Since I’m trying my best to slow a bit with the posts, I figured I would just post stories and videos of things I loved and hated this week. These are a bunch of things I could not fit into other posts. It’s going to be random and jump all over the place. Here goes.
- We start off with Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, from Illinois. Quick background, he won his election last November, on Tea Party momentum. He is a colossal douchebag in his political and private life. You see why he’s a political douche in the clip. He’s literally yelling at and shouting down people he hopes will vote for him in 2012. In his private life, he has skipped out on child support payments, to the tune of $115,000. There’s no way he gets re-elected. For his sake, I hope he’s still living out of boxes, in his DC home. He’ll be moving soon. Enjoy (2:00 long):
- Here’s something I really dug. This gentleman, from Britain, actually creates landscapes using only food. He meticulously lays out food to create his landscapes, then photographs it using careful angles and zooming to make it appear as a normal landscape. (4 minutes)
- This week's roundup in police brutality gave you these scenes from UC Berkeley. This one includes a cop trying to ram a baton through a young women on the front line of the protest. And, here's the Oakland PD shoot someone with a rubber bullet or bean bag for filming them (unprovoked, w/o any warning).
- This is possibly the work of the protests going on around the country. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg came out for letting the Bush/Obama tax cuts expire, to help the deficit.
- This is sad and just another reason to get these wars over with ASAP and help the vets with needed services. In 2010, more veterans committed suicide than were killed in battle.
- This one I'm posting, in honor of all the anti-regulation speak from the last debate. At the same point in their presidencies, Obama has approved 4.7% less regulations than Bush. The article does say Obama's regulations may cost business more. But, if you read this blog regularly, you'll know no one pays taxes anyway, so they can afford it. Furthermore, according to the World Bank, U.S. regulations are more business friendly than most other regions. Oh, conservatives, it's tough when facts run against your pre-conceived notions.
- This one is thanks to L.A. Times and something to consider whenever you hear about "targeted drone strikes." You hear a military commander talk and you think it hit the terrorist on his forehead and nothing else was damaged. But consider this:
"Since June, when some of the new strictures went into place, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 235 suspected militants. Thirteen of those, or 5.5%, were significant Al Qaeda figures or militant commanders, according to data compiled by Long War Journal, a website that tracks the strikes through Pakistani and Western news reports.
In 2010, just 2.2% of 801 militants killed were known significant figures, the numbers show. The percentage for the first half of 2011 was similar."
And, the numbers on civilian deaths wary greatly in what the U.S. and Pakistanis release. The full article is here. I just thought it was interesting for all the civilian deaths and collateral damage, we're killing "significant figures" at a 5.5% and 2% clip. Good times! Yay, endless war!
- No easy segway here, let's just say I'm posting this because Conrad Murray is going to be staying in jail. It's actually more because of David Garrett. Here's probably the world's best violinist (if not the best, very close). He does own world speed records on the violin. In this clip, he does a Michael Jackson medley on the violin. It is simply masterful. Enjoy. If you do get impatient, at least hear "Smooth Criminal" around 2:40 mark.
If you liked it, here he is performing Beethoven's 5th. And, here he is breaking the world record, playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" in about 65 seconds. Amazing stuff.
A few more from David Garrett and these are brilliant too, here he is performing the "Mission Impossible" theme. Here he is performing "Walk This Way". Here is "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The range of what he can do is endless.
- And, let's finish the week with some really good news. If you checked out my post on the 5th and 6th of November, you would know of the Keystone XL project. I talked about how damaging it was (environmentally) and the protests outside the White House. It seems the outcry has worked, at least temporarily. President Obama has delayed his decision until after the 2012 election. So, he's either going to punt this to a Republican president or screw people after they've voted for him. Either way, it was a big win for environmentalists. This pipeline was seen as a done deal before people starting heading to Washington to protest.
We'll leave it there for today, thanks again for checking in.
See you next time,
James
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