PSoTD

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) urged Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on Tuesday to step down from the Senate Appropriations Committee in response to the escalating federal probe of his ties to an oil services company.

The Airball Grabber!

When I was on vacation, my "airplane book" was The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation, written by Sally Jenkins. I was watching Charlie Rose about a month ago, and Ms. Jenkins was on to discuss her book, which covers the football team of the Carlisle Indian School (you may remember the name of Jim Thorpe) during its day, as well as the history of the school.

It's a pretty fascinating book and an easy read, and if you're looking for something in the sports and history vein, I heartily recommend it.

We've lived about 10 miles from Carlisle for 16 years now, and I guess one of the most surprising things about the Carlisle Indian School at this point is that there's little, if any, effort to generate any tourism relating to it. There's some opportunity, I expect, and it will be interesting to see if this book spurs an effort to do more.

BTW, while I was digging around on this book, I spotted this blog on Carlisle Indian School Connections, and wanted to highlight it.

At least this site suggests it is true, at the bottom of the page...

Check out the bids on this lime-green classic on eBay.

Just a horrible thing to do.

HIV positive patients in Zimbabwe face more risks amid reports that unlicensed drug dealers are flooding the market with counterfeit ARVs that could do more harm than good to the health of consumers.

The country’s medicines regulatory body has warned that patients on ARVs should avoid buying the drugs from the parallel market were the drugs are cheaper but also fake. The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) said this week that individual drug importers had flooded the local market with cheap counterfeit ARVs, which they are selling from unlicensed locations such as flea markets and hair salons.

MCAZ fears the drugs could expose HIV positive people to health hazards as counterfeit medicines usually cause drug resistance.

“This is a dangerous practice because the medicines may have been subjected to inappropriate and hazardous storage conditions, thus affecting the quality and effectiveness of the medicine.

“Such medicines may be counterfeited, adulterated and contaminated, thus rendering them ineffective and sometimes dangerous”, said the MCAZ in a statement.

Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa said his Ministry was fighting to stamp out the unauthorised drugs market, estimated to be worth billions.

“We are aware that people may want to make capital out of it especially in light of the HIV and AIDS pandemic,” said Parirenyatwa.

Medical experts say the collapse of the government health system has created a vacuum in which a parallel market for drugs has thrived. They warned that un-prescribed ARVs would result in drug resistance.

Sixty-two thousand HIV–positive people are on the government’s treatment programme, but this figure is expected to double by the end of this year.

But over 700 000 Zimbabweans are estimated to be in urgent need of ARV therapy.

To make you never, ever, ever eat a falafel again. Eschaton is only the vessel.

Mission accomplished.

As a Bears fan living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then Sacramento, during the era of Bill Walsh, I did not like the San Francisco 49ers, mostly because they were, in general, just a bit more successful than the Chicago Bears during the 1980s and the 1990s. For the most part, I chalk that up to two difference makers they had: Joe Montana, and Bill Walsh. Even though they were the key leaders of a rival, they were too good, too smart, too... advanced, to not deserve all the respect they received for their efforts on the football field.

Bill Walsh died today. NFL fans everywhere should feel the loss of one of the great "architects" of the modern game of football. RIP.

That sucks. Another Seventies icon gone. You can find a ton of videos documenting his Tomorrow Show interview exploits on YouTube. Here's one I like. Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the tubes...

Amazingly, Congress is considering giving itself a pay raise.

WASHINGTON — After raising the minimum wage by 70 cents an hour this week, many members of Congress are ready to give themselves a pay increase of roughly $4,400 per year.

That would take their annual salaries to nearly $170,000.

The pay raise debate crosses party lines. It could best be characterized as "the people sensitive to their constituents" vs. "the people who don't want to be in Congress anymore".

Michael O'Hanlon in September 2003:

"... I think the counterinsurgency effort is going fairly well ... one could travel around the country, even flying over contested areas, with relatively confident sense of security ..."

Michael O'Hanlon in March 2004:

".. there is plenty of reason for hope, and much going right today in Iraq as well . . . . one might think the war should be won by summer ..."

Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack today in the New York Times:

"As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq ..."

Glenn Greenwald has about a billion more examples of O'Hanlon's brand of "harsh criticism".

O'Hanlon and Pollack call it significant and surreal.

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Really! This time it's true! Really, really, really!! C'mon, believe us!

WAAAHHH!!!

Update: They couldn't even sell a Serious guy like Joe Klein.

There's a downside to posting about spamming here - every time I do, the particular post I write usually gets spammed in the comments sections. Still, I think there's value to pass along information about spamming that doesn't seem to percolate to the general blogging public.

Spammers automatically creating Hotmail and Yahoo accounts

BitDefender researchers found that spammers are easily bypassing the "captcha" security system and automatically setting up new e-mail accounts that are used to send out waves of spam..

Spammers have a new trick up their sleeves. According to researchers at BitDefender Labs, spammers are automatically creating Yahoo and Hotmail accounts and using a Trojan to help them send waves of spam.

The spammers, according to the security company, have figured out how to outwit the "captcha" security system. That's the one that won't allow a new e-mail account to be created until the creator correctly types in the twisted letters depicted in an image.

A piece of malware, Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A, actually has been set up to access the e-mail accounts, pull down encrypted e-mails from another site, unencrypt them, and then send them to e-mail addresses stored in yet another Web site.

"They've found a way to bypass the captcha system by using optical character recognition," said Vitor Souza, a manager at BitDefender, in an interview. "The software reads the images and transforms it into text.

Once it bypasses the captcha system, it enables them to automatically create the e-mail accounts." Souza said the automatic system creates accounts extremely quickly.

"It's beyond what we've ever seen before," he said, adding that it can create 500 new e-mail accounts every hour and up to 15,000 a day. "With this kind of speed, they can send spam from thousands of different accounts, and that's a lot more resources for them."

Bear Grylls can.

The things people will put on their cars...

According to Deborah Howell, if the public will read about it, it's worthy putting in the Washington Post. Or something. Her logic, as usual, is absent, but her excuse-making is in full view.

I'm not sure why I'm supposed to try this, but I'm trying it. Here's my exciting life, as described on Twitter. Prepare to yawn.

I'm not talking about the penis. I'm talking about the magnification of multiple character flaws that translates into personal dickitude. We all know them - people we can't even think of without having the thought "such a dick" or "what a dick" swirl about simultaneously. We don't want to think these things, but they become synonymous with the person.

We really don't have a family of terms to use about these people. Nor has science delved into the study of such people, to find out how they are actually created.

I just thought I should add a few terms, maybe it would make it easier for people to describe their experiences with such people.

contradickitude - when you're against dicks. You could also be counterdickitude.
exdick - a former dick who has worked on their character flaws.
hemidick - somebody who is a dick only while awake, but sleeps 12 hours a day.
neodicks - those who have recently decided to embrace their character flaws as strengths
phylodicks - related, but these are actually asswipes

Again, there's no science here, just terms for public use.

The Corner can't stop talking about them.

But let's be real here. The fact is, Hillary was wearing a fairly low cut summer top. She was not displaying cleavage, as the shot on Drudge indicates. Someone else wearing the same outfit might have done. But Hillary Clinton does not have cleavage to display. Period. Indeed, Hillary never forgave her mother-in-law, Virginia Kelly for pointing this out decades ago to the young Bill Clinton, a cleavage man if ever there was one.

Meow!!

The rhetorical heat is getting to Anne-Marie Slaughter.

It's time, then, for a bipartisan backlash. Politicians who think we need bargaining to fix the crises we face should appear side by side with a friend from the other party — the consistent policy of the admirably bipartisan co-chairmen of the 9/11 commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. Candidates who accept that the winner of the 2008 election is going to need a lot of friends across the aisle — not least to get out of Iraq — should make a point of finding something to praise in the other party's platform. And as for the rest of us, the consumers of a steady diet of political vitriol, every time we read a partisan attack, we should shoot — or at least spam — the messenger.

Kum-ba-ya, baby!

Sorry Anne-Marie, but you can't close your eyes, click your heels three times and wish away Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews.

If you can't defend your ground, somebody will take it. The recommendations of the "admirably bipartisan" 9/11 Commission got ignored.

The top priority of policy debate can't be avoiding ruffled feathers. The best choice between a bad idea and a good idea isn't a half-assed idea.

Splitting the difference doesn't get you anything but a split difference.

and sometimes I miss some interesting blog posts...

Scrutiny Hooligans moved!

Playing the game of Wikipedia.

Well, that's one thing you could do with the baseball that Bonds' hits to pass Aaron's career home run mark...

10.26 billion dollars. For Exxon. In the 2nd Quarter.

I sure hope the Simpsons' Movie is great.

This sums it up, really. "You can't win a war when you're on the wrong battlefield."

I always thought Skip Prosser was a great basketball coach. RIP.

This article seems about right to me. The adults talk about her. The kids - not so much. Take it from the father of a 5th-grader-to-be girl, she does like talking about Orlando Bloom.

Associated Press reports on the possibility. My first inclination is that this is tin foil hat stuff. None of evidence is particularly compelling. Even from only "ten yards or so" it could have been difficult to identify Tillman under some conditions. And while the close spread of bullet wounds may have been unusual from a longer distance, it was not impossible.

Tillman's death by friendly fire was embarrassing enough to cover-up. I doubt he was deliberately killed by his troops.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors _ whose names were blacked out _ said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene _ no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

Tomorrow, The Baseball Hall of Fame inducts Cal Ripken, Jr and Tony Gwynn and Cooperstown, New York overflows with baseball nerds.

Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame, fans pressed against glass display cases like teenagers rushing the stage of a Green Day concert. They whipped out their camera phones and took grainy photos of socks and shoes and caps worn by men whose sole claim to fame was the ability to play a game better than most.

When fans exited the museum, they saw some of those same men in person and paid hundreds of dollars to watch them write their names on a photo or a piece of cardboard or a ball.

I'm not an Oriole fan but was raised in Bird Country (York, PA) so I've had plenty of exposure to the legend of Cal, Jr. There were two schools of thought on Junior. By far, the most prevalent was Cal as "Mythical God", savior of Baltimore baseball. However I'm a bit of a Cal basher and a subscriber to the "Selfish Cal" school.

Cal's got the numbers to be going into the Hall of Fame under any circumstance. But he will always be defined by his streak of 2,632 consecutive games played. Unfortunately as the seasons rolled on, the Streak became simply about Cal and not about the Orioles winning. I doubt there was an Oriole manager who wouldn't have liked to rest Ripken occasionally but wasn't allowed to - by Cal!

Anyways, congrats to Tony Gwynn and "Selfish" Cal Ripken, Jr. on their election to the Hall. They certainly both deserve to be there. Now how about voting Jim Rice in?

Freakin' idiot, pay attention to liberal bloggers next time. How many times do we have to be right and you dumfounded before you realize that?

Look familiar?

It seems to me that when a tragedy in a foreign country occurs that kills someone, when there is conflicting news about the story initially but eventually it is cleared up to show that it was a horrible accident not possibly foreseeable by the victim, that any blogger that posted such event as a "Darwin Award Winner" would have the common sense - and decency - to remove the post, as it adds nothing to anything.

But apparently this "blogger" isn't up to that standard...

In a few weeks, the 6-year-old and I will be on our own for a few days, and I was looking at places to take him during that time. I was looking at the National Historic Site in Scranton as a possibility (and also the Houdini Museum there). Have you been to Steamtown? If so, what did you think of it?

But maybe, just maybe, local television news stations might reconsider their investment in car chases over other types of news information.

Krauthammer ought to be waxing sentimental about a perceived 2nd strike...

Then again, this column makes it 82 straight times.

One of the things I did while on vacation in Sedona, Arizona last week was golf. This is a pretty rare event for me - the last time I golfed was in 1995, and I have no immediate plans to golf again in the next dozen years. I am, perhaps, the world's worst golfer when I'm on the course, and if I'm not, then there are some seriously scary duffers out there.

And when I have golfed, I have mostly played on scrabble courses that are cheap to play. I've only played 3 rounds in my life where I used a driving cart, and all were for special occasions.

Of course, playing a course as beautiful as Sedona Golf Resort kind of requires the usage of such a cart. (Go ahead, take a look at the pic on their site. It really did look like that.)

And that's really the point of this post. I'm in awe of the GPS system our driving carts had at SGR. They showed a couple of different views of the hole. They showed where the cart was in relation to the fairway and the hole, so when you drove up to your ball, you knew where you were - including an estimate of how many yards to the front of the green and to the hole. It showed where other carts on the course were, whether they were stacking up in front or behind you, and also how we were doing compared to average time on the course (we were slowing folks down. Bad golfers do that. Quit pointing at me.)

Now, if they could only put GPS in the golf ball, and link it to the cart. I lost about 10 balls, with the houses, roughs, and water hazards. And then if I could get an electronic guidance system... I might play again before 2019.

We get a crazy amount of Tegan and Sara visitors thanks to this post.

Their new album "The Con" came out this week. Here's the first single...

Sounds like a good idea.

The Republican Presidential field of cheese-eating surrender monkeys fear the YouTubes!

Run away! Run away!

Is Atrios getting to you, Joe?

I know that we have some sort of split-personality belief of them - that they are some sort of criminal masterminds, yet are limited to repetitive mastermindery - but I, for one, really don't believe that the next terrorist attack in the United States will involve airports or planes. We are a nation of soft targets, a land full of horrible opportunities - that is a price we pay to be free. To think that potential terrorists haven't noticed this, or have fixated on air transportation regardless, seems to be an unrealistic expectation.

The 1981 Kiss concept album becomes a reality. Nelson Mandela has been chosen to lead a group of elder statesmen dedicated to saving the world. Producer Bob Ezrin's cocaine problem doomed the original project. Perhaps Mandela will achieve better results.

The former South African president will be the leading figure in the "Global Elders", a group of "12 wise men and women" who will address global problems by offering expertise and guidance.

A frail yet still magnetic figure, Mr Mandela was greeted in Johannesburg at South Africa's Constitutional Court - where he was once held prisoner - by a choir that sang his praises before he outlined the Elders' objectives.

"The Elders can become a fiercely independent and robust force for good, tackling conflicts and intractable issues, especially those that are not popular," said Mr Mandela.

The group will "speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes, working wherever our help is needed". advertisement

He added: "This group derives its strength not from military, political or economic power, but from the independence and integrity of those who are here."

The club's members will comprise former presidents, elder statesmen, leaders and activists and probably five Nobel laureates.

There will eventually be 12 Global Elders - but the exact make-up of the group was in flux right up until yesterday's announcement.

As well as Mr Mandela and his wife, Graca Machel, the group comprises Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town; Jimmy Carter, the former American president; Mary Robinson, the former Irish president; Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations; and Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate economist and founder of the Green Bank in Bangladesh, where he is known as "banker to the poor". All were at the launch in Johannesburg yesterday.

(I know I shouldn't make fun of this but oy vey!)

I'm removing Rox Populi from the blogroll. Yes, I know she quit that blog back in January, but I kept hoping that she'd change her mind and come back... and even though I'm still hoping that will happen, the blogroll needs updated unless it does.

Looks to me like Congressmen Chris Cannon and Rick Boucher should have their campaign contribution receipts investigated, because this special effort to federally eliminate tax revenues for state and local entities from rental car taxes makes absolutely no sense.

If you have it, it's a great way to start the barbecue.

After all, it's Wednesday evening.

Found at Pax America.

And even though it seems like every day's weather report promises some rain, it doesn't seem to actually... drop.

Earl F. "Buddy" Hance, a fifth-generation Calvert County farmer, says he hasn't seen a drought like this in almost a quarter-century.

"My corn crop, I figure I've lost 80 to 90 percent," he said yesterday. "And soy, I have very limited potential for making a crop. We haven't had significant rainfall where I live for two months."

Hance, who is also Maryland's deputy secretary of agriculture, says the grim news is echoing across Maryland. Scant rainfall during the prime growing season has damaged as much as 60 percent of the corn crop and 50 percent of the soybeans, hay and pasture grass in Southern Maryland and the lower Eastern Shore.

Yesterday's thunderstorms, which briefly dumped rain in scattered pockets across the region, were nothing resembling drought relief. The National Weather Service said more teasing from isolated thunderstorms is expected today.

Around the region, suburban lawns have turned to straw, and officials have asked residents of Mount Airy, Westminster and Frederick to cut back on their water consumption as the dry weather enters its fourth month.

Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport has received barely half its average rainfall since May 1 - just 6 inches. Without an isolated thunderstorm at the airport July 10, that would be closer to 4 inches.

Nearly 85 percent of the state is in "moderate" to "severe" drought, up from 37 percent a week ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It's the third drought in Maryland since 2002.

Watched a bit of Alberto Gonzales testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Quite bizarre. They ask him simple questions and Gonzalez refers to newspaper accounts to figure out what he did - as if he wasn't in his body when it happened.

This reminded me of a movie out a few years back titled "Memento". It was a mystery about a man with a rare disease which destroyed his short term memory. He can't even remember ten minutes ago and tattoos important information on his body to make sure he retains it. Surprisingly, this condition actually exists and is called anterograde amnesia.

Anterograde amnesia is a form of amnesia, or memory loss, in which new events are not transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory. This may be a permanent deficit, or it may be temporary, such as is sometimes seen for a period of hours or days after head trauma or for a period of intoxication with an amnestic drug. The deficit makes its sufferers unable to recall an event which occurred only moments earlier when their attention has shifted to something else.

Could Alberto Gonzales be an anterograde amnesia sufferer?

Sen Leahy: Mr. Gonzales, can you tell us what you had for lunch?
Gonzales: Judging from the mustard on my sleeve I believe it was a hot dog. I'm burping up some pickle. But I can't be sure. Let me check my credit card bill.

How does Alberto find his car in the parking lot? Is there someone assigned to make sure he doesn't wander off during the day? Wonder if a blow to the head would cure it.

You know who is probably hating the news most about the NBA ref who bet on NBA games?

Think about who would like to have a franchise in Las Vegas. Why, it's those loveable owners of the Sacramento Kings, the Maloof brothers!

Not as catchy as "Werewolves of London", but we saw a lot of them hiking.

For those that enjoy it (and I do!), there will be zydeco music reverberating at Creekview Park in Hampden Township this Friday evening.

Then everything you say is suspected to be a lie or wrong.

For national security Purposes, if there's something important that the American people should be told - and expected to believe - it shouldn't be coming from George W. Bush's mouth.

I know it's not at the value level of the Washington Post or CBS, but I have to say, there must be a collection of some of the most shallow bots in the world determining the headlines that are run on the Yahoo! front page. TWO COREYS??!?! That wasn't even headline-worthy in the 1980s, unless your reading ability was limited to five-letter words back then.

The battle continues between the City of Harrisburg and the General Services Administration over the placement of the new Federal Courthouse.

Midstate officials have written to the General Services Administration urging the federal agency not to devour "productive taxable land in the heart of the [Harrisburg's] Restaurant Row" for a new federal courthouse.

The letter, spearheaded by Dauphin County Commission Chairman Jeff Haste, is to be delivered today to Abby Low, the administration's project manager in Philadelphia. The letter is being delivered a day before opponents of the two sites are to meet at St. Patrick Cathedral in Harrisburg.

Last month, GSA officials announced plans to build a $100 million federal courthouse on the southeast corner of North Second and Locust streets or at the southwest corner of North Third and Pine streets.

I don't understand why the bureaucrats at the General Service Administration want to go against the judgement of every local interest and jam the building in the middle of Restaurant Row. Apparently the GSA's overriding concern is easy access to quality lunch spots for judges and lawyers.

I'm sick of these kinds of comments.

Hillary Clinton, about meeting with various leaders of countries that the U.S. has problems with:

"I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes," she said. Her campaign quickly posted video of her answer online, trying to show she has a different understanding of foreign policy than her chief rival.

This isn't an answer that shows leadership, but fear. Win the propaganda war by positioning the United States favorably. It's not a weakness to be willing to talk - it's an indication of the strength of the message, and the speaker. Do we really give a shit if Castro or Jong-il misrepresents what we say after the fact if we have forcefully and convincingly made our point? Why should we be so afraid of talking to tinhorn dictators?

The audience isn't primarily these leaders - it's the world, and the people of these nations. It's depressing to see any Democrat would take the position of Polypdent Bush on such foreign relations efforts.

Sound bite of the night from the Dem YouTube debate was Obama's apparent willingness to meet unconditionally with the most troublesome American adversaries while HRC says she would not. I must be as naive as Barack because I agree with him. It makes a lot of sense to confront and size up your toughest foes face to face. The Bunnypants strategy of hiding in his room sure hasn't worked.

And if the always wrong Corner thinks Obama's position is "astonishing" then I'm even more inclined to think he has it right!

Newshoggers now has a store? I am SO BEHIND THE BLOGGING TIMES...

Joe Wilson apparently supports Hillary Clinton. I support Joe Wilson in his battle versus the Bush Administration, but that support is not transferrable to Hillary.

No Quarter Moved!

Who wants to be a member of the Dead Blogger's Society?

Faith Hill, how you have changed. (Thanks to Redbook)

No shit, John Edwards' "Hair" video is great.

I, too, am wondering is there will be enough 21st Century Jimmy Breslins...

If you're flying with young kids to different states, and you're not taking your kids' car seat/booster with you, this chart might come in handy in determining the law for where you're going - although simply following the locality's law to the letter isn't necessarily the safest thing for your children. It's surprising how much difference there is in the law from state to state on this child safety issue.

Circa Survive - "The Difference Between Medicine and Poison is in the Dose"

If anybody has a clue what this video is about, please share!

Two million views and counting.

Where I was last week. It was purdy.

I'll write more about it as time allows.

One of the things I've noticed about the Bush years is how it is stifling political discussion in my family. With some of my family members, I can discuss how we disapprove of so many of the things that Bush has done. With others, we get an argument as to whether Bush is wrong, or the anti-Iraq-War majority is wrong. But either way, the pressure and temper builds up so quickly that everyone backs away before it gets to the edge, and there's very, very little room for actual discussion about how to improve the world, politically.

I guess it's political burnout, and I would guess that it's commonplace throughout the country, existing in almost every family. It seems to me to be a gaping void of communication, one that politicians of today benefit from as we fail, as families and friends, to discuss the issues because we've become so polarized - polarized by the very issues that these politicians embrace. How will we ever fix health care, or energy issues, or poverty, if we don't sit at the dinner table and discuss it among ourselves? Depend on the politicians to do this work? How could anyone responsibly believe that is an option. Pin ourselves on the hope that science and inventive genius will somehow resolve these issues? Maybe the odds are better there, but again, not responsible.

Our government has told us to be afraid, and politically, we seem to be complying. Nationally, we've known that for a while. At the dinner table, perhaps it is time to face up to this as well.

Yeah we tease him a lot cause we’ve got him on the spot
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

(By the way, PSoTD often wears one of those television set hats.)

Egads. Who would read this?

Well, I'm back after a week of vacation in Sedona, and glad to see that nothing has missed a beat, which is good, since my email download is towering over me like Coffee Pot Rock.

I'll be back after the avalanche.

Thorn-in-the-Republican-side Presidential candidate Ron Paul gets a free pass from Atrios and much of the left thanks to his anti-war position. Dr. Paul may not be an Iraq wacko but let's not overlook that he would be hunky dory with an America dotted by walled enclaves of the wealthy protected by their own private armies.

He's kind of lacking in the "vision thing" for my tastes. 1820 ain't coming back any time soon.

Heading down to Price's Seafood in Havre de Grace today to do some blue crab picking where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay. They've always had great crabs but the place used to be a little beat up. Word is they recently remodeled. Their black pepper seasoning is kickin'!

We should be there around 2:30. Stop in and say hey!

The Washington Post is intrigued by them.

Do women really put this much thought into their cleavage?

Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable.

Sigmund Freud would be proud.

Johan - She's Got A Way With Men

Cheers!

The Senate Finance Committee voted yesterday to provide $35 billion in health care coverage for low income children through re-authorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Most of this will be paid for through an increase in taxes on tobacco. The editors of National Review hate the idea.

Why?

Well, the Congressional Budget Office says the program would give new coverage to 2.3 million uninsured children. But National Review grumbles that 1.7 million low income kids with existing coverage might switch from their inferior private insurance plans. Because they believe that poor people deserve inferior insurance plans.

National Review also fears that low wage workers might fail to "work hard to make more money" because they would no longer qualify for S-CHIP. Remember, only hard workers make more money. Nobody poor is working hard enough. And besides, once you've got government subsidized health care for your kids, you've got it made. With S-CHIP, the poor will have no incentive left to do anything but watch soaps all day between joy rides to the doctor. Because the National Review thinks that's how poor people like to spend their days.

But don't think that the National Review is totally without sympathy for the poor. They point out the unfair hardship additional cigarette taxes will place on low-income families. Because they believe if you can't have heath care, you might as well have cheap smokes!

Confidential to K-Lo: Why do you make fetuses your cause and then not care about health care for children? That's fkkked up.

Wonder if you can file a class action suit against the mob?

July 20, 2007 -- THE FBI is investigating an NBA referee who allegedly was betting on basketball games - including ones he was officiating during the past two seasons - as part of an organized-crime probe in the Big Apple, The Post has learned.

The investigation, which began more than a year ago, is zeroing in on blockbuster allegations that the referee was making calls that affected the point spread to guarantee that he - and the hoods who had their hooks in him - cashed in on large bets.

Federal agents are set to arrest the referee and a cadre of mobsters and their associates who lined their pockets, sources said

Won't this speed up the melting?

GENEVA, July 18 (Reuters) - Greenpeace is seeking hundreds of volunteers willing to strip naked on a shrinking Swiss glacier next month for a photo shoot meant to raise alarm about global warming.

The environmental group said it hoped to attract as many people as possible to pose for U.S. photographic artist Spencer Tunick, who has previously staged mass nude photo shots in Mexico, Germany and Spain.

The Swiss shoot, to take place the weekend of August 18-19, is meant "to symbolize the vulnerability of glaciers and the fragility of the human body," Greenpeace said in a statement released on Wednesday.

Mark Steyn doubts that Africans have proverbs.

Was there something hinky about that blue plate special you just picked through at lunch? Find out your chances of keeping it down at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's website. They have a searchable database of food safety inspection results and compliance statuses for eating establishments throughout the state.

Browse for violations at your favorite restaurants or zero in on the joints to avoid. Bon appetit!

Or at least until they go out of business.

An ambitious and long awaited new consumer VOIP startup - Ooma - launches on Thursday morning. Much like Vonage and the ill-fated SunRocket, Ooma allows consumers to use their normal phones to make and receive telephone calls, but at drastically reduced prices.

Vonage provides unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada for a flat $25/month. Ooma, however, is using an innovative peer-to-peer architecture to significantly reduce their cost overhead. Because of that cost reduction, they’re charging for hardware only. Calls in the U.S. are free, and will be forever.

Anybody have any positive or negative experiences with Voice Over IP phone service? I haven't checked it out yet.

Dogs have been in the national spotlight due to football player Michael Vick but there was a local animal treatment story in the Harrisburg paper yesterday. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office fined The Humane Society of Harrisburg $2,025 for violating state charity, nonprofit and consumer protection laws.

According to the agreement, the attorney general believes the Humane Society violated the law by:

- Using the terms "no kill," "unadoptable," "unhealthy" and "untreatable" in solicitation and promotional materials in a way that was "confusing or misleading."

- Saying it didn't turn away animals but failed to disclose that it charged a fee for accepting strays from municipalities that don't have a contract with the organization.

- Failing to keep accurate books and records.

The attorney general's office began investigating the Humane Society after two former volunteers — Annette Reiff and Felicity Fox — lodged a complaint in April 2005.

Reiff and Fox accused former management of falsely advertising the Humane Society as "no-kill" and of using temperament testing to label some dogs aggressive so they could be euthanized.

They noted that the Humane Society's 2005 annual report indicated that 40 percent of the 7,433 animals taken in were euthanized, a rate they said was too high to allow a "no-kill" designation.

I had always assumed "no-kill" meant exactly that but apparently shelters can euthanize some percentage of animals and maintain a no-kill designation. The situation has been resolved amicably. The group may have been well-intentioned but lacking the resources to live up to the letter of their billing. The Harrisburg Humane Society is under new management now that no longer claims the shelter is no-kill but says they are moving in that direction.

Jayk the Beagle says please spay and neuter your dogs and cats!!

Your love alone ...

... is not enough.

At Andy's place!!

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Joe Lieberman are all flying over New Orleans in a Blackhawk, surveying the progress that has been made in rebuilding the city and the levees. As they fly over the Ninth Ward, Cheney looks out the window, grins, and says, "You know, I could throw a thousand-dollar bill out the window right now and make one of those poor bastards very happy."

Bush says, "Well, I could throw ten hundred-dollar bills out the window right now and make TEN people very happy."

Not to be outdone, Lieberman chimes in, "Oh yeah? Well, I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a HUNDRED Americans very happy."

Hearing this, the copter pilot rolls his eyes and says, "Man, I could throw all three of you out the window and make 300 million Americans very happy."

Thank you sir, may I have another?!

Q. How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A. None. George Bush predicts the light bulb will be fully capable of changing itself within 3 months.

Y'know the Republican Party may be less popular than spam, bankrupt of worthwhile new policy ideas and incompetent at running the government but they still are damned impressive at manipulating the media.

The Dow breaks 14000. Larry Kudlow's take ...

... this global stock market boom signifies a major defeat for al Qaeda and all the terrorist jihadists who seek to destroy capitalism and our way of life. The spread of prosperity across the globe cannot tell a lie: The terrorists are on the wrong side, they are on the losing side, and their side will be defeated. Freedom and capitalism is moving full steam ahead. It will ultimately crush the evil, totalitarian jihadists.

Despite all the criticism President Bush has received over his administration’s Iraq war policies, the stock market has been booming throughout the whole period from early 2003 onward. Markets are giving Bush’s steadfastness in the battle of Iraq and the world terror war a big thumbs up vote of confidence.

Whoa ... bold claims! Any sort of cause and effect data to back that up?

How do we know the market didn't take off on the Democrats gaining control of Congress? Or maybe the bull market reflects the Red Sox lead over the Yankees? Or could it be a reaction to Beckham and Posh coming to Los Angeles?

Nobody makes it up as they go along better than Larry!

You get the feeling Kudlow would credit Bush for good results on his cholesterol test. I think he's still hoping to kiss up enough to get appointed to the Fed.

No, not the Yahoo founder.

Jerry "The Juggernaut" Yang is a 39-year-old Laotian immigrant who's currently leading the final table at the World Series of Poker.

Get used to hearing the name. We'll be watching him for the next year on ESPN poker reruns.

Latest Chip Counts at the Final Table of the World Series of Poker:

Jerry Yang - $63 million
Tuan Lam - $20 million
Raymond Rahme - $17 million
Jon Kalmar - $16 million
Hevad Khan - $8 million
Alex Kravchenko - $4 million

I don't think Kevin Drum is going to approve of this vapidness at all.

Obama didn't look amused when a reporter asked him about the independent music video Monday, just after the Democratic presidential hopeful walked a picket line with striking workers at the Congress Plaza Hotel.

"That's not why we're here," the Illinois senator said. "I've got no comment about something like that."

Featuring buxom actress and model Amber Lee, the slick light-hearted video is the work of the BarelyPolitical.com Web site. Its first installment, titled "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has drawn more than 2.3 million hits since it debuted.

Titled "Debate '08," the sequel went up Monday, drawing more than 11,000 hits by early evening. It features Obama Girl and two, um, like-minded Obama partisans squaring off against three other comely lasses apparently smitten with Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuli