First Looks category archive

John Cole on Cheney and the violation of civil liberties:

I was listening to NPR yesterday, and one analyst stated that the reason Washington is terrified to investigate this is because they know that so many laws were broken so flagrantly that any investigation will lead to the indictment of Bush and Cheney, and that, for obvious reasons, terrifies the Democrats (you can listen to that piece here). It would simply consume Washington and destroy Obama’s agenda, and they want to avoid that at all cost. Holder, on the other hand, may not give two hoots about Obama’s agenda and the delicate sensibilities of the Democrats, and go after them anyway.

(Follow the link to see the links that Mr. Cole refers to above.)

Looking to the future is one thing. Turning a blind eye to evil is quite another.

Evil was done.

In our names.

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Via BartBlog.

Sample institution about which consumers should be able to make their own decisions without a financial consumer protection agency.

Because, natch, financiers are so trustworthy and have only their fiduciary duty in mind.

Bank of Wyoming, Thermopolis, Wyoming, ain’t no more.

By my count, that’s 53 dustbiters this year. The FDIC is maintaining their two banks a week average.

It’s not just a large island in the North Atlantic any more.

. . . overall, more than 1,000 Peco (Philadelphia Electric Company–ed.) customers have lost power in the last few months because of aggressively growing vines that have shrouded tree trunks, poles, fences, rocks, and anything else in the paths of their insidious tendrils.

The outages are symptoms of what evidently has been a breakout year for the region’s vegetation.

The harvest of growth – and it’s not just the vines – is the product of a near-perfect recipe concocted by nature: generous and consistent rains mixed with gently warmed soil.

(There’s a short ad at the beginning.)

A scientist writing in the Guardian has skeptical commentary here.

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First time initial claims for unemployment have dropped under 600,000 in quite a while. MarketWatch:

The number of (unemployment) initial claims in the week ending July 4 fell 52,000 to 565,000 – the lowest level since January – as the manufacturing layoffs, predominantly automotive, that had been expected have already occurred at some companies, according to the Labor Department. The department added that some seasonally expected layoffs may come later or not at all.

(snip)

The four-week average of initial claims fell 10,000 to 606,000. The four-week average smoothes out distortions in the week-to-week data.

(snip)

Last week the government reported that the U.S. economy shed jobs at a faster pace in June than in May, suggesting that the turnaround in the economy may take longer than expected. Nonfarm payrolls shrank by 467,000 in June, higher than the 325,000 decline expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch and the 322,000 jobs lost in May. The unemployment rate ticked higher to 9.5% in June from 9.4%. Since the recession began in December 2007, payroll employment has dropped by 6.5 million

Still doesn’t get my next door neighbor a job.

Some pictures taken from the South Island of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The South Island has parking, a fishing pier, and a diner with surprisingly reasonable prices.

A freighter entering the bay from the ocean. The picture is facing north; the vessel is moving from east to west:

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Via Oliver Willis.

From the Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

No, it will never end, not so long as Pinocchio’s nose can grow.

Twit ain’t necessarily so.
The things you are liable to read on the Twible,
Twit ain’t necessarily so.

Twitter Inc., which lets users post 140-character messages online, said last month that it is testing a feature that would add the word “verified” to some accounts to distinguish real and fake users. While Palin’s account is verified, more than a dozen accounts, including “hockymom64” and “EXGovSarahPalin,” use Palin’s name or title, and some show her photo.

H/T Alison for the link.

I’ll be on the road. You can be there.

Tuesday, Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, 6 p.

Frankie Martin writing in the Guardian:

“America is a very frightened country.” It was last October, and I was sitting face to face with Noam Chomsky at MIT, a man the New York Times has called “arguably the most important intellectual alive”. Chomsky was answering a question posed by Akbar Ahmed, American University’s chair of Islamic studies, that he described as “striking”: What is American identity?

As a young American brought up to believe I’m part of a superpower, Chomsky’s identification of fear as essential to what it means to be American caught me off guard. Privileged to be witnessing a conversation between two world-renowned academics in the fields of anthropology and linguistics, I listened.

Follow the link and read the whole thing, especially Mr. Martin’s reflections on the Founders, which, following this opening, will likely surprise you.

Relevant amendments, and some striking parts that do not need amending, are highlighted.

There have been some changes since the last time I posted this, but also some glaring omissions and failures. See if you can find them:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless we don’t like them. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness, unless the United States Attorneys’ offices can be packed with sycophants on the sly. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

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Does anyone else find this a little ookie (emphasis added)?

(Michael) Jackson’s brother Jermaine told Larry King during Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Larry King Live,” that there will be a private ceremony for family and some special guests before the public memorial, according to show transcripts.

He added the family wants to have other memorials around the United States.

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T-Mobile has redesigned its website. It appears that they have fallen into the clutches of those who value appearances over function (not that that ever happens in the field of web design, oh noes) and who are unaware of web standards.

It’s all flashy now, with lots of moving parts.

It just doesn’t work right any more.

It seems to work fine unless you want to look at your account. It lets you log in, then it gives you the finger.

It doesn’t work in Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, or Lynx (with Lynx, it won’t even let you log in).

It does work in Windows Internet Destroyer.

I have been a satisfied T-Mobile customer since they were Voicestream. I have received good service that meets my needs at a fair price, along with excellent customer service and technical support.

I will not cancel my account over this, but I reserve the right to be highly irritated.

Travel Day.