Posts from — January 2008

From a BBC America interview, US fears Europe-based terrorism: “One of the biggest threats to US security may now come from within Europe, US Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff has told the BBC.”

Yes, folks, the terrorists are now coming through Europe and we never subject people on flights from Europe to any scrutiny… well almost never… unless they are Icelandic Christmas shoppers that everyone recognizes are Islamic terrorists at heart, willfully ignoring visa restrictions in Macy’s.

With retail in a slump and the dollar way down, I’m sure every major retailer in the US wants to hear that we are hassling the potential customers in Europe. Europeans will just flock to the US knowing they are going to be treated like criminals at our ports of entry, right?

Only 369 days to sanity.

Dr. Cole occasionally cuts to the chase: Ayatollah Huckabee Condemns US Constitution with new Fatwa.

Tsk, tsk. The VSP won’t like that very much.

As long as we are discussing loaded terms, I would like to point out a couple of things that certain Southerners say that are not exactly obvious. When someone says “bless his/her heart” down here they generally leave off the “after you rip it, still beating, from his/her chest” because that would disturb everyone digestion. One should always smile sweetly when using the phrase, and the additional phase “and feed it to the hogs” is rarely envisioned.

While generally “SBC” refers to the Southern Baptist Convention, among some Southerners is used to mean “ignorant misogynist Nazis”.

English is such a wonderful, playful language, even if you aren’t Humpty Dumpty.

Mark Adams at Dispassionate Liberal is enjoys diving into the numbers and has started State Poll Analysis over at his place.

Judging by the graphics, Mark is an Edwards supporter, but if you read his analysis, he subsumes that bias, occasionally to Edwards’s detriment, when looking at the data because he has established a uniform method.

If you like the nuts and bolts, Mark has them.

I’m checking my e-mail [BTW John, thanks for giving Barack my address, because there’s nothing I need more than unsolicited requests for money 😈 ] and what to my wondering eyes should appear [apologies to whoever wrote A Visit From Saint Nicholas] but a request to sign a petition to ask Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City to come to our rescue because, apparently, nearly two dozen people running for President isn’t enough:

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Someone on my hosting service is enduring a distributed denial of service attack [DDOS] and this site was unavailable for up to an hour.

It’s Monday so I’ve come to expect this sort of thing.

First off, get your mind out of the gutter; this is not that kind of on-line opinion magazine.

They are holding another caucus in a state that allows anyone to become a Democrat for a day and select the party’s candidate for President, this time in Nevada. I assume they’ll just put the names on slot wheels and pull the handle.

Seeing the Forest has a link to the political compass of the major candidates in the Presidential primaries – not very comforting for liberals.

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If you care, I have a couple of posts appearing over at the American Street. Hopefully I won’t break it again.

I had a “duh” moment when reading a Dave Johnson post at Seeing The Forest on tax money. What he said was so obvious after I read it that I felt truly stupid for not realizing it.

Here’s the deal: the surplus that the shrubbery gave away with his tax cuts for the rich was in FICA/Social Security taxes. There was never a surplus of income taxes, even with the increases during the Clinton administration. The actual deficit that the Hedgemony has been running is at least a quarter trillion dollars larger per year than stated because they have been spending the FICA surplus. The so-called “Social Security crisis” is the point when they have to finance the government from actual tax receipts without any FICA surplus payments to hide what is going on with the budget – a very scary moment for Republicans.

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In the early hours of January 13th, 1969 I was forced to accept something that I had known for a while, but had pushed to the back of my mind: I was mortal and was going to die.

This was the first of several incidents when my chance of survival was a good deal less than 1 in 2. This wasn’t the scariest, but it was the first, and following on the heels of the terrible events of 1968, it had the biggest impact.

In the end the only “death” was an airplane, Rivet Ball, the Air Force’s only RC-135S. The military version of the Boeing 707, the fuselage broke in half, like an eggshell, on impact. A very talented pilot, John Achor, the aircraft commander, was responsible for that miracle.

Update: for those not familiar with “the terrible events of 1968”, Distributorcap NY has an outline of the main events on this fortieth anniversary.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

In response to all of your pointed suggestions I have decided that you can take your opinions and fashion them into a suppository. That will allow them to return the same way they came.

When Logan Murphy of Crooks and Liars says that the Corporate Elite Still Terrified Of John Edwards, she isn’t just talking about the multinational corporations, it is just as applicable to the media, another group of corporations.

Paul Kiel of TPM Muckraker notes the $60 million “Swift Boat Fund” of the US Chamber of Commerce in Populists Beware. The corporate world doesn’t want a President or Congress that will stop corporate welfare through subsidies and tax exemptions, nor anyone who considers the well being of the people of the nation over the profits of the multinationals. Mustn’t have any of that, nor any regulation that will halt the worst of the abuses. It should be noted that it is the Chamber’s opinion that illegal acts committed by corporations at the request of an out-of-control government should not be penalized.

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The recent changes enacted by the Postal Service weren’t simply an increase in the price of stamps. There were other changes in the package that is shifting costs from large corporations to the people at the bottom. Many of you have heard of the large increases for small periodicals as compared to the big guys, but there are also changes that affect the individual.

A big change is that almost anything that isn’t a standard #10 envelope is going to cost you more to mail. Sinfonian at Blast Off! has a prime example of this: absentee ballots. The Palm Beach county absentee ballot will cost 91¢ to mail back, not a single first class stamp, because it is not a standard sized envelope.

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Sue Sturgis at Facing South notes Kucinich asks for N.H. recount. There have been questions about the vote counting in the New Hampshire primary and Dennis Kucinich is willing to put up the money to find the truth. It can’t be expected to help his chances much, but he wants people to have confidence in the system. Fortunately the Granite State sensibly uses paper ballots, so a hand count is possible.

Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. People need to know the truth about their voting system, and this will ensure they do.

‘Noz at Rubber Hose has concise post about the incident in the Strait of Hormuz. Short version [only because it is too late to attempt the LOLcat version this deserves]: it was a routine identification of vessels in the waterway by the Iranian Coast Guard, as the Iranians said. Pathetic, it wasn’t even a “bump and run”. The agitprop unit in Iraq is really getting carried away, and needs to have its wings clipped before it gets someone killed.

Does someone actually believe that if a Mexican Navy vessel started paralleling the Texas coast in international waters, the US Coast Guard wouldn’t ask for identification? How about a Cuban naval vessel paralleling the Florida coast?

Marine channel 16 is the standard hailing/calling frequency, but it is VHF and short-range, so you have to send a vessel or aircraft out to check. If someone sailed out of a Gulf port to the central Gulf and then returns, the Coast Guard will want to know who they are, especially if radar tracking seems to indicate they met another vessel in international waters. This is normal and expected, not a hostile threatening act.