In the ex-presidency game, there’s a lot to be said for sitting at home quietly and letting the new guy take his lumps.
Aside from the occasional presidential library to open or first pitch to throw out, chilling out at home with the missus seems to have been former President George W. Bush’s legacy-building gameplan since leaving office in 2008.
According to a major national poll released Tuesday, that strategy is paying off for W.
Gallup pollsters announced Tuesday that the last Bush in office is more popular than our sitting president. Forty-nine percent of Americans now see Bush in favorable terms, compared to 47 percent for President Barack Obama.
Bush’s 49/45 approval-to-disapproval rating split in the new poll also is the first time since 2005 – not-so-coincidentally the same year as Hurricane Katrina – that more Americans say they approve of his presidency than don’t. It’s also a major uptick from his favorability rating low of 35 percent in March 2009. (His high: 87% two months after the 9/11 attacks in 2001).
Bush is even gaining ground among Democrats, who give him a 24 percent approval rating, up 10 percent from his last day in office. Independents have also given Bush a double-digit approval bump since 2009.
The shift seemingly makes sense. When you’re the guy watching the late night comedians mock the latest presidential scandal (domestic spying, IRS nosiness, Michelle’s bangs) instead of being their target, there’s an OK chance some members of the public are going to remember you a little more fondly.
So who would you pick in a popularity, pie-eating or any other kind of presidential contest? Post your pick in the comment section below.
As life imitates art and we find out just how closely “Big Brother” is actually watching us, George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four has seen sales skyrocket.
Originally published in 1949, one edition of the novel has seen a 4,566% increase in sales since news of the National Security Administration’s telephone records surveillance program was disclosed by former CIA agent Edward Snowden.
With the revelation that the federal government is collecting data on the habits of domestic telephone customers in an unprecedented scope, the theme of surveillance, taken to an extreme in Nineteen Eighty-Four, is hitting close to home for many Americans.
Similar practices seen as invasive or, well, creepy, by governments are often dubbed as “Orwellian,” but one wouldn’t normally expect such a direct correlation to book sales, however, it’s not uncommon. NPR points out that sales of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged took off during the 2008 banking crisis as readers similarly reached for foreboding fiction.
Was that a rape joke during a Microsoft presentation?
That’s the talk going around the Interwebs, referring to banter between a man and woman demonstrating the fighting game “Killer Instinct” at the Electronic Entertainment Expo Monday.
Microsoft acknowledged Tuesday that the comment was “offensive.”
The man was, well, beating up on the woman when he said: “Just let it happen. It’ll be over soon.”
The audience laughed.
“You have a fight stick,” the woman said.
“Wow. You like this,” the man commented.
“No, I don’t like this,” the woman replied.
Jonathan Blow, a prominent game designer, typified the outraged response, Tweeting: “Let’s bring a woman on stage and joke about how she’s bad at games, and say stuff like ‘relax, just let it happen, it’ll be over soon’??”
In contrast, on a YouTube page featuring the interchange, commenter limozeen64 wrote: “If you got a rape joke from this I feel sorry for you.”
In a statement Tuesday, Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios, said:
Yesterday, during the Xbox E3 briefing, one of our employees made an off-the-cuff and inappropriate comment while demoing ‘Killer Instinct’ with another employee. This comment was offensive and we apologize. At Microsoft, being open and respectful with others is central to our code of conduct and our values. Bullying and harassment of any kind is not condoned and is taken very seriously. We remain committed to make gaming fun for everyone, and in that effort, we must lead by example.
Nearly a fifth drank enough to get drunk. Since DDs are generally someone we know pretty well, this sort of means we can’t trust our friends, right?
Yeesh. Talk about a buzzkill.
It should be noted, though, that the University of Florida survey was fairly narrow in scope. Researchers followed 1,071 barflies, 165 of them elected chauffeurs for the night. They tested them six random times over a three-month period.
The sample wasn’t that diverse either. Most of them were white college bros. All were from a southeastern Florida college and nightlife district (they study doesn’t disclose where, which is too bad because it’d be nice to avoid it).
Eighteen percent in the group took breathalyzer tests and scored 0.05 percent or higher. That’s considered the “impairment zone,” but still legally sloshed. The federally set legal limit for a DUI, of course, is 0.08 percent, but the National Transportation Safety Board wants states to move to the 0.05 level.
The study concludes that people need to get schooled on the concept of designated driving – an idea struck up in Scandinavia before migrating to the United States about 30 years ago when Harvard famously introduced the Alcohol Project, which touted DDs as “the life of the party,” The Atlantic Wire tells us.
But evidently, there’s still a long way to go, despite lobbying efforts by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other public safety advocacy groups. MADD says about 10,000 people die from drunken driving a year and hundreds of thousands more get hurt.
The university study’s authors say they hope their report will “identify the need for consensus across researcher, layperson and communication campaigns that a DD must be someone who has abstained from drinking entirely.”
This should keep ESPN happy for the foreseeable future.
Tim Tebow signs with Patriots
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ESPN’s Ed Werder reported Monday that the New England Patriots will be signing quarterback(?) Tim Tebow. He’ll report to Pats minicamp on Tuesday.
There are certainly no guarantees as to Tebow’s role with the Pats although ESPN is reporting that he’s likely to stay a quarterback. Ryan Mallett is currently the only other QB on the roster behind Tom Brady, and Tebow was cut by the Jets after serving as the third-stringer for a single season. It’s been previously reported that although some teams were interested in Tebow’s athletic ability, he wanted to remain a quarterback.
In New England, Tebow will rejoin Josh McDaniels, the man who drafted him for the Broncos. McDaniels now serves as the offensive coordinator of the Patriots.
In three seasons in the NFL, Tebow has passed for 2,422 yards (just 39 with the Jets last year, however) and rushed for 989 more. He has 29 career touchdowns and nine interceptions.
Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD…
The account was unverified earlier today, leading to speculation over whether the “pantsuit aficionado” was really behind this. But then, newly verified, she tweeted (and her follower count skyrocketed):
Just in case there were still any doubts, her husband jumped in to confirm the former secretary of state has indeed joined the 21st century:
Bill is also a new addition to Twitter: He joined in April (@billclinton), thanks to some help from Stephen Colbert.
No one’s listening to your phone calls, Obama insists. (Photo: Evan Vucci)
Though an open secret for years, the realization finally sunk in thanks to some high-profile news reports this week that, yup, Americans are being watched on a massive scale.
Remember that closed-circuit capture of one of the Boston bombers circulated by the media? Those security cams are widespread, and could very well record you as you wait for the train, stroll through an intersection or walk from office to car.
New York Mayor Bloomberg, discussing domestic spying and drones a couple months ago, said it’s a given that privacy is a thing of the past.
“We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy,” he said on the radio, per the New York Daily Post. “I don’t see how you stop that. And I don’t think it’s a question of whether that’s good or bad.”
Better to ask, he insists, how do we live with it? Can we even find privacy in an age of surveillance?
Yeah, you can. But it’s a huge pain in the neck, Wired explains.
Worried about phone tapping? Buy a burner phone–no contract, pay-by-the-minute. With cash. The throw it away. Got some secret e-mails to send? Use a secure e-mail service that encrypts your messages and don’t open any attachments (that gives away your location). Set your IM to off-the-record.
Even then, all that’s moot if the person on the other end doesn’t take the same precautions.
If you’re like most Americans, of course, you share the most intimate details voluntarily. You build networks of personal acquaintances online, mostly through Facebook. You probably list your hometown, your place of employment, where you went to school. You post your favorite quotes and links to articles you read and places you’ve traveled. You upload your job history to LinkedIn. At work, you probably commiserate with pals on g-chat about your tedious workday and co-worker crushes.
Someone you’ve never met could write your unauthorized biography, if they cared. (Chances are they don’t.)
That’s the nature of data-mining: You collect reams of information, most of it goes unused and the anomalies get put under the microscope for the putative aim of fighting terrorism, as President Obama reminded us in a defensive speech delivered in San Jose today.
So good luck finding some semblance of privacy. No secrets for you. Those civil liberties were exchanged for national safety during the last administration – a policy continued to this day.
“I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 10 percent security, and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Obama said today. “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”
A choice would be lovely, but it seems it’s been made for us.
The only well-kept secret is how quickly these spying capabilities are advancing.
A screenshot of Pamela Anderson’s TV ad that banned in Britain for being “sexist and degrading to women.”
So, all these years when Pamela Anderson appeared barely clothed on “Baywatch” and various awards shows, that wasn’t too sexist for TV.
But now that she’s splashing milk or cream on herself while wearing a bikini, that’s too sexist.
That’s according to the Advertising Standards Authority, a regulatory agency in the United Kingdom. The group banned Anderson’s recent commercial in Britain, saying it was “sexist and degrading to women,” reported the site Mirror.
The ad, for a web-hosting firm, features Anderson and a female co-worker dancing suggestively in bikinis, as part of one guy’s fantasy at a business meeting.
(The ad is a little NSFW, depending on your W, but you can watch it on YouTube here).
Much has made of Anderson’s drastically different look in recent months; here’s the star through the years:
