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Friday, November 2, 2012

The Daily Drift


Why Transportation Gets Better All The Time, advertisement for Union Carbide, 1947
The world of tomorrow as seen in 1947

Some of our readers today have been in:
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Waterloo, Canada
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Ampang, Malaysia
Odessa, Ukraine
San Jose, Costa Rica
Riga, Latvia
Vancouver, Canada
Roxas, Philippines
Medellin, Colombia
Sursee, Switzerland
Cape Town, South Africa
Manila, Philippines
Melbourne, Australia
Pristina Kosovo
Khulna, Bangladesh
Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
Mogadishu, Somalia
Klang, Malaysia
Ajman, United Arab Emirates
Johannesburg, South Africa

And we were real popular in Turkey today with readers in Ankara, Istanbul, Sisli, Burdur, Diyarbakir and Konya

We would also like to welcome our newest readers in the country of Somalia.

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1570 A tidal wave in the North Sea destroys the sea walls from Holland to Jutland. More than 1,000 people are killed.
1772 The first Committees of Correspondence are formed in Massachusetts under Samuel Adams.
1789 The property of the church in France is taken away by the state.
1841 The second Afghan War begins.
1869 Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok loses his re-election bid in Ellis County, Kan.
1880 James A. Garfield is elected the 20th president of the United States.
1882 Newly elected John Poe replaces Pat Garrett as sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory.
1889 North Dakota is made the 39th state.
1889 South Dakota is made the 40th state.
1892 Lawmen surround outlaws Ned Christie and Arch Wolf near Tahlequah, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). It will take dynamite and a cannon to dislodge the two from their cabin.
1903 London's Daily Mirror newspaper is first published.
1914 Russia declares war with Turkey.
1920 The first radio broadcast in the United States is made from Pittsburgh.
1921 Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett form the American Birth Control League.
1923 U.S. Navy aviator H.J. Brown sets new world speed record of 259 mph in a Curtiss racer.
1926 Air Commerce Act is passed, providing federal aid for airlines and airports.
1936 The first high-definition public television transmissions begin from Alexandra Palace in north London by the BBC.
1942 Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrives in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for the invasion of North Africa.
1943 The Battle of Empress Augusta Bay in Bougainville ends in U.S. Navy victory over Japan.
1947 Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose flies for the first and last time.
1948 Harry S Truman is elected the 33rd president of the United States.
1959 Charles Van Doren confesses that the TV quiz show "21" is fixed and that he had been given the answers to the questions asked him.
1960 A British jury determines that Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence is not obscene.
1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated.
1976 Jimmy (James Earl) Carter elected the 39th president of the United States.
1983 President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.

Non Sequitur


“Glitch” wipes out 1,000 early votes in black FL neighborhood

Always Florida
There was a story over at NBC’s The Grio three days ago noting that at one Florida polling location, in a heavily black neighborhood, the number of people who voted early was suddenly “revised” from 2,945 to 1,942 – that’s a 34% decrease.
At first, polling officials blamed it on a “computer glitch.”  Uh huh.  And what glitch would that be?
The local supervisor of elections (SOE) didn’t inspire a lot of hope when speaking about another, smaller, change to the early voting numbers at another polling location:
African-American senior vote
Broward SOE spokesperson Mary Cooney acknowledged that the Sunday totals were revised, and said she would look into why.
“I can’t tell you definitively now,” Cooney said, “but I queried the person who posts those numbers and the most significant number he told me he changed was an instance where 1050 should have been 1150 — the numbers were transposed.”
He transposed the numbers by hand? And this is how Florida tallies votes?
The Grio followed up on the story the next day, Tuesday of this week, and got a different answer about the 1,000 vote discrepancy: now they’re saying “human error.”
In the future, they’re only going to report the electronic result, which still begs the question of which result is really correct, and what else do they do that might result in human error?  Not to mention, why did they first say it was a computer glitch?
And why is it always Florida?  Why always in a heavily Democratic precinct, and why do the errors always help the other guy?  Remember that Florida is already dealing with a widespread repugican voter fraud scandal.  From my earlier post of a month ago:
We reported last night that a firm doing business with the national repugican cabal and the Romney campaign was being investigated for voter fraud. The firm has done $2.9 million in business with the repugican national cabal this year alone, and another firm run by the same did $80,000 in work for Romney.
Always Florida.

Gingrich email: Obama’s gonna win

Ouch.Then again, Paul Ryan is also looking for another job.
Yesterday, an email was sent out to the Gingrich email list informing people that Obama was going to win and that it was time to start looking at 2016.  Buh bye, Mittens!
The email, titled “What’s really at stake this Tuesday …” came from Gingrich Marketplace and went out to people who’d given their contact information to the Gingrich campaign when the former speaker of the House was still in the presidential race. Bygone candidates, such as Gingrich and Herman Cain, regularly rent out their email address lists to advertisers.
I think a lot of Republicans are writing their “why Mittens lost” emails today.  And a lot of Romney staffers are writing their resumes.  But rest assured the 1% Romney staffers will get another huge bonus after they lose.

New York Mayor Bloomberg endorses Obama


Business Abandons Romney as Bloomberg and The Economist Endorse Obama

Bloomberg wrote:

Romney’s horizontal fibbing on oil drilling

In his campaign speeches yesterday, Mitt Romney was promising that the new technology of “horizontal drilling” would open up new reserves of oil and gas, and allow the US to become energy independent.Like most Romney “facts,” it isn’t true in any meaningful sense of ‘truth’.
Oil drilling

Romney offends another ally: Italy

Mitt Romney has offended yet another important US ally, this time Italy.We learn via AGI, one of the top Italian wire services, that Romney, while speaking yesterday in Roanoke, Virginia had a few choice words for Italy:
Speaking at an campaign rally in Roanoke, Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, took aim at President Obama by citing Greece, Italy and Spain as examples of countries that the U.S. will end up like:
“If you are a big company and are thinking of making a large investment, you have to ask yourself, ‘Is America going down the same road as Greece?’ Are we heading for a great economic crisis like the ones we are seeing in Europe, Italy and Spain, and in other parts of the world?’ If we continue to spend $1 trillion more than we take in, America will find itself on that same road.”
HuffPo reports that the Italians were ticked, and boy are they. I went around and looked at the top Italian papers, and almost all of them have given Romney’s attack on Italy front-page billing.  I speak Italian, almost all of them quote Romney saying “With Obama, we will become like Italy.”  A number of them also used a nasty photo of Romney I’d not seen before.
Now remember, this isn’t the first time Romney has insulted an important US ally.
Romney’s poor management skills weren’t a gaffe, they’re a feature.
Look at his foreign trip. His big chance to prove himself on the world stage. What did Romney do? He offended the British, insulted both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and then desecrated a Polish holy site for good measure. By the time his trip was finished, all three countries were ready for Romney to self-deport asap.
And now we welcome the Italians to the wreckage of foreign relationships that is Hurricane Romney.
Here are several of the front pages from a number of the top Italian papers :
Corriere della Sera
Corriere della Sera
Il Giornale
Il Giornale
Il Messaggero
Il Messaggero
La Repubblica
La Repubblica
La Stampa
La Stampa
Il Gazzettino
Il Gazzettino
Il Resto del Carlino
Il Resto del Carlino
Il Secolo XIX
Il Secolo XIX

Animal Pictures