Children Sing to Our Glorious Leader

I saw the creepy child homage to Bary Obama this morning. Right away I knew what it needed, but I had to do that work thing. Anyway, I slapped this together when I got home. I think I've improved it when you consider that, hey, Obama isn't just a candidate, he's a world citizen, with a grounding in socialism: He needs to be sung to by child world citizen revolutionaries. Try socialism often enough and one day it might work.

First Day on the Job

Funny videos

Stock Market Jitters

Let's take a break from stock market concerns for a moment and feast our eyes on Heather Locklear, striking the Nolte-pose. She was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of a controlled substance in the upscale Santa Barbara area, according to authorities. "I wanna speak ana lawler! I'll has yerr jags, you liddle job-offs!" Thanks Heather, we needed a diversion.

Missouri Again

Who Is Responsible?

Want to know who is responsible for the Fred/Fan fiasco? Give a listen to who said what when flags were first raised in 2004.

From teh E-mail

Redneck Fire Alarm - never needs batteries.

Missouri Ad

Don't worry, I think I'm safe from prosecution. I said "might" be a zombie. And anyway, I'd like to see anyone prove that he's not a zombie. This isn't what the disgraceful St. Lewis County prosecuting attorney was talking about anyway.

Sure, he'd like to say he was talking about all 'those damn zombie ads.' Truth is though, he doesn't want to prosecute anyone. He just wants to use his position as a law enforcement officer to intimidate the local media from running ads critical of Obama's ties to some very radical, and even anti-American characters.

This is pretty low-rent behavior. I've got nothing but contempt for St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer. I can't vote them out of office. But votes may not be needed in order to stop this shameful behavior.

From the FBI site:

U.S. law enforcement officers and other officials like judges, prosecutors, and security guards have been given tremendous power by local, state, and federal government agencies—authority they must have to enforce the law and ensure justice in our country. These powers include the authority to detain and arrest suspects, to search and seize property, to
bring criminal charges, to make rulings in court, and to use deadly force in certain situations.

Preventing abuse of this authority, however, is equally necessary to the health of our nation’s democracy. That’s why it’s a federal crime for anyone acting under “color of law” willfully to deprive or conspire to deprive a person of a right protected by the Constitution or U.S. law. “Color of law” simply means that the person is using authority given to him or her by a local, state, or federal government agency.

The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating color of law abuses, which include acts carried out by government officials operating both within and beyond the limits of their lawful authority. Off-duty conduct may be covered if the perpetrator asserted his or her official status in some way.

Does this "Truth Squad" violate the civil right to free speech? Even more important, isn't it interfering with a federal election? I hope the FBI is keeping an eye on any contacts these Obama truthers have with media executives in Missouri.

***Update: I hesitated, because the FBI is involved in many very serious cases, but in the end I realized that this is a very serious matter... so I filed a request that they look into this report. At the very least, these prosecutors need to be reminded that they are public servants, and that they are not free to use the law to promote one candidate over another.

Missouri Governor Responds

Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign’s Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement

JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.

“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.”

h/t: Dallas

Get Out the Vote

From Getty, an image to warm the heart of Bob McCulloch, Obama's prosecutor in Missouri. The gat got my attention, but the hat is what makes the picture. Check the expression of the guy in the background, "You will be voting now, yes?"

Certainly, you can vote for whoever you like. You
can vote for Vladimir, or you can vote for Putin!

The Debates

My reaction, for what it's worth: Obama wasn't as helpless as I expected (and hoped) without his teleprompter, though overall, I'd have to say he picked a bad week to give-up sniffing glue. McCain was steady, solid, possibly not always as clear as he might have been. Jim Lehrer was fair.

Bob McCullogh, Clown Prosecutor

Not sure what this is.

The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.

Apparently they've got some prosecutors and sheriffs involved, including Bob McCulloch (above), who wants voters to know that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes on anyone who makes under $250,000.00 a year.

Um, Bob, arrest yourself. OK, maybe don't, because technically Obama might, in theory, want to cut taxes for anyone making under $250,000.00 a year. We can't prove he doesn't want to do it. One thing is for sure though. It's never going to happen. Bill Clinton "wanted" to cut taxes for the middle class. The key word is wanted. I don't think a single Democrat has cut taxes since JFK. They talk a good game, but in the end they want to spend money more than they want to give you a tax break. It's never going to happen, Bob.

But all that aside, just when did it become OK for someone in law enforcement to enforce the laws for one candidate and not the other? This is the "Barack Obama Truth Squad". Do you go to the Barack Obama jail if Bob thinks you lied about his candidate? And just what law might you be violating? (apart from the usual don't-piss-off-the-sheriff law) Also, does John McCain need to get his own sheriffs and prosecutors?

It's silliness, sure. This isn't eastern Europe right? We don't really have thug law enforcement favoring one candidate over another. Right?

Faster Bob

Faster Bob, they're gaining on us.

ACORN, Your Package is Ready for Pick-Up

It's flabbergasting: even our present financial peril can't bring our representatives together for the good of the country. Even this they have to exploit to their own advantage. I'm referring to reports that ACORN, a partisan organization with a history of fraud, was slated to get 20% of any incoming funds from the bail-out deal. Lindsey Graham:

“And this deal that's on the table now is not a very good deal. Twenty percent of the money that should go to retire debt that will be created to solve this problem winds up in a housing organization called ACORN that is an absolute ill-run enterprise, and I can't believe we would take money away from debt retirement to put it in a housing program that doesn't work.”

And now there are reports that the dishonorable jackals who crafted this plan feel blindsided? Sheesh, I wish.

The next time Republicans gain a majority in congress, they need to drive a stake through the heart of ACORN.


***Update: This is ACORN ... tell me, how is it they get my tax money?



h/t sailorette

Looky-Looky

Barack Obama (PBUH) shows his new hand sign,
known as the "Me! Me! Look at me!" sign.

Katie Couric

Newsbusters has a video clip of it: Katie Couric asks Sarah Pailin about a possible "Great Depression," then, the same day, asked John McCain if Pailin should be using scare terms like "Great Depression."

Interviewing John McCain on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Katie Couric informed him and viewers that, during an interview of Sarah Palin she conducted earlier in the day, Palin warned of a “Great Depression” if the bail out is not passed, leading Couric to scold Palin to McCain: “But isn't so much of this, Senator McCain, about consumer confidence and using rhetoric like the 'Great Depression,' is that the kind of language Americans need to hear right now?” Quite a bit of chutzpah for Couric, chutzpah CBS didn't even hide from viewers since in the subsequent excerpts from the Palin interview which viewers saw it was Couric herself who raised the ominous phrase.

Palin had not used the term when Couric asked Palin: “If this doesn't pass, do you think there's a risk of another Great Depression?”

I Was for the Debates Before I was Against Them

I've only been listening to the radio off and on today, but the latest read I've gotten is: McCain wants to fix this financial kerfuffle and postpone the debates - Obama wants to watch the other guys fix it, and keep the debate schedule.

The somewhat amazing James Taranto's take:

Early reports are that Obama wants the Friday debate to go on. Of course, that can't happen without McCain's cooperation--but Obama can, and will, claim McCain is chickening out. The only way McCain can counter this is by showing some real leadership over the next couple of days. Then the question will be whether Obama is capable of doing the same.

Me, I'm thinking someone in the McCain campaign already has the speech written: "Sorry to hear that Obama thinks we're chicken, tell you what, lets double the number of debates and do town-hall meetings as well." It's the O side that wanted to limit debates to just the one set. If they step out of line, I say call their bluff.

How They Voted

From the comments, Dave asked how to find the roll call vote on S.1580 of 2003 and S.190 of 2005. I'm putting this up top because it's a great link for finding such information. Keep in mind that a bill may not have been voted on in the year it was first proposed.

Also, the informational link for each bill will list "Major Congressional Actions," which will then link to the numbered roll call vote for that bill if there is one.

Sadly, I think that both of the GSE bills were referred to committee, where they died. As for villains, I suspect Democrats and Republicans.

To find committee reports, amendments, and related information, search the Thomas site with the format "S.NNNN" or "H.R.NNNN" and the year.

From teh E-mail

Going after the cling-vote.

h/t: RB

Syler's Pick

Hiro? I'm sure he's a McCain/Palin guy.

BTW, I'm happy with the new season of Heroes, or, not disappointed yet, at any rate. It's obvious they would do better with the addition of a lumberjack hero, but hey, there are more heroes than I can count already. Not sure what special powers he could have anyway, most of the good ones seem to be taken. Maybe the ability to make squirrels explode with his mind. My own special powers run more along the line of bar tricks. And I don't see how you could work removing a quarter without touching the glass into a save-the-world plot. Still, if they decide they want a lumberjack, I'll be near the phone.

If You've Got Time

The Word According to Andrew Klavan is worth a listen. Speaking of listen, listen to me: "if you've got time." Of course you've got time. If you didn't have time, everything would just zip right by.

Search for Self

This photo fiddle started out because of the NYT article on Obama's search for self. Oh yeah, that's news, it's pretty rare for someone growing up to go through a search for self. OK, anyway, I remembered the photo with that goofy Biden grin... then somehow the grin reminded me of Ahmadinejad, and it grew from there.

Hey, if Obama gets elected, a scene like this could become a reality. Enlightened world leaders shaking tambourines, clapping hands, swaying to the music. Where's the Sunshine? We're the Sunshine!

Photoshop, No Really

Lucky for us, penguins don't live on our side of the equator. "We call it 'makin penguin butter'. Everybody up here does it."

More Binky Gets Involved

Binky, Nooooo!

Dirty Tricks

I was a kid when I first heard about political dirty tricks. I think the story that intrigued me was from one of Dick Nixon's campaigns. At a campaign stop, Nixon was speaking from the back of a train. He had just begun his remarks when Dick Tuck, the Antinixon, signaled the the engineer that the speech was over... Nixon was hauled backwards away from from his own rally. Don't know why but I thought that was great. Probably I was impressed that anyone would think to do that.

These days dirty tricks are much more sophisticated. Sometimes you can find evidence of someone with a great imagination, but more often it just involves people who are willing to be dishonest. Michelle Malkin has a Rusty (if that is your name) Shackleford report on one such deceitful campaign smear. The fake smear is interesting but not terribly imaginative. The only cleverness attached to it came from Rusty, who traced the ad to its probable origin.

Though such ads may be partially effective, I'm not so concerned about liberals lying. I think that many times they underestimate the intelligence of the public, and their efforts end up just looking pathetic. What does have me concerned though is the Obama Campaign's willingness to use whatever means necessary to silence the opposition:

News has emerged that the organizers of that anti-Iran rally that famously got snarled up in Senator Hillary Clinton's ire at Governor Sarah Palin last week were threatened by New York Democrats with IRS action against their tax-exempt status if they allowed Palin to speak. CBS local NY news reported this little fact and so did NBC but most of the national news has ignored this outrageous threat to use the IRS to silence Governor Palin.

Accusing New York Democrats of using "McCarthyism" to shut Palin down, Democrat Assemblyman Dov Hikind was flabbergasted by the behind the scenes threats against the rally organizers. "It's an absolute shame that this has happened," CBS quoted Hikind as saying. "To threaten organizations … to threaten the Conference of Presidents that if you don't withdraw the invitation to Gov. Palin we're going to look into your tax exempt status … that's McCarthyism."

That isn't dirty tricks. That's fascism. And it's very troubling when you add the Obama's Action Wire attempts to tie up phone lines to talk radio shows, and recent Democrat interest in the "fairness" doctrine. Freedom of speech isn't the very first Amendment for no reason. It isn't just important, it's vital to our continued freedom.

Hong Kong Cleansed

John Agnew should look into this using his cutting edge if-the-lights-are-out-the-people-are-dead analytical technique. (see below) It would appear that while nobody was looking Hong Kong got ethnically cleansed. The picture on the right shows nary a soul left alive. Oh, the humanity.

btw - pretty cool picture of Hong Kong here, that shows it going from night to day as you run your cursor over the picture. Watch the ethnic cleansing happen!

Dishonest Science

John A. Agnew is a liberal liar. Harsh? Well maybe a little. But look at his picture. He's tilting left. And wearing a stupid grin, as if to say, "I'm even tilting to the left in my faculty picture and you people are too stupid to discern my bias." He's making a statement. Either that, or he's tilting because he's drunk in the middle of the day on campus property.

Well, OK, maybe it's a stretch to get all that from one picture. But get a load of what he can tell from a few pictures: He says that nighttime pictures of Baghdad show that the Surge didn't better Iraqi lives. And that violence went down because of "a total loss of Sunni population and a successful Shia strategy of `pacifying' those areas in the city hitherto most hostile to Iraq's largely Shia government."

He says:

We started with the hypothesis that the US military surge in Baghdad should have led to an improvement in the quality of everyday life as indicated by an increased or stable nighttime light signature of the city. If we take the US government at its word, the surge was supposed to create better material conditions in Baghdad and thus contribute to the political reconciliation widely believed to augur a successful outcome of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet, as other Iraqi cities experienced just such an intensification of their nighttime lights, Baghdad had the opposite experience. We interpret this change as indicating that violence has decreased in Baghdad not because of an overall improvement in material conditions or because US troops have imposed a Pax Americana on the city but because large parts of the city have been emptied of their existing populations and sometimes replaced with coreligionists, thus reducing the local stimulus to violence emphasized in the Jones Report (2007). If during the period of the surge something has worked, therefore, in the sense of decreased violence during a given period, it may have had little to do with the surge itself.

I'll say this for the guy. He talks a good game, makes a pretty graph. You might be tempted to argue that electrical supply is spotty in Iraq. Or that just the presence or absence of nighttime lights doesn't indicate who has the lights on, what their religion is, or how and why they came to be turning on the light. But you don't have to. The people who ache to say that the Surge didn't work won't listen to you anyway. I mean look at the map. The lights in some Sunni areas were down by over 50%. This proves the surge didn't bring prosperity:

Figure 4. Proportion of change in nighttime lights in Baghdad between
20 March 2006 and 16 December 2007. (Image and data
processing by NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center.
DMSP data collected by the US Air Force Weather Agency.)

I realize that arguing with a stuck-in-the-sixties academic is futile. Ditto the liberal blah-blah blogs that are eating this stuff up. They just know the surge didn't work. It doesn't matter though. Elsewhere in his "study" Agnew documents his dishonesty:

Extensive archive searches of the DMSP-OLS F16 datasets resulted in comparative cloud-free nighttime light imagery under low moon conditions and time of night over Iraq for four time periods: 16 November 2003 (9 PM), 20 March 2006 (9 PM), 21 March 2007 (9 PM), and 16 December 2007 (11 PM). These dates correspond to time periods after the US invasion of Iraq, before the US surge, and after the US surge (Jones, 2007).

See it? 9:00, 9:00, 9:00, 11:00. Wait a minute. What date was the 11:00 PM data taken from? Oh, 16 December 2007? The night that showed the population not prospering? Yup, you dishonest hippie, the night that showed everyone driven out, ethnic cleansed, and forced not to prosper. Either that, or they had turned out the lights and gone to bed. Because it was two hours later than the data you compared it to.

I'm not inclined to chalk this up to stupidity or sloppy work. John Agnew's other writings show a predisposition towards condemning Imperialist Amerika. No, this is dishonest leftist douchbaggery. But, you could have discerned that from his picture.

Ramesh Pegs It

I read on NRO just now, from Ramesh Ponnuru regarding Obama's votes on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:

I wouldn't say that he supports infanticide; but I would say that in certain cases, he is pro-choice on infanticide.

Har! exactly. We don't want the government legislating what we can and can't do in our own hospital utility rooms. "Keep your laws out of my broom closet!"

BTW, Isn't it best to laugh at this stuff? If you really thought about it, if you really contemplated that sometimes babies were left to die alone in utility rooms, well, you could cry for days.

Plant Closed, Future Uncertain

Another half-researched ad from the big BO; he laments the closing of a plant without disclosing what they made. The almost amazing James Taranto noticed, however: "glass tubes for television sets and computer monitors."

See, under an Obama administration we wouldn't have progressed past cathode ray tubes yet. Or maybe a BO administration would set up a program to buy obsolete technology, warehouse it, then pay to have the glass recycled and turned into CRTs again. Jobs! That's what it's about people.

Hate It When That Happens

XKCD

Lumbercruise 2008

Doesn't the National Review cruise look great? And the list of speakers goes on and on; I just didn't have room for them all in the screen shot. I'd love to go on one of those one day.

But in the meantime.... I very easily could have been asked recently about putting together a (somewhat more economical) Lumberjack Cruise. I've been thinking about it and noodling the numbers with the help of a somewhat innovative and, well, even unorthodox group of "travel arrangers". They are offering "any damn boat you want in the waters off Somalia". The drawback, of course, is getting to the waters off Somalia in the first place. Oh, plus they said we'd have to help with the boarding, whatever that means.


I'm also looking into getting conservative speakers for the trip but so far, they've all got pretty good security. No, just kidding. I was thinking we could just wait for the next National Review Cruise, and then send cars for their speakers. Tell them we're taking them to the NRO Cruise, and by the time they realize they're in a Panamanian tanker off the coast of Africa, it will be too late.

Hacked e-mail Screen Shot

So what do you think the chances are that the psychotic fringe will start forging Sarah Palin e-mails now? I mean, other than me -- that other psychotic fringe.

Poster Update

I've updated the Airy One's poster to better reflect the villagers-with-torches mode that the Obamasphere has devolved to. Great googily-moogily, breaking into e-mail accounts, telling outright lies in the Spanish language ad. What won't they do? I mean, is there anything that Obama would look down upon and say: no, this is too despicable, even for us.

And about that ad, does Obama think that it will work because Spanish speaking immigrants are too simple minded to discern the truth? Or does he think he'll get away with it because Republicans can't speak Spanish? Either way, the ad says more about Obama than it does John McCain, or the Spanish speaking immigrants it's aimed at.

They Got the Dirt on Sarah

On the youtube page I think some of the Faithful are missing the point that this is a parody of the Effort. (to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin)

Government Contracting

Again, Obama's naivete shows, regarding the USAF's competition for the next gen tanker:

But according to Reuters, Obama accused McCain of favoring policies that hurt American workers, saying that McCain "just doesn't get it. Just ask your brothers and sisters at Boeing."

So Obama, like Boeing's other buddies in Congress, is in favor of a free competition as long as Boeing wins it - and that, one assumes, is what McCain doesn't "get". So if Obama wins, and the competition resumes, how much money are EADS and Northrop Grumman likely to invest this time around? And given the Boeing's been virtually guaranteed a win, do we expect their next bid to be cheaper?

Government contracts have many drawbacks, but the one thing they have going for them is competition. Rival contractors keep you honest, generally. Remove the competition and you've given the contractor a license to steal.

Fashion Week in London

You look at these things and think, "I could do that."

No. No you couldn't.

Not unless you've got a glue gun. And a brutal alcohol addiction.

McCain Part of the Problem?

John McCain, from the Congressional Record, May 25, 2006:

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.

It's probably understandable that Senator Obama is ignorant of McCain's stance on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. McCain made this push for the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, [S. 190], at a time when the Obamas were involved in purchasing a new house (with the help of Tony Rezko). They closed on it a few weeks after McCain spoke.


This isn't the earliest McCain spoke out against the GSE's excesses either. On September 10, 2003, he signed on as cosponsor of S.1580. [read it - it should have been titled the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Shenanigans Reduction Act]

Hmmm, 2003, that was the year Obama voted against the amended Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Yeah, guess he wasn't in Washington back then so he wouldn't have noticed McCain's actions. Still as the #2 man on the list of Fannie Mae beneficiaries, you'd think that one of those lobbyists would have clued Obama as to who the opposition was.

***Update: To find the source of that first quote you have to go here and search "Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act" in the Senate, for the 109th congress.


Also- Seems Silly Nancy needs to read the above quote as well. Today she said:

When asked whether the Democrats “deserve some responsibility” regarding the economic crisis, Pelosi responded: “No.”

“John McCain said that this is a result of overregulation by the Democrats in Congress,” she added. “Either he doesn’t know what he's talking about or he’s misrepresenting the facts as he knows them. But it’s simply not true.”

***Update:Michelle Malkin reports that McCain is finally fighting back re the Fanfred Maemac imbroglio. Good. He's been as clean as any politician on this and Obama has been the second most dirty. Time to get the record out there.


h/t: Sean Hannity show

US Review

Why not tell Amazon what you think of US magazine? Write a review.

Speech Suppression We Can Believe In

I can't yet find the audio of this Milt Rosenberg show:

Tonight, we have David Freddoso on our show discussing his new book. As we speak, thousands of Obama supporters are flooding our phone lines and e-mail boxes, just as they did for our show with Stanley Kurtz. An Obama Action Wire was sent out tonight to intimidate us into taking Freddoso off the air.

But I really, really, want to hear it - if for no other reason, because BO doesn't want me to hear it. They're doing their action-wire thing again, telling the faithful to call in and jam up the lines. Ah, democracy in action, sorta. And this guy is supposed to be smart? By singling out these shows, he's ensuring that many more Bamites are exposed to opposing views than would have been the case had he just gone about his business.

If the Obama campaign wants to stay in the speech-suppression business, it ought to find some better thugs.
-Ramesh Ponnuru

“I’m asking you to believe, not in my ability to silence critics. I’m asking you to believe in yours."
-Barack Obama

Hey BO: “I’m asking you to believe, not in my ability to torpedo your campaign. I’m asking you to believe in yours."

Small Invasion

Ripping on Sarah Palin must be a full time job. I don't see any of the mainstream media covering this:

Two Syrian commando battalions accompanied by reconnaissance and engineering corps units have crossed into Lebanon in the last 48 hours and taken up positions in seven villages, most of them Allawite Muslim, outside Tripoli, DEBKAfile’s military sources reported Saturday, Sept. 13. They are the vanguard of a large armored force poised on the border.

Damascus has signaled to Washington and Paris: Don’t interfere.

It is the largest Syrian force to invade Lebanon since Damascus was forced to end its occupation of the country in May 2005, three months after former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated.

Tripoli is Lebanon’s second-largest city, with half a million inhabitants, most of them Sunni Moslems but including large Christian and Alawite communities.

The Syrian incursion coincided with the expected arrival of Russian naval and engineering experts for renovating Tartus, the Syrian port 40 kilometers north of Tripoli, to serve as the Russian fleet’s first permanent Mediterranean base. Bashar Assad clearly feels he can safely embark on a fresh foreign adventure to occupy northern Lebanon without fear of restraint.

Obama and Change

Senator Obama did a call this morning with some of his key economic advisors including Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Laura Tyson about the state of the financial markets. They discussed what to expect from financial markets today and over the course of this week, how these events would impact the overall economy, and what steps should be taken to address the problems in our financial markets and economy more broadly.

Um, ok. We've got a crisis in the financial markets, so let's call on the manufacturers of this mess to find out what to do next. Sheesh.

The only person missing from this list of advisors is Alan Greenspan. I don’t want to generalize about these advisors, but I think that Democrats, and the Obama campaign, would be wise to make a distinction in their mind between neo-liberal and liberal economics. The ‘90s were the heyday of neo-liberal economics, which attempted some accomodation with the conservative laissez-faire variety. And part of that accomodation consisted in opposing new government regulations of the financial industry and attempting to remove old ones like Glass-Steagall. Under Bob Rubin, the Clinton Treasury Department took the lead.

And btw, McCain is right. While this is a crisis in the financial markets, the overall economy is still growing, despite liberal chanting of "recession" like an unceasing 4/4 string ostinato in D minor. That's a fact. The financial market meltdown is cause for concern, yes, but silly and dishonest to twist McCain's statements on the economy while relying on the old guard that engineered this mess for advice.

More Cowbell

Ever wonder if your favorite music might possibly sound better with a tad more cowbell, and maybe a little Christopher Walken thrown in?

Well wonder no more. Now you can create the perfect tune, with just the right anount of bell and Walken:

	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

Higgs Boson

They call me Mr. Higgs

Anyone scared that the big doughnut at CERN is going to make little black holes and end the world? Not me, much. I'm more worried that the black holes will bend space time and we'll be stuck for eternity, doing whatever we were doing when the switch got flipped. Sure, some people will be doing something fun, but most of us will have just stepped in dog poop, or be watching something with David Hasselhoff (but I repeat myself), or something equally unpleasant.

Or what if time goes in a loop and we go groundhog-day? We can't all learn to play the piano and juggle.

Ah well, we'll see what happens. Possibly forever, oh, or, over, and over, and over again.

The Binky Mandella

More Bichon circle of life madness.

Some things You Just Don't Share

More Photoshop fiddling on a Saturday afternoon.

Standoff

"Tension are high as a bomb disposal robot approaches
a Palestinian teenager wearing an explosive-packed belt. As the
robot gets closer you can see..... Binky!! Nooo! Not Now!!"

Change

(clickabiggen)

Another motivational poster. When your hair looks good, you look good.

Life is Unkind

...and so am I.


Sorry Joe, photoshop was open and, um, my foot slipped.

Tyra Banks Goes All Alvin

Tyra Banks goes angry-angry-chipmunk




via boing-boing

Jimmy, Come Back

In Memoriam - Thomas H. McGinnis

In Memoriam - Thomas H. McGinnis

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
(Revelation 21:4)

Thomas McGinnis, 41, was a commodities broker for Carr Futures and he usually worked on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange. However, on September 11 he had a business meeting at Carr's offices on the 92nd floor of One World Trade Center. It was there he lost his life in the tragedy we now call 9-11.

I received Thomas’s name at random as part of the 2996 project. And while researching his life, it struck me that if Thomas H. McGinnis represents an average victim of this tragedy, then we have lost much more than many of us can ever comprehend. He was by all accounts an exceptional man.

Thomas touched many people’s lives, and I was able to find many comments on his passing from those who knew him best. The following is just a sample of what was said:

When Iliana invited Thomas to our house, Thomas was a teenager,very tall and skinny. Through the years, he worked part time, studied and visited frequently. So they finished college ,got a job and finally any mother's dream came true, they get married. Since the beginning, my younger daughter Eva, and myself, loved Thomas and his family.

Thomas was a very hard worker, extremely intelligent and charitable. In reunions people gathered around him laughing at his jokes. Though the years, I not only saw him as a son , I learned to talk to him like a friend. The happiness was culminated when my beautiful granddaughter Caitlin was born. I am so happy I had the opportunity to tell him how proud I was of him and my daughter Ililana, he was surprised but he knew it was true. Thomas we miss and love you very much. God bless you, we will always remember you.
Love, Mom Ofe
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I only knew Tommy for too short of a period of time and only saw him at family gatherings and at his outstanding holiday parties. But I got to know him to be a terrific and genuine all around person. He was kind and considerate, very intelligent with super high-energy. I will most remember his wonderfully funny and impeccably timed sense of humor. My heart goes out to Iliana, Caitlin and all family and friends who loved him for their loss. We will always remember Tommy.
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Thomas was my cousin. We spent our childhoods together in NYC as our mothers were best friends. I remember calling his mom, Patsy, on 9/11. we we're still very much in shock but shared a prayer. It was so tragic as Thomas was moving on & up with his own seat on the board. So his meeting at WTC was to be one of his last with Carr. Tragic. His murder his loss... I am proud to call Thomas my cousin and will always remember those day at Washington HS grounds playing with Thomas and his younger brother James.
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Tommy worked with my father, Tommy Reynolds, in the commodities business when I was a teen-ager. He came to visit us in Tyler one year and made an amazing impression on me. We took him to the State Fair of Texas and had a blast. He had such charisma and energy that you just wanted be near him and hear more of his crazy stories. He talked about his girlfriend Illianna, who became his wife, with such awe and tenderness. When my family reaches heaven, we will look for his spirit because it was one that brought peace, happiness and joy to all!
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My name is James R. McGinnis and Thomas is my Brother. He was incredibly proud of his Irish heritage and one of the proudest days of his life was the day he met and had dinner with Gerry Adams. The greatest memories of my brother will be of the trip the two of us took to Ireland 2 years ago. It was the best trip I ever had.
The Murder of my brother has crushed my heart and it is so hard to rebuild. I have wonderful memories of my brother and he will live on forever in my heart.
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''He read everything,'' said his wife. ''If he wanted to know more about Ben Franklin, he'd pick up four books and read them all.''
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I was grateful to find so many testimonials to the life of Tom McGinnis. But even if I hadn’t been able to find these people’s good words, I still would have known what a great man he was. It is reflected in his last actions that morning, as shown in this account:

At 10:18, Tom McGinnis, one of the traders summoned to the special meeting, reached his wife, Iliana McGinnis. The words are stitched into her memory.

"This looks really, really bad," he said.

"I know," said Mrs. McGinnis, who had been hoping that his meeting had broken up before the airplane hit. "This is bad for the country; it looks like World War III."

Something in the tone of her husband's answer alarmed McGinnis.

"Are you OK, yes or no?" she demanded.

"We're on the 92nd floor in a room we can't get out of," he said.

"Who's with you?" she asked. McGinnis mentioned three old friends - Joey Holland, Brendan Dolan and Elkin Yuen.

"I love you," McGinnis said. "Take care of Caitlin." Mrs. McGinnis was not ready for that.

"Don't lose your cool," she urged. "You guys are so tough, you're resourceful. You guys are going to get out of there."

"You don't understand," McGinnis said. "There are people jumping from the floors above us."

It was 10:25. The fire raged along the west side of the 92nd floor. People fell from windows. McGinnis again told her he loved her and their daughter, Caitlin.

"Don't hang up," Mrs. McGinnis pleaded.

"I got to get down on the floor," McGinnis said.

The phone connection faded out.

It was 10:26, two minutes before the tower crumbled. The World Trade Center had fallen silent.

When he knew the end was near, Thomas’s thoughts were for his wife and child. A selfless and loving father, husband, son, brother, and cousin until the end. I pray that time has lessened his family’s pain. I pray for the soul of Thomas McGinnis as well, but I suspect it is little needed.

***Update: A Nephew's Remembrance:
I'm moving the following up from the comments section of Thomas's remembrance. It's the memories of his nephew, Brian, on that dark day. I thought they deserved to be up top. Thank you, Brian.

I thought I would share my memories of the day:

I was in 12th grade. I was looking forward to school that day to discuss the Broncos latest triumph with my classmates. I awoke to my mother pounding on my bedroom door. Figuring I had overslept again, I simply made an annoyed grunt to indicate I was awake. She told me to turn on the TV. I watched in shock before going to school. On my way in from the parking lot a classmate told me that another plane hit the pentagon, I distinctly remembering saying the following, "shut the fuck up, that isn't funny." I limped through my first period music appreciation class, where my teacher who had been holed up in his classroom since 5 that morning had no clue what was going on and conducted class as usual. During the break the secretary pulled me aside as I walked past the office and told me my parents had called and asked for me to return home. Knowing that my uncle was a commodities trader I knew this was a possibility but tried not to think about it. I remember walking to my car, saying to myself, "someone is dead. no everything is fine." I got home to find my mother in tears saying everything was fine, it was a false alarm. Reliable information was so hard to come by that day. I hugged my parents and told them I loved them and returned to school. I made it through my free period and micro-economics like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. During lunch, I passed on eating opting instead to watch the news coverage with about 50 other people in the green room of the theater. I'll never forget watching one girl burst into tears as they replayed the second plane hitting. We went to our afternoon classes, Calculus and English, where none of us knew what to do or what to say. Soccer practice that afternoon was cancelled, so I went home. When I got there my mom was in tears, she met me halfway up the driveway "We lost Thomas." 92nd floor Tower 1. It hit me like a ton of bricks, my uncle Thomas was a hero of mine, the smartest and funniest man I've ever known. I was confused, "What? How? I thought everything was fine?" As I said reliable information was so hard to come by. He usually worked across the street at NYMEX, but was at a meeting in his brokerage house's office. The funny thing was that he never even should've been there. He had a bought a seat on the exchange and was going to start his own firm. He was covering for one of his many friends that was on vacation. The meeting he was in had no bearing on him, it had to do with the benefits of the traders in his firm. But that was the kind of man that he was. He'd give you the shirt off his back and never ask for a thing in return and he was always there to back up his friends. So when something came up that would affect his friends he was there to show that he was behind them fully.

More links and remembrances at Michelle Malkin.

Is NBC Partisan?

Newsbusters:

The executive suite at MSNBC is the last hardened corner of America to concede that maybe Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are nowhere close to the textbook definition of detached, "straight news" anchor. Their decision to abandon what was tenderly called their anchoring "experiment" only acknowledges that the idea was a bust: MSNBC was regularly coming in dead last among the commercial cable-news and broadcast-news network covering the conventions.

Actually, I think MSNBC did have a winning combination: it was very entertaining to watch those two girl-fight over which one of them loved Obama more. I tuned in to see what would happen next, but once they were forced to stop fighting, they had nothing else to offer.

Alaskan Invasion

So how are those dirt-diggers that the Democrats flew into Alaska doing? I understand the polar bears say they're delicious. Polar bears say, "Nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom."

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Officials from Alaska teamed up Wednesday with the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama to launch a group aimed at exposing the truth and debunking myths about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.....

"Our current governor is now a candidate for the vice presidency and is one heartbeat away from the presidency, if she is successful in that regard," Knowles told a telephone news conference.

"I do have some very serious concerns about her qualifications for the office and some of the issues they are running on in terms of change that don't meet the facts of the situation," Knowles said.

Who is this official, Tony Knowles? Oh yeah, he's the two term Democrat governor that Sarah Palin beat. Darn. How were they able to turn him against her?

The Lipstick Kerfuffle

I was of two minds, well three actually, if you count the one that dreamily contemplates bacon all day, about Obama's intention with that "lipstick on a pig" remark.
One thing that would argue for his intentions being bad is this clip of him flipping off a former first lady:



I tried to tack on a clip of him explaining his "my Muslim faith" remark, but this new version of iMovie is very hard to use. Let's be clear though, the "my Muslim faith" remark was just a Freudian slip. The man is almost surely not a Muslim, probably.

He's the Expert

Over at Salon, darn, no link, Juan Cole asks and answers:

What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick

In most lipstick matters I'll defer to the man. But I think he's being silly now.

Is It Cold In Here?

A message for anyone who feels guilty for burning carbon:

......for the first time in 95 years, a month has gone by without a single spot forming on the sun’s surface.

While this may appear to interest only scientists who rarely leave their laboratories, the level of solar activity has an impact on climate conditions that affect everyone on the planet. Indeed, the absence of sunspots has caused commentators to revisit an unpublished paper from 2005 by a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory in Arizona.

Dr William Livingston and Matthew Penn predicted that, by 2015, sunspots would vanish for ever, stoking fears that a mini ice age would be in store, severely impacting life on parts of the globe.

If this is the case, it will not be the first time a lack of sunspots has been linked to cooler temperatures. In the second half of the 17th and the early 18th century, few sunspots were recorded – there were 50 when one thousand times that number would have been expected. The weather was so cold the River Thames in London froze over for weeks and harvests throughout Europe failed, all because of the unpredictable behaviour of a star almost two hundred million kilometers away from Earth.

So if we're ice skating on the Thames, will Al Gore give us a refund on the carbon credits he sold? I'm thinking he'll offer a coupon good for the equivalent number of global-cooling credits, you know, just to balance everything out.

The Boom Gets Lowered

I join Michelle Malkin in doing the happy dance over the latest Pelosi news:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has accepted an invitation from San Francisco’s archbishop to discuss whether she should continue to receive communion at the Catholic Church in the wake of comments she made about abortion.

And about time too. We've had to listen to a bonus homily twice now because of Nancy's remarks on Church teaching. Which I suppose is ok, except that some of us have padres that do quite well, volume wise, already. Give our guy something extra to talk about and it could be Monday before you get out.

Anyway, kudos Catholic Church. Church teachings on when life begins aren't vague or open to interpretation. Nancy was foolish to claim that they were. Hey Nance, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Tomatina

See? This is why there's been a standing order to check Keith Olbermann for weapons every single time he comes into the studio. Demote him, throw in a guard who was distracted by a phone call, and countless make-up artists and cameramen pay the price.



OK, not really. It's a festival in which culturally superior Europeans put on what amounts to a huge wet t-shirt contest with V-8 Juice. Called, predictably, Tomatina.

Think, hey, we could do something like that? Nope. If we did it, it would be a decadent waste of food. "The cowboy Americans throw away food that could save starving children," something like that. That's why we have belt sander races. Nobody's going to care if we recklessly destroy a Craftsman 11727. And most of us don't have to shower afterwards.

Air Force Cyber Command

Noah Shachtman writes in DangerRoom:

Air Force nuclear and cyber troops, well-place Air Force sources say, could be combined into a single "Global Effects Command." These forces would work with U.S. Strategic Command, to deter foes with missiles, bombers, or electrons. In effect, it would be Strategic Air Command, revamped for the Internet age. In other words, America's cyber forces wouldn't just protect military networks. They'd go on the attack against online foes.

Sounds like fun and games until someone gets hurt. (I can see the missiles going up and everyone scrambling to find out what the hell happened, only to find out one of the nerds got trolled by a Chinese counterpart... "Well, he started it")

Nah, of course the nuke buttons wouldn't be in the same room as the geeks. Anyway, seeing as Photoshop was open anyway, I tweaked their emblems:

The Bi Candidate

Word is, Barack Obama has extensive biking experience.



In Palin's case, "journalists" are looking into reports that she's bi.


H/t:RB

Photoshop Fiddling

I was just playing around with Photoshop. Don't you think the middle row of Campbell Browns look better?

Obama Threatens to Ununify Germany

Campbell Brown

Chris Tingle-leg Mathews has got nothing on Campbell Brown. When it comes to Sarah Palin, she just comes unhinged. Search her on youtube if you can stand it.



Her argue-face isn't flattering either. She best watch it because she can be replaced: