Ask Yourself These Two Questions Before You Keep Something ‘Just in Case’
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Use the 20/20 rule to figure out what you really need to keep.
1 hour ago
the many moods of mccain i guess my take on the debate last night was totally off?
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US Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) reacts to almost heading the wrong way off the stage after shaking hands with Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) at the conclusion of the final presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 15, 2008. By Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg's focus group were "audibly snickering" at John McCain's grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to "Joe the Plumber."
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/10/undecideds_laughing_at_not_wit.html
the day after the debate ads 1 mccan and 1 obama
Labels:
mccain,
obama,
politics,
sarah palin,
video
which do you find more powerful?
mccain:
obama:
Madonna and Guy Ritchie officially announce their divorce
Labels:
pop culture
After countless denials of domestic trouble, Madonna and Guy Ritchie announced Wednesday they are divorcing after nearly eight years of marriage. The couple's announcement brings to an end a showbiz union that spanned the Atlantic and dominated the gossip columns.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081015/D93R42D80.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4951833.ece
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1816131.ece
The couple are said to be just days away from finalising their split.
And Guy has told lawyers he wants “not one penny” of her estimated £300million fortune.
We can reveal that Madonna launched divorce proceedings against Guy after levelling a series of accusations against him — portraying him as a cruel and selfish husband.
The superstar singer told pals she had decided to end her seven-year marriage to film director Guy, 40, because he:
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REFUSED to dip into his own £30million fortune to pay for their lifestyle — while sponging off her massive wealth;
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IGNORED her pleas to spend more time in New York and shunned her love of the Kabbalah faith;
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FAILED to support her emotionally over child adoption plans, and;
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MOANED about her being in the limelight as his career disappeared.
Madonna, 50, was also furious about Guy’s involvement in a London pub he bought with her and pals — telling friends that he put it before his family.
They have a son Rocco, eight, and an adopted boy David Banda, two — and she has daughter Lourdes, 12, by dancer Carlos Leon.
But Guy hit back — branding Madonna a control freak obsessed with a “weird religion”.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1816131.ece
Seems others do not think mccain gave as good a performance as i did
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just look pretty much anywhere on the web. still - i thought he did much better than previously - even tho i considered it a tie. and a tie is probably not enough to take away obama's 8-13 percentage point lead in the polls - depending on which poll you like.
DEBATE REACTION: Arianna Huffington: McCain's Losing Strategy: Double Down On The Anger... Nora Ephron: McCain Seemed Off His Meds... Bob Shrum: Put McCain Out Of His Misery... Marty Kaplan: The Relentless Close-Ups Of McCain Were Cruel... Ari Melber: McCain's Entire Offensive Muddled... David Gergen: McCain "An Exercise In Anger Management... He Brought Back Memories Of Bob Dole In 1996"... NYT: McCain Seemed "Angry And Desperate"...
Ambinder: "We Saw A McXplosion"... Josh Marshall: McCain Didn't Land "Any Solid Punches"
Who is Joe the Plumber? He is Sam the guy who sometimes does plumbing...
Labels:
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*UPDATES:
"Joe the plumber" is:
not a licenced plumber
not named Joe
makes less than 250,000 dollars per year so he would get a tax cut under obama
is a registered republican
and owes back taxes
the median salary of an American plumber? - ($37,514)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/15/joe-the-plumber-speaks-it_n_135065.html
He is Joe Wurzelbacher, an Ohio man looking to buy a plumbing business who came to symbolize the notion of "spreading the wealth" in Wednesday night's third and final presidential debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
Earlier this week, when Wurzelbacher got a chance to speak with Obama when the candidate visited Toledo, he told Obama that his tax plan would keep him from buying the business that currently employs him.
Sensing an opening in the debate, McCain cited that exchange when the candidates were asked to explain why their economic plans are better than their opponent's. McCain said Obama's plan would stop entrepreneurs from investing in new small businesses and keep existing ones from growing.
"Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes," McCain challenged Obama.
"You were going to put him in a higher tax bracket which was going to increase his taxes, which was going to cause him not to be able to employ people, which Joe was trying to realize the American dream," McCain said.
McCain then looked directly into the TV camera and said: "Joe, I want to tell you, I'll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and I'll keep your taxes low and I'll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees. And I will not stand for a tax increase on small business income."
Obama denied that was true.
the rest is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/15/joe-the-plumber-speaks-it_n_135065.html
i made some additions to the flip flop story - mostly links to videos of what i described - no... not the shower scene but interesting none the less
to paraphrase Britney - what was i f-in thinking?"
you can look back at the flip flop story and click on the links as they appear at their relevant spots in the story or you can just watch the vids by these links:
the first one gets embedded because guess what - THE FAMOUS FLIP FLOPS SHOW UP IN THE ACTUAL VIDEO - no running involved tho - (20 second in very briefly and again at 40)!
world's fastest haircut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCY8hoEmwew&feature=related
a somewhat romanticised version of the whole ordeal but pretty bad none the less. it is camp pendelton, i can tell by the architecture. there are only two places for marine corp basic training, parris island for everyone east of the Mississippi and camp pendelton for everyone west of it. which means i had my fair share of deep southern accents while i was on parris island needless to say.
a sort of why i left - but it doesn't really explain it - i left because it was all lies - a practice in accepting lies unquestioningly - plus i had an out. but this sort of shows a little bit the attitude of what goes wrong there sometimes. i actually don't have that much sympathy for the guy in question because if it includes the word MARINE it probably involves WATER - but whatever. i left more on account of the sort of mind fucks that one can get a tiny tiny taste of in the head video....
how to go to the head (bathroom) later in training:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQXxH4p2dpI&feature=related
an example of exercises in ridiculousness - note how he tells them to put in one spot and then yells at them for doing it and makes them put it in another spot. repeat this exercise over an over again. take your clothes on and off several hundred times a week. run but don't run. yell but don't yell. look me in the eye boy - but - why you eyeballin me boy? after weeks of these subtle types of maneuvers it is intended to make you unquestioning. unquestioning because the marines are the ones who storm the beaches - and when they say run onto the beach they do not have a second to waste on your questioning whether that makes sense or not.
ok - so i complained. however, for every marine that finished boot camp i have the utmost respect. and i actually respect the marines more than the other branches. they existed BEFORE the united states (they were formed November 10 1775 in Philadelphia at tun tavern.) more than one (more than 2!) marines have told me that if the USA ever went into a dictatorship that the marines would be the branch that would resist and restore the republic. one reason this seems reasonable (besides them pre-dating the republic) is that every year the marines send back to the federal government a portion of the budget allotted to them. think about it. it's a very subtle f u.
so having complained, i would like to show a little bit of what no one else but the marines are capable of producing. and so i present you with several silent drill team vids - enjoy the men in white gloves doing intricate baton twirling while giving off more attitude than any drag queen in NYC could ever muster - fast forward to 1:20 to get to the drill corp action. men in white gloves with ultimate dramatic attitudes ... and why are gays not allowed in the military again?:
plus these that are really fun - and no the guys aren't necessarily gay - come on! but i have the highest respect for the level of precision and discipline that they have achieved:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y90UPLLo6nY
and finally some good old marine corp marching cadences:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y90UPLLo6nY
I'm sorry but note the men in flip flops and short shorts when the second cadence starts. come on, don't tell me these folks who have every subtle psychological trick in the universe aren't somehow using same sex bonding to their advantage?
i fully expect at least one terrible comment from some homo-phobe so if you think you will worry me by insulting me or threatening me, been there and done that...
ley-o ley-o ley-o riagh!
oh and while i'm at it - here is the history of the famous sword that marines get - it shows up in allot of usmc tv commercials:
from wikipedia:Marine Corps lore states that a sword of this type was presented to Marine First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon by the Turkish viceroy, Prince Hamet, on December 8, 1804, during the First Barbary War, as a gesture of respect and praise for attempting to return the prince to his throne. Upon his return to the United States, the state of Virginia presented hi
m with a silver-hilted sword featuring an eaglehead hilt and a curved blade modeled after the original Mameluke sword given him by Hamet. Its blade is inscribed with his name and a commemoration of the Battle of Tripoli Harbor.[1]
Perhaps due to the Marines' distinguished record during this campaign, including the capture of the Tripolitan city of Derna after a long and dangerous desert march, Marine Corps Commandant Archibald Henderson adopted the Mameluke sword in 1825 for wear by Marine officers.
mccain's best performance so far but is it too little too late?
Labels:
mccain,
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I did a write-up after the first debate. I skipped the second and let the Saturday night live video present my observations - but this last debate I took notes!
the first thing I noticed right of the bat was that there was a much friendlier and human style greeting, body language, words, and facial expressions than the last two debates.
I liked the format and the seating arrangement and the moderator much better than the last two. prefer the ability for them to have more than one response and rebuttal - more like a conversation. much better questions, more detailed and a bit harder to answer than some of the fluff questions from the other debates. moderator feels more confident speaking up. I like that they show both candidates faces as the answers are given.
as for the dial for the undecided to show their approval or disapproval (yes I watched on cnn all three debates) - are there really THAT many truly undecided folks out there at this point? and if they are undecided why? are they simply uninformed because they haven't thought about the upcoming election yet? and if that is the case do their reactions matter all that much to us at home?
repeat of the tax argument from every other debate. obama = taxes on exxon and corporations and cuts for the other 95% of the country. mccain = tax cuts for businesses will encourage business and boost the economy. heard this before in the other debates. in fact heard this since 1980. speaking of which mccain does try to add the classic class warfare response.
obama emphasizing future - future business owners, future technologies and future trade issues thru long term education etc.
mcain keeps saying nuclear - which obama does not oppose. obama formerly did oppose offshore drilling increases but re-evaluated and changed his mind.
spending freeze still baffles me.
tax increases for the rich and corporations during a depression is unheard of AND spending freeze is also unheard of - Hoover increased taxes and Roosevelt increased spending (on a lot of cool projects mind you - Tennessee valley river authority - forestation, dust bowl recovery efforts, they weren't all in vain. there are places you can drive around today where you can see all the old giant trees in a forest all lined up in neat little rows, thanks to the increased spending. however - I don't think that it IS an either or situation. reduce inefficiency and waste in the government and collect that 10-20 billion PER MONTH we are spending for Iraq and there goes most if not all of the budget deficit.
senator mccain's face looks different - tanner and tighter?. but also much better for mcain for them to be seated close to each other rather than standing facing the audience (1st debate mccain made no eye contact with obama and the town hall where mcain seemed to wander about too much. mcain is looking at obama and the camera and the moderator much more than in the past debates and seems much more comfortable this time. obama continues to make more face to face eye contact with both mccain and the moderator. when mcain is talking obama looks and listens to mccain. when the moderator is speaking obama looks at the moderator. when obama answers he looks at the camera. still struck by the fact that mcain is doing much better than the last two times. mccain is much more alert and connected to the debate - as evidenced by his correcting the moderators about climate control (air conditioning) and climate change. maybe others will say it was inappropriate but it was a good catch I think.
"if you wanted to run against bush you should have run 4 years ago" good one, good one.
dial not responding to obama as well as it did in the past two debates
mcain did oppose the republican party on a lot of issues - but that is mostly the old mcain not the new mccain we have seen in the last 8 years after he lost to bush, precisely for that very fact - that he opposed his own party.
mccain wanted 10 debates? I'm tired already after 3!
it is fair to question why palin and mccain did not speak up when people at their rallies called out terrorist and kill him. I think that the video from those events have hurt mccain and palin allot and if they would have spoken out they could have taken the moral high ground
I'm glad ayers came up. I think obama needs to explain that - and needs to explain who else has "palled around" with ayers. annenberg and other republicans.
and how about the palins and their associations with the anti American Alaska independence party. that would have been a great follow up question.
I have never heard the word "scranton" more in my life than in the last two months - actually ever since clinton talked about learning to shoot a gun up there in the primaries. why is scranton some sort of "perfect America"? I've been to scranton when I was in the monastery up that way, I'm sorry, it sucks. AND I'm tired of them throwing out special needs children as much as I am tired of them throwing out the word scranton.
I think allot of people would have liked to see Iraq divided into three countries - sunni shia and kurdish - and then us get the heck out. not sure mccain scored any real points on that one.
I do like mccain's point that there is a difference between Canadian oil, Venezuelan oil, and Saudi oil.
my sexism in paying more attention to the male dial thingy much more than the female one. I think this is due to three factors - females are stereotypical "supposed" to be democrats. 2 the male dial moves up and down much less. 3 - my own simple sexism.
another observation about the dial - mcain gets good responses with shorter answers. the more he talks he tends to droop off. obama initially takes a dip many of the times when he starts to speak but the longer he speaks the higher his dials go - topping out many times when he finishes his longest answers.
"do you support controlling health care costs?" -this is more like the older debate's questions - a softball -- both candidates HAVE to say yes, and who wouldn't?
obama will cut your families per-year health care PREMIUM by 2500 dollars? that seems a bit of hyperbole. prevention and better efficiency is the key to being able to extend health care to all Americans - which I have finally decided is a right - and if it isn't - it should be. something that could be brought up is that medicine continues to develop scientifically at a very rapid pace - making cancer and aids and genetically inherited diseases much cheaper and easier to deal with so science and development - especially genetic - will end up lowering long term costs.
the uninsured who go to the emergency room ARE the reason your aspirin costs 20 dollars at the hospital. I was uninsured and I had to go the charity care route two times in the last five years. between the two of those hospitalizations the cost was probably 4 or 5 thousand dollars in the end between the two. charity care covered most of that - which means nothing other than the cost gets shifted to everybody else who has insurance. and the rest that was not able to be covered by charity care. that went onto my bankruptcy - which means that - in the end it got routed back to the insured as well. I cant get my tooth fixed or run to the doctor when I have diarrhea for a week or whatever - but the hospital cannot legally turn you away in an emergency. therefore - the currently insured pay higher premiums because I had NO insurance. and I am not an anomaly. I represent a huge percentage of the American population.
O. lord - roe-vs-wade, I think people are so tired of this issue - even though it is such an emotional issue - I think the passions on both sides are fading. again - scranton, special needs, abortion. 30 plus years of this issue - I am tired of it being THE pro-life issue - some are pro-life before you exit the womb but could care less about your life after you exit the womb. I don't honestly believe that ANYONE is pro abortion. the question is how do you best minimize abortions? abortions took place well before roe V. wade, even back to the times of the early roman empire abortions were performed. and they would continue to be performed if roe V. wade were overturned. what, in the end, will make the number of abortions lowest? I think reasonable sex education and the availability of contraceptives makes abortion much less likely.
did obama really need to segue from abortion into equal pay? yes they are "women's" issues - but that wasn't really the answer to the question.
from everything I have read this is where the majority of Americans have settled on the abortion question - America wants a time limit on abortions and do not support partial birth abortions, and they also want an exception for the life of the mother, rape and incest. and both extremes tend to ignore what the American people seem to have already decided.
I totally lost interest in the education debate. I must admit.
closing statements. mccain tries to distance himself from the republican party. wants to freeze spending but also simultaneously expand all sorts of programs (special needs kids, education, buy up mortgages?) otherwise a very good wrap up speech!
obama - change. and he is the stronger change candidate since he is not of the party that has run Washington the last 8 years - and which only 10 % think have us on the right track at present. mccain has tried to co-opt that slogan and I don't think it flies as well for him. but obamas ending speech was rather weak.
end analysis - mcain went back towards the old mcain people liked in 2000, he was much more comfortable and much more eloquent than in the last two debates. I think he may have decided to stop listening to all of his advisers and just be himself and it worked well. everyone is much more huggy-love this time around. mccain did better but I would still call this a tie. perhaps mcain will regain a couple of the points he lost over the course of the last debate but again, I think by this point most folks have already made up their minds and if that is true than obama will do what he did to the clintons, he will start out slow and then in the end cruise past them and take the prize. we shall see November 4th.
going to type this up now and transfer it to the blog - THEN I'm gonna go see what everyone else thot and whether I'm in touch or completely out of touch.
matty
http://palinaspresident.com/
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http://palinaspresident.com/
move your mouse around and explore, click on the objects in the oval office of the future?
Mickey Mouse and ACORN
You know things are bad for John McCain in Florida when even Mickey Mouse is registering to vote against him. That application was rejected, but has provided conservatives a casus belli in their war against ACORN, the community organization.
the rest is here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/#cheatrow_170
Christopher Buckley has left the National Review
Conservative author Christopher Buckley has left the National Review (the magazine founded by his father William F. Buckley) in the wake of his publishing an endorsement entitled "Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama":
Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted--rather briskly!--by Rich Lowry, NR's editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.
So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it's a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.
While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of "conservative" government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, “Cancel my subscription,” I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book... Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me.
some funny tv commercials
seeking female opinions on britney's new video "womanizer"
Labels:
sexy,
stereotype,
video
is there something self-contradictory about the messages in this video vis-a-vis her hyper sexualized behaviour and her complaints against being "womanized"? for instance - she sits on a photocopier and makes a copy of her bare bottom and then purposefully shows it to the man and then punches him for looking at it. hmmmm. i'd prefer a female write something on the subject rather than me. is gloria steinem rolling over - in her - bed? or is this a positive pro body pro female message?
barack's catholic bishop
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mccain,
obama,
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spirit,
stereotype
Of course I believe that abortion is wrong, that it’s killing innocent life. I also believe, however, that those who are against abortion should be consistent.
If my choice is between a person who makes room for abortion, but who is really pro-life in terms of justice in the world, peace in the world, I will prefer him to somebody who doesn’t support abortion but who is driving millions of people in the world to death,” Onaiyekan said.
It’s a whole package, and you never get a politician who will please you in everything. You always have to pick and choose.
- Bishop Onaiyekan, widely seen as a spokesperson for Catholicism in Africa.
there is no such thing as a liberal pro-abortion muslim religious fundamentalist
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...and i think this is part of why the McCain campaign continues to flounder - they are trying to float two simultaneous messages that are, at their core, self contradictory. They would have done better to pick one or the other basis for their attacks.
Instead they have switched messages all over the place: if they emphasize reverend wright then they portray Obama as a member of a radical christian church. However, if they emphasize abortion or the 60's hippy Ayers then they float the "most liberal member of congress ever" approach, and finally if they repeat "Hussein, Hussein, Hussein" at every opportunity then they have to completely reverse gears and argue that he is a religious fundamentalist Muslim terrorist who would have all American women wearing burkas. Anyone who is even mildly informed in the year 2008 realizes that burkas and abortion are usually mutually exclusive, to say the least.
In the end, these sort of mixed messages just end up adding to many swing-voter's general sense that there is something disorganized and muddled about the republican message this year.
Via Eric Martin, the problem with the GOP's anti-Obama message:
...once you’ve made a narrative choice, you do have to stick with it - you can’t just keep bouncing around, or people become confused. If you are telling the story of a scary vampire, you can’t decide in chapter 2 that he’s also 500 feet tall and radioactive and bent on destroying Tokyo, in chapter 3 that he is actually a giant man-eating shark, and in chapter 4 that he is all this and a super-terrorist trying to plant a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. All of these things are, indeed, scary, but taken together they add up to a muddle.
This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense. It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960’s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined.
environmentalist video - FAIL!
"what is oozing out of our ground that makes rainbows?"
"this wasn't happening 20 years ago..."
where was this woman 20 years ago? i was 16 in 1988 and i remember being 6 in 1978 and playing with the hose and making rainbows. where do these people come from?
60 Minutes: FBI Wiseguy Fooled The Mob
Labels:
stereotype,
video
"Cuban-American Is Only Second FBI Agent In History To Be Offered Mafia Membership"
if you are interested in acting, crime, the mafia, things italiann north jersey, new york etc, then this is actually a kinda interesting interview on 60 minutes with the guy - all 390 pounds of him - :
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/09/60minutes/main4512252.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4512252
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