Julian Englis
Julian Englis's JournalSite selling racist Obama stickers shut down
Source: WFAA.com
One day after News 8 reported a web site selling racist bumper stickers about President Obama, the site has disappeared.
It was in part because of the efforts of two men who work in the same office, and stay in touch on Facebook.
Matt Houston and Ben Goerz office next to each other at the same company. Thursday, they didn't even see each other. But they teamed up on Facebook to put a dent in racism.
Matt spotted a Facebook page for "Stumpy's Stickers" and saw its racist bumper stickers using the 'N-word' in connection with President Obama. He posted a comment on Facebook.
Read more: http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Stickers-Stopped-142998395.html
I found about these sticker by way of this thread on DU: http://www.democraticunderground.com/125122521
A quick Google search and I found the story.
The good news is that this shows the power of social media and human decency. The bad news is that I thought these sort this sort of hate was a thing of the past but learned otherwise. Still, good people made some progress against the evil of racism, albeit in a small way.
Here the url for the Google cache of the website that was shut down:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:viXPmUIL4hQJ:www.stumpysstickers.com/+stumpy%27s+stickers&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Rahm Emanuel to Romney: ‘If You Can’t Stand up to Rush, How Are You Going to Stand up to Russia?
Source: ABC News
Mitt Romney, in his bid to retake the momentum in the Republican primary from Rick Santorum with a win next week in Illinois, arrives in Chicago on Friday. But the city’s mayor – and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel - couldn’t wait to rip into the GOP front-runner, saying Romney lacked “the fortitude, strength or character” to serve in the Oval Office.
“Now I’m not going to give advice to Republicans. They don’t take it and I don’t want to give it. They’ll make whatever decision they want to make,” Emanuel said at an event Thursday morning in Chicago. “You just take a look at the fortitude, the strength, the determination and the vision the president made on the auto industry and juxtapose it to Mitt Romney, who doesn’t have the fortitude, the strength or the character in my view to stand up to Rush Limbaugh. How can he stand up and make a decision to save 1.3 million manufacturing jobs?
“That Oval Office requires vision. That Oval Office requires spine. That Oval Office requires determination and grit. Mitt Romney says, ‘Let it go.’ The president said the American workers are too important to let go, and he doubled down on the American workers. When a decision comes to the Oval Office, who’s got the fortitude, who’s got the grit, who’s got the determination and who’s got the back of the American people and middle-class families? And nothing coming into that Oval Office is easy. It’s not clear. And I think when you see the character, the fortitude and the strength measured up, and the determination to reject conventional wisdom and see around the corner what’s right for the American middle class, people who work every day, play by the rules, you’ll see the difference of the two individuals and their vision for America.”
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/rahm-emanuel-to-romney-if-you-cant-stand-up-to-rush-how-are-you-going-to-stand-up-to-russia/
Rahm "F*cking" Emanuel, is not to be crossed and shows why, as he nails this.
What Isn’t for Sale?
[url=http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isn-8217-t-for-sale/8902/]From the Atlantic, an essay looking at the hidden costs of a society where everything seems to have a price.[/url]
Why worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up for sale?
For two reasons. One is about inequality, the other about corruption. First, consider inequality. In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence—or the lack of it—matters. If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to afford yachts, sports cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities of income and wealth would matter less than they do today. But as money comes to buy more and more, the distribution of income and wealth looms larger.
The second reason we should hesitate to put everything up for sale is more difficult to describe. It is not about inequality and fairness but about the corrosive tendency of markets. Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods; they express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged. Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but might also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction. Hiring foreign mercenaries to fight our wars might spare the lives of our citizens, but might also corrupt the meaning of citizenship.
More at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isn-8217-t-for-sale/8902/
Biden names names; says GOP 'dead wrong' on auto bailout
Source: msnbc
TOLEDO, Ohio -- In the White House's most aggressive singling out of its Republican rivals to date, Vice President Joe Biden slammed Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum by name during his first public campaign event of the 2012 cycle.
Addressing more than 500 union members and supporters at United Auto Workers Local 12 here, Biden touted the administration's backing of the auto industry bailout, saying that the GOP presidential candidates were "dead wrong" in their opposition to the measure.
"Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich," he said. "These guys have a fundamentally different economic philosophy than we do."
He specifically noted Romney's 2008 op-ed entitled "Let Detroit go bankrupt" -- greeted with raucous boos -- as well as Gingrich's labeling of the bailout as a "mistake," and Santorum's statement that the measure catered to Obama's political interests.
Read more: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10702824-biden-names-names-says-gop-dead-wrong-on-auto-bailout
Biden name names of the opposition and demands they are held responsible for their statements to abandon the auto industry for the sake radical ideological purity. This ought to put the GOP on the defensive.
Video of this with a discussion:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/46751000/#46751000
Goldman Stunned by Op-Ed Loses $2.2 Billion
Source: Business Week
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) saw $2.15 billion of its market value wiped out after an employee assailed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein’s management and the firm’s treatment of clients, sparking debate across Wall Street.
The shares dropped 3.4 percent in New York trading yesterday, the third-biggest decline in the 81-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index, after London-based Greg Smith made the accusations in a New York Times op-ed piece.
Smith, who also wrote that he was quitting after 12 years at the company, blamed Blankfein, 57, and President Gary D. Cohn, 51, for a “decline in the firm’s moral fiber.” They responded in a memo to current and former employees, saying that Smith’s assertions don’t reflect the firm’s values, culture or “how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.”
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, 84, whose “Volcker rule” would limit banks like New York-based Goldman Sachs from making bets with their own money, called Smith’s article “a radical, strong” piece. “I’m afraid it’s a business that leads to a lot of conflicts of interest,” Volcker said at a conference in Washington sponsored by the Atlantic.
Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-14/goldman-stunned-by-op-ed-loses-2-dot-2-billion-for-shareholders
Proof that talk is not necessarily cheap. I imagine Mr. Smith has angered several people.
I Didn't Tell Facebook I'm Engaged, So Why Is It Asking About My Fiancé?
A good example on how Facebook mines data from innocuous posts:
The morning began with my typical browsing routine: email, top-reads RSS news feed, a brief scan of Twitter, then Facebook. I found friends wrapping up at SXSW, some chatter about Kony, pictures of new babies, and then I noticed something out of the ordinary in the right hand column:
how well do you know nick smith.png
It's not the first time I've gotten an engagement ring advertisement. But what's this? Facebook is directly asking me to comment on the nature of my relationship to Nick Smith? That's something new. And weird.
Because, as it turns out, Nick Smith and I are engaged.
We contacted Facebook to ask them about what might have happened. A spokesman got back to us right away. First, the placement of the ad and the question was an accident. That is to say, Facebook wanted to show me the ad and it wanted to ask me the question, but the fact that they showed up at the same time was coincidental. Second, I was probably targeted for an engagement ring ad because of some things I posted about our wedding or on the basis that I'm a woman of marrying age. Third, Facebook's spokesman said that my answer to the question about Nick was just for Facebook's social graph, not for advertisers.
More here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/i-didnt-tell-facebook-im-engaged-so-why-is-it-asking-about-my-fianc/254479/
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Member since: Sat Mar 10, 2012, 12:07 AMNumber of posts: 2,309
