• Morons,  Politics

    Indra Nooyi: “America is the Middle Finger” Speech

    May 19, 2005 /

    Flap nominates President and CFO of Pepsico, Indra Nooyi, as MORON of the week.

    Read her graduation remarks at the Columbia Business School MBA recognition ceremony here.

    Read the Powerline take on the speech here:

    Read what Hugh Hewitt has to say about the lame attempts of Pepsico to spin the story.

    Hugh asks: Where is the CEO of Pepsico?

    STEVEN S REINEMUND, 55, has been PepsiCo’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since May 2001. He was elected a director of PepsiCo in 1996 and before assuming his current position, served as President and Chief Operating Officer from September 1999 until May 2001. Mr. Reinemund began his career with PepsiCo in 1984 as a senior operating officer of Pizza Hut, Inc. He became President and Chief Executive Officer of Pizza Hut in 1986, and President and Chief Executive Officer of Pizza Hut Worldwide in 1991. In 1992, Mr. Reinemund became President and Chief Executive Officer of Frito-Lay, Inc., and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Frito-Lay Company in 1996. Mr. Reinemund is also a director of Johnson & Johnson.

    Indeed!

    Mr. Reinemund’s slience is noteworthy.

  • Adscam Scandel,  Canada

    Paul Martin and Liberal Party Withstand Confidence Vote

    May 19, 2005 /


    Independent MP Chuck Cadman stands with the government during confidence vote on Thursday.

    The Canadian Government of Prime Minister Paul Martin barely survives a confidence vote in Parliament this afternoon. The Globe and Mail has the story here:

    The Liberal government survived a crucial budget vote Thursday night by a sliver, effectively ending the possibility of a snap election and giving the governing minority a bit of breathing room to finish this session of Parliament before the summer break.

    By the closest of margins, the Grits, along with the support of the NDP, and Independent MPs Chuck Cadman and Carolyn Parrish, pushed their budget with NDP amendments through, thus surviving a non-confidence motion on Bill C-48 which contained $4.6-billion in concessions for the Democrats. The final result was 152 to 152, with the Speaker breaking the tie for the government.

    Read the rest of the story here.

    Paul Martin survives to live another day but a tie vote in Parliament is certainly no mandate.

    Now, the Liberal Party will have to govern and hope the Gomery Inquiry does not result in any further defections.

  • Blogosphere

    The Coming Legal Superstorm Against Bloggers Exhibit 9

    May 19, 2005 /

    Justin Levine over at CalBlog has this piece (9th Exhibit) on a coming legal superstorm against bloggers. Read it here:

    Exhibit 9 in the Coming Legal Superstorm Against Bloggers.

    (R-rated warning: Descriptions of Gary Condit-style kinky sex acts described in the above exhibit.)

    Exhibit 8 here (with links to other previous exhibits).

    Read Flap’s latest piece on Exhibit 8 here:

    Justin Levine over at Calblog has another piece on the “coming legal superstorm against bloggers”:

    Exhibit 8 here. (Not so much a case “exhibit” admittedly, but an interesting commentary worth reading.)

    Tech Central Station seems to agree with the issue that I have been sounding the alarm bell over for some time now.

    The only thing that the writer is out to lunch on is that he fails to recognize that

    The war is already here in terms of libel and copyright law. A further expansion of those already overbroad laws are hardly needed in order to shut bloggers down. His implication that copyright and libel laws are currently well balanced against First Amendment interests strikes me as utterly loony.

    The expansion of FEC laws are already in the works. Talk radio was the canary in the blogger birdcage as far as that front is concerned.

    I will keep saying it until I am blue in the face – the only viable long-term solution is to scale back the entire scope of libel and copyright laws.

    Simply attempting to carve out a “blogging exception” will never work and will easily be bypassed by a legal establishment that looks for loopholes. (Just like carving out a “blog” exception to the Apple case won’t work either. Courts will never accept that since it would effectively end their ability to subpoena witnesses altogether. The attack shouldn’t be directed at evidentiary “privileges” or arguments as to what constitutes a “journalist”, but rather must be waged against “trade secret” laws in general – something that the conservative/blog/legal establishment isn’t up for quite frankly.)

    Exhibit 7 here.

    Exhibit 6 here (with further links to exhibits 1 – 5).

    So, will bloggers unite to fight the MSM?

    Will strength in numbers be able to subdue these attacks and allow blogging to be a subset of a new Media?

    Stay tuned…..

  • Bear Flag League,  Politics
    May 19, 2005 /

    Read about the California Bear Flag League’s Summer Conference here:

    Preparing for 2006: Bloggers Gaining Access

    As the influence of blogs grows, more often bloggers are gathering news directly in addition to commenting on stories from the traditional press. The Bear Flag League is putting together a summer conference on bringing bloggers and newsmakers together.

    When: July 17, 2005
    1 pm
    Special preevent gathering at noon for League Members only

    Where: Pasadena California

    Price: $50 includes lunch and midafternoon break

    Keynote speaker: Dan Weintraub,
    The California Insider

    Panels:
    Blogs as Part of a Political Campaign
    How Blogs Impact Campaigns and Make Policy

    Moderated by Scott Schmidt, former Communcations Director, Log Cabin California

    Hosted by Calblog, Irish Lass, Local Liberty Blog

    Co-hosted by Boi from Troy, The Pirate’s Blog

    Hosting and co-hosting opportunities still available.

    To secure your spot, click the Paypal button or email me.

    Flap will definitely be there!

    So, should YOU!

  • Adscam Scandel,  Canada

    Paul Martin’s and the Liberal Party’s Fate May Rest on One MP

    May 19, 2005 /

    At 5:45 PM EDT there will be budget votes that the Conservatives hope will bring down Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberal Party controlled Canadian government.

    Read the story from The Globe and Mail here:

    Independent MP David Kilgour will vote in favour of the federal budget but against an NDP amendment, a move that backs opposition efforts to topple the government and leaves the fate of Parliament effectively in the hands of a single member.

    Mr. Kilgour has said he was undecided on which way he would vote, but in recent days expressed concern about the direction of the minority Liberal government and the decision to give rookie MP Belinda Stronach a cabinet posting upon her defection from the Conservatives.

    Thursday afternoon, however, Mr. Kilgour decided to follow the lead of the Conservatives and give only his support to the broader budget, but not the amendment struck as part of a Liberal deal with the NDP…

    Within hours, MPs of all stripes will face off in the House of Commons to decide whether Canadians will be sent to tIhe polls just a year after their last trip to the ballot boxes to pick a government.

    Flap wagers on a mid-summers election for Canada.

    Stay Tuned!

  • Morons,  Politics

    Is Pat Buchanan Wrong and a Racist?

    May 19, 2005 /

    Flap previously reported on Pat Buchanan’s column Was World War II Worth It?. The piece is here:

    Now, former Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch has written a piece in response:

    In a May 11, 2005 column in The American Cause captioned “Was World War II Worth It?” Pat Buchanan argues that America and the world would have been better off if the U.S. and Britain had not joined World War II and defeated Hitler.

    Buchanan posits that Communism, not National Socialism (Nazism), was democracy’s enemy. He cites in this regard President Bush’s recent statement that the 1945 agreement in Yalta “followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable…The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs in history.”

    Buchanan is dead wrong. If we had joined with Hitler and the mass murderers of Nazi Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, ultimately Great Britain and the U.S. would have been conquered by the Nazis. Tens of millions more would ultimately have been killed, including all world Jewry, and that would have meant American Jews as well…

    Read the rest Of Mayor Koch’s column here.

    Buchanan is wrong on his history and wrong on his revisionist remake of same.

    Pat better be willing to debate these issues and explain his opinions fully.