I’m ROFLCopter @ “Tyson Homosexual”

A rabidly anti-gay news site — “Your Latest News From a Christian Perspective” — apparently has a filter in place to change the word “gay” to “homosexual.”

And that’s how sprinter Tyson Gay — who would have set a world record in last night’s Olympic qualifier had it not been for a slight tailwind — became “Tyson Homosexual.”

All I can say is:

[Via Slog]

Attacks on McCain’s Military Record are Deplorable

Just because the Republicans did it to the Democratic candidate four years ago doesn’t make it right for the Democrats to do it to the Republican candidate this time around.

Barack Obama needs to stop abandoning the principles that made me so gung-ho about him in the primaries and come out unequivocally against smears on McCain’s military experience.

This is an opportunity for Senator Obama to show the American people that he can truly rising above the deplorable politics of the past eight years. It’s an opportunity he needs to take full advantage of.

McCain: The Biggest Long-Term Economic Threat to the US is … Terrorism?

The latest issue of Fortune has caused quite a stir in political circles due to some extremely bad judgment on the part of McCain chief strategist Charlie Black. In an article about McCain’s evolution, Black went on the record with reporter David Whitford saying that a terrorist attack on the United States in the coming months would be, “a big advantage to [McCain].”

The stir came not over the content of the revelation — which is painfully obvious — but its source. Chief campaign strategists are not supposed to be quite so forthcoming, especially when it comes to fearmongering tactics that have earned widespread repudiation in recent years.

Still, fearmongering appears to be the only tactic the McCain campaign can come up with at this juncture. In the same issue of Fortune, McCain answered the question, “what do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?” by saying:

I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.

I suppose that Islamic extremism is also the biggest threat to the environment, to the education of our children, and to our health care system. I’m sure that McCain could find a way to spin them as such, anyway.

I don’t mean to downplay the potential economic impact of another terrorist attack. Such things have tremendous impact on the national psyche, but only because we let them. The only exception would be a nuclear attack, something that Obama has worked tirelessly to prevent via nonproliferation legislation.

But I digress from the economic argument, which is as one blogger put it, “science fiction territory.” The Israelis have to put up with the daily threat of suicide bombers, and yet their economy hums along. Even their war with Hezbollah in 2006 didn’t significantly derail their prosperity.

If politicians stopped talking about another 9/11-style terrorist attack as though it were a catastrophe on the scale of Hiroshima, perhaps our economy wouldn’t go into massive spasms when such things occur. Of course, that would undermine the whole point of McCain’s campaign of fear.

MTV Street Team ‘08 Does a Piece on TeresaCentric!

Many thanks to Washington State Street Team reporter Cory Midgarten for covering TeresaCentric.

More Push-Polling And Scamming

801-623-4621. Just got a call from them, no voice, just dead air, and did a look up. Apparently this number comes from a calling company in Provo, UT that does push-polls and/or scams. Looks like they are going to be out this election season.

Kid Rock Says “Steal Everything”

Hillary Clinton - Help Me Pay Off My Debts

Hillary Clinton overspent by about 20 million dollars. Now she wants help paying off the debt she racked up.

Now maybe I’m wrong about this, and its a common practice for politician to try to continue to raise money for their campaigns after an election is over so that they can pay off huge debts. But this seems really messed up to me.

George Carlin Dies at 71

He will be missed. Classic Carlin below.

Mike’s Hard Lemonade

I think that this is probably the funniest ad campaign I have seen in a very long time. I keep referencing this guy in jokes and no one knows what I’m talking about, which makes me sound like an idiot. Check it out so I don’t sound quite as dumb.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder

The lawyer who prosecutor Charles Manson and wrote the book Helter Skelter just released a novel in which he claims to lay the foundation for murder charges against President Bush.

In The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses—a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world.

I was listening to this guy on the radio yesterday, and I’m going to order the book. Honestly, just listening to some of the excerpts, I have to say that the odds of Bush actually being tried are higher than I thought. Although, higher is still of course a long shot, and one has to consider the ramifications of actual charges against President Bush for starting a war in a country in which we still have 100,000 troops stationed.

Basically, the arguments goes, that if President Bush knowingly misled the country in order to start a war, he is personally responsible for the resulting deaths. A quick summary of the strongest evidence that Bush knowingly misled the country:

Bugliosi calls our attention to the fact that after Bush had started talking about the possibility of war with Iraq he said that his decision will be based on the “latest intelligence.” What he never said, of course, is that on October 1, 2002, the classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate issued by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies said that Saddam Hussein was NOT an imminent threat to the U.S. Not long after that, on the afternoon of October 7, 2002, then CIA director George Tenet delivered a letter to Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW (chemical or biological weapons) against the United States.” That evening Bush delivers a speech to the nation at the Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in which he called Saddam Hussein a “great danger to our nation.”

However, for many, the conclusive evidence that Bush knew Saddam Hussein was no threat to this country, therefore an attack on Iraq was unjustified, will be the memo which has come to be known simply as the “Downing Street Memo.” This was written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on July 23, 2002, about high-level meetings he had with Bush Administration officials. This memo contained the statement that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Spoiler Alert!

He’s back. Ralph Nader is not only running for President, but he’s directed his attacks at none other than Barack Obama. Now you’d think that the candidate who publicly opposes NAFTA, supports massive funding initiatives for alternative energy sources, increased nationalization of health care, withdrawl of troops from Iraq, an increase in the upper-brackets of the tax code, has been funded by over one million individual donors, and not only refused money from lobbyists and PACs but encouraged his party’s national committee to do the same might actually be okay in the mind of Ralph Nader.

At the very least you’d think he spend his time attacking Obama’s opponent, who supports free trade agreements, permanent military bases in Iraq, extending Bush’s tax cuts, and has been funded mainly by lobbyists and large-donor based fundraisers.

However, Nader continues to demand that the Democratic Party move farther to the left, accusing Barack Obama, not of being an agent of corporate America, but of existing “in their environment.” Basically, in Nader’s view, anyone who tries to change or improve the system from within is automatically too tainted to do anything positive.

So again, Nader will try to punish the Democratic Party by costing them the election. He currently claims 6% national support. I find this impossible to believe and can’t see him realistically doing any better than his 0.3% showing in 2004. However, assuming he were to somehow get 6%, that would almost certainly be the difference between an Obama Presidency and a McCain Presidency. Does Ralph Nader really want to extend his legacy from 8 years of Republican leadership to 12?

Of course Nader and many of his supporters don’t view it that way. They come up with elaborate and intelligent sounding arguments about how Bush’s victory in 2000 was not Nader’s fault. But the best argument is usually the simplest: Nader runs in 2000, Bush wins. Nader doesn’t run in 2000, Gore wins. If you can dispute those facts, go ahead.

SCAM ALERT

I just received a phone call from 503-403-2674. As soon as I picked up the phone, it hung up. Apparently, this part of a scam. If you call the number back, you get this recording:

“Welcome to Wells Fargo, to get started please say or key in your card number.”

This number is most definitely NOT Wells Fargo. They just want you to give them all your information so that they can take all your money. Hopefully the Feds will shut them down quickly. In the meantime, block any calls from the following numbers:

1-503-403-2674
1-503-403-2660
1-503-403-2665

Obama Leads McCain in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania

As I’ve said before, I think McCain could got Mondaled. Now that Hillary is out of the picture, Obama’s numbers are going gangbusters:

Ohio: Obama 47.0 McCain 41.7
Pennsylvania: Obama 47.8 McCain 40.5

Florida: Obama 48 McCain 42

McCain Wants To Go Nuclear

Power that is. Given that gas was at $4.37 the last time I filled up, and will probably be at $4.50 by the time I fill up again, I say its about F*CKING time. I know there’s probably a reason why we haven’t built a new power plant in 30 years. At least I hope there is, and we just haven’t been sitting on our hands hoping that someone was going to make cars run on trash.

P.S. Al Gore would have made cars run on trash if he were President.

Our Next Vice-President

I can’t wait to see Jim Webb debate John McCain about his new GI Bill. Jim Webb is a straight thug, and I’ve been saying that he’s going to be the VP in 08 since January of 2007.

Room Vs. Roommate?

So I’m looking for a new place on the Westside, and I checked out some apartments today. So now I have to decide: huge room with so-so roommate, less huge room with more laid-back roommate, or smaller room with really laidback roommate.

So what do you think is more important in finding a new place: a sweet room or a laidback roommie?

P.S. If you say the answer is both you are annoying.

Senate Intelligence Report: Bush Administration Lied About Reasons For Invading Iraq

While it’s true that I’ve been saying that for the past six years, the fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee is now saying this is kind of a big deal. Yet, I’ve heard very little about this on the news, on the internet news, and in the blogosphere. Isn’t this basically grounds for impeachment/war crimes?

If there is evidence that the Bush administration deceived Congress and the American public into going into a war, isn’t this grounds for SOME sort of punishment? And why are people not flipping out about this.

An analysis:

The committee’s report is arguably the clearest and most direct presentation to date of the disconnect between what was known by the intelligence community in the run-up to the war and what was claimed to be true by the administration. On the question of Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability, for example, the report analyzes in detail the White House’s willful disregard of the conclusions of the Department of Energy and the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that the aluminum tubes claimed by the CIA to be part of Iraq’s supposed uranium enrichment apparatus were in fact being used for the purposes of a conventional rocket program–a point that was confirmed by the postwar findings of the Iraq Survey Group. And when confronted with CIA and DIA assessments that a purported meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials in 2001 could not be confirmed, the administration continued to insist that such a meeting had taken place and that it proved high-level cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida.

Can someone explain to me how lying about the reasons for starting a war is NOT grounds for impeachment?

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