July 3rd, 2009 by Sonny
Palin to Resign as Governor of Alaska – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com.
She’s obviously positioning herself for a presidential run in 2012. Let the fun begin! How will she top the proud ignorance and narscism of the last run? I hope the Sarah sideshow remains a big part of GOP politics for many years to come. Sink another reublican ticket! Go Barracuda Go!
July 2nd, 2009 by Sonny
Slashdot Technology Story | GPS-Based System For Driving Tax Being Field Tested.
This seems waaaay over the top in a big-brother sort of way.
July 2nd, 2009 by Sonny
Apple has released a beta version of firmware 3.1 to developers, which is includes the following enhancements:
* Options for MMS are back on AT&T, but not sending or receiving.
* Non-destructive video editing means trimming a clip no longer saves over the original video but gives you the option to “Save as copy…”
* Voice Control now works over Bluetooth
* iPhone vibrates when moving icons
* Updated AT&T profile to 4.2
* Updated modem firmware to 5.08.01
* Improvements to OpenGL and Quartz
* APIs to allow third party apps to access videos and edit them
* You can now paste phone numbers into the phone app’s dialer. This wasn’t possible under 3.0
* While pasting phone numbers, a neat feature is that it will convert alphanumeric phone numbers into a real phone number (e.g. 1-800-FLOWERS becomes 1-800-356-9377)
* Calendar appointment popup notifications now display the “Location” field from the calendar entry
* Ability to save video attachments in emails to your camera roll
via Unofficial iPhone OS 3.1 change log : Boy Genius Report.
Cnet’s iPhone Atlas reports that the new firmware will drop on 7/17/09. Now if it will stop playing Lady Gaga every time I ask it to dial Mom, I’ll be happy. Let’s just say the voice recognition needs help.
July 1st, 2009 by Sonny
Oxdown Gazette » American Prospect’s Public Health Plan Debate, Part I.
This is an interesting debate about the relative virtues of “strong” vs “weak” public plans and the interaction with insurance exchanges. I was in grad school for an Masters in Public Health at Emory, specifically looking at the role on insurance on the delivery of health care in the US, when the Clinton health care reform crashed and burned. I was disillusioned about how special interests (with allies on the Hill) killed it.
For once I’m not with Ezra, I’m with Kuttner, single payer is the way to go. It slices away layers of administrative bullshit directed at eliminating people who might actually use health insurance, denying claims and paying profits to stockholders. It can set global payment levels and allow providers decide how to allocate funds.
Anything else continues to allow insurance company stockholders to profit from the suffering of others. We’re the only western industrial nation that’s allows this type of looting (at great cost) while getting so much less in return. It’s national tragedy, crime and a shame all rolled into one
July 1st, 2009 by Sonny
Yes, it’s over call it a day…
In honor of “never say quit” Coleman:
July 1st, 2009 by Sonny
via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
Beck agrees that we need another 9/11 attack to “save” us from the evil socialist plot that is the Obama administration.
June 30th, 2009 by Sonny
Health care is not a bowl of cherries – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
Krugman notes that Kenneth Arrow pointed out 45 years ago that competitive markets don’t work in health insurance market. I read and quoted Arrow in a paper I wrote years ago while studying health policy and economics in college. How is it that otherwise bright people don’t seem to able to grasp long established standard works in economics? Mankiw really, really should know better. I suspect he does, which makes it infinitely worse.
June 30th, 2009 by Sonny
Court Rules Franken Has Won Senate Seat – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com.
Well OK then, can we finally move on now? Oh right not while there’s still wankers who want to mount challenges to the vote for no other reason than to drag it out as long as possible.
June 28th, 2009 by Sonny
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
Andrew is pissed and cynical about the Waxman climate change bill and the federal government in general:
Watching how this government can do nothing to reform healthcare, nothing to end the wars and occupations that drain the coffers, nothing to tackle entitlements even as the country teeters toward complete insolvency, nothing to reform a broken immigration system … even after a president is elected with a clear mandate and a Congressional majority in both Houses: well, we know why America is fucked, don’t we?
June 27th, 2009 by Sonny
I’ve had a chance to spend a week with the new iPhone.
Favorite new features:
As a total package it was a good upgrade for me, moving from an original iPhone. There are a few things to not like:
I’m really a fan, and I hope the guys at blog.iphone-dev.org roll out the 3GS jailbreak and unlock. They do seem to have made progress, but are waiting for the next firmware update to prevent Apple from quickly patching the exploit.
June 25th, 2009 by Sonny
It fills me with sadness. I have conflicted feelings about Michael Jackson. He was a victim of his own family’s greed and a target for opportunists. He may well have been a serial child molester. I don’t know if he was or not. I am certain he was a truly one of a kind talent that had never been seen before and will not be seen again.
Rock on MJ
[2WjOn5TNjBM]
June 23rd, 2009 by Sonny
How exactly is justice served by not allowing existing evidence to be tested? The DNA testing is not expensive and the defendant has offered to pay the cost. Why not let him? Why exactly would Alaska oppose it in the first place?
If it’s not his DNA, then justice is served by allowing him to exonerate himself. If it is his, then nothing at all is lost. How does testing this DNS “overthrow” any important state interest? Unless punishing a random person is more important than the determining the facts of the case. This is why a conservative court is dangerous and I hope Obama gets to choose more nominees.
In 1993, William Osburne was convicted of kidnapping, assaulting and raping a woman in Anchorage, Alaska. He spent the next 14 years of his life behind bars. Osburne insists that he is innocent, the State of Alaska has in its possession DNA evidence which will once and for all prove his guilt or innocence, and Osburne has offered to pay for DNA testing out of his own pocket. Allowing Osburne to prove—or disprove–his claim of innocence will cost Alaska literally nothing.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court held today in a 5-4 decision by Chief Justice Roberts that Osburne is out of luck. Although Roberts conceded that “[i]t is now often possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty,” he determined that Osburne has no right to pay for a test that could exonerate him for a crime he did not commit. Allowing Osburne to prove his potential innocence, Roberts said, risks “unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice.”
June 22nd, 2009 by Sonny
Neda shot by the Basiji police – Iranian Riots and Protests
The death of an innocent galvanizes protesters in Iran and across the globe. A man and his teen daughter are watching, but not participating in the protests, when an unseen sniper hits her in the upper chest. It’s hard to watch. She literally bleeds out and dies on camera as her father watches.
June 22nd, 2009 by Sonny
Good Question indeed, with 72% supporting a public plan why are democrats running from it as if their lives depended on being as far away as possible?
Hmmmm, maybe it has something to do with the money people like Senator Max Baucus get from the medical, pharma, medical device and insurance industries?
FDL has a post comparing the morality of allowing 18,000 people a year to die as a result of not having insurance to the morality of allowing slavery to continue. It’s simply a failure of moral clarity. 18,000 Americans die annually so others might continue to profit from an unsustainable system. If that’s not immoral nothing is.
June 16th, 2009 by Sonny
Economist’s View: “Russian Flat Tax Myth and Fact”.
If facts do matter then here’s a study that says the productivity gains claimed by supply-side economics fans are small. Mark Thoma notes:
The lack of a significant productivity response undercuts the main supply-side argument that cuts in taxes produce increased growth in output that generates a partial offset (some even argue a more than full offset) to the revenue lost from the tax cut. So many supply-siders have switched to the compliance argument for the US, but I doubt this effect would be large, and certainly not large enough to pay for the tax cut, and compliance can be increased in other ways such as closing loopholes and better enforcement of existing tax law.
June 16th, 2009 by Sonny
Sadly, No » It’s Got A Good Beat And You Can Dance To It.
Enjoy “God Hates the World” sang to the music of “We Are the World” by America’s sickest “church”. Sadly it’s not a parody, it’s normal fare for the Westboro Baptist Church.
June 10th, 2009 by Sonny
via HOW FOX NEWS OPENED AMERICA – New York Post.
Favorite right wing warmonger Chuckie C, much like the man he’d most like to publicly fellate quoted above, drops this little nugget of truth: “What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.”
The sad days of “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their facts” are happily behind us. We’re now free to just make shit up as we go along! Whoo hoo, the bloggers everywhere rejoice!
June 10th, 2009 by Sonny
Lieberman vs. Lieberman | Media Matters Action Network.
Opposing funding the troops is only bad if your enemies do it, otherwise it’s a bold expression of patriotism!
June 10th, 2009 by Sonny
via How civilized, law-abiding countries imprison terrorists – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Glenn points out that recently Turkey and Germany both managed to use actual legal means to prosecute and imprison terrorists:
While the U.S. continues to debate whether it must imprison accused terrorists without charges or trial — and now even refuses to say whether it will release those who are given trials but then acquitted — numerous other countries are, with their actions, adhering to the values and principles which we, with words, righteously claim to embody…
…Numerous countries that aren’t the U.S. — including those targeted by Terrorist threats at least as serious as those faced by the U.S. — have routinely and repeatedly given what are called “trials” and “due process” to those it accuses not merely of harboring terrorist wishes, but also actually having carried out atrocious terrorist attacks. During the Bush era, even the U.S. — when we were moved to do so — successfully did the same.
But who needs legal means when you have a craven legislature that refuses to defend the Consititution and executives whose only concern about the the Constitution is how to best circumvent it?
June 10th, 2009 by Sonny
via Lawyers plan class-action to reclaim “$100M+” RIAA “stole” – Ars Technica.
Not content simply to defend Jammie Thomas-Rasset in her high-profile retrial next week in Minnesota, lawyer Kiwi Camara is joining forces with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer.
The goal is nothing less than to force the industry to pay back the alleged “$100+ million” it has collected over the last few years. Perhaps the RIAA had good reason not to send those settlement letters to Harvard for so long.
Camara is attacking both the use of MediaSentry as an unlicensed private investigator and for using an illegal “pen register,” considered a type of electronic surveillence. Also, Camara maintains that the copyright registrations are not valid beciase they don’t contain the original recording and that the RIAA failed to produce certified copies.
Teaming up with Harvard Law professor and longtime RIAA foe Charles Nesson, Camara wants to take back all of the money the RIAA has extorted from people over the years by filing a class action suit. We’ll see if the claims made in the case at hand gain traction.
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