July 16, 2008
The last post was hacked again while we’ve gone fishin’. But sys admin is investigating it. Here is a repost.
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Summer is in full swing here - Fannie and Freddie plummeted as investors fear “socialism at our doorstep”, Fake Steve Jobs decided to hang up his boots, and stuffwhitepeoplelike hit the bookstores.
In the meantime, some intrepid souls “summered” in our backyard, a/k/a blog, and removed a June 10 post on “Deranged Hillary Hatred”. Summer must be going swimmingly for those into somersaults, we wonder?
July 11, 2008
Summer is in full swing here - Fannie and Freddie plummeted as investors fear “socialism at our doorstep”, Fake Steve Jobs decided to hang up his boots, and stuffwhitepeoplelike hit the bookstores.
In the meantime, some intrepid souls “summered” in our backyard, a/k/a blog, and removed a June 10 post on “Deranged Hillary Hatred”. Summer must be going swimmingly for those into somersaults, we wonder?
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We were alerted to the fact that someone hacked this blog and removed the June 10 post, “Deranged Hillary-Hatred”. Once it’s published, it’s in Google’s hands, as they say. We repost it here.
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Perhaps the specter of credit crunch has got into the heads of political pundits in the media, otherwise how can you explain the popularity of CDS, aka Clinton Derangement Syndrome? The US editor of UK’s New Statesman, Andrew Stephen, eviscerates media’s hideous Hillary coverage in the Dems primaries.
Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history.
Not to mention maniacal Obama supporters who seem nonchalant at best, happy at worst, with the way Hillary was treated. Her any action, no matter how innocuous, was “proof of evil intent”. Paul Krugman, NYT columnist, believes that most of the “venom” in the campaign “is coming from supporters of Obama”.
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June 10, 2008
June 6, 2008
Now that their preferred candidate is the de facto nominee, what do progressives, in particular men who spewed vitriol at Hillary and her supporters, feel amid the postmortem frenzy? Perhaps better late than never - they have come to realize that they cannot “brush aside” sexism after all.
It’s more a sop than mea culpa. Were they so swept off their feet by the maelstrom that they lost their head? “[T]he discourse we all engage in sometimes explicitly, and more often tacitly, reinforces” sexism and misogyny. But a Pyrrhic victory is a victory nonetheless - only it sets back progressive movement for decades.
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June 5, 2008
We recently asked a random number of people in our circle where they meet their friends. Perhaps not surprisingly, college (and to a lesser extent, high school) tops the list, followed by alumni events and networking occasions. So is it the happenstance where we meet that leads to friendship or is it because we consciously seek out those whose values we share?
Scientists at University of Leipzig endeavored to test the notion whether “People More Likely To Become Friends Based on Proximity Or Shared Values”.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, their findings suggest that friendships are based on more superficial factors like chance encounters, rather than intentional choice and common values and interests. But our straw poll does not seem to conform to their conclusion.
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June 4, 2008
“When not prompted by vanity, we say little.”
- Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)
May 30, 2008
As if to get its own back on the snub by New Line Cinema for premiering the over-buzzed Sex and the City in London on May 12, New York - which is arguably as big a star as the four Manolo-loving characters - has duly produced a kerfuffle this week.
First, thousands of ticket-holders were reportedly turned away by Radio City Music Hall; second, the self-proclaimed number one fan, who “traveled 10,000 miles from Singapore” and paid close to $20,000, was utterly disappointed. Adding salt to injury, critics slam the movie with scathing reviews: “screamy, garish and winsome.”
Well, not all is lost. At least not for what some call the attention-whore, a Chinese Chick at Harvard, who seems to relish being called out by Gawker for “oversharing” her post-BJ “facial” picture. If she thinks she is and can be sexually liberated, like the SATC women, she’s hopelessly at it, for writing about sexual exploits is nothing if not anachronistic.
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May 7, 2008
Buried in the headlines of “decisively” or “barely” are the intrigues, à la hanging chads circa FL 2000, in Lake County, or specifically Gary, Indiana, last night, and perhaps more importantly, the psychology of the holdup.
In terms of media narrative, Obama camp won hands down. Several hours after Sen. Obama’s victory speech, networks and cable channels still could not call Indiana. Jeff Toobin on CNN and Bob Beckel on Fox News both regaled us with Gary’s dubious reputation in vote-counting that was attributed to the Chicago style politics.
Then Mayor of Gary had this to say: “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.” “Curious” seemed to the consensus of CNN pundits, whereas Brit Hume uttered “fraud” in the age of “new” politics - the word ricocheted through the blogosphere.
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May 5, 2008
FT’s Clive Crook is known for his relentless logic and measured voice, but his argument that “rules have changed” in Election 2008, sadly, wears thin.
He reckons that because of the unique characteristics of candidates, a Black, a Woman, and a “very odd Republican”, the “demographic slice” and “swing state” rules of the old partisan playbook no longer apply. This is not entirely convincing, not the least in that, barring a landslide in both Indiana and North Carolina primaries tomorrow, Obama has yet to show he can attract the white working class voters en masse.
Over the last half century, as David Brooks, ever insightful on everything sociological, points out that the “social divide” - between the Creative Class and the non-Bobos - has “overshadowed regional differences”, thanks to the democratization of higher education. Thus the “ensuing segmentation has reshaped politics”.
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