The "debate" about Sonia Sotomayor disgusts me

In the 110th Congress, 59 senators and 174 representatives were also lawyers. You'd think that our national body of lawmakers, especially those who are also lawyers, might know something about the law, about judges and about courts of appeal. Apparently you'd never get these dolts to actually ADMIT it, though, because it might cramp their style when they have to tell the big lies about the other party's judicial nominees.

If Republicans want to paint Sonia Sotomayor as a liberal and/or activist judge, let them show the cases in detail that might suggest this. Let them also step aside after slinging their mud so that others might talk about the rest of Sotomayor's decisions that the Republicans weren't able to spin to their advantage so that we could actually have a reasoned debate on the topic.

Let every Republican who praised Alito's humble upbringing and said it would make him a better justice who understood the "real world" stand up after videotape of their remarks about Alito are played and say why this same standard shouldn't apply to a latina who had better grades than Alito and more years on the federal bench than he had when he was nominated. If even one elected official has the balls to do that, I might admire their ability to lie as much as I despise their willingness to do so.

I shouldn't even bother to be upset about it. No big scandals have turned up so far, so it looks like her nomination is likely to be confirmed. Still, it's galling to see the same people who huffed and puffed and cried "Politics!" about any suggestion that Democrats might not support Alito turn around and threaten filibusters and focus on irrelevant minutiae when a qualified, experienced, intelligent judge is nominated by a president who scares them as much as W scared sane people.

Rick Perry: Stupid, or evil?

Rick Perry, supposedly the duly-elected governor of my state, has repeated the long-debunked canard that Texas joined the US with a pre-approved agreement to secede if it chose to do so.  He couched this in a half-hearted statement that he didn't think Texas should do so, but the fact that he thinks we somehow have the right to do so is troublesome.  He's already been busy selling off as much of our state's infrastructure as he can get his helmet-haired head around to the private sector (including private companies based in other countries.) 

I was able to ignore Perry for the most part when the biggest part of my shame was that our former governor was busily wrecking the federal government (along with Iraq and Afghanistan) but now that there are signs that we have a president with detectable brain activity, it's time to get rid of Perry.  Even Kay Bailey Hutchison would be an improvement, and that is saying something.

Michael Steele is not very smart

So the shiny new chairman of the Republican party thinks that government-stimulated jobs are just work, but private-sector work is all JOBS and they'll last forever. Never mind the fact that the 8 years of tax-cut driven job-growth bonanza under our last president represented the LOWEST period of job growth since WWII. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Here is a man who either hasn't even a vague clue about economics, or is such a partisan hack that he doesn't mind lying through his teeth to get the job done... either he's not very smart, or he'll say anything to oppose, obstruct and delay. How can addressing infrastructure needs that have been piling up since Saint Reagan convinced everyone that all government is bad and the private sector is the only group that can create the Shining City on a Hill be a short-term fix? Hell, we have enough real infrastructure needs to have projects going on for many years!

Whom does Steele think will do this work? Does he believe we'll suddenly have a Ministry of Work that runs the projects from start to finish, employing all the workers and manufacturing all the materials? Has he such a tenuous grasp on economics that he thinks there is a way to address these big infrastructure problems such as crumbling roads and bridges and an electrical grid largely designed in the 1950s such that all of the jobs and all of the money spent on the projects will just evaporate without any lasting effect on the economy?

I for one don't believe Steele is quite that stupid. I think he's really just a partisan hack who'll say anything to get on the news and get in the way. In his tiny, cold, calculating heart, Steele probably wants the stimulus to pass with as little Republican consent as possible, so they can go on saying what a horrible waste it is for another couple of years and pray that the economy is still wobbly when the 2010 election cycle rolls around.

The Republicans themselves ruined the very idea of government spending to fix things when they were given $350 billion dollars to buy up some toxic assets and stabilize the banking system, and instead they turned it into a big giveaway party to pay off John Thain's decorating bill and fund billions in bonuses to Wall Street zeroes who should be applying for unemployment instead. The real question is whether they were shrewd enough to think they were poisoning the well, or dumb enough to believe they'd get away with it.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6830288

Digital TV conversion confusion

It's interesting to read article after article about how supposedly confusing and poorly-managed the 17 February conversion to all-digital broadcast television in the US has been. I realize I'm a geek and that any technology more complex than a Zippo seems like magic to many people, but I think reporters are just having withdrawal after the election and need something that sounds scary to write about.

In this article in the New York Times, one can see that even people who are supposedly writing to clear up the confusion either don't write well or don't fully understand the situation. In his very first paragraph, Mr. Taub writes that after 17 Feb 2009, "Old TV sets will no longer work." It's not until the 4th paragraph that he even mentions converter boxes, and then he's not altogether clear on the topic. In the 9th paragraph he writes that "Anyone who gets their TV signal over the air — whether through a rabbit ear antenna on top of the set or an antenna on the roof — will need to buy a digital-to-analog converter box in order to continue getting a signal. Some people may also need a new antenna." This is at best an overstatement, since many people who get their TV signal over the air already have a set with a digital tuner... nearly every flat-panel television has an ATSC tuner, as do many CRT sets people have purchased over the last 4 years or so. I suppose most people with an ATSC tuner realize they have one, but the article is still leaning toward fear-mongering.

It's really pretty simple... if you don't have cable or satellite and haven't bought a TV since the Brady Bunch was in primetime, or if you're still watching a Sony that looks like the one from Poltergeist, you'll need a cheap converter box. Wal-Mart has them, go get one soon (I'm sure they'll be temporarily sold out on 18 February.) If you're already watching TV over an antenna, the concept of an antenna is nothing new, and probably the idea that different antennas are tailored toward different signals isn't new to you, nor is the need to adjust a directional antenna to improve your reception. For those already practised in the black art of optimizing over-the-air TV reception, the only real adjustment will be that they have to find their new tuner's signal-strength display instead of looking at the picture and guessing where the best signal is.

The fact that most TV viewers don't know how digital tuners work shouldn't enter into it... they don't know how analog tuners work either, and they've been using them for years. Only people like me with OCD issues actually want to know HOW things work, most people are quite content if things just work. Perhaps part of my cynicism about this stems from my social-Darwinist attitude... if people can't bother to learn anything, they can just roll the dice and hope it comes out okay. Of course, just to be a bit introspective about the futility of all this... anyone who's reading this probably can figure out how to obtain and connect a digital converter box.

Bailout bozos

I realize that a great many people were opposed to the banking bailout under any conditions, so they have no cognitive dissonance when they diss the automotive bailout. I wonder at others who think the $700-billion banking boondoggle was "essential," yet they'd let the US auto industry wither and die before they'd LOAN them 5% of that amount.

I think both industries are important to our economy and that of the rest of the world, but NEITHER industry is so important that we should just give them sacks of public money without restrictions and oversight. At the risk of sounding like a Republican bitching about "media elites" I've read articles such as this one by Joe Lauria advocating "ditch(ing) the automobile altogether." The man thinks everything will be okay if we just let people who have the temerity to live somewhere that's not served by a subway walk, or drive a Toyota or a Volvo, even though they are "slightly more expensive." Surely Toyota would sell at exactly the same price without competition from US manufacturers, no? And the fact that Volvo is currently owned by a US auto manufacturer escaped Mr. Lauria altogether. That lends him great credibility in commenting about US auto manufacturers!

A well-structured package of loans or equity positions that the car companies could buy back on terms favorable to the people would be a better use of our money than the disgusting waste that is the hundreds of billions thrown at the financial industry with few restrictions and less oversight. The fact that the gifts to the financial industry were done stupidly doesn't mean that the government couldn't offer useful assistance to the manufacturing sector that could benefit both the public and corporate situation.

If we allow the US manufacturers who sell MILLIONS of vehicles to disappear, Toyota et al will have fewer competitors and will probably become more than "slightly more expensive." Ford, if you've been paying attention, feels that they can actually operate for quite a while without government assistance, and GM has in the last 5 years begun to significantly turn their product line around, and they currently offer some competitive and desirable products. Chrysler may be beyond help... they have little in the way of competitive products, but they are in a different position as a privately-held company, Cerberus could sell them at firesale prices to PSA or perhaps a chinese auto maker that wants a foothold in the US.

Mr. Lauria thinks that if we offer the US manufacturers any assistance, it should be for the government to take them over and force them to make electric cars (because I suppose he approves of electric cars.) It's possible that in 10 years all-electric cars may be viable for extraurban transportation, but the best bet for a truly usable electric car comes from a company he's already written off, GM (the Chevrolet Volt.) All-electrics aren't up to snuff yet.

MANY public transportation projects could significantly improve the state of transportation in certain areas of the country, but the wholesale squandering of vast sums of public money to build a network that would be largely unused in huge parts of the country would be a bigger boondoggle than making well-structured loans to or buying equity stakes in the viable parts of the auto industry.

Mr. Lauria claims he doesn't want to outlaw the car, but still leaves the impression that he thinks the automobile is useless. Considering the scale of the 2 bailouts, I think we'd save more of the people's money by applying some constraints to the financial industry thefts...er...gifts than by ignoring the US auto industry, leaving millions unemployed and further damaging the economies of dozens of American cities. The numbers being bandied about are about 5% of what was tossed to the financial wizards who torpedoed the world's economy in the first place. We need to cut off the free gifts of billions to the financial sector unless and until they promise to use it wisely and responsibly. The billions Mr. Lauria would dump into mass transit would be useful in the densest metro areas and an utter waste in the majority of cities.

Why do some cars still suck?

Here we are with 2009 just around the block, and there are still American cars in production that are absolute crap. Why is this? Better yet, why do some people BUY the bloody things?

Several weeks ago some cell-phone-addled operator of a motor vehicle managed to scratch up the bumper of my Legacy Wagon in the post office parking lot. If they even noticed the contact between the 2 vehicles, I'm guessing they didn't stop to look for damage or decided they could get away with it, so they buggered off. I wish them a plague of boils.

At any rate, having that repaired gave me the "opportunity" to sample one of the worst cars I've driven in years. While my insurance company was willing to pay for a car like a Fusion or a Malibu, the best that Enterprise had available (without forcing me to pay extra) was a 2008 Chrysler Sebring. This was a relatively fresh car, with about 10,000 miles on the clock.

Let me start by saying I've never been a fan of the current Sebring's styling, and I think the automotive press is unanimously behind me on that front. The car is ill-proportioned with some strange detailing, like the longitudinal lines in the hood that were a much more coherent design element on the Crossfire when it was designed EIGHT YEARS AGO. Not every design element on low-volume halo cars constitute a styling signature for the company. There are, however, some frumpy-looking vehicles that turn out to be quite decent cars. The shoe-box styling of the previous generation Malibu hid a car that was at least efficient and functional, even though it wasn't going to excite anyone. The equally frumpy Ford 500/neo-Taurus is also a much better car that its looks make you think.

The Sebring isn't hiding an automotive gem under its clunky styling, though. Clunky is in fact an excellent adjective for it. The flaccid automatic transmits power delivered in a groaning, wheezy manner to tires offering all the traction of teflon on cowshit. The suspension manages to be both floaty and coarse, and I'm still trying to figure out HOW one does that. The trunk was adequate in size, but ridiculous in access since the lid is proportioned almost like a mail-slot... the back window extends so far rearward that almost all of the trunk space is inconvenient to reach, and there wasn't a single hook or cubbyhole for securing the silly kinds of things people carry in the trunk of their cars, like GROCERIES.

When I look at the problem from an intellectual point of view, I realize that there would be a very negative impact on the economy to let Chrysler fail. When I look just at the merits of what they're offering for sale these days, I think there would be a net positive effect on the mix of CARS available for sale. Sell them to PSA Peugeot Citroen and let them bring us some interesting French strangeness... sell them to a Chinese company and let them at least build cheap bad cars instead of bad cars masquerading as decent transportation. Just don't make me DRIVE one again.

Pocket proJector

Imagine if you will a digital projector, about the size of a Palm Centro. If you imagine it with a 480x320 resolution and the ability to project a clear image between 8 inches and 8 feet, you might get something like the Optoma Pico, described here by David Pogue. Looks like a cool toy.

VIVACE: slow water movements generating electricity

I find this one to be a very interesting possibility. Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy (VIVACE) uses the way fish swim to generate energy from slow tidal or water current motion, and does it in a way that can be submerged so that it doesn't obstruct the waterway. The estimate in the article is that recovering 0.1% of the energy available from tidal motion of the oceans would supply power for a population of 15 billion.

Read the Science Daily article about VIVACE here.

WFTV Biden interview: Slanted questions and biased followups, and Fox News' slanted coverage of a slanted interview

On Thursday 23 October, VP candidate Joe Biden was interviewed via satellite by Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, FL. Surprisingly, as much of this election crap as I hear about, this little kerfuffle hasn't come up while I was paying attention until today. Flipping past Fox News for the neocon view of things, I saw a story about this and had to look into it more deeply.

Here's the synopsis... West had prepared a hatchet piece, asking Biden to (among other things) tell her if it's Marxist for Obama to want to make the federal income tax rates more progressive. to "spread the wealth around" (to quote the GOP talking point and 4 unfortunate words lifted from a several-minute conversation Obama had with "plumber" Joe Wurzelbacher in Ohio.) She also harped on Biden's poorly-worded version of the same thing Joe Lieberman has said, that the new president will likely face challenges on the international stage soon after his inauguration. She started her questioning off asking if Biden was "embarrassed" about their association with ACORN, and when he didn't grovel before her question she brought out the GOP talking points about Obama being an "organizer and attorney" for ACORN.

I thought Biden handled the actual responses to her questions pretty well. He gave direct answers to her question, even though some of them were obvious hackery and even though he meandered a bit about the questions themselves. I feel that her tone and her follow-ups looked somewhat biased, but nothing that would make Hannity the Manatee proud, and if I had seen the piece before I saw Fox News blathering about it I wouldn't have thought much of it. Biden asked her if the question was a joke when she essentially asked if Obama is a Marxist, and commented "I don't know who is writing your questions" when she asked, regarding his comments on the test of a new president, if he was "forewarning Americans that nothing will be done, and that America's days as a world power are over." This was her worst, most slanted, question that had no sane basis in reality, and Biden answered it as if it really merited an answer and answered it well. (I personally think it merited a bitch-slap, but we can just add that to the whole host of reasons why I shouldn't run for public office.)

Fox had their knickers in a twist because after this interview, the Obama campaign cancelled a scheduled interview of Jill Biden with the same reporter and suggested that it would not grant further interviews with this station until after the election. I understand perfectly the reason for cancelling Jill Biden's interview, she's not a candidate and there's no reason to subject her to the likely unfair, slanted treatment she'd receive from Barbara West. I'm less sympathetic about cutting the station off altogether, but it's nothing in comparison to the McCain campaign's treatment of members of the press who aren't seen as friendly to the campaign, barring them from the campaign planes and carping incessantly about bias. From their piece on this, and watching the chyron, Fox has manufactured unfounded concerns that an Obama presidency would "regulate the media" and that we should be concerned about an administration that won't answer "tough questions" from the press.

I think that in the direct sense of Fox's statement, we SHOULD be concerned about such an administration. Biden, however, ANSWERED all of her questions, even as he questioned their validity. We should be worried about an administration that has a hidden VP who only appears before friendly crowds and only talks to friendly media. We should worry about an administration that thinks favorable historic facts (military service, POW prison) should be reported, but unfavorable historic facts (poor performance in the academy and the cockpit, cheating on his first wife then dumping her for a tall, blonde beer fortune, supporting Charles Keating, visiting Pinochet with "no preconditions", supporting progressive tax rates as income increases, supporting ACORN) happened a long time ago and should be ignored. We should be concerned about what kind of closed-doors, opaque operation a McCain-Palin administration would run.

UPDATE: For those who just read topics and not comments, my friend Howard pointed me to this blog, where Barbara West is called out as the wife of a GOP political and media consultant. I wonder who might have pointed her to those McCain-Palin talking points?

You can view the video here:

How much energy can we save with just our brains?

My neighbor is wasteful.

Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and all, I'm sure he never even thinks about it. I'm not attacking my neighbor specifically, but this post was brought to mind indirectly by his action (or inaction.) Sunday 19 October 2008 was a gorgeous fall day in North Texas. The low was around 50 degrees, and it didn't get into the upper 70s until the middle of the afternoon. I'd had my AC turned off for over a week at that point.

I open the windows in the evening and let the house cool... closing the windows when the outside temperature begins to exceed the indoor temperature. It hasn't gotten much about 75 degrees inside my house for a week and I haven't spent a dime on heat or AC. By now, you may be starting to wonder what my neighbor has to do with any of this.

Late on Sunday morning it was about 73 degrees. My windows were open and I was pouring a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and I heard my neighbor's AC unit kick on. I started thinking about how much energy and money could be saved if people just stopped for a moment and thought about how they use things. There's certainly an opportunity in many cases to spend lots of money and save energy, but how much energy is wasted just by people who just don't pay attention to how much energy they use? Running hot water longer than you need it, leaving the windows closed and the AC on even when it's cooler outside than in, leaving the TV on when you're not paying attention to it, etc.

Next thing you know I'll be subscribing to Mother Earth News.

Michele Bachmann: The Second Coming of Joseph McCarthy

On "Hardball" on 17 October, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, MN) as much as stated that she'd like to usher in a new McCarthy era. She'll probably want to call it Bachmannism, of course, because her version will be different in that it will go after every Democratic member of Congress. Don't feel left out, I'm sure she'll happily proceed to investigate every other American citizen who's not a card-carrying Republican willing to pray to Ronald Reagan and follow Karl Rove to the gates of Hell, it'll just take her a while to get around to it. She has to get her secret investigators, hit squads and anonymous-call-takers ready, so she's starting small by simply accusing Democrats in the House and Senate of being anti-American and calling for an investigation of them.

Write your Representative and tell them it's not acceptable for a member of Congress to accuse every member representing the opposing party as of being "unamerican." Tell them we want government, not theater. It's easy, you can do it via a web form or email, and here's where to find yours. I've written mine, and my Senators for good measure. We absolutely cannot afford the venal, dishonest, theatrical distraction of a modern-day "Red Scare" while there are real problems to be solved in this country. If there's any justice, Ms. Bachmann will find herself unemployed after 4 November anyway, but this kind of vile, virulent statement cannot be ignored.

While I think it's more effective to contact your representative directly, you can also join in the chorus of those calling for censure of Bachmann here.

You can view the interview here:

Joe the Plumber is a Republican

John McCain's favorite topic in the final presidential debate on 15 October was Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, OH.) He mentioned Joe the Plumber several times during the debate, often when Senator Obama was speaking. Perhaps it was suggested to Senator McCain as something that might help him keep from grimacing or blinking?

McCain said again and again that poor old Joe wasn't going to be able to buy the business he's been working for (for 10-12 hours/day, mind you!) because evil Obama was going to take away all Joe's money by taxing him if he buys this business. Joe himself was interviewed on the phone by Katie Couric and didn't say that Obama threatened to prevent him from buying a business... in fact he said that Obama's tax proposals wouldn't raise his taxes "right now" but he's concerned that it's a "slippery slope" and feels that Obama is sure to decide later on that "$100,000 is too much" and raise taxes at that level.

My first reaction to McCain's harping about Joe the Plumber last night, and "small businesses" in general that are sure to be ruined by increasing the marginal tax rate on income over $250,000 is that TAXES ARE NOT ON GROSS INCOME. That's a dirty little secret that McCain is never going to admit to you, and he's CERTAINLY never going to say a word about the fact that the increased taxes will only be on the marginal amount of income that exceeds $250,000. Perhaps he thinks that people who aren't smart enough to see through Palin's perky folksy facade and recognize that she's just another politician also aren't smart enough to understand big words like "marginal" and understand how taxes work?

So, if Joe the Plumber is able to buy a business that has an adjusted gross (after expenses for materials, mileage, employee wages, etc.) of over $250,000, he can probably afford to pay a higher percentage of the amount over $250k. McCain thinks that this will force Joe to fire all his employees... never mind the fact that those employees' wages reduce the income of the business, and CERTAINLY don't talk about the fact that Obama's plan offers tax credits for job creation and for small businesses that provide healthcare to their employees.

Couric's interview of Joe the Plumber really left me thinking that Joe's a Republican and always was. It's okay that he's skeptical about a tax increase that doesn't affect him and may never affect him, but it's disingenuous for McCain to portray this as something that made up Joe's mind... never mind that it's probably McCain's version of Bush 41's "Read my lips" because if he somehow managed to get elected, McCain would either end up raising taxes or doing even more harm to our economy along the same lines as W with his "cut taxes, borrow more" policies.

Slippery Sarah Perky Palin only talks to friendly media

So, it's been quite a while now since the McCain campaign gave up on the idea of "Straight Talk" winning them the election and have devolved into innuendo and outright lies to try to divert attention from the disastrous financial conditions in our country and our world today. They know that the Republican administration with a Republican rubber-stamp congress at an absolute minimum failed to avert this crisis, even if there's a grain of truth to the right-wing bleating that Clinton "started it all." (I, for one, think Phil Gramm started it all while he was busy securing his lucrative post-senatorial position with UBS by ruining any hope of banking regulation in the US.)

In between her refrain of "Deny, Deny, Deny" about any possible ethical questions (and her persistently ignoring any other questions except those asked by Fox Noise and other far-right media outlets,) while speaking to arch-conservative radio host Laura Ingraham Sarah Palin has the gall to suggest that Barack Obama would diminish the prestige of the Presidency. Does this woman think that W has left any prestige in the presidency at all, with Cheney pulling the strings in the dark behind him and his befuddled response to events in the big ol' world outside our borders (that world he never bothered to see before he took office?) Does she think that an educated, intelligent president who seeks to rebuild our relationships with our allies and fix through diplomacy what W has broken through belligerence could possibly do more damage to the "prestige" of the Presidency than electing another narrow-minded neocon hick to the Executive Branch who's never given a thought to the wider world would?

Let her take her "Mean Girls" act back on the road... preferably the Alaska Highway. We don't need more shallow, ignorant neocon nitwits in DC.

Sean Hannity emasculated by a funny old Brit

Keith Olbermann read a poem written by one of the funniest men to live in our time... perhaps in any time. One of the reasons John Cleese is hilariously funny is that he's very intelligent, which supports his unique sense of humor brilliantly. Apparently Mr. Cleese's opinion of Sean Hannity is quite similar to mine.

An Ode to Sean Hannity
By John Cleese
Aping urbanity, oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee, faking humanity
Journalistic calamity, intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity, you’re a profanity
Hannity.”

Lies, damned lies, and Fox news

So, if anyone had any lingering doubts that Fox news is a neocon-loving organization, here's something for you to think about. They are stretching to help the Republicans out by abandoning suggestion and proceeding to outright lies, attempting to paint Obama as somehow "deeply connected" to ACORN. ACORN has been charged with voter-registration irregularities in several instances, so of course the Fox team wants to slyly suggest that has something to do with Obama, perhaps writing their stories in advance to broadcast after an Obama win, hoping to stir up Florida II.

What's the connection they pretend is so "deep" they they feel justifies accusing Obama of being allied with "voter fraud?" Obama represented a coalition of groups that sued Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar in order to get him to implement the federal "Motor-Voter" voting access law. As it happens, ACORN also supported the lawsuit and joined this coalition, along with the US Department of Justice. Of course at the time, it was the Clinton administration's DoJ, so Fox would probably be happy enough to accuse the DoJ of supporting ACORN as welll. Why not, it would have as much basis in fact.

NOTE: I realize my gearhead/geeky blog has turned sharply political of late. It's not that my opinions are newly formed, it's just that there's no shortage of political blogs and normally I haven't found it worth fuming about, but 'tis the season.

Palin says "Nuclear weapons would be the be-all, end-all for too many people..."

I know it's not what she meant (at least I HOPE it's not what she meant!) but Sarah Palin said that "Nuclear weapons would be the be-all, end-all for too many people..." when asked if there was a time when it might be appropriate to use nuclear weapons.

I hope she meant that the use of nuclear weapons would be disastrous and would end the lives of too many people, but it's definitely not what she said.

One must wonder how many other things she says that she really doesn't mean.

Ann Coulter is a filthy NeoCon whore

There. I said it. Nearly everyone WANTS to say it, but people for whom journalism and/or blogging is a career may be afraid to do so, because it's the sort of thing people get mad about. Of course, no honest THINKING person would get too upset about it, because they heard the wench lie, or read her lies, or felt nauseous while watching her lie on television.

Occasionally what she says is only slightly untrue, but couched in the most suggestive of phrasing to blame anyone who's not an Aryan neocon whore for all the ills in the world. At other times, such as her ridiculous assertions that the current financial crisis... the one happening at the end of 2008, after 7.5 years of the Bush administration and more than a decade of Republican control of Congress prior to 2006, the current financial crisis is of course 100% the fault of the Democrats.

The reason that I call her a filthy whore in the title and repeatedly in the text (besides the fact that it's a general truism) is that she suggests in the title of her "article" that good Aryan neocons were denied mortgages because banks were required to give them to minority borrowers. Where has this dumb bitch BEEN for the past decade? Anyone with a pulse could get a loan, it was bad business. Lots of dumb Republican crackers and crack-whores got zero-down loans on houses that probably weren't worth 75% of the loan amount. It was a cash-drunk feeding frenzy and it was lauded and supported by Republicans in the administration as well as Democrats in the house, and most of all by corrupt mortgage brokers everywhere. (I'm sure her next "article" will offer "proof" that every mortgage broker who sold a LiarLoan was a Democrat... she keeps all their party affiliations in their dossiers, you know.)

I am tired of her free pass. Are people afraid to mention her and give her more notice? Reading her trash makes me feel ill sometimes... there's only so much ignorant childish fiction passed off as news one can take, and Fox has exceeded my quota for the next decade... Coulter gets no free pass from me.

Sarah Palin has never seen Russia

Gary Tuchman of CNN has done something old-fashioned. He went to Little Diomede, the island in Alaska from which you can see Russia.

When he went there, he found a community of about 150 people who see Russian territory every day (the island of Big Diomede 2 miles away, itself 25 miles from the Siberian mainland.) While they see Russia on a daily basis, they've never seen a governor of Alaska on their island. Never.

I'm sure Palin's statements about "seeing Russia" across the "narrow maritime border" will be characterized as a figure of speech by the McCain spin doctors, but it smells like another lie to me.

Brokaw lies about poll results?

Interesting... MediaMatters links to reports that Tom Brokaw represented weeks-old poll numbers (taken just after the Republican convention) as "the most current" and said that the American people still feel that McCain is better suited to be Commander in Chief. It's one thing to be wrong... it's worse to be wrong about a poll supposedly conducted by your own organization. It's worse still to present this wrong information as factual and state that you're reporting this incorrect information that supports one candidate when in fact the polling data after the first presidential debate almost universally went to Obama "in fairness to everybody here."

Perhaps Brokaw had been too busy sucking up to the McCain campaign on behalf of NBC to bother reading the current poll data before hosting Meet the Press?

MoveOn.org and others (on the left, of course) are questioning his impartiality in the upcoming debate he's scheduled to moderate on 7 October.

Small-town mayor thinks Obama might be the Antichrist

You thought this was going to be about Sarah Palin, didn't you? Actually, if Palin thinks Obama is the Antichrist she'd want him to win, since she attends an "end times" church. This does, however, offer some perspective about how little judgment is required of small-town mayors. (Actually, Kwame Kilpatrick showed us that big-city mayors can be pretty dumb as well, but that's beside the point.)

Danny Funderburk, mayor of Fort Mill, NC, forwarded an email chain letter that contains false claims that the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian bible describes the Antichrist as a man of Muslim descent in his 40s. The email then builds on THAT lie with the suggestion that Obama is the Antichrist. Funderburk claims he was "trying to get documentation" on whether or not this was true, but he didn't put that in the subject header. The story doesn't say if the actual email he sent contained any indication that he was looking for such documentation, and no copy of the email is included in the article.

If there's any truth to his claim, this man needs to learn to Google before he makes an ass of himself. Cynic that I am, I believe he's just an idiot who believed the chain letter and forwarded it on to friends so he could share this important knowledge. People like Funderburk give sane, intelligent Southerners a very bad name.