1. Twenty-Six – Well two days and three cakes later, the Prey Sundek birthday celebration has finally come to a close. Not since my eighth birthday (when I dressed up like a dinosaur and had a magician perform at my house) have I had such an eventful 6/16.
And thanks to all of you who posted comments, wrote on my Facebook wall, and wrote me e-mails. It really means a lot.
2. Birthday Photos – A few pictures from the last 48-hours. As you can probably tell, Cambodians love having their picture taken with the cake…
3. Am I Really Doing This Again? – About 12 hours from now I’ll be lining up at the starting line of the Olympic Day Half Marathon in Phnom Penh. Considering I haven’t run over 7 miles in 2011 and it’s supposed to be hot and humid tomorrow, I can assure you that it won’t be pretty. I’m just hoping I don’t get chicked again.
Stay tuned. I’ll try to post some results tomorrow.
4. China in Cambodia – From the June 11-17th edition of the Economist: “Just down the road from the new (Chinese-built) container terminal is the huge Chinese bulit Prek Tamak bridge which opened last year. The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, recently broke ground on a $46m Chinese-built road linking the capital to the coastal province of Kampot. There, a new Chinese-built hydroelectric power station is about to begin operation-supplying, by one official estimate, half of Cambodia’s demand for power. The Chinese plan to build three more. Overall, China accounts for almost half the foreign investment in the country.” (Courting the Khmer) The Economist
5. The Bangkok Series – I just finished reading Bangkok Haunts, the third of the John Burdett’s Bangkok series. If you’re looking for some good summer trash, I highly recommended these books. The best way I can describe them is Stig Larson in South East Asia (and maybe with a little more sex.)
6. Why is Facebook Losing Customers? - From Slate’s Farhad Manjoo: “If it’s not privacy and it’s not a new rival, why is Facebook losing customers in America? Because there’s no one left to go after. As Inside Facebook’s Eric Eldon points out, Facebook’s growth always stalls when it hits 50 percent market penetration within a country. Facebook is now experiencing something unprecedented in the short history of social networking—it has captured every plausible user in several countries, and the only people who are left are folks without Internet access, people who do have access but don’t spend a lot of leisure time online, and the few lonely die-hards who swear they’ll never join.”
I wish I could say the same about TenThingIThink’s low hit count in June. Instead I’m gonna blame it on the nice weather.
7. Anthony Weiner - “Obama asks Weiner to resign but not Asaad of Syria. WTF is wrong with us?” – Michael Moore.
Now I think that it was the right move for Weiner to resign. At this point he had become such a distraction that holding on any longer probably would have done more harm than good. But it continues to irk me that a sex scandal is just about the only reason anyone is ever forced to resign or make a public mea culpa. Just think about it for a second. The guy didn’t break any laws (that I know of.) He really didn’t hurt anyone (with the exception of his wife.) And for what it’s worth he was actually pretty good at his job. It’s totally backwards.
8. Who is James Johnson? – This is the perfect follow-up the Anthony Weiner drama — a story from David Brooks, about the totally legal actions that cost us billions of dollars, while enriching a select group of the well-connected. (Who is James Johnson?)
Back then, Fannie Mae could raise money at low interest rates because the federal government implicitly guaranteed its debt. In 1995, according to the Congressional Budget Office, this implied guarantee netted the agency $7 billion. Instead of using that money to help buyers, Johnson and other executives kept $2.1 billion for themselves and their shareholders. They used it to further the cause — expanding their clout, their salaries and their bonuses. They did the things that every special-interest group does to advance its interests.
Fannie Mae co-opted relevant activist groups, handing out money to Acorn, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other groups that it might need on its side.
Fannie ginned up Astroturf lobbying campaigns. In 2000, for example, a bill was introduced that threatened Fannie’s special status. The Coalition for Homeownership was formed and letters poured into Congressional offices opposing the bill. Many signatories of the letter had no idea their names had been used.
But there are no crimes. This is how Washington works. Only two of the characters in this tale come off as egregiously immoral. Johnson made $100 million while supposedly helping the poor. Representative Barney Frank, whose partner at the time worked for Fannie, was arrogantly dismissive when anybody raised doubts about the stability of the whole arrangement.
Most of the people were simply doing what reputable figures do in service to a supposedly good cause. Johnson roped in some of the most respected establishment names: Bill Daley, Tom Donilan, Joseph Stiglitz, Dianne Feinstein, Kit Bond, Franklin Raines, Larry Summers, Robert Zoellick, Ken Starr and so on.
9. The War in Libya: Day 88 – Remember that quick little war we were supposed to be in and out of? Well this Sunday it will turn ninety days old. Any idea how much our broke country is spending there? According to the L.A. Times, our Libya operation costs almost $9.5 million every single day or $392,542 every hour (day and night). Any idea why it’s in our national interest to be there? Your guess is as good as mine.
10. The Final Chapter - And finally, because everything else in the news this week seems really depressing, at least there’s something to look forward to…
Enjoy your weekend. Happy Fathers Day! Happy Birthday Emmett!
anxiously awaiting a picture of you in your don drapper suit. please don’t forget the hat. thought you might find this amusing: more from bachman:
ThinkProgress has assembled 10 of the nuttiest things Bachmann has ever said:
(1) BACHMANN WARNED ‘THE LION KING’ WAS GAY PROPAGANDA: At the November 2004 EdWatch National Education Conference, Bachmann said the “normalization” of homosexuality would lead to “desensitization”: “Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of ‘The Lion King’ for instance, and a teacher might say, ‘Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?’ The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.”
(2) BACHMANN CLAIMED ABOLISHING THE MINIMUM WAGE WOULD CREATE JOBS: While testifying in front of the Minnesota Senate in 2005, Bachmann said, “Literally, if we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” This isn’t remotely true. Even simply reducing the minimum wage would, as Paul Krugman noted, “ at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually be contractionary.”
(3) BACHMANN CLAIMED THAT SCIENTISTS ARE SUPPORTERS OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN: During a 2006 debate, Bachmann said,“There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.” This was, and is, not true.
(4) BACHMANN CLAIMED TERRI SCHIAVO WAS ‘HEALTHY’: Not long after Terri Schiavo died, Bachmann said she would have voted for the Palm Sunday Compromise because Schiavo “was healthy. She had brain damage — there was brain damage, there was no question. But from a health point of view, she was not terminally ill.” An autopsy found that Schiavo had suffered irreversible brain damage and her brain, said the medical examiner, was “profoundly atrophied.”
(5) BACHMANN LIKENED VISITING IRAQ TO VISITING MALL OF AMERICA: In 2007, Bachmann returned from a junket to Iraq and told her colleagues, “[T]here’s a commonality with the Mall of America, in that it’s on that proportion. There’s marble everywhere. The other thing I remarked about was there is water everywhere.” As ThinkProgress documented at the time, the comparison was preposterous.
(6) BACHMANN CLAIMED THAT CARBON DIOXIDE IS ‘HARMLESS’: In 2008, a Stanford scientist revealed “direct links” between increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and “increases in human mortality” — globally, he found that as many as “20,000 air-pollution-related deaths per year per degree Celsius may be due to this greenhouse gas.” The next year, Bachmann, who is not a scientist, said that “carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
(7) BACHMANN CALLED FOR A CONGRESSIONAL WITCH HUNT: Pivoting off the news of Barack Obama’s alleged relationship to former Weather Underground member William Ayers, and his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bachmann accused the candidate of having “anti-American views.” She then suggested that Congressional liberals — including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid — ought to be subject to “an exposé” by the media because of their views. “I think people would love to see like that,” she told a stunned Chris Matthews.
(8) BACHMANN SUGGESTED GAY SINGER SHOULD REPENT AFTER GETTING CANCER:Bachmann saw Melissa Etheridge’s cancer as a teachable moment: “Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers,” she said in November 2004. “This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.”
(9) BACHMANN BOASTED ABOUT BREAKING THE LAW: In advance of the 2010 national Census, Bachmann told The Washington Times that she would break the law by not completing the forms. “I know for my family, the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home,” she said. “We won’t be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.”
(10) BACHMANN CLAIMED THAT GLENN BECK COULD SOLVE THE DEBT CRISIS: During a February trip to South Carolina, Bachmann told a South Carolina audience, “I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].”
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p.s rory mciiroy has a 3 shot lead a t the open. let’s see if he can avoid his “masters” melt down.
that’s mcllroy
COLUM MCCANN won a big cash prize in Dublin yesterday (Bloomsday and your bday!) for “Let the Great World Spin.” I love what the judging panel said, “a remarkable literary work, a genuinely 21st century novel that speaks to its time but is not enslaved by it. The human condition, the kindness and cruelty shown from one man to another, the ways in which we suffer and triumph, are subjects which have resonated through fiction for centuries.” Doesn’t it make you want to read it again?
And then there’s the MICHELE BACHMANN memoir which she has been shopping around for weeks (tentatively expected to be released this fall with JOHN FUND, a Wall Street Journal columnist “assisting” with the writing). Say it isn’t so.
HARRY POTTER on July 15 though. That will get us all through. We’ll wait for you to buy our tickets.
Yahoo. Good luck in the half. Hope you survive the heat.
Call when you finish. I’ll be at City Park Saturday morning signing up voters for OBAMA FOR AMERICA but will keep my mobile close.
XO
from the WSJ
Athletes’ Tweets
It’s no secret that professional athletes love Twitter.
We found the five active athletes in each of the four major sports with the most followers and tracked 100 of their most recent tweets. The messages ranged from the mundane (Chad Ochocinco’s daily updates on his workout routine), to the bizarre (Brian Wilson is apparently really into the Nintendo power Glove), to downright creepy (celebrity couple Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian exchanging not so private love letters).
In the end, though, it seems athletes do use Twitter for the exact reason their followers want them to: to communicate with their fans.
Content Breakdown:
Type of Tweet Percentage
1. Direct response to a fan 23.9 %
2. Comment on athlete’s own sport 13.4
3. Self-promotion or advertisement 12.7
4. Conversation with another athlete 6.5
5. Reference to movies/TV/music 6.1
6. Comment on a different sport 5.5
7. Complete non sequitur 5.1
Dirk Nowitzki on “Late Night with David Letterman” on winning the NBA championship:
“It might land me a Kardashian sister.”