Monday, September 29, 2008

Ding dong the bill is dead

The House of Representatives has defeated the bailout package 228-205. Apparently all that welfare reform they wanted for years jumped up and bit them. Too bad we never got to see if McCain was going to actually make it in to vote.

Funny stuff from the Colbert green screen challenge

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Ummm...did anyone ever watch the Flintstones and think, "I bet this is really how they lived back then"?


Ok, for anyone who has known me for any amount of time (and especially people who knew me when I was in 2nd grade), I've known since the age of seven that dinosaurs and humans did not coexist. The Cretaceous Period ended 65 million years ago, ending the age of dinosaurs and signaling the beginning of the Cenozoic Era and the rise of the mammal as the dominant life form on earth. This is scientifically proven fact, but not according to a portion of Creationists which holds among their ranks, wait for it...one of our two Vice Presidential candidates (its not the one who's been a U.S. Senator)! Sarah Palin apparently saw a few episodes of the Flintstones and believed it to be a History Channel special or something according to the LA Times.

Seriously, even though I thought Dino was the greatest and was continually pissed that I couldn't get a dinosaur as a pet, I, even at the age of seven, knew that it was a cartoon and not based on fact. Apparently, some members of our fine free nation missed that common sense memo.

Happy Birthday to me!!!

I'm in love with a wonderful woman, LSU won, the Cubs are in the playoffs, the Saints won, and Obama is ahead in the polls. Please let this be the year I get all my wishes.

SNL skits from Saturday

The Obama impersonation is brutal, but the McCain impersonation is dead on:



Darrell Hammond is dead on as Clinton as usual:



And another mock-up of the Palin interview by Katie Couric:



The only thing that's really scary about this last skit, they didn't even change some of the dialog from the actual interview. Frightening.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Ok, just watched the debate...

I've gotta give it to Obama, despite the fact that neither was overly impressive. Barack looked confident, collected, and unflappable. John McCain looked angry and bitter most of the night, and please tell me I'm not the only one who noticed that McCain never seemed to look Obama in the eye all night.

When Obama said "Can we move on Jim?" while McCain was raving about offshore drilling and Lehrer actually moved to the next question is when I realized Obama had won this debate.

"John, you act like the war started in 2007."


Ah, following McCain's prudence lecture:


Overall, a draw is still a win for Obama.

Before my debate opinions, a little sumthin for my peeps

I really loathe this woman (the one with the glasses):

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Hilarious



I love that this election has managed to make Letterman relevant again.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

This is our "best and only choice" for Commander in Chief?

Come on! Who over the age of twelve doesn't know where Spain is? I can completely understand a normal person not knowing who Zapatero is (Spain's Prime Minister), but this is the man who says his experience with world leaders and foreign policy is what sets him apart! What a ridiculous strategem to use here. The entire country is wondering if you live in the same place that they do, and you dodder around like an autistic grandfather (no offense intended to autistic grandfathers meant) on Spanish television. Good move Senator, I'm sure the leaders of the rest of the world rest easy on the laurels of whether or not you remember who they are when you could be napping with a finger on the button of armaggedon.

Go here for the original reporting of the latest (part 800 in a seemingly unending series) political gaffe.

I love David Sedaris

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The man just speaks to me...



This is ridiculous. Genius move by the Democrats in Congress for once. Appear to cave into a sham of an energy policy, when in fact, politically c**k blocking the destruction of our beaches and further destruction of the wetlands around the Gulf Coastline. Expect the GOP to continue to call this a sham because they were outsmarted for once. Kudos to you Speaker Pelosi, keep that kind of actual leadership up.

Beautiful



If either Gore or Kerry could've come across so naturally and fun, would I even have a blog? I don't think I would...

Monday, September 15, 2008

In completely non-political news:

Carlos Zambrano throws the first Cubs no-hitter since 1972! Holy Cow! Geaux Cubs!!!!

I have a new TIVO affair

In addition to Stewart, Colbert, and Olbermann; I now need to include Craig Ferguson. Isn't it funny how naturalized citizens of this country always seem to have more of a grasp on current affairs than natural born ones? (Schwarzenegger not included, I still think he's got a screw loose)


John McCain and his ethics

Reprinted from an email my Aunt Deanna sent me and an article from Snopes.com:

I was so disappointed by John Edwards when I heard he was running around on his wife while she was dealing with cancer. I liked his politics and I still do. I planned to vote for him in the primaries, but I'm glad he was out of the running by the time it was our turn to vote in California's primary so that I voted for Barack Obama instead.

The thing is, even though he was out of the race, the media made a big deal about it when we had much more important things on which to focus. Now that we're looking at the two final candidates in the running, we see Barack Obama's history being scrutinized and facts being twisted, things taken out of context... anything they can do to try to scrape up (or make up) dirt on him. The best they can do is lie about bills he has supported and pick on his noble service as a community organizer (which we actually have to thank for causing him enough frustration to go into politics where he felt like he could actually make a difference and make some much needed changes).

We've heard bits and pieces about John McCain's failed first marriage but his ...well, character flaws would be such an understatement, let's call it personality pathology... haven't really been looked at, much less put under a microscope. It is for this reason, I followed the problem up and got this from snopes after seeing the article in the British online news, The Daily Mail. Feel free to forward this email knowing it has been verified.

If the media liked Edwards' marital and character issues when he was out of the race, why aren't they lapping this up? We've already had enough ruination from a bratty, self-centered frat boy of barely above average intelligence, now people are seriously considering another source in this guy and his unbelievably poor choice for a running mate when he had such capable females in his party from which to choose (the woman who really, actually, seriously had no clue this week what the Bush Doctrine is, Palin, whose possible jab at the presidency absolutely scares the crap out of me, really does make the likes of Libby Dole [although considering gender, of nearly the same age demographic as McCain], Olympia Snowe, and Kay Baily Hutchison look stellar).

It's kind of sad to see the sacrifice of incarceration McCain (unintentionally) made in Vietnam tainted and marginalized as it is being used as his excuse for any wrongdoing since. I'm really sick and tired of McCain getting a free pass on everything while Obama is attacked with lies and contorted misrepresentations.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Verified on snopes: Article recounts details of Senator John McCain's divorce from his first wife, Carol.

Status: True

Example: [Collected via e-mail, September 2008]

Carol McCain

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fiber by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But there is another Mrs. McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator's presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain's three eldest children.

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam's infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news. But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969.

Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Today, she stands at just 5' 4" in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

"My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens ... it just does."

In 1979, while still married to Carol, he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Some of McCain's acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to 'play the field'. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans' rights, said: "I have been following John McCain's career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is, deceit."

"When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better."

"McCain is the classic opportunist. He's always reaching for attention and glory," he said. "After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history."

Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, and a former presidential candidate, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel, even by the standards of modern politics.

On 3 July 1965, 28-year-old Naval aviator John Sidney McCain III married 27-year-old Carol Shepp of Philadelphia, whom he had initially met while attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, several years earlier. John McCain adopted Carol's two sons (Douglas and Andrew) from a previous marriage, and the couple had a daughter (Sidney) together in 1966.

In July 1967, Lt. Commander John McCain was taken prisoner after his plane was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam and was held as a POW for over five years. During her husband's captivity, Carol McCain was involved in a near-fatal automobile accident that left her with permanent injuries, a circumstance that posed some difficult adjustments for the couple after they were finally reunited in March 1973:

One fact was especially difficult to deal with [after McCain's return to the U.S.]: Carol's physical condition. At Christmastime in 1969, while McCain was imprisoned in Vietnam, Carol was almost killed in a car crash. "Carol had taken the kids to her parents' house for the holidays," McCain later wrote. "After dinner on Christmas Eve, she drove to our friends, the Bookbinders, to exchange gifts. It had begun to snow by the time she started back to her parents, and the roads were icy. She skidded off the road, smashed into a telephone pole, and was thrown from the car. The police found her some time later in shock, both legs fractured in several places, her arm and pelvis broken, and bleeding internally.

"Several days passed before she was out of immediate danger. It would be six months and several operations before she was released from the hospital. Over the next two years, she would undergo many more operations to repair her injured legs. By the time the doctors were finished, she would be four inches shorter than she was before the accident. After a year of intense physical therapy, she was able to walk with the aid of crutches." Carol's new appearance was one of the more shocking details McCain had to deal with during his period of adjustment; quite simply, Carol was a different person from the one she was when he left.

By the end of the 1970s, the McCains' marriage was strained to the breaking point, even if it was not evident to those who knew them:

Even though friends saw a rosy picture when they looked at John and Carol McCain's marriage from outside, privately the couple was having difficulty. After years in captivity, McCain was not totally able to return to the life he had led with Carol before he went to Vietnam. As the marriage became rocky, McCain was unfaithful to Carol, or perhaps the marriage became rocky because McCain was unfaithful. Later, there would even be reports that he had, as the Boston Globe put it, "affairs with subordinate female personnel." The McCains had tried to achieve some semblance of a normal life after McCain's return home and, to a great extent, they had accomplished this, but the problems continued nonetheless. Years later, Carol would tell a reporter the main trouble was not complicated: McCain may have been 40, but he was acting like he was 25.

In 1979, then 42-year-old John McCain first met Cindy Lou Hensley, a 25-year-old school teacher who was also the daughter (and heir) of James Hensley, the founder of one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorships in the United States; the two began dating and married the following year. Sources differ as to the timing of McCain's separation from his first wife, Carol, and the beginning of his relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Cindy Hensley; whatever the circumstances, McCain remarried five weeks after divorcing his first wife:

McCain has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.


Updated: 10 September 2008

Sources:

Alexander, Paul. Man of the People: The Life of John McCain
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Churcher, Sharon. "The Wife U.S. Republican John McCain Callously Left Behind."
The Mail on Sunday 8 June 2008.

McCain, John S. with Mark Salter. Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir
New York: Random House, 2002.

Serrano, Richard A. and Ralph Vartabedian. "McCain's Broken Marriage and Fractured Reagan Friendship."
Los Angeles Times 11 July 2008.

Timberg, Robert. John McCain: An American Odyssey
New York: Fireside Press, 1999.

"McCain May Have Conflict Brewing."
Los Angeles Times 22 June 2008.

I do so hope my Republican friends actually read this...


Here's a crude graphic of the tax plans side by side. I don't understand where everyone says Obama is going to raise my taxes like McCain keeps telling me? Am I stupid? Can I not read a simple bar chart? If so, I should get my money back from that damn math professor at school!

Friday, September 12, 2008

New Evidence: Palin Had Direct Role In Charging Rape Victims For Exams


This is unconscionable in this day and age, especially when your state leads the nation in rape and incest. Apparently in the newest interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, you only have rights if you own a gun and shot the man who raped you from a Cessna.
About Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

You have got to be kidding me.

Ok, I've been pretty much not on the Palin bandwagon since Jump Street, but this is just the most god damn ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Please read this excellent article by a man with a glorious first name and a fabulous nose for journalism. Copied from The Huffington Post:

Despite denials by the Palin campaign, new evidence proves that as
mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin had a direct hand in imposing
fees to pay for post-sexual assault medical exams conducted by the city
to gather evidence.

Palin's role is now confirmed by Wasilla City budget documents available online.

Under Sarah Palin's administration, Wasilla cut funds that had
previously paid for the medical exams and began charging victims or
their health insurers the $500 to $1200 fees. Although Palin
spokeswoman Maria Comella wrote USA Today
earlier this week that the GOP vice presidential nominee "does not
believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to
pay for an evidence-gathering test...To suggest otherwise is a
deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims
and bringing violent criminals to justice," Palin, as mayor, fired
police chief Irl Stambaugh and replaced him with Charlie Fannon, who
with Palin's knowledge, slashed the budget for the exams and began
charging the city's victims of sexual assault. The city budget
documents demonstrate Palin read and signed off on the new budget. A
year later, alarmed Alaska lawmakers passed legislation outlawing the
practice.

News of the controversial policy has leaked slowly into the press
this week as the presidential campaign has heated up and Palin's record
has been subject to increasing scrutiny. The practice of charging rape
victims has called into question Palin's stated commitment to women's
issues, her judgment as an executive and her honesty about her record.

The story of the Wasilla policy has made its way from comments on Daily Kos to the pages of USA Today.
But clear evidence suggesting Palin knew Wasilla was charging the
victims of sexual assault has been hard to find. Placing the city
budget records, however, alongside a timetable of Palin's firing Chief
Stambaugh and hiring Chief Fannon makes it clear the policy was put in
place as a direct result of Palin's leadership.

The mayor of Wasilla before Sarah Palin, John C. Stein, was also a
Republican, though the office was and continues to be non-partisan.
Mayor Stein was defeated by Sarah Palin in a campaign that brought in
the NRA, Republican partisans, and a whisper campaign that Mayor Stein was Jewish
(he is a Christian, but is "proud of such a reputation"). He now runs
the Sitka Sound Science Center, a marine research facility in Sitka,
Alaska.

Mayor Stein told OffTheBus that he didn't "think victims were billed
while [he] was mayor," but that he wasn't certain. He did mention that
"Wasilla participated in establishing a Sexual Assault Response Team to
set-up a one-stop forensic exam room for victims," evidence of a
pro-victim police department. In order to confirm his assertion about
the billing policy, he recommended I contact current police chief
Angella Long for confirmation. She did not return my request for
comment.

However, I was able to eventually track down Irl Stambaugh, police chief of Wasilla from the founding of the department until Sarah Palin fired him
for "not fully supporting her efforts to govern." Stambaugh sued for
breach of contract, but lost when a federal judge ruled that "police
chiefs serve at the behest of the mayor unless otherwise specified." He
later served as the executive director of the Alaska Police Standards Council.

It turns out that Wasilla did not bill sexual assault victims
for the cost of rape exams while Irl Stambaugh was chief of police. As
chief, he had included a line item in the budget to pay for the cost of
such exams. He had only just heard about the Mayor Palin/Chief Fannon
policy today, and was just as shocked to hear about it as I was.

Checking the budget confirmed former Chief Stambaugh's claim. He had
included a contingency of $15,000 in his budget for the department's
1st year of existence (1993-1994), $5,000 for 1994-1995 and 1995-1996,
and $13,000 for his final year as police chief in 1996-1997, spending
$11,625.

Duwayne Charles Fannon, his replacement, halved the budget request
in 1997-1998, with a request of $7,298, spending $3,454. However, it
seems he began the "victim pays" policy in the 1998-1999 fiscal year.
That year, he requested $3,000 but spent only $205. This data can be
found in the Document Central section of Wasilla's website.

The Document for the 1998-1999 fiscal year begins with a message "To the Citizens of the City of Wasilla:"



The comprehensive annual financial report of the City of
Wasilla for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1999, is hereby submitted.
The City's Finance Department prepared the report. Responsibility for
both the accuracy of the data, and the completeness and fairness of the
presentation, including all disclosures, rests with the City. To the best of our knowledge and belief,
the enclosed data is accurate in all material respects and is reported
in a manner designed to fairly present the financial position and
results of operations of the various funds and account groups of the
City. All disclosures necessary to enable the reader to gain an
understanding of the City's financial activities have been included.
...



At the end of the letter, under the words "Respectfully
submitted," is the signature of Sarah Palin. Unless she made a false
claim about the data being accurate to the best of her knowledge, she
was aware of the change in billing policy orchestrated by Police Chief
Fannon. The McCain/Palin campaign did not respond to requests for
comment.



2008-09-12-signature.jpg



To see Palin's signature in Wasilla's 1999 Financial Report, download the full report here. [The
7-page letter written by Sarah Palin and the city's finance director as
an introduction to the 1998-1999 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
makes it clear that the City of Wasilla, and hence the mayor, is
responsible for oversight over the report. The letter discusses certain
minor city actions, such as an extension by the city of the East
Wasilla Water Main in order to serve the newly built Wal-Mart. The rest
of the letter is a summary of the information contained in the report.
However, it is notable that "the City of Wasilla is required to undergo
an annual single audit in conformity of the Federal and State Single
Audit Acts." Under the most recent amendments to that act at the time,
an entity had to expend $300,000
in federal funds to be subject to the Single Audit Act; a look at page
88 of the full financial report shows the federal share of Wasilla city
expenditures to have been $1,145,753, nearly $200/resident.
]


Hopefully, I've covered my ass as far as plagiarism goes.

Straight from the horse's mouth...

Maybe that's offensive to horses though.

Remember this? I do and its more fitting than ever these days...

What?



Since when was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed public enemy number one? Is the Bush administration just trying to cover its own collective asses as it runs out the door here, or is it just me? Osama Bin Laden was the target that Bill Clinton HANDED the Bush N.S.A. on his way out and now he's just the figurehead? Get over it and get the hell out of my White House and take your clones with you.

To release this statement on 9/11 is unconscionable.

Really John?



I haven't been to a doctor in five years because even my employee health insurance is out of my price range, and let's not talk about the dentist (can we say High School?). Out of touch and bad for this country.

Great Commercial

Bravo Planned Parenthood!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Hey, what's the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom?

Pitbulls don't lie.

Obama '08.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Update on an earlier post:

For anyone who actually read my post about Hillary's work for women's rights and cared about the issue, you should definitely check out the "feminist" stances of our new GOP VP candidate. I'm literally afraid of this woman.

Just when I thought I could rest...

This election just got retarded in the last 2 weeks, and I'm not talking about the obvious....Joe Lieberman. I'm so sick of that little turd riding McCain's coattails. Don't worry, the Sarah Palin bus hasn't missed this stop. I'm on my way, all I need is a little time to control my rage.