refugees in Darfur, where Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir expelled or shut down 16 aid agencies -- a move that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said put the lives of more than 1 million people at risk.

Farrow has been keeping an irregular video blog of her fast on her own YouTube channel, as well as on the channel of Darfur Fast for Life, an organization that fellow activists put together to draw attention to Farrow's efforts.

As of tonight, 75 other people had signed up on the site to join Farrow in the fast. Some said they would only drink water; others said they would eat the same rations as those in Darfur. 

Participants in the growing online hunger strike have been posting updates to Twitter and posting to YouTube.

Farrow, a slight 64-year-old, said in a recent video that she wasn't sure if she'd be able to last the full 21 days -- she has never fasted before, and her doctor was skeptical.

Still, she was resolved to make a statement. "Of course I don't expect that me on hunger strike is going to do that much," Farrow said in the video. "But if it provides a news hook for newspapers so they can talk about what's really important, then that will be worth it."

Gabriel Stauring, who helped organize the site, expressed concern for Farrow, with whom he said he'd traveled to Darfur last summer. "You’ve seen Mia’s size," he said. "There’s no way she can go that long without doing permanent damage. We want to convince her that if we have somebody else that is famous and that would draw attention, that she should stop." Stauring suggested that more recognizable names might be joining the effort soon.

Also striking is Pam Omidyar, a founder of the philanthropic group Humanity United, and the wife of EBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar has been eating the refugee meals for 18 days, according to her blog on fastdarfur.org. 

Farrow appeared on CNN's Larry King Live on the day she began the strike, and will reappear on the show Tuesday night, according to Stauring.

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