Archive for Celebrity
Re-inventing Government
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The president has asked congress for fast track authority to streamline the government.
Mahervelous Performance
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Tebow is the Family Circus of football – hated by sophisticates, loved by millions. Sophisticate-in-Chief, Bill Maher, took it on the chin by the numbers.
Obit Week
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The year 2011 was the end of the line for guys who changed the world – Steve Jobs in one way, Vaclav Havel in another. Anne Applebaum tells how Havel ‘s essay “Power to the Powerless” changed the world. His great insight was that all totalitarian regimes are based on a lie. If individuals “live in the truth” the lie dies and the regime collapses. That’s what happened with the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia.
As it happens, Havel was overshadowed in death by the totalitarian leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. Or Kim Jong-Dead, as Rush Limbaugh kept referring to him yesterday.
The Dear Leader’s birth on a sacred mountaintop is said to have been announced by a talking swallow. In addition to his miraculous golf scorecard, he claimed the power to order up perfect weather for his birthdays. He wasn’t completely without humility, though, having never claimed to cause the planet to heal or the oceans to recede.
Many tree bark eating North Koreans who mourned the death of their epicurian leader (his annual bar tab for Hennessy Cognac alone was over half a million dollars) don’t seem to be “living in the truth” so much. But then what would you expect from a nation of racist dwarfs.
Christopher Hitchens, RIP
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My favorite atheist has moved on to meet his maker. He deserves extra credit for his independent mind, brilliant wit, courage, and humanity.
Here’s a link, sent by another Hitchens fan, to a speech he made to the Christian Academy in Texas.
“Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.”
The Night They Tore the Lampposts Down
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A ten year old boy was raped and students rioted…because coach Paterno was fired. In a show of balance, they held a candlelight vigil for the victims on Friday. Nothing was burned down.
As I type this I’m watching the Nebraska and Penn State teams gather in prayer before the start of Saturday’s game.
I thought this column by the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell was best.
Steve Jobs
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Here’s an interesting WSJ column by Walter Mossberg about his personal relationship with Jobs.
The quote in the cartoon is from his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005.
The Big Picture
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Condoleeza Rice was minding her own business last week until Dick Cheney tried to blow up her head. No, he didn’t take her hunting. The former VP was hustling his book, In My Time, by saying it would make heads explode. The book did get a rise out of Condi by claiming she tearfully regretted advising President Bush to apologize for his State of the Union claim that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake uranium in Niger.
The unwanted African attention continued when it was revealed that the cross dressing former Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi, kept an album crammed with photos of the former Secretary of State.
As it turns out , the yellow cake business led the demise of Saddam Hussein (not to mention Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame trial), which directly caused Gadhafi to fearfully surrender his own real nuclear program and give up AQ Kahn’s international nuke sales operation.
iWorld
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Steve Jobs is resigning as CEO at Apple, a company he started with Steve Wosniak 1976. The company now reportedly has more cash on hand than the U.S. government. Ok, bad example, you probably do too. Anyway, Jobs is responsible for the personal computer as we know it today, as well as smart phones, iPads, movie animation, the music industry, and God knows what else.. He really did change the world. Here’s how Walt Mossberg, the WSJ tech guru, put it,
…Mr. Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology and media in multiple ways on multiple occasions. And that changed the way people live.
Man of the People
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The president celebrated his birthday in style while the stock market suffered its worst week since March 2009. Here’s an exchange between ABC’s Jake Tapper and press secretary Jay Carney over the collapsing stock market on Thursday.