Maybe you've seen this. But it's good. If you haven't done so already, send it to everyone in your address book. It will possibly lay a big freaking guilt trip on them. I've already voted early, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Click Here

Ever since I saw that creepy Danny Elfman video about McCain morphing into Palin I have not been able to stop thinking about the synchronicity between that video, Oingo Boingo, and their classic tune: Dead Man's Party

And it made me wonder if the Republicans are truly a Dead Man's Party. A party for the dustheap of history; the dustheap of bad agenda's, near misses, and also ran's in the hall of shame and the marketplace of toxic ideas. The Republican Party wasn't struck by lightning. They brought this on all of us. They have been tried in the balance and found wanting. The days of their Kingdom are numbered. Mene, mene tekel u-Pharsin.

Jonathan Swift wrote, in A Run Upon the Bankers...

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.

 

Go here and take the NOW poll.

Apparently, Republicans got the word and have been jamming the results.

Click Here for C Hitchens latest takedown of the ineffably cretinous Sarah Palin. He may be a rum besotted rapscallion with a curmudgeonly disposition, but when he takes down the fatuous, I'm glad he has girded his loins and stormed the Circus Maximus.

Bottom line: if God created all things bright and beautiful and vile and odious, then DNA is useless, and research to perfect serum innoculations against bird flu are pointless. We can all go happily to our graves content in the knowledge that it is God's Will....

On the radio, this morning, at a campaign rally, I heard McCain say this:

"You know, the other night in the debate with Senator Obama, I said his eloquence is admirable, but pay attention to his words. We talk about offshore drilling and he said he would quote, consider, offshore drilling. We talked about nuclear power, well it has to be safe, environment, blah, blah, blah."

At the sound of the blah blah blah, his audience errupted in enormous laughter and applause...

Apparently, the Republican activists on hand for the speech found "blah, blah, blah" to be absolutely hilarious. Where is the humour in this? What is their level of awareness?

My father worked on the propulsion engine for the first Polaris missile. Later, he set up the first nuclear weapons depot for the Atlantic submarine fleet. I worked on the North Anna nuclear power plant, back in the early 70's, actually manufacturing the high quality concrete required by the continuous reactor pour. 20 years later I was part of a team of Systems Analysts that electronically re-engineered the process for obtaining a license to possess nuclear materials, for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

Last time I flew to San Francisco, I sat next to one of the world's pre-eminent authorities on the effects of radiation on human health. He was a consultant to NIH who had lived and studied the population of Hiroshima for 20  years. At that time I worked for a major healthcare media company, and we had a long talk about radiation and health issues. So, throughout my life, I have been exposed to issues regarding radiation and public safety.

Bottom Line: Radioactive materials are poison. They stay in the environment for a long time. If you inhale a particle of Plutonium, and 20 years from now, develop lung cancer, and your remains are cremated--the radioactive particle of Plutonium goes up in smoke, is assimilated into the atmosphere, and will perhaps take up residence in some other poor soul, and so on and so forth,  for the next 24,100 years. That is the half life of Plutonium. Pluto was the Lord of the Underworld. Apt name.

There is mine in the Congo called Shinkolobwe. It has been such a security problem for the Govt of the Congo that they have been attempting, in vain to seek help from the US, British, or French, to take over the mine, which has been closed to Uranium production for many years. It is one of the richest sources of Uranium in the world. This is where the Uranium came from that ended up as Plutonium in the air over Hiroshima and Nagasake. The locals, back in the day, used to smear the yellow clay on their bodies and attack their enemies by night, glowing in the dark. They were not a long-lived tribe. Today, valuable deposits of cobalt are intermingled with the Uranium, attracting the locals to come and mine the cobalt by hand, a certain death sentence 20 years down the road. Cobalt is very expensive, these days.

The security lifecycle on radioactive materials begins at birth, and must be sustainable until their death, which varies from compound to compound, but is longer than human recorded history, in the case of Plutonium. What if you came into this world and discovered your ancestors had been stacking up Plutonium waste for the past 24,000 years? How big a security force would be needed to control the waste? What about earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and asteroids from outer space?

Yes, there have been breakthroughs in terms of sealing up nuclear materials in durable glass casings. This would prevent problem of ground water contamination or perhaps earthquake. But a determined terrorist could still crack open the glass canisters, given sufficient force. And absolute security must stay with nuclear materials at every stage of their journey and resting place from cradle to grave and beyond, for 24,000 years.

My whole point is this: the security requirements for the lifecycle of nuclear materials are very high. Frankly, they don't come any higher. Obama wants these safeguards to be carefully scrutinized.

Apparently, McCain does not believe in 'Safety First'. And if he can mutter blah, blah, blah in contempt, when someone raises the issue of public safety, then what does he believe in?

And what is the nonsense that his supporters believe in?

Is it possible, before we take Plutonium to the Altar, to have some nuclear wedding counseling before the fact? Because a nuclear wedding, in terms of human scale, is forever and ever, amen.

 

 

In 2007, this was pretty funny, but today, it's more like an actual description of what has gone down.

If comedians were able to see this coming before it happened...and make fun of it, then who was asleep at the wheel?

This right here

Why? Because John McCain is a liar and a cheat.

High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.--Sir Walter Scott

Political Hate Crime?

The disgusting political trick of the McCain campaign worker in Pittsburgh who pretended to be assaulted by an Obama Maniac--is not a unique instance of this form of grift.

It's a form of short con. A confidence game to be played to woo people who are not strong supporters, or are fence sitters to come on over. It's designed also to motivate the true believers to try harder to win converts, using the talking points that the other side is full of thugs and maniacs who hate you because of your political views.

But it's just another confidence game from a party that rose to power using the long con to sting the entire American population.

I . . . who took the money? 
Who took the money away? 
I . . . it's always showtime
Here at the edge of the stage
I, i, i, wake up and wonder
What was the place, what was the name? 
We wanna wait, but here we go again...--David Byrne

Sort of. Their platform is very strong. It has lots of very strong planks. John McCain stands on those strong planks of their platform. Their platform is so strong that you can build on it for America what America needs right now from John McCain who is standing firmly on those strong planks is for McCain to build on this platform.

The Wisdom of Carabou Barbie

The Political Origin of the Specious

Let's just get right down to the real nitty-gritty, shall we.

"Sarah is intimidated by intelligent people."

From the Guardian U.K.

 

The recipe for creating a military dictatorship is quite well known to students of history. Naomi Wolf revisits this recipe in the context of our current civic predicament.

 

I don't know--some people, particularly those who are averse to 'thinking things through' take to fascism quite easily. If  you are someone who instinctively reaches for your revolver every time someone mentions the word 'culture', then you would probably thrive in the 'new order'.

 

But the rest of us, accustomed to freedom of thought, and the right to petition the authorities over grieviences, well, who knows, maybe we are an endangered species.

Marc Ambinder tells some of Obama's jokes from the Al Smith Memorial Dinner.

I saw Obama and McCain deliver their speeches on Rachel, tonite. There was one interesting moment of body language. Obama looked at McCain and said it deserved to be repeated, that McCain had distinguished himself with honor in the service of his country--or something to that effect--and McCain visibly swelled. He was clearly having an emotional reaction. Obama was very gracious, and when he left the lectern, having finished on a note about walking together in the sunshine, McCain rose to his feet and tried to hug Obama with the limited range of motion he has in his arms. You can only imagine the panopoly of emotions he must have felt to be publicly honored by the man whose character he has devoted himself to assassinating.

It was a very interesting moment that came on the heels of a speech where Obama once again appealed to the better Angels of our Nature. It is remarkable to hear a politician deliver a speech that he wrote himself--but to hear a speech that is articulate and eloquent, and high minded without being maudlin, is very rare, these days. You can't help but get the feeling that he is the real thing, the American 'archetype', what Will Rogers used to call, the Real Bird.

Or acid reflux. We report, you decide:

 

Click here for photo

 

The photo is getting a lot of attention today. It was not photoshopped. It seems Iconic of the whole electoral process.

It's also a magic picture, like the picture of Dorian Gray. It reveals the dream behind the reality.

 

Who knew?

McCain has wanted to be POTUS all his life. He wanted to prove to his distant, emotionally aloof Dad that he was lovable. Nobody ever told him: That'll do Pig. That'll do.

So he sat there, and watched this exotic figure winning over the electorate on his own merits, and he came up with a scheme. He would create a MONSTER. And the MONSTER would destroy his opponent and sweep himself into office. So he went down down down into the dungeon of his castle with his sidekick the Wolf Woman of Wasilla and cobbled together some dead stories, and mummified rumors, and stitched them together with lies and the glue of deception, and he thrust his piece meal corpse up in to the sky to bring down the lightning and the thunder, and low and behold, the fire of the GODS landed on his creature, and it got up off the table and began to STOMP around all over the place, scaring the shit out of everybody.

And when he talked to it, trying to calm it down, trying to control the MONSTER, it turned on him, and with arms outstretched, it began to stalk him, booing him as it stomped and whomped--and McCain saw what he had done, what he had unleased, and he threw his hands up in fear and loathing and cried. No! No! My opponent is a decent family man citizen. But the MONSTER could not hear, and went stomping on out into the darkness...the screams of the frightened villagers echoed through the valley...it was time for torchlights and pitchforks...

Thus always is the way with MONSTERS...