On the 24th anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square massacre, Beijing's former mayor dies. Chen Xitong served as mayor at the time and had a hand in the slaughter. Here's hoping the coincidence will haunt his memory forever.
The US uses the anniversary to call for full disclosure of the incident. China is not happy with that demand. Sucks to be them.
Ed Kilgore calls Gallup an "organization that did nearly as badly last November 6 as the Romney-Ryan campaign," which is pretty accurate. Their numbers showed Romney with a running 6-point lead in October -- which, as we all now know -- was just way off and helped drive the "unskewed polling" conspiracy theory. The pollster has run an internal review to figure out what went wrong and the problem seems to be their "likely voter' screening questions which, among other problems, leaned heavily toward the midwest and away from the coasts.
At the overhyped hearing on the Tea Party/IRS controversy, Rep. Jim McDermott asks the question everyone should be asking -- why are Tea Party groups getting tax-exempt free rides by masquerading as charities?
Steve Benen makes a good catch: in a recent GOP-sponsored survey of young voters (a survey that found the party mostly hated by that demographic), repondents were asked to identify leaders of both parties off the tops of their heads. For dems, it was the sort of names you'd expect -- Obama, the Clintons, the Kennedys, etc. For the Republicans, it was mostly "media personalities and commentators: Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck." No wonder they're hated. If these are the percieved party leaders, then it would be impossible to take the GOP seriously. "It's a problem that's been lingering for a while now," Benen points out, "the Republican Party has no real leaders."
The trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning begins, with the prosecutors planning to link him with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Manning is on trial in part on charges of espionage, WikiLeaks is basically a news organization, so Manning is charged with being a spy for the press -- a bizarre and Orwellian charge. Part of the reason that Republicans aren't seriously pursuing the Obama administration on the AP phone record controversy is demonstrated right here -- the press is the enemy.
Finally, no peeping at porno with Google Glass. Now they just need to figure out how to automatically disable it while you're driving.
[photo via Yahoo! News]
