October, Surprised?

Attacking Syria, now... great.

Brokaw nails hypocrite McCain

Crooks and Liars has this awesome little tid-bit from this morning's talk shows. Clips of McCain supporting exactly, word for word, what Obama's tax plan is, back in 2006 and 2002. In research reminiscent of Russert's fastidiousness, Brokaw then faces McCain on Reagan's tax record... beautiful!
http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/meet-press-brokaw-nails-mccain-taxin

funeral leave this week...

Dr.Desert Flower's grandmother passed away after a long battle with chronic pulmonary disease, emphysema, and various other ailments. She was in alot of pain, and not a happy camper for the last few years - hospice was there so it was not a big surprise to the family, except surprising she hung on a whole year longer than they predicted last January. We'll be in Cincy for the funeral most of the week. My mother-in-law has no broadband, so I won't be connected while being up there.

Palin still ignorant about Scientific Research

Basic research on fruit flies, that's a "wasteful earmark" according to Palin.
Think Progress has a factual story on it:
"Memo To Palin: Fruit Fly Research Has Led To Advances In Understanding Autism"
Pharyngula, which I love, has a MUCH MORE Poignant and angry version:
"Sarah Palin: Ignorant and anti-science"

Best ignorant statement by Palin on her impassioned subject of Special Needs research :
"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

Best reply from Myers:
"This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important."

Every time this willfully ignorant and hypocritical woman opens her mouth, she digs herself deeper and deeper. "Ready to be President"? Not even of the Wasilla Rotary Club!

Dr. Desert Flower got a huge kick out of this. =)

Desperate, Weak & Futile

It's not just the RNC that's sunk low, it's McCain too. It's a pity to see someone with previously such potential become the kind of douche bag he himself despised in 2000.
http://ssdtf.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/rnc-barack-obama-and-terrorists/

The short Youtube video is worth a watch as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sF-a1lDpMg
"It ends with McCain looking at the “Terrorists” mailer and a reporter asking him, “Are you proud of that?”

McCain answers, “Absolutely.”"

Someone who bombs an abortion clinic is Not a Terrorist, in a Palin world

Thanks to Matt for this one:

Brian Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition?

Sarah Palin: (Exasperated sigh.) There’s no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who thought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There is no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to, I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word "terrorist" there.

MSNBC link here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27343688
Youtube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qty8kuS7Vo
DailyKos link here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/24/2295/2310/113/640591

"Under the pre-Patriot Act definition of the law, William Ayers and many of his compatriots in the Weather Underground certainly qualify as terrorists. Unlike the abortion clinic bombers and assassins, however, subsequent to the townhouse explosion in which three Weathermen blew themselves up in March 1970, the Weathermen gave advance warnings of their attacks.

The anti-choice terrorists didn’t warn Dr. Barnett Slepian and Robert Sanderson (killed in 1998) or Dr. Jack Fainman and another unnamed physician (wounded in 1997) or Dr. Hugh Short (wounded in 1995) or Dr. John Bayard Britton, James H. Barrett, Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols (killed in 1994) or Dr. Garson Romalis and five others (wounded in 1994) or Dr. David Gunn (killed in 1993) or Dr. George Tiller (wounded in 1993).

Nor did they give warnings in most of the more than 200 clinic bombings and arsons since 1993, the most recent an unsolved case in Albuquerque, N.M., in December 2007."

Confused, babbling senior citizen

I saw/heard McCain severely, repeatedly, verbally stumbling around in front a crowd of fanatics yesterday on MSNBC last night. Crooks and Liars has an excellent description of it. Looks like senility or creutzfeldt jacob may be setting in sooner for McCain than it did for Reagan.

wonderful calculator widget

thanks to my buddy JoeM for this. Links to JoeM.

Pfisted!

Go Chris Matthews go! Thanks to Matt for pointing this one out.

Topographic Purple America

this was from 2004. I had it on my work laptop, and was surprised I could find it again. In two weeks, we'll see how much (if at all) the tones have changed in the American landscape. Il faut voir...

another clueless Republican spouts hate & fear

Minnesota Congresswoman Bachmann...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27319845/
"During an interview with the Times' editorial board, Bachmann said she walked into a trap and did not bring up the term "anti-American."" ... really? A trap? I'm trying to picture Chris Matthews... in a raccoon hat, speaking with a French accent, dressed in buckskin, setting traps...

"Matthews asked Bachmann if she believed Obama held anti-American views. Her response was: "Absolutely. I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That's what the American people are concerned about. That's why they want to know what his answers are."

Bachmann said Tuesday she probably should have watched "Hardball" to see what it was like before she went on it."

No, rather, an unarmed opponent should not try and have a dialogue with a fully armed interviewer. She's clueless, unapologetic, and deserves to lose her election. Never even watched the show befoe she was booked on it? Where are the intelligent, informed, clueful Republicans? They used to exist, in days of yore... didn't they?

I used to not like Matthews, as I thought he was just a loud-mouth blow-hard, but he's quite intelligent, and passion to get an answer & his complete disgust with Republican dodgery - especially when they show split screens of him and the person he's questioning and they completely refuse to answer his questions - has won me over as an interested viewer. I've enjoyed watching "Hardball" when I'm in SC and working out at the hotel each evening. Bachmann should go back to the 1950s, where people like Joe McCarthy used to thrive.

both US presidential candidates support redistribution of wealth

Daniel Schorr's commentary today on NPR made alot of sense. His premise - both McCain and Obama support redistribution of wealth. McCain wants the free market to continue to concentrate wealth in the richest American's hands. The OECD's report, out today, once again shows America's wealth is further concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.

Obama on the other hand, wants to redistribute the wealth, "spreading it around" from the richer few (over $250K) who can pay more to others who can pay less. Maybe someday, when I am a rich greedy S.O.B. making more than $250K / year, I'll feel differently... but right now... I don't like McCain's "free market" (LOL) paradigm that keeps making the rich richer, and the poor... more plentiful, poorer, more desperate, and more dangerous.

Real and Unreal Americans

I've lived and worked and gone to school and paid taxed in towns ranging from 2000 people (1/3 the size of Wasilla) to 4 million people, in 3 different time zones. I'm appalled and vastly offended by the McCain campaign statements (Palin's and Pfotenhauer's) about the Real and Fake, American loving and America hating, Patriotic and Unpatriotic parts of America. The Daily Show dedicated their show to dissecting these statements Monday night, here, and here (quiz). Truly a poignant perspective. Then, later, Jason Jones filed his best report ever from "Wasilla Main Street", here.

Truly despicable. Reminds me of W's "I'm a uniter" load of crap.

Morning grins, from the Onion

Non success in government running things - perspective check

Zaius Nation has this gem today:
"Thought for the day: Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. We are trusting this country's economic recovery to a government that couldn't make money selling sex and booze to drunk truckers."

themiddleclass.org

I stumbled upon this site while Googling "McCain" and "Middle Class". It's a non-partisan site (check out the "about" page). Funny, but when I looked at SC and AZ, nearly all the Republicans got F's on their score cards, except for McCain who got a "inc" grade. Democrats ranged from A's top C's. http://www.themiddleclass.org/ - how did your elected representatives do?

Braving mountain lions for a beautiful image

This photo is beautiful. The text at the link is remarkable as well. Indirectly, a tip-o-the-hat to my buddy Jason, who Digg'ed this, as well as my VP Debate drinking game link, which both came up during a google search of "justjoep". [additionally, "justjoep" googling shows I am not a 14 year old boy in the Netherlands, nor am I a 38 year old musician in Texas, nor a 38 year old single guy looking for a date in Charlotte NC. 'The internets... it's a series of tubes!']

Thanks Phil Gramm! (The Architect of the CDS market)

I had no clue what a CDS was 2 months ago. Now, with my home having lost 40% of it's value (which I bought at the peak of the local Phoenix bubble in Aug 2007) and a worthless mortgage with negative equity, I know what they are and despise their very existence. All those times my mortgage was sold and resold to other lenders... it wasn't just me, it was every freakin mortgage in the US being swapped and traded. 'Not my problem if the home owner doesn't pay it back, I sold the damn thing!' the original lender could claim. I understand better now, how they became such a massive over-indulged fiscal orgy by the deregulation Republicans who amended the bill that started the feeding frenzy. MBS swaps look like venial sins in an environment of CDS Caligula-esque blood lust. Thank's Phil Gramm!

It's asinine. Matt Taibbi states is very well here in refuting the National Review's Byron York:
"The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That's like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it's all speculation by Wall Street traders. It's a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme. The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable."

"S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson" ...and "the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps."

Look it up. It's despicable. Yeah, I'm just "a whiner". "Our economy's never been stronger". Grrrrrrrrrr.

Officially Documenting the Authorization of Torture

Die Hard Right Winger may not care about the world opinion, or the "quaint" Geneva Convention, or much else that doesn't support their Jack Bauer-esque agenda in fighting terror ('take one life to save thousands'), but like most regimes who do nasty things to people secretly, W's administration has left a convenient paper trail. Memos, authorizing the use of torture... they'll love those in The Hague. Didn't they learn any of the lessons from the Bosian/Serbian conflict? Cambodia? the Japanese during WWII?

Scott Horton writes this piece in Harpers this week.

Foreshadowing, HLR Presidency

Andrew Sullivan posts this excellent piece today "Beyond Victimology".. I think it's more like Foreshadowing
Short synopsis:
"Here's rock-ribbed conservative, Bradford Berenson, remembering what Obama was like as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review:

I think Barack took 10 times as much grief from those on the left on the Review as from those of us on the right. And the reason was, I think there was an expectation among those editors on the left that he would affirmatively use the modest powers of his position to advance the cause, whatever that was. They thought, you know, finally there's an African American president of the Harvard Law Review; it's our turn, and he should aggressively use this position, and his authority and his bully pulpit to advance the political or philosophical causes that we all believe in. And Barack was reluctant to do that.

It's not that he was out of sympathy with their views, but his first and foremost goal, it always seemed to me, was to put out a first-rate publication. And he was not going to let politics or ideology get in the way of doing that ..."