What's the big deal? She had legs. She knew how to use them.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:41 PM | Comments (726)
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Meh, Open Thread.
Interesting to see how badly LP'd my "go to spot" back in Maryland has gotten.
Can't help but notice the most conservative congressional districts are all in black and blue zones, where all the most liberal ones are too bright to see Saturn...
Color code:
Black- Astronomers require fresh pants after looking up.
Grey- You have to be as blind as Obama's economic advisers to miss the Milky Way.
Blue- Decent night sky, Andromeda Galaxy and Orion Nebula obvious to the naked eye.
Green- Milky way visible, but in patches.
Yellow- Lesser constellations washing out, Milky Way barely visible.
Orange- Major constellations beginning to lose stars.
Red- Good luck seeing much of anything.
White- You are screwed.

(Click on map to zoom in)

I live in Zone Red, but only 30 minutes from a yellow zone (good evening for a telescope) and a 2 hour trek to Zone Black. I have a feeling most of you aren't nearly as lucky.

Posted by: CAC at 02:57 PM | Comments (300)
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The US Women's soccer team is playing for the 2011 World Cup championship today at 2:45pm EST on ESPN. They are a great team with lots of heart. Go USA! more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:18 AM | Comments (415)
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This guy is not longer a joke, he's simply despicable.

Chris Wallace asked Herman Cain about a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. After arguing that Islam doesn't qualify as a religion or something under the 1st Amendment, they got to the heart of the matter.

So Wallace asked the inevitable question: does any community have the right to ban mosques? “Yes, they have a right to do that,” Cain replied, without skipping a beat. He later added that, while he is not willing to discriminate based on religion, “I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

Cain has a rather convoluted understanding of the US Constitution, at least when it comes to it's applicability to Muslims in this country.

I didn't like John McCain's attempts to rewrite the 1st Amendment through campaign finance reform laws and I don't like candidates for President like Cain who think some people may only build houses of worship at the sufferance of their fellow citizens.

Yes, mosques must follow the same laws and regulations as any other religion nor should they be granted any special consideration because in some areas Islam is "the de facto state religion". But the wholesale banning of them because people don't like Muslims or what they believe in? I'll stand with the Constitution.

Guys like Cain profess to revere the US Constitution yet they are strangely willing to ignore it when it either suits their personal beliefs or political needs. Personally, I'd prefer to live the selective and creative interpretations of the plain meaning of those indecipherable old words to liberals.

Below the fold, a personal story. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 09:22 AM | Comments (1243)
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Here we go.

“I’m not ready to tell you that I’m ready to announce that I’m in,” Gov. Rick Perry told The Des Moines Register. “But I’m getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do. This is what America needs.”

Another big-name potential Republican presidential candidate who is still on the sidelines, Sarah Palin, told Fox News in May that she has “that fire in the belly” to run. It remains a question whether Perry does.

“I’ll be real honest with you, I don’t wake up in the morning – never did and still don’t today – and say, ‘Gee, I want to be president of the United States,’ ” Perry, 61, said by phone last week.

But his wife, Anita, and hundreds of people nationwide say they want him to run, he said. He said he would likely decide in two or three weeks.

If he makes the leap, Iowa Republicans will have another avowed fiscal and social conservative to choose from in the Feb. 6 caucuses lineup.

This one takes credit for playing a role in half of U.S. job growth in the past decade. He once implied that he agreed with calls for his state to secede from the nation. And he has proclaimed Aug. 6 as a day of prayer and fasting for the nation to seek GodÂ’s guidance and wisdom.

Perry may turn out to be a great candidate or perhaps the Teh Fred of this cycle, time will tell. Either way, he's going to be a factor so we really need to take any polls with a grain of salt until he gets in and established.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:53 AM | Comments (241)
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Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon has been getting a lot of press in the last week, and deservedly so, so I thought I'd link it again. I recommend it highly to people who have only heard the Democrat version of the 2008 financial crisis -- Morgenson and Rosner do the work Phil Angelides couldn't be bothered to do. There's plenty of blame to go around for the collapse in subprime-mortgage backed securities which led to the financial crisis in 2008, but the way the Angelides report simply ignored the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the crisis was just shameful. (It also shows what a snake Barney Frank is, and has been for many years.)

As a change of pace, I decided to brush up on my non-Western history. I've always been interested in the recent history of the Indian subcontinent, so I picked up a couple of books to get me started. The first is Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India by Lawrence James; the second is The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan. My knowledge of the Raj period in India, and the Partition, is very lacking, and I hope to fill in some gaps with these two books. I also hope to gain some insight on the Pakistani national character, and try to understand what has turned this new country into such a basket-case over its short life.

I've also pre-orderded Vernor Vinge's The Children of the Sky. You've heard me rave multiple times about Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep as being one of the best sci-fi novels ever written; this is a sequel to that book and is due to be released in October. I'll re-read Fire to prepare for it. This kind of sequel makes me nervous because the original book didn't need a sequel -- it was a splendid and self-contained story. I hope Vinge doesn't do to the Fire Upon the Deep story what Arthur C. Clarke (and other writers) did to the Rama story -- which was to make a wonderful first novel more disappointing in retrospect by trying to explain everything too much in later books. But Vinge is such a splendid novelist, and I am such a fan of his earlier books, that I'll willing to go along with him on this ride.

What's everyone else reading?

Posted by: Monty at 05:40 AM | Comments (142)
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The book thread will follow in just a bit.

"A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet." - Truman Capote

Posted by: Monty at 05:12 AM | Comments (96)
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Lemme tell you something about Luckies. If you want to cough for the next four decades (assuming you make it past the treatments), fire up a pack of Luckies every day.

I used to swipe these from my grandpa. Because dad smoked Salems (GAH! ACK!). These are less throat irritating than, oh, say, the barbed cock of Satan (I'm guessing here, I haven't sold my soul yet. YET.) They are not, what's the word I'm lookin for here, smoove. Yes. They are not smooove.

Some outstanding Americans prefer the smoke of the grill, and serving other Americans. more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:28 PM | Comments (535)
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I really hate it when old commies won't own it and complain later "oh, I never!"

Hanoi Jane wanted to promote her book about aging and the "life cycle." Damn those old people and their stupid memories!

Somebody call the waaaahmbulance.

The network said they got a lot of calls yesterday criticizing me for my opposition to the Vietnam War and threatening to boycott the show if I was allowed to appear.

Bottom line, this has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us.

None of it is true? Oh ninja, please. Check out the links at the link. She never did anything to hurt our country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us.. except condemn the men who fought for us then as purposefully attacking civilians, and the men who returned from communist POW camps as "hypocrites and liars".

Please, please whine some more about how businesses decline to peddle your wares because it's been "so long now, and that's all in the past" Jane.

I could respect her (perhaps, ok I'm lyin) if she denounced it. I'll be damned if I'll feel an ounce of pity over her stupid ass "pretending it never happened".

It happened.

The hell with her and her "oh this isn't fair".

via Monty, who does a damned good impression of J-Dog Stalin communicating in code on an Enigma machine, if I do say so myself (see the comments).

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:56 PM | Comments (271)
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Charles Krauthammer criticizes Obama's ridiculous "I'm above the political fray" act and lays out his plan for dealing with the White House. He say that Republicans should call the president on the August 2nd bluff by passing a clean bill with spending cuts and a modest, short term increase in the debt limit, and then send that bill to the president and Democrats in the Senate, daring them to put the country in default.

Obama is angling for a bigger deal to get the budget issues past the election.

I would add that the Republicans need something similar to Bill Clinton's quick response team to deal with Obama's blizzard of lies. He gets away with pointing his finger and saying "they're ideologues, and I'm not" too often. He does this over and over. And, like Krauthammer says, if you just started paying attention to the debate, it would appear that Obama is indeed above the fray, dealing with recalcitrant children. In reality, he's the biggest brat in the room. Every time the president does that, someone--the designated responder--should mug every reporter with a microphone and make light of the fact the president doesn't consider himself an ideologue and part of the problem.

Video below the fold. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:53 AM | Comments (393)
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