The View

Just such a strange conversation…

Video- “The View” co-host doesn’t know if the world is round or flat

I can’t believe this. One of the co-hosts of The View, Sherri Sheppherd, said she didn’t believe in evolution so co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked her if she believed the world was flat or round. She wasn’t able to answer, using the excuse that she was too busy being a good little housewife to think about [...]

Tags: The View, Sherri Sheppherd

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Color TV

I know, for most of you young folks, color TV has always been a part of your lives.  I can recall when a friend’s family got the first color TV in my home town. I was young, maybe 9 or 10.  We gathered at his house to watch Saturday morning cartoons. A  snowy signal from a station 90 miles away. But, it was so COOL.  I’m guessing it was probably this set – or one very similar..Then, a few  years later, my family got one.  Just in time for one of the early Super Bowl games!

Tags: Color TV

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Old TV Shows

YouTube is a marvelous repository of bits and piece from classic TV shows. This, my friends, was the true beginning of TV in America  the 1950’s and 60’s..

Tags: Classic TV, Nelsons, Lucy

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The Captain Is In The House

Captain Kangaroo.  Tell me you didn’t grow up watching him! I’ll fess up.  Watched him every chance I got. Now, watch him again. It’s not much, just the open to the show, but it’s an original.

Tags: Captain Kangaroo

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Tuesday "Truthiness"

One down, four to go. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.  Bedtime gets later.  The alarm clock gets earlier. The TV talks about how much food prices have gone up in the past year, how much gas prices have gone up (and will go up), Iraq, Iran and (of course) O.J. Too much O.J.  That’s why you’ll see few mentions of that story around these parts.  I have more than a passing interest in the story, though, having spent a week in California covering his murder trial.  It was an interesting experience, working shoulder to shoulder with the network people.  Our timing, as I recall, was just a bit "off" – we were hoping to be there for the verdict, but missed it by a few days.  Still, I’m pretty much avoiding this latest round of trouble for Simpson. There are other, more important, things to talk about.  Case in point…

Abizaid Tells the Truth About Iran

The truth is so rare these days that when I see it, I am almost thrown off by it. Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday. John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them [....]

Tags: Iran, Nuclear Weapons, Abizaid

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All You Need To Know…

…About electronic voting machines and how they can be compromised.  The post below starts with the latest news from California, but expands into an excellent summary of all of the issues with those machines.  If you’re just catching up with the reports of problems, here’s a great way to get up to date..

California Secretary of State: Voting Machine ‘Sleepovers’ Violate State Law

She’s hinted as much previously, and her new security requirements issued in the wake of her landmark "Top-to-Bottom Review" of e-voting systems would seem to preclude them, but CA Secretary of State, Debra Bowen has now given her most direct comment to date on the matter of voting machine "sleepovers". "Sleepovers [...]

Tags: Electronic Voting Machines, Voting Machine Sleepovers

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Running The War

Interesting proposal in a well-written opinion piece on the net tonight.  Should be just turn the Iraq War over to Blackwater, and bring our military folks home?  Go and read it to see how the writer builds his case.  And, make sure you follow the link in the final line of his copy, to read an excellent Dan Froomkin column from the Washington Post.

Let Blackwater Run the Whole War

Some of my more conservative readers think government should do almost nothing. Their argument – which certainly has some merit – is that government is too inept to do anything right. Generally, their one caveat is that government should do pretty much nothing except fight wars. I happen to agree with them on the war [...]

Speaking of Blackwater –

Why the Betrayal Theme Is Right (Example 3982)

Given the Iraq Government’s claim that it has withdrawn Blackwater’s “permit” to field an unaccountable mercenary force provide security services for the US government and others in Iraq, I suspect the Administration is in full panic mode behind the scenes on two fronts. The first is in trying to figure out how to mollify [...]

Hmmmm…

It’s a Trap!

I’ve avoided commenting on the Blackwater story until this point because there simply wasn’t enough detail on this specific incident. It just got more interesting: The ministry said the incident began around midday, when a convoy of sport utility vehicles [...]

Tags: Blackwater, Iraq War

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Stossel Smackdown

I once admired John Stossel’s consumer-oriented reporting.  Somewhere, somehow, over the course of time, he morphed into an agressive, opportunistic, reporter with an obvious agenda.  An agenda that often cannot be supported.  Crooks and Liars has details of a striking example from his latest target..

Wife Of Victim From Michael Moore’s Sicko Responds To Stossel Hit Piece

ABC News, the same network that neo-cons use to further their agenda, decided to look at the question of Universal Health Care in the US. Who better to investigate it than John “The Free Market Trumps All” Stossel? As is evident from the promo from last Friday’s Good Morning America, Stossel’s program looks like [...]

Tags: Michael Moore, Sicko, Universal Health care, John Stossel, Tracy Pierce

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Those TV Guys

Quick updates, via TV Newser, on a couple of my favorite TV folks, Keith Olbermann and Jack Cafferty – just in case you’re interested -

Olbermann: "Barring Any Setbacks My Big Return Will Be Thursday"

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann gives us an update on his condition: "I got home around 5 today just in time to [...]

Cafferty’s Book Goes Into Its Third Printing

Jack Cafferty’s book It’s Getting Ugly Out There has only been out a week, and it’s already into its third [...]

Oh, yeah.  CNN has announced an hour-long version of "The Cafferty File" Wednesday night.  Directly opposite Olbermann.Thank goodness for DVR’s.

Tags: Jack Cafferty, Keith Olbermann

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A Flood of Foreclosures

Absolutely mind-boggling numbers.  And, the blogger notes, it’s just the beginning. Yeah, the economy is just fine, thank you…

Today’s Housing Bubble Post – Foreclosures Soar

U.S. home foreclosures soar in August, "The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month more than doubled versus August 2006 and jumped 36 percent from July, a trend that signals many homeowners are increasingly unable to make timely payments on their mortgages or sell their homes amid [...]

August foreclosures up 115% from 2006

Republican "let industry self regulate" economics in action. Where are all of the GOP members of Congress who allowed the mortgage market to go unchecked these days? They had no problem allowing this new system to discard decades of common sense so they should have no problem stepping up and explaining themselves today. There’s no rush though, since [...]

Tags: Foreclosures, Home Ownership, Adjustable Rate Mortgages

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Just the Facts

Surprise, surprise.  The Pentagon and Patraeus don’t seem to agree on how things are going in Iraq…

Quarterly Report From The Pentagon

Less than a week after Gen. David Petraeus spun fairy tales for Congress about a successful "surge," the Pentagon has released their quarterly report on Iraq and they seem to have a different story to tell.  Security taking a turn for the worse here, increasing violence there, and militias growing influence everywhere.  In other words, the same things we’ve been hearing for the past four years.  And now George Bush wants [...]

Confused, yet?

Yet More Questions

Ilan Goldenberg reads the Pentagon’s September report to Congress on stability and security in Iraq and notices something odd: you’d think that the Pentagon’s civilian casualty figures (dead and wounded) and Gen. Petraeus’s civilian fatality figures would track [...]

UPDATE:  Think it’s really going swell over there?  AMERICAblog reports tonight –

One week after Petraeus says all is well, US bans almost all land travel by American govt. officials in Iraq

Tags: Iraq War, Pentagon Report, Patraeus

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Read It

And weep. 

Bush:  Every Day Is Mother’s Day

George Bush held a pep-rally at the White House today and made what was perhaps the most idiotic remark in a long line of idiocies from his misbegotten presidency: [...]

Tags: Bush, Gold Star Mothers

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PR Bust

All that work.  All that talking.  All for naught. You, my friends, should be proud.  You didn’t get fooled again.

The week that changed nothing

Last week was supposed to be a crossroads in the debate over Iraq policy. Testimony from Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker would captivate Capitol Hill; a prime-time speech from the president that pointed to the end of the surge would bring some comfort to the nation; and a controversial ad from MoveOn.org would [...]

More poll numbers here – They take polls…

Tags: Patraeus, Crocker, MoveOn.org

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Big Storm A-Comin’

Let’s see now.  China can evacuate 1.6 million people and we couldn’t get a half-million out of New Orleans?!?!? Do you think maybe, just maybe, we did a really bad job of it?

China evacuates 1.6 million for typhoon

A typhoon expected to be the most powerful storm to hit China in a decade churned toward the densely populated coast on Tuesday with 165 mph wind gusts, and the government evacuated 1.6 million people. The fringes of Typhoon Wipha lashed northern Taiwan, where [...]

How’s it going in NOLA, now?

Elderly in New Orleans find tough going

Nearly half of the 85,000 elderly people displaced by Hurricane Katrina have returned New Orleans, many finding only squalor and rubble. Public and private sectors designed to aid the elderly report being overwhelmed by need, the Los Angeles Times [...]

UPDATE: More evacuees…Typhoon Forces Evacuation Of 1.8 Million In China

Tags: Katrina, New Orleans, China Typhoon

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The Taser Incident

This story seems to be attracting an inordinant amount of attention. I’m pleased Kerry responded.  Finally. But, there are still issues on several levels. Did the police need to use so much force?  Was the young man a self-described "professional taunter"?  Multiple links to a myriad of impressions about this story.  Keep in mind, they’re compiled by Michelle Malkin, so there’s an obvious bias.  Still, there’s a lot of information below..

Student tasered at John Kerry forum Update:

Tags: Kerry, Taser Incident, Student Tasered

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Faceoff

Politics is quite the game. It really is.  Just picture two people, standing toe to toe, ready to rumble..

Leahy: No hearings until White House hands over records.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is demanding the White House turn over information necessary to complete a number of Judiciary Committee investigations into Alberto Gonzales’ tenure at the DoJ. “All I want is the material we need to ask some questions about the former attorney general’s conduct, on torture and warrantless wiretapping, so [...]

Tags: Leahy, Judiciary Committee, Gonzales

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14 Pages of Smackdown

Oh, my.  Mr. Waxman is upset.  Some day, one of these all-out assaults is gonna have some impact.  Some day..

Waxman: State Investigator Blocked Corruption Probes

In a blistering 14-page letter today (pdf), House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) charged that the inspector general for the State Department Howard Krongard has been actively [...]

Tags: Waxman, State Department, Howard Krongard

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Cafferty

Because I really like the guy.  And he has a new book..

Cafferty admits to drinking the Kool Aid in the run-up to the Iraq Invasion

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, Jack Cafferty did something that most of the punditry class needs to do in this country and that is to take responsibility for his words. He admitted that he was caught up in the national hysteria that followed 9/11—-manipulated by the White House propaganda and pushed for war with Iraq. [...]

Tags: Cafferty, Reliable Sources

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Unbelievable

I guess there are bad people everywhere…

Asst. U.S. Attorney Arrested in Sting, Planned to Have Sex With 5 Year Old Girl

– A U.S. Justice Department official has been arrested on suspicion of traveling to Detroit over the weekend to have sex with a minor. John David R. Atchison, 53, an assistant U.S. attorney from the northern district of Florida, was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Detroit Monday afternoon. An undercover [...]

Tags: Atchison, Minor Sex

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A New Week

Well, another weekend in the history books.  I should have spent a lot more time looking for interesting posts, but traffic really does fall off during the weekend.  Especially this time of year, when the weather is nicer and football is in play.  Someday, I’ll organize my staff of dozens and schedule somebody to do the weekend posting! <G>

To kick things off for the new week, a troubling report from Iraq.  Not that it’s that unusual to find a discouraging word from there, but this one hits the history books.

Cradle of civilization being looted and destroyed

It was so much different back when it was the Taliban destroying the Buddhas of Bayan in Afghanistan. The world was outraged and Colin Powell even referred to it as a "crime against humankind. Now that centuries of history are being looted and damaged across Iraq, we hear so little. We can add this to the list of history sites that the US has destroyed such as My Son and Hue in Vietnam. Who needs history anyway? "There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the Nassariyah area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been systematically looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would [...]

Tags: Iraq History, Cradle of Civilization, Nassariyah, Sumerian

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