AP photographer Alex Brandon caught a shot of Senator Al Franken sketching Senator Jeff Sessions yesterday during the Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Elena Kegan.
It looks like three buildings with a ship stuck on tip. From Wikipedia,
Marina Bay Sands is an integrated resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. Developed by Las Vegas Sands, it is billed as the world’s most expensive standalone casino property at S$8 billion (US$5.7 billion), including cost of the prime land.
The resort features a 2,560-room hotel, 120,000 sq-meter convention-exhibition center, The Shoppes mall, six restaurants, an Art & Science museum, two Sands Theatres, two floating pavilions, a casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines. The complex is topped by a 340m-long SkyPark with a capacity of 3,900 people and a a 150m swimming pool, set on top of the world’s largest public cantilevered platform, which overhangs the north tower by 67m. The 51-acre resort was designed by Moshe Safdie.
The resort was officially opened with a 2-day celebration on 23 June 2010 at 3.18 pm, after a partial opening earlier in April. The museum, theatres and floating pavilions are still being built and are expected to be fully completed by December 2010.
How sick is this. Toru Iwatani, original creator of the Pac-Man game was visiting Holland for their Festival Of Games exhibition. And while he was there, he brought along a special folder. (Click to enlarge) via bleedingcool
There has been a lot of buzz over the past couple of days on Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece, “The Third Depression.” If you haven’t read it, check it out.
24/7 Wall St. has published their 2011 list of brand that will disappear. Some of these, especially BP and Blockbuster seem really obvious. Frankly their past predictions don’t give them the best track record. Last year they predicted that HP, Gap and Borders would fold. They did predict Sun Microsystems would get it. Sun’s brand has really feels diminished since it was acquired by Oracle. If anything their analysis of each of these brands is interesting.
Life imitates art. It’s A Day Without a Mexican comes to life. Arizona Central reports that “Arizona’s illegal immigrants departure affecting businesses.” These are hard lessons for stupid right-wingers cowering in irrational fear. Let’s just see what happens when undocumented immigrants are chased away. Arizona is getting economic lessons on many fronts.
Here are some excerpts from the story with my emphases and /*comments*/.
Luis Sanchez and Marlen Ramirez, undocumented immigrants from Mexico, packed up and moved to Pennsylvania this month, taking their three U.S. citizen children with them.
Many will cheer their departure, saying it’s a sign that Arizona’s new immigration law, which hasn’t taken effect yet, is driving out illegal immigrants and potentially saving the state money. But not everyone is pleased over the exodus of Latinos, both legal and illegal, saying their flight from Arizona could hurt businesses, schools and neighborhoods.
“It’s basically running us out of business,” said Rollie Rankin, 62, of Peoria, who owns several apartment buildings in Surprise, including the one where Sanchez and Ramirez lived with their children. Most of his renters are from Mexico, though Rankin does not ask about their immigration status.
Rankin said seven families have moved since Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 on April 23. The families told Rankin they were leaving because of the law. Four of the families moved to Pennsylvania, among them Sanchez and Ramirez and their three children. Another family moved to Tennessee. Two other families moved to Mexico, Rankin said.
…
Supporters say their departure will save the state money because taxpayers won’t have to cover the cost of education or social services for their children, /* While ignoring the cost that this will have to the state in lost tax revenue and economic stimulation. Signature right-wing miopia. You would think these people had only taken high school economics. Oh wait. */ including those of Sanchez and Ramirez, who were on the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s health-care program for indigents. But the effect of illegal immigrants leaving Arizona is not that clear-cut.
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Latinos represent a huge and fast-growing market. About one in three people in Arizona is Latino, and about 40 percent are 17 or younger. In Arizona, Latinos accounted for 16 percent of all purchases in the state, or $31 billion in spending, according to a report by the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
…
Rankin said he is having trouble renting the empty apartments because many families are waiting to see if the law survives legal challenges. If the law takes effect on July 29, he expects more families to move out.
Rankin said the law comes just as the housing market was starting to improve. He bought seven four-unit buildings in 2001. He lost one building to foreclosure in May and another at the beginning of June. He fears he will lose more buildings if he keeps losing renters and can’t pay the mortgage.
“We are probably going to lose the whole thing,” Rankin said.
Throughout the neighborhood, many businesses that cater to Latino immigrants also are taking a hit.
Gloria Mayorja, 65, of Peoria, goes door to door selling homemade churros. She was selling 140 a day before Brewer signed the law. Now, she is selling only 50 or 60.
“People are leaving, so they don’t want to spend any more money,” Mayorja said.
Kim Nuu, manager of a 99-cent store on Dysart Road in Surprise, said most of his customers are Latino immigrants. Sales are way down.
“In December, we are closing,” he said. “We aren’t making enough money to pay rent. I don’t know why, but business is slow.”
…
But low-skilled legal workers also consume more in services than they pay for in taxes, she said. If anything, she said, replacing illegal workers may increase government costs because legal workers are entitled to social services that illegal immigrants don’t qualify for. /* This is at the heart of this asinine argument the Stupids make about undocumented immigrants consuming social services which is total bunk. Typically all they take is public education which is a net lower cost than their contribution to the tax base, even if paid indirectly through rents or directly through sales taxes. */
After endorsing, along with Obama, victorious establishment candidate Senator Blanche Lincoln in his home state of Arkansas, Bill Clinton has stepped into the Colorado race by endorsing Andrew Romanoff’s primary challenge to appointed incumbent Senator Michael Bennett. Keep in mind that Obama endorsed Bennett.
Here is Clinton’s blast email.
June 29, 2010
Dear James,
I first met Andrew Romanoff in 1992, when he was a student at the Kennedy School of Government and I was a candidate for President. Four years later, I was running for a second term, and he had just been elected to his first — as one of Colorado’s representatives on the Democratic National Committee.
I was proud to carry Colorado in 1992, but you should be even prouder of what Andrew Romanoff did to turn the state blue. He worked harder than anyone in Colorado to put Democrats in positions of power — and to use that power to benefit every single citizen.
Andrew led the effort to win a majority in the Colorado House of Representatives for the first time in 30 years, and to keep that majority for the first time in more than 40 years. He built the largest Democratic majority since John F. Kennedy was President.
Even more important, Andrew took on Colorado’s biggest challenges and made enormous progress. As the first Democratic Speaker of the House since 1976, he:
- Put together an Economic Recovery Plan to bring good jobs to Colorado and balance the state budget.
- Passed the largest investment in school construction in state history — a billion-dollar plan to repair, rebuild and modernize schools, especially in rural Colorado.
- Protected Coloradans from the threats they face every day: insurers who deny their claims and refuse to honor their policies, scam artists who prey on seniors and bilk them out of their life savings, polluters who destroy the environment and expect somebody else to pay for the damages.
Andrew won. Colorado won.
In 2008, the editors of Governing Magazine honored Andrew as “Public Official of the Year.” They recognized in Andrew the same qualities that the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, and more than 50 other organizations had already seen — integrity, courage, compassion. Simply put, Andrew Romanoff is one of the best legislative leaders in the United States.
Colorado is far better off today because of Andrew Romanoff’s leadership. America will be too.
As a Senator, Andrew Romanoff will continue to stand up to special interests and fight for working families. We need Andrew’s leadership in Washington — especially now, when so many Americans are losing so much. “It is not enough,” as Andrew put it at the Colorado Democratic Assembly last month, “to put a President of real talent and vision and leadership in the White House if the same qualities are not matched at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Andrew won the state assembly by 21 points. With your help, he’ll win the primary and the general election.
Andrew brings to this race both an extraordinary record of public service and an extraordinary capacity to lead. I believe that those assets, as well as his deep commitment to Colorado, give him the best chance to hold this seat in November.
I support Andrew Romanoff, and I hope you will too. Please make a generous contribution to his campaign today.
Sincerely,
Many progressive bloggers who use Google AdSense to monetize their blogs have to constantly deal with the hassle of preventing Republican and right-wing ads from serving on their sites. By using Competitive Ad Filters, bloggers can go far in mitigating these ads from serving.
Here is a simple description on how to filter your ads and a way we can share domains to keep on top of what would be an overwhelming project for one person.
To get going, in the “Ad Sense Setup” tab go to “Competitive Ad Filter.”
You will see two tabs in the lower part of the screen, “Ad Sense for Content” and “AdSense for Feeds,” in which you can enter advertiser domains to exclude. Be sure to enter all blocked domains in both if you serve ads to RSS feeds via FeedBurner. In most cases you will simply enter the domain without the www, i.e. “gop.com” and not “www.gop.com.” This is important in the event any of your blocked advertisers should serve ads linking to other sub-domains of which you may be unaware.
Building a list of blocked domains can take some time. It would be nice if there was a simple setting like “Block Republican Advertisers” or something but alas there isn’t. For the most part you would just have to just wait for a “bad” ad to serve, note the domain and add it to our list.
This method, however, has a critical shortcoming. Most campaigns will geo-target their ads, that is limit their ads to serve only within a specific geographic area. For example, John McCain’s senate campaign in Arizona would likely only book ads to serve to users in Arizona. If you are a blogger in Colorado, you would be unaware of the fact that McCain ads are serving to your visitors in Arizona. I have build a list of Republican and right-wing domains that I know remains very incomplete, however I’ll share it with you here and if you know of other domains, please add them to the comment thread. I’ll verify the domain and update the list. This way, I figure we progressive bloggers can help each other out.
As a final note, when testing ads do not click on AdSense ads on your own site. This is a violation of the AdSense program policies as it creates an invalid click and inflates advertiser costs and your earnings as a publisher. It can also get you banned from the AdSense program and make you susceptible to legal action. In most cases the domain will display under the ad or you can use the AdSense Preview Tool to get the destination domain without clicking the ad. The AdSense Preview Tool will also let you impersonate different locations to test for geo-targeted ad. It’s a must for any AdSense publisher.
Click on the image to enlarge and see more.
In case you didn’t catch this, Arizona Governor and Pendeja of the first order Jan Brewer, said, “We all know the majority of people who are coming into Arizona and trespassing have become drug mules.”
See folks, this is the the cloud of ignorance and utter misinformation and trademark right-wing disregard for facts under which policy and laws like SB1070 are set in Arizona. There is absolutely no remote factual basis for this utterance. But again, we are talking about Jan Brewer. Even soul-seller Senator John McCain sorta disagrees saying, “I think that there’s a large number [of illegal immigrants smuggling drugs] and I think she’s right in that the drug cartels’ movement has dramatically increased, I may not agree with one sentence that she uses, but she’s standing up for Arizona and I think that the people of my state deserve a better environment of security than the one they’re getting from the federal government now.”
