Category — Uncategorized

First it was the odious Kyl-LIEberman Amendment [AKA, S.Amdt. 3017 to S.Amdt. 2011 to H.R. 1585 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008)], another excuse for the Hedgemony to go to war. It served no national purpose, but will be cited as an excuse if the crazies in this administration decide to attack Iran. [Note that Clinton voted for it, while, as usual, “not voting” was recorded for Obama.]

Now we have the House getting into the act with House Concurrent Resolution 362.

Iran is not our friend, and certainly has no reason to be, but since before the Declaration of Independence was signed they have never attacked another country. Our best intelligence estimate is that they stopped doing anything associated with nuclear weapons in 2003. The real leader of the country is on record as saying that nuclear weapons are “un-Islamic”, which makes them forbidden.

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Not speaking ill of the dead, is actually part of our old religious heritage, the ones that most of our ancestors followed prior to the arrival of missionaries of any type.  It, like many funeral traditions, was predicated on calming the spirits of the departed.

Amazingly enough, it is the death of those whose spirits would be thought to be the most evil and vindictive that cause the prohibition to be shattered.

I won’t join in, but the world is truly a better place when some people are no longer a part of it.

Five of nine Supreme Court justices have decided that “the right to bear arms” is an individual right, and finally replaced the deeply flawed, all over the place, decision in United States v. Miller 307 U.S. 174 (1939), the only other case on the Second Amendment to be heard by the Supreme Court.

CNN reports that the High court strikes down gun ban

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Washington D.C.’s sweeping ban on handguns is unconstitutional.

The justices voted 5-4 against the ban with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.

At issue in District of Columbia v. Heller was whether the city’s ban violated the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” by preventing individuals — as opposed to state militias — from having guns in their homes.

The “militia” argument was always an evasion. When the Bill of Rights was passed there were no state militias, the militia was everyone capable of fighting. This doesn’t mean that weapons can’t be regulated, only that they can’t simply be banned. This ruling actually has a minimal effect on current laws outside of a few cities in the United States that do ban weapons.

Because the rest of the news is just depressing.

On Friday the BBC reported that Martha Stewart ‘barred from UK’. It’s not like she threatened to redecorate Parliament.

Then today I read the CNN report: Boy George denied U.S. visa.

The War On Terror™ continues… 😈

… it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law of the land.

Why supposedly intelligent people insist on attempting to mix politiics and religion is beyond me.  It always ends badly for someone.

Evangelist accuses Obama of ‘distorting’ Bible

(CNN) — A top U.S. evangelical leader is accusing Sen. Barack Obama of deliberately distorting the Bible and taking a “fruitcake interpretation” of the U.S. Constitution.

In comments to be aired on his radio show Tuesday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticizes the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for comments he made in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal.
…

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Millennia ago they knew how to recognize and deal with false prophets:

When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

Deuteronomy 18:22 KJV

They were stoned to death back then, while these days they get newspaper columns, and appear on news shows.  Some of them get elected to office.

Now we know what he wants for his rug in the Oval office. To say this is stupid and tasteless is to understate reality, but I don’t thinks this seal that he is using on podiums when he speaks has much connection to reality, but to hubris.

His motto is Vero Possumus which is freely translated as “Pogo was right”, i.e. as Pogo said: “We have met the enemy… and he is us.”

…and they are rants, not raves. Some might call them shrill and they are not G rated.

Atrios names Obama, Wanker of the Day.

upyernoz says: “it’s official, obama backs the bullshit FISA ‘compromise.'”

Emptywheel notes Obama Replied – “He told me to fuck off.”

Digby wonders if we have been Sistah Soljah’d ?

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The the current cost of gasoline, there is something you should keep in mind: the temperature when you buy the gas matters.

The meter on the gas pump is keyed to volume and gasoline expands a good deal more than water in response to high temperature. If you mow your lawn with a power mower you have probably seen it happen and missed the significance. You filled the tank on the mower to the top and then started it up. After a couple of minutes you will see the tank overflowing. As the mower heats up, the gas expands and is pushed out of the tank.

The best time to buy gas is in the early morning, the coldest part of the day. Don’t fill the tank all the way to the top, leave room for expansion.

If you make a practice of buying “cold gasoline” you will see an improvement in your mileage.

The Pensacola Beach Blog has been tracking the local reaction to the budget problems caused by the mortgage meltdown, cratering house prices, and Amendment 1.

As the Republicans have a lock on political offices in Santa Rosa county, you knew that whatever they did, it wouldn’t be called a tax increase, and they came through with the old Reagan dodge of “user fees”.

Both the city of Milton and the city of Gulf Breeze are in the process of enacting emergency services “fees”, which essentially mean that if you call 911, expect a bill.

If you are planning to travel in this area, you might want to avoid those two cities, although I expect other areas will get in the act shortly. While the Milton ordinance isn’t as blatant as the Gulf Breeze version, years of living here tells me that local voters won’t be stuck with the costs, they’ll push them on to tourists or people from outside their voting districts.

They really do seem hellbent on annoying as many people as possible around the world with their stupid rules and massive data collection operations. The BBC reports on the latest effort to make the US the last place anyone would choose to visit – US to tighten visa restrictions

The US is to tighten visa restrictions to allow it to screen all short-term visitors from Japan and Western Europe.

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said visitors to the US who do not need visas will be required to register with the government online.

The security regulation, set to begin next year, will require visitors to register three days before they visit.

The online registration will remain valid for a two-year period, Mr Chertoff said.

I have no idea what they think this will accomplish, except to provide terrorists with lists of real people with real passport numbers when DHS leaves a laptop somewhere, or has its site hacked.

Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers notes that Both McCain, Obama exaggerating Iran’s nuclear program

WASHINGTON — The presumptive Republican nominee for president and the leading contender for the Democratic nomination are exaggerating what’s known about Iran’s nuclear program as they duel over how best to deal with Tehran.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., say that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community, however, thinks that Iran halted an effort to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the program, has found no evidence to date of an active Iranian nuclear-weapons project.

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Just to prove that all of the jerks are not running for office, Elsa Wenzel at CNet’s green blog tells us about ‘Carbon Belch Day’ promotes un-green actions

Smoke cigars, do a partial load of laundry, drink bottled water, and feel no shame. That’s what a campaign against a carbon trading bill is urging.

The latest parody of the proliferation of “green” social-networking sites and eco-friendly events comes via “Carbon Belch Day,” a campaign from the conservative Grassfire.org alliance that encourages people to pollute as much as possible on June 12.

So far, more than 140,000 people have signed a petition against “climate alarmism,” according to Ron De Jong, spokesman for Grassfire.org. If the effort attracts half a million people, it would lead to the release of 105 million pounds of carbon a week from this Thursday.

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