Yostivanich

“Talk about putting a tar­get on the back of a Fox News anchor. A shout-out from the hated Times op-ed page? Things only got worse for Smith over the week­end when the Times’ Frank Rich also sin­gled out the Fox News anchor for praise. I mean, c’mon. Were Krug­man and Rich try­ing to get the guy fired?!” No it’s not big enough.

“The num­ber of new houses started in the US rebounded in May from April’s record low, the Com­merce Depart­ment has said. Hous­ing starts jumped 17.2% to a sea­son­ally adjusted annual rate of 532,000 units in May, up from April’s fig­ure of 454,000. How­ever, the rate was still down 45.2% from May 2008. Also on Tues­day, the Fed­eral Reserve said indus­trial pro­duc­tion fell 1.1% in May from April, which was worse than had been expected.” Some what good news.

What’s the worse ad you could think up, this has to be worse.

“A man who spent eight years in jail for a mur­der he did not com­mit has crit­i­cised the British jus­tice sys­tem after return­ing to his home in Grimsby.” I would be upset too.

“Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, under grow­ing crit­i­cism for not seek­ing to end the ban on openly gay men and women in the mil­i­tary, is extend­ing ben­e­fits to same-sex part­ners of fed­eral employ­ees. Obama plans to announce his deci­sion on Wednes­day in the Oval Office, a White House offi­cial said Tues­day. The offi­cial spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because the pres­i­dent hadn’t yet signed the pres­i­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum.” Try­ing to please the lgbqt community.

“US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is resist­ing pres­sure to side with Iran’s oppo­si­tion as mass protests con­tinue over the nation’s dis­puted pres­i­den­tial poll. In a TV inter­view Mr Obama said there might not be much dif­fer­ence between the poli­cies of Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad and rival Mir Hos­sein Mousavi. Mr Mousavi’s sup­port­ers have con­tin­ued street protests despite the threat of gov­ern­ment force and ear­lier blood­shed.” Don’t agree how­ever one com­ment in the arti­cle makes it make more sense. “The BBC’s Justin Webb, in Wash­ing­ton, says Mr Obama is wary of the US becom­ing sucked into a protest move­ment in favour of Mr Mousavi, par­tic­u­larly as some intel­li­gence reports sug­gest that Mr Ahmadine­jad might have gen­uinely won the election.”

“The writer claims that @change_for_Iran, @persiankiwi, @stopahmadi and oth­ers are fake accounts cre­ated in Israel. The six points he uses to back up the claim are pathetic.” Logic is so hard for some people.

“Gen­eral Motors has reached a ten­ta­tive agree­ment to sell Saab to the Swedish sports car man­u­fac­turer Koenigsegg.” And GM gets a cool $600 million.

“The US leader played down Arab anger over the terms Mr Netanyahu laid out in a major pol­icy speech on Sun­day. But Mr Obama again demanded an end to Israeli set­tle­ment activ­ity, over which he and Mr Netanyahu have locked horns.” The speech basi­cally said that Israel would rec­og­nize a Palesti­nen­ian state if it was demilitarized.

“For­mer US Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter has said he had to “hold back tears” while view­ing destruc­tion on a visit to Gaza. He is due to meet lead­ers from Hamas, which con­trols Gaza but is con­sid­ered a ter­ror­ist group by west­ern coun­tries. The vet­eran politi­cian is expected to hand over a let­ter for cap­tured Israeli sol­dier Gilad Shalit from his family.”

“The UN has warned that it has run out of food to pro­vide for nine mil­lion Ethiopi­ans who rely on its assis­tance. A UN spokesman told the BBC the port of Dji­bouti was seri­ously con­gested and there was lit­tle prospect of sup­plies arriv­ing for the next five months.”

“This was such a fun project — this is what users of Inter­net Explorer 6 see when they visit Momen­tile.” Best ever.

What????

“Polic­ing games in Eng­land and Wales cost £8m a year, offi­cers told MPs, and the con­tri­bu­tion from clubs was “incon­sis­tent” with the costs involved.” At that amount I would be want­ing the busi­nesses to start cov­er­ing my costs.

“This Inter­net scut­tle­butt is false. Grad­u­at­ing mid­ship­men have gone with­out swords at grad­u­a­tion for decades, even when Bush and Cheney spoke.” Do peo­ple even believe this sort of stuff.

“US sen­a­tor John Ensign, con­sid­ered a ris­ing star in the Repub­li­can Party, has admit­ted to an extra-marital affair with a mem­ber of his cam­paign staff.” That knocked his star down a lit­tle bit.

“A con­tract has been signed at the Paris air show that will lead to the devel­op­ment of a remark­able space­craft to test re-entry tech­nolo­gies.” So cool.

“A fed­eral judge in Man­hat­tan said on Tues­day that he would prob­a­bly allow two mil­i­tary lawyers to help defend a for­mer Guan­tá­namo detainee who was ordered by Pres­i­dent Obama to face trial in a civil­ian court. The detainee, Ahmed Khal­fan Ghailani, has been charged with assist­ing in the 1998 bomb­ing of the Amer­i­can Embassy in Tan­za­nia, which killed 11 peo­ple and wounded scores. He would also have at least two civil­ian lawyers, one with expe­ri­ence in death penalty cases, the judge said.”

“Yet on Mon­day after­noon, a 27-year-old State Depart­ment offi­cial, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twit­ter with an unusual request: delay sched­uled main­te­nance of its global net­work, which would have cut off ser­vice while Ira­ni­ans were using Twit­ter to swap infor­ma­tion and inform the out­side world about the mush­room­ing protests around Tehran. The request, made to Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media mile­stone: the recog­ni­tion by the United States gov­ern­ment that an Inter­net blog­ging ser­vice that did not exist four years ago has the poten­tial to change his­tory in an ancient Islamic coun­try.” I’m right now so proud of our government.