The Weblog awards are up - please go vote for your favorite blogs. You are allowed to vote daily. From each computer. (heheheheheh….)
Nope, MPS did note make the finals for any of the categories in which we were nominated, but many fine, fine blogs have been selected, and more than a few Scissorheads are represented in the class of 2008.
PANETTA GREAT ON TORTURE…. With Leon Panetta slated to take over the CIA, for many of us, and I include myself in this, the first question is pretty straightforward: how is he on torture? Atrios pointed to an op-ed piece…
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who’s about to take the reins as chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, doesn’t appear to be too happy with Leon Panetta’s prospective appointment to head the CIA.
President-elect Barack Obama is including a 300 billion dollar tax break in his massive stimulus package for the US economy that he will begin discussing with lawmakers on Monday, The Wall Street Journal said.
Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan” is expected to cost between 750 billion and one trillion dollars. Nobody quantified the tax relief it includes, but the Journal said it could account for about 40 percent of the overall stimulus package.
Interesting - studies have shown time and time again that tax cuts do not stimulate the economy, so this is either bait to get the Grand Old Plantation on board, or as I have been saying all along, the Carebear is a corporate-friendly, slightly left-of-center politician who is going to be Clinton 3.
Asked by Schieffer if he believed that anything the president does in time of war is legal, Cheney said there is “historic precedent of taking action that you wouldn’t take in peacetime.”
…Cheney referenced Abraham Lincoln as an example of another president who “suspended the writ of habeus corpus” during a war, prompting this exchange:
SCHIEFFER: But nobody thinks that was legal.
Well, no. It certainly was in the sense he wasn’t impeached. And it was a wartime measure that he took that I think history says today, yeah, that was probably a good thing to do.
In reading an article in the Chicago Sun Times where Homeland Security has stripped him of his security briefings since he was charged with allegedly selling a senate seat vacated by Pres.-elect Barack Obama, clearly a man who has not even been indicted is being punished.
According to the Sun Times, Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for Homeland Security. She stated, “Being the subject of a criminal complaint, no matter who you are, is a disqualification,” Note the operative word being complaint. There has not been an official indictment and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald stated it could take three months to indict Gov. Blagojevich. To me, it signifies, justice delayed is justice denied.
Repiglicans are still repiglicans. The question on the table is whether the dems have yet grown a spine. I’d be happy to recommend a surgeon who rebuilds spines with some plastic material that he injects.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN)– Sen. John Cornyn weighed in on Minnesota’s close and still unresolved U.S. Senate race, saying Friday that no one should be seated until a winner is made official by both Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Sen. John Cornyn says Republican senators will filibuster if the Democrats try to seat Al Franken.
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Democratic challenger Al Franken holds a lead of about 50 votes over Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman, but this number does not reflect what could be more than a thousand improperly rejected absentee ballots still to be tallied.
No matter the results, officials have said there will almost certainly be court challenges.
Minnesota’s other senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune this week that if the state Canvassing Board — which is tasked with tallying votes — certifies a winner, the Senate should “consider seating that person pending litigation.”
Klobuchar’s statement prompted Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to threaten a filibuster to block Democrats from seatingFrankenbefore an official certificate is signed by Ritchie and Pawlenty.
The governor and secretary of state are barred by Minnesota law from making the election official until all legal proceedings have been completed.
One of the many pleasures of living in the SF Bay Area is that we have a film critic who, well to put it bluntly, is an honorary Scissorhead. But this past week he topped us in his weekly column, Ask Mick LaSalle:
Q: Hey Mick: What’s with Tom Cruise and his lack of a German accent in “Valkyrie”? Couldn’t he have at least made an effort or is he really that lacking in talent?
Jeanne Carlson, Graeagle
Hey Jeanne: I don’t think the problem is the accent, because really there’s no reason Cruise should be speaking English with a German accent when he’s supposedly speaking German. The real problem is that Cruise’s manner is so indelible that it’s difficult to see him as Claus von Stauffenberg, and he does nothing to change his familiar Cruise essence. Thus, on an experiential level, “Valkyrie” becomes a movie about Tom Cruise trying to kill Hitler.
In fact, a historical fantasy with Cruise going up against Hitler could have been amusing, if only they’d have taken it further. “Valkyrie” could have shown Cruise sneaking into Hitler’s map room with a print of “Vanilla Sky.” Picture it: Hitler and his generals hunched over a table, analyzing troop movements, and then - sudden chaos as Cruise switches on the movie, and there’s a mad stampede for the exit. Several generals are trampled and killed, but Hitler escapes with a few bruises. Now, that would have been a movie worth seeing.
An Alaska talk show host and frequent critic of Gov. Sarah Palin claims in a column in the Anchorage Daily News that an apprenticeship Palin said her daughter’s boyfriend is serving in Alaska’s North Slope violates federal regulations.
Dan Fagan, who also publishes a Web site, thealaskastandard.com, said Levi Johnston’s reported service as an electrical apprentice on Alaska’s North Slope while he is enrolled in correspondence courses to complete high school violates federal regulations, which require a high school diploma.
Fagan wrote that the director of the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. apprenticeship program confirmed that Johnston was enrolled in the program, but that he didn’t know if federal regulations prohibited those without a high school diploma from participating.
Palin on Wednesday cited Johnston’s apprenticeship in a series of communications with news organizations in an effort to refute descriptions of Johnston, who is the father of the governor’s week-old grandson, as a high school drop out. Johnston came to public attention in September when the governor and her husband, Todd, announced that their then 17-year-old daughter was pregnant. The Palins have said that Bristol and Levi intend to marry.
Fagan also raised questions about how Johnston got into the apprenticeship program, noting that similar programs have long waiting lists.
An effigy of President George W. Bush is seen hanged during a demonstration against the Israeli attacks on Gaza, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. Thousands of Afghans condemned the Israeli attacks on Gaza in Afghanistan.
…are these the shoes the Scissorheads proposed sending to Chimpy?
For no apparent reason, someone dumped thousands, and we mean thousands of shoes on Miami’s Palmetto Expressway, causing massive backups during the morning rush hour.
Road workers equipped with shovels, front end loaders and trucks worked throughout the morning to clean up the mess, but no source for the footwear flotsam has been determined. Police are looking for a charity to take the shoes.
I know we all have strong feelings on Kennedy, but I gotta admit, I’d rather have her in that seat than Bill Clinton, the Best GOP president we’ve ever had.
NASSAU, Bahamas — John Travolta’s teenage son, Jett, died in the Bahamas after falling ill and hitting his head at his family’s vacation home, police said Friday. A house caretaker found Jett, 16, unconscious in a bathroom late Friday morning.
OK, cheap shot, but I’m known for that. As Scientology advocates that people are immortal spiritual beings (or thetans), who have lived many lifetimes, maybe the poor kid will come back, but next time maybe to non-nutjob actors. Or at least talented ones.
Condolances to the family. Sixteen is too young and tragic of an age to die.
UPDATE: I did some more research because I was feeling sleazy about this post:
Jett was probably autistic but whose condition was masked as Kawasaki Syndrome—so that the Scientologist Travolta Family could conveniently put the blame on household cleaners and other “toxins,” which fits perfectly with Scientology’s teachings. (Autism is considered a sign of a “degraded being” by the cult.)
So how could an autistic/Kawasaki kid, with a history of seizures, go missing overnight? When he left to go to the bathroom and did not return, no one thought to check up on him?
I think it is a given that I have little respect for Scientology/Scientologists, but isn’t this a bit bizarre? And I’m sure ol’ Stayin’ Alive will soak up the sympathy (another career boost! Yay!) and maybe go on the Tom Cruise Scientology rant tour.
The Mitfords - Letters between Six Sisters - Edited by Charlotte Mosley The Perfect Scent - A year inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York - by Chandler Burr In Defense of Food - An eater's manifesto - by Michael Pollan Otherwise Normal People - inside the thorny world of competitive rose gardening - by Aurelia C. Scott My Year of Meats - by Ruth L. Ozeki Typographic Systems - by Kimberly Elam Bait and Switch - by Barbara Ehrenreich All Over Creation - by Ruth Ozeki Secrets of Monet's Garden - by Derek Fell French Dirt - by Richard Goodman The Shock Doctrine - by Naomi Klein Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice - by Janet Malcolm Someday this pain will be useful to you - By Peter Cameron A Pig in Provence - by Georgeanne Brennan The Authentic Garden - by Claire E. Sawyers The Far Side of the Dollar - by Ross MacDonald Playback - by Raymond Chandler