Author: swanksalot

Some additional reading October 18th from 16:22 to 20:40:

• Doonesbury – GBT's FAQs – Did Obama really sink eight out of ten from downtown?
  — Mark G. Smith, Chapel Hill, NC
  Indeed he did. GBT and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter were chatting with Sen. Obama in a hotel lobby in Berlin about the widely-seen video of the candidate sinking a three-pointer in front of a gym full of troops. Obama explained that in fact he'd gone on to sink seven more during two games of Horse. He was justly proud of his performance, and GBT got the clear sense that he wouldn't mind if the full story got out
• Strange Candidate #4: Jonathan Maxwell – "85-year-old Jonathan Maxwell ran for president in 1948 as the candidate of the American Vegetarian Party. He was the owner of a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago and claimed not to have tasted any meat in 45 years. He also said that he loved every vegetable, "except okra."

  As the leader of the Vegetarian Party, Maxwell demanded the abolition of slaughterhouses and cattle cultivation. He advocated the use of pasture lands for growing foodstuffs, saying this would solve the world's food problems. He also proposed building "garden cities" in underdeveloped areas. Finally, he wanted to ban liquor, tobacco, and medicine."

Some additional reading October 17th from 00:44 to 01:07:

• Will Gun-Totting, Churchgoing White Guys Pull the Lever for Barack Obama? – NYTimes.com – "No. 2 is how we talk about issues,” Obama went on. “To act like hunting, like somebody who wants firearms just doesn’t get it — that kind of condescension has to be purged from our vocabulary. And that’s why that whole ‘bittergate’ episode was so bitter for me. It was like: Oh, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. This is what for the last five or six years I’ve been trying to push away from.”
• Declarations – WSJ.com Peggy Noonan: Palin's Failin' – When even Peggy Noonan thinks Sarah Palin is unqualified, McCain has problems:
  "But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for?…In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism."
• The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker – McCains Debate Problem – One of the reasons John McCain isn’t especially successful as a debater, or as a speechmaker, is that he often discusses issues by using inside-the-Beltway shorthand, a shorthand that’s completely baffling to anyone who doesn’t already know what he’s talking about—which is say, completely baffling to almost all American voters.
• Joe the Plumber, dumb and dumber – "One more point that Joe and I will be mentioning again. We just found out today that Obama's $250,000 cap on the tax cut, that's $250,000 in taxable income NOT total income. In other words, that means if you make under $250,000 AFTER deductions, you get a tax cut. And if you have your own business, that means your real salary could easily be $400,000 before deductions. That's a hell of a salary for Joe the Plumber to be making and whining about."

A few interesting links for October 13th through October 16th:

• The Deal, Sealed? – Timothy Egan Blog – NYTimes.com – "McCain went back to some of his obscure obsessions, including yet another mention of that overhead projector that Obama helped to get some museum in Chicago. Imagine if Herbert Hoover, debating Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 at the depth of the Great Depression, kept dwelling on the problem with university chalkboards, and some old sympathizer with Sacco and Vanzetti."
• McCain camp creates imaginary friends at Virginia rally – "We all know the McCain campaign is full of pathological liars (the McCainpedia is up to 132), but as the ship takes on more water, getting caught in this sort of stupid prevaricating makes them look even more pathetic:"

Some additional reading October 13th from 16:18 to 16:42:

• The Raw Story | Fox concludes Larry Flynt's 'Sarah Palin porno' is legal – Apparently, a stand-in for Sarah Palin (she claimed prior commitments, and is only in a cameo) finds a truckload of Russian soldiers, and has herself a little party, discussing Putin and his rearing head.
  "A partial script of the movie which has appeared online makes it clear that the film definitely has elements of political parody. In the opening scene, the actress playing Palin flings herself on a tanning-bed repairman, pronouncing, "You're in luck. I fully support off-shore and on-shore drilling. … God almighty! You are hung like a moose. Now I have to eat ya! … Pound me until my head is so empty that I can't even remember the name of the one Supreme Court case I actually know!"
• Rubbing it in their face – So back in the day, August 8, 2005, one of the wankers at Powerline wrote this gem:

  It must be depressing to be Paul Krugman. No matter how well the economy performs, Krugman’s bitter vendetta against the Bush administration requires him to hunt for the black lining in a sky full of silvery clouds. With the economy now booming, what can Krugman possibly have to complain about?…
  The "depressed" Krugman can cry himself to sleep with his Nobel Prize, as well as the realization that yes, he was right and the wingnutosphere was once again proven tragically wrong.

• Smellin’ Like A Felon – "The Perfesser has done the voter fraud myth one better: he’s managed to convert a bureaucratic error in which no fraudulent activity has taken place into an act of fraud. Fraud no longer requires the act of one person or group intended to deceive another, it simply requires a record keeper to not keep up with records. Meaning, of course, that you’re committing fraud when your change of address form isn’t processed by the DMV or when a bank mistakenly places a deposit in your account.

  How Glenn Reynolds eats without stabbing himself in the eye with a fork, I do not know. My guess is either he uses those nice soft plastic forks with barnyard animals on the end, or his diet is restricted to finger foods and chewable vitamins. "

Some additional reading October 12th from 13:14 to 19:50:

• BAD PHYSICS: Misconceptions spread by K-6 Grade School Textbooks – Physics questions answered in two paragraphs – useful for bars (assuming you have your iPhone handy), and classrooms, or discussions with one's nephew…
• Thank you for smoking – Roger Ebert's Journal – Kind of stupid if you ask me, history is history, and shouldn't be manipulated by the latest fashion, or belief system.
  "The stamp honoring Bette Davis was issued by the U. S. Postal Service on Sept. 18. The portrait by Michael Deas was inspired by a still photo from "All About Eve." Notice anything missing? Before you even read this far, you were thinking, Where's her cigarette? Yes reader, the cigarette in the original photo has been eliminated. "

  They've done this deed to a Robert Johnson photo too if I'm not mistaken.

  A travesty.

• Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong – The American Press is worse than Hitler! – "Capital gains and dividend tax cuts are simply not "economic measures aimed directly at the middle class": the middle class doesn't collect capital gains, or dividends, in any material amount. Indeed, that's what makes you middle class–that even though you have a fair or a good income you work for it."