YourBofA.com website looking for feedback

The Huffington Post has an article about the new joke website, but the message beneath the humor is completely serious. Bank of America really is your Bank of America, so click through and speak your mind about what you want your bank to be. Read the rest of this post...

Romney blames Obama for factory that closed under Bush

Are all Harvard MBA's as clueless about facts as Bush and Romney or are they the exceptions that prove the rule? D'oh!

Mitt Romney visited an Ohio factory, closed when President George W. Bush was in office, to make the case that President Barack Obama’s economic policies prevented the facility and others like it from reopening.

Standing in the middle of an empty warehouse floor yesterday, Romney blamed Obama for promoting measures that have slowed the economic recovery.

“It would have reopened by now, but it’s still empty,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said. “It underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regards to getting the economy working again.”

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Why is Sarkozy so disliked in France?

The BBC has an interesting read about theories on why Sarkozy is so disliked. My own two cents is that France is a fairly conservative (with a small "c") country and he thrives on being flashy, which people strongly dislike. His behavior was perhaps acceptable in his suburban neighborhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine where flashiness is more of the norm.

He was already well known nationally following his positions in various center-right government but apparently his tendencies were not well known enough. As a junior member of previous governments, he also was working for someone else rather than being the lead. Once he stepped out and assumed his role of leader, the more present he was the less people liked him.

What was previously viewed (by some) as action was eventually regarded (by many more) as little more than hyperactivity without direction. There was always talk of change but in the end, there wasn't a great deal of actual change. One could also argue that France, like many countries, never really wanted change in the first place.

One of the great disappointments has been Sarkozy's failure to ever move forward with his earlier talk of affirmative action. He often spoke about the issue (which in France is considered to be a conservative issue and hated by the left) and his first government was unusual in that it was not an all white male team. Once he ran into trouble he abandoned that diversity.

He also abandoned any effort to fix the glaringly obvious problems of racism in France. Some argue that he played the race card too often in his attempt to win the far right vote, leaving the problem for another day.

By Monday there should be a much clearer view of where the election will go in the second round. A few political analysts are suggesting there is much more support for Sarkozy among voters but until the votes are counted, we won't know for sure. Read the rest of this post...

Comcast heads to trial for anti-trust violations

The courts will decide whether Comcast bought off its potential competitors or not, but it's certain that Americans pay a lot more and get a lot less for internet services than other industrialized countries. How could this be possible in the supposedly free-market, unregulated US system?

As I've mentioned before, even in "socialist France" there are so many more choices, with higher speed (fiber optic) options for less money. It's also standard to include phone calls around the world at no additional fees and TV channels all for a bundle price that is about the same price as US internet rates.

Consumer choices for high speed internet are lacking for American consumers and that needs to change. Until the political class is forced to break the grip of companies like Comcast (and their heavy financial influence) this will never happen. Read the rest of this post...

Florida welfare drug tests have failed to save money

Who needs to save money when you're busy kicking the poor to win votes with extremists? Not to be outdone, neighboring Georgia just passed a similar law, targeting the same knuckle-dragging voters who somehow believe that humiliation is the answer for poverty rather than corporate excess or systemic failures. Read the rest of this post...

Case for legal action against Murdoch in USA building, over 1,000 phones likely hacked in UK

Although this latest report from The Guardian doesn't specifically say Fox News was involved in hacking, it does throw Fox News into the scandal by suggesting there are reports of something that involving a breach of privacy. It's unfortunate that too many Democrats play the Fox News game of pretending as though they are fair and balanced, though perhaps it is out of fear. Whatever it is, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire may have some problems in the US in the very near future.

Lewis said that he had been contacted by a number of people since he arrived in the US last weekend "raising issues against other [News Corp] titles or Fox News, not necessarily about hacking but about other untoward dark arts to obtain information that should be private." He added that the new complaints were unproven allegations.

Lewis told reporters that he had taken on a fourth case of alleged phone hacking in the US. Previously, it had been known that he was representing three individuals, one of whom is an American citizen and two of whom are Europeans who believe their phones were hacked while visiting America.

In addition, Siegel, a former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he had been contacted by six individuals raising complaints about News Corp outlets. "My experience in these sorts of cases is that when people sense you are serious and balanced in your approach, they begin to come out of the woodwork," he said.

And Bloomberg reports that in the UK over 1,000 cell phones were likely hacked by News of the World. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Boy chased by chickens

He doesn't realize until too late that the chickens aren't chasing him, they're chasing the bag of feed he's carrying.

I worry sometimes as to whether these YouTube parents aren't fully appreciating what constitues trauma to a young kid. His parents thought it was adorable. The kid thought he was living the sequel to "The Birds."

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Apple exec slams Instagram for"jumping the shark"

It wouldn't be Apple if they weren't crying about another vendor who didn't want to be locked into the control freak Apple environment. Apple is always happy to have customers locked into their annoying environment but for consumers, who wants that? Why is it so offensive to have choices as a customer? Wahhhhhh, competition is horrible.

And not only is Schiller trashing the service (in the odd form of a message to a 9to5Mac reader), he has also deleted his Instagram account (@schiller) entirely (much like some thousands of other users.)

What got Schiller so upset? Not the billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook, apparently. "It 'jumped the shark' when it went to Android," was all the Apple executive wrote to the curious reader Thursday.

Instagram launched its Android version earlier this month. In the first five days, the Android app saw five million users sign up. That's not huge compared to the 30 million iPhone users, but the rate of growth was stunning -- and strongly contributed to Mark Zuckerberg's decision to offer Kevin Systrom $1 billion for the app.

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Zimmerman gets $150,0000 bail in Trayvon Martin killing

Just reported, the judge has set the bail at $150,000. Zimmerman apologized to the parents.

Here's the audio of Zimmerman on the stand.
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Ed Schultz on the destruction of the U.S. Postal Service

We've written about this assault on the Post Office in our piece, "The Post Office is almost broke — on purpose" and Allison Kilkenny takes on the same subject here.

This is Ed Schultz making the same point and adding the latest news. Note that, like myself and Ms. Kilkenny, he's even-handed in his criticism of the parties involved (at 4:14 and again at 5:45).

(So view this large in a new tab, click here.)



All you need to know (3:30):

"They already have enough money to take care of retirement for the next 75 years."

I love stories like these from Ed Schultz. He's passionate, sincere, and integrity-intact. Thank you.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Romney flip-flops on immigration

Romney's short dalliance with conservatism seems to already be dead.  Boy, no one could have predicted that one. NYT:

The Romney campaign appears to have begun shifting to the center on immigration, after staking out a position to the right of opponents like former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

During the primary fight, Mr. Romney said he would veto the existing version of the Dream Act, or the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would grant illegal immigrants brought into the country as children by their parents a pathway to citizenship. He labeled it a magnet for illegal immigration. And he criticized Mr. Perry for granting young illegal immigrants in-state tuition to Texas universities.

On Thursday, campaign aides said Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, was not referring to the most draconian portions of Arizona’s immigration law when he said during a debate that Arizona could be a model for the nation. He was referring specifically to the “E-Verify” measure that requires employers to check the legal status of job applicants electronically.

Last weekend, in a comprehensive list of advisers provided to The Boston Globe, the Romney campaign did not include Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and co-author of the Arizona immigration law. During the primary campaign, the Romney campaign had referred to Mr. Kobach as an “informal adviser.”

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British Conservatives fight to block elected upper house

Ahh, Conservatives being Conservatives. There's nothing quite like the sound of knuckles dragging on the floor in the morning. It's almost too hard to imagine the idea of politicians threatening to resign to block reform in a crusty and outdated chamber. Then again, there is still a royal family that sponges pays little taxes and sponges money from the people so it's not a complete surprise.

What's amazing is that one of the Tories is fighting to make sure Margaret Thatcher still has a lifetime seat in the House of Lords. Even if I liked Thatcher and respected her, I find it unthinkable that she should retain a seat in her condition. How ridiculous is it to fight for the rights of someone in her condition to hold a position in government? More on the controversy at The Guardian. Read the rest of this post...