Posts Tagged: watch


24
Dec 10

Krauthammer And Hayes See Mitch Daniels As Man To Watch For 2012

It's Christmas Eve, so let's treat ourselves to something conservative political junkies enjoy: handicapping the 2012 Republican field.  

On the Fox News Special Report this evening, panelists Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer both singled out Mitch Daniels as a man to watch.  Hayes identifed  the Indiana gov as perhaps the true Tea Party candidate—someone willing to speak the hard truths about the need for entitlement reform.  Krauthammer counter-intuitively found Daniels' lack of charisma appealing—as an antidote to our overdose of hope-and-change.

View video after the jump.

read more

NewsBusters.org blogs


24
Dec 10

Krauthammer And Hayes See Mitch Daniels As Man To Watch For 2012

It's Christmas Eve, so let's treat ourselves to something conservative political junkies enjoy: handicapping the 2012 Republican field.  

On the Fox News Special Report this evening, panelists Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer both singled out Mitch Daniels as a man to watch.  Hayes identifed  the Indiana gov as perhaps the true Tea Party candidate—someone willing to speak the hard truths about the need for entitlement reform.  Krauthammer counter-intuitively found Daniels' lack of charisma appealing—as an antidote to our overdose of hope-and-change.

View video after the jump.

read more

NewsBusters.org – Exposing Liberal Media Bias


24
Dec 10

Creepy Toy Watch

by Zoë Pollock

Michelle Legro describes Thomas Edison's other invention, the failed phonograph doll:

The doll was meant to be hand-cranked, just like a phonograph, and had a large handle sticking out of its side. It cost $ 10 in 1890 - more than $ 200 in today's money - an adult sum for a child's toy. The toy weighed four pounds, too heavy for a small child, because its torso was metal — the head was porcelain, the arms and legs wood, but the chest looked a jet engine and there was a speaker where the heart should be. Edison's doll was about as cuddly as a carburetor.





Email this Article
Add to digg
Add to Reddit
Add to Twitter
Add to del.icio.us
Add to StumbleUpon
Add to Facebook




The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan


24
Dec 10

A Jihad Christmas Two Must Watch Videos

While it may be the time for “Peace on Earth” and “Good Will Toward Man” not everybody in the world believes in those holiday wishes.  The two videos below are satirical but ring very true as this week there are new warnings for travelers that there may be new attacks from Islamic fanatics.  (if you cannot see the two videos below-Click Here)

The First is a brand new video from the Latma folks famous for “We Con The World” this one is called “Jihad Bells”

This one is the Classic from Achmed the Dead Terrorist, Jingle Bombs




YID With LID


24
Dec 10

Watch Mike Tomlin, Ben Roethlisberger after win – FOXSports.com


Globe and Mail
Watch Mike Tomlin, Ben Roethlisberger after win
FOXSports.com
A week after losing a heartbreaker to the New York Jets, the Pittsburgh Steelers rebounded in style Thursday night and inched one game closer to clinching the AFC North with a dominant 27-3 win at home against the Carolina Panthers.
Panthers Do Little to Slow Steelers' March Toward a ByeNew York Times
No surprises, Steelers roll by PanthersBoston Herald
Mike Wallace Electrifies Steelers Offense in Panthers PummelingFanHouse
The Star-Ledger – NJ.com –Reuters –Seattle Times
all 903 news articles »

Sports – Google News


23
Dec 10

Global: New ‘Digital Rights Watch’ Wiki

By Solana Larsen

Digital RIghts Watch is a new wiki for mapping legal issues like censorship, surveillance and intellectual property around the world.

Global Voices in English


22
Dec 10

Creepy Ad Watch, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Michael Petrelis makes a reasonable request:

Notice that [Michael] Specter omits links to any research backing up the effectiveness claim [that fear-based HIV campaigns work], but he does link to a chat-board containing one Kramer email, a note from a gay doctor backing him up and a press release from GMHC/GLAAD. That link helps inform the debate about HIV prevention today, but there's no link to any of the research he says exists.

The public discussion over the alarmist NYC DOH ad is put at a great disadvantage with hard research omitted by Specter. I'm not saying a fear-driven campaign can't work. It might, but I would like the backers of such campaign to produce their evidence with links to studies.





Email this Article
Add to digg
Add to Reddit
Add to Twitter
Add to del.icio.us
Add to StumbleUpon
Add to Facebook




The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan


22
Dec 10

Watch DADT Repeal Sigining Live @ 9:15


Scheduled to begin at 9:15 a.m. at the Department of Interior, the White House invited bloggers and activists to attend the historic signing.

Last night Mitch McConnell tried a last minute amendment to block the repeal. Lieberman stopped it:

McConnell attempted to add an amendment to the so-called stripped-down defense authorization bill that would have required the consent of the military service chiefs to proceed with “don’t ask” repeal. Under legislation passed by the Senate last week, certifications are required from the president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. All the incumbents in those positions support repeal.

“It was a McConnell proposal,” a GOP aide confirmed. “There was an attempted to get unanimous consent for it to be included in the defense bill and someone objected.”

McConnell’s amendment, which Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other GOP senators have been urging for months, called for certifications from the four service chiefs. All of the incumbents in those positions have expressed at least some reservations about repeal at this time.

Repeal advocates have long viewed such an amendment as a poison pill. Presumably, this is what prompted Lieberman’s objection.


The Moderate Voice


21
Dec 10

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 51

As the foreclosure mills get ready to start up in January, it’s important to note that 27 states don’t have judges decide foreclosure proceedings, and in those states, trustees hired by the banks conduct proceedings for evictions.

All 50 U.S. states are investigating whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. Attorneys general in non- judicial states, including Arizona, Texas and Washington, are conducting independent probes of mortgage foreclosure practices and examining the documents used to secure foreclosures.

“Washington’s foreclosure process frequently includes inaccurate documents, conflicts of interest, faulty chains of title and failures to provide the disclosures and conduct mediations required by law,” state Attorney General Rob McKenna said at a press conference on Oct. 13.

McKenna sent out about 50 letters that day to trustees operating in the state, asking them to suspend all foreclosures where documents hadn’t been confirmed as legally signed, or where the chain of homeownership wasn’t clear.

“Our consumer-protection division has already begun investigations regarding several trustees,” he said.

Washington will have about 40,000 foreclosures this year, up from 31,000 in 2009, according to Statewide Poverty Action Network in Seattle. The state is ranked at 17th nationwide, said Danielle Friedman of the network, an advocacy group for the state’s poor.

“A handful of trustees do the vast majority of the foreclosures” in Washington, said Jim Sugarman, assistant attorney general. About 60 trustees operate in Washington, he said. Most are affiliated with law firms, he said. Trustees receive a set amount of money to handle a foreclosure based on the difficulty of the transaction, he said.

The trustee system was set up as a “more efficient and less costly alternative for both the borrowers and the lenders,” said Lance Olsen, a Bellevue, Washington, attorney. In a judicial foreclosure state, the borrower “could end up with half of the default owed in attorneys’ fees in a few months,” said Olsen, who represents Northwest Trustee Services in Bellevue.

Opponents of the system “want the outside independent review of a judge,” he said. “That’s a valid request, but it’s an expensive one for a review that’s most often not required.”

Borrowers in non-judicial states can still sue to stop a foreclosure, he said. 

But when the banks are using the MERS system, the “efficient” system is designed to foreclose as quickly as possible, even when the bank doesn’t own the mortgage note.   And that’s the real problem.  Thousands of homeowners don’t have much in the way of recourse in stopping this freight train that will get back on track in January.

How many homeowners will be illegally railroaded into foreclosure?  We may never know.


Zandar Versus The Stupid


21
Dec 10

Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Watch Is Hard At Work

From now on, every HRW report on Israel is going to be greeted with “you mean the Saudi-funded HRW,” or “you mean the report written by the woman [HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson] who is a great admirer of Norman Finkelstein and lobbied Kofi Annan against Israel in the middle of the Second Intifada” or “you mean the report written by the guy [Stork] who supports the anti-Israel boycott movement and has been venting his hostility to Israel for almost forty years” or “you mean HRW, the organization that fails to take down from its website anti-Israel reports even when it has admitted they are inaccurate,” and so on.
David Bernstein, Volokh Conspiracy

And yes, Human Rights Watch is at it again.

Saudi Arabia’s favorite NGO has come out with its 166-page report Separate and Unequal accusing Israel of discriminating against West Bank Arabs on the “basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin.”

So for instance, according to the HRW report:

In most cases where Israel has acknowledged differential treatment of Palestinians—such as barring them from accessing “settler-only” roads and subjecting them to 505 roadblocks and checkpoints within the West Bank (as of June 2010)—it has asserted that the measures are necessary to protect Jewish settlers and other Israelis who are subject to periodic attacks by Palestinian armed groups, particularly during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, from 2000 to around 2006.[4]

When we check out the documentation for this in footnote 4, we read:

Violent attacks by Palestinian armed groups killed 202 Israeli civilians in the West Bank between 2000 and August 31, 2010. During the same period, Israeli settlers killed 43 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Israeli security forces killed 1823 Palestinian civilians there, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

While it is nice that Human Rights Watch acknowledges that there were “violent attacks by Palestinian armed groups” that does not stop it from fudging the B’Tselem numbers-as NGO Monitor points out in its report HRW´s Destructive Criticism: Analysis Of False Claims Against Israel. HRW leaves out the part where B’Tselem notes the 479 “Palestinians who took part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces” and 411 “Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and it is not known if they were taking part in the hostilities”.

That is sloppy on Human Rights Watch’s part.

HRW also makes assumptions about international law as if it were actual settled law-and binding, when in fact it is not:

HRW repeatedly asserts that statements made by various UN bodies place legal obligations on Israel. But, none of these sources are legally binding. Despite HRW’s claims to the contrary, the applicability of various bodies of law to Area C remains a highly controversial and contentious debate among legal scholars and authorities.

Human Rights Watch is entitled to its opinions, but should label it as such.

Human Rights Watch also promotes the BDS agenda, writing recommending “offsetting the costs of Israeli expenditures on settlements by withholding U.S. funding from the Israeli government in an amount equivalent to its expenditures on settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank”

But according to Omar Bargouti, the founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the goal of the BDS movement is “a unitary state, where, by definition, Jews will be a minority.”

Is that the goal of Human Rights Watch as well?

The HRW report is consistent with its continuing emphasis on Israel as opposed to other countries in the region, as NGO Monitor notes:

HRW devotes disproportionate resources to condemnations of Israel. “Separate and Unequal,” the longest report issued by MENA in the past two years (166 pages), is the third in-depth report on Israel in 2010. In contrast, in 2010, HRW released a five-year study on Saudi Arabia (“Looser Rein, Uncertain Gain,” September 27, 2010) totaling only 52 pages, and a ten-year survey documenting abuses in Syria (“A Wasted Decade,” July 16, 2010) was only 35 pages. As noted in NGO Monitor’s analysis of “Looser Rein,” HRW downplays the most egregious examples of Saudi Arabia’s systematic abuse of human rights, and does not issue the harsh recommendations it directs toward Israel. In particular, HRW does not call for an end to US military assistance to Saudi Arabia.

Reuters Middle East Watch makes a point as well, arguing that:

Israel is not responsible for providing “basic necessities” to Palestinians living in the “West Bank”. Those Palestinians classified as “refugees” are supported by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) which is funded to the tune of over a billion dollars annually, coming mainly from US and European taxpayers. Indeed, the Palestinians receive more aid money than any other refugees in the world. Palestinians not classified as refugees are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas and work for their basic necessities, as do Israelis. The government of Israel is not “depriving” anyone.

With respect to infrastructure like electricity and water, Israel has spent billions of dollars since 1967 building and supplying electrical power and clean drinking water to both Jewish and Arab communities in the territory. That HRW cites a single Arab village with 150 denizens which cannot apparently get connected to the electrical grid (for security reasons) is hardly evidence of, “systematic discrimination merely because of (Palestinians’) race, ethnicity and national origin”, which after all, is the same as that of millions of other Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank who are connected to the power grid.

But no matter. Not doubt the next time Human Rights Watch travels to Saudi Arabia, it will no doubt be able to regale its hosts again of its anti-Israel work.

Technorati Tag: and .


Daled Amos


21
Dec 10

Honduras: Human Rights Watch Releases Report on Abuses After 2009 Coup

By Silvia Viñas

Bloggings by Boz reports: “Human Rights Watch released an important new report yesterday on abuses in the post-coup environment, including excessive use of force, arbitrary detentions and violence against journalists and civil society. Particularly troubling is the level of impunity for abuses and the lack of resources and judicial independence in prosecuting those abuse.”

Global Voices in English


20
Dec 10

Creepy Ad Watch


by Patrick Appel

Michael Specter applauds the above PSA:

This [ad] has sent a number of H.I.V. activists into a frenzy—and many have demanded that the city pull the ad. Why? For the same reason that Larry Kramer, who founded both Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the New York-based H.I.V.-advocacy group, and ACT UP, was ostracized in the early days of the epidemic: unpleasant truths are never welcome. … Nasty messages are unpleasant and they don’t always work. But they do work sometimes, and there is research to suggest in cases like this, where it has become easy to shrug off the truth, harsh reminders are particularly effective. (You can find a series of exchanges that stakes out the positions of each side in great detail here.) 

Michael Petrelis is much more skeptical of fear-based HIV prevention efforts, as am I.





Email this Article
Add to digg
Add to Reddit
Add to Twitter
Add to del.icio.us
Add to StumbleUpon
Add to Facebook




The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan


20
Dec 10

Remainders: Watch

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, checks his watch before an unusual closed session in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington Monday, Dec. 20, 2010.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Scale and scope of intelligence gathering on citizens is unprecedented

Harry Reid has secured his place in history.

Proposed constitutional amendment on states rights gains traction.

Could cities and states tax the upper earners that Congress won’t? 

Massachusetts redistricting battle will be fought in the courts.

Murkowski has been a reliable vote for Obama during the lame duck.

Photos of the Deepwater Horizon fire emerge.

Is Palin becoming overexposed?

Republicans are tired of the Christian right’s agenda, argues Chait.

Scott Brown proves his moderate chops with his DADT vote.

Without aides, Paterson’s daily life will be much harder.

White House dodges ‘gay president’ question.

Is Chris Christie like Pepsi and best in small doses? 

And Patrick Kennedy messed up Pelosi’s house as a 10 year old.





Add to Twitter
Add to Facebook
Email this Article
Add to digg
Add to del.icio.us
Add to Google
Add to StumbleUpon




Ben Smith’s Blog


20
Dec 10

Watch out: More Obama union pay-offs in the works

On Friday, President Obama mollified Big Labor bosses at the White House. Which means you better watch your wallets.

Angered at the tax deal, union leaders marched into 1600 Pennsylvania with a renewed list of grievances and demands. AFL-CIO chief thug Richard Trumka was there, along with: United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard; American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten; Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry, and United Auto Workers President Bob King.

One item on the Big Labor wish list: more failed government-funded infrastructure spending:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking for the union presidents at White House, backed administration efforts to boost funding for infrastructure projects.

“We need to make a long-term commitment to infrastructure,” he said.

In September, Obama called for spending $ 50 billion on infrastructure and then creating a national infrastructure bank that work with the private sector on longer-term projects.

“If you make a long-term commitment, then we can begin to crowd in private investment,” Trumka said. “Hopefully, we can get the infrastructure bank up and running that can.”

In a telephone interview, UAW president Bob King said higher spending on infrastructure would boost American competitiveness and noted improving the power grid would help automakers launch electric vehicles.

“You have to do infrastructure spending to put people back to work,” King said. “Every country we are competing against — China, Brazil, Korea, Germany — we are lagging behind and infrastructure s the foundation of your economy.”

As I reported in September, Obama’s infrastructure plan is the mother of all big dig boondoggles:

Like the infamous “Big Dig” highway spending project in Boston, this latest White House infrastructure spending binge guarantees only two results: Taxpayers lose; unions win.

The plan would add at least $ 50 billion more to the nearly $ 230 billion already allocated in the original trillion-dollar stimulus law for infrastructure. Less than one-third of that infrastructure stimulus money has been spent, but the urgency to pile on has increased exponentially as the midterm elections approach and unemployment hovers near 10 percent. So, the president says he wants to “put people back to work” through a new “upfront investment” in surface transportation, airports and the air-traffic control system paid for by repealing tax incentives for the oil and gas industries — followed by massive, unpaid-for expenditures on pie-in-the-sky high-speed rail, “environmental sustainability” and “livability,” whatever that means.

Obama spoke emotionally at an AFL-CIO rally on Labor Day about unemployed construction workers. A “lot of those folks, they had lost their jobs in manufacturing and went into construction; now they’ve lost their jobs again,” he said. “It doesn’t do anybody any good when so many hardworking Americans have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America that needs rebuilding.”

But here’s the rub: Not all workers are equal in Obama’s eyes. And most of them will remain “idled” by the Democrats’ own design. The key is E.O. 13502, a union-friendly executive order signed by Obama in his first weeks in office, which essentially forces contractors who bid on large-scale public construction projects worth $ 25 million or more to submit to union representation for its employees.

The blunt instrument used to give unions a leg up is the “project labor agreement (PLA),” which in theory sets reasonable pre-work terms and conditions — but in practice, requires contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining control; to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits; and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations. These anti-competitive agreements undermine a fair bidding process on projects that locked-out, nonunion laborers are funding with their own tax dollars. And these PLAs benefit the privileged few at the expense of the vast majority: In the construction industry, 85 percent of the workforce is nonunion by choice.

We don’t need to theorize about how this shakedown works in the real world. Boston’s notorious Big Dig was a union-only construction project thanks to a Massachusetts government-mandated PLA. The original $ 2.8 billion price tag for the project skyrocketed to $ 22 billion in state and federal taxpayer subsidies thanks in no small part to ballooning labor costs. In February, the Bay State’s Beacon Hill Institute found that PLAs added 12 percent to 18 percent to school construction costs in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Washington, D.C., the Department of Veterans Affairs commissioned an independent study showing that PLAs would increase hospital construction costs by as much as 9 percent in some markets.

In short, Obama’s new Union Infrastructure Rescue Plan is a political favoritism scheme that raises the cost of doing business and bars tens of thousands of skilled, nonunion laborers who choose to run open shops from securing work.

See also: Obama sinkhole recipe: Hey, let’s create a new, government-run infrastructure bank!

And related: According to The Truth about PLAs, 19 House Republicans are challenging the exclusive union preference on federal construction projects exceeding $ 25 million in total cost.

The new House GOP majority can’t come soon enough.

Michelle Malkin


20
Dec 10

YouTube Protects Hate Speech By Banning Palestinian Media Watch

“Hate speech” refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.
YouTube policy on Hate Speech

By now, you are probably aware that YouTube has removed a number of the videos posted by the Palestinian Media Watch, on account that they violate YouTube’s policy violating hate speech.

And no wonder!

As IMRA points out, the videos that YouTube has banned are are viciously anti-Semitic:

1. “Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews”
formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwN2M6ZIIRU
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 10/02/2009.

2. “Jews are a virus like Aids”
formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYaGl3KjPUw
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 01/18/2010.

3. “Farewell video before suicide attack of Hamas suicide bomber Adham Ahmad
Hujyla Abu Jandal”
formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYdTudQhWM4
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 06/10/2010.

4. “Hamas suicide farewell video: Jews monkeys and pigs; Maidens reward for
killing Jews”
formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryc7RqXlVdE
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 08/14/2010.

5. “PA cleric: Kill Jews, Allah will make Muslims masters over Jews”
formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjuDTO8fgqM
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 12/12/2010.

6. “Hamas suicide terrorist farewell video: Palestinians drink the blood of Jews” formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSftYIGH6-w
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 12/15/2010.

[Note: currently, the last 3 are now again available on YouTube]

But that’s the funny part-you would have expected that it would be the Jews who would have protested the presence of these videos on YouTube, but it’s not. Instead it has been Palestinian supporters who have insisted on this videos being removed-as if the videos which expose the hate speech propagated by the Palestinian leadership and controlled media, themselves represent hate speech.

Obviously, it’s not as if Palestinian supporters are jumping to eliminate anti-Semitic speech.
No. They just don’t want the rest of the world to see English translations of the hate speech that is regularly being spread around the Muslim world.

According to the YouTube Community Guidelines:

We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).

So, is YouTube accusing Palestinian Media Watch of attacking and demeaning Jews?
Or is it just opposed to Palestinian Media Watch freely expressing its opposition to the expression of anti-Semitic hate speech in the Muslim world.

Maybe YouTube can explain that one.

Technorati Tag: and and and .


Daled Amos