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Good news, everyone!
If you watch every the slightest bit of even the most local of news programs, you’re probably aware that if the Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on a budget for the rest of this fiscal year, the federal government will be shutting down as of midnight tonight. Both sides are doing a fantastic job of blaming each other and are all around doing a fantastic job of claiming that the other side is the one refusing to negotiate. Likewise, both sides are adamantly insisting that they do not actually want a government shutdown. Openly contradicting what the Republican leadership is saying, however, is the Tea Party. They are actively hoping that the government does indeed shut down. Some of them have even been chanting it at rallies and their elected officials have been, albeit not publicly, excited about the prospects of a shutdown. In fact, it is the Tea Party caucus in the House that keeps coming back to Boehner with their thumbs pointed to the ground.
Although there is plenty of blame to go around, there’s really only one force that continually blocks compromise and and wants a shutdown. This isn’t the Democrat’s government shutdown. It isn’t even the Republican’s government shutdown. This is a Tea Party Shutdown.
I listen to NPR. A lot. Specifically, I tune in to Milwaukee’s WUWM and occasionally WPR; The #1 and #2 presets in my car. In an average week, my ears get to enjoy at least some of the following programs: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Fresh Air, On The Media, Radio Lab, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and plenty of other fantastic news and non-news public radio programs.
Lately there has been a renewed push by the Regressives of this country to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of all of it’s federal funding. This would effectively shut its doors for good and close down dozens or even hundreds of local NPR and PBS affiliates. Their reasoning for the proposed defunding is because NPR has a “liberal bias”. This could not be further from the truth. Part of the reason that I so enjoy listening to the various programs from NPR is because of how hard they strive to be unbiased and balanced. I can’t think of a single story I’ve ever heard them do that I felt leaned to one side or the other or wasn’t immediately followed up with the opposing view. If I want media with a “liberal bias”, I’ll point my browser to the Huffington Post or set my TV to MSNBC. Likewise, if I want to hear conservative lies I’ll switch over to Fox News. If, however, I want straight news delivered professionally in an intelligent manner that doesn’t insult the listener, I tune my radio to NPR. My only assumption is that what the right-wing sees in NPR as a “liberal bias” is, in actuality, a bias towards intelligence and if there’s one thing that frightens the right-wing, it’s an intelligent voter.
Regressives – noun
The new label representing the political attitude of the Republican Party, showing their push towards policies that strip American citizens of their rights. This should be adopted to refer to the Republican Party in the same respect that it’s antonym, Progressives, is a reference to the Democratic Party; Why did you vote for the Regressives? Their overall goal is to strip workers of their rights and make the rich richer.
Wisconsin’s smug corporate puppet of a Governor, who will hopefully not make it through a full term, decided after signing his union-busting “budget repair bill” in to law today, that he would turn the douche up to 11 and utilize Twitter to rub a little salt in to Wisconsin’s wounds. I have no doubts that he was all but giggling while he informed the state workers’ unions of the “good news”.
I don’t know exact numbers, but it is probably a safe assumption that the Facebook app for the iPhone is likely one of the all-time most used 3rd party apps. That being the case, why does Facebook continually expand and improve upon its web-based features, while all but completely ignoring its mobile iPhone platform? Sure, they integrated the “Places” feature pretty rapidly after it was introduced, but it has so far been a flop (Does anyone know anyone who actually checks in somewhere other than their own house using Facebook Places?). Aside from that, they’ve largely left the application completely alone except for minor bug fixes here and there. I’m not proposing anything huge here, but I’ve got some ideas for features I’d love to see integrated in to Facebook’s iPhone app.
- Liking Comments
This feature has been integrated in to Facebook for a while now. Would it really be so hard to update the app so I can swipe a comment to like/unlike it? - Properly Attaching Links & Videos
There are three main status updating options: Text, Photos, Links, Videos. Is there some reason that the latter two on that list don’t make the cut for the iPhone? Last I checked, the newer iPhones handle video quite nicely and can easily copy/paste a link from Safari in Facebook. - Tagging Friends/Pages
This is one of the changes they’ve made lately that really made sense to me. Why this handy little feature hasn’t made its way over to the iPhone is beyond me. - Ignoring Applications
Everyone’s got at least one Facebook friend who uses every quiz, game, etc, that spams their Facebook wall every single time they beat a level or take a quiz. PLEASE let me ignore whatever new annoying application they’ve found from my phone, so I don’t have to remember to look back and find it next time I’m using the web interface.
That’s it for now. Maybe whatever monkey they’ve got programming their iPhone app will see this and take note. Anything else you’d like to see that I missed? Please comment and let the world know.
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