I Hope You're Happy

A Republican I’d actually vote for

Olympia Snowe (Maine)

Diebold selling its voting machine business

Maybe now we can get some election security and paper trail?

John Ashcroft can be sued for illegal detention after 9/11

More inconvenient accountability for the previous administration.

Rupert Murdoch’s son upset with BBC News having unfair funding advantage

So the BBC gets lots of money through Television license fees—fees collected from owners of televisions for watching the BBC. While in this country this would be branded socialist and anybody associated would be hunted as unAmerican by Michele Bachmann, in the UK, it is a way of providing quality independent journalism without regards to who their sponsors are, what their ratings are or how much money they stand to make on one story over another. In the U.S., this freedom from outside meddling is roughly comparable to NPR, and it’s often why the BBC news coverage of events in America is better than U.S. Coverage.

Murdoch wants to bring the Foxnews model wherein they lie to dumb people and ruin a nation and world for profit to the UK, but thinks he has a disadvantage because he relies on sponsorship (and lies and bias and sensationalism) to sell his story to the public. Oh, and I think they have laws about truth in their news that might be a little sticky.

Note to the UK: This is one U.S. Export you really don’t want.

On an encouraging note, though, Newscorp is going to begin charging for its news content, and maybe this will discourage people from stumbling on it and becoming Republicans.

Bringing the offshore business home

At the outset, you’d think this was a joke: A Palestinian hair dresser decides to bring the manufacturing of his hair products line to America and chooses Texas as the place to do it. A Palesinian hairdresser in Texas? What? But he’s actually a very smart businessman taking a risk as he looks at the market and decides that Chinese manufacturing is not only costing him business, but it is hurting America, his adoptive home. Democrats could read this story and shed a tear of respect and gratitude to somebody who understands how America should work. Republicans would tell this immigrant he’s a terrorist out to destroy the world’s economy with his high quality and fancy hair products, he should instead go back home and get us more oil.

T-Mobile is jumping the shark on being a top-flight wireless carrier

We just got charged $60 to turn our phones back on after AIG forgot to pay us for three weeks and our bill lapsed. Now they’re going to charge a fee to send you a bill. We pay more in this country for wireless than other countries, and our service is worse. Upcomers like Cricket are offering unimited plans for less than T-Mobile offers 700 minutes with no text plan and a sharp stick in the eye. Their customer service has always been horrible. I can’t wait to get out of this contract.

Patrick Buchannan defends Hitler, says he didn’t want to go to war

What world do these guys live in? Let’s see, Hitler was mobilizing a massive military and marching them into Poland with his eyes on all of Europe because he was really interested in one little town Poland got from Germany in a bad treaty after WWI. The bonus, though, is his comments, which surprisingly call him out on this horrible lie of an article.

It is amazing to me that The conservative end of the branch feels Nazis are a winnable tactic in public discourse. There is the axiom that whoever is the first person to mention Nazis loses, but let’s add some corollaries. First, any mention of Nazis will bring up only the worst associations, and will not in any way open up a mind to “Maybe they’re just misunderstood.” Second, If you bring up the Nazis in an argument, you will either get the argument wrong, or look like a sympathizer. Third, any mention of Nazis automatically brands you a kook.

Idaho GOP Gubernatorial candidate wants to issue Obama Hunting Licenses

This ill-conceived thought came in an off-hand remark. Could we have the Republican equivalent of Joe Biden?

Obama to indoctrinate our nation’s youth on his socialist agenda

Or Maybe that’s just silly

Or just tell them to stay in school and be smart. Either way, Republicans have a problem with it.

A brief look at the who, why and how of why our oil prices shot up when our economy tanked

(Hint: It isn’t because free markets know what’s best for them)

A look at the impending Evangelical collapse into atheism

As written by an Evangelical minister. He starts off with this wonderful clip from Ricky Gervais.

There’s some very interesting thoughts here, both for Atheists and Evangelicals, and the message seems to be some amount of mutual respect is going to have to develop. The image of Atheists as socially inept science types and bitter ex-Christians is changing. Atheism is, like an evolutionary diagram, pulling itself out of the primordial ooze into a social movement with its own celebrities and respectability. For Christians, when an atheist thought enters the minds of one of the flock, no amount of look-at-the-monkey tactics or reeducation camps are going to bring them back to the fold. The old rationalizations that are built on contradictory arguments aren’t going to work, either. I really like the tone of this article.

Dumb and Dumber

Glenn Beck interviews Rush Limbaugh on the threat to free speech. Should be the threat to rational speech.

Tom DeLay shows his moron and joins the Birther movement, and why not? His legal issues means he doesn’t have to worry about re-election, so why not be a kook?

Fanning the flames of hate from conservative media

Let’s see, one week:

Limbaugh dismisses  global warming and cap and trade as just like the healthcare is broken myth.
Glenn Beck danced around committing violence as acts of civil disobedience
Glenn Beck Poisoned The Speaker of the House in effigy
Beck made up an “Obama enemies list” (I think we all know who you are)
Beck furthered the Obama Nazi rhetoric

They’ve been busy.

Then again more companies pulled their ads from the Glenn Beck show

And really, if a company as conservative as Wal-Mart pulls their ads, you know you’re way off the deep end.

Jon Voight: Is Obama Starting a new civil war?

No, but you are. I’m personally boycotting any movies Jon Voight is in just because of his political views.

No, really, tell us what you really feel

These have to be the best lines I’ve read about the relevancy of the current Republican party in ages:

Given the heinous dust that’s been raised, it seems likely that end-of-life counseling will be dropped from the health-reform legislation. But that’s a small point, compared with the larger issue that has clouded this summer: How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?

Of course, when you’re wooing the youth vote with Henpcked Bruce Jenner and a beauty queen….

You pretty much know you’re done as a party. Really, Bruce Jenner won a gold medal before the target voters were born. The Beauty Queen? Prejean.

The Joker Obama image was made by a Kucinich supporter

Way to stand up for the team, dude. BTW, the Joker is an anarchist.

Glenn Beck lost his sponsors

In fact, he lost what has to be most of his sponsors in a week. That kind of makes it difficult to produce a show, now, doesn’t it? Of course, being a raving lunatic with an indefensible position just looking to make a buck off blatant sensationalism may be somewhat distracting to a corporate brand.

The oil industry is taking lessons on protests at townhall meetings

Further showing their short sightedness, oil continues to not pursue the strategic vision of energy independence, choosing instead to pursue a business that will, like the record companies, become increasingly irrelevant. I’d pull my money out of oil stocks now.

The soaring deficit
The Republicans have always been right on this one, Democrats like to spend money. Of course, to Republicans, deficits don’t matter, so I don’t know what they’re complaining about. Look at the chart, they took two years of surplus, cut taxes, and turned it into six years of straight deficits. Obama is in a bind, and he has to get the economy moving first, so long as it doesn’t destroy us later. If only there were a way to cut spending without reducing taxes so that we could pay off our deficit. I remember having this argument with a Republican in the ‘04 election. I’m sure he’s still screaming now. Doesn’t matter. History is telling me I’ve been right all along.

A GPS in every car to report our mileage?

Most of us would call this an odometer, but for Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, we need GPS, a whole program to monitor them, and then tax collection agents. No wonder Democrats can’t create a streamlined, efficient government.Thanks for dispelling that Big Brother image.

We pay more than other countries for our crappy cell phone service

Hmm, that’s just like health care. Other countries pay less, get more. I’m sure the Republicans are calling it a Democratic plot.

Typical Teenage Rebellion story, Michele Bachmann style

Looks like her son has joined Americorp, or as she calls it, a Democrat Reeducation camp.

A little more Republican Waffling on the birth certificate

Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina again proves the difficulty of having a lunatic voter base.

Santorum 2012?

Already campaigning, instead of doing something, I don’t know, useful.

Unfinished Business from the previous administration pt. 1

Looks like Karl Rove is very central to the Attorney Firings.

Unfinished business from the previous administration pt. 2

Alberto Gonzalez regrets torture memo, (but he remains silent on the actual torture)

What Orly Taitz believes

This Salon.com article did what MSNBC couldn’t do, give Orly Taitz a non-confrontational place to look like a village idiot. This columnist allowed her to ramble, and ramble she did. There’s a good litany of bizarre conspiracy theories here that go well beyond the birth certificate. It proves a point though, in biased news outlets like Foxnews and MSNBC, you don’t have to shut them up, put them down or anything of the sort. Just let them rant and look like imbeciles. It’ll serve you better.

Why 14 yr old girls aren’t the best spokesmen for a religion

Two Christian girls try to convert an Indian Hindu in what is certain the be an emotionally tramatic experience for all of them.

Birthers Must be Stopped by Bill Maher

Maher shows why he’s among the best on this editorial for the LA Times.

And there’s nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background … and they still wouldn’t believe it.

Which raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won’t take anything on faith?

So far, the reaction from Democrats is to laugh this off, and I understand why. If you seriously believe that President Obama is an African sleeper spy, get out of your chat room and have your house tested for lead.

But we live in America, and in America, if you don’t immediately kill arrant nonsense, no matter how ridiculous, it can grow and thrive and eventually take over, like crab grass or reality shows about fat people.

Speaking of Birthers, they seem to congregate in the south

I wonder what this statistical deviation indicates?

And here’s the best part about it

There was no deviation among minorities, meaning the concentration of whites who aren’t sure of Obama’s citizenship is even more skewed than the graph showed.

What? Glenn Beck lies to support his own paranoid political agenda? Say it ain’t so.

Gets called out on his accusations of Obama’s science guy John Holdren talking about forced abortions and sterilants in the water supply. Seems the only one who is obsessed with forced abortions and sterilization is Glenn Beck. He’s also really good at taking things out of context.

The guy who got the drinking age raised to 21 regrets it

Just looking at common sense talking, though if you read the article, I’m not sure his solution would make things any better. I can just say that keeping something away from people, like drinking, drugs, or sex, only makes them more attractive, and in my eyes, juvenile about how they handle it when they can get their hands on it.

The way our society addresses this problem has been about as effective as a parachute that opens on the second bounce. Clearly, state laws mandating a minimum drinking age of 21 haven’t eliminated drinking by young adults—they’ve simply driven it underground, where life and health are at greater risk. Merely adjusting the legal age up or down doesn’t work—we’ve tried that already and failed. But federal law has stifled the ability to conceive of more creative solutions in the only place where the Constitution says such debate should happen—in the state house—because any state that sets its drinking age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its federal highway funds. This is called an “incentive.”

Global warming releases more CO2 from permafrost

The thing about climate change deniers I can’t believe is how they can boil the most complex of all the systems any living human will likely ever have to deal with to a simple “Oh, we can’t be doing all that. We’re having a cool summer, see? Not true.”

Belief in God claims another victim

Dale Neumann told the jury he didn’t seek medical help for his [child's diabetes] because “I can’t do that because Biblically, I cannot find that is the way people are healed.”

He added: “If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God. I am not believing what he said he would do.”

So let me get this straight, since the only way people are healed in the Bible is by miracle, and even though people are cured every day by medicine, you chose prayer? Brilliant. Poor kid’s probably going to come back as an atheist in her next life.

One version of the health care bill coming today

Let’s take a good hard look at this one.

Why I like Al Franken as a Senator, pt. 1

A blog entry from Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress speaks volumes on Franken. Republicans accused him of being a simple comedian (and to be sure, he never was quite that), but I was a bit apprehensive. In the video, he asks about net neutrality, and issue that is incredibly important and something most Senators don’t get, and certainly no Republicans would consider when attacking her.

Why I like Al Franken as a Senator pt. 2

He brings some levity to the Sotomayor hearings by asking which case Perry Mason lost.

Sarah Palin to form her own Political action committee

I have to love this idea. It will provide me with comedy material for at least a few more years.

Sen. Sessions (R-acist) thinks Sotomayor should judge like other Puerto Ricans

This morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) castigated Sotomayor for not ruling with her fellow Puerto Rican colleague, conservative Judge José A. Cabranes, when she decided to deny an en banc appeal in Ricci v. DeStefano, a process in which all judges of a court hear a case (as opposed to a three-judge panel of them). Sessions seemed to indicate that people of the same ancestry should vote the same way:

SESSIONS: You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case.

Funny how in May, Sessions called on his GOP colleagues to back off their racism comments.

Which is really funny considering his own past.

This is how it works

Republican Sen. Jon Kyl wants to show up Obama, says the stimulus program should be cancelled. Gov. Jan Brewer, who is really more directly affected by the stinukus money is contacted and asked if that is what she would like as well. She replies, “He said wut?”

My favorite part is where he says this:

“What I said was, ‘Take the stimulus money that hasn’t been spent and apply it to something else.’ You could apply it to the deficit. You could apply it to health care, and it would do a lot more good than if you double the amount of spending on all those things and still spend the stimulus money,” Kyl, the minority whip, said in an interview with The Arizona Republic.

Which isn’t really true. The stimulus spending has the highest return on investment according to economists.

This whole birth certificate thing is just becoming an excuse for wusses

I won’t go to Iraq because Obama never produced a birth certificate that satisfies the aliens that sponsor my conspiracy theory meetup group. Waaahh wahhh.

Bill making hate crimes for sexual orientation illegal coming to vote

Republicans claim it infringes on their freedom to gaybash.

Your daily Glenn Beck wtf?

And last but not least

They’ve found a mystery carcass in Lake Okanagan

I wish these early report articles came with photos. It’s described as 1.2 meters, which is like 4 feet, and I believe that’s still in the range of the largest fish in the lake. Hmmmm…… Wonder What it could be?