First Looks category archive

George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln.

Here.

Upyernoz has a quiz from a Stony Brook University grad student over at his place.

Please go help him out.

New York Times. See the “emphasis added” part to realize why the NeoCons don’t have a clue:

Across the nation, the labor market has been deteriorating. Many companies, long reluctant to add workers, are hunkered down and waiting for improved prospects, engaged in what Ed McKelvey, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs, calls “a hiring strike.” Americans with jobs are taking cuts to their work hours; those without jobs are staying out of work longer, or accepting positions that pay far less than they earned previously.

Teenagers are struggling to land minimum-wage jobs at fast-food restaurants, because those positions are increasingly being filled by adults. And those with poor credit are finding that this can disqualify them from getting a job.

IN many communities, dreams of upward mobility are yielding to despair and the grim realization that the economy — not strong for less-educated workers even when it was growing — may now be shrinking, making it tougher than ever to find a job.

Indeed, the increasingly anemic job market comes on the heels of six years of economic expansion that delivered robust corporate profits but scant job growth. The last recession, in 2001, was followed by a so-called jobless recovery. As the economy resumed growing, payrolls continued to shrink.

There’s more to a healthy economy than making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer.

Via Todd.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Bushies.

As wrong as he was in throwing the public good under the bus in favor of private gain, he was a brilliant and witty man and a scintillating writer.

Dick Polman offers a memoriam.

The person who wrote this had health insurance. She got t-boned in a traffic accident–not her fault. First, her health insurance carrier cut her off. Then the other driver’s auto insurance cut her off.

This happens when health care is based, not on caring for health, but on making money for anonymous third parties. (Emphasis added)

So here I am, some 4 years later more than $20,000 in debt and still without a job, a car, or health insurance. I was very fortunate to meet someone special who has helped me out, and given me the time to learn a new career that I can actually physically do.

Now, I am sure I left a bunch of stuff out of this, and if you have questions I will gladly answer them. But here is my point.

Universal Health Insurance doesn’t solve a damned thing. Insurance companies, all types of insurance companies, do what they want. What good is having insurance if they can refuse treatment?

I had insurance. I had health insurance from work, I had insurance for my car. I had disability insurance. I had insurance for my credit cards.

You know what it did for me? Not a damned thing. We don’t need universal health coverage, we need universal health care; where you cannot be told, oh sorry, we’re not going to cover that.

Here.

But Bushies do. ASZ has the scoop.

I’ve activated a new plug-in that reformats From Pine View Farm to a mobile friendly format when you connect from a mobile device.

When I tested it on my cell phone, it worked pretty good, but it did seem to strip the links out of the bodies of the posts.

If you have PDA, cell phone, or other mobile device, check it out and tell me what you think.

Paula Poundstone is playing Rehoboth.

We always look forward to her appearances on Wait, Wait. She is truly witty.

And it will be a weekend with no kids (no disrespect meant, Second Son) and no dogs (disrepect meant, dogs).

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 to 9 p. m.

If the dentist doesn’t beat me up too bad, I’ll be there.

And I do mean “faculty.”

Phillybits has the scoop.

Oh, my.

Advanced gadgeteers evidently cannot rest until all technology combines into a single useful tool – the Swiss Army Knifing of the digital world.

And now, along with phones that make movies and Blackberries that navigate better than Columbus, come weapons that sing.

More specifically, Tasers are being paired with MP3 players – and marketed to women as fashionable safety devices.

Scheduled to hit the market in early March, the Taser MPH is the bizarre coupling of a gunlike device capable of delivering a 50,000-volt jolt, and its holster, which contains a 1-gigabyte-capacity handheld music player.

It’s been a long week of racking up billable hours and trying to be a webmaster. As you can see, we are mostly back.

I’ll be working on the sidebar throughout the day. For the geeky among us, the blogroll is organized by categories. In updating the database from WordPress 1.5.x format to WordPress 2.3 format, the categories disappeared.

All comments are being held for moderation until until I get a WordPress 2.3 compatible anti-comment-spam plugin working. (Honestly, I got this thing back on line yesterday about 4:00 p. m.; within 15 minutes, I had seven spam comments.)

I can’t vote for this guy. I don’t live in Florida.

I’ve spent lots of time in Florida. Frankly, I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t frankly. Also, I wouldn’t live in Florida on a bet.

But, if I could vote for this guy, I would.

What the future holds, from Radio Times:

The rising political clout of Hispanic voters. First we’ll hear about a new population projection from the Pew Hispanic Center. In 2005 Hispanics accounted for 14 percent of the U.S. population, that’s expected to increase to 29 percent by 2050. We’ll talk with JEFFREY PASSEL co-author of the new report, then we’ll look at the role Hispanic voters are playing in this year’s Presidential election. Our two guests are LUIS CLEMENS editor of Candidato USA, an internet publication that helps clients reach Hispanic voters and MARISA ABRAJANO co-author of a forthcoming research article The Hispanic Voter in the 2004 Presidential Election.

Listen here or go to the website and search for the February 13, 2008, show.

Read the Pew Hispanic Center’s report here.

Diva Dog had dental work today.

(We call her Diva Dog because she never asks for anything. She knows someone will come to do her bidding. For example, she will not bark to go outside. She will lay down in front of the door and wait. She knows someone will come to accede to her wishes without her having to ask.)

The vet says she has a bad case of cocker mouth (and she’s part Cocker). That means that it’s easy for her to develop dental problems. Unlike most dogs–and people–in Cockers, the gums do not recede from infection; they grow to cover it and hold the bacteria more tightly to the teeth.

She lost seven teeth today. And her annual physical last year was just fine.

I came home with a fist full of doggie dental products.

Ever since she came home from the vet, the World’s Largest Yorkie ™ has refused to leave her side.

The vet promises that she’ll be pretty much back to normal tomorrow.

So far, she’s only had to take one doggie Rushie.

She’s a good dog. I’m sorry she had to go through this.

Fell victim to the layer of ice on I-95. Personally, I think this weather should have stayed in Illinois, where it could feel at home.

But there’s good news tonight.

Tomorrow.

Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, just a block from South Street, Center City, Philadelphia.

I haven’t tried the Ostrich Burger yet.