A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died...
My first thought was radiation poisoning. Then I started wondering how many deadly cargoes like this are sailing in our world's oceans right this moment. Then I curled up in a ball in a corner and started rocking back and forth, humming "Pop Goes the Weasel" with my eyes clamped shut.
The McCain bunch has been blaming "gotcha journalism" for Sarah Palin's ever more numerous gaffes. The thing is, it doesn't even take journalism for her to screw up. I could ask her a question about any number of issues that bother me and she'd fuck up the answer because she's a stupid fucking beauty queen that believes the earth is 5000 years old and that people rode on dinosaurs and ate roasted brontosaurus for Sunday dinner after church. She's agonizingly moronic and vapid. If you smiled warmly and told her she was an insipid harpy she'd probably smile back and say something chirpy like, "Yer so sweet! Thinks!"
This debate coming up (if there's a debate) between her and Joseph Biden may be as unwatchable as a baby getting mauled to death by a rabid wolverine. It's going to be ugly and you know ahead of time who will win. Let's just hope Biden doesn't sling too much blood onto the audience or we'll get stuck with a huge cleaning bill as well as this insane bailout.
I don't ask for much but it would be swell if you listened to this and voted for it. Radiohead asked me (and a few tens of thousands of others) to remix this song. Actually I would much rather that you download this high quality version and listen to it. The version on Radiohead's website (the one loaded in the player below) sounds very dull because I was forced to fit a seven minute song into 5MB (this download is 10.6MB) and 5MB would be fair sounding for a five minute song. Yeah. So, the copy below is kind of "not good" sounding. This download sounds GREAT! Anyway, vote for this song and I hope it changes your life.
Castrillo de Murcia, Spain does not have a running of the bulls but they do have a "leaping over the babies" where men dress as demons and jump over the town's babies who lie on mattresses in the street. After jumping over the babies the demons continue to run representing the banishment of demons from their lives. It would be really cool if they let trick bicyclists or skateboarders be demons as well.
Why is it that only a satirical news program on a cable comedy network has the balls to show these people repeating their lies (or contradicting themselves within hours as McCain did earlier this week)?
It's just not a good idea to have an army active inside your borders. The police are one thing but the army is something much worse. I wonder if the next President will give up any of the new-found and awesome (not in a good way) powers this last President (remember him?) has gathered to himself.
STEPHEN COLBERT: One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.'' STEWART: Then they'll head right over to the abortion mixer. There'll be a dance, and then there'll be a little tent set up outside, just in case anybody wants an RU-486.
I should've posted this a while back but forgot to. Just to drive home the fact the Republican Presidential campaign keeps telling bald faced lies because they know their followers will believe them despite all the proof to the contrary. Proof like President Bush saying Iraq was not involved in the 9/11 attacks and that they did not have WMD.
John McCain has "suspended" his campaign for the Presidency (the quotes are because he's been constantly appearing on news programs since the "suspension") because of the current financial crisis. Who does he think he is? He's not on any of the committees that will write the law that will probably fuck all the non-wealthy Americans that could be fucked and he's not a member of the Senate leadership that will call the legislation to the floor.
Is it just a ploy to keep the vapid former beauty queen Sarah Palin from having to debate Biden? McCain's plan to make up this Presidential debate is to replace next week's Vice-presidential debate with McCain v. Obama. There are 39 days left until we elect the next President and we have yet to see them head to head and the Vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket has yet to hold anything even vaguely resembling a press conference, much less participate in a debate.
Don't these people have computers, cel phones, video conferencing, etc.? Oh, I forgot. McCain doesn't understand all that new fangled technology. If he did he wouldn't need to go to Washington in person until he actually needed to vote on a bill.
And a little note about the debate McCain wishes to cancel: it will likely lose $5.5 million for Ole Miss. As we all know, public universities are awash in cash so they'll just be able to shrug this off, right? Fire a few more professors, hire some more marketing personell...
A little bird told me about this video taken at a freaky little church in Wasilla Alaska featuring a preacher from Kenya and the State's governor. I'm now wondering if Sarah Palin doesn't handle snakes...
"Always wear eye protection" it said on a sticker on a hammer I bought. It says this on spray foam containers, drill bits, chisel packages, etc. There are also constant warnings to wear gloves and protective clothing. You see children riding their bicycles with almost as much padding, gloves and helmets as an NFL linebacker. I've wondered for a while how long it would be until Americans spent their entire lives wearing knee pads, gloves, safety glasses and helmets. Well, the Japanese have now added high tech safety wear to the end of our lives:
The 1.1 kilogramme (2.4 pound) airbag looks like a traveller's waist pouch but inflates in one-tenth of a second when sensors detect the wearer has taken a tumble.
The Tokyo-based company, Prop, unveiled the 148,000 yen (1,400 dollars) device at a fair of products for the elderly and people with disabilities.
It protects the back of the head and the buttocks with two inflated bags that contain 15 litres (3.9 gallons) of gas each.
Elderly people are more prone to injury when they fall due to their brittle bones.
Japan has one of the world's highest life expectancy rates, which is attributed to a mix of factors including a traditional healthy diet with plenty of vegetables.
People aged 65 or older accounted for 21.5 percent of the total population of 127 million last year, according to the government. More than 36,000 people are aged over 100.
But Japan is facing growing costs of caring for its elderly since fewer young people are having children.
This week he points out the lies the McCain/Palin campaign have been perpetuating about earmarks. As you know by now (if you read this blog that is) the conservatives will believe even more fervently in these lies as the truth is shown to them. I think McCain/Palin are depending on it.
"Well, we know that our base will believe whatever we tell them more strongly after it's been shown to be a lie so let's just lie our collective ass off."
We can only hope there are more people in this country whose political leanings range from liberal to moderate than there are conservatives or we are fucked.
Some quotes from the most recent show:
Palin raked in $27 million in earmarks for Wasilla.
The nationalaverage per person for earmarks is about $50.Palin got her town $1000 per person.
...
The cold hard truth is, Sarah Palin is actually the Pork Barrel Queen of all governors.
Her current request is for $197 million dollars in earmarks.
This is more per person, than any other state in the nation!
McCain:Here's an interesting fact.Governor Palin just mentioned she vetoed a half a billion dollars in earmark pork-barrel spending, and Sen. Obama asked for nearly a billion dollars in earmark pork-barrel spending!932 million dollars, almost a million dollars for every single day he was in the United States Senate.It's remarkable!
The cold hard numbers make a mockery of what McCain said.
First of all, Obama's state, Illinois, has about 13 million people.Alaska has 670,000.You do the math.
Ok, I'll do it for you.
What that means is, Sarah Palin's earmark requests as Governor average $330 per Alaskan each year.Obama's average $18 per Illinois resident each year.
$330 Palin, and $18 Obama.And McCain condemns Obama?!Is McCain just confused again?
Hmmph. Here's a little science that most conservatives will ignore because... it's science*:
It is not the military surge that has brought peace to the areas of Iraq where it has "succeeded." It was a surge in sectarian cleansing. The night time lights in Iraqi cities were analyzed and it was found that, starting before our "surge" began, the level of light in various ethnic areas of the cities were dimming. Why? Because as they fled, the victims of this cleansing turned out the lights. We have "achieved success" in Iraq by letting the Sunnis to run the Shiites out and the Shiites to run out the Sunnis. What was that about us not being able to leave because there would be a civil war and horrible bloodshed? Mightn't it have been quicker, cleaner, and a hell of a lot cheaper to have just let them take care of this themselves? They did it anyway, but we were trying to stop them.
*Actually, conservatives will ignore this information (if they ever encounter it as I doubt it will be reported on Fox Noise without a mighty heapin' of venomous scorn) is because they were first told that the "surge" has "succeeded." (Why do I feel it so necessary to put sarcastic quotes around all the key words used by this administration?) I think you should listen to this story from the fantastic radio program On the Media from WNYU for a better explanation than I can give in short here. Here's a short excerpt from the transcript that speaks specifically to why I think conservatives would probably ignore this study of night lights in Iraq:
SHANKAR VEDANTAM: The researchers, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, brought in a bunch of Republicans and told them about the Bush Administration’s claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. And then they provided the volunteers with essentially a correction of that information.
About 34 percent of conservatives believed that Iraq had either hidden or discarded the weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion, but after they heard both claim and refutation, 64 percent of conservatives believed that Iraq had had the weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, the refutation caused more people to believe in the Bush Administration’s claim than they did before.
There are more studies about that show that conservatives respond differently to the world than liberals (or non-conservatives), specifically in the case of new or contradictory information. Now if I were to hear I was likely to deny the truth this week just because I believed something wrong last week, I would try really hard to correct for that. Conservatives can't work like that, at least not easily.
There is so much about this out there. Odd how Fox Noise (or any major media outside of NPR) has completely failed to report on this. The findings really are quite striking and if you look at the studies, they're very well done. The right wingers are, as always, impuning the messenger and the message but what doubt I've seen has been towards individual tests. It seems odd that so many different studies could reach the same conclusion. If you've ever had any involvement in science you know that one spends a great deal of time removing any external cues or prejudices in the design process of the test. Here is a case where there may be a small bit of doubt as to whether the analysis is biased. I kind of don't think so. (I wonder if that makes me a conservative?)
This can't be good. The executive branch is using the current economic crisis to increase its power in frightening ways.
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