News Shift - This Century So Far According to Google News and the Wayback Machine

I was thinking tonight, looking over the hot topics on Google News, how even though "things" have gotten worse since the economy fell into disarray, "things" somehow don't seem as bad as "things" were when the Bush-Cheney-Fox-News team blasted catastrophe 24x7, without ceasing, without fail, during the 'war on terror era.'

Even with a real catastrophe on our hands today, with a bi-polar economy in need of lasting stabilization, the Obama political machine has found a way to keep the hot topics less dramatic, less hysterical, less frightening. And the media (Fox news notwithstanding) has obliged.

In The News

Red Wings

Stanley Cup

Sonia Sotomayor

Pittsburgh Penguins

Tony Awards

Mariano Rivera

Orlando Magic

Billy Elliot

Tony Stewart

Chivas USA

You see? Woooo. I'm shaking. Not.

Some say Google is in bed with Obama. If so I hope Obama gets all the covers. Because it's making me feel better that even though "things" are in many ways worse, it doesn't feel all that bad all the time.

Do what I did tonight and use the Wayback Machine to take a look at Google News past.

It's a little bit fun. A little bit interesting. A little bit scary.

But not as scary as it used to be.

Hamster Genitalia

Judging by my referrer log tonight (right sidebar), someone is (one might call it "disturbingly") obsessed with hamster sex.

Frank, give it a rest for tonight.

I'm just sayin'.

TWITTER: Men on Men Action!

New Harvard Research suggests a Man of Twitter (MOT) is almost twice as likely to follow another MOT than a Woman of Twitter (WOT).

And in other news, Hell is still HOT.

The NEWS to me is that Harvard finds this trend stunning:

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks ⁱ. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women - men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know. Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

Huh? Remember the pre-historic era of blogrolls? Remember the echo chamber? Remember Aggregators and top feeds? Remember Techmeme? Twitter is not a new Internet, it's just a new node with the same tendencies and hierarchies (and patriarchies) replicated in 140 characters. I really don't GET the assumption that men usually follow/read/link-to women, and that women do the same. It's just not true. Not online, not offline, not never.

An interesting fact to me is the sheer velocity of popularity on twitter, and how ACTIVITY (not content) may be what drives follows:

Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

That may mean that tweeting OBNOXIOUSLY OFTEN gets you somewhere on Twitter. But then, I think we already knew that.

the WB

Kelly at Kdidddy has a great recap of her recent trip to the (former) motor city, the glory, the tragedy, the vinyl, the husband, the house music, the to be continued, and the pictures.

OH and the writing. I've been reading way more 'mommybloggers/parenting bloggers' than usual recently because of a project I'm working on, and I've made an amazing discovery: lots of these people are writing their asses off. Writing WELL, I mean. Great story tellers. I can't avert my eyes kind of story tellers.

What did I expect? I mean, I WAS an early mommyblogger before mommyblogging had a name, although the name itself isn't one I would have self-selected because the term is a market segment, and I frequently avoid being segmented. I've spent so much in therapy dollars trying to integrate, after all.

So Kelly is one of these Really Good Writers Who Also Happens to Be A Mom (that's my new proposed term for mommy bloggers by the way: RGWWAHTBAM. Deal with it.). However, she mentions not being able to write so much on her blog these days, a malady with which I've become (believe me I've read your emails) all too familiar.

That's why it was great to read her Detroit post, which inspired me to post here YET AGAIN (nearing a record for the year).

As for the post itself, I cry when I think of Detroit. Really. Of all it was, is, and represents. It makes me think of the middle class genocide remark made by the 'markets' expert guy a couple of posts down. wtf. no really.

We have adam lamberts and chris whats his faces and legions of others who eat fresh meat of the love-art-industry of American music built in a city that has been desimated.

Accidental? Maybe not.

ADAM! ADAM! ADAM! really. white people. don't get me started.

ANYWHOO this post was supposed to be about the writer's block that Kelly is currently toying with deciding she has.

I know. I do know. I've been calling it menopause, but have also been waiting on hormone test results which will probably show I have years left of fertility and in fact actually have Mad Cow Disease.

But something is amiss - it's not easy to write - it's not as cathartic - it doesn't seem necessary. SO many words and pixels flood the net. Lots of times I feel like I'm doing a disservice to add more.

NONETHELESS I just added some more, and thanks, Kelly, for the inspiration.

okay, an Oreo Donut?

From Sheila Lennon, a simple elegant site that demystifies the most unhealthy foods on the planet by showing us what quadruple smothered, battered, and fried looks like: This is why you're fat.

Halley's gonna freak when I say so, but if you put this Oreo Donut in front of me, I'd be all up in that.

Back to the Future

I clicked my blogroll tonight for the first time in forever. You are still there, many of you. wood s. lot how long has it been? And you lead with a doosey. You always had doosies and you still do.

Don't miss it. Steve Lendman spills the beans on how markets really work (against us).

Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it's more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."

and...

The idea that equity prices reflect true value or that markets move randomly (up or down) is rubbish. They never have and more than ever don't now.

Fisticuffs Saturday

You start the summer and you figure: YAY! THE POOL!

The thing about Atlanta is that a subdivision isn't just a subdivision. Sure you can call it a subdivision, but it calls itself a swim-tennis community. Unlike a regular subdivision, a swim-tennis community has, among other things, a pool and a tennis court.

Rocket science.

Now, since we don't live in a swim-tennis community, but rather in a loose-basketballs-and-random-bikes-strewn-across-yards community, our neighborhood doesn't have a pool. Or a tennis court. Or a clubhouse. Or a neighborhood association. I know, stop painting the rosy picture.

As a result of our pool-less-ness, every summer I search for a swim-tennis subdivision that takes outside members so that we have somewhere to swim, fry our skin, and basically wear out the child so we need less melatonin nightly.

For the last 4 years we've joined the same pool, and for the last two of those years, we've seen what apparently is a rite of summer in the south: pool fights.

A pool fight takes place when at least two grown men have consumed at least two cases of beer over the course of at least two hours while sitting or standing or stumbling in direct sunlight over the course of at least eight hours, after which one says something stupid to the other.

What happens in fight club stays in fight club.

Tonight's brawl was between two fathers who had a total of six kids at the pool who had been friends for 15 years. Niceeee.

Apparently the wives were at the crux of the conflict, and then apparently one of the husbands said something about the other husband's wife's crux, and fists began flying.

I don't know how many grown-up fights you've seen, but until my pool days, I think I had only seen a couple of bar brawls, the result of falling in love with a bassist who sometimes played in clubs where people sometimes drank even more than pool people do.

Today's fisticuffs was broken up by several other large dad-men at the pool, and the drunker of the two offenders and his wife and children were escorted out by the large dad-men. Some pool goers stayed on after the brawl; others decided it was a good time to take their leave.

I think I did a little of both.

Meanwhile, I had three girls there (mine and her 2 friends), who got to witness the brawl in all its splendor, leaving me with the task of explaining wtf.

They didn't say, "Mom/Miss Jeneane wtf?" but it was written all over their faces.

I explained that some of those involved had been drinking large quantities of alcohol, and things got out of control, but that those people were gone now and we were ok.

And thinking that was lame, I asked the President of the Board at the pool what happened, who said: "Too much booze, too much sun."

What happens in fight club stays in fight club.

What won't leave me alone tonight are the faces of the children who watched the fists connect, the ones whose dads were involved, the ones who were dragged out of the pool and stuffed into the car smack dab in the middle of what was, three minutes before, a fun day.

But that's how it goes with pool fights.

The not so funny thing is, when we were driving out of the subdivision, I saw the offending family outside at their house. The kids skateboarding, the parents were sitting relaxed on the front setps laughing, talking to another neighbor.

Everything was back to normal. Nothing to see here. Don't ask don't tell. They'll all live to swim another day.

What happens in fight club stays in fight club.

moves me now like then

if i had a dollar for every post I've written here...

...I'd have over five grand, and that would have been more than enough to keep jeneane.net going, which, since I haven't received said five grand, or even one grand, recently went offline due to a case of the dreaded-but-familiar "blog host nonpayment syndrome"...

...And all of that, my patient friends, is a round-about way of saying that jeneane.net is now back up and nearly operational. You may notice, she's also sporting a new and improved look thanks to the sleuthing and savvy design chops of Mr. RageBoy who has been known to do WordPress magic in exchange for almost any treat from the A Taste of Thai product line, but only occasionally, and only if you ask nice.

Now, to all of the angry neo-cons who bring goodly traffic my jeneane.net site accidentally while searching for Janeane Garafalo to harass (she's jAn, not jEn), I say this:

Keep those blogads comin'. Mama's got RXs to fill.

So When Google DOES Buy Twitter, Will Anyone Say "Jeneane predicted that in 2006"?

Probably not. But I did.

With Twitter, I think Ev may become the first person to get bought twice by Google. The way I see it, Twitter is the reason Ev bought back Odeo, Inc.

Ev even thanked me kindly for the positive nod. In fact, I think it will take a powerhou$e like Google to put some of the other stuff I predicted 3 years ago into the twit-mix:

The Recipe (variations based on taste): Buy Odeo, Inc. back for $2 million; rebrand; take your least-understood product and take it to market hard; aggregate the curious and their friends from across web-based social networks; get them co-communicating on a realtime platform via the web, IM, and cell phone/SMS; acquire a couple of companies or organically build in powerful local/regional/commerce capabilities; and let users make rev off of ads too 'cause that makes for more users; create the power of completely engaged smart mobs; improve offering; get amazing press; add a pinch of cumin and get acquired by Google.

Good to hear good things are in the works for twitter, however it turns out.

You heard it here first. NO REALLY, YOU FRICKIN' HEARD IT HERE FIRST.

The Only Real Twitter Book You Really Ever Need, Pretty Much.

it's like he knows me, like he sees into my very soul.

"You need to calm down. Strategy guides can arouse you and make your head go a buzz with excitement and all the possibilities that suddenly flood into your mind. So we need to calm you down."
--marcus brown
Power Force Twitter Black Belt
pre-download, pre-order and pre-read yours today!

dammit. everything is different now.

Worked Very Hard Not to Transfer Own Fear to Kid OMGZ Way Up High

I've never ridden a ferris wheel. I used to become quite literally paralyzed on the tilt-a-whirl, unable to grip the bar, completely frozen by the speed of spin.

One time I rode those swings on chains that fly you around in a suicide circle, and as soon as I got off, I threw up. In front of everyone. Mortified.

Since then I haven't ridden many amusement park rides.

Yesterday I worked Very.Hard. Not to transfer my own fears and nausea to my daughter as she experimented with rides she'd never ridden before at the local mall carnival.

Look about 2 seats from the top. That's Jenna & her friend.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

stereotype this.

Japanese Enka singer from Philly, Jero.

v. nice interview with chris locke by marcus brown

Gets better n better as you go. Good take on the swarm of locusts. And you learn: It's all Doc's Fault! ;-)

good stuff on cluetrain 1 and 2.

Shelley Powers on Ada Lovelace Day

In celebrating two uber-known bloggers, david armano recently said, "You can tell who the pioneers are from the arrows sticking out of their backs."

I thought a lot about this saying tonight. Wrinkled my brow over the connotations of words like pioneers and arrows. I've come to the conclusion that pioneers are not always -- nor often -- heroes. Often, pioneers come looking for fame and fortune, put conquest over content, rob native people of their land, their crops, their livelihood, their dignity, and sometimes their lives. Smallpox infected blankets might ring a bell. And arrows in the back might be a proper thank you.

So, pioneers have their own history book pages. I'm here to celebrate the contribution of an ancestor from the original blogosphere, the pre-historic times of online publishing, an indigenous person, one of those who came before the others, who after-settlers have tried to contain and oppress on their way up the twitter scale without success.

One woman in tech comes to mind above all for me, and that's Shelley Powers, Burning Bird, the native, not the pioneer.

Shelley is an indigenous netizen, an original woman technologist and author, photographer and activist, online and off - the earliest female tech blogger to stand up for women's issues online when there weren't many women being heard, when debates got hot and heavy and personal, the brilliant writer who talked until the men went nearly mad from her unwillingness to submit.

What Shelley has done for tech is a matter of public record and Internet lore.

What makes Shelley special is not just what she has done with and for technology, not only her many books, but the richness of her writing and photography beyond the topic of tech. She is proof that the most interesting of us in any discipline are those who have multiple dimensions.

We shout we whisper we cut we bleed we code we paint.

Visit the many dimensions of Shelley, and tell her thank you.

technorati tags: ada lovelace day, Shelley Powers, Women, Technology, Photography, Natives, Pioneers, Guts

Tragic Decline of a Brilliant Mind - Marc Brown Reads Scoble

Official Tweet Reading V: Reading Robert Scoble from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

Internship -- The New Not-Job

Have you SEEN the number of internships available now that so many companies have laid off employees and are looking for warm bodies with some kind - any kind? - of ability to fill their place, fo' cheap? Wooo! Now is TEH time to be an intern.

There isn't a hotter career on the job boards or in the breakroom, and not a better way to worm your way into an organization ensuring that you maybe, one day, if you're lucky, after you do a lot of grunt work, actually get paid a few bucks.

As jobs disappear, the competition for highly visible internships is likely to heat up. Many are holding out, hoping for a CEO internship. When CEO interns head the boardroom the truth will be exposed: MBAs really aren't a prereq to running things.

If you lack the money to go back to school to learn a brand new skill set, and since Obama's jobs building bridges and electric cars haven't materialized quite yet, now is the time to check out internships in your area. Might be the only gigs out there.

Hey it could be worse.... uh... ?

disintermediating the paparazzi

So Demi Moore (@mrskutcher) and Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) are on Twitter, and they are being real people, which I guess is what you are if you're used to doing all the cool things that celebrities do.



I have to say, it's interesting to see someone as high profile as Demi Moore (I think she's even more famous than Mike Arrington!) post a photo she took of the paparazzi outside her house on twitpic.



Now THAT's a paradigm shift.

Demi took some other pix of their trip to the Superbowl and tweeted the game as well.

who needs TMZ when celebrities tweet?

---

Next Up on the Chopping Block: Your School Nurse

In the ever growing wave of budget cuts, some school districts are considering cutting the school nurse job from all public schools.

What a stupid idea.

Of course, Georgia is right up there classing it up -- let's give the kids salmonella-tainted peanut butter and then take away the nurse who cleans up their puke.

Go Sonny Go. (No, really, go.)

the PTA says No Way--Nurses should stay.

Atlanta moms are up in arms too:

Eighty-five percent of students who see a school nurse return to class. One Georgia nurse I know was the first ever in her district. When she visited one school, the secretary pulled open her desk drawer and said, “Here is our medical cabinet.” My friend left with a two-quart pitcher full of medication, much of which was expired and the rest mismatched pills in the wrong bottles. School nurses around the state can share similar stories.

Asthma, juvenile diabetes, food allergies, seizure disorder and a host of other illnesses were virtually unheard of in children when Perdue was a child, but now affect a large percentage of children. The reasons are complex. These students need regular monitoring and, oftentimes, medical intervention to stay in the classroom. Our state test scores are already disgraceful. They will only be worse with tons of kids being sent home from school midday.

Is it even LEGAL for schools to cut school nurses? Will it take a well publicized asthma death to make sure schools can fit a nurse into their budgets?

I mean there MUST be another place to cut. One nurse, hundreds of kids. Seems like an easy math problem to me. But then, I'm not Sonny Perdue.

---

Just when i think it's all bad...

...the net picks me up and makes me lol -- and I mean LthefuckOL!


Reading David Armano from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

bad landing page tip 9943320

Please don't welcome me to your site with noise. You ought to know better by now.

Landing page music went out in the 90s. And fake talking people are annoying. 

Case in point: The Tori spelling chick on fax.com - the one who never shuts up - she's GOT to go.

---

The Little (Ad) Engine That Could

This past week, blogads reminded me why Henry and the gang remain the coolest and most reputable ad engine in town for web publishers. Reward my sponsors; reward Blogads. Because the blogads folks have been treating bloggers fairly since blogtime began.

Today Henry discusses the falloff of online ad sales, and its effect on his industry. Like everything else, it's not a rosy picture:

Back in November, I suggested that online ad sales might fall 40% in 2010 as a deep recession carved into online ad budgets. Looks like the market is headed that… or worse, at least according to this Ad Age article:

Cost-per-thousand ad impressions for online publishers are generally off about 20%, according to several people on both the buying and selling side, and sell-through rates are dropping. And where publishers used to unload 60% of their inventory, some are now able to sell only 30%.

But perhaps indicating more trouble ahead is just how cheap the low end of the market has gotten. An August study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Bain & Co.* found the average CPMs on ad networks ranged from 60 cents to $1.10, only 6% to 11% of the prices publishers could command when they sold inventory directly. And the pricing for networks appears to be getting worse not better. CPMs for ad-network-sold ads are dropping, some by 50% year-over-year, according to a recent study of pricing by Pubmatic, which tracks pricing among many Long Tail ad networks.

Put those percentages together and you’ll discover that some publishers have seen revenues collapse 60% or more.

Compounding the recession-driven collapse in revenues is the fact that the volume of online content is still doubling yearly, thanks to all the blog posts, comments, photos, videos, ratings, interactions and e-phemera that we all create singly and socially.

With supply doubling and demand stagnant or down, advertising prices are headed to zero for any property that doesn’t deliver VERY compelling value to advertisers.

What a lot of publishers don’t get is that “selling” is only a tiny portion of the formula for survival in the short run, and success longer term. The real keys are innovating, keeping overheads low, improving processes and talking relentlessly to your customers about what they want.

Note what Henry says and compare it to my observations about the value of content in my previous post:

Compounding the recession-driven collapse in revenues is the fact that the volume of online content is still doubling yearly, thanks to all the blog posts, comments, photos, videos, ratings, interactions and e-phemera that we all create singly and socially.

With supply doubling and demand stagnant or down, advertising prices are headed to zero for any property that doesn’t deliver VERY compelling value to advertisers.

It's the same thing I said below. And Henry, I'm not sure WHAT the criteria is for "compelling" anymore. It used to be gripping, good quality content. Naked pictures? A good social media boxing match?

Seriously: The value of Value itself is in question today.

wtf. where do we go from here.

--

The Value of Words

I have made my living using words for a quarter of a century. It hasn't been a bad living. At times it's been a very lucrative living. And it's not like I ever had any other choice. I was published at 11, and after that my trajectory was set.

I remember not quite believing the first time I hit a six-figure salary at a big agency willing to pay me that much money to write. They paid it to me because I was a special kind of writer -- the kind of writer that can jump from client to client, project to project, technology to technology, instantly, and be up to speed within hours, honing in on the key key key KEEEEYY pieces of a client's story that my ear tells me will resonate with the market.

Being able to write well is something you learn because you spend all day, every day, for years and years, doing it, not because you were born with some special gift. Sure, some people are gifted, but most writers work hard to become good. They read; they write. Every day.

That's where new media comes in. Suddenly, everyone is a writer. No, really. Everyone IS a writer. People are writing all the time. All day. Every day. Posting and thinking and posting.

Because I started writing websites in 1996 and blogging in 2001, this plethora of great online writing thrills me. It's incredible to read so many people with so much to say saying it so well. Who's been a louder cheerleader for blogging than me?

But, like the indie recording revolution before us, this swarm of great amateur writers, combined with a new means of distribution (the Internet), leaves us pros in a lurch.

Now, mix this evolution of great writers into our current dismal economy, and those of us who once made a living 'writing' are hurting the same way we would have if we had been building carburetors for GM for the last 30 years.

This is not a story you'll hear on twitter. The tweets of the social media elite get faster and more furious -- a kind of machine-gun denial stream of who's meeting where attending which conference lunching with whom waiting for what meeting to start with which big name company or influencer.

Please.

These. People. Are. Lying. To. You. And. Themselves.

Let's talk numbers for a minute.

Of course, writing isn't a product that you can always package in a precise word-for-dollar way--especially when strategic thinking is involved. But, I've played around with the numbers during my career to see if there is a formula of effort expended to pay, and there usually is.

The old OLD pay for writers when I started out 25 years ago was $1 a word. During the dot-com era, I was averaging $3 a word. At other times, the average compensation has fallen in the middle. For web content, I've made anywhere from $250 a page to $2,000 a page.

These last two weeks I've been checking out a few sources for writing work, and what I found was more depressing than I even imagined.

Responding to a dozen craigslist postings and 5 elance.com postings yielded four relevant replies.

The first, a woman who uses elance to outsource writing work to folks in India. I was, she explained, overqualified for the kind of work (and pay) she was offering. I did the math. It was pennies a word. She said I was overqualified. I have to think she's right.

The next was a social media blogging gig, two posts per day minimum, with pay of $200/month, preceded by a testing period where hundreds of interested applicants would compete to get this primo gig. To the company's credit, they offered $100 for the testing period.

Next I tried another online micro-job site that posts small jobs requiring a tiny bit (and nothing more) of human intelligence. Sample writing work there? 1000+ word product guides. Pay: $5.00. In 1986 I would have made about $1,000 for that job. In 1999 I would have made $3,000 for that job. Today, some one will do it -- maybe not well, but they'll do it and search optimize it -- for five bucks.

The third was a company owned by a major social media player looking for people to post articles using certain tags. A phone call revealed some interesting things: 1) Hundreds of people applied. 2.) many of them were high level pros 3.) the gig doesn't pay, at least at first. My contact for the job was surprised that so many name folks and pros responded to the job posting. Now, some people would have used that opportunity to say, YES, but I'm the BEST. I said: "That's because NOBODY'S WORKING--ok?"

Eight years ago I started my own business. I've had slow patches here and there. This is not a slow patch. This is a collision of the worst economy of our lifetime and the de-professionalization of my craft.

And it's heartbreaking.

The rise of the commons isn't always easy on the common man. How to balance the beauty and benefits of an open, free culture with food on the table? It's not an unfamiliar dilemma in our family - my husband spent 40 years in the music business.

Of course, those of us who have been around the block and bring MORE than writing to the content table have an advantage. And quality (maybe) still counts. I've branded and messaged and helped build some of the largest and strongest brands in the world. I also have a decade in PR under my belt, and am a pretty well known marketer.

But at the core of it all, I have always made my living with words. And today words are a commodity that can be outsourced and automated. As a commodity, I'm not sure how low the value of words will go.

But if the old adage a penny for your thoughts still holds true, and a thought is probably at least 10 words, then I think we've pretty much hit bottom.

(cross-posted to jeneane.net)

long live the funk, indeed...

A must read, because funk ALWAYS gets it right.

Way back B.O. (Before the New Pres, you know who), the Real Clinton sang about foregoing the 40 acres and mule and going straight for the Chocolate City. It was no dream. Banishment for the establishment, you know what I am saying?

You don't need the bullet when you got the ballot / Are you up for the downstroke, CC?

The Real Clinton spoke of a day when the Greatest of All Time, Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali, would be in the White House and Miss Aretha Franklin would be the First Lady. Thirty-three years later (the lifetime of Christ, by the way), Ali was at the Capitol and Miss Aretha sang for the First Lady. It all makes sense. This is the way it was destined to be. Too bad Richard Pryor left for brighter pastures. You know he was smiling down on us.

Amen.

Not Atlanta - WNY Vacation Christmas 09

Let It Snow.

back to basics with some good and crazy interspersed, and a few words on how twitter did good

Really, I've been trying to keep jeneane.net as my "all things social media" blog, but as always, when I start wandering away from THIS old house, I end up as scattered, smothered, and covered as Waffle House hash browns. Fo' Real.

So I'll probably keep doing some stuff on each blog. Although I'm wondering - wordpress comments, that spam receptacle, astounds me. How do you people keep up with the comment spam on your wordpress blogs? Sure Blogger gets some too, but not nearly as much. I don't know; that's a conundrum for another day.

Yes, I'm on steroids. Could you tell?

It takes a lot to get me motivated to put on my glasses these days. And in order to write comfortably staring at the screen, my 46-year-old eyes have decided that glasses are mandatory.

Tonight a cool thing happened on twitter that brought my glasses onto my nose.

David Armano used his blog and twitter for a worthy cause - to raise money to get an appartment for an immigrant and her three children who found themselves in domestic turmoil and had been living with Armano and his family. In fact, everything the woman owns is in Armano's garage.

How'd it end? Well it is still unfolding, but the twittosphere delivered 10K in a few hours. I expect to see the story on CNN and the Today Show. Seriously.

As someone familiar with things that become Internet Lore, I think Tori Tuncan raises some important issues regarding the details. Another risk for Armano is becoming a virtual (or literal) halfway house for those in need. Could be a call for a new and fitting career? Could be a real nightmare? Time and circumstance will determine if one woman got the help she needed, or if perhaps a longterm miracle happened tonight.

The legalities and details will no doubt sort themselves out. But for tnight Twitter, was full of people Tweeting and Retweeting, trying to do some good for a woman and her three kids based on a trusted member of the community vouching for the cause he was personally involved in. And as someone who benefited from a blog-a-thon that got me my new Macbook when my old Acer gave out, I'm glad to see someone in #Daniela's situation get a year of free rent. And more if she can.

did you do it?

i didn't do it (yet), but i'm going to diddit soon. you'll see.

--

baby daddy mama six counts and counting

From the how'd I miss this one department: Bristol's baby-daddy's mama got snagged on drug charges today. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is due to become a grandma this weekend if Bristol cooperates. Alaska--it seems so.... fun, juneau?

Enter the Micro Worker

When i met George* more than two decades ago, I remember chuckling over the name of his first business.

He still had company checks, and I came across a box of them one day while we were packing to move out of our apartment.

They said: "Sessum Cleaning and Productions."

He was 18 when he officially started his own business, and he decided to name the business after what he did: commercial floor cleaning and music production. Completely unrelated businesses, apples to oranges, a marketing faux pas in my eyes. And, boldly monogrammed on yellow checkered business checks, also kind of funny.

He said, "It made sense at the time - It's what I did. Plus, it saved the cost of registering more than one business name."

In those days I wrote about technology. All of my marketing training and big company expertise made me right, of course. I told him, you don't dilute your brand. Focus. How can you know who you compete against if your business is cleaning and production? You're playing in two different markets; you have no unique selling proposition; how can you differentiate across those markets - it's a losing proposition, I told him.

I was so smart. girl genius.

Except, he was ahead of his time.

His time is actually now.

With business as usual officially on life support, we as workers will all assume new roles, like it or not, before the plug is pulled. I can be glad that I'm ahead of the curve. The dot-com bust cut my industry** down substantially 8 years ago. I've had my own business ever since.

During the last year, I find myself differentiating my offerings even further. I sell vitamins. I write copy. I'm a business strategist. I do marketing and PR. I'm a publisher. If you give me a microphone, I might even do comedy. I'm just sayin'.

I'm starting to be asked to do even smaller time-limited tasks for some, micro tasks, which in turn bring in micro dollars, but dollars nonetheless. Once the dollar is no more, I'll be trading words for chickens, and I'm okay with that. I'm cleaning and productions. I'm PR person and journalist. I'm vitamins and content.

Micro jobs for micro money*** -- the age of the micro-focused is here. One job won't do it, and one job is hard to find. Many tasks spread over geographies and markets will supplant the old "real job." Many small business activities under one small business umbrella, or personal brand, will trump the job title (at) real company (dot) com.

Tools that will make this happen:

Google - gmail, collaborative google docs, g-chat and video chat.

LinkedIn**** - it's there, we're already using it, referrals based on multiple types of skill sets (related and unrelated to my current business) are coming in.

RevolutionMoney*+* - I've been calling for a micro-payment service to take the lead in allowing us to compensate one another for small tasks we can farm out to those we respect and know across our various online social homes. With Revolution Money, the service provider won't take a hit when they receive a payment for a task as they do with paypal.

Skype*#* and Twitter*#* - "Hey, do you do x?" "HELL yeah!" (or) "No but let me find you someone who does." Do I become my brother's reseller? Am I my friends' affiliate? The details remain to be seen, but I think IM and DM (through the likes of twitter.com) will take the place of 'over the cube wall' inquiries.

Companies like Cerego*^, with the iKnow social learning platform, and the open source education movement, where the world's best universities offer free access to course and lectures, also have much to offer the coming upside-down business environment by helping solo practitioners stay ahead of the game with new skills, languages, and knowledge.

As David Weinberger's#@! blogsticker(^) noted several years back: "Cluetrain was basically right." id est:

>>"Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down."

>>THESIS 94: To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

These are the best of times. These are the worst of times. Ain't we lucky we got em - good times.

Disclaimers follow: *my husband, **reference to BigPR and Ketchum, ***covet it, ****member, *+*I hear you get $10 for signing up and plan to do so, *#*jeneanesessum and jeneane respectively, *^work with them some, #@!Friend, (^)blame gary turner.

Good Times - They're Back (now new and improved for white people!)

Good Times.
Any time you meet a payment.
Good Times.
Any time you need a friend.
Good Times.
Any time you're out from under.

Not getting hassled, not getting hustled.
Keepin' your head above water,
Making a wave when you can.

Temporary lay offs.
Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs.
Good Times.
Scratchin' and surviving.
Good Times.
Hangin in a chow line
Good Times.
Ain't we lucky we got 'em
Good Times.

Blagojevich Is Right...

a job is a very fucking valuable thing.


BONUS:
Predicted time elapsed until web 2.0 delivers social jobs4sale site: 22 hours, 5 minutes, 29 seconds.

horror at Marianna - The White House Boys Speak.

Statements from The White House Boys - Funny videos are here

SEE ALSO: The White House Boys.

It appears Florida government has finally be shamed into listening.

One of the children abused there, Roger Kiser, grew up to write books, this one among them. I wonder what would have happened if he hadn't. Unmarked graves, a cover up for murder.

Merry Christmas to/from Lorenzo & Francesco

Skype trumps email. The first message I answered after a weekend off my laptop was Lorenzo Pescini, skyping me about his new holiday video with Francesco Nesi.

I looked, I loved, I linked.

How do I say that in Italian Lorenzo?

Merry Christmas!

And Now, A Fine Pop Music Interlude

the layoff thing - getting beyond denial

A friend remarked the other day that the only person we know with a "job" is one of our friends' husbands who works at The Home Depot.

I thought about it. She's right. Three of my friends have been laid off in the last year; a couple more are struggling to keep their businesses going, a couple more are single moms - one of them on public assistance - a couple more are doing odd jobs here and there to pay what bills they can.

But very few of the people I know have an actual job.

Somehow though, Atlanta keeps pretending. Denial is our specialty. People run here and there, get nails done, hair done, the gym done, the spa done. Hell, I'm one of them. By day we pretend it's going to be ok. By night, we hoard and joke about who has enough land for crops.

Three big restaurants in our immediate area are closed in the last six months. Two coffee shops still boast signs welcoming customers, but they're all but abandoned. Building projects have been halted in media res. It's beginning to look someone decided to bail half-way through prosperity.

Another friend was going by the Cobb County unemployment office on Monday. The parking lot there is not small. I was there seven years ago when I used a mutually-agreed-upon departure from BigPR to start my own business. There were no shortage of parking spaces even though the newly laid-off were plentiful then.

But on Monday, my friend said, the parking lot was not only full, but cars were parked on both sides of the road where it's located, up and down the street, no where to park.

That's not so good.

I was working at Starbucks yesterday (a knowledge worker, not a barista -- they have better benefits and work hours, trust me), and three ladies were at the table next to me. One said, "So what - I'll lose my house if I have to," and so I poked my nose in and said, "Did you get laid off?" They had 'the look.' I knew before I asked. She said all three of them had been laid off on Monday, along with 65 others. Small company, just down the street.

I told them it would be okay. They didn't look like they believed me.

It's not like the end of business as usual wasn't predicted. It's just that most of us didn't think it would happen all at once.

Joke's on us.

If you have a job, don't wait: Start your own business. Whatever you're good at, get better, get networked, and start taking on small projects where you can get them.

And someone wake Gary Turner, re: the blogtank--are we there yet?

---

Losing Joe

There aren't many musicians remaining of both the hardy stock and stubborn attitude required to survive the Rochester/national/international jazz scene from the time my father played it (1950s-60s) through the time my husband played it (1970s-90s).

The more of them we lose, the more loudly the loss resonates. The absence of a player's unique interpretation of sound and space can be deafening.

That's just one of the reasons why it's so hard for artists to live--period.

Joe died December 1st at 76 of lung cancer. My memories of hanging out after the gigs listening to Joe's special brand of humor haven't faded since the 80s. I could say a lot of things about him--about his musicianship, his edge, his, his tenacity. But instead, I'll simply say, so long Joe Romano.

Ok it's time to say something

First of all, I have glasses. I'm 46 years old and these are my first real glasses--the kind you wear all the time, the progressive lens type for people who can't see close or far away.

My initial reactions:

• Trees have leaves.
• There are too many words hanging up in the world.
• I am short.
• My feet don't walk right.
• I need to wax my upper lip and pluck my eyebrows. Like right away.
• Time for some makeup.
  

It reminds me of Halley's old snowglobe posts...

... they got me in and out of there fast as can be and in LESS than an hour and my glasses are a god send. I slipped them on and hell, it was like being high on dope with Oreos, with your best high school buddies and candles -- I am seeing things so much more clearly, I was amazed. I say to the glasses guys, "Whoa! I can really see with these things!" The manager says, "That's the idea!"

So I leave the mall, feeling so cool that I can see things -- like I can see my car in the parking lot, even before I attempt to open three other wrong Burgundy Camry's and before I have to bend down and braille-read the license plate. I'm just teasing, I'm not that bad. Well, almost.

I feel some sort of apology is in order - for my clients and myself. Blaming my fuzziness on menopause may have been inaccurate. I now realize I was fuzz-sighted. That's not near sighted or far sighted. That's when everything is blurred around the edges.

Now I look like a dork, but I have these lenses that make me feel like a kid, complete with feeling shorter. I wonder if that's my brain reconfiguring my perspective back to the last time I could see this well.

It's all very very very odd.

---

You know this Ella?

You gotta try a little bit.

the bridge is so nice

Oh Gosh I almost forgot the Stupid People song. An oldie AND a Goodie

heh.

okay sing the stupid people song with me--want to?

Helloooo stupid people
it's good to meet you
no it's not
see you made me lie
and if I tell you true
I would have to tell you
you
really you make my
intestines flutter
and rumble, baby
and not in a gooood way, baby.

I'm not sure how you
live with a pin-sized braihaaaiiin
but you really do
yah you do baby
you do it all my sweet
thing
because you're not just
ordinary
solitary
no
you're very very
extraordinarily
stupid
How do you do it?

You're bill-o'reilly stupid
You're bill-o'reilly stupid
You're not just smiley stupid
You're bill-o'reilly stupid

I bet in the morning, yah
you open your sweet shining eyes
and come alive inside
and your mind, your mihiiiiind
goes back to sleep
precious sleep
and that's okay
because baby
you gotta lotta work to do
in this world
a lotta hard work to do
and it's not easy, baby
no not easy
to operate the fryer
all the grease
sometimes the policeeeeee, baby
they come a rum come come
and say to you...

You're bill-o'reilly stupid
You're bill-o'reilly stupid
You're not just smiley stupid
You're bill-o'reilly stupid.

social allaboutMEdia or how i forgot my blog's 7th birthday

It's hard to see the forest for the trees these days. Social media pundits are punditizing themselves into such puffery that they are bursting from the very overstuffing of their grandiosity. There are more places than ever to pontificate, but blog posts still reign supreme as the bully pulpit to nowhere.

as in:

If I See ONE MORE post with BIG BOLD SUBHEADS boasting cute phrases that want so desperately to be profound that I have to turn my head to spare them their own embarrassment, I WILL puke.

I'm telling you, people.

I'm not talking polite regurgitation - I mean PUKE.

Don't pretend you have no idea what I mean.

"Think Small, Talk Deep" "Make Them Let You See Me Sweat" "If They Say Yes, You're Doing It Wrong." THOSE types of bullshitty neon nonsense.

You can tell these posts because the 'faux ballsy' subheads are most often followed by all the reasons why social media-community-internet-technology (buy my book buy my book buy my book) is the answer to every question yet to be answered under the sun, especially by business, which we all seem to forgotten, has RUN OUT OF MONEY.

That's the kind of supluferous fluff disquised as consulting genius I'm talking about.

It's the echo chamber, baby, say "hello" (ello ello ello ello)

So repulsed am I by what the conversation unleashed online back at the turn of the century - yes I was there - has become, I have managed to miss my own blog's 7th birthday.

happy birthday to me and the class of 2001.

Not for nothing, but if you think you're saying something new and interesting ABOUT the Internet with those big sweeping subheads you hope to work into a TOC for your next novella, it's time to actually DO something new and interesting BECAUSE OF the Internet. Or create something interesting and let us at it.

Because those posts--the ones with the faux-ballsy subheads--they gotta go.

happy birthday to my ass.

Paint the White House Black Lyrics, George Clinton, Baby!!!

I've been on the interwebs long enough to find everything I've ever wanted to find, needed to find, hoped to come across, and a lot of stuff I wish I'd never seen. One thing I haven't been able to find since I started looking when our new King, Barack Obama, began his run for office, are the lyrics to the funkolicious "Paint the White House Black," by one of our elder kings, George Clinton. I have the CD Smell My Finger, and in 1993 I danced like a proper funkateer to PTWHB. But I never could find the lyrics online, so I did what any good netizen would do - transcribed em myself.

I could use help with one line--you'll see he ???s--leave a comment if you can make out what she's sayin.

With assistance from grandmaster George himself, the following represents my best shot at transcribing the lyrics to Paint the White House Black, which, 15 years later, is ever more timely - Picture this, paint a picture picture perfect, paint a perfect picture. :-)


Paint the White House Black
George Clinton
Paisley Park Records, 1993

...Featuring Ice Cube, Dr.Dre, Yo-Yo, MC Breed & Kam; other appearances by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Public Enemy, Shock G & Pupa Curly


And in these uptight times
Hardcore Funkateers deploy the Bop Gun
The unleasher of positive light
The bop gun can do you no harm
It frees your mind
so your behind can follow.

Let's do a fly-by

123 and I come with the wicked
White house, lights out
Boom boom boom with the bop gun
looks like I dropped one.
I'm top gun.

Picture this, paint a picture picture perfect,
paint a perfect picture, paint a picture.
Picture this, paint a picture picture perfect,
paint a perfect picture.

Hi, yeah, what's up? What's poppin'?
This is Dr. Dre callin' from gun control
Can I speak to the President?
Uh, yeah, just tell him he was smokin' last night at the club,
you know what I'm sayin?
What? He don't inhale? Well I know I got
the wrong muthufuckin' house.

Did somebody beep me from there?

Colors don't clash
for good.
Color me happy
next to you.
Oh, just like it should,
There goes the neighborhood
That's what they'd have us believe.

Paint the white house black
Brown
Paint the white house

(No matter what creed no matter what color)

Paint the white house black
brown
Paint the white house
white.

If love ain't got nothing to do with it
then keep it
Ain't no big secret
We all know the reason
People change every day
but life stays the same
one big game
ain't a damn thing change
A woman's gotta do
what a woman's gotta do
be a macstress
don't let these macs smack you
So I can ??? ????
I'm stressin' and tired
the man that runs the joint
gets me higher
It can be a white house
a black house
it can be a crack house
An outhouse
if it ain't the right house
Go get your army
Yes ladies we got a fight
They ain't gonna set aside another night.
It's so bad in Los Angeles
It's so scandalous
Gimme somebody
who can handle us
Young brothers on top of things
So ah color me man
I'm ready for a change.


I gave a show
one time too many
and a brother gotta be
comin' out his nickles
and countin' up his last pennies
buyin' his brushes
and bum rushes home his greenery
man he don't give
a hill of beans
what it means to me.

Leave it up to me
I'm paintin' the white house black
It ain't no feature when you're frontin'
So why do LA be frontin', Jack

It'll either change
or we're gonna change it
(yeah it's gettin old)
Usin' everything from
spray cans to charcoal
Put em up
Put the crew up on discharge
leavin' wet paint signs
in the front yard.

It drives these people crazy man,
They don't even know what I'm sayin'.

Ohhh, air brushed and colorized
change right before our eyes
Real is the US of every flag

And that's the north side from the right house
Be it the black, red or white house
I fear the puppeteer can pull
our strings.

Paint the white house black, brown.
Paint the white house.

(This white ain't right, get the flash light.)

Paint the white house black, brown.

(No matter what creed no matter what color)

Paint the white house.

I pledge allegiance to the flag
bein' all i could never be
Damn, with this toe tag
This is USAK all day
And you can't interrupt
Lay back.

Stars and stripes
For the tards and tights
Got brothers like me
behind bars and on pipes

Damn I'm gettin' fit for a trip
they got me seeing stars from the club
and stripes from the whip

Why must ya'll be like that
I ain't into politics
So skip them
white collar tricks
They never did us no good
to hell with the space shuttle
put some money in the hood
and make jobs
let's mob up to the capitol
Then we ain't gotta rap at all
Power to the people
And the only way to get free
Is the J to the U-S-T-I-C-E.

Picture this, paint a picture, paint a perfect picture

Yo listen to the real Clinton
Who Bill Clinton?
Hell No, I'm talkin' bout George Clinton

Paint the white house black, brown

Paint the white house black, brown
(no matter what creed or what color.)
Paint the white house
(with God by our side we gonna change this power)

Paint the white house black, brown
Paint the white house.

Picture this, paint a picture picture perfect, paint a perfect picture, paint a picture.

There goes the neighborhood.

Picture this, paint a picture picture perfect, paint a perfect picture, paint a picture.

You understand this, cause that's how it be.
His name is George and his last name begins with a "C".

Picture this, paint a picture picture perfect, paint a perfect picture.

technorati tags: George Clinton, Paint the White House Black, Picture This, Barack Obama, History, Rap, Music, Funk

despite everything that's wrong...

...this is so right.



Hard to be in a bad mood lately.

so we don't forget

Yes, We Did.

I can't stop smiling.

I just can't.

Can you?

To those who said to me in the early years of my marriage that they didn't believe in mixed marriages because, after all, "What will become of the children?" I say to them today, "They can become your President."

Happy Day, America.

The fear mongers are out of power.

Breathe.

Let's get ready to get to work.

It's for them.

Been busy holding my breath

WAITING hoping praying for an Obama win.

meanwhile, the spammers have started to have their way with my comments, so I decided to stop being quiet and start breathing.

If you are still thinking of voting mccain, listen to these colleagues:




The group Vietnam Veterans Against McCain attacks Senator John McCain's heroism as a POW in the Vietnam conflict; this is making some waves in the news due to McCain's presidential candidacy. The documentary "Missing, Presumed Dead the Search for America's POWs" however focuses more on Senator John McCain successfully blocking the release of classified POW/MIA documents. Here is a DVD extra from that documentary. A DVD of the documentary may be purchased at www.MissingPresumedDead.com.

The Ills of Big Pharma - Cure? Not for you.

It's happening to Andrew Barron's dad, who happens to have a researcher on his case who has discovered something important.

It appears the Drug Company with the potential cure is trying to block its use.

In what can only be defined as a miracle in timing, a few days ago, one of his doctors who has been studying his tumor cells in the lab for years found an antibody with an exact match: Tysabri which is manufactured by your company, Biogen Idec. In the test tube, it attached to the antigens on the surface of the tumor 100%.

Though the drug has never been used before in this way, and because time is running out, the head of the FDA, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has granted special approval for use of the drug for this purpose but you have personally decided “no”.

Help Andrew if you can - he says how in his post.

Also: Interesting discussion on this issue at TechCrunch.

-----

The Corporation Pwnd - Silver Lining 3.0

THIS my, fellow soldiers, is the Official End of Business as Usual.

THIS is the moment where loosely joined independent workers will change how business is done.

THIS has been 10 years in the making. It will not be easy - but it will be transformative.

THIS is the rightful skewering of the bloated corporation, the bleed of the overstuffed startup.

YOU are the new upstart.

Get started.

i kinda never liked hillary better than right here

How Right You Are, John McCain, My Fellow Prisoner

Sheesh--they shouldn't have gotten on to him about using "My Friends" incessantly. Now he's saying what he REALLY thinks.

Why Wait? Move to Canada Today with the ELITE Plan

WANTED: Alphacat and Sara Benincasa Mashup

A DEFINITE MUST. Introducing Alphacat - ROCKIN the BARACK

Won't Evict, Sheriff Dart Says

An American Hero in the War on Economic Terror

CHICAGO (AP) - Residents of foreclosed properties in Chicago and other parts of Cook County don't have to worry about deputies forcing them out. Sheriff Tom Dart says that starting Thursday his office won't take part in evictions.

Dart says he's concerned that many of the people being evicted are renters who were unaware that their landlords have been failing to pay their mortgages. He says his deputies have no way of knowing whether they're removing someone who has defaulted on a loan or someone who has been faithfully paying rent.

Dart says he thinks he's the first sheriff in a major metropolitan area to stop such evictions during the ongoing foreclosure crisis.

McCain's Fear and Loathing

McCain despises otherness. It is why he left his disabled wife. It is why he uses racial slurs and endorses American Exceptionalism, now touted by Palin any chance she gets.

Good video by an author who tackled McCain's "It's Ok That I Hate Gooks" era and why it matters.

That One for President!

she was READING? more lies.

Is it a crime to incite an assassination - because she might as well be crying: Hang the nigger! With a wink and a smile.



Side Note: American Exceptionalism.

She is DANGEROUS.

more, said better, here.

How you like him so far?

The Children Notice: Recession Archetypes

We don't have the TV on a lot at home. But kids talk about what their parents can't afford to do right now because of "the economy." Vacations not taken. Gas not to be had. Gym and swim memberships gone by the wayside.

Most of all I think she notices all of the new office construction, the new plazas, sitting empty. "90 days free lease!" "OFFICE SPACE!" "For Rent - First 3 Months No Cost." She knows Sonny's Barbecue has gone bankrupt. She's seen the two coffee shops we used to go to fail.

She told me today: "I had a dream last night mom - you and I went to Coldstone Creamery to get an ice cream cone, and it was gone. Empty. It had gone out of business."

I told her that must have felt like a crummy dream. She said yep it sure did.

Wonder how long before it's reality.

On a wink and a prayer...

What they say:

The McCain campaign was asked by ABC News to clarify what a McCain administration would do to "stop multimillion dollar payouts" to CEOs.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said McCain supports allowing company shareholders to vote on CEO compensation. However it's unclear how any president could enforce such a measure within a private company.

"What he supports is making sure that shareholders can vote on CEO compensation, right now he's saying they don't," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told ABC News.

McCain's top economics adviser Carly Fiorina, a McCain campaign surrogate who made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows this past weekend and appeared on CNN Monday speaking for McCain, herself benefited from a multimillion dollar payout.

Fiorina was dismissed as the CEO of Hewlett Packard in 2005 after a merger with Compaq floundered, stock prices plunged 50 percent, and 20,000 people were layed off. Fiorina walked away with a $21.4 million severance package.

Asked whether McCain was talking about CEOs like Fiorina, McCain's top adviser who walked away with millions in compensation as her company's stock price plunged, Rogers said McCain was "talking about the issues that are before us today."

"We're talking about Freddie and Fannie and CEOs like Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, folks that are largely responsible for what happened and walk away with this kind of multimillion dollar payout," Rogers said.

"I don't think there's any analogy there," Rogers said referring to Fiorina.

Heaven help us.



What she says:

I am one of those female, middle-class business owners Sarah Palin seemed to think she was addressing in last night's vice presidential debate.

Nothing is more horrifying than the thought of being represented nationally — or worse yet, globally — by a functionally illiterate, issue-evading, winking Barbie Doll. It is insulting to assume that Americans prefer lapses in the English language (“gonna,” “betcha,” etc. — how I wish the commentators would have counted the number of “ing” drops in her responses) to leaders who can speak clearly and articulately.

And I truly cannot imagine that Germany's Angela Merkel, Iraq's Jalal Talabani or China's Hu Jintao would appreciate coy winks during diplomatic discussions.

Palin's redirection of responses to the things she wanted to talk about (an expression she used more than once) was successful only in confirming her lack of knowledge about most of the issues that burden our nation today. Successful debating is about persuasive argument on the issues — not coy, patronizing, self-aggrandizing deflection.

Women in politics and the media: embarassing. OR read a book Cokie.

Exceptional post on American Exceptionalism and the current state of a union that is to stupid to know a gaffe from its asshole.

By way of contrast with the above "misspeech," Joe Biden said...

Look what we did in Bosnia. We took Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, being told by everyone, I was told by everyone that this would mean that they had been killing each other for a thousand years, it would never work.

Here's that towering genius, Cokie Roberts, calling Biden on his "gaffe" (click image for video)...



The fact of the matter is that Bosniaks is the correct term for Bosnian Muslims. Sounds as if -- like Sarah Palin -- Cokie should maybe sometime read a book.

Say It Ain't So, Average Joe Six Pack

Frank Listics Payner summarizes last night's debate "no fail" from the Palin side of things. What you saw last night was a performance by someone who could be anyone of average (or slightly below) intelligence who works within any given field. That's NOT ENOUGH to lead a country on the brink of the Great Depression 2.0. Three cute winks, one say it ain't so, joe, and seven "nukyoulars" are NOT ENOUGH.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

I'm so afraid that she did just well enough with the right voters. I'm so afraid that I live in a country where so many stupid people who consume politicians as if they are just another arm of the media.

Hillary must have rolled over in her pant suit last night. That's all I can add.

----

mccain - hiding in plain sight...

From Rolling Stone:

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

READ IT.


http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

Get Your Bailout On

Good Dog.

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

How can anyone in good conscience support the power structure that has been in charge for a decade -- the one that has succeeded in ruining the economy and waging a 100-year war with the wrong country. They'd like to tell you it's the fault of minorities and the poor. I know a few people who have lost their house or had to sell before forclosure, and they look mostly like Glenn Beck. They would like you to go aaaaaallllll the way back to Jimmy Carter (second only to Bill Clinton in the GOP blame game) and pin the current problem on him.

How stupid are we? That is the question that will be answered in the next election.

How. Stupid. Are. We?

Ron K. Jeffries has heard from some friends who are early casualties in the economic war zone.

Here is some of what is happening:

• Friend #1 said in a phone call: “I’ve lost my house, the auction is tomorrow.”

• Friend #2 writes: “My IRA has been wiped out but more importantly, Ameriprise has frozen my huge cash deposits, because the Reserve Muni Money Mkt fund has not honored their redemption.

I'm so sorry Ron. I don't know what any of us are going to do. Meanwhile my health insurance premium goes up this month to an obscene amount for an obscene deductible.

It's going to be a long road.

VOTE.

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smart i am.

paynter stop niggling me. dammit.

Launcher