Oct 6th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Endgame
Back when the coolest thing in store, oo-oh-oh was a Commodore 64:
— James Inhofe says reconciliation has never been used for major tax legislation. He’s wrong.
— Swedish technology museum has an impressive collection of obsolete computers.
— Unfortunately, the kind of health care reform being debated in congress won’t do anything to solve this kind of problem; you need more robust socialism!
— Julian Sanchez unleashes devastating attack on Fox News’ coverage of the Patriot Act.
Aqua is best known for their late-nineties hit “Barbie Girl,” but the newer “Back to the Eighties” is pretty solid pop too.
37 Responses to “Endgame”
Register
RSSLogin
Advertisement
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Books By Matthew Yglesias
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Abortion
Afghanistan
Basketball
Blanche Lincoln
Budget
China
climate
Congress
Crime
DC
Demographics
Economics
Economy
Energy
Environment
EU
Finance
Football
Gender
Health Care
History
Inequality
International Law
International Relations
Iran
Israel
Media
Monetary Policy
National Security
NATO
NBA
Palestine
Political Reform
Public Health
Public Opinion
Race
Regulation
Russia
Sarah Palin
Sports
Stimulus
taxes
Technology
Trade
transportation
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Contact Matthew Yglesias
Use this form to contact blog author Matthew Yglesias.
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 6th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Does the museum have a spot for your Kindle?
October 6th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
For us in the UK it was the BBC Micro. Indeed…
October 6th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Sorry for the non-Brits: BBC Micro (like and Apple II or C64, but even better).
October 6th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Here’s a challenge: find a Danish band without a direct link to producer/songwriter/musician Thomas Troelsen. It’s really hard.
October 6th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Oh and I can’t believe you’ve not linked to this yet: at this moment Denmark is generating 1805 MW of wind energy, and exporting 441 MW overall. http://www.energinet.dk/Integrationer/ElOest/ElsystemetLigeNu/energinet1.swf
October 6th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Kudos to Sanchez for that smackdown. That’s gotta smart.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I think I get why Sanchez does the oh-so-carefully-crafted hipster thing in that video, but as an old guy, it’s still annoying.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
No, the coolest thing in the store was the Apple III. So cool, nobody bought one. Except for my dad, of course. He was way cool. To this day, I still haven’t met a single person who had.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
The Apple III tells you everything you need to know about Apple. No heat vents, no fans, no heat sinks; completely lacking in proper function and made to look cool and run quietyly as if either of those two things made up for the fact that it didn’t work.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
No way Matt’s old enough to remember when the C64 was the coolest thing in the store. You’re not allowed to co-opt my nostalgia, you little whipper-snapper.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Well, I actually hope they did not think it looked cool, given the fact that it was an ugly monstrosity, but I have to assume otherwise because everyone knows Apple tried to make shit look cool even when they have no idea what cool actually is.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Well, I actually hope they did not think it looked cool, given the fact that it was an ugly monstrosity, but I have to assume otherwise because everyone knows Apple tried to make shit look cool even when they have no idea what cool actually is.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
“as if either of those two things made up for the fact that it didn’t work.”
Oh, it worked. You just needed to load the Apple II emulator to run any useful software. But it was okay for compiling your own programs. Of course, you had to by the compiler separately.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
C64s/Apples/old microwaves: More geek pr0n! That’s what this blog’s been missing.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Cato forces their people to video-blog from a messy house somewhere? Good video, though.
My favorite Fox News moment was when Anthony Napolitano explained to Bill O’Reilly how the Patriot Act actually did violate the 4th amendment, at which point O’Reilly declared that real problem was that the “far-left” was blowing it out of proportion.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
(AIPAC/AZC)
(AIPAC/AZC)
As every politically conscious individual of the Community of Nations on the face of the earth knows [All] The Empire [DC/544] are owned by the Israeli Government via its political pressure Lobbyist group The [AIPAC/AZC] American Israel Public Affairs Committee/American Zionist Council, the most powerful pro-Israeli lobbying organization, under the umbrella group and within the group of numerous and prominent pro-Israel organizations numbering (100K) One-hundred membership of neo-conservative Jewish lobbyists groups, connected to various influential caucus members of the Empire’s pro-Israel lawmakers, [AIPAC/AZC] recognized early on how the Empire system of government worked, [AIPAC/AZC] learned how to play the system to the advantage of the State of Israel, which went from clout, to enormous influence to total and complete control of the Empire. The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto by pro-Israeli lawmakers of legislation or any appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of [AIPAC/AZC] views, determined to prevent any view other than [AIPAC/AZC] views from being aired, by the substitution of political correctness [Pro-Israel] for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by the Empire political system other than those that [AIPAC/AZC], favors, controlling the Empires discussion or exercise of Independent judgment about matter of great importance to the Empire, as well as its allies and friends.[AIPAC/AZC], has gained total political control in driving Empire foreign policy.
[Special Relationship Covenant]
This meant the regular doling out tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions, collected by more and more forcefully arguments, to its donors that their continued relevance in defining global affairs is based upon higher amounts of donations. [AIPAC/AZC] is estimated to have an annual budget of [$60M] Sixty-Million Dollar use to pay the hired hands, the [DC/544] Degenerate Democratic and Republican Crooks, to ensure that its hard line State of Israel agenda’s s were not only part of every discussion of foreign policy that takes place in Congress or the White House, too dutifully carry them out under the [SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP COVENANT]. The [AIPAC/AZC] succeeded because they knew that the (DC/544) needed to court [AIPAC/AZC] , needing money for reelection campaigns, and money holds sway in their political system, and the [AIPAC/AZC] has stood ready to fund their election campaigns with generous donations and gifts.
[SACRED SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP COVENANT OATHS]
At the organization’s annual [3] three-day conference which draws hundreds of politicians, including presidents and vice presidents, past and present, each of whom patiently takes a turn at the podium to reaffirm their obedience, allegiance, and sworn oath to remain the staunchest of Israel supporters and the [SACRED COVENANT], to the State of Israel, the [SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP], based upon activities on behalf of hard-line Israeli government policies. And of course the Media Messiah Imperial President Obama has made one thing straight and that is his staunch support of the [SACRED SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP COVENANT] with Israel, and his administration will be the most pro-Israel in Empire history, which the Messiah made good upping the previous Administration.
The George W. Bush Administration Jewish Members;
White House Chief of Staff: Joshua B. Bolten (2003-2008)
Deputy White House Chief of Staff: Joshua B. Bolten (2001-2003)
Deputy White House Chief of Staff – Joel Kaplan (2006-2008)
Secretary of Homeland Security – Michael Chertoff – (2005-2008)
Attorney General – Michael Mukasey (2007-2008)
Assistant to the President : Lewis Libby (2001-2005)
Deputy Secretary of Defense ” Paul Wolfowitz (2001-2005)
Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee – Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith
And, under the Media Messiah Imperial President the Jewish Power and Control over the American Israeli Empire has grown (10) ten fold with the top of the listing being The Empire is (COS) Chief of State Rahm Emanuel and (ACOS) Assistant Chief of State David Axelrod both, Mossad agents, pro-Israel party hacks and henchmen in a special place, to guarantee that the Empire’s Mid East policies will go where the (AIPAC/AZC) and Israel what it to go, with many placed into the roles of [CZARS] and State Sensitive Positions.
[LIAR AND TRAITOR]
Obama has for a Media Rock Star appearing on all Media Outlets and Channels morning and night, remains silent, and turns a blind eye when it comes to the Israeli illegal settlements upon the Palestinian West Bank Occupied Territories an increase of [40%] Forty-Percent over the past [6] Six-years, under the euphemistically called Israeli policy of [NATURAL GROWTH], in direct violation of the Road Map to Peace Agreement, despite [75%] Seventy-Five percent of American Citizens in a poll conducted by [www.WorldPublicOpinion.Org], responding, indicating that Israel should comply with the Road Map to Peace Agreement
The Imperial Media Messiah President has proven to be a [LIAR AND TRAITOR], and too be in the back pocket of (AIPAC/AZC) along with the (DC/544) who are vacillators to that Treason, that is a given and has over and over again said one thing while doing another, or doing nothing at all. Such is the present case with Israel’s Pre-emptive Nuclear Attack upon Shi-ite Persian Republic of Iran. The Messiah has not only given the Green Light to such an attack but has been paving the road, having;
* Throwing Eastern Europe under the bus to prevent the Russian Federation from delivering [S-300] Missiles to Iran on the Russian Ship, [The Arctic Sea], with [BiBi] making a secret trip to Moscow, with the deal, later signed by the Messiah.
* Strong arming Saudi Arabia into granting over flight rights to Israel for the pre-emptive attack.
* And pressuring the Egyptians to allow Israel to sailed one of its three German-made Dolphin submarines into the Red Sea through Suez in June, opening a way to the Gulf. The submarines are believed to be capable of firing nuclear and conventional cruise missiles.
* And the Empire must provide any and all assistance to Israel that it can covertly if possible but if necessary will be compelled to do so overtly.
* Intelligence information is used to increase [international pressure] for sanctions and lay a path for possible military action, so that information has to be publicly scrutinized carefully.
* Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), was involved in a scandal, Jane was caught on tape promising to help reduce charges for suspected Israeli (AIPAC/AZC) spy’s, during the much-publicized trial of the [2] two former (AIPAC/AZC) officials accused of spying for Israel. (AIPAC/AZC) has and represents only one master, and that is Israel, running clandestine operations against both the Empire and thru there positions within the government have access to sensitive information of the entire Community of Nations, as well.
* Arguing that [THERE IS NOT ANOTHER OPTION BUT AN ATTACK] and [VERY SOON].
[Plumbing The Depths]
(AIPAC/AZC) are, master chefs, more than prepared to serve up multiple course servings of final verdicts, for any perceived sins and transgressions against (AIPAC/AZC) and therefore (AIPAC/AZC), will engage in torpedo tactics with all-out fusillade’s plumbing the depths of dishonor and indecency of furiously E-Mailing to sympathetic reporters, which include but are not limited to;
* Character assassination
* Distortion
* Fabrication of falsehoods
*Hit job’s of easily traceable trails of E-Mail barrage’s
* Humbug
* Hypocrisy
* Libelous distortions of the targets record
* Selective misquotation
* Smear Tactics
* Willful distortion of the record
* Utter disregard for the truth
* Political bias
[Foreign Policy (AIPAC/AZC) Controlled]
[The Speaker of the House California Representative Nancy Pelosi]
The most polarizing personalities to occupy the post of Speaker of The Empire House, became embroiled in a political controversy committing the sin of breaking the [SACRED SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP COVENANT], on [March 19th, 2007], and felt the sting of the (AIPAC/AZC), Nancy’s sin was to try to strip from a military appropriations measure a provision to weaken [ANY] Imperial Presidents ability to respond to any perceived threats from Iran against the State of Israel, Nancy was bullied ragged, booed, and much as in the Christian New Testament calls were made to pick up the stones, and stone her, a comparison to the Prostitute save by Jesus Christ, with (AIPAC/AZC) demanding that [NO] Imperial President be required to appear before the Congress of the Empire, [WHEN] the scheduled pre-emptive Nuclear Attack against Shit-ite Persian Iran begins and [B-2] Stealth Bomber, are dropping their payloads on Arak, Natanz and Bushehr. Nancy was forced to capitulate and scuttle any such requirement, Nancy is now in the bag, but Nancy is far from being alone in that bag, The Empire has the best government that (AIPAC/AZC) gifts and money can buy”.
[Charles "Chas" Freeman]
A former Empire ambassador to Saudi Arabia, an [ASOD] Assistant Secretary of Defense and a Senior Empire diplomat in China, has served on the (CNOOC) China National Offshore Oil Corporation board, [Chas Freeman] also serves as the president of the Washington, (D.C.) District of Columbia, Middle East Policy Council think-tank, felt the wrath of the (AIPAC/AZC), judged guilty of critical remarks amounting to the [BLASPHEMY OF ISRAEL], (AIPAC/AZC) pack the audience who chanted crucify him, crucify him, over the proposed appointment of a Blasphemer candidate for a leading Empire intelligence post for disputing the wisdom of (AIPAC/AZC) views, Chas was crucified by members loyal to the [SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP COVENANT] in the Empire [DC/544] congress for remarks seen as critical of Israel over the isolated open air concentration camp of Gaza, saying [The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending], handing down a veto of his appointment. Admiral Dennis Blair, the national intelligence director who chose Freeman for the Middle East Policy Council think-tank called the (AIPAC/AZC) position of [pre-cooked pabulum judgments], that the Empire had lost a man with of an inventive mind, and strong analytical points of view, thru the interference of (AIPAC/AZC).
[Evangelical writer Mike Evans]
(AIPAC/AZC) has fully align itself with [CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS] who believe that the politics of the Middle East are being orchestrated by God in order to usher in the second coming of Christ, and are actively engaged in working against Middle East peace, which, according to Evangelical writer Mike Evans, is in reality [an international plot to steal Jerusalem from the Jews … [controlled by] a master collaborator [Satan] who is directing the play. Basically the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Christian Zionist and Israel both stand against the Road Map to Peace Agreement.
[Moral Authority Lost]
It has come time the citizens of the Empire to liberate themselves from the grip and control of the [DC/544] and their (AIPAC/AZC) Lobbyist Masters. The Empire no longer acts in accordance with the will of those they govern but have in fact so out to the interest of a foreign master [The Empire has lost its moral authority. It’s unsustainable, ungovernable and unfixable,] It’s time to water the tree of liberty – a phrase taken from Thomas Jefferson, an 18th century American revolutionary and third US president, who wrote: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, it is it’s natural manure.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
October 6th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Triathalon: Get a blog and link to it. No one cares about your spam.
October 6th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Triathlon and the timecube guy need to have a competition to see who can shit out the most word-diarrhea the fastest.
Also, why don’t tv shows introduce inhofe as “the senator from oklahoma that lies every time he opens his mouth, and doesn’t care when he’s caught lying, and will continue to lie about everything because he’s a soulless toad”. It would be time-saving and more accurate.
October 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
I remember playing video games on our TI-99-4A. Fortunately, for fans of the past, some classic video games are still available.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
“I remember playing video games on our TI-99-4A.”
We almost bought that computer because of the 16 bit processor. But it lacked the PASCAL support of the Apple III. It did have better games, though. But my dad considered that to be a bug. He thought I should spend my time learning programming. And he needed to write design optimization software at home because his company didn’t think it would pay off if they let them use their mainframe. Kind of a joke considering his first program saved $15 Million in construction costs on a new steel mill. And all for $3000 is hardware costs and a week’s worth of late nights on his own time. Man, those were weird times. Computers were so good at the recursive optimization techniques that simply couldn’t be done by hand without a few thousand people. But nobody believed how important they could be if used right.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
October 6th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Fostert, some of the games were pretty good (Parsec, Alpiner, Munchman, etc.). Munchman was Pac-Man in reverse where you lay down chain instead of eat up dots. I remember using the TI to write my first BASIC programs. Saving programs involved writing code to an audio cassette tape. I still have the TI-99-4A and it still works, although the joysticks aren’t the best.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
not to be curmudgeonish, but I hated that song. nostalgia just for the purpose of nostalgia isn’t something I go in for. And a musical version of “I Love the 80s” isn’t exactly original either. For an actual good song mining the same territory, try Relient K’s “In Love With the 80s (Pink Tux to the Prom)”
October 6th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Nice job by Sanchez…. it’s fascinating to see how utterly inaccurate Fox is.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Rather OT, but an earlier photo in Matt’s stream (SDC10464) is of an old SAAB 95, the worlds ugliest car (pre-Aztek, that is). I had one for a few years and loved it. Utterly simple three-cylinder 2 stroke (oil in the gas) which ran like a top. The brakes were not the greatest, and the doors and floor rotted out, but it had poi-sonality. Good times.
October 6th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Personally, my favorite Apple III story is that there’s an apple technical memo instructing users to drop the machine 3 inches in order to resettle chips loosened by overheating.
Personally, I miss my Apple II user’s manual. Any book that includes circuit diagrams for your hardware, that’s hardcore. You just don’t see that these days, just ‘cos the book would be 4000 pages long.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Triathlon, making lists of Jews in public office?! Stay classy, asshole.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:15 am
I’m 30 and remember playing some track & field game on the Commodore 64. I think MY’s around the same age.
October 7th, 2009 at 1:45 am
“Fostert, some of the games were pretty good”
I loved those games as a kid, so I know. But I had to play them on my friend’s computer. He had to compile his programs on my Apple III because he couldn’t do it it on is. Say what you will about about the Apple III PASCAL compiler, but it reduced programs to the machine code, which could be embedded as routines in BASIC, COBOL, other languages. We could mess with those games by editing those codes at the machine code level and injecting new stuff into the algorithms. But we did it in PASCAL first and then compiled it into machine code. It was just so much easier to write code in PASCAL, compile it, and then reduce the relevant code to machine code and then replace those codes. I was hacking code when I was nine years old back in the 1970’s. But both of us decided that hacking was wrong, and both of us became engineers instead. Should have stuck to hacking. I’d be a lot richer and have probably spent less time in jail than I have. But hacking was not cool back then. It wasn’t a social issue, it was just that if you were doing it, you weren’t even dreaming of being social. When you were a computer geek in the 1970s, you didn’t have friends, you were just a freak. If there was one guy who could work with you you, you were really lucky. But I had that, thanks to my PDP-11 (or CDC-7) terminal five years before the first PC came out. I was hacking as a kid before the first stand-alone computer came on the market. But I can’t hack now, I gave it up thirty years ago. Hacking has become much more complex now. It’s not just running a code the searches for passwords. You could pull that off in the 1970s, but certainly not now.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:13 am
But the really weird thing is that I didn’t even want to deal with computers. I’ve never liked them. I just hung out with my friend because it was better than mom. I really just wanted dad to come home and we’d play tennis. He could teach me something real. He was good enough that he tried to go pro, and had a chance. But then he got his ass kicked by some 15 year old kid named Jimmy Connors, who turned out to have a great career. My father probably took it more seriously than he should have given that Bjorn Borg couldn’t always beat that kid. But my dad (at 40 years old) had a 130mph first serve that was really scary to see. But with Jimmy in the game, best to stick to engineering, and he did. He still played, and he taught us kids how to play. And as good as he taught me, I could never return his first serve. The Williams sisters are the first to break that speed in women’s tennis. In men’s, it’s an average serve now. But back then, my father really did have a serve like Jimmy Connors, he just didn’t have the rest of the game. At best, my father could have been an Andy Roddick.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:20 am
POKE 53280,0
POKE 53281,1
October 7th, 2009 at 4:21 am
“POKE 53280,0
POKE 53281,1″
Man, that got created and obsoleted while I watched. It wasn’t real language when it existed. And I was just a kid and knew that. But then again, I was privately teaching the computer teacher. I rarely attended her class, but when I did, I taught it. I’d been using computers for ten years and I was sixteen. She’s thirty and has been using them for three years. We worked out a deal where I’d teach three of her classes and not attend the rest of them, and then I’d skip those gym classes which were scheduled at the same time. The rest of the time, I’d just go to gym and she’d count me as present in the computer class. But she’d make sure that if there was something she didn’t know, she’d pull me into class to teach it. And I was on the swim team, so the Gym teacher was cool with it, even if he was the football coach.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:00 am
So here’s a funny one that your mom might have to deal with. Dealing with it now would be difficult, but back then, it’s unknown. There are no laws about it, and nobody even can think about what to think of it. But something’s gotta be wrong, right? I was eight years old and had a terminal my mom got from Lehigh University. And every mom might wonder what a little child might do if left alone, and she should expect this. Kids are smart, and I manged to transfer the game we wanted to play onto the PD-11 server instead of the CDC-7 because I knew it would run faster. So I figured out how to re-rout it. And copied a new version of the game on the better server, and created special passwords and told the players how to get there (this is 1978, remember). And I hacked Lehigh’s computer to do it. And I was eight years old. Later, I realized it was wrong to hack people. That was when I was thirteen years old.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:29 am
“That was when I was thirteen years old.”
And that was a long time ago. The lucky ones will live long enough to see Social Security and Medicare. The rest of us won’t. But there is nothing like running through a corn field when you’re a kid. Some die young, some die old. Know when you’ll die and plan for it. I know when it is, and ain’t nobody else planning for it. They probably will just dump me in the river. And God only knows what fish would eat me then. But God is only fate, so it’s it’s really just dumb luck. And it’s better to have the fish eat me. The worms will get you anyway. And that’s a good thing. But I’d still rather have the birds eat me. And I hate birds.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:47 am
And consider this. I’d like my burial to be done by Tibetan tradition. Carried up to the local mountain to be eaten by birds. But it’s illegal in America to do that. Think we’re free in religious thought in America? Think again. Only Christian thought is protected by the Constitution. The rest rest are just after-thoughts to be claimed as bait. My body will not get a proper burial, because my country won’t allow the transfer to India, which is one of two countries that allows that burial. And I’m not Indian, I’d just like a proper burial that is specifically discriminated against by our laws. But they’ll just burn my body into charcoal and use it to cook food. There’s only one other country who is so open minded as to accept these kind of burial practices. So that’s probably where I’ll be buried: Iran. Every country claims to be open minded, but on that point, Iran is the only country that actually is. India says it is, but isn’t. So really, tell me how you are somehow defending my beliefs. I’ll defend yours to my death if any one of you would defend mine for a single moment. But I’m sure nobody here would take that bargain. And I offer it for real. But not a single conservative or liberal would ever be willing to put up their life for their beliefs. I would sacrifice my life for rights if I could get them. But I can’t, and I’ll die from cancer anyway. So just move on, nothing to see here. Not like all that money I paid to insurance companies will ever help me, they already cut me off. And the hospitals surely won’t touch me without the insurance I can’t get. Welcome to the death sentence. I don’t know when I’ll get cancer, but when I do, it’s over, baby. I’ve got six month’s of treatment in the equity in my house, and that’s just not enough. So why bother? Just give half of it away to the people you love and see the world with the rest of it. Just leave enough to pay for the cremation. If someone wants to pick the ashes up, let them spread them where they want. Think I care when I’m dead? I’m guessing not.
October 7th, 2009 at 9:21 am
some grist for EMH mill
October 7th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Jesus, fostert, you’re depressing me.