bigmagic’s posterous

Andy Borowitz: Gingrich: Pelosi Not Good Enough Liar to be Speaker

The former Speaker issued the following ultimatum to Rep. Pelosi: "She needs to get better at lying, or step down."

Mr. Gingrich offered a brutal, blow-by-blow criticism of the House Speaker's lying technique, which he said consists of "pauses, ums and uhs, stuttering - all the hallmarks of an amateur."

In contrast, he said, "When I was in her chair my lying was as smooth as a baby's bottom."

He added that if Rep. Pelosi is serious about remaining in her position, he would be "more than willing" to give her lying lessons.

"Being a good liar requires practice," Mr. Gingrich said. "Fortunately for me, I've had years of practice lying to my many wives."

More via huffingtonpost.com

He's good.

Internet data heads for 500bn gigabytes | Business | guardian.co.uk

At 487bn gigabytes (GB), if the world's rapidly expanding digital content were printed and bound into books it would form a stack that would stretch from Earth to Pluto 10 times. As more people join the digital tribe – increasingly through internet-enabled mobile phones – the world's digital output is increasing at such a rate that those stacks of books are rising quicker than Nasa's fastest space rocket.

The large files from digital cameras and the world's burgeoning army of surveillance cameras account for a significant proportion of the digital universe. The rapid increase in so-called machine to machine communications – such as when an Oyster card is touched on a reader or a satellite navigation system requests information about its location – has seen the number of individual digital creation events balloon, despite the economic recession.

The digital universe is expected to double in size over the next 18 months, according to the latest research from technology consultancy IDC and sponsored by IT firm EMC, fuelled by a rise in the number of mobile phones. At the time of their first Digital Universe report in 2007, the pair reckoned the world's total digital content was 161bn gigabytes.

More via guardian.co.uk

OK, so, from the dawn of time until 2007 we've stuffed 161bn GB of data into the Intertubes. Now, 161bn GB is really, really big, but to go from 161-487bn GB in TWO YEARS! Wow.

When the Cheney family singers give the full-throated chorus of "Ticking Time Bombs" and "Keeping Us Safe" (conveniently forgetting that little incident on 9-11-2001) it's wise to know exactly what they were really after when they were torturing anyone who crossed their path.

..what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

More via tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com including a video from the Rachel Maddow Show - about 12mins but well worth it.

The drip, drip, drip of evidence against Darth Cheney continues. This frantic round of interviews is only supplying the rope he'll hang himself with. Next up, who ordered the destruction of the CIA torture tapes? Any guesses?

Um.. And Larry's not a big fan of Richard Bruce Cheney.

This is a excerpt from a piece by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Hmm... Maybe there's a limit to this Internet thingie!

...the next factor we need to look at is bandwidth. Here, the physical limits are imposed by the electromagnetic spectrum. I don't think we're likely to get much more than a terabit per second of bandwidth out of any channel, be it wireless or a fibre-optic cable, because once you get into soft X-rays your network card becomes indistinguishable from a death ray.

Charlie's Diary: LOGIN 2009 keynote: gaming in the world of 2030 (from Charlie Stross)

More via antipope.org

h/t Brad DeLong

Computer-nerd alert!

Although, it might be cool to have a laptop/deathray. Sure would clear out those crowded Internet cafes!

The Cheney-Bush-Rethugliclown-Conservative legacy lives on...

I just got back from New Orleans and, while it's come a long way back, it's still got a very long way to go. The well-traveled areas are looking pretty good, though there are notable gaps of distressed properties, and the high-and-dry (aka unaffected by flood) areas seem to be fully back. But the worst hit areas are still filled with abandoned, wrecked properties and very little local infrastructure (stores, other retail businesses). The burden on New Orleans to put itself back together is a titanic struggle that they can't do alone. Many people are helping but there's so much more to do. I had the opportunity to visit the "ground zero" area for the breach of the flood wall in the Lower 9th Ward and see the rebuilding effort started by Brad Pitt and his "Make It Right" foundation. Very impressive, forward thinking residential developments and they're having a huge effect on a neighborhood that was utterly destroyed but, again, it's not nearly enough. Read on.

Leaving the Trailers - Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing

Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned “Katrina cottages” has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings.

Nonetheless, FEMA wants its trailers back, even though it plans to scrap or sell them for a fraction of what it paid for them.

More via nytimes.com

The GOPosaurus (politicus loserus) is the star on the DNC version of "Survivor". Hilarious.

From The Plum Line – Greg Sargent’s Politics Blog on whorunsgov.com