Sarah Palin, the intellectual leader of the TeaBag WingNut Republican party, uses a new high-tech tool to prompt her memory while speaking and answering questions:
Her palm. Really.
More below the fold, including pics and video.
Policy and Politics | tagged Sarah Palin I stumbled across this while doing research on something else, and just find it so amazingly ironic that I decided to share. Think about the mortgage and banking crisis of the past eighteen months, and one of the major players, and then check out this story:
Fannie Mae Opposes Mortgage Legislation
Policy and Politics | tagged Banks, Fannie Mae Markos (of Daily Kos fame) is writing a new book and wanted to find out if Republicans actually believed some of the things that Dems accuse them of, or if we were just believing our own poorly-drawn caricatures. So, he commissioned a poll of over 2,000 self-identified Republicans. The results are actually pretty startling.
Policy and Politics | tagged Poll, Republicans Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-Maryland) has introduced a Constitutional amendment to undo the democracy-destroying SCOTUS ruling that corporations have the same free-speech rights as people. John Conyers has co-sponsored the bill, and it is beginning to build some buzz. It's endorsed by the groups Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance.
You can visit the web site here, where you can view the amendment and sign the accompanying resolution. You can also help spread the word, and even give money to support this important step to preserving democracy. If you want to know more first, make the jump to view the video:
Policy and Politics | tagged Election Finance, SCOTUS In fact, it's way past time. Don't Ask Don't Tell was a silly policy when it was implemented, and is even sillier now. You could make the argument that it was a necessary interim step, given the acceptance of gays then versus now, but that moment has passed. It's time to realize that one's sexual orientation -- or preferences, for that matter -- don't have much to do with your ability to aim a gun, run a radio, or lead troops in combat.
Looks like the military is finally catching up to the rest of us:
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 7:30AM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged DADT, Gays, Military 
Being a Vol fan, I naturally cheer against all things Florida. The animosity is good-natured -- this is sports, people -- but still, a win over Florida is always extra-special. And for years, I've joined Vol fans in calling Billy Donovan, the Florida men's basketball coach, the wonderfully appropriate sobriquet of "Eddie Munster." If you've seen pictures of both gentlemen, you'll immediately see why.
After the events of this past weekend, I have sworn that off. When it comes to Billy Donovan, it's ixnay on the unstermay stuff. In fact, I have a new respect for Mr. Donovan. Make the jump to see why.
Sports | tagged Basketball, UT I'll post something of my own later on, but I wanted to recommend a diary on Daily Kos that I think perfectly sums up the Obama we have seen this week, as well as the reaction to him on the left. Give it a read:
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 10:58AM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged Moderate, Obama I've long been a weather addict. When I was about 10 my parents got me a home weather station, and I predicted the weather to our family all that summer. Got pretty good at it, too ... though predicting summer weather is pretty easy in Knoxville.
It's winter weather in The Ville that is a real challenge, and John Belski does it as well as anyone. So, I was excited to stumble across his blog last year. It's an excellent resource if you like knowing the behind-the-scenes info -- he lays out the various models and explains his thinking on the forecast in clear, understandable prose. Plus, there are a number of regular commenters that keep things lively; some are amateur weather people like me, so they like to debate and discuss the possibilities. All in all a great site to visit. Make the jump for the URL and another couple of weather sites to know about.
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 10:30AM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Life in General | tagged Weather For any Obama haters who stumble across this blog -- before you quickly run back to Red State, chew on this:
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 9:56PM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged Obama, SOTU Excited about this new vision for America! Catch the new ad below:
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 9:39PM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged SCOTUS, Snark Being the total geek that I am, I streamed the SOTU online while simultaneously following the text at Daily Kos and working remotely on something for the office. And I have to say, overall I was impressed
with the speech. Good delivery (of course), good balance between humility and assertiveness, and a number of solid, specific proposals for action. So here's my word to President Obama:
Hey Prez -- great speech. Now listen to Larry.
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 12:30PM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged Obama, SOTU I've never held elective office (not counting student senate in college), but I could do better than this. Who presents a budget that includes an unapproved revenue stream? That's just irresponsible. It's playing at governing, farting around with the future.
Here's a truism that this governor apparently hasn't learned:
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Policy and Politics | tagged Beshear Lots of punditry going on about the Repub win in Mass as well as the inability to pass health care and the general animosity toward government in general and Obama and the national Dems in particular. Some are trying to say that the problem is that Obama and the Dems are too liberal for the country. Here's my take, and many polls are backing this up:
The problem is that Obama and the Dems have not been liberal enough.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 7:22AM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged Democrats, Obama Write the date down: January 21, 2010. You'll want to be able to tell your grandkids, "Yep, I was alive then. Sure was. I wasn't paying a lot of attention -- none of us were, really; the health care fight and basketball season got all the press. But now we know -- that was the day that democracy began dying."
Yes, on this date, in one of the worst decisions since Dred Scott, the Supreme Court of the United States officially helped our democracy commit suicide. Not the quick suicide of a coup or a surrender to a foreign power; no, more like the long, slow suicide of gradually increased doses of a powerful drug. But suicide, nonetheless.
Policy and Politics | tagged Election Finance, SCOTUS Had to pass this on:
Recently, Fox News pushed a Daily Mail story about global warming that was full of falsehoods, half-facts, and bad science. The title? "Could we be in for 30 years of global cooling?" The expert it was supposedly based on? Dr. Mojib Latif of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Except ... it wasn't true. Dr. Latif never said the things attributed to them, and he certainly isn't a climate-change denier. In fact, he states repeatedly that rapid warming is all-but-inevitable over the next two decades.
Here's the quote, though, that just perfectly captures Fox News:
He had me reread the quotes attributed to him a number of times, asking twice, “those are direct quotes?” After I did, he said to me: “I don’t know what to do. They just make these things up.”
Pretty dead-on accurate, don't you think? In fact, I think that would make a great tagline for the national Fox News Network:
Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 3:00AM | Post a Comment | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article Policy and Politics | tagged Climate Change, Fox, Journalism 