Posts from — November 2007

Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central says that Reid Allowed Vote On Mukasey In Exchange For Military Funding Bill

According to sources inside and outside the Democratic leadership, Harry Reid allowed a vote on Mukasey because in exchange the Republican leadership agreed to allow a vote on the big Defense Appropriations Bill, which contains $459 billion in military spending but doesn’t fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Read more →]

Quiddity has harvested some major snark from the Post‘s comments section that should cause anyone who thinks the former mayor of New York City is worth hiring for any job in the public sector to consider having their meds adjusted.

While we are all aware of people padding their résumé and/or CV, Rudy is way over the limit.

Why are Democrats supporting torture?

The Dem candidates running for President opted for plausible deniability and didn’t vote.

Togetherness

Turn up the heat!

[Editor: The nighttime temperatures of 40° tends to make the crew compatible to share the warmth. They are all there, although Property is in the back and hard to see.]

Friday Ark

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has said that he has seen a UFO, and defines it as an object that was flying and he couldn’t identify it. Most of the planet have seen things in the sky they couldn’t identify.

The local community of Gulf Breeze has reputation as a hot spot for UFO sightings, and, not coincidentally, UFO frauds. There is a reason, and it has nothing to do with E.T.

[Read more →]

The BBC reports: North Sea surge brings flood risk

A storm in the North Sea has left Britain and the Netherlands facing the worst flood threat in decades with tidal surges predicted early on Friday.

Flood defences have been put on alert on the entire Dutch coast and flood warnings are in place for the eastern and northern coasts of Britain.

Dr. Jeff Masters notes: Huge North Sea storm threatens England and the Netherlands with serious flooding

[Read more →]

There’s a word for what CNN is reporting: FBI warns of uncorroborated threat to malls

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In what one FBI spokesman described as “almost an annual ritual,” the bureau has obtained uncorroborated intelligence indicating al Qaeda would like to strike shopping malls during the holiday shopping season, two law enforcement sources said Thursday.

Those sources confirmed there is intelligence dating back to August that al Qaeda would like to attack malls in Los Angeles, California, and Chicago, Illinois.

[Read more →]

There are a lot of good things in the Water Bill – Gulf Coast recovery money, levees for New Orleans and Lake Okeechobee, the Indian River Lagoon and Everglades restoration work – to name a few of local concern, but they should have been approved on their own. The problem is that anytime there is an appropriation that seems to benefit a particular area, it must be loaded down with garbage from other areas to get passed in Congress. This is wrong.

Each of the items I pointed out are, in fact, Federal issues, not local. They involve Federal lands, and in the case of the levees, Federal screw-ups. The Federal government injects itself into an area, allows things to get messed up, and then tells the local governments to clean up the mess. They won’t regulate, refuse to permit the states to regulate, and then disclaim any ownership of the problem. This is why they aren’t trusted in a lot of the country. Of course, a study would so that the GOP is generally in power at the “birth” of these disasters, and keeps claiming that it is government action that caused them without mentioning that they are responsible for those actions.

They wouldn’t do it to provide health care for middle-class kids, but the Congress will defend pork barrel projects that address the scourge of brown lawns and dirty cars.

The Associated Press reports [because no one else seems to do any actual reporting anymore] that Congress overrides the Shrubbery’s veto:

WASHINGTON – President Bush suffered the first veto override of his seven-year-old presidency Thursday as the Senate enacted a $23 billion water resources bill despite his protest that it was filled with unnecessary projects.

[Read more →]

Caroline McCarthy at The Social, a CNet blog, writes about a Michael Eisner interview with Neil Cuvuto, Fox Business News, about the Writers Guild strike: Eisner’s advice to striking writers: Blame Steve Jobs, not the studios

He said it would take about three years for Web video and other forms of digital distribution to gain enough of a foothold to be profitable–and that’s when the Writer’s Guild would have a case to make. “What I’m saying is for a current writer, for six thousand people to give up today’s money for a nonexistent piece today is stupid,” Eisner asserted. “They can do it in three years. They shouldn’t be doing it now.” Right now, the profit from digital content is “a piece of a nonexistent flow, which won’t be nonexistent, but it will be nonexistent for the next three years.”

[Read more →]

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof has been involved in this insanity for four years.

Hipparchia at Over the Cliff, Onto the Rocks has only been at it for a year at the end of last month and forgot to mention it. No doubt she’ll claim she has been too busy with kittens.

There are a lot of blogiversaries™ this month as people tend to get energized around election time.

Update: Mustang Bobby reminds me that among that “lot” is Echidne of the Snakes who kicked things off the same day he did.

Andante of Collective Sigh, my “blogmother” hit four years on Guy Fawkes day. [I am a bad blogchild]

But fine for hurricane evacuees.

CBS News reports that FEMA Protecting Itself, But Not Evacuees?

CBS News has learned that while telling the residents of its trailers that it is still working on the formaldehyde problem, it appears it prohibits its own staff from even briefly stepping inside trailers once residents have moved out.
…

In July the head of the agency told Congress he was working quickly to deal with the toxic formaldehyde issue.

[Read more →]

Because there isn’t enough for parents to worry about: Millions of toys recalled; contain ‘date rape’ drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of Chinese-made toys have been pulled from shelves in North America and Australia after scientists found they contain a chemical that converts into a powerful date rape drug when ingested. Two children in the U.S. and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads.
…

[Read more →]

New York Times Books reports that Conservative Authors Sue Publisher

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

These authors are apparently totally unfamiliar with how corporate media conglomerates work, and how their individual works climbed on the bestsellers lists. It is always sad when the naïve are confronted with the harsh realities of the corporate world.

[Read more →]