Mussolini iPhone Apps is Italy’s Second Best
Any guesses on what could be the second most downloaded iPhone apps on Holocaust Memorial Day in Italy is? It has to be collection of speeches by Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini.
The application that is for the iPhone is now easily available at the Apple store online. It is really affordable at 79 EUR cents which is approx $1.1. The number of downloads that iMussolini enjoyed has even surpassed the video game called Avatar that is based on the blockbuster movie. This has been announced by the Apple Inc’s Italian iTunes store. The only one to beat this application is a wallpaper application, which won the race of the most downloaded apps.
There are around 100 speeches of the so called Duce’s speech that is now available for the iPhone. History has it that Mussolini the dictator ruled Italy right from 1922 till the time of his death which was in 1945 when the WWII ended. Alessandra Mussolini his granddaughter is now an ally and a politician of the current Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi’s government.
The application creator Luigi Marino who is only 25 years said, “It’s a delicate page in our history that should never be forgotten. I am stunned by the success of the application. I’ve had complaints, but also lots of positive feedback asking me to keep updating.”
Marino is a local from Naples he now gets 70% of the proceeds that this application makes. The application will soon cross the 1000 mark. When it was first released it has only 55 downloads.
It’s Oscar nomination day, which means some in snow-covered Washington DC — Hollywood for ugly people, if you believe the old saying — are daydreaming about what it would be like to make a blockbuster film. “Avatar” seems to have the inside track in this year’s Academy Award race, but isn’t there an old classic movie ripe for a Washington-style remake?
How about “Meet John Doe”? It’s a Frank Capra morality piece made in 1941, where a soda jerk can speak basic truth and a rail-riding hobo is played by Gary Cooper, the George Clooney of his day. Everybody’s scrounging for a job and a buck, they’re laying off the old pros at the local newspaper and a cigar-chomping oil magnate wants to get into politics. Barbara Stanwyck plays a hard-driving columnist who fakes a letter from a mythical “John Doe” who says he’s going to leap off the city hall roof on Christmas Eve to protest widespread corruption and the state of the world in general.
But that’s all background. What makes it made-to-order for a 2010 remake is what happens when Gary Cooper a.k.a. “John Doe” speaks to a big gathering, reading remarks written by the columnist, who’s now in cahoots with the oil magnate: the crowd loves him so much they go out and form grassroots John Doe Clubs, just to be neighborly. No politicians allowed. They’re not partisan, they just want to make things a little better.
The oil magnate has another idea, to use the John Doe Clubs as a platform for his political ambitions. Meantime the columnist and the hobo fall in love, and decide they really are altruistic and want “the people” to succeed. It all winds up on the city hall roof in the snow on Christmas Eve, with (really) the “Ode to Joy” playing in the background.
OK, here’s the 2010 version: picture Scott Brown, the new Massachusetts senator, as this century’s John Doe, arriving in Washington to find a Senate tied up in knots, a House in disarray and a White House mired in debt and war. He’s buoyed by support from the John Doe Clubs of the 21st century, the Tea Party movement. Another Washington outsider, a telegenic former governor with ambitions of her own, is drawn to the nouveau John Doe and to the Tea Partiers. They go to the Tea Party convention but find their maverick message competing with entrenched Washington interests. Nobody goes up to the city hall roof, but the two newcomers emerge from the fray older and wiser and open their own PR shop.
Now the fun part — casting! Clooney would be perfect in the Scott Brown/John Doe role. Sandra Bullock would be ideal as the media star but why not get an acting amateur with real potential: Sarah Palin. For the person embodying the power elite, maybe Jack Nicholson. Again, there’s a non-actor who could fill the bill — Rush Limbaugh. He bears an uncanny resemblance to Edward Arnold, who plays the part in the original. And Limbaugh already has the cigars!
This is a screenplay that practically writes itself — so hit those keys!
Conservative Tea Party activists had loads of fun in Boston last month helping Scott Brown chuck Teddy Kennedy’s forever-Democratic Senate seat into Republican waters.
Now the painted warriors hope to stage a reenactment of Florida’s Dade Massacre, with Republican Gov. Charlie Crist playing the ill-fated Maj. Dade.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows Crist 12 percentage points behind former state House Speaker and Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio in Florida’s Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate. Rubio leads Crist 49 percent to 37 percent.
Rubio’s lead is only just outside the poll’s 5 percentage point margin of error, and 11 percent of 
the 449 people surveyed say they’re undecided. But the numbers suggest a fundamental change in voter sentiment since August, when Crist’s support stood at 53 percent. Rubio and Crist both hold a double-digit lead over likely Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, in the general election campaign to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.
Rubio’s fortunes present an important test of the Tea Party movement’s ability to draw votes. But there may be more than that at stake. Pundits say the Tea Party movement needs national leadership to become a true force in American politics. A Senate victory for Rubio could help give them that in time for the 2012 presidential election campaign. 
But is the Tea Party movement really without leaders? An article in The New Yorker magazine points out the involvement of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. It also notes that some well-heeled lobby groups and think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth, Campaign for Liberty and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, sponsored the Tea Party march in Washington last September.
Photo Credits: Reuters/Brian Snyder (Boston Tea Party Reenactment); Reuters/Mark Wallheiser (Charlie Crist); Reuters/Larry Downing (Dick Armey)
President Barack Obama didn’t mince words when he criticized Republican opposition to prosecuting foreign terrorism suspects in U.S. criminal courts rather than in military tribunals, calling it “rank politics.”
His administration was caught off guard last week when opposition mounted to trying the accused plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks in a lower Manhattan courthouse amid concerns about security and costs as well as potentially affording the suspects certain legal rights.
“One of the things that we’ve had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we’ve tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they’ve never escaped,” Obama said in an interview with YouTube.
“It’s been one of those things that’s been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics,” he said, referring to Republican opposition to the criminal trials. While much of the opposition has been by Republicans, a few Democrats have joined in the disapproval.
A group of senators, including Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln, plan to offer legislation on Tuesday that would prevent any funding of the criminal trials, though it was not immediately clear whether there was sufficient support or how they would seek to pass the measure.
Obama’s budget for fiscal 2011, which starts Oct. 1, includes $73 million to transfer, incarcerate and prosecute the Sept. 11 suspects, including the self-professed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The proposed budget also included $237 million to buy, fortify and upgrade a state prison in Thomson, Illinois, to house foreign terrorism suspects now at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Many Republicans have also opposed closing that facility, arguing it is the safest place to keep terrorism suspects.
“Gitmo is a bought and paid for facility that can be run at a low cost and with guaranteed security for the American people. It also ensures that terrorists will not be brought to the U.S. where they will be able to use the rights afforded to criminal defendants to obtain lighter sentences and broadcast their terrorist agenda from center stage.,” said Representative Lamar Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
Obama refused to back down on closing the Guantanamo prison, but he did acknowledge that Congress can withhold the money to do so. He has argued that anti-American militants have used the prison as a recruiting tool.
“This is something that we’ve got to work through both in Congress but also with public opinion so that people understand that ultimately this is the right thing to do,” Obama said. “By closing Guantanamo, we can regain the moral high ground in the battle against these terrorist organizations.”
For more Reuters political news, click here.
- Photo credit: Reuters/Chip East (the Metropolitan Correctional Center next to the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan)
Lest there be any doubt, President Barack Obama, a Democrat, blames Republicans for leaving him a huge deficit when he took office.
Heard that before? Many times, probably. The president, who is under pressure for spending associated with the $787 billion stimulus package, bank bailouts and car company rescues, introduced his budget on Monday with another reminder of what he faced when he came into office.
“The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon,” Obama said.
“Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy and funded two wars without paying for any of it — all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs,” he said.
The result: a $1.3 trillion deficit when he first took over the Oval Office.
On Monday his administration forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit in 2010.
Administration officials acknowledge that even though Obama didn’t create the full problem, it’s now his to fix.
What do you think? Is it right for Obama to put most of the blame for the high deficit on the opposition party and his predecessor, George W. Bush?
Expect to hear the reminder again.
Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama)
A Tea Party leadership conference in Dallas on Saturday urged the conservative movement’s activists to adopt old-fashioned, get-out-the-vote tactics, including driving people to the polling booth.
“This is something ACORN has been doing,” said Dallas Tea Party activist Lorie Medina, referring to the left-leaning group that conservative Tea Party types love to hate.
Medina’s presentation — one of several at the weekend conference — focused on retooling the protest movement into a well-oiled political machine that can deliver the vote in primaries and general elections for candidates that subscribe to its view of limited government, low taxes and “national sovereignty.”
Much of what Medina said mirrored tried-and-true strategies employed by both Republicans and Democrats, including organization by zip code, voter registration drives, neighborhood walks and signing up members for affiliates.
The conference was a sign the movement — it grabbed headlines last year as it channeled conservative opposition to President Barack Obama’s policies into nation-wide protests against bank bail-outs, the drive to overhaul healthcare, and other aspects of the White House agenda — is becoming more focused.
The Dallas Tea Partiers hope to make an impact in the March primaries in Texas. In the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the organization has 136 groups organized by zip code with 20 or more members and across the state it claims over 20,000 members.
In the Republican primary for Texas governor, the Tea Party activists mostly are backing libertarian-leaning Debra Medina against incumbent Rick Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Few expect Medina to win, but her candidacy could force a run-off or push Perry and Hutchison to the right.
And that raises a question nationally: will Tea Party activists pull the Republican Party further to the right? And if so, is that ultimately a winning strategy?
(PHOTO: A man holds signs during a “tea party” protest in Flagstaff, Arizona August 31, 2009. Organizers say the event is an effort to work against members of Congress who voted for higher spending and taxes. REUTERS/Joshua Lott)
Recent electoral wins have pulled the Republican Party out of a tailspin that started at the height of its power in 1994, but it will be well-selected local candidates, more than the national party, that drives the agenda in November’s mid-term elections.
So says Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Most political pundits expect the GOP to pick up many House and Senate seats in the fall as part of a backlash against the incumbent Democrats and frustration over the weak economy and high unemployment.
“This fall I think you’ll see much more reliance on the candidates carrying the water in their states,” rather than the national party apparatus, Steele said during a lively exchange with students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
In victories such as the recent upset win by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, “we have trusted the candidates to shape the ground game and the campaigns and the messages,” Steele said. Brown was elected to Ted Kennedy’s old U.S. Senate seat in January, a victory that surprised the Democratic Party and deprived them of the 60-seat supermajority needed to pass legislation over Republican procedural hurdles.
Steele said letting candidates shape their own campaign and message took advantage of populist sentiment at work across the United States.
“People are taking control and they are shaping the agenda. … If you don’t believe me, ask the truck driver named Scott Brown. Ask the New Jersey governor named Chris Christie. There’s a certain dynamism that’s starting to explode across the country, and the political elite are not awake to it.”
Steele bristled at characterizations of GOP as “the party of no” for voting against most Democratic legislative initiatives over the past year.
Instead, he rapped Democrats for not being able to advance their agenda more boldly further despite large majorities in the House and Senate.
“I know why a lot of people want to focus on the GOP and the party of ‘no.’ But I didn’t hear a lot of yesses coming from the Democrats either. Even with 60 seats in the Senate and (a majority of) some 70 seats in the House, they couldn’t get it done. Now what does that tell you? I’ll let you ponder that. Write a paper on it or something.”
Steele gave the Harvard students, many of whom are likely to seek careers in policy or politics, some advice: be real.
“It helps to run on things that you believe. Don’t be a phony. Don’t pretend to be a conservative when you’re not, just to get through a primary. Don’t pretend to be a moderate if you’re not.”
“If you want to be able to lead in these moving times …. shut up and listen. Listen to what the people are saying,” he said.
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Molly Riley (Steele after being elected chair of the Republican National Committee last year)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Pentagon leaders on Wednesday underscored their commitment to the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program and challenged some of the arguments Boeing Co is hoping could help it sell more of its F/A-18 fighters before production of the F-35 gets into full swing.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s plan to double U.S. exports over five years includes passing free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea that have been delayed for years, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With a nervous eye on the November congressional elections, Senate Democrats will unveil tax credits and other proposals on Thursday that aim to bring down the nation’s double-digit unemployment rate.
