Next in the Holloween rampup.
A deliciously campy example of the B-Movie staring Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley, Jr. Michel Richards and Geena Davis. This 1985 comedy/horror spoof tells the tail of two tabloid reporters (and not very good ones) sent to Transylvania in order to find stories that the National Star and Dan Rather would turn down.
Barnes and Noble has announced the Nook, their e-book reader.
This is in direct competition to Amazon’s Kindle. It’s a very similar bit of technology, the major difference being that the B&N Nook will allow users to “share” e-books with other Nook users. It works this way. You purchase an ebook from B&N on your Nook. You like it. You think your buddy, who also has a Nook, would like it. So you can “loan” that book to said buddy. It will be available to be read on his Nook for two weeks. My bet is that this will generate a lot a ebook sales.
Now, some may argue that Amazon already owns the mind share for e-book readers, having crushed the Sony E-Reader in the market. The Kindle took off because Amazon was already seen as a major e-retailer of books and they had the ability to buy books immediately on the Kindle using mobile Internet technology. Sony wasn’t known as a book seller and they had no such “instant buy” option. The Nook has a similar broadband connection to the Kindle and B&N is seen as a major retailer of books by the public. The fact that B&N has a much larger ebook library than Amazon doesn’t hurt either.
There are two major flaws I can see with the Nook. First, the whole DRM thing. Second is that it only supports three formats, EPUB, eReader and PDF. A few more, including unencrypted Mobipocket, would be nice.
Amazon has responded, quietly, with the announcement that they will release free “Kindle software” for the PC platform, so people can read Amazon’s DRM crippled ebooks on their desktop or notebook computers. MAC and LINUX users are not supported in this release. Amazon is also selling refurbish (i.e. used) first gen Kindles for $150.
Kudos to the White House Press Pool for standing up on their hind legs and saying “NO” to the Obama Administration’s attempts to subvert the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Team Lightbringer tried to ban the Fox News reporter from participating in a standard Press Pool event. The other television news organizations in the pool (CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS) refused to be a part of this and would not proceed unless the entire Press Pool was part of the interview.
Allahpundit points out the disgusting level of hypocrisy shown by the Obama White House:
Decide for yourself what the most disgraceful aspect of this is. Was it the fact that Gibbs told Jake Tapper explicitly on Monday that the White House wouldn’t try to dictate to the press pool who should and shouldn’t be included — before doing precisely that? Was it Anita Dunn going out of her way to say she respects Major Garrett as a fair reporter — before the administration decided he didn’t deserve a crack here at Feinberg? Or was it the repeated insistence by Dunn and Axelrod that of course the administration will make its officials available to Fox — before pulling the plug today?
A free and unfettered press is a key element of a functional constitutional republic. A fact that too many so-called “liberals” are sadly all to willing to ignore as long as their political enemies are the ones be oppressed.
It is also very disturbing to see the President of the United States to be more concerned with his “War” on those in the news media who dare to not march in lockstep with his agenda than the war Islamofascists have declared on America.
A talking head at MSNBC parrots the Team Lightbringer party line and states flat out that she is quoting an email from the Obama White House.
So much for that objective media thing.
Yet another ACORN sting video! This time from Philadelphia, PA.
Remember that our current President, Barack H. Obama has ties to ACORN that go back to his early days operating in the bed of corruption that is Chicago politics. His connection with ACORN, which is involved in yet another vote fraud scheme, this time in Troy, NY, has continued up to this day.
It will be interesting to see how the leftist weasels over at Media Matters try to spin this one.
At first our Dear Leader was emulating the worst President of the past 50 years, the overtly racist Jimmy Carter.
Now he is taking a page out of former President Richard M. Nixon’s book of really bad things to do, and starting an “Enemies List” of American journalists.
This action raises this important question, “What does Barack Hussein Obama and his administration have against the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America?”
Let’s review the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
It is widely excepted that the free speech and press clause is focused on “Political” topics. The American people have to be able to freely report on and discuss their government and the effects on them, in order to maintain a free society.
Team Lightbringer doesn’t seem to be on board with this concept. The Obama White House, through it’s official spokesmen, have publicly attacked members of the American News Media, and public figures, who have published stories that the Obama administration doesn’t like.
What happened to the classic liberals who stated, “I do not agree with what you are saying, but I’ll defend your right to say it”? They seemed to have been replaced with thin skinned leftists who viciously attack anyone who dares to disagree with their agenda.
Jack Tapper, of ABC News seems to be the only member of the White House press corps with a functional set of testicles and an understanding of the US Constitution.
Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –
(Crosstalk)
Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.
Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –
Gibbs: ABC –
Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?
What is this White House afraid of? A news organization that points out that Obama has admitted Communists and supporters of pedophilia working for him? Aren’t those actual facts that the American people should be aware of? Doesn’t the American people have a right to know just which health insurance officials are in those secret meetings with Joe Biden?
Just to add to the stench of Obama’s “Enemies List” is the flat out hypocrisy of Team Lightbringer. The White House talking Head Gibby specifically singled out two of Fox News’ opinion format hosts, Beck and Hannity, as the reason for the Obama White House War on Fox News (which they are spending more time and effort than the war against Islamofascism being fought in Afghanistan) at the same time they are bringing in MSNBC’s hate mongers Olbermann & Maddow, who are clearly lapdogs of the Obama Administration, in for private briefings.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Christopher C. Horner.
Since the BBC finally figured out that the planet stopped getting warmer a decade ago, today’s pick is by someone who pointed out some of the problems with broken model of the anthropogenic global warming Luddites a few years ago.
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.
Among the projects being funded at the possible cost United States Military Personnel lives is an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts democrat.
While most of the money taken from the operational military budget was from pork projects funded by democrats, there were some Republicans with their snouts in the pork trough, including the the two RINO senators from Maine.
I’m serious here. The human female breast, especially perky ones, have to be one of his greatest creations, bar none.
Well, by way of Atlas Shrugged, is this disturbing story about an actual Fatwa against women with perky breasts.
A Somalian Muslim group reportedly has started whipping women in public for wearing bras that violate Islam, the Daily Mail reports.
Residents claim insurgent group Al Shabaab sent gunmen into the streets to round up women who appeared to have a firm bust. The women are inspected to see if their suspected firmness is natural or from a bra. Officials reportedly make the women shake their breasts after removing their bras.
Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of full veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,” a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday.
The new bra rule adds to the long list of religious restrictions in Somalia, including a ban on movies, musical cell phone ring tones, dancing at weddings and playing soccer.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the out cry from leftist so-called “feminists” in the West over this barbaric behavior.
“No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. It is not to be supposed that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by judges as fundamental law. If there should happen to be a irreconcilable variance between the two, the Constitution is to be preferred to the statute.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #78
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people’ (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.” — Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Washington,15 February, 1791
“Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: ‘We the people.’ ‘We the people’ tell the government what to do, it doesn’t tell us. ‘We the people’ are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which ‘We the people’ tell the government what it is allowed to do. ‘We the people’ are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I’ve tried to do these past eight years.” — US President Ronald Reagan
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” — Alexis De Tocqueville
“Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they’re it. They believe they’re more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people’s lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite.” — Dean Koontz, The Face of Fear
“Today the old-fashioned liberal pretension of equality is dead. Replacing it is naked power and the use of government to protect and expand the privileged status of the Democratic Party and its courtiers and constituents. Liberals have become reactionaries, behaving as kings did centuries ago by robbing their opponents to reward their vassals. Liberals now believe that the main purpose of government is to play favorites, to bring down their foes and give privileges to their friends.” — Lowell Ponte
“Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.” — Ayn Rand