I watched the Arianna Huffington interview on Charlie Rose a few days ago. You really have to love Charlie Rose and the intellectual integrity he represents amidst a sea of Jerry Springer-like, sensational and biased news media here in the US. Here’s a question for you: click here and then here and let know how long it takes you to tell the difference? Compare to this, and you’re task becomes more difficult yet. I frequent HuffingtonPost.com as well as BBCnews.com, to escape the 24-7 Rev Wright, kindergarten siege of mainstream US news coverage.

Time has just named its 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. #1 in the list is Shigeru Miyamoto. Before clicking here, do you have any idea who the heck this guy is?

Actually, there are 207 people in the list, each having a rating from 1 to 100 (i.e., some people tied with other people). Incidentally, Miley Cyrus – aka Hannah Montana (rank 146, rating 33) is also one of the top 100 influentials. Check! The full list can be found here.

Must give Obama credit for the ‘high road’ approach to campaigning he’s taken, being effectively the anti-Clinton. Yes, they’re both politicians, and yes she is behind so she probably feels the Clintonian call to do anything to save her presidential soul (a Clinton never loses, so expect her next move to be to going postal w/ her “grandfather’s guns”).

Author Benjamin Barber recounts in his book, “The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House” how Hillary Clinton answered another speaker who had raised the difficulties of reaching “Reagan Democrats” after Democratic losses in the 1994 Congressional elections. The debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David in 1995. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach. Barber recounts Hillary Clinton’s response:

“Screw ‘em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”

It stands in stark contrast to the attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail, in which she has presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class needs:

“I don’t think Obama really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you,” she said this week.

Three memorable “misspeaks” of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, probably just the tip of the iceberg?

Clinton misspeak #1:

During an April 1995 visit to Tibet, Hillary Clinton met New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary, co-first-climber of Mount Everest. Clinton remarked that her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, had told her that she was named after the famous climber. “It had two L’s, which is how she thought she was supposed to spell Hillary,” Clinton said at the Tibet meeting. “So when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it’s because of Sir Edmund Hillary.”

The problem with the tale, however, is one of timing. Sir Edmund and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became known to the world only in 1953, after becoming the first men to reach Everest’s summit. Sen. Clinton was born in 1947. In 1947, Sir Edmund was an unknown beekeeper, but Clinton had explained her mother read about him in a publication while pregnant and liked the name. Obviously not possible. The tale was also stated as fact in an Oct. 10 Times story – about Sen. Clinton’s mother moving in to the family’s house in Washington – which stated “her mother named her for the mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary.” The Clinton campaign ultimately issued a correction to the tall tale.

Clinton misspeak #2:

Commenting about a trip to Bosinia in 1996:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Asked later about the issue during a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News’ editorial board, Clinton said she “misspoke.” Actual video footage of the landing and reception shows how bad the misspeak really was.

Clinton misspeak #3:

“I’ve hunted. My father taught me how to hunt. I went duck hunting in Arkansas. I remember standing in that cold water, so cold, at first light. I was with a bunch of my friends, all men. The sun’s up, the ducks are flying and they are playing a trick on me. They said, ‘we’re not going to shoot, you shoot.’ They wanted to embarrass me. The pressure was on. So I shot, and I shot a banded duck and they were surprised as I was,” Clinton said drawing laughter from the crowd. . .

Commenting that Clinton’s hunting stories didn’t pass the ’smell test’, Dick Cheney challenged her to a shooting match. Clinton was forced to admit that she had “misspoke” about her gun exploits as a child, stating “I fired a gun once, and didn’t like it.”

Also, watch Bill Clinton misspeak about wife’s misspeaking.

A report issued by the Institute for American Values titled “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and for All Fifty States” puts the cost of “divorce and unwed childbearing” in the US at 1 trillion dollars to US taxpayers over a 10 year period. See the report here.

Both Obama and Clinton addressed the Alliance for American Manufacturing in Pittsburgh, PA today. Both brought up and discussed Obama’s recent ‘bitter’ comment in San Francisco and attempted to make their respective cases. Whereas Obama was met with a very positive response from the audience, the response to Clinton’s case was quiet w/ some jeers from the crowd. Click here to watch the video. There is also a vid with Barack Obama speaking in Steelton, PA.

The video:

Also, Barack Obama speaking in Steelton, PA

Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there’s a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there’s a pause before the cross traffic light turns green. There are even legal limits as to how short the duration of a yellow light can be. According to Motorists.org, six US cities have been caught shortening their yellow light lengths for profit, since short lengths of the yellow at intersections have been shown to increase the number of traffic violations. The cities in question are Union City, CA, Dallas and Lubbock, TX, Nashville and Chattanooga, TN, Springfield, MO, and these are just the ones that have been caught. Read more about it here on the Motorists.org website.

Hot off the press of the White House website, the following photo is supposed to show Dick Cheney smiling on a recent fishing trip, and is supposed to illustrate his love for the outdoors. But, some see more reflected in his sunglasses than mountain streams and fishing poles. What do you see?

Click here for a zoomed image.

Here are two images with increasing zoom:

This news is old, but still neat. Could you text this phrase in less than 42 seconds? “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocios! Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. If you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious.” If so, you could have earned an extra $25k for your spring wardrobe last year! On Saturday April 23, 2007, 13-year-old Morgan Pozgar was crowned the first ever National Texting Champion, and awarded $25,000 for her blazing thumbs. 300 competitors vied for the prize, being tested for both speed and accuracy. Read the full story here.