Fallenmonk notes that Jon Kyl has returned to the roots of the American Republican Party, invoking the Dobbslins to defeat the evil Democrats. Barney Frank has been required to battle LaRouchskis. The Nine-Twelvers are everywhere, as long as it doesn’t interfere with watching their Dear Leader on Faux. The Limbaughians are ready to fill in the gap, and the militia weirdos are showing up where permitted by state laws, and pretending they are “bad and tough and ready for everything”.

[A personal note for the fool with the AR-15 slung on his shoulder in Arizona: if you don’t control the safety and the trigger, you stand a good chance of getting shot in the butt with your own gun. Real “bad” people are laughing at you. (see picture)]

So, what is the leader of the party doing to advance his agenda: calling religious leaders, to ask them to combat lies about his program.

Excuse me, that might be a logical move for a community organizer in Chicago, but it doesn’t cut it, when you are the President of the United States. You don’t get your message out by using “informed White House sources”, you either speak yourself or you appoint someone to speak for you on this issue, and you back what they are saying. Of course, it is hard to stay on message if you don’t have one, so why don’t you work on that and get back to us.

Update: News flash from Badtux 54% of Americans don’t know that Medicare is a government program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tom Cohen writes that False rumors influencing health care debate [Gee, ya think?]

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A woman asked Rep. Allen Boyd at a town hall meeting the other day if health care reform proposals would force people to let the government access their bank accounts.

“That’s not true,” the Florida Democrat responded. “When someone sends you something on the Internet that sounds crazy, how about just checking it a little bit?”

The CNN Truth Squad, which fact-checks political claims, has debunked the bank-access rumor as false. Yet that claim, and others that have been disproved, keep coming up in the national debate on health care reform, inflaming an already emotional issue.
…

[Read more →]

John W. Schoen writes at MSNBC: Frustration rises over mortgage relief program

Nearly two years after the federal government’s first program to slow the relentless rise in the pace of home foreclosures, the latest attempt, known as Making Home Affordable, is turning out to be another painful disappointment for millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes.
…

More than 13 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are either behind on their payments or in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. As of June, more than 4 percent of all borrowers were in foreclosure and about 9 percent had missed at least one payment. A separate report found that more than 272,000 borrowers were at some stage of foreclosure in July, up 8 percent from June and 55 percent from July 2007, according to RealtyTrac, which maintains a national database of foreclosure filings.

Under FDR the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was created that not only dealt with this problem, but when it finally closed its books, it had made a profit for taxpayers. We know what works, so why aren’t we doing it instead of screwing around with all of the banks that haven’t been able to do anything in two years? As Albert Einstein pointed out: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

In it’s obituary of a retired police officer, the Miami Herald lets it slip out: Tom Brodie, Bomb expert kept Miami safe

Brodie worked many of the high-profile cases that by 1974 had made Miami what he called “one of the terrorist capitals of the world.”

During the 1960s and ’70s, political passions frequently boiled over into violence — a subject about which Brodie testified before Congress. In 1968 alone, 44 bombs went off in Miami, including one aboard the ship Caribbean Venture docked in Miami during the Republican convention.

During that era, Cuban-American radio host Emilio Milián lost his legs in a car bombing. Explosives detonated at four federal buildings, at the homes of the British consul and a magazine editor who advocated dialogue with Fidel Castro and in a Metro Justice Building restroom.

Yes, there were a lot of terrorist attacks before September 11, 2001, and we managed to deal with them. We didn’t have to give up our civil liberties, and Mr. Brodie didn’t have to torture anyone to defuse bombs.

Mr. Brodie was good at his job, and not because he was awarded an MBE by the Queen for working on cases involving Britain, but because he died at 78 as a result of Parkinson’s, not the result of a bomb.

One of the few decent things for local people is no more, as the PNJ reports The Zoo is gone

After 25 years of bringing smiles to children’s faces, the financially troubled Zoo Northwest Florida is closed permanently.

“There was no long-term commitment from the community,” Bob Switzer, one of the zoo’s owners, told the Santa Rosa County Tourist Development Council on Wednesday. “We are officially, now, closing the zoo. … We are trying to put together something for the land and the animals.”

As the council discussed a request from the zoo for $125,000, Switzer and the other partners in Animal Park Inc. issued a news release confirming the closure.

Although they didn’t know about the decision, the council did not vote on the allocation because of the lack of a clear plan to make the zoo sustainable.

Ah, yes, it is always about the money. If it isn’t “profitable” it must be eliminated. The “pursuit of Happiness” has no meaning in this area, only the pursuit of the dollar.

My Dad loved the Zoo. He made the drive and took hundreds of pictures at the Zoo. It wasn’t fancy or elaborate like the San Diego Zoo, but it had a nice representative collection, without getting carried away with the big cats. It was a friendly place.

Hurricanes, and the recovery from them, as well as the presence of some people who pursued the buck, were the downfall of the Zoo, but, in the end, it was the local people who refused to give it the support it deserved.

Position: 24.9 N 64.3 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [310°] near 18 mph [30 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 125 mph [205 kph].
Wind Gusts: 155 mph [240 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 260 miles [415 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 115 miles [185 km].
Minimum central pressure: 943 mb ↓.

It is 510 miles [825 km] South of Bermuda which has issued a Hurricane Watch and Tropical Storm Warning. Bill is a Category 3 storm. The Atlantic Coast from Florida to Nova Scotia will be receiving major increases in wave height related to Bill. If you go to the beach expect rip currents.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]