Doesn’t Get Any Weirder than This

Well, I was going to report on the St. Paul RNC this week like I did the DNC in Denver last week, but it never quite caught my attention. Hardly anybody went (including the President and Vice-President of the United States, who are the party’s figureheads), Weather was lousy in Louisiana so the first day got put off altogether, and Fred Thompson makes me go to sleep.

But I’ve honestly gotta say, this whole Alaska Momma mooseburger beauty queen thing with Sarah Palin has me utterly and completely befoozled. Bamboozled. Conundrumated. WTF???

First thing out of the gate was that she’s been governator for less than two years, and before that was mayor of a town the same size as Wilburton, Oklahoma (where Granny lives). Then she violated military regulations and operations security by telling everybody her 18-year old son is deploying on September 11. Then she lied about her close relationship with indicted AK senator Ted Stevens and his “bridge to nowhere”, and ‘forgot’ to tell anyone that her own state Senate has her under current investigation for abuse of power. Oops.

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What If They Threw a Convention…

…and Nobody Came?

Looks like we’ll be treated beginning on September 1 to the spectacle of what happens when the Party of Bush/Cheney meets in St. Paul, Minnesota for their quadrennial bash and the inside-the-beltway crowd of insiders decides to stay home, closer to their call-girls (and boys). I mean, Minnesota is so… so… midwestern.

Instead of an all-star lineup and four long days of never-ending party, the focus has been on the number of Republican senators and such who have decided to skip the formalities this year and spend their time trying to save their jobs from increasingly disgusted voters in their home states.

The Associated Press reports that at least six Republican senators are opting out – Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was indicted on felony graft charges last month, won’t be there. Gordon Smith of Oregon has been touting his close working relationship with Barack Obama and John Kerry to his constituents, hoping not to get tossed in the anti-Bush backlash against McSame. Liz Dole of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine are both facing challengers who are entirely likely to win. Wayne Allard of Colorado and “Wide Stance” Larry Craig of Idaho won’t be there either. They’re retiring.

George Bush and Dick Cheney will of course be there to speechify their increasingly dispirited troops. Looks like ‘independent’ Joe Lieberman will be attending, probably to accept the VP nomination from McSame that will do more to seal the doom of the modern Republican Party than anything Democrats could possibly think up.

Should be interesting to see who else decides to stay home this year. I’ll report on no-shows as they don’t show.

Links:

Wonkette: Even Republicans Don’t Want to Attend Convention
Six Republican senators to skip GOP convention

You’ve Just Gotta Be Proud…

Wow. That’s a real photograph of our dear President representing America at the Olympic Summer Games in Bejing. Pay particular attention to the look on daughter Barbara next to him… Even as Chinese police are slaughtering protesters north of the city and censoring internet access for people from all over the world. Some athletes and journalists covering the games can’t even get their own blogs…

Just for coming-in-January nostalgia’s sake, check out the rest of these fun photos over at Gawker. At the very least it’ll make you not feel so bad about those debate drinking games where you have to chug every time John McCain mentions being a tortured Vietnam veteran or Obama says “we can.”

Link:

Gawker: Bush Looking Drunk at the Olympics

I’m Voting Republican…

Ah, REASONS to vote Republican! Sure wish the Republican in my life were so darned terrified of these nasty Intertubes that she really feels she needs Bill-O to protect her! It’s pretty funny anyway, so enjoy, all you Intertubers out there!

More Primary Time-Biding Digressions

Today is yet another primary day, as Oregon and Kentucky hit the polls and Democrats will choose between Hillary Clinton – who is expected to win Kentucky handily – and Barack Obama – who is expected to take Oregon by a goodly margin. Thereby not changing a thing in the current delegate situation and not resolving the issue of who will be the Democratic nominee against John McCain.

As it stands right now while voters in those two states vote, Obama is 110 delegates away from victory, while Clinton needs another 306 delegates. Today’s vote will diminish those “still-to-go” figures, but the ratio will remain essentially the same. And since Clinton still hasn’t figured out that America doesn’t believe it “owes” her the top job, she shows no signs of giving up on her desperate clinging to irrational hope that she can blackmail her way to the nomination via superdelegate coup d’etat. By now, of course, most Democrats are sick of the whole mess, as is just about everybody else in this wacky primary season that has lasted way, way too long.

So… what’s going on in the real world these days?

First, here’s a great photo of Myrtle Strong Enemy, a 101-year old Crow Indian (and oldest living Crow), waiting for Obama to speak in Crow Agency, Montana on Monday. When Obama was officially adopted into the Crow Nation. He was given the Crow name “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land,” which seems quite fitting. He is also the first presidential candidate ever who has visited the Crow reservation.

Another subject of interest is the 8 million Americans targeted for round-up in case of a declared National Emergency. You may ask, how can I make sure I get on that list? It’s really very easy. There’s this computer software algorithm that does all the hard work, making thinking human beings completely unnecessary to the project of designating enemies of the state. It makes judgments about targets’ behavior by tracking their associations via “social network analysis” and uses artificial intelligence tools.

The data collected includes information from banks, credit card companies and credit agencies, private data like ISPs, landline and cell phone records, your travel record, things you purchase, how much cash you withdraw from the ATM, etc. All that “domestic spying” data they say they don’t need a warrant to collect, which is collected anyway and fed into the “Main Core” database for analysis. Bragging rights all around!

Last but not least (for today), there’s the OOOH, SCARY statistic that 16% of high school science teachers neglect evolution or teach unapproved notions such as Creationism or Intelligent Design. Now, that might not be all that scary to people who recognize that public schools are such failures generally that more than 16% of American students don’t even attend at all (home schoolers plus the ~60% dropout rate in entire regions of the country), but there’s a strong scientific lobby that likes to play Chicken Little on the very idea that people are still allowed to believe things the lobby disapproves of in the US of A in the 21st century. Go figure.

At any rate, those are three items of interest and possible discussion value over dinner tonight as we all await the results of the primaries we already know the results of. Do try to avoid the temptation to throw up hands and start living in the real world. It’s an election year – we’ll have none of that! [/snark]

Scary 80-Year Old Terrierist!

Police arrest anti-war protester, 80, at mall

Oooohhh, scary! Don Zirkel, an 80-year old church deacon was arrested last weekend in the food court of Smith Haven shopping mall in Lake Grove, where he was drinking coffee with his 77-year old wife. His offense was that he was wearing a t-shirt that had the death tolls of American military and Iraqis in the war, saying “Enough.”

He’d been passing out protest pamphlets when mall security told him to stop and to turn his t-shirt inside out. He stopped passing out the pamphlets, but didn’t turn his t-shirt inside out before stopping at the food court. So the mall security goons placed him under “civilian arrest” and called police. When they arrived and Zirkel refused to stop drinking his coffee they picked him up, put him in a wheelchair, and wheeled him out. He was arrested for criminal trespassing and resisting arrest.

“Eighty years, and I have never been arrested before for fighting injustice,” said Zirkel. During those 80 years he had served in the U.S. Army, edited The Tablet, the Diocese of Brooklyn’s newspaper, and worked for the state Division of Human Rights under Governor Mario Cuomo.

A PR company representing Simon Property Group, owners of the mall, said in a statement to the press -

…In keeping with our Code of Conduct, it is our corporate policy not to allow protests or demonstrations of any kind to take place on mall property regardless of the topic.

Unfortunately for Simon, there were two opposing protest groups at the mall that day, vocally sparring with each other – one anti-war, one pro-war. Zirkel said he wore the shirt to show his support for the anti-war protesters. None of the protesters in either of the two groups were arrested.

Maybe they were young and fit, and the mall security goons were afraid of enforcing policy on them. I’m sure an 80-year old looked like a much safer target…

Oy!

Links:

USAToday On Deadline Blog
Raffello Network
CommonDreams

A Swashbuckling Musical Interlude

A toe-tapping Austin Lounge Lizards take on the health insurance industry, only this time instead of Guido and the Goons, we get Cap’n Kaiser and his notorious crew of murder by spreadsheet bottom-feeders!

Enjoy!

The Ultimate Campaign Tool!

Aileen

Gordon Smith over at Scrutiny Hooligans turned me on to this very cool version of the game “Mortal Kombat,” where you can pick a candidate (in either party) to fight any other chosen candidate. To The Death!

It’s the usual slice ‘em dice ‘em scenario, and each candidate has a Secret Weapon super-attack move that’s just sure to make you laugh. Bill Richardson has the heft and weapon to do some serious slicing (my grandson’s favorite), his Secret Weapon is to stomp the ground and set off seismic shock waves that don’t work nearly as well as John Edwards’ freeze-ray. Though neither works as well as Hillary’s Doomsday Device, which is Bill. He appears, grabs the opponent by the neck, and proceeds to do a Nolan Ryan style punch-out. Hilarious!

If there are any gamers out there reading this, go to Kung-Fu Election and start playing! Do let me know who won in your elimination match. I figure this is a pretty good way to figure out who the final nominees will be – just pit all your candidates in one party against each other until one emerges as the clear winner. When both parties have a final nominee, we should then be able to hold the final Championship Match and know who will be our next President!

That’s:

Kung-Fu Election

Have fun!!!

Katrina Recovery in MS Goes to the Rich, Not the Poor

Two years later the color of the federal government’s hurricane rebuilding efforts in Mississippi is decidedly black and white. Which, if you think about it, probably does more to explain the 6 Days’ Horror in New Orleans that we all got to watch on television as the government hemmed and hawed and dragged its collective feet, FEMA denied entry to relief organizations from Red Cross to Baptist Conferences, and the FoxNews androids made excuse after excuse, day after day, for the obviously racist response. Which cost lives.

The Congress was not so slow in allotting billions for federal grants to help low-income residents trying to recover from the storm in the Gulf states, yet Mississippi still has not spent half of its share. Many of the homes and buildings damaged have yet to see any repairs at all.

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Waterboarding: Torture or Not?

It’s just so darned hard to get a straight answer out of policy makers and policy hacks. Though, interestingly enough, it’s not that hard to get opinions from warriors (or prisoners) who have been subjected to it.

Yes, it’s torture. It’s labeled such, known as such, practiced as such. The fact that we subject our SEALs and Rangers and other special forces operatives to it to give them an idea of what torture *is* and how to resist it, tells us that it’s legitimately, objectively classifiable as TORTURE.

So, you might ask with wonder in your eyes, why are Senators and Congresscitters and administration hacks arguing about it in public? Why is it “important” on somebody’s scale of things to do to make this long-ago made distinction? Why won’t AG candidate Michael Mukasey lend us his views on the issue? It’s a fair question, let’s ask it…

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