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The new 'no comment': F--- off
The reporter's e-mail was insistent, his questions obviously skeptical. The State Department official's response was defensive, his mood obviously annoyed.
Then the missiles started flying.
Story Continued Below
"Why do you bother to ask questions you already know the answer to," Philippe Reines, a communications adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asked the reporter.
"Why don't you give answers that aren't bullshit for a change?" responded Michael Hastings, a reporter for the BuzzFeed website.
Reines then called Hastings an "unmitigated asshole" and suggested that he "[expletive] off." Hastings responded with a sneering remark about Reines's personal life. Reines closed by telling Hastings that he was now designated as "junk mail" on his computer and telling him to "have a good life."
( PHOTOS: 21 potty-mouthed politicians)
This exchange gave Washington reporters and political operatives alike a prurient thrill when BuzzFeed published it in full several weeks ago. In truth, however, the fact that the whole thing went public was the only remarkable thing about it.
"The email happened to be posted, but somebody has a conversation like that every day," said Peter Baker, a White House reporter who has covered the last three administrations, now with The New York Times.
It is one of the signature developments of Washington during the Obama years: a flourishing F-bomb culture, one that has spread far beyond the White House and now pervades government-media relations in both parties, all across the capital.
The close 2012 presidential campaign has been an especially ideal environment for this new mind-set of nonstop combat — marked by blazing email trails, streaked with profanity and accusations of incompetence and bad faith.
( Also on POLITICO: The best stories of 2012)
These kinds of confrontations, while hardly unheard-of in earlier eras, now happen with frequency and ferocity that represents a fundamental change.
Operatives representing government and campaigns blame a pattern of hyperventilating and shallow coverage by the media, and say getting aggressive — and at times volcanic — with reporters is a natural response when confronted with frivolous or insulting inquiries, or complicated questions that come with a warning that a story will be posting within minutes.
Reporters blame a pattern of swaggering non-responsiveness among press aides, in which operatives often seem to be posturing to win favor with colleagues and bosses for being tough and infuse what should be routine interactions with a mood of snarling, self-important melodrama.
Beyond these dueling accusations, there is clearly a convergence of larger factors that have helped transform Washington's media culture.
( PHOTOS: Sunday endorsements and more)


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The weather here in KL has reached 36°C and all I can think about is ice cream. Feeling inspired after having a scoop of salted caramel ice cream in Hokkaido Ice Cream in The Garden Mall, I went in search of recipes. I was very pleased that this splendid flavour was now available in KL. I've only ever had salted caramel in Paris (the best is from Berthillon). I found a recipe I am keen to try. Upon finding this recipe, I was keen to explore other flavours and thought that a pandan coconut flavour would be very nice indeed. I looked it up and found this.
The perfect song for making ice cream is perhaps Battles' new track featuring Matias Aguayo on vocals called Ice Cream. If the video reminds you of El Guincho's Bombay, it is because the video is directed by the same folks.
Find salted caramel ice cream (sold as shio caramel) in:
Hokkaido Ichiba
Lot T-201, 3rd Floor,
The Garden Mall,
Mid Valley City,
Lingkaran Syed Putra,

subset: commoncrawl


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The average visitor to some of the nation's parks and wilderness areas is getting grayer, prompting a new emphasis on getting young people to unplug and head outdoors.
USA Today reported that without "a generation of kids who have had good experiences with national parks, then in a very short amount of time, we may not have enough people who care about national parks to keep them going," says John Hayes of the Dunes Learning Center at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
For the National Park Service (NPS), developing life-long connections between the public and parks — especially for young people — is a priority from now until its 2016 centennial.
That could be a challenge: A 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that people ages 8 to 18 spent an average of 7½ hours a day on digital media. Last month, a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that three times as many Millennials — born in the 1980s and '90s — as Baby Boomers said they made no personal effort to help the environment.
A "big concern" of the National Park Service "is maintaining 21st-century relevance," says James Gramann, a Texas A&M professor writing a book on people-park links. Visitors ages 16-24 are most under-represented, he says.
The aging of visitors affects wild places across the USA:
•The average age of a visitor to Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area was 26 in 1969, 36 in 1991 and 45 in 2007, says a March report by the U.S. Forest Service. "It's the same people. They got attached, and they keep going back," says co-author Bob Dvorak, a Central Michigan University professor.
•The average age of out-of-state visitors to Glacier and Yellowstone national parks in 2011 was 54, says the University of Montana's Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research.
•At California's Death Valley National Park, 49% of spring visitors in 2010 were 46 to 65 years old.
Overall visits to national parks fell in 2011 for the second year in a row. The National Park Service counted 278.9 million visits in 2011, down about 1% from 2010.
Some parks have plenty of young visitors. The Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Ill., attracts about 10,000 students a year, Superintendent Dale Phillips says. "It's important that we teach them early," he says.


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Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Q & A with John Barlow
Here's an interview with British crime writer John Barlow, author of the new LS9 series.
Q: What makes John Ray different from other (unofficial) PIs?
His whole family is deeply involved in crime, and he grew up in a criminal environment. But his girlfriend is police. John finds himself between the two worlds, which is psychologically difficult for him, but gives him a unique perspective when it comes to solving crimes.
Q: How did you come up with the character?
He came more or less fully formed. There's a bit of wish-fulfilment, in that he's the kind of man that I'd like to be (well, some of the time...). Other than that, I don't remember 'devising' the character of John at all, at least not like I did with the characters that surround him. I knew I wanted someone with a split perceptive as a detective, and from that proposition John Ray emerged pretty much naturally.
Q: Why switch from literary to genre writing?
As a young, unpublished writer everything I wrote had a minimum of one dead body in it! Then, when I was 32 (and still unpublished) I wrote a novella about a man who eats furniture. It was published in the Paris Review (a very 'literary' American magazine) and won a prize. That led me into literary writing, and for the next decade I more or less forgot about crime fiction. Then, two years ago I wrote a semi-spoof American noir novel, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO?, under the pseudonym Joe Florez. I loved writing it, and it made me think: why not do a serious crime mystery set in the place I know best? So I did.
Q: What's next for you and John?
HOPE ROAD is the first novel in the LS9 series, which will eventually comprise nine books. They will not all feature John Ray as the point-of-view character, and they will not all take place in Leeds. But they will all be about the Ray family in some way. So, that's my future! I'm into the second book now, and the plotting has been made slightly easier because I recently found out that a great uncle of mine was an arms dealer (found dead on a flight from Amsterdam in the early 80s). Go figure.
Q: How do you promote your work?
Ebooks and self-publishing are completely new to me. So far I've been contacting book bloggers and asking them to mention the novel, or to allow me to do a guest blog or interview. I'm also starting out with Twitter, and a few other social sites of a literary nature. I've only been publicising the book for a week, and I'm sure I'll discover new ways of findings readers as time goes on. I always following the blog posts of David Gaughran, who is an excellent source of info and know-how on self publishing. As for advertising, I am running a Facebook ad (using a $7 coupon that gets you $50's worth of ads), but I don't think it's having much effect.
Q: What's your idea about the psychotic sidekick in PI novels like Hawk and Joe Pike?
My writing is not hard-boiled in that sense. I don't depict righteous violence as a response to society's ills. There is criminal violence in HOPE ROAD, but there is no violent retribution, at least not so far. What really interests me is how people deal with a world in which criminal violence and the threat of it are constants. My main character suffers from having witnessed the murder of his own brother (a career criminal), and it's that close proximity to the inevitable violence of the criminal world which sets John Ray apart from 'normal' citizens. His girlfriend, a police detective, also exists in a world where criminal violence is a constant. To me, they're an interesting pair.
Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation?
I think it will diversify to the point that a clear evolution is impossible to draw. A lot of 'literary' writers are moving into genre fiction, often crime, and that complicates the idea of a direct inheritance. Meanwhile, writers like Lee Child are leading the genre as close to parody as it can go (I mean this in a good way). However, this is a dead end in terms of the development of the genre; if you want to write broadly realistic fiction you couldn't get MORE macho than Reacher, and the scrapes he manages to get out of couldn't be more unlikely. A lot of writers, especially self-published ones, seem to be following this groove (and it's a very good groove), I think the interesting trends moving forward will be those who take the genre away from pre-established moulds.
Q: Larry Block came up with the following question: How do you keep the series from running out of steam?
I dunno. Perhaps I will run out of steam. I certainly don't want to write nine books with John Ray as the prime focus. I think we all know authors for whom the new novel is just a yearly chore. I was talking to an editor at a UK publisher a few weeks ago and she said that it is pretty much an accepted fact that when a crime writer gets his/her series well established, the quality often falls off. In the case of my LS9 series, books four to six will have a different point-of-view character, and if we get to book six and everything's still going to plan, I'll make another shift for the final three novels.
Q: What question should we ask every PI writer we interview and what is your answer? Do you write about crime because you're too scared to do it?
Buy HOPE ROAD:
2 comments:
- John Barlow said...
Thanks for posting this, Jochem.
Readers should know that the pasty skin colour and slightly pained smile on the photo are because I was hungover and desperately trying to get to the end of the shoot without throwing up.
Best wishes, JohnB
- January 11, 2012 at 4:11 AM
- maldives wedding said...
Thank you for making this site very interesting! Keep going! You're doing very well!
- January 25, 2012 at 8:27 AM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


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Sheila Bair On Geithner's Appointment: 'A Punch In The Gut'
Bair wanted Volcker to run Treasury, and bondholders to suffer losses. Geithner won on both counts. This is a great read.
The second installment of Deal Journal's look at Sheila Bair's new book, Bull by the Horns. Click here to read the first post.
Reprinted with permission.
Wall Street Journal
The rocky relationship between Bair and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is already the stuff of Washington legend. But Bair has new details to enter into the lore.
Bair, for instance, urged the fledgling Obama administration to nominate former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker as its first Treasury Secretary. Many of the officials calling the shots during the crisis were too cozy with Wall Street chiefs, Bair believed, and "we need more independent perspectives to deal with the substantial problems confronting the financial sector."
The news that Obama had nominated Geithner instead "felt like a punch in the gut," Bair writes. "I did not understand how someone who had campaigned on a 'change' agenda could appoint someone who had been so involved in contributing to the financial mess that had gotten Obama elected."
Shortly thereafter, news reports that Geithner was advocating for her dismissal led Bair to try to confront him at the New York Fed headquarters, her nine-year-old daughter in tow. Geithner, Bair said, wouldn't tell her to her face what his problems with her were.
Treasury declined to comment.
Overall, Bair attributes her clashes with Geithner to "a profound philosophical disagreement," namely that Geithner opposed seeing bondholders at the mega financial institutions to suffer losses. "I did," Bair says.
She highlights a bad moment for Geithner when Obama starts getting pummeled in the press over the pending payout of $165 million in bonuses to employees at AIG. Walking into the Oval office for a meeting with the president, Bair describes Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers as looking "uncomfortable, their eyes downcast." Geithner had failed to warn the president about the bonus situation, Bair writes. Now a visibly fuming Obama was asking her if she had any ideas on how to stop them being paid out.
"I wanted to say, just fire them," Bair recalls, but settled on pitching her ideas on new powers for the FDIC to prevent taxpayers from having to bailout future AIGs.
Bair repeatedly hits the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, and its leadership as being a poor banking regulator, one that panders to the big banks it oversees rather than taking them to task.
She criticizes John Walsh, who served as the acting OCC chief for more than a year after John Dugan stepped down. Bair speculates that Geithner pushed Walsh as the acting head rather than longtime OCC lawyer Julie Williams, who'd previously held the temporary role between nominations, because Geithner "thought he could control [Walsh], while Julie – a smart, tough-minded lawyer – would be more independent."
In her recommendations at the end of the book, she says the agency should be abolished. She points to Citigroup and Wachovia – two of the biggest banks the OCC oversaw in the run up to the crisis – as evidence: both "would have failed had it not been for government interventions and, in the case of Citigroup, massive amounts of taxpayer aid."
Part 1:
What Sheila Bair Really Thinks About Lloyd Blankfein
Notice in the photo below that Larry Summers is taking his usual nap...
While Geithner is just a monkey doing stupid human tricks.


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Playstation 4
Posted 10 March 2016 - 08:36 PM
Posted 11 March 2016 - 11:50 AM
Mother of God...
Posted 11 March 2016 - 06:38 PM
My body is ready.
Posted 25 April 2016 - 03:25 PM
Posted 27 April 2016 - 11:30 AM
I'm more annoyed that they didn't actually use the Space Jam theme song. Missed opportunity.
I'm down to play tonight, if you all would like.
Posted 07 September 2016 - 11:53 AM
- PS4 Slim - $299
- PS4 Pro (Neo) announced. Standard PS4 now known as the PS4 Scrub. More than 2x GPU power. 1TB HDD. Nov 10, 2016. $399.
- Some Horizon Zero Dawn
- Some Mass Effect Andromeda
Edited by Blaze, 07 September 2016 - 02:13 PM.
Posted 07 September 2016 - 12:11 PM
Took me a second to understand the Big Mac picture. I approve.
Posted 08 September 2016 - 05:54 AM
May wait for the inevitable cheaper pro/vr bundle. Kinda surprised they were able to keep the price this low though.
Posted 08 September 2016 - 09:08 AM
The PS4 Pro is a major fail. I thought MS was in serious trouble when they announced it at that price point and for this year considering the Scorpio won't be out until next year.
First of all the thing doesn't do native 4K games, they're upscaled. Worst of all, the damn thing doesn't have a UHD blu ray drive, so you can't watch 4k blu ray movies. This is so ironic considering Blu Ray is Sony's format, and every PS console has always led the way in media drives.
So essentially the Xbox One S and PS4 Pro both have HDR, and 4K upscaled games. The PS4 Pro has a better GPU but good luck explaining how that makes a difference to an average console consumer; the Xbox One S has the UHD drive and the lower price point.
Posted 08 September 2016 - 09:42 AM
Having a hard time considering either for purchase when it seems like the next generation of consoles can't be too far off at this point.
Posted 08 September 2016 - 12:02 PM
Yesterday was a weird day for press conferences.
Posted 09 September 2016 - 05:30 PM
What were they thinking?
Edit: And with no UHD BD support too. A terrible shame.
At least we'll have PS5...!
Edited by Drew, 09 September 2016 - 05:30 PM.
Posted 11 September 2016 - 02:52 PM
Yeah, definitely not buying the Pro.
Posted 12 September 2016 - 06:27 AM
Having a hard time considering either for purchase when it seems like the next generation of consoles can't be too far off at this point.
Microsoft is saying that the Scorpio will be 6 teraflops as opposed to PS4Pro 4 teraflops, and the Scorpio will also do native 4k (not upscaled) so that may be worth the upgrade once it comes out. One thing is for sure, the next xbox and PS5 are a long ways away now that they have better GPUs in the current systems. I think they bought themselves an additional 4-5 years before new generations of consoles.
Posted 12 September 2016 - 06:38 PM
The Scorpio will be vastly overshadowed by PC hardware by the time it comes out (it already is, even by the current GTX 1070... that's not to speak of the 1080 or Titan). I think 4-5 years would be really, really stretching it.
Posted 13 September 2016 - 05:16 AM
Any console is already under-powered compared to PC, even on the day the console is released, so that's a totally moot point. Considering they kept the 360 and PS4 around for about 8 years with the same GPU, I think it's totally reasonable to assume another 5 years with significantly more powerful GPUs since we're only 3 years into each console life-cycle.
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|October 2010
|OKLAHOMA'S eGOV NEWS REPORT
Welcome to Oklahoma's eGovernment News Report. We hope you enjoy the monthly report providing you with up-to-date information on Oklahoma's eGovernment achievements.
Upgrades to State System Make Reporting Simple for Oklahoma State Agencies
One Website Enables State Agencies to Electronically Upload Many Required Filing Types
The Oklahoma Office of State Finance and OK.gov, Oklahoma's official website, today announce updates to the Oklahoma State Filing System that enable state agencies to submit new filing types online and simultaneously to the Governor, House of Representatives, State Senate, and Secretary of State, leading to business efficiencies and a reduction in the state's consumption of paper.
Launched in November 2008, the first phase of the system enabled agencies to file Administrative Rule changes. The new system changes allow state agencies to file Fee Increase Notifications, Agency Reports, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data, and Ethics Commission Constitutional Rules all in one location.
"The system was initially built as a result of Senate Bill 1507, passed during the Second Regular Session of the Fifty-first Oklahoma Legislature (2008)," said Nelda Kirk, Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration, Office of Governor Brad Henry. "By moving these filings online, it positions Oklahoma for transparency. In fact, by next year, the public will be able to view submitted Administrative Rules online through this system."
Other benefits of the system include:
The state plans to add more filing types in the future.
Oklahoma's Veterinary Board Opens 24/7 Online Store
The Oklahoma Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners (OBVME) announced today that the public and veterinary professionals can now purchase items or pay for application fees online through a new online store on their website. Items for sale through the store include:
"We had many requests from veterinary professionals and the public to pay for items by credit cards," said Cathy Kirkpatrick, executive director of OBVME. "This online store not only facilitates that demand, but also adds to our suite of online services that provide convenience for our constituents."
OBVME also provides an Online License Search and Online Renewal Service for the public and veterinary professionals. Visitors can visit the Oklahoma's Veterinary Board website click on the Oklahoma Veterinary Board Online Store banner, and view the items for sale through a safe and secure online environment. Visitors to the site have the option of paying for items with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and EFT payments. The payments are processed through a secure payment engine that abides by rigorous policies and procedures to ensure that their payments are safe, private, and secure.
The OBVME Online Store is a product of a partnership between the Oklahoma Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners and OK.gov, Oklahoma's official website.
Okie Boutique Web Store Now Open on TravelOK.com
Oklahoma-inspired Merchandise is perfect for Holiday Giving & Keepsakes Year-round
The Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department launched a new online store on the state's official travel planning website. The Okie Boutique features Oklahoma-themed merchandise, customizable gift baskets, as well as items from the Department's brand Authentic Oklahoma (AOK).
"TravelOK.com is the source for trip planning and event information, but now it is also home to high quality gift items and keepsake souvenirs that capture Oklahoma's personality," said Hardy Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department.
Okie Boutique's offerings range from shirts and hats to jewelry and home décor items as well as collectable ornaments, tote bags, travel journals and more. Shoppers will also find the department's AOK brand of merchandise which features products chosen to reflect Oklahoma's legendary stories, gracious people and epic landscapes.
Some items featured on the Okie Boutique Web store include:
"The Okie Boutique also makes it easy to purchase Oklahoma Today magazine subscriptions, plus dozens of hostess gifts, stocking stuffers or other items for those 'hard-to-buy-for' names on your list," said Watkins. "Since our merchandise has been carefully selected to positively represent our state, we hope Oklahoma companies will take advantage of our customizable and quality products for any corporate gift needs.
In addition to the Okie Boutique Web store, Authentic Oklahoma and other Oklahoma-themed merchandise can be found at Oklahoma Tourism Information Center gift shops in Oklahoma City – at the State Capitol, First National Center downtown, and 122nd & I-35 – or at centers in Tulsa, Miami, Colbert and Walters.
For clever Oklahoma gift ideas, make sure to visit TravelOK.com to find the online store and other deals and coupons for Oklahoma attractions, or call 1-800-652-6552 to speak to a tourism professional.
What's Inside
Oklahoma State Election Board
- Paul Ziriax,
Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry
- Terry L. Peach,
Oklahoma Motor Vehicle Commission Website
Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry Notification System
Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust: Tobacco Stops with Me Facts Application
How Do I Learn More About This Year's Flu Season?
Visit the State Health Department's Flu Informational Site
How Do I Keep Food Borne Illnesses Out of My Holiday Traditions?
Visit the State Health Department's Food Borne Illness Informational Site
Thursday, November 11
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Have an Oklahoma eGovernment story to tell? Want to give us feedback?
About OK.gov
OK.gov is the official website of the state of Oklahoma and a collaborative effort between the Oklahoma Office of State Finance (OSF) and Oklahoma Interactive, LLC to help Oklahoma government entities Web-enable their information services. OSF is responsible for OK.gov. Oklahoma Interactive operates, maintains, and markets OK.gov and is part of eGovernment firm NIC's (NASDAQ: EGOV) family of companies.
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Misfortune Sucks, But It's Not Google's Responsibility
from the slippery-slope dept
Ars Technica has been following the story of Mario Gianna Masiá, who has been engaged in a legal battle with Google's Spanish arm over the search results for his business. His family opened the Camping Alfaques vacation spot in 1956, and in 1978 a tanker-truck explosion on a nearby road left 200 campers at the site dead, resulting in a lot of disturbing photos in the media. Masiá's father decided not to change the name of the business—it was still fully supported by locals and clients (the disaster was in no way their fault, and they were powerless to prevent it) and he said he had no desire to "erase history". Masiá later took over the business, and was shocked two-and-a-half years ago when, after one of Google's many adjustments to its algorithm, the grisly photos of the 30-year-old disaster began appearing near the top of the search results for the site. He wants them gone.
Now, to his credit, Masiá sounds a lot more reasonable than most people who have a problem with Google's results. He's noticed the bizarre fact that the generic query "camping alfaques" produces the disturbing images, while the more specific "accidente camping alfaques" doesn't. He understands that Google results are purely algorithmic, but feels this is a problem with that algorithm, and has been trying to get it fixed:
A regional IT consultant told him that the websites hosting the pictures had no interest in making any changes, so Mario decided to try Google. He began reporting the images as offensive, using Google's own tools, sometimes clicking on each five times a day; it had no result. He sent a certified letter to Google, begging them to associate the graphic images with searches for the accident and not with generic ones for his campground; they said there was nothing they could do.
... "We don't want to erase history, we want them [Google] to classify properly the information," Mario told me. He cited other searches, such as the one for the "MGM Grand" in Las Vegas. The hotel suffered a famous fire, but no picture or links to it appear just by searching the hotel name. Only specific searches for the tragedy bring up images of the burning building. Most of the world's accidents and terror attacks don't bring up such "horrific close-ups of people," Mario said.
After taking legal advice on the question and making no progress with Google, he finally sued the company's Spanish subsidiary in a local "court of first instance" in Spain. He didn't want any money; he wanted the images moved to other searches that he argues are more appropriate for the information. Last week, a judge threw the case out, saying that US-based Google Inc. had to be sued instead, as they were responsible for the algorithm.
The MGM Grand example seems damning at first, until you consider that it is a globally famous landmark that was the largest hotel in the world for years—and that was turned into Bally's, while the new MGM Grand Las Vegas has become an even more famous spot and is gobbling up lots of the search results.
Ars compares the situation to a few others, such as Google's "explanation page" linked from the distressing results for the query "jew", the changes Google has made to address "bomb" attacks that mocked public figures, and the suicide hotline notes they use in some countries. All those examples have key differences, though: the explanation page started as an internal Adword buy, and now exists as an organic result; Google bombs were addressed with algorithm changes, not curation; and the suicide hotline was included in their program to highlight emergency services information, just like fire and poison control phone numbers.
The fact is, sometimes bad things happen to good businesses. It's unfortunate that Masiá's business must contend with the fallout of an accident that he could not control, just as it's unfortunate when a crime scene shuts down a retail street during vital business hours, or when a "haunting" rumor forces a real estate agent to sell a house for less than its value—but bad fortune is a part of life. Google has to take an all-or-nothing stance on curation, because if they meddle with the results for one complainant, where does it end? Should a search for "Kent State" not return photos of the infamous massacre? Should a search for "Tiananmen Square" show only peaceful, touristy shots as it does in China?
Masiá is considering his next move, possibly planning to appeal the Spanish court's ruling rather than pursuing a judgement against Google in the U.S. as the first judge ruled he should. If he does, hopefully the appeals court will uphold the decision, and Masiá will realize that though he got a bum-deal, it's not Google's responsibility to fix it. But given Spain's mixed history of rulings about Google results, anything could happen.
Filed Under: misfortune, search results
Companies: campign alfaques, google


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Memorial Day Weekend Marathon Roundup
May 22, 2014 3:48 PM EDT
It's Memorial Day weekend! What better way to celebrate than by catching up on your favorite shows? For those of you who plan on spending the long weekend indoors, check out your options below: (All times are ET/PT) Saturday, May 24Being Mary Jane&nb… Read more


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Cruz: Shutdown successful because it sparked debate
DES MOINES, Iowa Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says this month's partial government shutdown and his key role in it were a success: They got people talking.
"One of the things we accomplished in the fight over Obamacare is we elevated the national debate over what a disaster, what a train wreck, how much Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans across this country," Cruz told about 600 Iowa Republicans on Friday at the Iowa GOP's annual fundraising dinner in Des Moines.}
Cruz's crusader's spirit was the perfect example of what longtime Republicans in Iowa and nationally say is at the root of the party's losing ways and has sparked an intraparty fight over the way forward after consecutive losing presidential elections.
It's a conversation that's spilling out from backstage to behind the podium between national GOP establishment luminaries and state leaders around the country.
"A number of us were saying back in July that this strategy could not and would not work, and of course it didn't," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Other Senate Republicans, including the party's 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., criticized the strategy that led to the shutdown as foolhardy.
Although he ultimately lost, the 42-year-old freshman senator played a leading role bringing about the 16-day partial federal shutdown with his demand that President Barack Obama gut his 3-year-old health care law. He also successfully urged a core of House Republicans to follow him, at one point even lobbying conservatives in the House to defy their own leaders by maintaining a hard line against Obamacare.
The final and perhaps most important stop of Ted Cruz's recent public tour was less an exclamation point on a series of raucous events in Texas and more a presentation of opposite ideas for the GOP's way forward nationally.} } }
Immediately before the Cruz spoke, five-term Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad barely acknowledged the guest and said the way forward for the party nationally was by way of the route cleared by Republican governors.
Branstad, 66, at the heart of Iowa's GOP establishment, called Cruz "a bright, up-and-coming senator" before turning his attention to the tangible successes of Republican governors, beginning with Cruz's own governor, Rick Perry of Texas.
"The results of conservative governors are making a difference," said Branstad, who is preparing to seek election next year.
He pointed to Wisconsin and Michigan governors moves to trim union rights as reasons for falling unemployment, and Texas' reduction in regulation for rising job growth.
Cruz, in his 40-minute speech, argued the health care law enacted in 2010 was the main impediment to economic growth.
Cruz was vague after the speech about whether he would continue to try to defund the law in the future.
"There will be plenty of time the coming months to talk about specific tactics and strategies," he told reporters later. "What I think is critical is we keep the focus on Obamacare, we keep the focus on the fact that this bill isn't working."
Cruz said Democratic senators asking Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebielius for an extension of the enrollment period was no surprise. But he wished they had called for its repeal or defunding, not "expand the enrollment period."
On Tuesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., sent a letter to the administration urging them to extend the open enrollment period beyond March 31, 2014 - the date after which individuals must have health insurance or face a fine. Her proposal received backup from several Democrats in red states who face tough reelection fights in 2014, like Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor and Alaska Sen. Mark Begich.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., went a step further, requesting a one-year delay in the IRS fine for individuals who haven't purchased insurance.
Former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour pointedly accused tea party-fueled refusal to support spending measures during the shutdown foolhardy. Though Branstad wasn't as direct, he has shown little patience for Congress over the past month, especially the drama surrounding Cruz, and has called for broadening the party to make it more welcoming to voters who have turned away from the GOP.
It was Cruz's third visit to Iowa, which is expected to hold the leadoff GOP nominating caucuses ahead of the 2016 presidential election.


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Tattoos are a great way of accentuating your personality. Picking the right theme to ink might be confusing, but there are lots and lots of ideas available out there to give you a wide variety to choose from. There are numerous themes that have been used in tattoos ever since the early civilizations, and still have not lost their popularity and significance.
So select your type, pick out a nice shade, and shoot for your name tattoo designs for women. 😀
Thank you for visiting name tattoo designs for women, we hope this post inspired you and help you what you are looking for. If you're looking for the same category, please also take a look at Related posts below. If you have any comments, concerns or issues please let us know. Don't forget to share this picture with others via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other social medias!
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Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists -- a small, influential and, in the Egyptian political scene today, remarkably coherent and clear-eyed group -- has issued a statement that explains why giving General Al-Sisi a "mandate" to "fight terrorism" is a bad, and illogical, idea. Egypt's April 6 movement -- the activist group that began youth protests against Mubarak -- has also come out against heeding Al-Sisi's call for mass demonstrations today.
Whatever crimes the Brotherhood has committed against the people and against the Copts in defence of its power in the name of religion, we do not give army chief Al-Sisi our authority. We will not go into the streets on Friday offering a blank cheque to commit massacres.
If Al-Sisi has the legal means to do what he wants, why is he calling people into the streets? What he wants is a popular referendum on assuming the role of Caesar and the law will not deter him.


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A Day In The Life
Jen and I are often asked what it's like to be "professional" bloggers. How do we spend our days? Do we have a swimming pool filled with gold coins? Are there fantastic parties and gourmet ketchups? The answer to all these questions is yes. Jen even has a green dress. (But not a real green dress. That's cruel.)
That doesn't mean it's all fun and games, though. Sometimes we take naps.
In fact, I think I'll keep a diary for a day, just so you can see firsthand the "glorious life" of the "Professional Blogger." Enjoy!
1:00 pm - Woke up to cats hammering on door and yowling. Note to self: get thicker door. Also, new cats.
1:35 pm - Cats' yowls going super sonic. Ear plugs ineffective. Time for the Super Soaker.
2:10 pm - Jen's awake. Cats are hiding. I ask in my best Kirk impression (complete with hand gestures), "JEN! Are... you... readytobe... funny? We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill!"
3:45 pm - Checked on Jen in the office. She has 27 browser tabs open and is humming "Loathing." So far, so good.
5:20 pm - Jen comes out of her office to reheat some "breakfast."
7:20 pm - A yell from the office: "Oy! What're some puns for 'lactating?'"
8:15 pm - Maniacal laughter coming from office.
8:21 pm - Loud sobs coming from office.
8:30 pm - Colorful swearing coming from office. Huh. Rapid mood swings may indicate low blood sugar. I bring Jen a cookie.
10:45 pm - Heading to McDonald's for lunch.
12:20 am- Break time. Watching Castle with Jen.
2:15 am- Jen heads back to the office. I'm off to bed.
3:35 am - Woken by a loud yell. Rushed out to find Jen staring horror-struck at a new e-mail:
Thanks to Lyle, James, Alistair, Carissa, Amanda M., Helen W., Elizabeth M., Kristin S., Eilen, Tyler O., Dana S., & Beatrice Y., for helping us avoid "real" jobs. Now: nap time!
Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.


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11/12/2008, Kampala - The President of the Republic of Uganda welcomed African ministers and high-level representatives from African and OECD countries to the 2008 NEPAD-OECD investment meetings. Discussions focused on: strengthening investment policy reform in Africa through peer learning and active private sector engagement; making optimal use of investment policy tools; and enhancing private investment in transport infrastructure.
Left to right: Hon. Fred Jachan Omach Mandir, Minister for Finance (General Duties), Uganda; Rt Hon. Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda, Ms. Rebecca Kadaga; His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of Uganda; Hon. Prof. Semakula Kiwanuka, Minister for Finance (Investment), Uganda; Mr. Mario Amano, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD; Amb. Olukorede Willoughby, Acting Chief Executive, NEPAD Secretariat; Mr Charles Awitor, Head, Regional Integration Division, AU Commission; Ms Victoria Forster-Jones, Programme Officer, AU Commission; Ms Maggie Kigozi, Executive Director, Uganda Investment Authority
President Yoweri Museveni, in highlighting the implications of the global financial crisis, alerted participants to the fact that "prescriptions of yesterday will not be relevant today". This will entail a balanced assessment of needed reforms. OECD Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Mario Amano, noted that it was particularly fitting that the conference take place in Uganda, which is a reform-oriented member of the East African Community that has recently recorded pro-business reforms and a steady growth of private investment.
The Ministerial Forum on investment policy reform in Africa noted that, while the global financial crisis has already affected revenue flows to the continent, Africa's progress in reforming the investment agenda is likely to mitigate its impact. NEPAD CEO, Ambassador Olukorede Willoughby added that "although these are difficult times, they are also interesting times: for Africa, the glass is clearly half-full and not half-empty".
More, however, needs to be done. Participants concluded that consolidating investment policy reform was key to avoiding a backward slide and that African governments could further reduce the cost of doing business. Good practices were highlighted, including, amongst others, the launch of the Zambian Development Agency, and Kenya's streamlining of business licenses where only those which promote environmental or health policies are retained.
When considering strengthening investment policy reform through peer learning, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) was unanimously considered to be a critical step forward in achieving good governance in Africa. The APRM Secretariat has indicated that it is revising the Questionnaire for Country Self-Assessment, taking into account business climate related issues. Development partners were encouraged to support the investment component of the APRM's implementation.
The session on making optimal use of investment policy tools highlighted that Africa must recognise the need for assessing its investment framework so as to improve its business climate and that this can be achieved through using instruments such as the Policy Framework for Investment.
The discussion on private investment in regional road infrastructure strongly emphasised the link between adequate transport infrastructure, economic growth and poverty alleviation. Uganda's Minister for Finance (Investments), Hon. Semakula Kiwanuka, underlined that Africa's regional integration will simply remain "beautiful on paper" if infrastructure is not fixed, particularly in the transport and energy sectors. Efforts being made by East Africa in deepening regional integration were applauded in this context, and African governments were called upon to harmonise their infrastructure policies. Participants agreed on the importance of improving upstream project preparation and deepening domestic financial markets to ensure successful public private partnerships in infrastructure.
The discussion on furthering private investment in road infrastructure acknowledged the enormous gap between Africa's needs and existing infrastructure in the transport sector and that increasing private investment in road infrastructure is an urgent priority. Governments were encouraged to improve regulatory frameworks and contracting arrangements and to prioritise road maintenance. Opportunities for attracting new investors such as Sovereign Wealth Funds were also highlighted.
For further information, journalists should contact Mr Karim Dahou, NEPAD-OECD Africa Investment Initiative, OECD Investment Division (firstname.lastname@example.com; Tel: +33 (0)1 45 24 19 38).
Documentation and presentations from the meeting are available on the conference webpage .
More information about investment-related work in Africa is available at www.oecd.org/daf/investment/africa
Related Documents


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A long-standing belief among Arkansas outdoor enthusiasts is, if the state's varied interests could join together, they could move mountains for the benefit of wildlife and outdoor recreation by the state's citizens.
This did happen in the early 1990s. A coalition of public agencies, conservation organizations and private citizens locked arms and created Ed Gordon-Point Remove Wildlife Management Area in Conway and Pope counties.
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission officials opened eyes wide when it learned that the big Schewe farm in western Conway County was going on the market. It was rich land straddling two forks of Point Remove Creek, and adjoining land included a swamp called Goose Lake, popular with ducks. It was also for sale. Seldom had such a large tract been available. Trouble was, other interests – developers and hunting clubs – were highly interested too.
The AGFC wanted it all right but was tightly strapped for money, with cutbacks frequent and staff vacancies unfilled. Federal aid was ready for three-fourths of the cost, but prospects were dim of AGFC coming up with the remaining one-fourth of the multi-million dollar price tag.
Phone calls were made. Explanations were earnestly given, and good things began to happen. The Arkansas Nature Conservancy stepped forward to secure the transaction while Ducks Unlimited, the National Wild Turkey Federation. Arkansas Heritage Commission and others dug into pocketbooks.
Negotiations included use of federal payments for Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to go toward the purchase price. Owner of the adjoining land, Mrs. Ruby Cargill, put a fourth of the money she was getting back into the pot.
Blackwell Bottoms, as it was called at the time, went into public ownership. It was the first large North American Waterfowl Conservation Act (NAWCA) project in Arkansas.
A more fitting name was created, linking a prominent Morrilton attorney and former AGFC commission with the major creek that flowed through the area. A lake on the northern portion of the WMA was named for Mrs. Cargill's late husband, W.J. Cargill, a prominent area resident and sportsman.
From the outset, Ed Gordon/Point Remove has been a multi-purpose facility in the broadest sense. But ducks are near the top of its list. Ducks were already using Goose Pond and other lowlands, and with some encouragement, more ducks could be enticed.
Ducks Unlimited contributed a highly specialized machine called a Malsam Terracer. Drawn by tractor, it built low levees in a fraction of the time that conventional earth-moving equipment could do. Ed Gordon/Point Remove's duck habitat multiplied.
Some quail lived on the higher ground of the WMA and field trial enthusiasts pitched in with the AGFC to improve conditions — the result being frequent competitions and birddog training. A clubhouse was built for use by field trial participants and by anyone else when it's not reserved. Family reunions and wedding receptions are just a couple of the uses for the building not far from the Hattieville community.
It's officially the Wylie Cox Field Trial Area, with another well-regarded area sportsman honored. Not just dogs seeking quail use it. Beagles going after rabbits are frequently in competition on the area too.
For hunters, the top attractions are ducks when sufficient water is on hand, deer for archery hunters and by permit for modern gun hunters. Doves are also abundant.
Management activities involve several strategies for the wetlands, including working timber along the creeks. In the uplands, fields are disced in strips, planted with grain and burned when needed to encourage wild food plants to flourish. Bush-hogging is also done to keep lanes open for horse riders in the field trial area. Plantings for doves include brown-top millet. Winter wheat helps attract deer and turkeys.
Ed Gordon/Point Remove is reached from the south by the Blackwell Exit off Interstate 40. On the north, Arkansas Highway 213 at Hattieville gives access to the field trial area, the other parts of the WMA and to Lake Cargile.
Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas' best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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kozom1234 wrote:Oh yeah? well i'll out nerd you. I'll say my wedding vows in darnassian, your turn, Ichi
My name is Al, im 50 years old, married to my ingame night elf character, live in my parents basement and my computer is worth more than the house i live in


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By Mary Rees
Berkeley Holiday Fund sends over 1,000 checks to Berkeley residents
By Sarah Chung | Staff
12/12/2018 | The Daily Californian
Snapp Shots: Berkeley Holiday Fund spreads cheer to needy
By Martin Snapp Columnist
12/06/2012 | Contra Costa Times
Politicians are fond of saying that you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it, but in the real world there's a lot of human suffering that could be easily fixed by the timely infusion of a little cash.
Such as a single mom whose budget is already stretched to the limit putting food on the table for her kids, leaving nothing left for their Christmas presents.
Or a Berkeley High senior who would have been the first in her family to go to college, except for one hitch: She couldn't afford the college application fees.
They were just two of the almost 1,000 people who got a very welcome surprise last December when an envelope containing a check mysteriously appeared in their mailbox. The checks weren't large, ranging from $30 to $100. But for the recipients, they made all the difference. And there were no strings attached. No guidelines, no conditions, no sermons to hear first. What's more, this has been going on for 100 years.
It all started in 1912 when Jo Mills, a prominent figure in early Berkeley, founded the Berkeley Christmas Committee. The committee produced a large-scale pageant every December to raise money to provide gifts of food, clothing, blankets and toys for needy families. The pageant eventually grew into a colorful spectacle with 800 children and 200 adults.
The pageant was canceled during World War II, but the work of the Christmas Committee never stopped. It became a nonprofit organization, changed its name to the Berkeley Christmas Fund and switched from giving gifts in kind to mailing checks directly to the recipients.
In 1992 the name was changed again to the Berkeley Holiday Fund, but nothing else has changed. Virtually 100 percent of the money goes directly to the recipients. There's no overhead -- no office, no paid staffers, just a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers. And most of the logistical support is donated. The postage is paid by the Berkeley mayor's office, and the Mechanics Bank cashes the checks free of charge.
The fund doesn't choose the recipients. It gets the names from local social service agencies, including Children's Hospital, the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, Bananas, Berkeley Head Start and the Salvation Army.
"We take the social workers' word for it," says Andrew Williams, who co-chairs the fund with his wife, Linda (who, by the way, writes detective novels under the pen name Linda Grant). "That's their job. Our job is to write checks."
The social workers appreciate the lack of red tape, a rare luxury in the bureaucratic world they work in. One wrote, "I especially appreciate that you are not condescending in your generosity."
Next weekend, about 10 volunteers will sit around the kitchen table in the Williams' home and stuff envelopes with this year's checks. It's that down-home.
If you'd like to support this effort, please mail a tax-deductible check to: The Berkeley Holiday Fund, P.O. Box 9779, Berkeley, CA 94707 or visit www.berkeleyholidayfund.org.
A few donations have been as large as $1,000, but some are in the $5 to $10 range.
Merry Christmas.
Reach Martin Snapp at firstname.lastname@example.com.
12/16/10 | Berkeley Times


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Can history explain anything? Henry Adams, after a lifetime of writing about American history, wasn't sure that it could. "Historians undertake to arrange sequences,—called stories, or histories,—assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect," he wrote. But he suspected that the assumptions wouldn't bear scrutiny, and he was haunted by the idea that hoping for a causal explanation of human affairs might be a mistake. "Chaos was the law of nature," he suggested late in life. "Order was the dream of man."
Perhaps it was Adams's penchant for historiographic nihilism that drew him to the War of 1812, the conflict with Britain that looms over his masterpiece, the nine-volume "History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison." As a great evil, a war calls out for some kind of theodicy—for an explanation of why it happened and what it meant—but the War of 1812 frustrates the desire for such answers. Its origins lie in a concatenation of misperceptions, crossed signals, and false hopes. Its end is no less obscure: America, which started the war, accomplished none of its stated aims, and the peace treaty merely restored the combatants to the status quo before the fight. A number of historians feel that neither Britain nor America won—though most agree that the Indians, allies of Britain who never again seriously obstructed white America's expansion, definitely lost. At the time, no one seemed to have more than a partial understanding of why they were fighting. A British government official compared the two countries to two men holding their heads in buckets of water, to see who would drown first. Adams wrote of the first winter of the war, "So complicated and so historical had the causes of war become that no one even in America could explain or understand them."
Many of Adams's successors have found it just as hard to say what the war was about. Recently, in "The Civil War of 1812" (Knopf; 2010), Alan Taylor pushed pointillism even further than Adams did, taking as his subject the unstable allegiances and local vendettas along the border between America and Britain's Canadian colonies—the sort of fractal details that tend to get smoothed out of popular narrative. "No single cause can explain the declaration of war," he wrote. In "The Weight of Vengeance" (Oxford), a new study marking the war's bicentennial year, Troy Bickham repeats the refrain: "There is no single explanation for the outbreak of war in June 1812." But Bickham has a trick up his sleeve. It turns out that he's an optimist. He thinks that it is possible to say what the war was about. What's more, he's sure that Britain lost.
Within America, the War of 1812 was controversial—advocated by Republicans, who were known for their hatred of taxes and big government, and opposed by Federalists, who favored élite rule, central banking, and a peacetime defense establishment. Donald R. Hickey, a Wayne State College historian and the dean of 1812 scholarship, has called the vote to declare war the closest in American history. "Many nations have gone to war in pure gayety of heart," Adams wrote, "but perhaps the United States were first to force themselves into a war they dreaded, in the hope that the war itself might create the spirit they lacked."
The slogan of the so-called War Hawks centered on two issues: "free trade and sailors' rights." By "sailors' rights," they meant an end to the British practice of conscripting, or impressing, sailors from American merchant ships. By 1812, between nine and twenty thousand British sailors were working aboard American vessels, which paid more than twice as well as the Royal Navy. Britain, at war with France for nearly two decades, didn't think it could afford not to go after them. The American government considered many to be naturalized citizens, but British law deemed allegiance to the King indissoluble, and, at the time, it wasn't easy to tell an American from a Briton even if you agreed on the definitions. Though the American government issued certificates of citizenship, they were so easily forged that few British captains respected them. Many sailors simply identified themselves with tattoos of American flags or eagles. Under the circumstances, Taylor writes, "every British impressment was an act of counterrevolution." Secretary of State James Monroe counted more than sixty-two hundred impressments of American sailors between 1803 and 1811.
What about the "free trade" half of the slogan? British planters in the West Indies blamed American shippers for a sugar and coffee glut that was eroding prices in Europe, and they called for a crackdown on America's profitable trade with France and the French West Indies. Intermittently, the British government tried to regulate the United States almost as if it were still a colony. In 1807, in response to an attempt by Napoleon to blockade its coast, Britain issued a series of decrees, known as Orders in Council, that required American ships to dock in a British port and pay a British tax before trading with any part of Europe under Napoleon's control. As Adams put it, "American commerce was made English."
Yet neither free trade nor sailors' rights fully explains the outbreak of war. Impressment had been going on for years before Republicans started to harp on it, in late 1811. Even though the dispute had, in 1807, provoked a British warship to fire on an American one, no less an authority than Thomas Jefferson said he hoped that the two nations "might have shoved along." In addition, war was bound to put a stop to commercial shipping, sending the very sailors whom America was trying to protect back to the Royal Navy in search of employment. Impressment hardly seems decisive when, Bickham points out, war continued even after the issue became moot, in the spring of 1814, when Napoleon fell from power and the Royal Navy began discharging sailors instead of recruiting them. As for free trade, America didn't go to war until five years after the Orders in Council; instead, it tried what Jefferson called "peaceable coercion," a series of obstacles to trade with Britain. And France behaved at least as badly, seizing American ships bound for or leaving Britain. "The Devil himself could not tell which government, England or France, is the most wicked," a North Carolina congressman remarked. What's more, America's peaceable coercion of Britain eventually succeeded, thanks to an assist from Napoleon's blockade and an economic depression: in 1811, high bread prices caused riots in England, and by the end of the year the mills of Manchester lacked cotton. Eventually, on June 16, 1812, Britain announced the rescinding of the Orders in Council. But the news didn't reach America for five weeks, and two days after Britain's announcement the United States declared war. President James Madison later admitted that he would have delayed the declaration if he had known about the repeal. British merchants were so confident that war had been forestalled that they rashly celebrated by sending the White House a large quantity of English cheese.
Still, Bickham insists that the war was "no accident," and, indeed, British and American attempts to reach an armistice failed in August of that year, as did Russian offers to mediate, in 1813. In Bickham's opinion, the war continued after the evaporation of its ostensible causes because a larger issue was at stake: "whether or not the United States would be respected as a sovereign nation." Bickham writes that Britain "sought to stifle American ambition and turn it into a client state," which implies that Americans confusedly but accurately diagnosed a threat to their interests. But if a historian, looking at the matter in retrospect, isn't able to say exactly which interests the war protected, it seems just as likely that Americans were acting against their interests. Must the war mean what early Americans say?
Other historians have been more skeptical than Bickham. Hickey has written that "the supposed threat to American independence in 1812 was more imagined than real," and, in a recent article in the Journal of American History, Lawrence A. Peskin points out that what he calls "conspiratorial Anglophobia" sometimes drifted away from reality. Some Americans were willing to believe, for example, that British secret agents were buying up Connecticut sheep in order to sabotage the textile industry. In Adams's view, British politicians merely believed that "America ought to be equally interested with Europe in overthrowing the military despotism of Napoleon," and they resented giving America a free ride. Bickham is aware of the resentment, and even explains how it justified, in British minds, interference in America's trade, which was seen as taking unfair advantage of Napoleon's attacks on British shipping. Bickham tends, however, to take American touchiness more seriously than British resentment, and this allocation of empathy seems questionable, given that it's now easier to believe that Napoleon wanted to rule the world than to believe that Britain wanted to resubjugate America. But perhaps early Americans, through the haze of their emotions, did perceive a genuine danger, which, because they succeeded in averting it, never materialized and is now therefore hard for historians to see.
When war was declared, there were only ten or twelve thousand men in the American Army, and its officers were "sunk into either sloth, ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking," as one of the better ones later recalled. The Navy had only seventeen seaworthy ships. Britain, meanwhile, commanded a thousand ships and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors worldwide, and it collected forty times as much tax revenue from its citizens. In declaring war, America had, as one congressman lamented, chosen to "get married, & buy the furniture afterwards." Though Congress repeatedly raised the wages and land bounties for soldiers, "these inducements were not enough to supply the place of enthusiasm," Adams wrote. The Army never had more than fifty thousand regulars, and Monroe, when he became the Secretary of War, estimated that the country needed twice that many.
Lacking the budget to augment its Navy, America chose to invade Canada, which was still a British colony. Madison had long ago predicted, "When the pear is ripe it will fall of itself," and many agreed with Jefferson's assessment that conquest of Canada would be "a mere matter of marching." Only seven thousand British troops were stationed there, and not all Canadians had strong loyalty to the King: Lower Canada, so called because it was lower on the St. Lawrence River, was full of Catholics of French origin, and the majority of Upper Canada's residents had recently left America for the promise of nothing more lofty than cheap land and low taxes. When General William Hull, the governor of Michigan Territory, crossed the Detroit River and initiated hostilities, his message to Canadians assumed their willing capitulation: "You will be emancipated from Tyranny and oppression and restored to the dignified station of freemen."
But, a month later, Hull was back in Detroit, under siege, drooling tobacco spittle and cowering while a British commander paraded Indians in vermillion-and-blue war paint before his fortifications. He surrendered, and the conquest of Canada began to recede as a possibility. By December, Henry Clay, the leader of Congress's War Hawks, was calling the conquest of Canada "not the end but the means"—no more than a potential bargaining chip—and Bickham considers the idea that America went to war for the sake of Canadian territory a "myth."
The campaign against Canada rarely rose above mediocrity. At least twice, American fighters arrived at the border only to decide that they preferred not to cross it, and their habit of looting undermined hopes of winning Canadian hearts and minds. Worse, America's strategy was flawed. The key to the region was the St. Lawrence River. Whoever held Montreal controlled everything upstream. But to attack Montreal Americans had to pass through northern New York, where Federalist residents opposed the war. The Administration shifted its focus to the west, where there were plenty of Republicans eager to fight, but where, Taylor writes, "the war could never be won." It's a little like the joke about the drunk looking for his keys not where he dropped them but where the street lamp is.
Viewed as a narrative, the war has too many settings and a weak plot. The British take Detroit. The Americans fail to take Queenston. The Americans try to take Fort Erie. On Lake Ontario, the Americans raid York, the capital of Upper Canada, and burn the Parliament buildings. The British fail to take Fort Meigs. The Americans take Fort George. The Americans raid York again. The British burn Black Rock. The Americans retake Detroit. The Americans abandon Fort George. The British take Fort Niagara and burn Black Rock (again), as well as Buffalo. And so on, for nearly three years. As a diversion, the British Navy raided and burned towns along the Eastern Seaboard, and in late 1813 and 1814, in what was practically a separate war, Andrew Jackson roamed the Alabama Territory rounding up and killing rebel Creeks.
Amid the chaos, though, there are some lovely scenes. Taylor paints one of General James Wilkinson, Aaron Burr's co-conspirator and betrayer, descending the St. Lawrence River with his troops while high on laudanum and whiskey, singing,
I am now a-going to Canada.
And there I will get money.
And there I'll kiss the pretty squaws.
They are as sweet as honey
only to be defeated, upon arrival in Canada, by a British force half the size of his. He deserved worse, considering that he had lost a thousand of his men to disease and desertion by lodging them in a Louisiana swamp and appropriating their provisions.
The war had pathos, too, in the fate of the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, who sided with the British in the hope of forging a universal Indian confederacy. Tecumseh had a clear-eyed view of his people's predicament, explaining to an American general, "You want, by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in allotting to each a particular tract of land, to make them to war with each other. You never see an Indian come and endeavor to make the white people do so." When Tecumseh died, American soldiers cut off bits of his skin as souvenirs.
And there were some good lines. "I'll try!" Colonel James Miller said, when ordered to capture British cannons at a battle near Niagara Falls. He succeeded, and Adams says that his story "for the next fifty years was told to every American school-boy as a model of modest courage." The war also begat "We have met the enemy and they are ours," and "Don't give up the ship," not to mention "The Star-Spangled Banner." The best British line came when Admiral George Cockburn's forces overran and burned Washington, D.C. "Be sure that all the C's are destroyed, so that the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name," Cockburn ordered, as he supervised the demolition of a newspaper's printing office. The night before, his troops set fire to the White House after eating a supper they found on the table there.
America's luck in the war was not all bad. A few months in, the American frigate Constitution challenged a British frigate to a sea duel. A British cannonball bounced off the wooden ship, earning it the name Old Ironsides, and it won. (The ship, which has been preserved by the Navy, sailed Boston Harbor in August, on the anniversary of the victory.) The British were shocked. In twenty years of war with the French, they had lost only a handful of naval engagements. "The sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was broken," one British Parliamentarian declared. The American public recovered confidence in its power to fight; it was delighted, Adams wrote, by the discovery "that it still possessed the commonest and most brutal of human qualities."
The American Navy took two more frigates that year. The success against the Royal Navy was unprecedented, but the damage inflicted was "trifling," as Adams acknowledged. By late 1813, the Royal Navy had blockaded all of America south of New England, whose ports they left open for a while, probably as a reward for the region's resistance to the war. In April, 1814, the British closed New England's ports, too. The American economy was left in tatters.
A war tests a nation's strength, which consists, practically speaking, of its citizens' willingness to die for their country and to give it money. In 1814, such willingness began to fade in America. The Army shot a hundred and forty-six deserters, up from thirty-two the year before, and enlistment fell off when the government ran out of cash for recruiting bounties. "Something must be done and done speedily," the Secretary of the Navy said, "or we shall have an opportunity of trying the experiment of maintaining an army and navy and carrying on a vigorous war without money." In November, the federal government defaulted on the national debt, and the State Department wasn't even able to pay its stationery bill.
Meanwhile, secessionists in New England, who had for years been scheming to split from the United States, saw their chance. Nantucket, pleading starvation, made a separate peace with Britain in August, declaring neutrality and suspending payment of federal taxes. Britain relented its blockade of the island and freed Nantucketers from its prisons. Block Island and several towns on Cape Cod followed, and, in British-occupied Maine, locals soon took oaths of neutrality and even of allegiance. After Connecticut and Massachusetts squabbled with the federal government over command of the state militias, newspapers and politicians proposed that the states should hold on to their federal tax revenues in order to pay for the militias themselves. The governor of Massachusetts dispatched an agent to Nova Scotia with a secret, treacherous message: if the rupture with the federal government turned violent, the state was willing to help defend Canada in exchange for British military assistance. President Madison looked "miserably shattered and woe-begone," a Virginia lawyer reported in October. "His mind seems full of the New England sedition." In December, representatives from five New England states met in Hartford, but all secessionist machinations became irrelevant in February, 1815, when news arrived that diplomats had signed a peace in Ghent at the end of the preceding year.
Hickey calls the treaty America's "most significant victory." The London Times had been calling for Madison's execution, and the British had begun negotiations, in August, 1814, by asking for the annexation of northern Maine, the demilitarization of the Great Lakes, and the creation of an independent Indian nation in the Northwest, which would have taken up fifteen per cent of America's land. They settled, in the end, for nothing. Bickham doubts, however, that America's diplomats deserve all the credit. Britain's allies were impatient to start trading with America, he explains, and at the Congress of Vienna, where the end of the Napoleonic Wars was being negotiated, it was awkward for Britain to ask Russia and Prussia to refrain from carving up smaller nations while Britain itself was known to be asking for chunks of the United States. In October, the Prime Minister warned a colleague that another season of war in America would cost "much more than we had any idea of," and said he doubted that the British taxpayer was willing to foot the bill. The Duke of Wellington, the vanquisher of Napoleon, advised the Prime Minister that Britain hadn't fought well enough to deserve keeping any American territory, and, soon afterward, Britain's diplomats were instructed to get rid of what the Foreign Secretary called "the millstone of an American war" as fast as possible.
In London, the stock market rallied. Americans went on parades. In Washington, citizens heard of the peace only a week after learning that Andrew Jackson had routed British invaders in New Orleans, with a mere seventy-one American casualties to Britain's two thousand and thirty-six. Although Jackson's victory came too late to alter the terms of the peace, it succeeded in altering the memory of the war. Americans came to feel that they had won. Bickham, while not explicit, seems sympathetic to this view. Britain had aimed to "ignore American national sovereignty as it saw fit," he writes, and found that it wasn't able to.
British respect for American sovereignty did follow the war, and Britain and America never again tried to invade each other. The only question is whether the War of 1812 had anything to do with those facts. What if Britain began to respect America's sovereignty simply because it no longer had a good reason not to? Once Napoleon fell, Britain didn't need to fight him with sailors seized from American ships. Once the Continent was no longer controlled by a would-be world tyrant, Britain didn't mind American ships trading there. The idea behind America, Henry Adams believed, was "that in the long run interest, not violence, would rule the world." America grew timber, cotton, and tobacco that Britain wanted; Americans were excellent customers, and Britain looked forward to recapturing its hold on the American shipping business. The war's true victor may have been not America but the American idea, as championed by the tightfisted British taxpayer. ♦


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The NCSF Sport Nutrition Specialist (SNS) program will prepare you to sit for the NCSF-SNS Exam and to earn the Sport Nutrition Specialist certificate. This educational program will cover all relevant content areas including Nutrients and Intakes, Physiological Aspects of Nutrition, Macronutrients, Micronutrients and Supplementation, and Nutrition and Physiological Adaptations to Exercise. The program will also teach you to calculate nutrient requirements and manage nutrient-timing to accelerate adaptations to training. You will learn how to recognize and manage disordered eating in athletes and active populations at risk.
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In this program you will learn how to properly recommend nutrients to optimize body function and performance based on the latest research. You will learn to plan and monitor nutritional status for anabolic adaptations, effective fat loss, and body composition for health and sports performance as well as evaluate nutrient and supplementation requirements for human performance and function.
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In the Sport Nutrition Specialist program, you will be exposed to a variety of content related to nutrition and its relationship with human performance. The program will prepare you for successful completion of the NCSF-Sport Nutrition Specialist (SNS) Exam and will support an existing fitness related professional credential or allied health professional license. This course also includes a voucher which covers the fee of the exam.
You will learn about the energy-yielding nutrients such as carbohydrates, fat, and protein, as well as the importance of vitamins and minerals and nutrient timing. The physiological adaptations to exercise and how that relates to nutrition will also be covered. You can expect to develop a deeper understanding of how to optimize performance in athletes and the athletic population through proper nutritional strategies.
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