Wind Farm

1. National Review (pro-GOP publication) – Immigration, Proving Not a Silver Bullet For the GOPNot a great Election Day for Republicans yesterday. We can argue about how big illegal immigration will play in next year’s elections nationwide, but based on yesterday, it seems clear the issue won’t be a silver bullet for Republicans. The Washington Post looks at the muted response from Northern Virginia voters, and McCain man Patrick Hynes sounds a cautionary note for the GOP.

2. BloombergThe dollar dropped to the lowest against a basket of six major currencies yesterday after Chinese officials signaled plans to diversify the nation’s $1.43 trillion of foreign exchange reserves.

3. Boondad – Today’s MarketsWhy are gaps down bad? To Quote Bulkowski from Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns, “…in both cases [of upward and lower gaps] some type of exuberance is driving the stock to create a gap (page 241).” In other words, there is a strong emotional reason for the change. It’s safe to say that a downward gap is a sign of extreme concern. When there are three gaps on a single day, it’s s sign of really extreme concern.

chartSPY

Olbermann on Torture

A Special Comment on torture:

Theocracy Now!

Max Blumenthal at the Value Voters Summit 2007 (at the end they honor James Dobson)

The Dollar continues to slide

I got this from the free preview section of the Wallstreet journal

Ben Bernanke is a married man. But if he weren’t, there’s at least one woman who wouldn’t want anything to do with the Federal Reserve Chairman’s policy charms: Gisele Bundchen. The Brazilian supermodel is reportedly now insisting that she be paid in a currency other than the U.S. dollar.

“Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros …

From the little bit offered it sounds like the Wallstreet Journal is trying to lay the blame for the falling dollar at the feet of the federal reserve chairman, the Dollar was falling long before he was appointed, in fact it seemed like the fall of the Dollar may have started about the same time that conservatives took over the whitehouse.  Some of the hate America crowd, like the guy here,have pointed out that soon Americans will be sneaking into Canada so that they can send Canadian Dollars home to the US.  I wonder if part of the reason certan people are so against mexican immigrants is that they know soon they will be competing for the same jobs in Canada.  A better solution to the xenophobia in some circles might be to get the US off its current path to third world obscurity.  

Colbert Drops Out

It took a few days, but I finally ran into the perfect piece to describe the Stephen Colbert for President phenomenon.

Think of political press corps as that fat kid from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, Augustus Gloop. For too many journalists, the lure of the Colbert candidacy is akin to Wonka’s river of chocolate, the one that lured the candy-loving Gloop into the deep end and got him stuck inside the tubes. The press already seems to do everything it can to avoid covering campaign substance. Instead, it pursues trivia such as haircuts, and laughs, and cleavage, and parking tickets, and head movements, and marital sleeping habits, and chiseled good looks, and cats, and accents. It’s clear that the allure of a saccharine story like Colbert’s running gag is simply too tempting.

That’s because the press has decided to cover presidential candidates as celebrities, as personalities. This media phenomenon became enshrined during the 2000 contest, when the press announced that presidential campaigns were no longer about how candidates might function as presidents; what they might actually do as commander in chief. Instead, campaigns were about personalities — which candidate was fun to be around and which one was authentic. The approach is thriving today. Look at the latest research findings from the campaign trail: “Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election,” according to Editor & Publisher magazine. “And just one percent of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance.”

Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman is the host of this show, which can be seen and heard by going to the Democracy Now! website. Without fail, where the mainstream media fails to even attempt digging into a story, this show right here will make up the difference. What I like most is how useable the site is, so when I get into a certain story I can easily search and if sometime in the past an interview pertaining to it took place, I can always have the transcript and audio file downloaded to my PC within minutes.

I’ve read two of her books, which at least one of she co-wrote with her brother. I highly recommend both of them:

STATIC: GOVERNMENT LIARS, MEDIA CHEERLEADERS, AND THE PEOPLE WHO FIGHT BACK

The Exception to the Rulers : Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them

What got me thinking about Democracy Now! lately, has been this stupified glop glop in the press on scandals and Constitution-shredding that is packaged as something new, when in fact it is anything but. I’ll post a clip tomorrow that will provide a perfect example, having to do with Donald Rumsfeld’s management philosophy. He’d shoot off 60 or so “snowflakes” around the Pentagon every day, basically mucking up the works, as these things wouldn’t even cover something actionable, but could represent more of what was going on inside the old bastard’s head on a given day. As if he were having a debate with himself over the ins and outs of defending a personal failure by spreading out the misery far and wide, and trying out his political swirms on the department as a whole.

I got aggrivated mostly because this story was actually covered in Bob Woodward’s ‘State of Denial’ over a year ago. Anyone could read that book and see Rumsfeld for what he is, the infighter with little competence to lean on when it came to managing the defense department. Though for me it’s the series of books that have come out since then, mostly relying on released documents and interviews with people who wouldn’t have spoken up sooner, which go much further than a couple of snowflakes telling us what we already knew.

Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal. By the standard set by our own laws and certainly the standard set by international law, he should find himself on trial at some point. Piecing a belief like this one together is something that takes place over a stretch of time, with hundreds of thousands of words read, and once in a while the crucial interview with someone in the know on a show like Goodman’s Democracy Now! opens up a doorway. It is a crucial function of our fake democracy, these shows that really focus on finding out the truth. They are few and far between.

The Great Divide

The great divide

Cable News Prank Calls

Since OJ Simpson got away in his white Bronco, there hasn’t been anything positive going on in the realm of 24 hour news. It stupefies America. Therefore, these clips really make me smile.

Captain Jenks pranks CNN

Pranking FoxNews on Michael Jackson Story

Read More

All time worst wingnut post

Kevin Drum asks the important question, what is the all time worst wingnut post.  Michelle Malkin dressed as a cheerleader gets my vote but Ann Althouses obseesion with with Jessicas Valentes breasts is a close second.

You can vote here

BCS Insanity 2007

Hoping not to jinx anything, I’m now looking forward to what it will take for BC to earn a shot in the national title game. Clearly, they have to win out, which means winning games in Death Valley (Clemson) and Maryland. The Clemson game is going to be the most ominous, as we’ve beaten them twice in a row. An ACC title game would be vs. either Virginia or Virginia Tech.

The comeback win last Thursday taught me a great life lesson. When you’re recording one game on the DVR and watching another, make sure to schedule the box to record the program that comes on after the game as well. Throughout the night I was watching the recording of that game during commercials in the World Series, but since I had failed to record the program that came on after the BC-VT game, I was only able to watch up until halfway through the 4th quarter. Running to the computer after finding this out, I honestly figured they’d lost, but had hoped that they hadn’t been shutout. It turns out I missed the greatest comeback in the team’s history.

BCS Sucks Ass

Heading into this week, I’m wondering how many years it will take before the Big 10, Pac 10 and Big East finally start having conference championship games. If SEC, ACC and Big 12 teams have to do it, then the other three conferences shouldn’t be getting over. That said, if Arizona St. makes it through these last four games undefeated, how can Ohio St. be considered more worthy of a slot in the title game? Hypothetically, if Kansas-BC-OhioSt-ArizonaSt all win out, the title game could be BC vs. Ohio St, which appears on its face to be very very very unfair. Likewise, if one of those four teams loses a game and LSU wins out, how can anyone pretend that making it out of the SEC with one loss is somehow less impressive than making it out of the Big 10 undefeated, never having to play a conference championship game?

I’m anticipating that if BC holds onto the #2 ranking and earns a shot at the title, there will be a #3 team that most of the college football world considers more worthy, and it will suck having to listen to it for a full month prior to New Years. The NCAA has to be hoping that there are only two undefeated teams at the end (sorry Hawaii, even though Boise St. beat Okahoma in a BCS bowl game to go undefeated last year, and in 2004 Utah decimated just about every team it played, “your kind” are second-class citizens.) I think it will most likely work out to something like 2004, when USC and Oklahoma played in the title game, while Auburn went undefeated and had to take a back seat. I think it’s wrong to exclude ANY SEC team that goes undefeated in the title game.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to Arizona St-Oregon in a couple hours, and the Seminoles are in Chestnut Hill tonight. The Celtics played defense last night. Peyton is in for a long, painful Sunday.   Read More

Political Clips

The Politics of Parsing

The Politics of Douchebagery

Rudy in a nutshell

Joe Biden sums it up perfectly:

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