if you think the administration can’t get anyworse … along comes bush

this must be one of the most ridiculous parts of tonight’s state of the union speech “President Bush will say “America is addicted to oil” and must develop technologies to address soaring gasoline prices”

this is from Bush says U.S. addicted to oil

well duh.

i guess he is not the smartest but he is also not the quickest. it took him more than 5 years to get to this insight. all the world has been talking about america’s high oil consumption and all he used to say was that we are going to drill for more oil in alaska or that that was just the way it is. and now suddenly he wakes up. amazing.

i won’t say that i am glad to hear it, it will certainly have to be measured but the action the administration takes. if this is just hot air which i assume it is with anecdotes of how the business will save the day then nothing will change. but maybe bush read friedman’s column in the nyt last week … well yes, as if that happens.

slow news week for the right — so let’s bash the nyt

worldviewweekend.com, this wonderful bastion of crazy religious propaganda has a column today by dr. dennis wright on the new york times: The New York Times Blasts the President, Or,Why Should Anyone Listen to a Dinosaur?. well first that is interesting punctuation and also it is probably not really a column by mr wright but more of a collection of quotes by some of in his view excellent journalists, like michelle malkin and david yerushalmi, who writes for the specter.

amazingly mr wright even mentions that ms malking writes for the new york post, because he uses one of her ny post quotes. well post vs times (if this was washington i would be ok with this but ny?)

the column is the general right wing crap about the times being unpatriotic, smearing the president … . here is just one of the part of this column which is just mind-boggling:
“In another example, Malkin records that in June, “Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of downed American Airlines Flight 77, blew the whistle on plans by civil liberties zealots to turn Ground Zero in New York into a Blame America monument. On July 29, the Times editorial page, stocked with liberals who snort and stamp whenever their patriotism is questioned, slammed Burlingame and her supporters at Take Back the Memorial as “un-American” – for exercising their free-speech rights.””
just like in the rest mr wright doesn’t really make a point, he just points out pseudo facts from others that don’t really have a point either and have no substance to it.

or this part:
““Yes, ‘un-American.’ This from a newspaper that smeared female interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as ‘sex workers,’ sympathetically portrayed military deserters as ‘un-volunteers,’ apologized for terror suspects and illegal aliens at every turn, enabled the Bush Derangement Syndrome-driven crusade of the lying Joe Wilson, and recklessly endangered national security by publishing illegally obtained information about classified counterterrorism programs.””
well first of all pieces are taking completely out of context like the sex workers part and then assertions are being made like “the lying Joe Wilson” … has he lied, yes he probably has, just like anybody else in this world including mr wright; has he lied about the issue at hand back when a decision about war in iraq had to be made? — no, he didn’t lie instead he told the truth which, if listened to could have saved more than 2000 american lives.

the he brings up the wire tapping issue and says that “David Yerushalmi reports that much has transpired since the existence of the secret electronic surveillance program was reported. “The most important of which is a Justice Department investigation into the identity of the person or persons who provided this information to the Times.” and goes on to say “On its editorial pages, the Times argues that ‘[i]llegal spying and torture need to be investigated, not whistle-blowers and newspapers.’ The Times editorial should be understood for what it is: an attempt to lobby the public and government officials against a federal indictment charging the Times management…”
this is just amazing. so the president is committing a crime, which even republicans have admitted this wiretapping business was, and the problem we have is an illegal whistle blower? give me a break.

what is especially ironic in a way is that in the end wright concludes in saying “I suppose that as times change, the Times does not change very much at all! Why should anyone listen to a dinosaur? They shouldn’t.” that from the people who think that dinosaurs roamed the world in the last 6000 years together with men, which more or less makes you wonder if you shouldn’t listen to the nyt dinosaur why on earth should you listen to the much older dinosaur the bible?

it is amazing that anyone can take this stuff serious.

the administration seems to have zero imagination

these seems to be a story that was reported but only on the back pages, while it should have been front page news, like it was at TPMCafe: A New Intelligence Failure?

“If she [Rice] is saying that the no one at the CIA, the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or the Defense Intelligence Agency had a clue that something like this [Hamas winning the Palestinian elections] could happen, we should immediately dismantle the intelligence community and start over. I find it difficult to believe the system is that broken.”

i completely agree. this is just amazing that the administration even has the guts to go out in public and say something like this. they have already messed up a bunch of times and with such an important election happening this administration just assumed that things would stay as they are not even contemplating a win by hamas? if that is the case than this so called mba president should pack his stuff and leave the white house right now because that is not how you can run a company just by one dimensional, simple assumption without even taking into account other views. but then after the big iraq fuck up who expects anything else from these people?

i guess any op-ed quoting the daily show has to be good

today’s paul krugman op-ed A False Balance start off with an interesting story from a recent daily show episode

“Mr. Corddry’s parody of journalists who believe they must be “balanced” even when the truth isn’t balanced continues, alas, to ring true.”

the op ed is about how the press handles the abramoff scandal and tries to paint it as a bipartisan scandal rather than the republican scandal that it really is. which is certainly right, just as watergate was a nixon scandal abramoff a long time republican with close ties to the most conservative and corrupt members of the republican establishment served the ones he was in bed with and not the ones he was fighting (democrats). i guess the interesting thing about abramoff is that he wasn’t your typical lobbyist, because his mission wasn’t so much as to lobby for some special interest like an industry or a association, but in a way he was collecting money for republicans, ok sometimes a bit also went into the pockets of some democrats, but mostly it went to republicans, making him in a way a lobbyist of the republican party.

“So the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It’s not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade.”

two views on pixar in one new york times — one right one wrong

the nyt has a great article on what makes pixar special in today’s entertainment world: How Pixar Adds a New School of Thought to Disney. unlike most other pieces on the company this one (actually a quite short one) boils down not only how pixar is different from the hollywood business model. and it isn’t just the bland idea that pixar is bringing software development practices to the animation world. this is about creating long term creative relationships that are founded on constant learning among the group.

“… a tightknit company of long-term collaborators who stick together, learn from one another and strive to improve with every production.”

while i can see that this model is hard to replicate within the movie industry there seems to be evidence that some of the most creative and successful collaborators works quite closely together. just take a look at soderbergh and clooney or at tarantino’s production group as well as the weinsteins. while these are all not pixar like environments they are closely nits groups of people that spend much more time together and are able to learn and influence each other.

what is amazing though is that while the times prints this great piece in it’s business section today it also covers the disney-pixar deal in it’s week in review section in which it says “one animation blockbuster after another in recent years has come from Pixar … aided by the innovative use of computer technology.” the problem i have with this is that computers are really just the infrastructure of this company, the creative force and the strength of their story telling are the real reasons pixar has been such a successful company. computer animation is just a means to tell these stories, but not the reason for their success.

oil at $262 a barrel

i guess this cnn/fortune story on prediction of the price of oil from soros and bill browder fits quite well with the thomas friedman new york times op-ed from yesterday on the need for conservation. in the story Ready for $262/barrel oil? they talk about two presentations the two investors gave at davos. with a worst case scenario of:

“The fall of the House of Saud seems the most far-fetched of the six possibilities, and it’s the one that generates that $262 a barrel.”

and some other scenarios that lead to lower oil prices.

“Other outcomes include an embargo by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez ($111 a barrel), civil war in Nigeria ($98 a barrel), unrest and violence in Algeria ($79 a barrel) and major attacks on infrastructure by the insurgency in Iraq ($88 a barrel).”

soros clearly points the finger at bush, pointing out that “‘U.S. power and influence has declined precipitously because of Iraq and the war on terror and that creates an incentive for anyone who wants to make trouble to go ahead and make it.’” and that next to iran, russia is the main trouble spot in the world for rising oil prices.

while $262 might be a bit excessive although not completely unrealistic in today’s world, even $88 should be a reason for concern and make the bush administrations talk about how conservation is bad for the economy just plain crap. $88 for oil for a longer time is bad for the economy. and the worst is that the bush administration has been talking about energy policy pretty much from day of since they have been in office, but the only thing they have achieved is that the US is more dependent on oil and oil prices are only going up. this is especially amazing with most of the members of the administration coming from the oil industry which would mean that if they had been smart and opened their eyes while in the industry they should have seen these trends coming — like for example that china is going to increase its oil needs, this is not something that happens out of the blue.

mobile carriers don’t get it — again

gizmodo has a brief story about the recent mobile adult content conference that took place in miami … Verizon Says Fat Chance to Cellphone Porn. and the headline of the story points out exactly where the big carriers go wrong.

“In the end, however, the key to this type of technology really lies on whether providers will offer direct billing to their cellphones—and that seems the be a sticking point with companies like Verizon. As Jeffrey Nelson of Verizon Wireless said, As my grandmother would have said, “fat chance.””

i don’t know who they think they are, but do they think they (the US carriers) are that much better than the european ones? why do they think vodafone is offering mobile adult content? not because they are sleazy, but because they are a business and a smart one too. if companies like verizon really think that every mobile content has to go through them, they are mistaken. in the past people had to go through aol to get to online content, but with the open internet that became history. in the mobile phone space it will happen too. all those mobile carrier portals are nice, but in the end it is the content that i want to access that i will access — mobile carrier or not. and yes billing through a carrier would be nice but there are alternatives like credit card payments, similar to the ones used on the internet.

another problem with this view is that verizon might say this now, but what happens if virgin mobile is offering it in a couple of months and then t-mobile follow, cingular falls in line, then i want to see jeffrey again telling us fat chance. the problem is that these guys don’t understand that they are infrastructure, and i don’t go on the internet or mobile internet because of the internet but because of content and if users don’t get the content they want on the carrier portal they will go somewhere else. already i find googles personalized mobile portal way more useful than cingular’s and i never go to the cingular home page … carriers have to wake up to this reality and this is not only a question of adult content, but any kind of content.

the wonderful world of thomas friedman

State of the Union is thomas friedman’s new column in today’s times. in it he writes up the state of the union speech he would like to hear — well to be honest many americans and earthlings would like to hear.

but unfortunately things like…

“Therefore, I propose creating a government agency that will buy up any gas-guzzling car or truck in America at the original new or used price, and crush it. This national buy-back program will be financed by a $2-a-gallon gasoline tax that will be phased in by 10 cents a month beginning in 2008 — so people know what is coming and start buying fuel-efficient cars right now.”

… just won’t happen, not under this administration, probably not under any US administration. which is too bad because the topic of oil independence is an important one, and would be way more important in the war on terror than wiretapping americans or invading iraq. but this administration has shown many times that they don’t really have a clue what they are doing and that they are still operating with the cold war mind set that they grew up in.

increasing gas tax and forcing car manufacturers to innovate would probably be declared bad for business by this administration, but just look at recent layoff numbers by the companies in detroit and then take into account the aggressive expansion by japanese manufacturers like toyota and such an argument pretty quickly become a joke.

it is quite a problem if an administration is so blinded by their pre set world view that they can’t adjust it to a changing environment.

microsoft attacking the ipod?

businessweek has a story in the new issue The Bug in Microsoft’s Ear which speculates about a possible microsoft mp3 player in order to attack apple’s ipod. now that microsoft is not happy about the ipod is obvious, the whole idea that microsoft would own the digital music standard is going down the drain with the ipod’s dominance. so i guess it would make sense that they are thinking about throwing a ton of money to change this. what was interesting in the story was this:

“So in addition to playing music and videos, a Microsoft device would include games. Microsoft would probably use the Xbox brand to market the gadget.”

this to me just sounds like just another microsoft mistake. yes, let’s top apple and bring out a device that can even play games and has an xbox brand. who outside the gaming world cares about the xbox? the problem with this tactic is that gamers are more tech averse and most of them already have an mp3 player (probably an ipod — the reason why the xbox can connect to the ipod) most of the market out there now left are those users who are less tech averse, so people who will not have a playstation or xbox at home, maybe a dvd player. so to them the xbox will mean nothing. and the gaming function is pretty much irrelevant, we are talking about people who will probably have smaller music collections maybe have a need to radio and satellite radio connection, but not xbox.

at the same time if microsoft thinks a device like that would attract gamers they are probably wrong too. the psp is the gold standard in mobile gaming, but few people will probably give away an ipod because they can listen to music on the psp, the two devices are different one large for gaming the other small for music. a music xbox that also has gaming and would be interesting for games would have to be larger than an ipod (close to the psp) and by doing that becomes uninteresting to the broader market.

so yes, microsoft, please come out with a mediocre mp3 player call it xbox mobile or xbox music, but don’t complain when it doesn’t catch on. and just as the digital music market is not comparable to the pc os market it is also not comparable to the gaming market, since games have a fairly short user life-span while music probably has a 5 to 10 year life-span — meaning people will not just throw away their ipod with all the itunes music they bought just to get and xbox mp3 player to buy all the music again in the wmv format.

new 7 megapixel samsung mobile phone … disguised as a bone

the good guys over at gizmodo have New Pics of Samsung 7.7 MP phone.

i am sorry, but this is horrible, i don’t know who designed this but it is just ugly… large and ugly. i never though it would but this phone makes me think that there will be a time where a phone will have a toaster. samsung had a couple of nicely designed devices on the market (especially in the flat screen tv space) trying to stress that they are the sony of the new millennium. i have never liked their phones that much, they were always a bit on the utilitarian side for me, but this phone just tops anything they have ever done.

there are certainly devices that don’t need to look great, like pcs although that is becoming less and less true as people are taking laptops with them to starbucks and placing their desktops in the living room, but phones are devices that are constantly visible to others and that is why people want to make sure they look good. the thing with mp3 players, and was already true with the original walkman. for this people are willing to pay a premium and also miss out on functionality. but this phone just doesn’t fit. people don’t need a lot of megapixles for the kind of pictures they take with a mobile phone but they want a cool looking phone. oh and yes, i will be proven wrong there will be people who buy this phone, just like people bought those nokia bricks and the rokr, but i hope samsung is not hoping to create a massmarket phone …