Author: jpm

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Christie 2016

Everybody’s got a little hole in the middle
Everybody does a little dance with the devil

The Hurricane1 does it again! Chris Christie continues his campaign to win my vote in 2016, making him the first Republican I’ve ever voted for in a national election. We still disagree on several deal-breaker issues, but he’s getting there. He’s decided to appoint an interim Senator until a Special Election can be held in October to finish the remainder of Senator Frank Lautenberg’s term after the Senior Senator from New Jersey passed away this week. Not everyone is happy with the decision, however:

[Former House Majority Leader Dick] Armey accused the governor of trying to curry favor with Democrats by not appointing a Republican to the seat until 2014. He’ll name an interim senator by next week to serve until the special election.

“All Christie has to do is appoint a Republican. That’s the correct move for him to make,” Armey said. “Now, I put it down as debilitating stupidity. The first rule of politics is ‘Don’t lose the friends you already have for the friends you’re never going to get.’ And if he thinks the Democrats are going to love him for being the guy who plays fair rather than takes the political opportunity he’s crazy.”

A Democratic governor would have “seized the opportunity” and appointed a senator from his own party, Armey argued Tuesday.

This was the classy, statesmanlike thing to do. And anything that pisses off Dick Armey off is a good thing.
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1That’s my nickname for him.

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Talk about a soft opening

The Bellefonte Dairy Queen is no more.

That bit of drama out of the way, I give you: The Bellefonte Twist. Apparently the “twist” is a vanilla and strawberry swirl cone. I’m curious to see how well that combination sells.

I work maybe 100 yards from the Brockerhoff Hotel building and I didn’t notice the change, so they’ve certainly kept it on the down low.

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The White Geek’s Burden

assangeJulian Assange is a lot of things to a lot of people. Traitor. Hero. Visionary. Megalomaniac. Gentleman. Asshole.

He’s a cipher; a tabula rasa onto which anyone with a perspective and/or an axe to grind can project their hopes, fears, and particular worldview.

He’s also really good at reviewing books.

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century.

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The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not.

Wouldn’t it be something if China ends up being the last bastion of freedom in a world gone Google? For now, that notion is little more than a fever dream in the minds of some of our more senior literary figures, oft as not writing in the throes of late-stage Brain Eater Syndrome, but our grandchildren may look to the East, as the people of Russia and Eastern Europe once looked west, and long for whatever they have over there.