From CelebTV on YouTube: Carrie Prejean loses her crown for violating her contract, and this time, even pageant boss Donald Trump wants her gone.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger follows Zennie62 on Twitter!
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Ok. As of this writing I have over 3,500 Twitter followers. Normally one follows those with more Twitter followers, unless the Twitter account has quality Twitterers following them; that's true for me. I've learned that such a position attracts the larger Twitterers, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has over 200,000 Twitter followers himself. Now, he's following me!
What? You've got issues with him? Hey, it's Ahhhold, baby! Yah know? Of course I followed him back, which means we're Twitter friends. Very cool. A pipeline to California's governor who has a pipeline to this blogger - nothing to sneeze at. It's prized. It doesn't mean I voted for his initiatives in the last election; I didn't. But truth be told I voted for him twice in the California gubenatorial races starting in 2002.
Why?
Because as a Dem, I felt the California Democrats needed a shakeup, an ass kicking; we'd become a bit too arrogant in our power and forgot then that the party serves the people, not the other way around.
For me, the personal last straw came at a fund raiser I went to a few years back when as a certain big time California Senator player in the party walked by me and as I said "Hello Senator. How are you" told me to, ah, blank off, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Now, I'd never known this person and was just being polite; he walked by at close range. Why he did that, I don't know, and others tell me that's just the way he is. Regardless, I'd had it. That happened to be 2001, the year before the year of the great California recall election. The one that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor's chair and I was one of the Democrats who crossed the voting aisle to make it happen. I figured his democratic wife Maria Shriver would keep him in check, perfectly in the middle, and I was sort of correct.
Ah, governor, leave education alone! Unlike the Pink Floyd song, we do need an education. But seriously, California's economic growth was fueled by its universities. The guvs objective should be to restore the UC system to 90's levels of public funding as a percentage of total funding. Then, Berkeley received over 65 percent of its budget from the government and it was affordable; not any more. We've got to change that.
The Leader
While Schwarzenegger will not go down as the best governor we've had, he will be considered the best leader we've had. There's an idea that California's ungovernorable anyway; I happen to disagree with the idea, but it's a powerful one. The initiative process is seen as the problem, but it's not. The simple fact is the state doesn't take in enough money because after Prop 13's passage in 1978, lowering property taxes to a uniform one percent state wide, our tax revenue has been chronically low relative to need and that emerged as a problem starting after 1987. That's the fact, jack. The problem's not complicated at all.
First, we need about $30 billion from the federal government. Then, we need a two-tiered property tax system: one for businesses at a higher rate and leave the current level for residential structures.
Arnold's Tweets
Ok. What's our gov tweeting about? Have a look:
- Check out this tool from LATimes: http://bit.ly/L2Bph. It is your chance to make the tough budget decisions. Tell me how you do.
- Met with the treasurer and the controller. We need to act to close this $24 bil deficit by June 15 to avoid running out of cash.
- I love public participation so I want to hear your ideas for solving our budget, no matter how radical. Use #myidea4CA.
- I don't want to cut your CalGrant, @heidi_luvs_jery. I hate these cuts. But we can't spend $ we don't have. I welcome creative solutions.
- FresBee Ed Brd ltr today. Submit q's with sub. line "Governor question" to metro@fresnobee.com. @scoopy559 will be tweeting.
- I just met with the mayors for the big cities to talk about how we can work together with the budget and to hear their ideas.
- http://twitpic.com/6xydi - I just went upstairs to talk to the Senate leadership about the need to so what it takes to come to an agreem ...
- http://twitpic.com/6wycj - At Calabasas High School discussing our first-in-the-nation Digital Textbooks Initiative.
- http://twitpic.com/6r6wd - Entering Charles Drew University's commencement ceremony
- Don't forget to tune in to ask me questions at 10:45. www.sacbee.com/live.
- Great question, @deelynn39, but remember the day has 24 hrs. If I couldn't find 1 hr for fitness, I would feel like a loser.
- Thanks for the kind words, @LuvenRN. I'm proud of the nurse ed initiative - nursing is so important for the future of health care.
- Thanks, @BigJiggity. State payroll is actually only abt 10% of GenFund. Biggest expense is education followed by soc services and prisons.
- You shouldn't have to be a secret agent to find out where your tax dollars go. Contracts, etc to be posted on web: http://tiny.cc/B1Xob
- I joined the team to bring FIFA World Cup soccer to U.S. & CA in 2018 or 2022. Let's bring it back to USA http://bit.ly/GmgkW
- Tomorrow I'll be at the SacBee Ed Brd taking questions from readers about the budget. Join in at 10:45 am at http://www.sacbee.com/live/
- Today I checked out a VW Passat with a hydrogen fuel cell. Zero emissions - I can already imagine it on the Hydrogen Hwy.
- Just addressed a joint session of the Legislature to urge them to work with me to prove the pundits wrong and get California back on track.
- Weekly video response to some more of your questions. Good night - have a fantastic weekend. http://bit.ly/15qcKW
- I answered a lot of your questions about the Hummer yesterday in this video: http://bit.ly/hhvPw
A read of the Guvs Tweets reveals that he wants us to know what he's working on. A good use of Twitter. I much prefer this information to knowing that he's brushing his teeth. What's of greatest importance is he wants to see your solutions for solving California's budget problems, "no matter how radical."
Smart cookie. The guv knew I was gonna blog this information, so he followed me. Not bad.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
North Korea: Free Journalists Or Face Military Action
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On YouTube.com
As I write this, video journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to jail for 12 years of hard labor. While they're charged with 'tresspassing" into North Korea during a project where they were reportedly covering the story of the trafficing of women. Interesting that North Korea would not want such a story covered, eh?
I've thought about this and now recall the ideas of my professor Robert Scalapino at Berkeley, who advocated a nuanced way that America could cause this Leninist state to move toward Democracy. But that was 1989; these current moves show a country that has little interest in personal freedom and every interest in power.
Kim Jong-il has assesed the World's economic situation, rightly determined it terrible, and estimated this time was the best to make his move. He wants desperately to be considered the leader of a nuclear power and over the last three weeks alone has made moves that are certainly so provacative as to flirt with the very idea of war.
Why else would he basically kidnap - forget the kangaroo court - Euna Lee and Laura Ling? It was a stupid move to say the least and not just because they're American, but Asian. Kim Jong-il's now managed to piss off everyone not in North Korea, and moved the war clock pretty close to a possible scenario of bombing the hell out of the military installations there, should any harm come to those Americans.
Look, what I think President Obama should do is negotiate with Kim Jong-il even as the U.S. Military and the CIA are planning and executing a strategy of getting Euna Lee and Laura Ling out of jail.
How?
There's got to be a way we can get a radar-invisible helicopter over that area, drop troups in an isolated place nearby at night, shoot anyone who comes to attack them, make way for more troup drops, get over to that prison, break in, and get them. Then as they're out, have the helicopter land, get them on board, and get them out. As they reach altitude, they would be joined by our stealth bombers which would protect them as they fly out and over to South Korea.
Done.
Look. I know this is risky, but frankly I'm totally sick of Kim Jong-il's behavior toward American and the World and North Korea's gone too far. Plus, he's got to answer for interrupting an investigation into female trafficing along his boarders. If Kim Jong-il's trying to test President Obama, he forgets that American citizens will back whatever agressive decision Obama makes.
There's a growing feeling that we're being pushed around because of the perception that our economy's in the tank. First, we had the Somali Pirates, which ended with some casualties but it was necessary. Now this, and it seems miliary action's needed again.
Enough already with North Korea. As The Thing would say, "It's Clobberin' Time!"
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Phil Villapiano holding court
From danfunk on YouTube - "A classic clip from the 2009 Biletnikoff Foundation Charity Golf Tournament, Oakland Raider Legend Phil Villapiano hamming it up with the fans, there was a lot more to it, you had to have been there!"
Friday, June 05, 2009
New Moon | Why Is Twillight / New Moon So Popular?
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YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Sclipo and Viddler
Maybe you all can help me with this. Ok? Here goes. Why is the Twillight Saga so popular? The official trailer for the movie "New Moon" is out and it looks interesting this Trekker's just not feeling it. Especially since the one person who appears to be the baddy is a rastafarian black guy who's about to get it by a guy, "Jake" who turns into a wolf in mid run.
What's that you say? I've got to read the book series Twillight? I guess so; there's four of em. Look, I've seen the book all over the place: on the BART Train, at the gym, in the hand of a passer by. Almost always a woman between the age of 20 and 50; mostly white or Asian in the Bay Area - seldom black. Just an observation. I've only once seen a guy reading the book. Just an observation.
I have to admit I became more interested in this because the author of the Twillight Saga, Stephanie Meyer, came up with this four-book marvel of success out of a crazy dream she had in 2003 about a 17-year-old girl and a studly vampire who loves her but wants to kill her and suck her blood. Moreover, Meyer, reportedly expecting a $10,000 book advance just to pay off her minivan, got a $750,000 deal, and the book series has sold 17 million copies worldwide, has made her a new millionaire, and...wow.
That's great. For that alone, I'm proud of Stephanie. Hugely so.
But why the heck is it so popular?
Last year, Gawker's Alex Carnevale explained that Vanity Fair's James Wolcott "pulled out the stops" in trying to pull together all of the pop-culture referrences that seem to have found their way into Twillight:
"Here's the full list of cultural references from Wolcott's piece: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Vampire Academy, Gossip Girl, The Morganville Vampires, Vampire Kisses, The Vampire Diaries, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Into the Wild, Mary-Louise Parker, Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, Six Feet Under, Harry Potter, Debussy, Rudolf Nureyev, Chris Isaak, Michelangelo, Chopin, Superman, the gays, Sarah Palin, James Dean, David Lynch, Bob Dylan, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, and Brideshead Revisited. An impressive array, to say the least."
Ok. But that's not necessarily a receipe for success as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So I'm using new media to take the question to you: why is the Twillight Saga so popular? Also, when I look at the Vanity Fair photo here:
All I see is the common picture of white American youth plus one African American and one other person of color out of 12 people. Interesting. It's a photo so common it implies anyone who's not "that" need not be at the party for the most part, except as a token. And therein lies the problem for me, specifically.
Why does the Twillight Saga have to be an almost totally white picture of a fantasy? Because Meyer's Mormon and it's her dream? I'm not comfortable with that notion only because I don't know Meyer and admire what she's done. Since I want to like her, I'm afraid to go that route of thinking.
I'm just being honest. I'm just thinking, which I do too much of perhaps. But I just can't accept what's tossed at me chapter and verse. Sorry.
That feeling of racial isolation is a bit bothersome to me, especially as our society becomes ever more integrated. I don't think for a moment most readers of Twillight think about the story in this way as presented in the book. But the movies -- the movies give a different take because they paint the picture for us.
See? Our ability to create a fantasy and install ourselves within it, skin color and all, is taken away. Then here comes Vanity Fair to cement the deal.
The real wildly popular story of an interracial set of as President Obama would say "folks" has yet to be told. But I have the feeling one can't achieve success by setting out to write that story. I suppose some guy, somewhere, will have a dream about a 20-year old African American boy and a space alien in the form of a hot-for-teacher, 40-year old hardbody Asian woman who wants to kill him and take his bones back to some home planet in Orion's Belt, but is so in love with him she winds up...
You get the idea.
Hmmm....
Obama on Iraq, Iran and Israel in Cairo
From the AP: President Barack Obama addressed a wide array of issues, including the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in his address to Muslims in Cairo Thursday. (June 4)
Susan Boyle Released From Hospital; Will Sing For Demi Moore
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Susan Boyle, who's set to perform for President Barack Obama, has been released from Priory Clinic in London, where she was treated for emotional exhaustion, and has been offered $30,000 to sing at Demi Moore's wedding anniversary event in Los Angeles (hey, I thought hubby Ashton Kutcher was supposed to plan this?).
At any rate the American offers are starting to pop up for Boyle. Meanwhile, Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden said on Larry King Live on Tuesday of this week, that the show was not at fault for Boyle's problems stating that the contestants are all "extraordinarily well looked after."
Are you kidding me? Really, Amanda? So why did this happen if that's so? Moreover, I don't think Holden would have come on King's show were it not to do damage control regarding Boyle's horrible treatment. I still think she should have quit early and I said so here:
But maybe, as someone observed on Twitter, (where she's still a hot topic as of this post time) Boyle's coming in second place on BGT was the best thing to happen for her. Perhaps all of this will work out in a sideways fashion. But the big new issue is how people are treated on television. There should be a government review of what happens to new celebrities and what responsibilities TV producers should take, including explaining the risks that come with being on television to those who want to appear on a show, and protecting the persons from harm.
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