After watching as much of tonight’s debate as I could stomach, I am now supporting Joe Biden for President. It seems to me whenever there’s been a hearing he’s been the one who asked the honest, insightful questions. Hopefully he does better than Wes Clark and Bill Bradley.
So while going through the Sunday circulars I came across good ol’ Parade. Here’s what’s new:
- The Lockhorns have been replaced. Is this temporary? Is there a scandal involved? I don’t know. If the USA Today insert contains the Bickersons, I’m going to start buying the Sun-Times.
- Marilyn vos Savant answers why news is such a downer instead of more feel goody and why people get on horses from the left side.
And this interesting bit. I finished setting up my Windows Vista Home Premium box, which functions as a Media Center PC, and getting it synced up with my cable set top box. So obviously the correctness of my clock became an issue. While checking the official world time I noticed there are areas of the world that are a half hour off the hour. Every day you learn something new. Obviously not quite as interesting as why that wicked media reports so much bad news, but hell…
The boys at Big Time Attic had a really nice tip on getting your handwritten fonts looking more natural looking.
An actual “Terrorist Busters” logo created by the C.I.A. It seems like he’s wearing a ski mask, so he’s kind of the old school terrorist type.
Howdy folks. Someone will be blogging the Minneapolis 24 Hour Comic Day event here. Danno, our erstwhile organizer, has asked that we post a link so you can watch cartoonists freaking out in real time.
Well, I guess we’re kind of like frogs in boiling water. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 14,000. That’s 9800 in euros, about the same value in euros as in summer of 2002 when there was euro/dollar parity. So, assuming your retirement fund or whatever appreciated at the same rate as the market, minus broker fees… There are a number of very disturbing trends appearing for the poorer 90% of Americans.
Here’s a nice bit from Jenna Bush:
Your father has borne a lot of criticism as President. How does your family deal with all that is said about him? —Leo Federico, Rio Rico, Ariz.
We don’t watch too much television. The world is such a big place, and there’s so much that goes on, but a lot of the media really just cover the same thing over and over again.
(link)
In the Bush family, it’s not common knowledge that news can arrive through other things like, say, magazines, newspapers, the internet.
It was pretty darned hot in Minnesota, and excessively hot and humid in the Education Building at the State Fair, where the comic con took place. There was a good amount of human odor floating around. All in all though a good time. Came out slightly ahead from the poker game, ate buffet breakfasts two days in a row, etc.
“Raiding every taxpayer’s wallet for the purposes of playing politics with our national security amounts to one of the most irresponsible proposals I’ve seen in a long, long time,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a statement. “It’s time for Democrats to support our troops and the strategy that has led them to make undeniable progress in Iraq.”
I have rarely come across a pair of sentences that contained a comparable quantity of bullshit.
- The occupation and stalled reconstruction of Iraq is costing money. Where is the money coming from? Where should we obtain the money for it? It seems highly unlikely that we’re going to be raiding Iraq’s oil revenues to pay for this invasion and occupation begun on flimsy evidence.
- National security is thrown in there for very sketchy reasons. This is a matter of foreign policy. It’s a winding path back to national security from the Iraq Occupation.
- It takes some balls, I’d assume no more than two, possibly four if you count the pair he’s sucking on, to say that paying for an additional expense by increasing revenue is irresponsible.
- Asking for America to share the burden of the occupation by paying for it is, according to Representative Boehner, NOT supporting the troops. And may I repeat, Representative Boehner.
- Irrespective of whether there has been progress, he’s saying that we should support the strategy that gained us that progress. If it’s obvious that our strategy, not our troops’ strategy but the political machinations, blunderings and blusterings of our executive branch have caused untold waste and suffering, even if it has yielded the current amount of progress, there is no reason to support that strategy. “My contractor was able to knock down the wall by pounding his head into it repeatedly.” Well, there’s no reason to support that strategy. It’s kind of not a good strategy. Or perhaps, a better analogy, “My contractor is making progress in knocking down the wall. We just need to support him as he rams your childrens’ heads into it.”
- By calling the progress undeniable he intends to mislead I don’t know who, maybe the guy whose balls he’s got in his mouth, that there is significant progress.
Apparently Bush issued an executive order in late 2001 that would’ve given him control over his presidential papers in perpetuity - himself, then his heirs. Of course, he’s always saying that what he does is up to history to judge, and the less history knows the better.