Monday, June 30, 2008

shut the fuck up, America

"Republican strategist" Frank Donatelli just told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, in a discussion about Obama's position on Iraq, that NOBODY who has not been to Iraq could possibly have a valid opinion about what was actually going on there and whether or not the Bush administration was achieving "success" in the country we unilaterally attacked without provocation.

Eighty percent of the American public agrees that Bush's war is a continuing fiasco and an enormous blot on the honor and reputation of the United States of America.

According to Frank Donatelli, the opinions of a quarter billion Americans don't mean anything.


The Republican party. Democracy in action.

from the jaws of victory

"As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark."
-Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, today.


"I don't do cowering."
-Barack Obama, last week.



Say hello to President McCain.

grazed by a bullet


One hundred years ago today, a cataclysmic event occurred, the only one of its kind that we know of in modern times. On June 30th, 1908, in the remote Tunguska region of Siberia, an object descended from space and impacted planet Earth at a speed of thousands of miles per hour, causing tremendous devastation in an area covering nearly a thousand square miles. Hundreds of thousands of gigantic pine trees were flattened and incinerated in the event, houses were blown apart by the shock wave, human eyewitnesses were thrown through the air and injured, and the region still bears the scars of this event. Seismographs thousands of miles away registered the impact, and people as far away as London could read newspapers that night by the light generated by the event. Particulate matter rode the jet streams around the world for months. Tunguska was, and still is, a largely unsettled and uncivilized area and it was several years until scientists made their way to the impact site, and when they finally did they were overwhelmed by the evidence that still remained for the amount of power the event released.

There have been many attempts to explain what happened. To this day, many people espouse the notion that an interstellar spacecraft of unearthly origin suffered some overwhelming technical problems and exploded high in the atmosphere. Most astronomers initially suspected that a large meteorite had impacted the Earth, but the absence of a large single crater, like the Barringer Crater in Arizona, made that theory untenable for some time. Since the late Sixties, the most common explanation was that a comet, those wanderers of the Solar System likened to vast dirty snowballs, was the culprit. A comet would evaporate a lot of its mass in the brief second required to traverse our hundred-mile deep atmosphere, and would not be expected to leave a large crater. However, in the last few years our understanding of asteroids and meteors has changed and we now realize that many asteroids are not solid masses of rock but are rather more like accreted dirt-clods which can be broken into much smaller particles by wind resistance from entering atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour, and at this point in time that is taken to be the most likely candidate for the object that caused this historic event, which would explain the lack of a singular impact crater and the presence of enormous amounts of small meteoritic particulate matter in the area.

The Tunguska impactor devastated nearly a thousand square miles of Siberian forest and is estimated to have released the energy of thousands of Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs. If it had been delayed by just a couple of hours, it would have likely hit somewhere in Europe and caused death and destruction of a region the size of an entire European country and disrupted the course of history.

Events like this are expected to have a frequency from every couple of hundred years to every couple of thousand years. The Solar System is a violent place and always has been. The Earth has been hit millions of times in its over four billion years of existence, and will continue to be hit regularly in the future. The question is not if we will be struck by another large object, but when. The next one could be large enough to cause extinctions of higher species, including us. There is a historical record of this, it is the way of the universe, and silly films like "Armageddon" aside, we have absolutely no way to prevent it. It's quite likely that we will not have any warning, as there are only a tiny handful of people who watch for near-Earth objects that are potential impactors. When it happens, it is far more likely to be a catastrophic surprise rather than something we can plan for and try to change.

Our species is threatened by extinction from space every second of every day of every year. All members of the human species are eggs in one gigantic basket, a basket that can be obliterated by one mountain-sized rock. The only hope our species has for continuing to exist in a violent universe is to find other baskets for we human eggs. While traveling to other stars grows less likely every day, we do have other places in the Solar System where humankind can make a stand and survive. We have the Moon, the planet Mars, the Jovian satellites Ganymede, Callisto, and even Europa, we have the Saturnian satellites Titan and Enceladus, and we have the possibility of constructing large orbital stations with self-contained biospheres in which humans can live and thrive.

If you do not support human space exploration, you are condemning the human race to inevitable extinction. The miniscule NASA budget of about sixteen billion dollars per year represents roughly one month of George W. Bush's Most Excellent Adventure in Iraq.

Please support manned space exploration, it is the most effective approach to our continuing existence. Humanity must colonize the Solar System, or we will eventually face an astronomical event that causes the extinction of our species. It may be the only chance your offspring have.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

battery spark

So, graspingly desperate presidential hopeful John McCain wants the federal government to pony up a three hundred million dollar reward to be given to the first person who successfully develops a practical, powerful electrical storage battery for automotive propulsion and other energy needs that will pull the United States out of the energy dependence hole it has further dug itself into, despite the stern warning given to us in the Seventies about how tenuous our gasoline-driven economy actually was.

Apparently, Mr. McCain thinks that nobody is already working on this approach, and doesn't fully understand that achieving it would make that three hundred million pocket change in comparison to the profits that could be reaped from the development itself. Many people are familiar with new, low-production or technology-demonstration vehicles like the Tesla or the Chevrolet Volt, and get the false impression that these kind of vehicles are going to be the magic bullet that gets the country off gasoline in a brief period of time, avoiding the difficulties being predicted by Peak Oil supporters and making themselves evident in the form of rapid inflation of energy prices. However, these vehicles are extremely expensive to produce and in the case of the Tesla are almost entirely made of batteries and not very practical, and they are very labor-intensive to build and maintain.

The simple scientific reason the magic battery hasn't been developed is that there is a finite (and relatively small) amount of energy that can be produced or stored by chemical reactions. You want power, you have to have big, heavy, expensive batteries. We are already starting up the "diminishing returns" part of the curve on battery technology and one way or the other, the power that goes into a rechargeable battery comes from somewhere else, a lot of that energy is lost in the transfer from energy production facility to storage facility, and inefficiency equals expense.


Science isn't magic, the periodic table is the periodic table, and physics is physics. Anybody expecting battery technology to attain the kind of goals desired in terms of energy independence and environmental benevolence is going to be sorely disappointed.

cat yodeling...

Saturday, June 28, 2008

that boat's already sailed

And the plot thickens...

Today, Verne Troyer's attorney had a judge bar TMZ.com from posting any more clips from the hour-long sex tape I mentioned yesterday and also ordering that the full tape not be released for sale. In granting the injunction, Judge Philip Gutierrez said Troyer's motion "demonstrated that he will suffer irreparable harm to his reputation" if the video is released.

This is the same Verne Troyer that spent the entire season of "The Surreal Life" getting trashed beyond belief, leering at, groping, and making inappropriate comments to the women of the cast, and urinating on the wall of the house from the seat of his powerchair while blind stinking drunk and naked. On camera. And now he wants to protect his "reputation."


Seems to me at this stage of the game, the sex tape would be a bit of an upgrade.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

synchronicity

In other news, Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer now has a sex tape.

It's really short.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I shall call him... Mini-Me


Monday, June 23, 2008

rude and crude

This may come as a surprise, but this country is full of retarded people. All of the cable news channels today are heralding Saudi Arabia's announcement that they will raise their oil production by two percent, which will somehow magically bring down the price of gasoline. It's all so simple, it's just "supply and demand" that sets the price of oil, and if the Saudis pump more goo out of the ground, we will have dollar-a-gallon gas again. Unfortunately, our retarded citizenry can't see the truth that sits before their eyes.

Is supply really the problem?

Every gas station is open, every gas station is meeting the demand of their customers, there have been no shortages, no gas lines, no rationing, not the slightest hitch in people getting the gasoline they need. Everyone that is willing to pay the price can fill their tank any time and any place they want to. In other words, no, supply is not the problem, and adding a couple of percentage points to the amount of oil being extracted is not going to change a damned thing.

We had the chance to start preparing for this predictable turn of events thirty-five years ago and instead, the country decided to mock President Carter for sounding the alarms (and wearing a cardigan) and ultimately voted a crew of oil industry people into the White House thinking they would be the ones who could "fix" the very situation that is making them and their cronies rich beyond all dreams of avarice.


We have the future we paid for and the truth is, we deserve it. Enjoy those decorative lawn Hummers, they will make great playhouses for the kids.

From the roof?

From Herbie of the burger joint in "With Six You Get Eggroll" to those dirty little words heard by the supreme court...and Cardinal Glick in "Dogma"....he rocked a lot of people's worlds and aged very nicely. Smooth and complex but still with a kick...

He said: "Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck."

We'll miss you. Thanks for pushing the boundaries--and everybody's buttons.

George Carlin 1937-2008

Friday, June 20, 2008

howdy, folks

Welcome to visitors from PMomma's Crew. I'm not the formal type, so just make yourselves at home!

leadershit

Barack Obama, today:

"Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act.

Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people."



And so we make the final transition from "Profiles in Courage" to "Profiles in Convenience."

I've made it clear that Obama was at best my third choice for Democratic candidate for president, and I will continue to support him over the befuddled McCain, but I will be holding my nose the whole way.

Mr. Obama, you were silent all week instead of displaying the leadership and the allegiance to the Constitution of the United States that we expect of a president, even as the House of Representatives was signing away MY Fourth Amendment rights without my permission. When your voice could have made the difference, you were missing in action.

If you don't fight for your principles, you don't have any.

I just have one question for you:
Do you really think that YOUR telephone calls and YOUR emails are not going to be searched now that the Bush administration has a legal green light to do so?



Once again, the ineffable Digby sees the way of it:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/sistah-soljahd-by-digby-theres-lots-of.html

And, a prescient warning from Atrios:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_06_15_archive.html#1234067466832961618

let's see a blood test, Cindy

So, Cindy McCain, the woman that John McCain dumped his ex-wife for, the ex-wife who was grievously wounded in an auto accident while she was waiting for him to return home when he was being held captive in Viet Nam and who he left as soon as he returned in favor of the millionaire bleached blond who was not disfigured in an accident but still appears to be a skull with skin stretched over it, that Cindy McCain, went on television and insulted Michelle Obama for being insufficiently patriotic to impress her.

Gosh, that's nice. This Stepford harpy has the temerity to get up and throw stones at anyone else despite the fact that not only did she carry on a public affair with a married man and wreck his marriage, for several years she also nursed a secret, Limbaugh-sized addiction to pharmaceutical opiates like Vicodin and Percocet and got arrested for stealing her dope from a children's charity that she had access to because she founded it, literally stealing vital medicine from desperately ill children, sort of like Limbaugh using threats of job insecurity to coerce his Hispanic maid to score his dope for him on the black market.


Then, like Limbaugh, she used her money, influence and power to escape the prosecution that a less wealthy person would have faced in order to go to a dry-out clinic instead of to prison, where she truly belonged and would likely still be if she had the finances of an average American.

Bravo, Cindy McCain. You are proof that in America, anybody can grow up wealthy and escape accountability while they demand that everyone else be held to standards that they themselves evade. Are you one of the "haves" or one of the "have mores?" Either way, you're a real class act.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/18/drugs/index.html

Thursday, June 19, 2008

I'm confused


When did Klaus the Nazi fish turn into an old black Volkswagen?

momentous discovery

There is water on Mars. Wherever there is water on Earth, there is life. Mars is more similar than dissimilar to Earth. Mars used to be far more Earthlike than it is now. I am more confident every day that during my lifetime we will find evidence for life on Mars, whether it still exists there or not.


If there is, or was, life on Mars, there is life everywhere in the universe.

this is the way the world ends

On the same day that the U.S. Congress agreed to give George Bush another one hundred and sixty-five billion accountability-free taxpayer dollars to finance his war crimes in Iraq for the next several months (and his invasion of Iran in October,) what is our magnificent, Russert-worshipping press focusing on today?

They have managed to expose the financial waste story of the century.

It seems that Michelle Obama paid a clothing store one hundred and forty-eight dollars for the black and white dress she wore on "The View" this week, when the designer of the dress sells it for ninety-nine dollars on her own website.



Not with a bang, but a whimper...

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

they mostly come at night... mostly

Premiere make-up and special effects designer Stan Winston has died at the age of 62, the result of a long battle with cancer. Winston had created the denizens of our nightmares for decades, some of the most frightening and convincing creatures ever put on film, including the Aliens, the Terminator, and the incredible CGI and hydraulic dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. There are a lot of talented people in this eccentric cinematic specialty, but Stan Winston was in a class of his own. Thanks for all of the great scares, Mr. Winston. Science Fiction films will never be the same.

Friday, June 13, 2008

ORGASMATRON!


While the simple laser pointer is probably the best toy ever for playing with your cats, I have found the ultimate Feline Stimulation Device. I discovered this thing in my late mother's clothes closet and I suspect it is intended to be a lint remover for clothing, but after looking at it for a few moments it struck me that it might be even more useful for something else. I was right. This is the best cat brush in the world. It is made of a soft rubbery compound and has about two hundred pliable rubber fingers each roughly two centimeters long and a couple of millimeters in diameter, and it makes cats squirm and purr better than catnip-basted turkey. Get one, your kitties will love you for it, and it really makes their coats glow!
(toes not included)

Tim Russert, dead at 58

Tim Russert died today, collapsing with no warning in the early afternoon while at work in Washington, D.C. I extend my sincere condolences to his family and friends.

However, I will not miss his presence in the media. His nakedly partisan political coverage has been one of the most toxic and corrupting influences on our nation for many years now. I hope that his absence will bring more real balance and honesty to our national discourse.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

real heroes

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." - Justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy


If that sentence doesn't bring a tear of joy to your eye, you have no right to call yourself an American. If the fact that four of the nine Justices disagreed with this statement doesn't chill you to the bone, you should move to another country.


http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/12/boumediene/index.html


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

so, got any sisters?


Tuesday, June 10, 2008

what took so damned long?

From www.democrats.com:

"On Monday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich made history on the floor of the House by reading 35 Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush.

At last!!!!!

We've waited years to find one Member of Congress brave enough to stand up for our Constitution, for which generations of Americans have fought and died. We are thrilled and honored that Dennis Kucinich has chosen to be that one genuine patriot.

We congratulate him on his historic leadership, and pledge to do everything in our power to persuade the House to adopt all 35 Articles and put George W. Bush on trial before the Senate of the United States, exactly as the Founding Fathers wanted.

Of course, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-8), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD-5), and Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (IL-5) all remain adamantly opposed to impeachment - despite the overwhelming evidence of High Crimes, including the "Phase II" report by the Senate Intellligence Committee and Scott McClellan's new book.

And when Rep. Robert Wexler (FL-19) called for Judiciary Committee hearings on Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Cheney in January, only 17 Democrats joined them: Neil Abercrombie (HI-1), Tammy Baldwin (WI-2), Michael Capuano (MA-8), Yvette Clarke (NY-11), Lacy Clay (MO-1), Steve Cohen (TN-9), Peter DeFazio (OR-4), Keith Ellison (MN-5), Sam Farr (CA-17), Raúl Grijalva (AZ-7), Luis Gutierrez (IL-4), Barbara Lee (CA-9), Gwen Moore (WI-4), Jim Moran (VA-8), Mike Thompson (CA-1), Ed Towns (NY-10), and Lynn Woolsey (CA-6).

So Kucinich's heroic efforts will be in vain unless we inundate Congress with emails and calls (202-224-3121) showing our full support for Rep. Kucinich's 35 Articles of Impeachment:
http://www.democrats.com/35-articles-of-impeachment

And if you have time to do more, please login to Democrats.com, click "Local" and connect with other activists in your Congressional District to organize a Honk-To-Impeach gathering at the District Office of your Representative or a major local intersection:
http://www.democrats.com/honktoimpeach

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your constant support throughout this long and historic struggle.

Bob Fertik"



Hmmm, more evidence to support the previous post title? Of course, it depends on the outcome as to whether it's probative...

Monday, June 09, 2008

You may be wrong....perhaps there IS a god...

Clueless Nattering Nabobs

Today's latest interchangeable morning CNN Journalist Barbie just announced that "Senator Ed Kennedy" has now left the hospital after his surgery last week. She followed that up with a comment from the Senator that now he was cleared to return to work that he would be pursuing his main focus at this time, that of getting Barack Obama elected president, the mention of which for some reason made Journalist Barbie snicker derisively.


"Ed?"


CNN - the most trusted name in Affirmative Action for really, really, really, really stupid white people who know how to kiss republican ass.

it's not a lie if it gets you elected

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply, use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot." - George W. Bush, June 27, 2000


Impeach the bastard and make him dance at the end of a rope for treason.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

passing the baton...

Excellent speech by Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Strength and grace under fire. I'm proud of her and thank her for her campaign, her hard work, her determination and tenacity--and for pledging that to the party and our country going forward. As she said MANY times during her speech...

...let's go elect Barack Obama as our next president.

It's time to count a fourth democratic president in the last 40 years--before our great country slips away..

Friday, June 06, 2008

these are not the 'droids...

The price of oil jumped eleven dollars today, or about eight percent from yesterday, the Dow is taking a three hundred point dump, jobless rates have increased for five months straight, and what does CNN tell us?


To "stay calm" because the "market will adapt."


After all, that is what ordinary Americans are worried about, whether or not the stock market will manage to continue doing business.

Americans aren't worried about keeping their homes, being able to get to work, being able to afford food, being able to obtain medical services, being able to pay for their children's educations and daily needs, being able to finance their retirement years, being able to keep some semblance of a life beyond mere sustenance provided by a meager paycheck from a dehumanizing job that they have no choice but to continue in because there are no other jobs available, something that their employer is fully aware of and takes advantage of by continuing to squeeze ever more productivity from ever fewer employees in order to pay executive salaries that have risen by several hundred percent in the Bush years, they aren't worried about the United States being plunged into another war of aggression by a psychotic halfwit president and knowing that their children died on the sands of a distant country in order to prop up this plummeting economy and let the oil and armament companies continue to reap record profits. No, Americans should not worry about any of that.


Americans should just stay calm, CNN tells us.

"The most trusted name in news." Indeed.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

excuse me while I whip this out

Well, it looks like we will be having the "Blazing Saddles" election this year with McCain as Taggart and if Hillary gets the VP nod, with her cast as Lilly von Shtupp...