Parity Violation

The mainstream media, so quick to buy whatever tall tale any yokel in Arkansas would tell about Bill Clinton, yet refuses to cover any of Bush’s serious violations with seriousness. The clear violation of the law that was and is Bush’s illegal, warrantless, wiretapping program was often described using the GOP spin of “terrorist surveillance” or some such euphemism. No one ever said we shouldn’t spy on terrorists, what we said is that it has to follow the law and require warrants.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon writes on the MSM’s disregard for the Bush Administration’s firings of U.S. Attorneys. Yes, Bush can fire whoever he wants. But, it’s improper and unprecedented to do so in the middle of a term. In fact, as a Congressional Research service report has shown, exactly 5 of 486 U.S. attorneys in the last 25 years have been fired in the middle of a term.

Yet, the press just laughs at it, as the clip Greenwald links to shows.

The press is failing American democracy every single day.

Well, people are having no trouble hacking the AppleTV just days after its release. Bigger hard drives, extra codec support, etc.

I would love an AppleTV, but it’s not in the budget any time soon. I had an old iBook G3 acting as my iTunes-machine but it’s hard drive died. Oh, and then its AC adapter died. So, I may just sell it as a fixer-upper and get an AppleTV someday.

More Discovery Channel stuff, the BBC series “Planet Earth” on Discovery HD Theater looks amazing, as is fascinating. They used some sophisticated cameras and techniques to get some never-before-seen shots. Wired has a story on it that’s worth checking out.

It’s interesting that on Discovery HD there are far fewer commercial breaks… to the point that in between each hour tonight, HD viewers got to see little snippets on the making of the show – whereas low-def viewers did not. Not exactly sure why Discovery HD Theater sells less ads than the standard def Discovery channel, but I’m not complaining.

I’m not sure what was cooler, the artificial intelligence driven robotic probes that explored the surface of the hypothetical Alien Planet on Discovery and Discovery HD Theater or the strange Myst/Riven like planetscapes and the weird scenes and life forms. A pretty cool show.

What’s amazing is that it’s not that hard to believe, but in 1993 when Bill Clinton fired all 93 U.S. attorneys at the start of his administration, the GOP and the right wing noise machine was outraged

Am I the only one who thinks it’s odd that the East regional (which Texas is in), is out in… Washington state? I’m fairly sure that’s not in the East. For a second I thought maybe they meant Washington, D.C., but no – Spokane, Washington. Of course, Texas really isn’t from the East either so… maybe it’s just a label.

Culberson and his anti-rail goons should sue! It says East! It has to be in the East!

A very interesting article today at the Wall Street Journal on apple as Music’s New Gatekeeper. Apple apparently doesn’t take money to get on the front of the iTunes music store, but does like special pricing or exclusive tracks.

Don’t ever quote a hymn in a speech or the right wing noise machine will use it against you and the main stream media, like the lapdogs they are, will dutifully latch on to the phony story without actually doing any research.

There’s not a shred of doubt in the scientific community that the earth is getting warmer. Nor is their any doubt that the CO2 levels in our atmosphere are their highest ever, and this is due to manmade activity. Yet, the main stream press continues to publish craplike this that casts doubt on global warming as something we should worry about.

And what a pile of junk this piece has. He dares to call Gore’s oscar a sign of “peer review” when every single peer reviewed scientific paper affirms the existence of global warming.

This new tack, that we don’t know exactly how much of the change is due to manmade activities. We don’t know the exact percentage but is it too much to err on the side of caution? But we know we are spewing more CO2 in the atmosphere than ever. We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know that is making the earth warmer.

This article conflates uncertainty in the precise magnitude of the warming trend and in the precise percentage of man made involvement with uncertainty that global warming is a problem that must be addressed. There is no doubt we are warming the earth, and no doubt that eventually it’ll be a huge problem if our CO2 emission remains unchecked. It’s not just ocean levels, it’s life in the oceans, it’s so many many things. Maybe in 100 years than in 50, but we have to do something about it now.

These fools who continue to cast doubt on the problem are putting the whole world in peril. If we don’t step up and solve this problem, we don’t deserve to inhabit this planet.