Being the day before Thanksgiving, today’s a busy day at airports all across the United States. If you’re flying today, the Citizen’s Insertable Swiftness Manifest will guarantee that you’ll breeze through security*!
* Straight into the body cavity search room, that is.
I missed reading “Dersh’s” op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled Democrats and Waterboarding until this morning. After reading it, these two things came to mind:
It’s nice to start the working week with some good news: the world’s most sleazy amnesiac, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Says the A-G, who’s stepping down on September 17th:
I have lived the American dream. Even my worst days as Attorney General have been better than my father’s best days.
How would he know? He can’t remember a damned thing.
Here’s the definition of pendejo (pronounced “pen-DEH-hoh”).
Here’s a CNN piece on Gonzales’ inability to remember key details at his hearings:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
Here’s Gonzales stating that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus as a right:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
Here’s Jon Stewart on Bill Moyers’ show. He hits the nail on the head when he says that Gonzales, based on his testimony, is “either a perjurer or a low-functioning pinhead”:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
And finally, a telenovela from The Daily Show, Mommy, Why is the Lying Man Still in Charge of the Law?:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
This week, The Daily Show aired one of its best and most spot-on segments, America to the Rescue, a high-larious summary of 30 years of American foreign policy in the Middle East:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
It’s all about the giant hands:
Photos from Esquire, courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Here’s what these wonders are:
If the folks at Family Security Matters have their way — see this article from Google’s cache titled Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy (they’ve since taken the article down from their site) — America could earn its own totalitarian wonder. Here’s an excerpt (the emphasis is mine):
Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
It’s a bit over-the-top, even for neocons. I had to look around the site to confirm that it wasn’t some kind of Daily Show or Onion-style parody. Apparently, it’s the real, non-ironic deal.
Anyhow, if Family Security Matters get their wish, may I suggest this as a design for their totalitarian monument?
Richard Florida is moving to Accordion City!
The urban thinker who coined the term “creative class” is following in Jane Jacobs’ footsteps and setting up residence here, where he’ll be doing work at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where he’ll continue his studies on his pet topic: how creativity and creative people make for successful cities.
Here’s an excerpt from the Globe and Mail story:
Richard Florida, one of the era’s most influential urban thinkers, will be leading a new initiative at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management that will allow him to expand his research on how human creativity drives a city’s economic success, a source says.
The author of the 2002 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class has left his post as a public policy professor at George Mason University in Virginia after three years.
“He expressed some interest in the last several years that Toronto would be a wonderful place. … To get him here, the deal was that there would need to be a fairly important initiative that he would be a part of,” an official said yesterday.
U of T spokesman Ken McGuffin confirmed that Prof. Florida will be joining the institution, which academic sources around the country say is a coup for the university. But he declined to divulge details of the position, saying those will be released next month.
The creative class comprises those people whose lives and jobs revolve around knowledge and creativity, which covers artisans, doctors, filmmakers, lawyers, writers, artists, and yes, computer programmers, accordion-playing and otherwise. Florida’s these is that they are a key factor in the socioeconomic success of cities. He uses this thesis to explain the success of cities and areas such as Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, the North Carolina research triangle, Dublin and Bangalore.
Florida says that in order to attract a creative class, cities must have the “Three T’s”:
Want to know more? Then check these out:
Here’s something that many (but not all) of you regular Accordion Guy readers might not find familiar — it’s five minutes from an NBC News broadcast from July 4th, 1972:
Some interesting differences between the nightly news 35 years ago and today:
Here’s another difference between then and now that has less to do with the newscast and more about politics back then. Listen carefully to the report from San Clemente by reporter Richard Valeriani: he says that the Democrats are meeting in Miami Beach to choose a candidate for the elections.
What’s so weird about that? It’s that 1972 was an election year. American elections take place near the beginning of November. It’s the start of July at the time of the broadcast. That means that the campaigning would last no longer than four months. That’s quite unlike the current situation.
In case you’re not up to speed on your recent U.S. history, the 1972 presidential elections were a disaster for the Democrats. Ted Kennedy would’ve been a contender, but as I like to say, “that’s water under the bridge”. Ed Muskie was the was mainstream democratic favourite until he cried like a chick during the primaries. Grassroots-boosted George McGovern got the nomination and in the end, they lost by over 23% in the popular vote.
1972 U.S. Presidential Election results by state. Click the map to see it at full size on its original page.
(Check out the pie charts on the map above — note the difference between the electoral vote and the popular vote.)
I must admit that my earliest introduction to that particular election was in the late seventies, from reading back issues of MAD magazine.