A smartphone the size of a credit-card appears to be nearing that point.
Unless you're Zoolander.
...A couple months after Easter itself came and went, the Easter egg Google shipped with its Chrome OS prototype laptops has finally been discovered.Brad Wells found the Easter egg. Aided by a little Google searching, found out how to activate a fake blue screen of death--one of the "legacy" leftovers from the PC era Google hopes to banish with its browser-based operating system. Then, with an ASCII code converter, he found a parody of the legalese that causes me a lot more heartburn these days than BSODs...
Why is the White House Collecting Emails?: RWNQOTD: "The same people who whine that Sarah Palin is unqualified to serve as president have no problem uttering the following phrase with a straight face: 'Vice President Joe Biden'". --Me, just now.
President Obama has named a new top White House lawyer, the third of his two-and-a-half-year tenure.
New White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler will replace Bob Bauer, who is returning to private practice -- including service as general counsel to the president's 2012 re-election campaign and as Obama's personal lawyer.
...Ruemmler is already working at the White House as principal deputy counsel to the president. She officially becomes White House counsel at the end of June.
...Washington attorney Greg Craig served as Obama's first White House counsel, but resigned after a year amid controversy over failed efforts to close the terrorism prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
...according to data provided exclusively to The Daily from TweetCongress.org, a nonprofit website that captures each member of Congress’s Twitter feeds in real time, the shot seen round the world was transmitted using TweetDeck — a popular Adobe desktop application that links up with social networking sites. A review of Weiner’s Twitter stream from May 27, the day of the crotch pic, shows that Weiner had been posting only from TweetDeck — one of many ways to post messages to Twitter — that entire night.Chet Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at security software company SophosLabs, said the TweetDeck stamp “does make it more plausible that it did come from him.”
...Robert Stribley, a senior information architect at Razorfish, a social media strategy agency, reasoned that if Weiner used the TweetDeck app, “it would probably make it less likely his account was hacked.”
...Matthew Green, chief technology officer at Independent Security Evaluators, said that if the offensive tweet had been transmitted through something other than TweetDeck that night, it might have gone a long way to exonerate Weiner.
... “Here’s the thing that solves it all,” said McCroskey, “for him to call for a criminal investigation. All they have to do is look at his TweetDeck and see if it came from there, see what IP address [it had]. The local police department or Capitol Police could probably figure this out in 15 minutes.”
It is entirely possible, and perhaps extremely likely, that collection of these emails crosses the line into an illegal use of government property for partisan purposes. The Clinton administration's Justice Department issued a 1999 memo that outlined prohibited behavior....activities in the workplace directed toward the success or failure of a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group, would violate the Hatch Act and also would violate the [DOJ]'s rules. For example, inviting individuals to attend a political event, recruiting campaign volunteers or dispersing campaign literature over the Internet is prohibited...
It is to promote, directly or indirectly, the reelection campaign of Barack Obama.
Paul Ryan Gave One Hell Of A Campaign Speech Last Night: AceI think it would make no sense for her to run. I think her chances of winning the nomination are small. The chances of winning the general election are probably nil. I think, for the same reasons you articulated, 60 percent negatives. That's almost impossible to overcome. And it isn't as if that is forever. Hillary Clinton had very high negatives at many points in her career. But over time, they tend to soften....The problem with her, I think, is that she is not schooled. I don't mean she didn't go to the right schools... But when it comes to policies, she's had two and a half years to school herself, and she hasn't. And that's a problem. You want a president who will be able to not have to learn on the job. We've already had that... ...with President Obama and with others... It's the lack of effort to school herself and the lack of insight to see that she needs it...
...I think if you're going to master policy, especially world affairs, you've got to know history. As you said, you have to know how things evolved, and she is weak on that. It's not as if she can't learn. The fact is it doesn't appear as if she wants to sort of sit down, spend some months schooling herself, as many people have done in preparing for the presidency. If you're a governor of any state, you face a narrow range of issues, and you don't have to deal with the world. It's incumbent on you to actually learn about it.
The independent voters have made up their minds about her, and it is a negative judgment they’ve made... After the 2008 campaign she had two things she had to do: she had to go home to Alaska and study, and she had to govern Alaska well. Instead she quit halfway through her first term and shows up in the audience of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and other distinctly non-presidential venues...
How are those Stimulus, HAMP, Cash-for-Clunkers, Weatherization, Green Jobs, Obamacare, "Banking Reform", drilling moratorium, First-Time Home-Buyer Credit, auto company takeovers and QE2 programs working out?Even before the current #Weinergate scandal broke, Rep. Anthony Weiner had quite a history of lewd behavior towards women.
A 2001 Vanity Fair article about a young woman using her sexual proclivity to climb Capitol Hill featured a large section on her interactions with Weiner. In early fall 2001, the New York Democrat introduced himself to a Congressman Mike Rogers staffer, Diana Davis, as an “auto-parts salesman.” He rambled on and on about how politically connected he was and boasted about a trip he was scheduled to take with President George W. Bush to Ground Zero. He was going to fly with the president on Air Force One. Despite his attempt to impress Davis, Weiner couldn’t seal the deal with her that night, so he tried again.
“The next day, New York’s Anthony Weiner finds the time to hunt down Diana’s E-mail address... He writes that he hopes they might meet again..." In his email, Weiner told Davis she should come visit his office "in person." Ward wrote Davis “left Anthony Weiner dangling,” because she thought the “in person” comment “was kind of cheesy.”
Even after he emailed her, Davis had no clue Weiner was a United States congressman. She thought he was just a cute car parts salesman. It wasn’t until later that her friend Caroline Chatterton told Davis over lunch that Weiner was a member of Congress...
...Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin told The Daily Caller Weiner’s “long history” of “skirt-chasing” raises more questions about the New York Democrat’s Capitol Hill sexual secrets and expects more women with similar stories to come forward... The photo gallery of his select group of young female followers/followees on Twitter suggests a continued hunt.”
...The latest buzz from D.C. Democrats is that other pictures of Weiner’s package are out there. This raises troubling questions about who the recipients might have been, how old, and whether they worked for or under the congressman (NO pun intended!)...
Weiner still can’t answer with “certitude” whether it’s his penis in the picture sent via his official verified Twitter account to Seattle-area college student Gennette Cordova. Since folks in Washington have been asking Weiner about the details surrounding the photo, he’s called a CNN producer a “jackass” and dialed 911 on a CBS reporter. Weiner has tried to deflect attention away from the major questions in the storyline and has tried to say outright he’s not answering any more questions...
Rep. Anthony Weiner's humiliated wife sheepishly showed her face at a Washington event yesterday, keeping a stiff upper lip amid the swirling scandal surrounding her husband's tawdry Twitter photo.
Huma Abedin, 34, briefly hesitated at the State Department ballroom door before working up the courage to go in... At first, she seemed to be a no-show at Clinton's morning event, where the secretary hosted a session of the Iraq Business Roundtable for companies including Caterpillar, FedEx, Microsoft, Citigroup and GE.
But shortly after the event began in the ornate Ben Franklin room, Abedin opened a door, peered into the room, then strode over to another Clinton aide 20 feet away from the secretary.
Wearing a black pant suit and a prominent pearl necklace, Abedin never cracked a smile and kept her distance from the former first lady. She ducked out long before the event finished.
Weinergate ain't Watergate, not even close... But they're both classic examples of abysmal damage control....His less-than-forthcoming answers to the frenzy over a lewd photo have made matters worse for the congressman who aspires to be New York City's next mayor, raising fresh questions and fueling even more media scrutiny.
When a reporter asks if you've ever taken photos of your nether regions like the one purportedly hacked from Weiner's Twitter account, there's only one acceptable answer.
But Weiner didn't just say no - he just ducked... He also couldn't say "with certitude" the offending photo wasn't him, an unfortunate non-denial denial.
... Ninety-six percent of state workers are in collective bargaining units, and there are petitions pending before the state labor board that could increase that proportion to 99 percent, said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago......Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, R-Des Plaines, said the governor is to blame for reaching a no-layoff agreement until June 30, 2012, with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in exchange for $50 million in concessions.
“Didn’t he think everyone was going to join the union?” Mulligan said. “They’d have to be stupid not to.”..
As for all of the hospitals, vendors and suppliers to the state who are owed money -- much of it six months in arrears -- the news just got worse thanks to the Democrats' intransigence.The Senate rejected four bills sponsored by state Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, that would have sold more than $6 billion in bonds to pay vendors to whom the state owes money. That means, for now, school districts, local governments, vendors and other providers won’t be getting paid any more quickly.As of last week, Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka had more than 130,000 unpaid bills dating back to December that total just over $4 billion.
“Vendors should know that there will still be substantial delays, but the situation will slowly begin to improve if we hold the line on new spending,” she said.
NAACP Fights To Keep Kids Trapped in Failing Schools: BGQOTD: “I don’t think he should pull out (of the mayor’s race) on the basis of this. I still think that Twitter aside, his private life should not trump his public career.” — Ernest Gilman, 65, West Village
“He’s beating around he bush, the fact that he can’t say for certain that the picture is of him. I think the outcome of this might affect his mayoral run. If no questions are answered by that time it would have a very negative impact.” — Casey Fulgenzi, 23, East Village
(via AMNY on Weinergate)
For the last two months I commented "It is very questionable if this pace of jobs keeps up." Clearly it didn't and this certainly cannot all be blamed on a Tsunami in Japan. The entire global economy is slowing rapidly......In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,814,000. Yet the labor force dropped by 544,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,358,000...
...Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%...
...The official unemployment rate is 9.1%. However, if you start counting all the people that want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.
While the "official" unemployment rate is an unacceptable 9.0%, U-6 is much higher at 15.8%...Things are much worse than the reported numbers would have you believe, and for the second consecutive month the beneath the surface numbers were bad-to-awful.
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change.
"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.
"It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."
China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.
Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt... Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt continued to increase.
Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.
While it is true Congress has never before refused to raise the debt ceiling, it has frequently taken its sweet time to do so. In 1985, Congress waited nearly three months after the debt limit was reached before authorizing a permanent increase. In 1995, 4 1/2 months passed between hitting the ceiling and congressional action. And in 2002, Congress delayed raising the debt ceiling for three months. In each case, the U.S. and the economy survived.
... The people running this government are never going to deal with this untenable situation unless and until it becomes untenable for them. The only way that will happen is if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling and forces the administration to prioritize payment of those obligations that must be paid to maintain our full faith and credit — for as Kevin and Veronique point out, this already perilous situation could be blown sky high if the interest rate we must pay to borrow spikes. Only when there is no way around it will we get serious consideration of what government should and should not do, and what kind of welfare state the public is willing to pay for.
If we put it off, if we expand the credit card of a bankrupt Washington whose credit card needs to be cut to pieces right now, not only will our dire straits get worse. We won’t get to deal with them — we will be at the mercy of how they deal with us when the music finally stops.
More than 150 economists back U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's call to match any increase in the debt limit with spending cuts of equal size, according to a letter released by the Republican leader's office Wednesday... Signatories include Nobel laureate Robert Mundell of Columbia University and economists from schools like New York University and Georgetown University, as well as conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute... Republicans say they will not back any increase that does not include steep spending cuts and other limits to ensure that debt stays at a manageable level.
Amid media circus, Palin lays out policy positions: YorkQOTD: "On this morning's John Gambling show on WOR710 AM in NY, a caller [credible Republican] called in to say that a "gorgeous" female friend of his received similar communications from Weiner. John Gambling had the caller speak to his staff offline after the call and apparently this was not a fluke incident. Stay tuned." --JS
Kramer walked in to Weiner’s office, announced herself as being from CBS 2 in New York City and said she’d like to see the congressman. Those few words created quite the stir. Doors slammed and people pretended she wasn’t there.
Finally, brave press secretary David Arnold arrived. The following is the exchange Kramer had with him:Kramer: “All I want is for him to say something to his constituents, the people who have to vote for him.”
Arnold: “I don’t think you can say he hasn’t said anything to his constituents. He spoke for nine hours yesterday.
Kramer: “But not to anyone in New York. You know, this is the sort of in-the-bunker in the capitol, not to anyone in New York.”
After Kramer left Weiner’s office, his staff called the Capitol Police.
Police officers asked for identification. One cop told Kramer that if she went into Weiner’s office and didn’t leave if she was asked, she could be arrested.
That GM sales declined in May by 1.2% on expectations of a rise of 1.5% in May is not really surprising: as we have been saying for a nearly three months now, the Japanese earthquake, far from adding points to US GDP, is now impacting every aspect of the US and global economy......Furthermore, the bulk of these purchases are the government-funded equivalent of subprime home purchases from 2005-2006: take away government funding and the sales collapse would be historic. Yet what is surprising, and what continues to be the only important metric in the monthly GM sales report, is the monthly channel stuffing update, aka the "month-end dealer inventory." We hope nobody will be surprised to find that it just hit another all time record of 584,000, 7k more than April and 177 more than a year ago. Although in reality, considering that GM car assembly should have been impacted by the Japanese earthquakes, one would have hoped for this inventory to decline. Which is the truly surprising part. In other words, in May, channel stuffing at GM went into overdrive.
Since the first official month of delivery late last year, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt has held an overall lead in sales over the 2011 Nissan Leaf but in April, Nissan was able to boast of being the bestselling electric vehicle in the US for the first time as their all-electric vehicle outsold the extended range Volt sedan by a margin of 573 to 493... General Motors stated that deliveries were slow because they were working on getting demo vehicles to dealerships but as the May numbers have come in – things haven’t improved for GM. In fact, they have gotten worse as the number of Volts delivered last month was down to just 481; compared to the 1,142 Nissan Leaf units delivered.
The past decade of wage growth has been one for the record books — but not one to celebrate.
The increase in total private-sector wages, adjusted for inflation, from the start of 2001 has fallen far short of any 10-year period since World War II, according to Commerce Department data. In fact, if the data are to be believed, economywide wage gains have even lagged those in the decade of the Great Depression (adjusted for deflation).Two years into the recovery, and 10 years after the nation fell into a post-dot-com bubble recession, this legacy of near-stagnant wages has helped ground the economy despite unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus — and even an impressive bull market.
Over the past decade, real private-sector wage growth has scraped bottom at 4%, just below the 5% increase from 1929 to 1939, government data show.
To put that in perspective, since the Great Depression, 10-year gains in real private wages had always exceeded 25% with one exception: the period ended in 1982-83, when the jobless rate spiked above 10% and wage gains briefly decelerated to 16%.