US VP Joe Biden doesn't think the Taliban are an enemy to the US. What does that tell you about the current administration? I think it's important to listen carefully and see what words the administration starts using to define friends and foes. Morning Bell: Biden Says Taliban Is Not Our Enemy
On a Saturday in late October in Kabul, Afghanistan, a car carrying explosives rammed into an armored U.S. military bus, killing 13 Americans, including five soldiers and eight civilian staff. In August, a Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans. Who was responsible? The Taliban. And who now says the Taliban is not America’s enemy? Vice President Joseph Biden.
In an interview with Newsweek, Biden laid out his — and the Administration’s view — of the Taliban:
Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.
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It is outlets like this that keep the division between Americans that are more to the center. The line here: "* We're using "scientific" in the Republican sense of the word. So we really mean "made up"..." clearly shows that Reason has no desire to unite Americans. A generalization like this is one of the best ways to alienate people, and Reason is determined to be unReasonable and keep the divide as wide as possible. Democrats are just as guilty of "making up scientific data" as Republicans are, so my advice is to Reason is: find a more credible angle.
Is Amplify not pushing to Posterous anymore?
If Facebook thinks it needs to make my friends get to know me better, I beg to differ. I don't need Facebook trying to find ways to get my friends to know me. I can do that on my own. I like Facebook, I like social media in general. I don't like them trying to figure out how to connect me more than I want to be connected. I don't need Facebook or any other social media company trying to make me a better friend. I don't need more information from my connections, I need to be able to filter the information given better. I don't need to know everything about everyone I am connected with, and I don't need to know what they are doing the instant they do it. If my friends want me know what's up, they will let me know.
Facebook cannot make friendships better than they are. It's up to us as people to do that. And that means communicating directly with each other, not just reading each other's graphs and "liking" things. We are people, not computers. People don't even use the message system on Facebook. Facebook is taking true communication out and replacing it with trivial matter. I like staying connected and getting reconnected with people. I don't like how Facebook has changed how we communicate with each other. There is more to getting to know each other and staying in touch than just the "like" button, or seeing what we post on other friends pages.
Facebook cannot know how to connect me emotionally with my friends, nor can it make me know my friends better than they want me to know them. And Facebook won't make me a better friend.
Facebook stop trying to assimilate us and just provide a solid communication tool. You can't be all things to all people. If you continue to try to be that, it will be your demise. In recent days, rumours have emerged that Facebook will implement one of the biggest changes: the conversion of a user’s profile page into a sort of digital entertainment dashboard. There have been signs of this change coming in the form of rumours of an alliance with Spotify, the launch of video services, such as the rental of Top Gear videos for 48 hours and the streaming of movies like The Dark Knight. |
“The changes Facebook will roll out on Thursday are designed to enhance the emotional connection its users have to each other through Facebook. These changes will make Facebook a place where nearly everything in your life is enhanced by your social graph. These changes will make it so you know your friends better than you ever thought you could. |
When you go out to eat, do you sit around for 20-30 minutes with your friends or family trying to pick from the awesome menu of choices, or lack there of? Is it not part of the ritual? You ask each other about what you will order. It goes back and forth for a few minutes as you look at the menu. Everyone contemplates 2 or 3 dishes that sound good. Some people don't want to order what someone else at the table is ordering, so they wait until all other decisions have been made to make theirs.
It is inevitable this ritual, with technology, will change. We will be ordering our food from our smart phones before we arrive at the restaurant. Decisions will be made before sitting down at the table. Friends will text each other: "What looks good to you", while looking at a menu app from the restaurant. And we will be paying with our smart phones too! QR codes will simplify that process.
The future is here, in San Francisco anyway. "The Melt" restaurant allows you to do just that! It won't be long where we will wax nostalgic about the days of sitting around the table with your friends, contemplating what your meal will be. Read on (comments are welcomed!): SmartPhone To Speed Up Grilled Cheese Orders |
 A new “fast casual” restaurant has opened in San Francisco that takes advantage of smartphones to provide fast delivery of grilled cheese sandwiches. The Melt, who’s owned by Jonathan Kaplan, the man who brought us the Flip camera, has just opened. You can order your meals ahead of time on a smartphone, but they aren’t made until you arrive at the restaurant.
When you place your order on a smartphone you receive a QR code that is then scanned at any of The Melt”s four current locations in the Bay Area. Once the code is scanned the kitchen receives your order and you have the ability to pay from your phone. The idea is to provide hot and fresh meals as quickly as possible.
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This is from an investment firm in Canada! It's quite sad that people in other Countries can see it but half the population in the USA can't. Thomas Caldwell, chairman of Caldwell Securities Ltd., said that despite stronger job numbers in the U.S., the Canadian markets will face trouble in the coming days. |
"I don't think you can hang it on one group of statistics in one time frame. This game isn't over yet," he said. |
Major exchanges and indices in London, Frankfurt and Paris were down during Friday trading, while Japan's Nikkei, Hong Kong's Hang Seng and China's Shanghai Composite Index dropped by more than two per cent each. |
Caldwell blamed the drop on a perceived lack of confidence in the current U.S. political leadership, especially after the near calamitous debt crisis. |
"They never seem to stop running for election, and they should take some time out in America to try to run a good government," Caldwell said. |
I just posted a blog entry at Dadomatic.com. It's my "why" for doing a fitness program. Take a moment to read it. Hopefully I can inspire you to start getting fit, if you are not already doing so. URL: dadomatic.com
This is an interesting "development". I wouldn't expect anything less, really. The fact that they can now openly declare bin Laden is dead gives fuel to their fire. Instead of trying to continue to prop bin Laden up as alive, they can now move forward with electing a new leader.
This confirmation does not appear that they confirm HOW bin Laden died, just that he IS dead. And I happen to believe he's been dead for a long time. The clip below also gives more reason to suspect when bin Laden died because they are seemingly unaware of how bin Laden was "laid to rest" (according to over Government officials). So it seems to me to be a prepared statement they had ready for a moment like this when the US would claim to have killed him.
Al Qaeda has known for a long time that bin Laden was dead. There is an article from an Egyptian newspaper from 2001 with what is more or less an obituary for bin Laden. They have been laying low, waiting for a moment like this where they can reunify under a new leader and continue to terrorize the US and world. It will be interesting to see what Pandora's box this opens. read the clip and then tell me what do you think: The writers of the statement appeared unaware of the announcement by American officials that bin Laden's body had been buried at sea. The statement warned against mishandling or mistreating bin Laden's body and demanded that be handed over to his family, saying "any harm (to the body) will open more doors of evil, and there will be no one to blame but yourselves." |
I am looking forward to April 15th, also known as Tax Day. That is when Part 1 of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand officially makes it to the big screen across the USA. I am not much of one to stand in line for movie premieres. I think the last time I did that was in 1988 for U2's Rattle & Hum here in Montreal. However, I would for this one. Unfortunately the closest it is showing is about 3 hours from me. So I won't be waiting in line for the premiere, but I will be seeing it as soon as I can.
Atlas Shrugged is a classic novel that was written in 1953 but you could swear some of the issues are current day events. Ever since I read the book I have anxiously awaited for it to come to the big screen. I remember reading somewhere online that it was in production, but it seemed like it would be years before release. Time flies!
Will the movie do the novel justice is the big question. David Loeper at Forbes.com writes a review that is encouraging, considering most media outlets probably won't do the movie justice. I've clipped parts of it for you to read here: Atlas Shrugged Can Be Seen On The Big Screen And In Today’s Society |
Atlas Shrugged Part 1- A movie every investor should see |
For those unaware of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it is a novel that has profoundly moved millions of readers. It is one of the top selling novels of the 20th century, still selling nearly a half million copies every year and currently in the top 100 books on Amazon.com more than fifty years after its original release. Fans have waited decades for the message of Atlas Shrugged to reach an audience broader than those willing to tackle the 1,200 page epic novel, and this film is primed to do just that. |
The main concern for most fans of the novel has been whether or not the film would remain true to Rand’s original premises. Thankfully, it does. However, the producers wisely set the movie a few years into the future, allowing the situations and characters to appeal to the broader target audience. Readers of the novel have often labeled Rand’s work “prescient” because of the parallels currently playing out in today’s society, and setting the movie back in time as the book was written would have resulted in a loss of this overall perspective. |
Atlas Shrugged is about men that use their objective minds to create and produce in honest and morally ethical trade with one another (released in 1957, at the time the term “men” included women; the heroine in the movie is a woman, Dagny Taggert). In both the book and the film, Washington bureaucrats seize private property for “the common good.” Let’s see, who owns GM and AIG? Oh…that’s right–our government. They confiscated money from productive people and used for what they claim is the “common good.” |
In the film, each crisis is an opportunity for Washington bureaucrats to gain more power. If that doesn’t qualify as a parallel to what we are witnessing today, perhaps nothing does. |
There is probably no better–or more important–time in our lives for this film to be released. Longtime fans of Rand will love how true the movie stays to Rand’s premises, and Part I will leave those new to the story wondering why all the productive people are vanishing. They will be motivated to either dive into the novel, come to Part II (which, according to the producer, is planned for release on next year’s tax day), or both. |
The cinematography and acting are both strong, but as with any film, one’s opinion of how it could have been improved is filled with all the perspective of a Monday morning quarterback. Mainstream critics will likely focus on these aspects of Atlas Shrugged Part I while completely missing or ignoring the actual message of this important work, which is expertly conveyed. |
If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth spending the eleven or so minutes (for the US audience anyway). James O'Keefe, the journalist that went under cover to expose Planned Parenthood, has done it again. In this under cover video, O'Keefe exposes two top level NPR executives. After seeing this, tell me where you stand on the public funding of NPR. Does the American public continue to fund through taxes or not? As you’ve most likely heard by now, two young investigative journalists trained by my organization, The Project Veritas, went incognito and filmed two top level NPR executives, Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley, blasting Republicans, Tea Partiers, middle America, Jews, and Christians. |
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