Think about this for a moment: you tweet something you genuinely think is the truth, and then you discover that you made it up. In effect, it was a lie. What would you do? This is not an academic question: the odds that one day each of us will tweet something that is less than 100 percent true are pretty high. How might you effect a correction? I’m about to outline what you should not do, with Michael Durwin (@mdurwin) standing in as the poster child. Who Is He? His Twitter bio: online marketing...

In The New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi has a heartfelt letter addressed to “his friend” Imam Rauf. The objective behind the letter is twofold: first, to establish that he does consider Rauf to be an important figure in interfaith dialogue (“If you are not a worthy dialogue partner for the Jewish community, then there is almost no one in Islam with whom we can speak.”), and second, to urge the Imam to change the plans for the Park 51 center. Instead of turning it into a Muslim...

You get what you reward. A new report concludes that chief executives of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than their peers at other large U.S. companies. The report, from the Institute of Policy Studies, found that the 50 layoff leaders received $12 million on average in 2009, compared with an average compensation of $8.5 million for chief executives of companies in Standard & Poor’s 500....

Looks like Chris is not very happy with the teleprompter Obama

Wagnerian November This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Here are some thoughts on Kathy’s post below. Is a god necessary?  Stephen Hawking says no. God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics. Hawking says in his book “The Grand Design” that, given the existence of gravity, “the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London. “Spontaneous creation is...

According to the Washington Post, the White House is considering an idea stolen from the Republican playbook — a new stimulus package focused on tax cuts for businesses.  Specifically, the staff-level discussions suggest the possibility of a “payroll tax holiday” where businesses would be exempt from paying taxes on their workers for some period of time. Unfortunately, there is no sign that the White House is putting any more thought than Republicans have (that would be zero) about...

That’s not me saying that; it’s Stephen Hawking, in his new book which will be released next week. Or, at least, it’s what CNN says Hawking is saying:

The following is a press release that appears to be from Apple. Looks like Apple is once again transforming the face of technology. “Apple is proud to announce a revolutionary advancement in the way you experience your Apple products. Drawing upon the success of our Apple Stores, we are proud to introduce an Apple endeavor that will permanently change the way you do everything. Introducing iCompound. iCompound is not a product, it’s a way of life. iCompound is similar to existing Apple stores...

I suspect for most readers this will come down to an ‘only in California’ comment. The long and short of it is the fire marshal requiring the removal of the latch which allows the nozzle to fill up without you holding it. The report cited *13* cases in which this brand of of nozzle had stuck and spilled gas on the ground. Now I am certainly not one who wants dangerous products to be used and obviously you have to be very cautious when it comes to gasoline. But thirteen cases ? There are...

Or, is he? At least he went to the trouble to try and find an answer to the fear factor that is the meat and potatoes of the right-wing echo chamber.

Personally I am still uncertain as to how things will play out this fall but Larry Sabato (a fairly well respected and neutral analyst) is calling the House a done deal and the Senate as in play. I do think this will be a bad year for the Democrats, off year elections almost always are for the party in the White House. I also think that for each party the worst outcome would be narrow control. And of course we must factor in the Tea Party and its ability to screw everything up for the GOP.

A new Vanity Fair takedown disheartens an aged former editor who in his time has seen too many dreary “I didn’t get the story because nobody would talk to me” magazine profiles. “Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder,” the magazine blurbs, “she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author...

A new oil well drilling explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, this one in shallow water, is sending shock waves to Gulf experts. Here’s one account. My reaction: Oh shit. If the observer, Bob Cavnar, is correct which he has been most of the time in the BP disaster, this one stands a much quicker chance of being capped. Of continuing concern to me is the higher than normal 5% levels of methane in the crude mix being drilled in some oil deposits in the Gulf. I take offense for those who view these...

So far there is no information about the cause of another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, but some are already making political hay out of it.  The longstanding theme that oil companies are malevolent and predatory grows in power every time there is an accident. (Update: CNN reports that all 7 wells at the platform have been closed off and that any fire or leakage will come only from oil in storage.  This appears not to be the dramatic vindication of anti-oil extremism that some were hoping...

Can established software giants — Microsoft, Apple, even Google — get “the social web”? From Microsoft, we have the ignored “social” tab on the Zune; from Google, the death of Wave (less than a year) and lackluster response to Buzz. Apple joined the foray yesterday. I asked on Twitter if we really need a new social network, a niche one for music:

Outgoing Obama Administration chief economist Christina Romer painted a dark picture of the United States’ economic status, tacitly admitting that the “stimulus” package that she championed has failed. The prescription offered by Romer and many other Democrats (most insistently, Paul Krugman) is the same — more “stimulus”.  Having admitted that $800 billion didn’t work, they say more of the same.  The logic is curious.  Even whether it can be called logic...

According to the New York Times: Coast Guard Says Oil Rig Exploded in Gulf of Mexico, A.P. Reports An offshore oil rig exploded on Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico, west of the site of the April blast that caused the massive oil spill, the Coast Guard told the Associated Press. Coast Guard Petty Officer Casey Ranel said that the blast was reported by a commercial helicopter company on Thursday morning. Seven helicopters, two airplanes and four boats are en route to the site, about 80 miles south of...

With the death of Melville Fuller in 1910, then President Taft selected Edward Douglass White, Jr. to head the Supreme Court. He was the first sitting Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to be elevated to Chief Justice. John Rutledge had technically been a member of the Court, though never sat with them, when he received his recess appointment from George Washington to serve as Chief Justice. White had sided with the majority in the Court’s separate but equal ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and...

The difference in a nutshell: Analyst Michael Gartenberg sums it up nicely on Twitter: “Apple and Google taking two different approaches. Google wants input one. Will never get it. Apple wants input two and might.” He’s referring to the input jacks on your TV set. Google is trying to replace your cable box or satellite TV box as “input one.” That’s really ambitious, and a big risk. Apple wants “input two,” where your DVD player is today, or your PlayStation....

The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato is one of the most reliable political analysts and forecasters in America. Unlike some popular political pundits who suggest they analyze and forecast (one in particular who I get by email) but are partisan and ideology based, Sabato is a solid political scientist who isn’t issuing forecasts for political reasons. And his latest Crystal Ball entry has grim news for Demcorats: He predicts they face a virtual political Katrina on election day....

A Burning Question: Extremists on 9/11 by Tina Dupuy In case you missed some of the lowlights of the 20th century, one charismatic pastor from Florida is trying to bring them back. Yes, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville is planning a Koran burning for the ninth anniversary of 9/11. His church, the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center, plans to show their contempt for the Islamic holy book, a tome the pastor admits he’s never read, by using it as fuel for a bonfire. While the debate about...

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Pakistan’s monumental anger and despair is partly captured in this scathing criticism of the the government in Islamabad. Columnist Sajida Khan Niazi of Pakistan’s Daily Mail writes that even if the flood disaster is the worst in the nation’s history, Pakistanis should forgive other nations that withhold life-saving aid, because the government is so corrupt that no right-thinking nation can trust it. For The Daily Mail, columnist Sajida Khan Niazi writes in part: Our stonehearted...

Back when Microsoft was the anything and everything of the computer world, I mused that if Bill Gates was really the James Bond villain some made him out to be, he could have embedded a virus in nearly every operating system on the planet, set to go off at some particular time unless his demands were met. This Dr. Evil version of Gates could have held the world hostage. Those days are long gone, and many would grumble that Microsoft’s operating systems have enough bugs without such a nefarious...

I periodically write about our heroes who continue to make the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan. Just this past Friday I quoted the latest AP statistics that told us that as of Thursday, August 26, at least 1,145 of our military had died in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion of that country in 2001—that is nine years ago. In the list of casualties—16 of them—there were two very young heroes, each age 19. I also said, “As I have written before, the bullet, the rocket propelled...

The on again off again rape investigation into Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is on again: Public Prosecutions Director Marianne Ny said there was “reason to believe a crime has been committed” and that the crime was classified as rape. … In a statement about her decision to review the case, Ms Ny said of the rape allegation that “more investigations are necessary before a final decision can be made”. She also said that an accusation of molestation – which is...

WASHINGTON — By insisting Tuesday evening that “it’s time to turn the page,” President Obama was talking about more than the Iraq War, and doing much more than reviving one of his most effective slogans from the 2008 campaign. He was also trying to turn the page on a period in which he has found himself on the defensive, his party in a perilous position for November’s elections, and his reputation for political mastery in doubt. Obama’s Oval Office...

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I’m holding my nose, but here goes. From A Tiny Revolution, I have a transcript of part of Glenn Beck’s Lincoln Memorial speech/sermon*: Behind you, in front of me, the Washington—alone, tall, straight—if you look at the Washington Monument, you might notice its scars. But nobody talks about that…but a quarter of the way up it changes color. Did you know that it did? Look at it. Look at its scars. How did the scar get there? They stopped building it in the Civil War. And when...

America’s combat mission in Iraq has ended but exiting from the quicksand without its dignity in tatters remains a long shot. The chief culprit may be clouded vision in Washington rather than fractious Iraqi politics. The key players, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were prudently non-triumphal in their comments as they inaugurated Operation New Dawn in Iraq. But Obama did say that his goals still include an Iraqi government that is “just, representative...

UPDATE: The gunman has been killed by police and the hostages are safe ************************************************* Sadly not a show on the network but a real world crisis. The suspect is James Jay Lee, a man with a history of protesting the network for not airing the proper kind of programming on the environment. Reports are he has hostages, a gun and some bombs (bomb equipment on site from the police too). He has a page on Myspace(for now). He also published a manifesto (on a site that appears...

What is it that makes Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin so appealing to a certain segment of American society? According to this assessment by columnist Julio Valdeón Blanco of Spain’s El Mundo, it is a native desire to recapture a past that exists only in the minds of demagogues and the ‘uncultivated’ people that always tend to follow them. For El Mundo, Julio Valdeón Blanco writes in part: Behind Beck’s words lurks a personality well-suited for show business, a comedian turned...

The most moving moment in ending America’s combat mission in Iraq comes not from the President’s touch-all-the-bases Oval Office speech but the stifled tears of a man who helped George W. Bush prosecute the war. At an American Legion convention yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates choked up as he said: “Today, at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 4,427 American service members have died in Iraq, 3,502 of them killed in action; 34,265 have been wounded or injured. We must...

I’ve been expecting it ever since Health Care Reform passed but i just got word that my health insurance premiums are going up 20% this year. First big increase (other than for age bracket) changes in some time. I will absorb the hike, probably by dropping dental coverage (which is to me of debatable value) and being single I am not in too bad of a position. I can only imagine what a family of four might experience. Of course part of my issue is being self employed I don’t have employer...

I host a daily Christian talk show in Seattle. Yesterday, I just got so tired of all the extreme talk that I dedicated my first hour to some common sense. I dealt with the “Mosque somewhere near ground zero” issue, the “who gets the credit and blame for the Iraq war” issue, and the “Why in the world are we using the words Glenn Beck and Martin Luther King Jr. in the same sentence” issue. Thought you might enjoy. . . or hate the show. So click if you want. Live...

Was it just a coincidence? A case of life imitating art? A very subtle attempt at self-parody? Or did that Tea Party gathering on the Washington Mall this past weekend bear an eerie resemblance to the tea party in Alice In Wonderland? The March Hare in Carroll’s book, who presided over a tea party on the other side of the looking glass, was of course quite mad. Glenn Beck, who presided over doings in Washington, is mad as well — though not in the same sense as the March Hare. Beck is mad...

I was at our annual neighborhood festival this past weekend. Local elections – or, rather, the decisive Democratic primaries – are two weeks away, and candidates and their supporters were out in force, handing out stickers and signs, and making their cases. It was a great chance to learn about the various contenders and their issues all in one place. But it also was a prime display of one of my least favorite political phenomena: the use of children as campaign signs. I don’t mean candidates...

During the administration of Andrew Jackson the size of the Supreme Court had been increased from seven Justices to nine. In 1863 it was increased to ten. With Lincoln’s death, and Andrew Johnson in the White House, the Court was reduced from ten Justices to eight. To preserve the Reconstruction acts, congress had also limited the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. In 1869 newly inaugurated President Grant convinced congress to increase the Court’s membership back to nine, where...

Last June, in a rash moment of environmental fervor, I wrote that California was poised to be the first state to sharply reduce the use of plastic bags at retail outlets. The bill, AB 1998, passed the Assembly and was supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. They were joined by environmental groups angry at seeing plastic wrappers pollute our rivers, beaches and ocean. Their theme song sung by Hollywood celebrities such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus was that what took seconds at a grocery checkout stand...

You don’t have to be able to read tea leaves, examine entrails, or count the warts on a horny toad to know that conservatism is headed for a smashing victory in November. Or is it? Will the coming electoral tidal wave hide deficiencies that have yet to be addressed following a long decade of decline and exhaustion? What has changed in the intervening months? Certainly, the rising fortunes of the GOP has energized the conservative base and instilled confidence in conservative cadres. But have...

In a statement the Sheriff’s office says, “We are confident the actions of our deputies will be found to have been both within the law and department policy.” Then the law has to change… I saw the story on GMA this morning, where a “former homicide detective” defended the tasering because the 64 year-old victim was “intoxicated” and officers thought he might become violent. Call me skeptical. More on the disturbing video here. Then there’s the...

From Workplace Prof Blog (an employment law blog): A recent Gallup poll has shown that for the first time in recent history, a majority of Americans expresses a negative view of unions.  The liberal Center for American Progress is expressing optimism that this is just a temporary function of the economic downturn that will reverse when economic times improve: What happened? And what does this mean for the U.S. labor movement’s future given that membership is already at 30-year lows? The answer...

Blogger E.D. Kain’s “Up from Conservatism” post had me thinking about something that I’ve seen over the years. You take a guy who was a conservative that starts to see some of the problems. They start to see them grow bigger and bigger and start to take on a crusade to reform conservatism. However, they continue to focus on the issues plaguing the movement, until the problems are all they see. At some point, they write a post renouncing their ties to conservatism and citing...

Now that I’ve gotten my inner partisan screed out of the way, let me go ahead and say something I never thought I’d say. President Obama would not have been able to give the speech on Iraq that he gave last night if not for the surge that he – and I – vigorously opposed. As we discussed at length back in 2007, the surge merely expanded and capitalized on an already-successful Anbar Awakening strategy. David Petraeus saw a successful counterinsurgency operation in the most...

In his White House address to the nation last night, President Obama once again returned to the virtues that secured his election in 2008 — moderation, optimism, and a modicum of charity towards those that disagree.  Because the main topic of his address was the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq — a war which President Obama consistently and sometimes harshly opposed — this was an event sown with political land mines.  Would the President use the opportunity to play to the...

Writing about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in The New York Times, John Burns asserts: [T]here were few, if any, who foresaw the extent of the violence that would follow or the political convulsion it would cause in Iraq, America and elsewhere. We could not know then … the scale of the toll the invasion would unleash: the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who would die; the nearly 4,500 American soldiers who would be killed; the nearly 35,000 soldiers who would return home wounded; the hundreds...

Let’s see if I got President Obama’s speech Tuesday night right: We spent a trillion borrowed and printed dollars and 6,000 American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan on wars we could not afford based on an American economy he cannot fix. What the president avoided to say was that the big winner in this war of lies was a shift in the Middle East balance of power in favor of Iran soon to be armed with nuclear arsenals he doesn’t know how to stop. At least the troops who fought our battles and their...

My humble advice to Democrats: Take the long view. The American people are angry and frustrated. The primary driver of that anger is the economy. Yes, there are myriad other factors at work, included some still-unpopular legislation, a prolonged war in Afghanistan, a nasty oil spill, and near-one party rule (60 votes is apparently necessary to qualify as one-party rule, yet 59 is enough to convince the opposition that ALL the blame for the country’s woes can be placed at the feet of the majority...

I don’t make predictions. But I read a lot of them. And repeat the ones I like. Some swirling around Wednesday’s Apple event (10 a.m. Pacific)… Nearly everyone expects Apple TV to be renamed iTV and go on sale for $99 ($130 less than the current model). One hold out, NewTeeVee’s Darrell Etherington: While I don’t doubt that Apple has big plans in store for the iTV, I find it very unlikely that we’ll see its introduction tomorrow. Changes this big would merit their own...

The President had plenty to say in the approximately 15 minutes he used to address the nation on the end of our combat mission in Iraq. He spoke about the war itself, about terrorism, about the emerging Iraq government and its security forces and capabilities and about the transition of responsibilities, about our continuing but different mission in Iraq and about our continuing, unchanged mission in Afghanistan. He even spoke about a new push for peace in the Middle East and about “contentious”...

Personally, I just have a simple “thank you” to our President Obama upon the policy decision to withdraw, or at least draw down, from Iraq. Some may see this as an election promise, some may see it as a moral issue. I see it as a developmental issue — for the independent movement. When independents put Barack Obama in the White House in November of 2008, we might have not known our own strength. 2 years later, the independent and unaffiliated, the “decline to state“,...

Hostile reactions to the “Tea Party” rally organized and promoted by right-wing radio shock jock Glenn Beck refuses to die down.  In the broadest sense, Beck has no grounds for complaint.  Since the election of President Obama, Beck has promoted himself as a leader of some of the most paranoid and apocalyptic visionaries on the far right.  His extremism has eerily echoed the equally bizarre predictions of looming dictatorship that characterized the far left during the Bush Administration....

I’m old – I became politically aware during the Vietnam war and realized that my government had no problem lying to me.  I didn’t realize how much they were lying to me until years later when Lyndon Johnson’s white house tapes were released but I knew they were lying to me all along.  After I graduated from college in 1968 I went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst.  It didn’t take very long before I realized the threat from the Soviet Union...

Bridges have always struck mankind as engineering marvels since the days of the Roman aqueduct. Most of us have a love affair with bridges from our childhood whether it be the Brooklyn Bridge for Jewish and Italian immigrants writing about it in the 1950s to the days I spent in Oregon where the magnificent span of a Depression-era bridge arches over the Rogue River in Gold Beach. Every time the History Channel reruns its Modern Marvels segment on bridges, I enjoy watching. The bridge of my childhood...