What else is new?

A majority of Americans are wary about US healthcare reform according to a Zogby poll. This is not surprising given the amount of airtime given to pro corporate politicians and media talking heads.

Fine time to quit smoking.

I read last week that the Pentagon was considering a ban on smoking in the military. It seemed ridiculous to me to expect soldiers to give up smoking while fighting 2 wars as if smoking was their biggest problem. Yesterday it was reported that Robert Gates will not ban smoking for troops in combat zones and force them to go through nicotine withdrawal while fighting for my freedom.

NASA Lost original moonwalk video

NASA erased tapes in order to reuse them and the historical moonwalk was gone forever. Hollywood came to the rescue and restored television video copies and made them look sharper.

General Cat Blogging. They OWN us.

From Live Science

"If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.


Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.

This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.

"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom.""

Continued

--------------

That's my cat's description. He can be such a pain that you simply cannot ignore it. He purrs and meows simultaneously, not to mention he will literally sit on my head when he needs more food or to go out.

Minin' for nose gold......

Well color me green and call me a boog




Just when I thought I had read it all!

Psych!

Sotomayor Surprises Sessions
Jess Bravin reports on Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.

Ouch!

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), seeking to discredit Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, cited her 2001 “wise Latina” speech, and contrasted the view that ethnicity and sex influence judging with that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”

“So I would just say to you, I believe in Judge Cedarbaum’s formulation,” Sessions told Sotomayor.

“My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions’ apparent surprise. “We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts.”

Cedarbaum agreed.

“I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging,” she told Washington Wire. “We’d both like to see more women on the courts,” she added.

UPDATE: Sessions slammed Sotomayor for not being a racist like HE IS. Get this:

This morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) castigated Sotomayor for not ruling with her fellow Puerto Rican colleague, conservative Judge José A. Cabranes, when she decided to deny an en banc appeal in Ricci v. DeStefano, a process in which all judges of a court hear a case (as opposed to a three-judge panel of them). Sessions seemed to indicate that people of the same ancestry should vote the same way:

SESSIONS: You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case.

This is why the neocons continually amaze me. They are of another breed and assume that everyone thinks like them and have evil motives like they do. Sheesh. Obviously Sessions can only think like a conservative white man.

What Would You Say

(OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO - DAVE MATTHEWS)


Dave Matthews Band - What Would You Say (Official Music Video) - Click here for more blooper videos


So, what do YOU have to say today?

Palin: the gift that keeps on giving II

WHO WOULD JESUS DROWN?

Levi Johnston, the boy who knocked up Palin's abstinent daughter is back in the news. He suggested that Palin resigned so she could make more money with a book deal or something like that. It was his opinion and the MSM was falling all over themselves to get it. Pat Buchanan was so upset by this that he suggested this on Morning Joe:

“Well, first, with regard to Levi, I think First Dude up there in Alaska, Todd Palin, ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.”

How very Catholic. How very American. Better kill her detractors.



BUT WHO'S REALLY BASHING PALIN IN THE MEDIA?

I haven't heard any liberals in the MSM complaining about Palin. (not that there are more than a handful of liberals in the media these days.) In fact it's her own party that's taking her apart. Here's one opinion: “In all my years in politics, nobody has left Alaska in such a mess.” Palin's under siege. oh my.

I love the smell of burning white men in the morning

Good lord, you have to at least see the headlines at Media Matters this morning. White men in the media have come unglued over the Sotomayor nomination. O'Reilly and Buchanan feel that their male whiteness is threatened. Beck thinks the country is crashing and burning. (Nice Catholic boys too.) The network MSM is repeating the nonsense spewed forth by the white racist pundits on cable news. The sad thing is that if you casually bring up Sotomayor to regular people you meet, they repeat the talking points- she's an activist, she'll put Latinos before whites, blah blah blah... they act as if one supreme court judge is going to send America to hell in a handbag.

If anyone is going to criticize her in the press, they ought to bring up legitimate reasons rather than fear mongering.

The Senators are going after Ginsberg while crying about Sotomayor as if white men's views of the world are the only legitimate ones. Story at Alternet

All I ever needed to know about Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.....I learned at THE WONKETTE

The Post and comments are a hoot!
G8 Countries Secretly Trying To Kick Out Italy, For Sucking:

Italy was a pretty important country or whatever about 2,000 years ago, but since then it’s gradually deflated to its current status as a wacky do-nothing ice-cream colony of back hair and male capri pants and trash and rats. Pompey was lucky to die when he did! Now the person running this ancient land-phallus is a naked orange clown who spends all of his time ringleading orgies with young non-wife girls or fiddling around with the roster of the soccer team he randomly owns. Which is great for him! But unfortunately for this Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, he signed Italy up as the host of tomorrow’s latest G8 conference a while back without realizing that he and his minions would have to “do preparation stuff” in advance, so they just did nothing, and now “Washington” is trying to kick this embarrassing pizza-bagel of a country out of its Rich Nations Club once and for all.

Ha ha look at these nerds with their terms, terms like “sherpa calls,” which are basically “catty conference calls behind lazy Italy’s back.”

Preparations for Wednesday’s G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.

In the last few weeks before the summit, and in the absence of any substantive initiatives on the agenda, the US has taken control. Washington has organised “sherpa calls” (conference calls among senior officials) in a last-ditch bid to inject purpose into the meeting.

“For another country to organise the sherpa calls is just unprecedented. It’s a nuclear option,” said one senior G8 member state official. “The Italians have been just awful. There have been no processes and no planning.”

“The G8 is a club, and clubs have membership dues. Italy has not been paying them,” said a European official involved in the summit preparations.

And isn’t Italy allied with the Nazis, too?

h/t to Anna Van Z @ BigBrassBlog --


and Dark Wraith Images

Science vs Religion

Gov Rick Perry of Texas appointed a creationist, Gail Lowe to chair the State Board of Education. She is actually the most moderate of social conservatives under consideration. She has stated that she thinks the study of evolution is important but has voted against text books that don't thoroughly explain the weaknesses of evolution.

• The Texas Freedom Network sees the Lowe appointment as the minute improvement that it really is. The organization's president Kathy Miller released the following statement:

• It's disappointing that instead of choosing a mainstream conservative who could heal the divisions on the board, the governor once again appointed someone who repeatedly has put political agendas ahead of the education of Texas schoolchildren. Ms. Lowe has marched in lockstep with a faction of board members who believe that their personal beliefs are more important than the experience and expertise of teachers and academics who have dedicated their careers to educating our children and helping them succeed. We can only hope that she will rise above her history on the board and as chair keep the board from continuing to hold the education of our children hostage to divisive 'culture war' battles.

See also

Science, religious beliefs conflict for one in three Americans

Darwin survey shows international consensus on acceptance of evolution
A British Council poll into awareness of Charles Darwin and attitudes towards evolution has found that there is a broad international consensus of acceptance towards his theory of evolution.

Americans are so dumb and will believe anything.

Drama of the week

Sonia Sotomayor will go before the Senate this morning at 10am. I think it will be pretty dramatic. I laugh when I read about white conservative Senators think that she won't be objective enough.

BARAK OBAMA -- Yes, YOU can....

YES???

GO FOR IT MAN!!

The Fed Under Fire

The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in Washington, long considered beyond the reach of lawmakers. But now, as details emerge of how the Fed secretly doled out more than a trillion dollars during the financial crisis, a rare bipartisan movement in Congress demands that the Fed be held accountable.

excellent youtube video



here's an org chart of the Fed

and speaking of "most powerful" and "secretive" -- these 2 words also describe our POTUS:

On his first day in office, January 21, 2009, Obama signed Executive Order 13489. This order was entered into the Federal Register on January 26, 2009.

What this executive order says, is that only the Attorney General (Eric Holder) and Council to the President, (Gregory Craig) are able to review presidential records requests and determine if they can be made public or not. (See Section 3)

In other words, you aren't going to see any records or documents that Obama doesn't want you to see.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Obama's first official act was to deny access to his records. Obama has lived for 48 years without leaving any footprints -- none! There is no Obama documentation -- no bona fides -- no paper trail -- nothing.

Original, vault copy birth certificate -- Not released
Certificate of Live Birth -- Released -- Counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license -- Not released

Obama/Dunham divorce -- Released (by independent investigators)
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license -- Not released
Soetoro adoption records -- Not released

Soetoro/Dunham divorce -- Released (by independent investigators)
Fransiskus Assisi School School application -- Released (by independent investigators)
Punahou School records -- Not released
Selective Service Registration -- Released -- Counterfeit
Occidental College records -- Not released
Passport -- Not released and records scrubbed clean by Obama's terrorism and intelligence adviser.
Columbia College records -- Not released
Columbia thesis -- Not released
Harvard College records -- Not released
Harvard Law Review articles -- None
Baptism certificate -- None
Medical records -- Not released
Illinois State Senate records -- None
Illinois State Senate schedule -- Lost
Law practice client list -- Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None
Source: Morning Security News Brief via Internal Company News Wire-Washington

via antijihadresistance (I know, I know, but they had the best list!)

HEY ALL YOU REBEL ROCKERS -- It's time to put up a fight

You got to let go of remote control






Don't ever doubt the power of just one mind.

Or the world-wide power of just one rhyme.

Don't ever doubt the force of the bassline.

Or a record gone round to burn the house down.



"SMASH THE EMPIRE WITH MY BOOM BOX" - great line!!