After a decade Kenneth Quinnell is shutting down T. Rex’s Guide to Life to concentrate on his group blog, the Florida Progressive Coalition. In blog years the Guide to Life was Jurassic but the coming election has made trying to maintain the two blogs too much work.

Lurch was the Army vet who has been manning the controls at Main and Central since Jo Fish of Democratic Veteran made the space available a while back. Apparently he has died, but the family doesn’t want anything posted on the ‘Net just yet. Just like most old sergeants, Lurch wrote common sense pieces about the absurdity of the military. Those of us who read him regularly will miss his voice.

Update 02/24/08: Fixer has the details on Lurch’s passing.

skippy the bush kangaroo has a post up about a MoveOn petition that is telling the Democratic Party Super-delegates that they should vote for the candidate with the most delegates and not “swing” the nomination for the “loser”.

When MoveOn made the decision to endorse a candidate prior to Super Tuesday, they forfeited any right to claim impartiality. That’s why I dropped a long-standing relationship with the organization. Anything they have said or done from that point has to be viewed as an action in support of their chosen candidate. You can’t take sides and then claim to be impartial.

Demanding that people vote in a particular way is not democratic, although it is Democratic in a Boss Tweed and Daley Chicago machine sort of way. I bring up the political machine of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley [father of the current mayor] because Obama and his supporters better get used to dealing with it, given Obama’s multiple references to Chicago politics.

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CNN reports USDA orders recall of 143 million pounds of beef

(CNN) — A slaughterhouse that has been accused of mistreating cows agreed Sunday to recall 143 million pounds of beef in what federal officials called the largest beef recall in U.S. history.

Keith Williams, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman, said investigators have found no cases of illness related to the recalled meat.

But Dick Raymond, the undersecretary of agriculture for food safety, said there was a “remote probability” that the meat from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company in Chino, California, could cause illness in humans.

When you have to move a supposedly not-dead cow with a forklift because it can no longer walk, that is not an indication of a healthy animal.

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