News

Michelle Obama, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver,Oprah Winfrey by LATimes

In a jaw-dropping last-minute endorsement, Maria Schriver endorses Barack Obama : Breaking News: Maria Shriver endorses Barack Obama.

Will.I.Am's endorsement of Barack Obama goes viral : Will.I.Am's remix of Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" speech.

La Opinion, the largest Spanish language newspaper in California (if not continental US) endorses Barack Obama. The tipping point? Immigration : The Democratic choice is Barack Obama y en español, La opción demócrata es Barack Obama.

In what looks like a direct response to Marcia Pappas' "Ultimate Betrayal" memo, 150+ Feminist women from New York State decide to endorse Barack Obama : New York Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama.

Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and coiner of the phrase "military-industrial complex", comes out in support for Barack Obama : Why I'm Backing Obama

By far the best independent news site on the web. All they're missing is the edition printed on dead trees. Published by wunderkid, John Byrne.

So Scoble twitters a link to this little gem showing Americans' knowledge of current affairs. Of course, for every incompetent respondent they probably found two or three people who answered thoughtfully to their questions --but that wouldn't make for good TV, wouldn't it?

What caught my eye though was the logo on the clip. I had to find out what it was all about. Well, what do you know? CNNN is a news parody show straight out of Australia and financed by the Australian Broadcasting Company. Can you imagine PBS producing The Daily Show?

I. Think. Not.

Infothought: Google Transferable Stock Options (TSO's) or how Seth Finkelstein succeeds at redifining web 2.0 with Google's Transferable Stock Options tool as Citizen Lunchmeat.

Eat The Press | Craigslist Robs Food From the Mouths of Journalist's Babies | The Huffington Post or how media dinosaurs cry the money blues.

BetaNews | Yahoo: Lower Page Views Due to AJAX or, if it takes a giant like Yahoo! to discredit a site rankings based on pageviews, oh lord have mercy, that would be so fine by me indeed. AJAX is a thing of web wonder that more sites should have to do away with the non-contextual page refreshing that happens due to non-dynamic designs. BTW, if you don't understand what I am talking about, don't worry. This is a shout-out to the techies in the community.

TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Le Web3 the good, bad and ugly., or the seedy underbelly of Web 2.0 technology conferences.

SECOND LIFE: A story too good to check - Valleywag or how PR and marketing departments are selling the virtual lie that is Second Life. This is Clay Shirky at his best and I am definitely coming back to this article.

MTV is now a lifestyle network:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - MTV on Wednesday unveiled a new scheduling strategy that will reshuffle and expand its primetime lineup. In addition, the lifestyle programming network has greenlit two series, one featuring "Jackass"'
Bam Margera and the other centered on wrestling.

WTF! I guess the music part of Music TV is just a metaphor.

Schools bag purses in class - USATODAY.com or, why it's in the little things like banning a girl's purse that schools demonstrate how they are not about freedom of expression but about domination and control.

US economy chugs ahead despite auto and housing slumps - Yahoo! News or, how US business are succeeding in road-blocking economic independence among that pesky of servant classes, the middle class.

Dolls lose their innocence - Yahoo! News or, are we using sex to sell toys to kids or to adults?

Funk veteran Prince to play at Super Bowl show - Yahoo! News, or how to insult an aging pop star.

Iran hosts Holocaust doubters at conference - Yahoo! News or how Iranians get to do what most Republican wingnuts can't.

Would serial killer Dahmer have been an evangelist? - Yahoo! News or, how this article proves my theory that Christianity is all about sublimated cannibalism and necrophilia.

*** BTW, Hodgepodege is a wonderful dutch comfort food made of mashed potatoes, lettuce, bacon and cream that I had the pleasure to try out in Amsterdam earlier this year.

Democrats only need to win 15 more House seats to take back the House. That's out of 40 surprisingly close races. Well, the Republicans have all but conceded one of those races, meaning Democrats only have to win 14 more.

White Supremicists are often too close for comfort to the Republican Party. Virginia Senator Allen, for example, is clearly a bit too much of a racist for my taste, leading me to donate to and advocate for Democratic candidate for the Senate, Jim Webb. But Republicans in general don't necessarily LIKE being associated with white supremicists. Witness the Republican candidate for AZ-8 Congressional seat: Randy Graf is well connected with white supremicists and has now been endorsed by former Grand Wizard of the KKK (and former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor of Louisiana and twice for president of the United States) David Duke. This was too much even for the Republican Party, leading them to do the right thing and pull out all support for Graf.

Here's a statement from the DCCC on this:

I couldn't have better news. The Republicans have withdrawn all of their financial support in the pivotal race in Arizona's 8th Congressional District, all but conceding defeat in a race that we had targeted.

Twenty two years after losing his parents and 5 siblings to Union Carbide's criminal negligance at Bhopal, India, activist Sunil Kumar Verma has committed suicide after fighting for years with paranoid schizophrenia an illness which affected many Bhopal survivors.

Meanwhile, Union Carbide and its successor, Dow Chemical, has largely gotten off scott free.

From the International Capaign for Justice in Bhopal:

On the night of Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal.[1] Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits.[2]Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women.[3] In 2001, Michigan-based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.