Random Stuff

This clown sent a letter to the IRS daring them to do anything to him. That is the same thing Wesley Snipes did, though the nature of the challenge is rather different. Now the feds are determining which correctional center they will slot Snipes into.

Martha Stewart tried lying to the feds about some stock sales she made and she also was treated to a stay at the gray bar hotel. Now she can't enter Britain because of her conviction. That's freaking hilarious!

Obama raised $21.9 million in May. McCain? Not so much. Is he really going to accept public financing for his campaign? It could be that the problem is because McCain hasn't been able to make up his mind as to what to do about our energy crisis. In fact, the Gropenfuhrer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, just dissed McCain's rationale for coastal drilling. The rejection of public funding will not hurt Obama.

McCain may name Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I know, who?) as his VP. But he isn't exactly going to energize the GOP base that is unhappy with the Republican top of the ticket.

Also, did McCain lie to either Hispanic leaders or Republican anti-immigration activists? Or both?

McCain can't finesse this number: 500 Californians dead in the Iraq War. Stay the course is not going to work there.

You might also be able to kiss another Republican blowhard off soon. Red Sox righthander Curt Schilling is going to have possible career ending shoulder surgery. Schilling was a major stud on the hill, but also a colossal asshole off of it. He once told Sports Illustrated that he hated it that pllayers were using steroids and then when a Congressional committee asked him about it, he ballessly demurred.

Some of you religious fucks are scary.

Republicans admit that new Orange County, CA sheriff is qualified for her job, but they are grousing about her selection anyway.

Firefox 3.0 tally to date: 14 million and counting.

You want something that will piss you off? You know that U.S. consumers are paying 3-4 times what the Japanese and the Koreans are for broadband access even though theirs is faster? That's what happens when you have a lack of competition ina given sector.

Pro Gay marriage folks in California are now pressing the courts there to head off a bigoted voter initiatve. I hope it succeeds.

Meanwhile, religious nuts refuse to do their taxpayer funded jobs when it comes to the same sex marriage issue.

Idiot of the day right here.

Also mentallly underpowered are those who got sucked into the "clean coal" hoax.

If you've ever seen the tv series Futurama, there was a joke in one of the episodes that went, "its some kind of hollow tube, devoid of human life. Gasp. The Los Angeles Subway." Well, that isn't true now with sky high gas prices. Check it out.

Two Republican sex predators (yes, their dad is connected to the party) just got out in the OC. So watch out for 'em.

I don't understand how you can use your employer's network and yet demand that they have to respect your privacy when you do. But a California court said that an employee has to give permission before your boss can see your correspondence on the job. This is absurd.

UCLA's hospital has been doing transplants on Japanese gangsters. I'm not kidding. This is fucking outrageous.

In the "It's About Time" file is this.

You may remember that Democratic congresswoman who had her home foreclosed recently. She was also in arrears of her property taxes. Now the state has taken the home away from the new buyer without compensation and given it back to her even though he had already begun renovating the place. Outrageous.

What Effect Will Newsweek Poll Have on GOP Campaign Finances?

A new Newsweek poll came out today giving Barack Obama a 15 point lead over John McCain. While it is way too early to lend that survey any actual gravity in terms of who might win in November, one wonders if it will tighten the wallets of Republican contributors further.

Or will it wake contributors up and make them get off the stick?

The GOP has only been able to raise half of its goal amount for the past quarter and with Scott McClellan's keeping the secretive and underhanded ways that the White House tried to subvert a national security operative in the headlines and other polls that see 80% of the populace believing that the country is headed inthe wrong direction as the economy slows down, this isn't the optimum atmosphere for fat cats to want to blow their cash on a losing horse.

John McCain has looked downright foolish at times and a recent tv ad starring John Cusack that equates Bush with McCain is devastating. Another ad by MoveOn.org featuring a mother saying that McCain can't have her son for his 100 Years War, also hits home strongly.

And that is before you get to the lacerating London Times report linked in the post below blaming the Republican leadership for failing in the war on terrorism. McCain has stated that he thinks things are going just ducky in Iraq and Afghanistan (where U.S. troops fended off a Taliban attack on Khandahar yesterday), another instance of just sheer delusion.

Obama has hit the ground running while McCain has had feet of clay. With Obama tied in Georgia (!!!) with McCain thanks to Bob Barr running on the Libertarian ticket and siphoning off votes from the GOP, even longtime wacko representative Dana Rohrabacher could very well lose his seat of 20 years to a Democrat mayor in reliably conservative and wealthy Huntington Beach, California,, the adversity only piles up for McCain.

The irony here in that latter instance is rich. Huntington Beach is a former oil boomtown (and there are still oil wells pumping away on Pacific Coast Highway) and Cook herself is bascially an oil industry whore. With the oil lobby (Bush and Cheney, etc) running the country, Rohrabacher may get a dose of his own medicine.

And oil further hurts Republicans in Florida, where the coastal drilling issue has resulted in charges of hypocrisy against Governor Charlie "Secret Gay" Crist. Obama is now destroying McCain in that nettlesome state for Democrats.

Then McCain decides to charge Obama with the words "cowboy diplomacy," something that rebounds back on to himself because it reminds people of Bush's mishandling of foreign policy that McCain supported and obscures what McCain is actualy attempting to get across, that Obama may be a protectionist. Another sign that McCain entered the Naval Academy as a legacy admit (which is true) and not on merit. Just like Bush and Yale.

Random Thoughts

First, a tribute to a journalistic hero in Mexico. This guy had 15 pound balls.

Yes, it's more problems for the bumblers in the White House in the Middle East as the Turbo Bush crowd massages America's hunger problem. I guess any problem can be cured with a new euphemism. Let them eat cottonseed, I guess.

Vampire Bob Novak dropped a big brown steamer on Bush's Thanksgiving dinner table. Now you know that the White House has become a lame duck pond when a true believer such as Novak, who should be in jail for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, jumps ship.

The American Legion supported Texas Representative Chet Edwards, a Democrat and non-veteran, over an Iraq War vet running for the GOP because, unlike the Republicans in general, Edwards has been an outstanding advocate for those who who go put a big ass whippin' on our enemies.

A Democrat priority should be fixing our broken Veterans Administration. It is obscene the crap that vets who emerge with medical problems due to serving us overseas have to endure from the VA, which basically treats them as nuisances rather than good folks with real needs. Get it done Democrats. Now!

You gotta love the marketing weasels at Microsoft and how they handled the launch of their new X Box. But since when do Republicans care about consumers?

But you actually really do have to admire scientist who continue to advance stem cell research, including one where it turns out they can extract stem cells without hurting human embryos. This further undermines the hosanna hut contingent that wants to impede the use of embryonic stem cells.

And there is even more intriguing stem cell related news here.

Can somebody rationally explain to me why there is resistance to a new regulation that requires every American traveling outside our borders and anyone entering the U.S. to have a passport? As someone who has lived in foreign countries myself it is unbelievable that this hasn't always been a rule. Wah wah wah, I got to spend $90 to get a passport. Poor baby. Give me a fucking break!

Canadian ISPs have joined the fight against child porn. What the fuck took them so long? Shouldn't they have done that in the late 1990's?

What are the British going to do about Vladimir Putin? Kinda tough to try to extradite the frontman of a nuclear power for murder, especially a particularly xenophobic one. The Russians did something like this before in Britain during the Soviet era when a KGB agent poked a target with an umbrella tipped with ricin at a bus stop, iirc.

France should be added to the axis of evil (which sounds like something Marvel Comics would have dreamed up, such is the manner in which the Bush Administration has dumbed down how we discuss foreign policy). Everything they have touched, be it Haiti, Vietnam or Algeria, turns to shit and creates tremendous international diplomatic and security issues. Now with revelations increasing of French culpability in the Rwandan Genocide, the froggies are moving to create legal diversions to obfuscate that fact.

My condolences to the family of former Baltimore pitcher Pat Dobson at age 64 of leukemia. The interesting note about Pat was that he didn't pitch a no hitter in the big leagues, but he did toss one against a Japanese all star team when the O's did a tour of Japan back in their glory days, when he was part of a rotation that included Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, and Dave McNally, all four men winning 20 games in 1971.