Category: interesting

McSame Administration
“She can see Russia from Alaska” is dopey and embarrassing and this is dopey and embarrassing too.

Somebody figure it out:
Man changes name to dodge airport security.

A Quebec businessman whose name is one of the many that have erroneously landed on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s flight passenger watch list has decided to change his name to avoid lengthy security hassles at the airport.

Mario Labbe, an executive with a Montreal-based record company, says his Canadian passport triggers a red alert on the computers of U.S. customs agents every time he tries to board a flight to the U.S. – which is about once a month for the past seven years.

“I was pulled aside in a room … and you have to wait your turn to finally be released,” Labbe said. “An hour, an hour and a half, two hours, whatever it is after. Once I was caught in Miami like that for six hours.

He wasted lots of time trying get off the list. No luck.

“So now, my official name is Franois Mario Labbe,” he said. “Then you have to change everything: driver’s license, social insurance, medicare, credit card – everything.” Although it’s not a big change from Mario Labbe, he said it’s been enough to foil the U.S. customs computers.

It’s a good thing the terrorists aren’t allowed to change their names.

It’s a good thing we can change governments.

Is Russia building a new aggressive empire?
We should know before we vote.

In a blunt three-hour interview over lunch, Vladimir Putin turned the air blue and denied claims he is building a new Soviet empire as he defended his ’embattled and encircled’ country.

Should we taunt Russia with might, er, media?
We should know before we vote.

ABC news – Sarah Palin wants Georgia and Ukraine in NATO noting that if attacked again the United States would go to war with Russia.

Can we live in peace?
We should know before we vote.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia has a 9/11 too, “like the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001”.

8-8-08?
Russia had not sought a war, Mr Medvedev said.

He said the world had learned lessons from the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and hoped the same would happen for Russia’s situation.

“The world has changed and it occurred to me that 8 August 2008 has become for Russia as 11 September 2001 for the United States. This is an accurate comparison corresponding to Russian realities.”

He said the balance of power in the world is out of date.

I’m not saying Russia is meek or clear or capable of cooperation because of a speech or two. I’m saying a speech or two reveals Sarah Palin isn’t federal material and I wouldn’t imagine her shtick on the global scene.

But don’t worry too much.
John McCain can take over in a pinch.

“I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Read that twice!

McCain doesn’t think mayors or governors can handle it. And that’s no lie.

Master and the Maverick?
Republican Weevils?
A sexist thing?

No, curtail.

Weevil not tolerate horrible puns.

Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity. – Thor Heyerdahl

You can see Russia from Alaska, duh, so what does the world think about this election?

Barack Obama to John McCain by an average of 4 to 1.

The BBC World Service poll shows NATO allies the most hopeful for Obama.

Which nations would like to vote for Barrack Obama?
Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Australia, India, China, Panama, Brazil, Poland, Turkey, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and yes, Russia.

I’ve noticed this since I was young.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscience studies show we never see the same thing twice.

One of the central questions of how the brain recognizes objects and faces is that you never essentially see the same image twice,” says James DiCarlo.

They want to sell robots but I’m interested in understanding. MIT says we are “gathering a host of different snapshots of the same object” none the same. “We don’t see the same image twice“.

Ponder that.

It’s not easy for me.

I do not shrill the morning
and I lay calm at night.
Effort of a lifetime.

Then why sour my blog citing corrupt mafia and scorn politics?

Because America is worth our effort.

How can we not dump our priorities for awhile,
come away for awhile
from the great task of civility,
and just kick some butt!?

America is worth our effort.

Alarming, I say to myself,
feeling nude in the mall,
to argue instead of walk gently, yes,
outright telling ’em off,
to revel against foe,
to discover proof to a lie,
a blemished flaw,
a tryst in the penthouse.
I do not like the taste of politics.

Ashamed,
I say to myself, why am I here,
hallways of cheap,
corrupt pathology,
gilt lies?
I do not like politics.

Well, America is worth it.

I’ll recover.

I’ll celebrate Hope and Change.

Would you like to see just one journalist unafraid of asking questions?

There’s two great things here. A reminder of what we really like and what we really like.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6LMsc7iic&hl=en&fs=1]

Downhill every day.

Gallup:
“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating.”

America’s Decline
“Can you name another administration as poor?”, asks j-walk blog. “”Who is the worst president if not George. W. Bush?”

Premature Evacuation
Party loyalists blame the man not the Republican Party:.

The numbers may say that, but people hated Nixon whereas Bush seems more like the national shoe stepped in dog dirt.

Pictures Speak Loud, Louder, Change.

[Press Release – White House – FDA – Neighborhood Grandpa Watch Program]
Phillip Carmichael, 58, pleaded guilty for thousands of indecent images of children on his computer, but walked free from court yesterday, after a judge ruled that dopamine-stimulating drugs he had been taking to treat Parkinson’s disease was responsible for his crime. “It was clear that Mr Carmichael had not acted under his own volition.”

I’m posting this with compassion, to alert us to side-effects in a complex and murky drug market.

Not in USA major media:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown … welcomed Senator Obama’s “progressive” new ideas for helping people weather the economic storm … provoked a protest to the British embassy in Washington by the McCain team.

What part of the American flag is Ford, GM or Chrysler?

Let Detroit fund its own damned projects!

Big Auto has fought environmental laws and beaten down attempts to modernize the US industry to produce more fuel efficient cars. They sell fuel efficient cars overseas but always find reasons why they can’t sell them in the US. Now that their brilliant plan to only produce gas hogs has failed, look who is lining up for $50 billion worth of help, as if there’s cash laying around for the taking. If we were to prop up these colossal failures, we ought to insist that they are truly on the cutting edge of environmental, safety and efficiency and not just up to our backwards current standards. Otherwise, why bother?

Begging for government aid in hard times were big corporations who were the strongest opponents of ‘big government’.

Well, here we go again.
Automakers ask for for government loans of up to $50bn.
GM, Ford and Chrysler also lobby Congress for a $3.75bn on top of the $25bn in loans authorized for the industry last year to escape Union pledges.

Bush’s Treasury is negotiating windfall payments for the execs of failed Fannie and Freddie too?

“Under no circumstances should the executives of these institutions earn a windfall at a time when the U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources,” Obama wrote.

John McCain is not actually running for president.

He’s running for Senate majority leader. All his passion is directed at defects in the legislative process. He’s been a military man or a senator for virtually all of his adult life, and listening to him talk, you get the definite impression that the two great threats of the 21st century are Islamic extremism and the appropriations committee.

It’s no wonder Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee called Sarah Palin a “cocky wacko”.

[Breaking ABC news story]
Sarah Palin wants Georgia and Ukraine in NATO noting that if attacked again the United States would go to war with Russia:

Asked by Gibson if the U.S. would go to war with Russia Palin said “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help…. [As a] NATO ally if another country is attacked you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Not in USA media:

In a blunt three-hour interview over lunch, Vladimir Putin turned the air blue and denied claims he is building a new Soviet empire as he defended his ’embattled and encircled’ country.

Reminding his guests that he had been at the Olympics in Beijing when the crisis broke out, Mr Putin said he was “astonished, astounded,” by the world media silence on the Georgian aggression. “What did you expect us to do? Respond with a catapult? We punched the aggressor in the face, as all the military text books prescribe.”

At this meeting, he seemed particularly intent on his new job as Prime Minister which he presented as being mainly responsible for Russia’s economy. Russia was facing problems today, he said, which demanded new solutions. “The solutions of the past wouldn’t do.” State infrastructure, housing, health and education all needed to be overhauled.

OK, don’t flame me, the point is Provocateur Palin should not enter the White House except to bring Obama her bear skin.

Blueprint for American Prosperity:
“Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West – efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust. [heaps of pdf Brookings Institution]

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said mastermind of 9/11 in jail.

What makes people vote Republican?

Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? [See, Republicans cost us money]

Diagnosis is a pleasure.
We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.

[See Altemeyer, Authoritarianism]
Here’s Professor Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians – “The greatest threat to American democracy today.”

People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Who are the opponents of science and how have they have taken control of the Republican Party to redefine science, to undermine science, and to misconstrue science even to the point of dismissing scientific consensus in favor of increasingly discredited fringe ideas?

Last month a Pew Research Institute survey reported a decline in the number of Americans who want churches and other houses of worship involved in political matters. The survey also found that most of the drop in the past four years comes among conservatives. [link]

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly:

‘People react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.’ – Richard Nixon

The phenomenon of misplaced fear in American culture is not uncommon, asserts sociologist Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.

“A vibrant and functional democracy depends on the honest dissemination of information. The corporate media, in its rightward drift and easy compliance to political power, is failing the general populace.”

Fourteen Republicans

Over the past few years, corruption has become a significant political issue, with interest peaking in early 2007. In the 2006 mid-term elections, exit polls showed that 42% of voters called corruption an extremely important issue in their choices at the polls, ahead of terrorism, the economy, and the war in Iraq. With the downturn in the economy, however, voters’ attention is unsurprisingly more focused on pocketbook issues than on congressional misconduct. Nevertheless, ethics still matter…

Keith Olbermann
Special Comment on 9/11/2008
Vigorous Call For Removing Extra Hijackers

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pVJ4jgFpPg&hl=en&fs=1]

Oh, the lies McCain hides in his Palin. If you don’t understand his threat you won’t understand this utterly scathing exposition of McCain/Palin.

No, it’s not personal, lipstick on a pig, but it’s a rallying cry against the McCain Campaign and says nothing worse than, well, the Republican plank is lipstick on a pig.

Andrew Sullivan ranked at the top of the hit count today for his article at The Atlantic: “For me, this surreal moment – like the entire surrealism of the past ten days – is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It’s about John McCain.

“The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?’

A better media would open McCain’s cocoon to provide our electorate information about Rove and more than one hundred career lobbyists leading a cynical and low-hearted campaign. Here’s the list with few wanting the light of attention.

– Rick Davis, campaign manager, has lobbied for Airborne Express and DHL on their controversial merger deal, as well as telecom companies Bell South/SBC and Verizon.

– Charlie Black, senior advisor, lobbied for more than 100 clients, including Yukos Oil and Freddie Mac.

– Randy Scheunemann’s lobbying clients have included BP Amoco and the NRA.

– Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior policy advisor, is a former Koch Industries lobbyist.

– Frank Donatelli, the McCain campaign’s director at the RNC, has had 70 clients including PHARMA, Pfizer and Exxon Mobil.

– John Green, congressional liaison, has lobbied for at least 150 clients, including insurance industry trade groups, predatory lender Ameriquest, Chevron Texaco, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

– Wayne Berman, campaign vice-chair, finance co-chair, and advisor has also lobbied for almost 100 clients, including Ameriquest, Fannie Mae, the National Rifle Association and American Health Insurance Plans.

SOURCE: Lobbying Disclosures, US Senate Office Of Public Records

McCain’s integrity is the big lie in this election.

Party loyalty is a mistake.

Republicans, please help me understand you. I hear you smack down anyone who supports the concept that global warming is a real issue, that we need to fix fuel and driving, that women should be able to own the body they walk in, that we need to reduce pollution in the air we breathe, and the damaging way we produce our food. When you brand these ideas as liberal lunatic rantings, do you intend to say that you would like dirty air, water, and food? You’re pleased with the price of a gallon of gas?

1. Who Are the Authoritarian Followers?
2. The Roots of Authoritarian Aggression
3. How Authoritarian Followers Think
4. Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism
5. Authoritarian Leaders
6. Authoritarianism and Politics
7. What’s To Be Done?

Here’s Professor Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians. Authoritarians may be “The greatest threat to American democracy today.”

Read it then throw it down because identification with imaginary collectives, Americans, Palestinians; there is no thing there but preconception, just people.

Yo, warriors and lamb, listen up, because elections glue us together and only a few days left.

Praising America won’t bring America. Fighting for it will not bring it. Crippling others is not America. America is what we are each day.

I think the radical voices are not condemning the powerful nor the good nor painting our streets in vice, but only crying when condemned. And I think nervous crowds are following avarice too. So I stand not for force, but humble, as if God wants me one million times better than the last time I thought I knew what he asked of me. I shrink hero claims and turn ambition away, a bias habit I admit, but forever true, always tears, or blood as we say. Never for one without all I feel, exactly our Union, and our Christ.

So, if not for the least are you Christian, and if not for the little are you American?

It’s not a divine vote, but every vote is perfect. We choose among what’s given; let’s be able. Make this election clear whether the candidates do or can’t. Please criticize. Please investigate to the last moment. It’s not their job we’re voting for, it’s our lives.

So take that. Let it be.

And a’that frost.

Took Lucky Lord Barkeley of Berkeley three miles along farmworker neighborhoods today while my truck was smogged for DMV. A 90 year old Mexican in a cape and brim hat dressed exactly like a 90 year old Mexican in a cape and brim hat lifted his eyes along the tractor path of the strawberry field and said something sweetly that I thought meant ‘Nice Dog’ but I don’t know ‘Nice Dog’ in Spanish. Owners were at work during our walk, a half-dozen pit bulls barked behind fences as we noised on their sidewalks. The mechanics were warm-hearted and said pit bulls are nice dogs too. I went to the Police HQ for a sign-off on the certificate. A guy dressed exactly like a Hollywood Detective, exactly like a Hollywood Detective, said to me “But VC-B needs a VC-402 before I can sign this off.” So I go back tomorrow, wondering if Washington knows what state we’re in, locally.

I understand
a silver nickel in a wooden jar,
carved, and
loud.

Particles, machines, tunnels and all the rest, the danger is not our science. Perhaps believing this requires a better faith and simple politics.

Study is never danger.
Only ignorance has killed us.

Superstition is common.
Higgs won’t hurt.
Pigs might.

I’m saying lies. The Wall Street Journal does not say lies.

“Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government “thanks but no thanks” to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.”

But humans are lie detectors, Seth says. “We hear stories. We enjoy them. We try them on for size. We’re looking for falsehoods and we sniff them out.”

We sniff them out?

Not you.

Not me.

We live in lies.

Seth says, “The spinners lie constantly.

“They lie with a straight face.

“They lie sentence after sentence, relentlessly.”

We’re accustomed to lies.

Why?
Because we lie?
Because we’re not lie detectors.?

Because the Wall Street Journal isn’t reporting lies but fluffs criticism and secures false populism and whitewashes corruption. We must investigate “significant evidence to the contrary” and call it a lie when it is a lie.

There is some research to say honesty is losing.

McCains and Palins of it.

Who apparently has a nastier streak than we have been led to believe?

The Boston Globe has posted several full-screen photos of hurricanes from space.