The voting for the 2009 Netroots Awards has opened.

The voting continues until September 29^th.

If not, NPR has a Fresh Air audio link interview [about 40 minutes] with New York Times financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers meltdown.

She is one of those nasty, reality-based people who doesn’t think anyone came out of this mess smelling good, and is definitely not impressed with what has and hasn’t happened in the past year, nor what is likely to happen in the near future.

I really hate discovering I haven’t been cynical enough.

in a single bound…

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird? It’s a plane? It’s ‘Roo, the recce robot.

Video on the BBC. This is going to be a problem, given the sense of humor in the military…

Will always be with us.

From the Times Picayune: Sen. David Vitter endorses health study that urges scrapping employer coverage

U.S. Sen. David Vitter has endorsed a new study from a conservative think tank that calls for scrapping the nation’s employer-based health insurance system in favor of individually owned policies and converting the Medicaid program into vouchers for private insurance.

The analysis, directed by the consulting firm of economist Arthur Laffer and released Monday by the Pelican Institute, is sweeping in its condemnation of President Barack Obama’s outline for overhauling the nation’s health insurance system, including creation of a public insurance plan to compete alongside private insurers.

Since this is associated with Arthur Laffer, the intellectual powerhouse behind the napkin that launched the Reaganomic-Trickle-Down-Supply-Side $9 trillion in deficit under three Republican Presidents, he is obviously someone who is serious. Since this was for Vitter, perhaps he eschewed cocktail napkins for disposable diapers.

I have a news flash for the Pelicans – we have Medicare because the health insurance industry wouldn’t insure senior citizens. Old people get sick, and insurance companies can’t make gazillions in profits insuring old people, so they don’t.

Our unlamented former governor, John Ellis Bush, introduced school vouchers for students at under-performing schools. Given the way we fund schools in Florida we had plenty of people who qualified for the vouchers, but a lack of private schools to accept them.

I wish these clowns would go back to herding unicorns, or whatever they used to do, and leave the rest of us alone.

I would direct your attention to FDR’s Fala speech [here’s the audio link for the speech].

I keep hearing about what the Republicans are doing is new, and they have destroyed the comity that once ruled the American political system. That’s a bunch of crap. American politics has been a street fight from the get-go, with a few years now and again between rounds.

The Fala speech was during World War II. Nasty politics have not been suspended for any war in American history, and that claim is only made if a Republican is in the White House and things are going badly.

Read the speech and understand that the tactics haven’t changed in the slightest degree. It even has references to Nazi propaganda techniques being used by the opposing party.

FDR would have definitely been an A-List blogger, although he is snarkier than most of them. This is what a real Democrat and real leader sounds like when dealing with Republican lies. You don’t ignore them, you ridicule them, because they aren’t going to vote for you anyway, even during a world war.

Look back at American history – Republicans always call for a suspension of normal politics when there’s a major disaster on their watch and proclaim it as some hallowed tradition of the United States. Almost all of the “hallowed traditions” cited by Republicans are made up of whole cloth, or some stupid bill they passed.

The Day of His Noodly Appendage

The holiest of holidays for Pastafarians, is of course the birthday of His Most Holy Prophet, Marco Polo (b. Sept 15, 1254), who brought the word of his Noodly Appendage back from the East. As Talk Like A Pirate Day falls on September 19th, this five-day period constitutes Holy Pasta Week, during which spaghetti is consumed liberally. With a nice Chianti, of course.