Jimmy

In two sentences Michael Moore sums up the entire problem with most major American companies (not just General Motors):

Well, what really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was we’ll build it and you buy it. We’ll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.

Eventually, the consumer got smart and said, ‘You know what, I’d like a car that gets a little better gas mileage. I’d like a car that’s safer on the road,’ so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn’t change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them.

-j

I love the way Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco name their songs. What does The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage have to do with the lyrics of this Panic! at the Disco song exactly? Nothing! But it’s wonderful anyway. That’s part of the reason I like Fall Out Boy and Panic!: I love listening to songs with titles like Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued (Fall Out Boy).

I mean, really, who wouldn’t?

Cheers.

-j

“Policy Over Process” is Jonathan Singer’s nice way of saying that Obama screwed us when it comes to Joe Lieberman keeping his gavel over the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The guy’s not even in the White House and he’s already making amateur mistakes.

Sigh.

-j

Huffington Post is reporting that in their meeting yesterday president-elect Obama offered Sen. Clinton the job of Secretary of State in his administration and that she’s “considering” it.

I just have one thing to say: take it, Hillary! Take it, for f’s sake!

That is all.

Cheers.

-j

Not being a cable TV watcher, I didn’t really know a lot about the politics of the (non-FOX News) cable news channels, but if Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow (video below) are representative of the entire network, it would seem they’re pretty liberal (or as liberal as you can get on cable news TV…). Anyway, here’s Rachel Maddow on Joe Lieberman, I agree with her 100%:

I have class in 5 minutes! Agh!

Cheers!

-j

If you’re any kind of political junkie you have may have already heard the rumors flying over the last 18 hours or so about the latest news/leak from the Obama Transition Team: that Hillary Clinton could be the next Secretary of State. It’s the top story on CNN.com right now, the most commented-on post on MyDD.com over the last couple of days, getting coverage overseas and is being e-mailed around.

So, when I first read about this on MyDD.com last night (the aforementioned post) I thought “hey, that’d be awesome, but it’s not exactly a done deal, is it?”

Well, it’s still not a done deal of course, but it’s seeming more likely to me. Here’s why:

• It’s not one, but two sources within Obama’s team that are reporting this possibility. Now it’s possible that both of them are getting their information from the same incorrect source, but two sources always lend more weight to a story than one does.
• The CNN.com story has a quote from Hillary today at a transit policy press conference that I read some things into: “I’m very happy there is so much press attention and interest in transit, in the off chance that you’re not here for this important issue and are here for some other reason, let me just say that I’m not going to speculate or address anything about the president-elect’s incoming administration. I’m going to respect his process and any inquiries should be directed to his transition team.” First, notice what’s missing: whereas some of her team last night were saying she was happy as a senator, now she’s not saying she’s going to stay in the senate. She mentions that she’s not going to “speculate“, implying that she doesn’t know anything, which could very well be the case but it could also be the case that she’s not going to “speculate” because she knows exactly what’s going on and doesn’t need to guess about it! Also, the last line caught me: “I’m going to respect his process”. Again, that could be code for “I don’t know what’s going on and I wish you’d all stop bugging me about it…or it could be code for “he’s the president-elect and when he wants to announce me as his new secretary of state he’ll do that and I’m not going to say a word about it.”

Putting aside for a moment the issue of if it would happen and thinking about if it would be a good idea, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a strong supporter of her I would love to see her get a spot in the new administration, but somehow the secretary of state role doesn’t totally seem like a good fit for her. I don’t know, maybe I’m not giving her enough credit for being more than a “one-issue” politician, but I would still rather see her working with domestic health care rather than foreign policy since I think her skills would be better suited for that.
On the other hand, I think it would be amazing to replace the second female secretary of state (Condi Rice) with another female secretary and I do think Hillary has what it takes to do the job amazingly well.

Anyway. I should really go do some homework now.

Cheers.

-j

Hey look, planets in other solar systems. It’s actually pretty cool, isn’t it?

Also, the Democrat running in the Alaska senate race has pulled slightly ahead as more votes are counted. I have no idea how many votes are still to be counted, but this race is still all up in the air, just like MN-Sen.

Cheers.

-j

I normally don’t pay a lot of attention to the issue of gay marriage (being a Christian liberal heterosexual I actually don’t 100% know where I stand on the issue and I’ve never sat down to really figure it out because I have other issues that I feel more pull to act on), but it’s hard to miss the uproar over proposition 8 passing by a narrow margin in California last Tuesday (for those who don’t know, proposition 8 amends the state constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one women). I still didn’t much care about the whole issue until I saw the video of the “special comment” that Keith Olbermann had on his show the other day and I feel that I have to share the video because it presents what I see as a very persuasive argument for the cause of allowing gay marriage, take a look:

Cheers.

-j

Yesterday I described my room a bit and today I thought I’d post some photos of it. It’s sad because when I took these photos I had my Dell laptop and Western Digital External Hard Drive out of the room to watch Lost on the living room TV but you can probably still tell that I have a LOT of electronics in my personal living space. *grin*

My “computer corner” (note the void where my Dell laptop usually sits, actually I can manage to fit both the Dell and the MacBook on that closer desk):

My bed and new MacBook (plus, on the left there, the cool $60 alarm clock that I bought that arrived and doesn’t work *sad*):

Close-up of the MacBook of Love (um, yeah, I unplugged my external hard drive without ejecting it and the mac got mad at me, that’s what the error message is there):

Anyway. That was fun.

Cheers.

-j

Ack! I haven’t posted yet today and now in 5 minutes I’m going out to a movie with my family until after midnight!

So, here’s a random fact you might not have known about me: I now have 4 computers in a room 22-feet long (my room is kinda cool in that it’s 6×22 feet). I haven’t set up a space for my new MacBook down in my “computer end” of the room yet so I’ve mostly been using it on the other end of the room on my bed by the window, but that means that since I was watching Lost off of my external hard drive this afternoon and had all the wires assorted with that spread across my bed, plus all the computer equipment (one 3-year-old Dell laptop and two 7-year-old HP desktops) on the other end of the room my room has become quite the tech-central.

Mind you I am so totally not complaining about this, but it does make moving around the room interesting as I try not to trip over any important power cords (as opposed to those unimportant power cords, I guess) or kick my external hard drive into oblivion (note to self: back up the family’s photos off that drive as one of my school friends just had a WD MyBook die on him….).

OK. That was 5 minutes longer than it was supposed to be and I’m running late!

Cheers.

-j