February 2010 Archives

Updated for a friend's request:  Gracie and I attended the Robert Burns Dinner last night in Houston.  It is the 5th largest event of its kind in the world, and great time of tippling single malts, celebrating the Haggis and baudy poetry in honor of the Bard.The world famous St. Thomas Pipe Band performed for the kilted crowd.  Here's a little sample I shot with my iPhone: Ellisland, near Dumfries, 18th May, 1789 Fair the...

This appeared on CNN's Crossfire in 2004. Not much seems to have changed. We're still grossly partisan as a nation (or at least the politicians are), and the media are still hacks."I'm not your monkey" ... Jon Stewart, I love you.As you know, CNN cancelled Crossfire in January of 2005 -- more info in an interesting follow-up piece here: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/01/4509.ars" ... most major media outlets, have a long way to go before the thinking public truly respects...

President Obama, in essentially a solo performance, took on the entire Republican leadership yesterday for almost 7 hours.  I was able to watch much of it, and coverage of the times that I missed.  What struck me was his depth of knowledge, not only of the pending health care reform bills, but also the insurance and health care delivery industries.  After over a year of posturing, obfuscation, distortion, and obstruction by the Republicans, it was...

A couple of items of interest from Afghanistan. 1) President Karzai's latest power grab: "...a presidential decree to take total control of the country's electoral watchdog commission. Yes, that is the same commission that exposed widespread fraud in the 2009 vote...The Electoral Complaints Commission adjudicates violations and will play an important role in the September vote for a new Parliament. By law, it has five members: three non-Afghans appointed by the United Nations and two...

Paul Hipp has created a youTube sensation singing the truth about health care...the United States has the highest cost per capita and ranks 37th among the developed nations in health care.  Presented to you without further comment:...

Anyone who is paying the slightest bit of attention is acutely aware that the wheels of government have ground to a halt.  The Republicans, who have gone all-in against every American in an attempt to cause President Obama to fail, have targeted the November elections for the near-term win.  There number one goal, of course, is to make Obama a one-term president, and this is the first step.  As a tactic in this strategy, they...

I realize I often times come off as sounding uncaring. Maybe it is a bit of the old-school in terms of education coming out. You can't help but listen to dinner conversation about work growing up without being affected. So, sometimes I come off as callous and maybe even a bit conservative. It's funny, I catch it from both ends. That's life in the middle I guess. However, today I wanted to talk about something...

Republican Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall claims that disabled children are God's punishment on women who aborted their first pregnancy.   Yeah, he really did. "The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically," he said. "Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children." "In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was...

In the latest news from the war in Vietnam Afghanistan, General Westmoreland's McChrystal's strategy of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese Afghani people took a hit over the weekend as another 33 civilians, including women and children, were blown away by an "errant airstrike". General Westmoreland McChrystal immediately issued an apology to President Nguyen Van Thieu Hamid Karzai."One day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai made an impassioned plea for American-led forces to do...

In an entertaining exchange this weekend, Lee Fang of Think Progress ambushed ambush reporter Griff Jenkins at CPAC in Washington.  You'll recall that Griff has made quite a name for himself ambushing O'Reilly and Fox Noise enemies in their front yards and parking lots peppering them with questions and then selectively editing the result to fit their narrative.  Here's the exchange:Griff certainly doesn't like having done to him exactly what he does to others on...