conan o'brien was funny at the correspondence dinner Sat. night.

conan o'brien was funny at the correspondence dinner Sat. night.
I wasn't there, but you can watch it at youtube.
this event for a comedian is difficult...you have to walk a fine line between joking and not insulting the pres. and first lady.
kudos to o'brien (and his writers) for successfully walking the fine line
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvS4aTcUyQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvS4aTcUyQ

Bush 43′s Library will be dedicated today.

Bush 43′s Library will be dedicated today.
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“Visitors will first be led through exhibits about some of the issues Bush had hoped to work on at the start of his time in office, including education and tax cuts. Then, the former first lady said, “you turn the corner and there’s the huge beam from the World Trade Center standing in the middle of a memorial to everyone who died on Sept. 11.”
Interactive exhibits on the war with Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the economic downturn at the end of Bush’s administration, give visitors the chance to vote on what they would have done — and then watch videos of the former president explaining his decisions. It’s called “Decision Points Theater,” .
to those of other presidents. It is the most expensive of them all, at $250 million. Private funds paid for the construction, but taxpayers pay for the operation of presidential libraries. , “the National Archives expects to spend $68.7 million in administration at the presidential libraries in 2013.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/25/178974849/5-presidents-set-to-help-dedicate-george-w-bushs-library
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In most cases, our presidential libraries serve ego displacement…as a substitute for NOT being qualified to be carved on Mt. Rushmore.
The libraries are gold mines for researchers; and can be locus for POTUS directed projects and research programs.
But the building of these monuments are too expensive.
The $69 annual fed. money is a speck on the fed. budget windshield. No problem there.
It is the construction of these symbols of presidential power that is corrupting.
The hidden politics involved, never to be known, is how presidential decisions are made to satisfy future donors to these libraries.
Another issue is how many annual visitors tour these libraries, scattered all over the country?
Would it have been better, for research and public touring, to cluster all the POTUS libraries together in DC?
Apparently Cheney and Rummy will not attend the dedication.
Since Cheney was the power behind the oval desk, he should be there.
Karl Rove will not be there.
Rove was often called Bush 43′s “brain”,which perhaps calls into question all the brain research recently that tells us that the 3 pound brain’s neurons, dendrites, synapses are constantly dying and giving rebirth.
Bush 43 often called Rove “turd blossom”…so there seems to be confusion on the location of the brain.
Will these 5 current/former POTUSes attend the 50th commemoration of the JFK murder/conspiracy in Dallas in Nov.?
Right, and Justin Bieber is an adult.

More than four years after leaving office, former President George W. Bush has a question for America: So what would you have done?

(..UNIVERSITY PARK, Tex. —
A Presidential Center for the 21st Century
In a new brick-and-limestone museum, visitors to an interactive theater
will be presented with the stark choices that confronted the nation’s
43rd president: invade Iraq or leave Saddam Hussein in power? Deploy
federal troops after Hurricane Katrina or rely on local forces? Bail out Wall Street or let the banks fail?...)
 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/politics/hitting-rewind-bush-museum-says-you-decide.html?hp&_r=0
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Good golly, Mr. POTUS Bush.
Hellzapoppin', I say.
Now you want to make your decisions democratic, with every visitor to your library voting.
Where was this interactive decision-making when we needed it?
Would Cheney/Rumsfeld, and the war-mongering neo-cons. have wanted a democratic process on these decisions?
When Bush 2 was getting ready to invade Iraq, this poster walked to the Albany Capital on a very cold Jan evening. I walked with several hundred, in a real, not interactive, opposition to the bad decision to invade Iraq.
Millions in the US and the world did the same.
But it didn't matter; and Bush lost no sleep on this decision.
Yes, Bush 2 should have sent in federal troops to the Big Easy. That was a no-brainer. Just one media interview with the Big Easy corrupt, brain dead, Mayor Ray Nagin would have convinced anyone that fed. troops were needed.
If a Wall St. bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

The Boston Mayor and Mass. Gov. both claim that there could have been additional terrorists about to engage in evil doing; and the shut-down of the Boston metro. area was a judicious ,cautionary act.

The Boston Mayor and Mass. Gov. both claim that there could have been additional terrorists about to engage in evil doing; and the shut-down of the Boston metro. area was a judicious ,cautionary act.
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Some Senators are calling for the death penalty for the surviving kid terrorist.
If you are opposed to the death penalty, as this poster is, then there must be consistency. No wobbling on this opposition.
Experts on the Sunday AM political shows all concur that the surviving terrorist cannot be tried as an "enemy combatant"..he is a US citizen
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A robot was used to remove the boat tarp. to make the kid terrorist visible.
Kudos to the robot.
Hopefully he/she is paid a living wage; and was given some ice cream and cake.
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Ok, I understand how preventing backpacks, bags etc among the finishing line crowd would not be feasible.
But how about detectors, scanning every bag/backpack as the spectators lined up?

"..When it is harder to obtain a library card than it is to buy a gun in this country, something is terribly wrong.." Tony Bennett

"..When it is harder to obtain a library card than it is to buy a gun in this country, something is terribly wrong.."
Tony Bennett
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-bennett/tony-bennett-gun-control_b_3112398.html

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Spot on, Tony.
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(..DENVER — Gunfire erupted at a Denver pot celebration Saturday, injuring
two people and scattering a crowd of thousands who had gathered for the
first 4/20 counterculture holiday since the state legalized marijuana....)
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/20/shots-fired-denver_n_3124744.html

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Are we in the first stages of a violent civil war?
POTUS Obama's 2nd term may have him obtaining no Congressional victories of any magnitude.
But he could spend spend most of his time at services for victims of violence.

A few random ruminations on the Boston tragedy from a tattered nonentity.

A few random ruminations on the Boston tragedy from a tattered nonentity.
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"...Arkansas State Rep. Nate Bell (R) sent out an insensitive tweet Friday morning amid breaking news surrounding the Boston bomber manhunt.
Bell brought the topic of gun control into the mix when he tweeted:
"I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes
wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A— Nate Bell (@NateBell4AR) April 19, 2013"
The problem with tweets is that so many human plankton, under-medicated whackjobs, twits can tweet anything, at anytime.
For example, Tsarnaey, the younger bomber caught in the boat last tweeted on Tuesday night:
"I'm a stress free kind of guy."
Right, and Justin Bieber is an adult.
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As Tsarnaey recovers in the hospital, he should be presented with a bill from the Boston city and region to cover the cost of the shut-down and the security forces..perhaps a billion or so.
“Boston and the entire area of Massachusetts around it represents a
billion-dollar-a-day economy,” Jim Diffley, chief regional economist at
research firm IHS said. “If everything stops, then you can think of it
as a billion-dollar loss...."
He could arrange a restitution plan of $10 dollars a month from his prison job, for the remainder of his life.
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That raises the issue of the death penalty.
Mass. has no death penalty, if he is tried at the local level.
But the feds. do have the penalty if he is tried thru DC; and is considered an enemy combatant.
If one is opposed to the death penalty, as I am, then the position needs to be consistent...without wobbling.
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NBC and Brian Williams did a superb job last night. Kudos to the non-cable network.
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Why were backpacks, bags allowed to be carried in to the Marathon finish line?
I believe these cannot be brought into a ball park, basketball arena etc.
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Surveillance cameras are everywhere, and can capture every move we make outdoors.
The Google map can show us walking from our house to the driveway.
It is these cameras that nailed the bombers.
If you are an evildoer, then surveillance by government,security forces are good.
If you are not engaged in evil doing, should we care if cameras are ubiquitous,everywhere?
I really do care, and I'm not an evildoer.
The bomber brothers apparently thought they were invisible men able to ignore public surveillance technology.
How dumb is that?
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Some reports have said that the brothers placed one of the bombs in front of the Russian flag at the Marathon finish line.
Haven't been able to confirm this as yet.
If true, this could be evidence that the brothers wanted a terrorist attack against Putin and Russia, and were able to pull it off in Boston.
The brothers are originally from Russia region near Chechnya, Chechnya nationalists have been fighting Russia for independence for 20 years.
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Was the security response, especially the Boston shut-down and the total number of security personnel, an overkill?
I certainly believe so at the finale at the Watertown boat capture.
The military helicopter infra-red technology had already spotted the bloody kid under the boat's tarp.
Having hundreds of security converge on the scene was an overkill.
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The aftermath of each of these terrorist episodes produces a fear that diminishes our civil liberties.
The security forces did a super job, no question.
But as NBC cameras showed the residents of Watertown cheering every security car that pulled out after the capture, the residents reactions are understandable.
But one also senses that such fear,such terrorism, can easily create conditions that would allow citizens to welcome a police state.

"..Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear capable of supporting life and that orbit a star 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra...."

"..Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear capable of supporting life and that orbit a star 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra...."
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/two-promising-places-to-live-1-200-light-years-from-earth-356091
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Sure those isolated academic astronomers can invite us to plan our next vacation in the north of Lyra.
And getting there could be safer than taking a Carnival cruise vacation.

But what those esteemed astronomers don't tell us is whether Lyra would have take out pizza; cell phone service; satellite dishes; the ability to take in a Lady Gaga concert; CSpan cameras showing an empty US Senate chamber(which most believe is better than having Senators voting on the floor);cars, hopefully the driver-less kind that make parallel parks; or highway driving circles.
If Lyra has none of these, it's not worth going.

Rather than traveling to Lyra, young mothers to be would do better to enroll in a diaperless baby course...the new fad sweeping the country, or at least the wealthy upper Manhattan west side.
The appeal of this diaperless movement is that it would eliminate disposable diapers; diaper rash; and the laundering of cloth diapers.
I enjoyed the description of diaper-less baby mothers having their babies pee between two parked cars.
And I would imagine the mothers of diaper-less babies would have to carry baby scoopers when out in public.
Would restaurants allow this?
Would this be allowed on Lyra?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/nyregion/babys-latest-going-diaperless-at-home-or-even-in-the-park.html?_r=0

Two promising places to live, 1,200 light-years from Earth

www.ndtv.com

Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear capable of supporting life and that orbit a star 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra.

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