My very favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon (and my second favorite)

And one of the best wartime ones -



And the one that gives me my identity:

Bill Moyers, peaceful afternoons and distraction

A day alone at the house. I've listened to two of Keith Olbermann's recent broadcasts, and I've now listened to four of Bill Moyers' broadcasts - only another two to go to be fully listened up.

I was putting together bread dough, which I've done hundreds of times over the last 25+ years - and I was listening to the Bill Moyers' broadcast in which he puts on Phil Donahue and the focus of his movie "Body of War," and I was so distracted that I prepared the entire raw dough loaf WITHOUT putting the yeast into it. Never have done that before. What was it that drew my attention so far away?

I'm not sure whether listening to this broadcast does ME any good. I know this information; I've heard about it as it was coming on for years. It's upsetting at a deep level based on my personal world view. "Liberty produces wealth, and wealth squelches liberty."

I was going to wash and wax the car today; the thundershowers interfered with that. Hmph.

Had a terrific conversation with Dina last night about working together more closely in the future. Lots of things in reflection today.

I STILL love this guy..

Bill from Portland Maine writes in today's Cheers and Jeers

Dear Bill: Is there a method to winning a political argument online? S.L., South Bend

Dear S.L.: Try this:

You always You never You should You must You shouldn't You mustn't. Why can't you Why don’t you Why aren't you Why didn’t you How could you? You suck You blow You lie You have no idea. You ignoramus You jerk You Ass You partisan hack. You're lying You're cheating You're distorting You're asking for it. You're out of your mind You’re out of your league You’re out of your tree You're out of your gourd. You’re off your rocker You're off your meds You're off the reservation. You're wrong You're stupid You're ignorant You're mental You're full of shit. You're an automaton You're a bomb-thrower You’re a water carrier You're a Kool Aid drinker You're a hack You're a loser You're a prick. You've got blinders on You've got no sense You've got spittle on your chin You've got your head up your ass. You disgust me You repulse me You disappoint me You make me want to puke. You’re talking in circles You're talking in riddles You’re talking in gibberish You're talking trash You're talking like a two year old. You can go to hell You can kiss my ass You can leave You can take your shit to another blog. I'm warning you I'm telling you I'm advising you I'm this close to troll-rating you. I'm sick of your crap I'm sick of your attitude I'm sick of your comments I'm sick of your emails I'm sick of your purity. Mine's better, smarter, faster, more organized, more effective and more experienced than yours, whatever it is. I say so I know so I was there I heard it from the horse's mouth I saw it on the internet I found it on Wikipedia I have a friend who took a class I got it from Fox News I read a press release from my congressman. Knock it off Cut it out Get a clue Do your homework. Clearly you don’t understand Clearly you don’t listen Clearly you don’t get it Clearly you haven’t tried it Clearly you weren't old enough at the time Clearly you're out of touch Clearly you're running around with the wrong crowd Clearly you want us to lose. One more word One more peep One more comment One more outburst One more syllable and you'll regret it. Don’t give me that attitude Don’t play that card Don’t change the subject Don't act so surprised Don’t be so stupid. Go to hell Go pound sand Go back to your mommy Go screw yourself Go to Little Green Footballs. I'm sick of you I loathe you I hope you get what's coming to you, crybaby.

And then add: "With all due respect." Bingo---you win.

So true, so true

AlterNet publishes the "Bottom 10" list for Geo 43

The 10 most awesomely bad moments of the Bush presidency

It's worth reading, not just as a refresher, but as proof that even the ideologues that these folks are pursuing think that it's all screwed up.

Unintended consequences

What if medical advances, considered to be without flaw, actually had consequences that are uncomfortable and undesirable?

What if the "sub-prime meltdown" was just the beginning?

What if our mess in Iraq had already happened once before, and we, who were unfamiliar with history, were condemned to repeat it?

What if you could avoid paying nearly any credit card or bank fees just by asking nicely?

What if Walnut Bend is my Manderlay?

Without remarks

George Carlin passes, nation mourns. Constitution is equally dead, no one notices.

I was truly shocked when I heard George Carlin had died. Rendered speechless for two or three seconds.

Why isn't it at all a surprise that a.) The constitution of this country is equally dead, or that b.) Barack Obama is fine with that?

Whoever wins in November, we're going to get four more years of the same - platitudes, rising prices, falling wages and government run by and for corporations with the best paid lobbyists.

At least in California, sensibility seems to be reigning to a minor degree.

What do you know about that?

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

For quotes, always check out quotations page.

And, once you've voted, you'll need this training

Okay, they have a few good points

I love Matt Taibbi

And sometimes he writes things that make my jaw hang slack:

McCain's transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an author who inspired him, the candidate -- who once described televangelists of the Jerry Falwell genus as "agents of intolerance" -- put none other than Joel Osteen at the top of his list. "He's inspirational," McCain said.

Standing at the meeting, I didn't write Osteen's name down in my notebook -- apparently because my brain refused on some level to accept that McCain had actually said it. Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion. "God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us," Osteen once wrote. This is the revolting, snake-oil-selling dickhead that John McCain actually chose to pimp as number one on his list of inspirational authors. So much for "go, sell everything you have and give to the poor," and all that other hippie crap from the New Testament.

End to end and edge to edge

Robert and I cooked up this little project a few weeks ago, and only tonight worked on the math. Check us and see if we're right.

So, this required a little research. (edit - and, fortunately, I know a Canadian who helped me with the metric conversion error)

Iraq is 438,317 km² or 438,317,000,000 square centimeters (edited to correctly reflect cubic centimeter calculation)

A dollar bill is 156 mm by 66 mm by .11 mm, or 102.96 square centimeters (edited from 1029.6 centimeters, which I thought looked pretty big...)

We've spent $3,000,000,000 on Iraq according to the Washington Post.

If each of those dollars were laid flat across the land surface of Iraq, they would cover 3,088,800,000,000 square centimeters.

3,088,800,000,000 centimeters divided by 438,317,000,000 centimeters is .7046954601. (edited to correctly show relationship between smaller dollar size and larger Iraq size)

If we'd have just taken the cash, and laid it all end to end and edge to edge, we'd almost have covered the surface area of Iraq with dollar bills. (edited to allow for corrected math.)

Taken another way, the WaPo estimate is considered by many to be low, and is several months old. Pretty soon, we could conceptually have covered the entire country with dollar bills.

Thanks to Wikipedia for providing the measurements of Iraq and the US Dollar, and to Google for its most helpful up and down conversion function, and Excel for being able to take numbers over 100,000,000.

And, thanks to my favorite Canuckistanian, Eric in Vancouver, who provided me with this very helpful conversion:

Ya know D,

After going to bed, I thought of an easier way to calculate this without losing track of erroneous zeroes and to help you with imperial-vs.-metric measurements:

Let's start with 1 square metre. A metre is approximately the size of a yard (39" or so). A metre is 100 cm, so a SQUARE metre (approximate the size of a square yard) is is 100cm x 100cm or 10,000 square (NOT cubic) cm.

A square cm (a little under a half inch squared ) is about the size of a sugar cube.

By your measurements, it would take 103 to cover a dollar bill. Let's round it down slightly to 100, and add the 3% later.

A km (1.6 miles) is by definition 1,000 metres. So a square km is 1,000 x 1,000 metres or 1 million square metres.

So to cover a square km with dollar bills we need 100 (to cover a square metre) X 1 million, or 100 million of 'em.

10 (TEN) square km would therefore take ten hundred million (aka 1,000 million, aka a BILLION) singles to cover it.

Let's stick to 10 (TEN) square km needing a BILLION bills for now:

Iraq is 438,317 square km.

To cover it would therefore take 43, 831 BILLION dollar bills

That's also known as 43.831 TRILLION bills.

(Remember that 3% we rounded up a while ago? Let's take it off now to bring the 43.831 BILLION down to 42.5)

So to cover Iraq in dollar bills would take 42.5 TRILLION of them

At $4.25 Trillion spent, you could cover 1/10 of the country in dollar bills.

E.

Who would best represent you, as our Senator from Texas?

This one?



Or this one?

The real effect of gay marriage

popping corn and popping bubbles

This morning, I went for a walk around the huge KBR complex up the street. I intended to listen to a Bill Moyers podcast (which takes about 45 minutes) and to get some idea of what the heck USED to be on that huge yard. As I was walking along through the mounting waves of heat and temperature, I noticed that I could hardly hear out of my left ear, but could hear great out of my right.

The first thought was that perhaps my headphones were busted. After all, these mini-cables are very tender to internal breakage and shorting. That thought lasted a nano-second, and then I started to reflect that I hold my Treo 700 (tm) to that ear. I put my Bluetooth (tm) headset in that ear. Was I suffering damage to that ear from the constant irridation of that part of my head?

I come home, and my friend Ben has sent me an article. Ben's always got something interesting to share, so I went to it right away.

Uh, scary. Seriously scary. Fortunately, it's not TRUE. But, it makes you wonder.



While we're on the subject of scary, how about this new fangled definition of two words not previously associated?

hot stain n. Because there are what scientists call “hot stains‘“…the parts of the Earth now running out of potable water. Hot stains include northern China, large areas of Asia and Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the U.S. Midwest and sections of South America and Mexico. —“Protecting water vital to America” by Marylou Healy APP.com (Asbury Park, New Jersey) June 16, 2008.

Over on Hullabaloo yesterday, Tristero wrote something that I'll never forget about the Supreme Court's decision released last week about Guantanamo...

As much as I would like to believe the Bush revolution has failed, I really don't think a 5-4 decision restoring the Magna Carta counts as evidence, or any of the other victories for America that occurred with the same or similar margins.

Lastly, here's a terrific article from Harper's magazine about the law and order herd mentality that will cause those who have an open spot in their thinking to revisit the idea that more police, more prisons and harsher punishment is the answer.

It was written in 1929. It could have been written today.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

If Obama had done this, or Kerry, or Gore, or Clinton .. what would have happened?

Finally Fabulair

We're coming back!

I wish I'd thought of it

Digby (who's the blogosphere's equivalent of William Shirer or Edward R. Murrow) has this to say today, and damn, if she can't just spell it out before the dots start connecting up in my noggin:

Bill Clinton is in the pantheon of popular ex-presidents who continues to do important work on global initiatives. Hillary Clinton is a Senator and historic breakthrough presidential candidate who won more primary votes than any candidate in history aside from Barack Obama. Al Gore is a global leader and Nobel prize winner. On the other side of that epic battle, Newt Gingrich is a Fox News commentator, writing reviews of mystery thrillers on Amazon. Tom Delay is a private citizen facing indictment. Half of the social conservatives who unctuously criticized Clinton's behavior have been run out of town on morals charges. Fox News is sinking in the ratings faster than George W. Bush.

Well, now that you mention it...

Isn't it rather appropriate that the biggest blowhards of the last thirty years (save for and except Phil Gramm) are now gasbags for pay? All that effort, all that power and the BEST that they can do is to bloviate on Fox News?