News Synergy

Two headlines from the BBC:

Ronald Reagan 'appears to Nancy'

and:

Weekly curry 'may fight dementia'

Mr. Gorbachev, tear off some naan (and get some take away to Nance, there's a love).

Keep him away from the controls*: he has a tendency to crash things

What US government issue aircraft would we like to think of when remember John McCain's service to America?:

Yep

Nope

*Both metaphorically and in reality

This Is Not An Election Blog 1

Two for you
(or if you prefer, two for ya, doggone it *wink*, *mug*):

Chuck Todd, Political Editor, NBC;

Murray Hewitt, Flight of the Conchords.

And also:

Fictional maverick

Fictional maverick

Do all Navy pilots want to be Tom Cruise? And does this make Sarah Palin Goose? Heaven forbid a President McCain ever take part in a topless oiled-up volleyball game or poke Vladimir Putin in the chest while drawing out the name "Icccce...mannnnn".

Hey John; those poll numbers that looked so good after your stunt- and negative ad filled August? I checked yesterday and they "were inverted". You'd better eject...

Dog Whistle or Warning Sign?

After 8 years of mangled syntax and mispronounced words, it seems that it has become Republican orthodoxy to pronounce fairly mundane words in slightly exotic ways. I'm not refering to big foreign tongue twisters like "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad" (i.e. "Ackyminniejabs, the new Adlorf Hilter") or new Pakistani president "Asif Ali Zardari", but rather to the name of our nation's capital.

He's been there in one form or another since attending the National War College in 197e and although he is older than dirt the name had been changed from Foggy Bottom a far while before he was born, yet for some reason Senator McCain insists on pronouncing Washington DC:

"WAHHRRSHHHINGTORN DC"

Is this a signal to his base that although a member of the establishment by any ordinary reckoning, McCain is so contemptous of "gov'mint" that he refuses to even pronounce the name of the first president properly?

Or rather is he proving himself to be dogged, principled, cunning, and as thick as two short planks?

In any case, if it is now ok to just make up pronunciations for long accepted names, I think I'll start refering to the good senator and his adopted home state of Arizona as "Jerrrrn MickCarrrrrrn of Arrrrrhhhhhrrowzima" from now on. Maybe it'll confuse a few of the Gunrack MacButtcracks out there at the very least....

McCain insists it is "Wahhhrrshingtorn": he looked it up on the original Blackberry that he claims to have invented (pictured)

And their sports guy looks like the late Senator Reed Smoot

From Bangor, Maine via MSNBC:

TV anchor who resembles Palin gets 'hate mail


BANGOR, Maine - A television news anchor in Maine who looks a lot like Sarah Palin says she's been getting "hate mail and nasty phone calls."

Cindy Michaels from WVII-TV has long brown hair that she sometimes wears up in a style similar to Palin's, and she also wears glasses on occasion.

Michaels says some viewers recently began accusing her of trying to copy Palin's style or, worse, somehow trying to subliminally sway votes.

While smarting over accusations of bias, Michaels says she's generally flattered by the comparisons to Palin. Michaels describes her as a "beautiful woman."

Having been subjected to the news on WVII on occasion, I am inclined to suspect that any 'hate mail'* is more due to her working for the most inane and pointless news operation in Eastern Maine than her sharing that c1993 senior flight attendant look with Palin.

I think of greater interest is the extent to which rival station WABI's weather man looks like President William Howard Taft:




(*Hate mail? I wonder who takes the time to compose hate mail- that shows real dedication to one's irrational, puce-faced anger. In this day and age surely one just blogs?)

Wanted: A Tough President who Sees Insults in Everything Anyone Says.

Barak Obama: "I amazed that my opponent thinks that when I said that choosing between Senator McCain and President Bush was six of one and half a dozen of the other that I was suggesting that he enjoyed symetrically balanced bisexual orgies."

John McCain: "My friends, when I pointed out that Senator Obama's suggestion that proper tire inflation as a means to solve the energy crisis was about as useful as a chocolate teapot, I was in no way bringing race into the debate. Those sort of suggestions make me angry, and you won't like me when I'm angry. McCain smash."

Joe Biden: "My saying Sarah Palin's accumulated executive experience in small town Alaska is about as relevant as tits on a nun has been deliberately misconstrued by the Republicans. I view the Governor of Alaska strictly from the neck up, and as I can attest there is nothing wrong with being catholic."

Sarah Palin: "Bridge to nowhere... blah blah blah... thanks but no thanks... blah blah blah... Don't tell anyone, but I kept the earmarked money in Alaska even though the bridge wasn't built... blah blah blah... nothing wrong with tits as they were molded out of clay by God's own hand 10,000 years ago... blah blah blah... Has anyone else noticed I sould like Frances McDormand in Fargo?... blah blah blah..."

This Convention is Pure Torture

From Beau Bo D'or

I have been watching some of the Republican convention this week and I think I understand John McCain's national security policy.

If John McCain is ever captured by Al Qadea, he won't talk, evah, even if they break his ribs. "Screw you bin Laden you Iranian bastard", he'll say, spitting his few remaining teeth into a grubby pail; "You and your Shia pal Putin might kill me, but you'll have Palin to deal with".

In fact, if he is elected the first thing he plans to do is to rip up the rose garden and install a runway so that we can take off in an A4 Skyhawk and bravely get shot down over our enemy's capital whenever a crisis arises. Nobody can crash an aircraft like John McCain: in fact he's built an entire career around being bad at his job.

"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. "Since McCain got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

Ahh, what it is to be the son and grandson of an admiral.

Has John Edwards been To Alaska in the past year?

One area where I feel a great deal of affinity with conservatives is around the concept of personal responsibility. Society cannot be blamed for the things in one's life that come from personal choices and that are more properly influenced by family and community.

Therefore I find it quite interesting to note that Christian conservative and Republican vice-presidential pander-date Sarah Palin's underage daughter is unmarried and pregnant.

I suppose this sort of thing is bound to happen when you emphasize snakes and apples over birds and bees. Or from a creationist standpoint (of which Mrs. Palin is a proud advocate) is this God's 'hand' at work? Maybe Mrs. Palin's calm acceptance of her daughter's pregnancy draws upon her opinions about climate change: if there is no human hand at work in global warming maybe the same applies to the formation of her impending grandchild. All of this does beg the question however as to whether Mrs. Palin's Veep acceptance speech will be drafted by Diablo Cody.

So what is it to be folks? Do the moralists out there want to vote for a ticket where the top half abandoned his wife and children for a rich heiress and the bottom half was unable to successfully relay her own values to her daughter, or is this somehow the fault of working mothers, equal rights for women, and other issues Hilary voters believe in? After all, McCain's chromosonal pick was predicated on a combination of fooling conservatives and Clinton supporters- has it worked? Has he fooled you?

Dead Parrot Picks Palin

Yesterday appeared to be opposite day in the Republican Party. Instead of running with a callow, inexperienced, and little-traveled child of a presidential candidate and a gnarled, foul-tempered, cynical old goat of a vice-presidential candidate they switched around roles. It fairly brings one back to the wonderous days of GHW Bush and Dane Quaylee.

Its probably good for McCain that the second placed Democrat in the tight primary race was a woman and not Barney Frank, otherwise his blatant tokenism would have been much harder for his zombotic horde of a base to swallow. Think about it- would rock-ribbed social conservatives ever rallied around a John McCain/Rip Taylor ticket?

Here Republican VP candidate, Governor of Alaska, and former beauty queen Sarah Palin demonstrates her policy experience in the fields of education and foreign affairs:

Some Questions for You, Grandpa

How does a famously short-tempered man defend his "temperament" without seeming tetchy?

How does an ex-naval officer senior US senator son and grandson of admirals and the husband of a multi-million dollar heiress pin the "elitist" label on the mixed-race man raised by a single mom who pulled himself up off food stamps to graduate from Harvard Law?

How is $5 million the threshold for wealth in your world?

Why won't you support the health care reforms that could save General Motors and make much of American industry competitive again, while covering your fellow citizens with the same plan they pay for out of their taxes to cover you as a US senator?

Driller Killer

Setting aside general questions as to the desirability or feasibility of energy independence (topics I hope to waffle about at a later date) I have been alternating between bouts of frustration and fits of the giggles every time I hear a candidate or interest group advocate for increased oil exploration and drilling in the United States as the way past high energy prices.

Even if we ignore the time it will take to bring any oil to gas stations (about 10 years), the shortage of drilling rigs, and the shortage of refineries, the minuscule savings per gallon the experts project will be eaten up by general inflation, never mind fluctuations in the oil market. The current best guess is a savings of 10c a gallon when the oil comes online a decade from now. That's about 3% of today's price per gallon at the gas station down the street from where I sit ($3.64). Ten years ago in August 1998 the average national price per gallon was $1.06. In the past decade therefore, the price of gas has more than doubled, going up by about 240%. That dime a gallon the oil companies promise you'll save if they are allowed to drill offshore and in ANWAR? If the next decade follows the same sort of price trends the past decade did, all that drilling, all those subsidies, and all that environmental damage would mean that prices would only climb by 237% rather than the 240% of the past decade. What a savings!!!

Lets be fair and assume that the price rise over the decade would be much less steep. Maybe T Boone Pickens strapped a windmill to a Mobil station or something, and gas only went up by 100%. Again, all this drilling would only mean that you'd be a mere 97% worse off at the pump. Unless oil and other prices increase by a factor of less than 3% of today's prices over the course of the next decade, additional drilling in sensitive locations will not lower prices, or even do much to arrest price increases. It will however allow oil companies to pump more product as demand continues to grow world wide and therefore generate greater profits.

And therein lies the truth behind this push for drilling. Don't get me wrong: I'm a firm believer in open markets (I feel they are the key to global prosperity if they are truly open) and capitalism. In fact my belief in the market is one of the reasons I feel this push to extract more oil in the name of "energy independence" is a crock- when was the last time you heard of an oil company that sold its product exclusively to its home country? The hydrocarbon markets are global, so the idea of more domestic oil lessening our demand for "foreign" oil is a non-starter.

From a simplified market standpoint, being a net consumer of fuel puts one in a weak position. It would be far better for the United States to offset (and hopefully reduce) that fuel consumption by being a net exporter of clean energy technology. Why should we base our entire on economy on something we don't have a lot of (oil) rather than something we have a goodly amount of (tech expertise and R&D spending)?

Of course, that's a topic for another post. But I did want to jot down my thoughts about drilling and the silliness that is currently prevailing in the election campaign around energy independence and pocket book issues.

This is not a maverick conservative french fry blog

I am surely not the first to notice this, but:

John McCain, Republican for president;

McCain Frozen Foods, the world's largest potato processor.

Good thing the Democrats are running Obama, not Oh Henry.

Malkin Hates Scarves; Stays Mum on Gerry Adams-Style Beards

Right wing screeching lunatic whose ability to have perspective was surgically removed commentator Michelle Malkin has become convinced that celebrity cook Rachel Ray is shilling not just for Dunkin Donuts but also for terrorists.

Setting aside the conflation of secular Arab nationalist/partner with Rabin/winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Yasir 'Arafat with Islamist jihadists who have only flourished in the occupied territories as a consequence of the US and Israel's refusal to support and compromise with moderate Palestinian leaders (and for good measure, confusing them with Al Qadea acolytes in Iraq), the sole reasoning behind the idea that Ms. Ray is somehow Osama bin Laden's personal chef is that a stylist draped her with a scarf resembling a keffiyeh (or shemagh)- traditional Arab head gear.

To be crystal clear then; Ms. Malikn and her pals believe that wearing a keffiyeh allies one with terrorists.

Someone had better tell that to the US Navy Seals and Britain's elite Special Air Service, both units being currently engaged in anti-terrorism operations around the globe:



God knows what Malkin and her pals would have made of the command patch for Eisenhower and the allied troops that stormed Normandy on D-Day. Flaming phallic sword? Rainbow? "Promoting the homosexual agenda" or something equally moronic, one supposes.

Wherein Basic Predjudices Long Unexamined Doth Boil Up

I personally don't belong to any faith and find the whole business of mumbo-jumbo and mystery in general to be a tremendous cop-out from embracing the truly exciting concept of the universe being powered by chaos, random events and competition between natural systems. That said, I was raised in the warm bath of generalized British soft protestantism and so when the Pope recently came to the United States for a visit I had the following reactions:

1) Ugh, the Pope.

2) Look at him, all conservative and hypocritical.

3) Wait a minute, who are all those cheering people?

4) Bloody hell, there is a significant percentage of the world's population who love the Pope and think he's a force for good.

5) I think I need to work on my empathy.

The Pope, as I've always seen him and his predecessors. Not a view shared by all, nor even the right one?

Armageddon (out of here if he wins)

Republican presidential candidate and professional ignoramus Mike Huckabee has a new pithy sound bite he likes to end his speeches with in order to rally his troops:

"I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles."

Well that should come in handy if he wins and has to fix the economy. The quotes from his supporters interviewed in exit polls makes for amazing listening: they sound like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. If these folks used the same logic they employ to pick a candidate to following the rules of the road then maybe we'd be able to be rid of them through a spike in fatal traffic accidents, but no- we would never be that lucky. Perhaps we could break off three or four southern states, gift them to the evangelicals for their own country, let them be as fundamentalist as they like, and call it Talibama.

And would somebody please tell Huckabee and his moronic horde that the word is "pundit", not "pundant"? Haven't we learned how devestating it can to be the country and the world if we elect someone who can't even be bothered to find out how a word is pronounced?

I'm sincerely grateful that economically illiterate rube isn't going to win.

Live Fritos or Diet

It's been a quiet week out here in Lake Woebegone, -oops, wrong intro.

Hello chums; hope all is well. I have been inordinately tired as of late (related to the arrival of season 3 of Lost from our Netflix queue- you can't watch just one) so I haven't been posting much. This will soon change.

I did want to highlight a different New Hampshire primary narrative than the one that is doing the rounds as conventional wisdom however, as it makes a lot of sense to me and shows how once a discussion is framed it is very hard for alternative explanations to break through to public consciousness.

The CW claims that Hilary confounded the world and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by sobbing slightly, possibly derailing the Obama campaign as she somehow captured the hearts of many and squeezed the balls of the rest destroying scientific polling in the process.

Another, less heard version suggests that the pollsters screwed up their samples on an epic scale and the Clinton machine's get-out-the-vote effort was better established in NH (after all, she's been running in effect since her husband left office and all his sleepers were still in place from 92 and Gore 00). And even with all of this, Barack Obama closed within 3 percent of the woman considered Democratic shoe-in nominee 12 months ago on the strength of only 5 days of frontrunner-hood.

Every time you hear Obama lost New Hampshire, remember that two and a half months ago he was 16% behind Clinton in opinion polls. In that time he made up 13% against the heir apparent. That's a lot of inertia, name recognition, and machine to push against, and yet he almost pulled it off.

I'm loving these races: whoever wins the Dems have the chance to send a real battle-hardened, road-tested candidate with the potential to make gender or racial history out of Denver and into November. Meanwhile Republican voters are seriously considering opting for either an old man who wants to prolong the war, a man who has changed position so many times this month alone his autobiography should be called the Mittra Sutra, and a man who believes Earth and all creation postdates the invention of beer and that the US government should be solely funded by a regressive 23% sales tax.

Seriously, if the Dems contrive to lose this one to yet another religious "national security" nut job I have already got Country Mouse to promise we're leaving.

If You Don't Stop It, You'll Go Blind

President Bush yesterday, commenting on the Mitchell Report into steroid use in professional baseball:

"I understand the impact that professional athletes can have on our nation's youth. I just urge those in the public spotlight, particularly athletes, to understand that when they violate their bodies, they're sending a terrible signal to America's youth."

Did the president just call major league ballplayers a bunch of wankers? Although hairy palms can lead to a poor grip on either the bat or split-fingered fastball.

"Hey Laura! I hear some of the black players have got ones this big!"

We Have the Prescription for Your Toe Tap Addiction

A typical Republican Senator last year, prior to treatment

This whole Larry Craig affair is a sad business. Not only does the senior Senator from Idaho find his career and family life in ruins, he no doubt is full of self-loathing and self-recrimination. How can one live a life decrying the morals and standards of those who share one's sexual orientation without feeling one's own bile slowly dissolving one from the inside?

Larry and his fellow self-haters must get beside themselves with self-disgust every time they succumb to their biologically hardwired impulses and bang out the nifty fifty with some bloke in the bogs. Self repression, oppressive legislation, fervent bible bashing, or reversion "therapy" obviously isn't working. What Senator Craig and his chums need is help from every Americans' guardian angel, the pharmaceutical industry.

If psychiatry, psychology, or prayer isn't working then pharmaceuticals will. What is the key problem? Illicit sex in public spaces. How is this sex being initiated? By the tapping of toes. How can the patient resist tapping toes? With a prescription for Mirapax.

Mirapax treats Restless Legs Syndrome (the disease that did for Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes). Closeted self-loathing Republican legislators won't have to worry about succumbing to their genetic preferences as they won't be able to move their legs to tap shoes with undercover coppers!

When you think about it, it's the perfect Republican solution. Blame the symptom not the cause then throw chemicals at it in a vain attempt to solve things. Meanwhile party contributors get your money and you are stuck in a toilet.

All that is missing is Dick Cheney to snarl foul language at one while he pistol whips an elderly man. Although come to think of it, that might prove too appealing.

A Real Toe Tapper

I have been following the story of Republican Senator Larry Craig with a degree of incredulity. Hanging out in public bathrooms, tapping the feet of an undercover cop, pleading guilty in a vain attempt to keep his subsequent arrest for lewd and disorderly conduct under wraps, and then claiming it was all an innocent mistake when the story breaks? You can't beat politicians for hanging on to the cover story just long enough to make themselves seem like tortured self-loathing psychiatric cases, can you?

I offer up the following as an object lesson to any elected official looking to carry off the deep scandal photo op:

Something Smells in the Rose Garden

The bloom has gone off the turd.

For old time's sake, here's the shit head making an arse of himself:



He couldn't even get the name of the prosecutor who was investigating him right, and yet he is painted as some sort of genius. Genius? More like an idiot savant who, by the look of that video, has serious bowel control issues.