Low Expectaions

Low energy day.

And For What?

The end of "combat operations" in Iraq...

The withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops...

But there is no sense of celebration. The 'war' is 'over', except that it isn't. There is no victory, because there was never anything to 'win' in Iraq. All that was achieved was destruction and despair.

I suppose that President Obama deserves some credit for reducing America's presence in Iraq, as he promised in his campaign. OK, Barack, here's a brownie point. A token of achievement for a rather minor accomplishment.

It was a war that never should have happened. Shrub and the neocons lied to create a threat that never existed and led an invasion that should be a war crime. The slaughter of innocent Iraqi's will be America's shame for many decades to come, as will the debts (both human and monetary) for a tragic act of folly. Over a trillion dollars wasted on wanton destruction, yet we "can't afford" to serve our citizens at home.

So we'll call this an "end", but for what? In the "end", what was it all for? Who was saved?

What was it all for?

Speaking of Boobies

I wonder what this pair are discussing...

I'll Drive

The Kestrel electric car will have room for a driver and three passengers and have a top speed of 90 kilometres an hour. (Motive Industries Inc.)

Blog friend Gordon at the alternate brain pointed this one out: Cannabis electric car being made in Alberta:

An electric car made of hemp is being developed by a group of Canadian companies in collaboration with an Alberta Crown corporation.

The Kestrel will be prototyped and tested later in August by Calgary-based Motive Industries Inc., a vehicle development firm focused on advanced materials and technologies, the company announced.

The compact car, which will hold a driver and up to three passengers, will have a top speed of 90 kilometres per hour and a range of 40 to 160 kilometres before needing to be recharged, depending on the type of battery, the company said in an email to CBC News Monday.

Now, not to go all curmudgeon on you, but I think us old time veterans of the cannabis culture should get first dibs on these.

And I do agree with Gordon:

Sounds very innovative and cutting-edge, but the jokes are flooding through my brain so fast they can't stop long enough for me to grab one...

I'd love to have one. Dear George Soros; I here you pay for all the liberal blogs.

Primary Blahs

(Tarantula for no particular reason)

Yeah, I voted in yesterday's primary. But it was with a total lack of enthusiasm. This has been a rare election cycle for me, one where I found absolutely zero candidates who motivated me to volunteer on their campaigns.

St. Sleazy McCain easily defeated J. D. "the eggplant" Hayworth in a classic case of 'the lesser of two evils' still being evil. But the democratic nominee, Rodney Glassman, is no prize, and has a snowball's chance in Phoenix of defeating McCain.

My congresswoman, Ann Kirkpatrick, is a milquetoast blue dog, who's first term has been sedate at best. But her opponent, Paul Gosar, is a total right-wing whacko. So I'll probably end up doing some volunteer work for Ann for the general election. Just not with much enthusiasm.

And I'll support Terry Goddard over Jan Brewer for Governor, although I'm not a fan of Goddard. Another 'lesser of two evils' choice.

It's tough to be a political junkie when the drug of choice has gotten so weak that there is no 'high' to be had.

San Juan Pics

Another fine San Juan river trip in the books. A wonderful time, although the weather did try to put up a challenge at first. We got hit with possibly the heaviest monsoon hail storm I've ever seen with a mile left to row to our first camp. After persevering through it, we had wonderful weather the rest of the trip. The boats performed marvelously, the people were delightful (the ladies in the mud fight above were a blast), and the food was delicious.

I'm ready to go back.

Boobies on Schedule

This is a scheduled post of the Friday Boobies, as I'm away on the river. Let me know if it doesn't show up.

River Time

The river is calling, and I must answer.

There are boats that need to be rowed, and rapids needing running.

Inspiration

Busy organizing gear for the upcoming river trip, so here's a pic to inspire me.

A Little Baseball

For baseball fans only:

On this day 100 years ago, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Superbas (today the Dodgers) played what the Baseball Reference Bullpen describes as "the most evenly
matched game ever." Both teams used two pitchers, scored eight runs, and recorded 13 hits, two errors, 38 at-bats, five strikeouts, three walks, 13 assists, 27 putouts, one hit batter and one passed ball. The game wasperhaps fittingly called on account of darkness, thus preserving the total deadlock.

Nice!

Friday Boobies

Friday the 13th? It's bad luck to be superstitious.

Know Your Newts

This is a slimy newt. It lies, cheats on its wives, and steals from anyone it can.

This is a good newt. It eats bugs.

It's important to know the difference, but neither one should be in government.

River Trip in One Week

One week from today, I'll be launching my raft on the San Juan river. This makes me very happy, but now I have to get all my gear organized. Where did I put that patch kit?

A Taxing Cartoon

Sometimes it's much easier to just post a cartoon than to write a post explaining a situation. Ending the shrub tax cuts explained.

Ted Stevens

(I debated about posting this)
Ted Stevens plane crash survival rate drops to 50%.
Too harsh?

8/9/10

Today at six minutes and seven seconds after five o'clock it will officially be 05:06:07 8/9/10, which won't happen again until 3010 2110 (edit: corrected, thanks to a commenter. Doubt I'll be around for it, anyway). I believe that is a perfectly good reason for a toast.

A Sunday Funny

For some unclear (sunspots?) reason, my wireless connection is really inconsistent today. It's rather annoying.

Boobies Hanging Out

Boobies hanging out on Friday.

That Kagan Kid

Elena Kagan's confirmation is fine, but it makes me feel old. For the first time in my life, a Supreme Court Justice is younger than I am. Jeez, first we elect that kid to be President, and now he appoints another kid. I know my level of maturity/immaturity, so forgive me if I'm a little nervous about handing that much power to youngsters.

Happy International Beer Day

Cheers!

International Beer Day, Aug 5th - A Celebration of Beer's Greatness

Equal Rights

I'm a very simple minded old hippie. "Equality" and "Equal Rights" are such basic concepts that I'm amazed there's even a debate about them. I'll take the Bible thumpers a little more seriously when I see them campaigning to ban football (Leviticus: Pigskin is an abomination); otherwise, their hypocrisy has no place in a legal debate.
Someday, people will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

More Extreme Beer News

The High Alcohol Content Beer War Continues With 60% ABV Brew, called "Start the Future." The battle for the title of "most extreme beer" is getting crazy:

Hot on the heels of last week's news about the 55% alcohol content beer (which also happened to come packed in roadkill), a Dutch brewer has upped the ante with a brew purported to contain 60% alcohol by volume.

While the 55% beer had been dubbed the "End of History," this 60% ABV boozer has a more uplifting name in "Start the Future." It also does not come stuffed in a rodent carcass, which is a plus.

Additionally, Start the Future's price tag -- $45 for .333 liter -- is a huge savings over End of History, which sold out in spite of its $760/bottle price tag.

The battle over these high ABV beverages has seen a lot of good-natured ribbing between competitors. For example, when German brewery Schorschbrau unveiled a beer with 40% ABV, BrewDog, the Scottish company responsible for End of History, introduced a 41% ABV beer they called Sink the Bismarck!.

"It has become a little competition," said the Start the Future brewer. "You should see it as a joke."

http://consumerist.com/2010/07/high-alcohol-content-beer-war-continues-with-60-abv-brew.html

I love a good, strong beer, but I'm starting to wonder if at these alcohol levels, can it still be considered beer?

Happy 49th

Have a beer, Mr. President. You've certainly earned it. Let's face it, you're stuck with one of the worst jobs in the world.

Barack Obama has been exactly the type of President I expected him to be. I know a lot of my fellow liberals expected him to be more progressive, but I always saw him as a pragmatic moderate. Sure, I wish he were stronger on a variety of issues; climate, DADT, human rights and ending the wars, among many. But that was never a realistic expectation given our political system and climate.

Let's face it, any American President will be attacked from some quarter regardless of which stance he takes on an issue. Ours is a noisy, fractious political system, and there's a media that makes a good living off of stirring up a controversy. But the right wing noise machine has been over the top when it comes to attacking Obama, no matter what he does. It's not a new phenomena: remember the hearings about the Clinton's Christmas card list? Despite all the attacks, Obama has managed to govern in a fairly calm, cool manner, and I admire him for that. He's managed to make the best of a "no-win" situation.

Obama has actually been very successful so far. The stimulus, health care reform, financial regulation, and most importantly his Supreme Court appointees all count as achievements (even if I wish that they all went farther) to be proud of. The winding down of the wars in Iraq and (hopefully) Afghanistan may be slower than I'd like, but they are moving in the right direction. So President Obama has earned a celebration.

The thing I like most about President Barack Obama? The fact that he saved us from a "President McCain", which truly would have been frightening.

Local Construction

This is a personal, local gripe, so feel free to ignore it. The street by where I live has been undergoing reconstruction for over a month, and today's news reports that the project will take longer than originally planned.

A project to resurface one of the city's oldest streets in Flagstaff is now behind schedule after it was discovered that the road was shallower than first believed.

The much-anticipated project was supposed to be the centerpiece of an effort to rebuild the main streets in the Southside neighborhood -- an area residents and business owners say has been neglected in the shadow of downtown Flagstaff north of the tracks.

Instead, contractors hired by the city discovered portions of South San Francisco were shallower than core samples had indicated, forcing what had been a simple resurfacing project into a complete reconstruction of the entire street.

This has pushed back the project's completion date several weeks -- now slated for near completion in November -- and forced the city to tap a cost-overruns provision in its contract with local contractors.

The project was set to cost $1.28 million, but the contract had an additional $130,000 set aside for unforeseen contingencies.

http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_ece74fd2-cb00-5e28-ab7b-ef9f44d955b0.html

Having San Francisco torn up is a major inconvenience for me, as it's the main route into downtown from my apartment. Never mind the noise of the construction; I can deal with that. But walking in the neighborhood is either hazardous or impossible from one day to the next.

Project Manager Christine Cameron said records on the street are not complete, but the city has resurfaced the street at least several times since the 1950s.

But adding new layers of asphalt over the existing road made some areas thicker than others.

Several 8-inch cores samples taken of the road suggested some portions of the road were at least 14 inches thick, but in reality several portions of the road were only 6 inches deep.

Cameron said the city also discovered other problems after tearing up the west half of San Francisco.

"We are finding things that haven't been touched since the 1930s," Cameron said. The city has begun work on the eastern half of the road, but most of that construction will start after the west side has been completed.

The project area extends from Route 66 to Butler Avenue.

Construction will include new street asphalt, sidewalk, curb/gutter, lighting, benches, trash receptacles, bicycle racks and landscaping/irrigation.

The city employee said she has been working closely with business owners to mitigate any problems the construction causes.

http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_ece74fd2-cb00-5e28-ab7b-ef9f44d955b0.html

Actually, I will be quite happy once the project is completed. The southside has desperately needed revitalization for decades, and neighborhood business will benefit in the long run. This part of town was rather run down (some even considered it a scary "bad" part of town), and it will be much nicer once done.

But it's a major pain in the gluts right now.

The Second

The True Story of Arthur

Happy Boobies

Another Friday, another pair of Boobies.

A Laugh

Much of SB 1070 Blocked

A while back I posted that I was tempering my outrage about SB 1070 because I was confident that the courts would find much of the law unconstitutional. And today, Judge Susan Bolton made the ruling:

PHOENIX -- A federal judge this morning blocked several provisions of Arizona's new immigration law from taking effect.

Sections barred from being enforced include:

- Requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped;

- Forbidding police from releasing anyone they have arrested until that person's immigration status is determined;

- Making it a violation of Arizona law for anyone not a citizen to fail to carry documenation;

- Creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident;

- Allowing police to make warrantless arrests if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be removed from the United States.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton rejected arguments by attorneys for the Department of Justice that other sections of SB 1070 are preempted by federal law. These include creating a separate state crime making it illegal to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant and changes in law dealing with impoundment of vehicles that are used to transport those not in the country legally.

http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_4cd440c6-9a70-11df-83f1-001cc4c03286.html

I'm sure the case will go all the way to the Supreme Court, but for now the worst provisions of the law have been blocked. And that is good news.

History Lesson

(click to enlarge to a readable size)

So now you know.
(found at The Political Carnival)

Brewer: Jailing Immigants for Profit

Gov. Brewer's support for S.B. 1070 is easy to understand: just follow the money. Yup, her people stand to make a tidy profit jailing brown people:

This Thursday, SB-1070, Arizona’s radical new immigration law, will go into effect. Despite an incoming lawsuit from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has maintained that her state “will prevail,” claiming that she is simply defending the border integrity and safety of her state.

Yet a new investigation by local Arizona TV news station CBS 5 finds that the Brewer administration may have ulterior motives for its strong support of the new law. The station has found that “two of Brewer’s top advisers have connections” to private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

Paul Senseman, Brewer’s deputy chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for CCA. His wife continues to lobby for the company. Meanwhile Chuck Coughlin, who leads her re-election campaign, chaired her transition into the governorship, and is one of the governor’s policy advisors, is president of HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, which lobbies for CCA.

This is important because CCA currently “holds the federal contract to house detainees in Arizona.” CBS 5 notes that the company currently bills $11 billion a month to the state of Arizona and that, if SB-1070 is successfully implemented, its profits would be significantly padded as it would take responsibility for imprisoning immigrants arrested by Arizona police.

The company maintains that it “unequivocally, did not at any time lobby — nor did we have any outside consultants lobby — anyone in Arizona on the immigration law,” but direct lobbying would not be necessary with allies like Senseman and Coughlin working directly for Brewer.

Coughlin, in particular, has a history of boasting about the influence he has had on the state government on behalf of private business. In an interview earlier this month, he bragged about privatizing the commercial garbage business in Mesa, Arizona, by coordinating with industry lobbyists. He told the interviewer, “I can make [expletive] happen.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/26/prison-brewer/

And this isn't even considered corruption here in Arizona, just business as usual. Absolutely despicable. In a just world, Jan Brewer would get to experience the joys of a "for profit" prison.

Hadn't Thought About That

Sometimes you read a news story, and it sparks a "I never thought about that" reaction. For example, A Russian milestone: 1st black elected to office . I admit, I never thought about race relations in Russia:

NOVOZAVIDOVO, Russia People in this Russian town used to stare at Jean Gregoire Sagbo because they had never seen a black man. Now they say they see in him something equally rare – an honest politician.

Sagbo last month became the first black to be elected to office in Russia.

In a country where racism is entrenched and often violent, Sagbo’s election as one of Novozavidovo’s 10 municipal councilors is a milestone. But among the town’s 10,000 people, the 48-year-old from the West African country of Benin is viewed simply a Russian who cares about his hometown.

The world is certainly becoming more integrated. Call it the "global Obama effect" if you wish.

(found at The Political Carnival)

GOP Economics Explained

(click for big)
Found at

What Would Jack Do

Palin Poster

That is my (I hope) last Sarah Palin comment.

Sad News

NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr has passed away:

Daniel Schorr, a longtime senior news analyst for NPR and a veteran Washington journalist who broke major stories at home and abroad during the Cold War and Watergate, has died. He was 93.

Schorr, who once described himself as a "living history book," passed away Friday morning at a Washington hospital. He was able to bring to contemporary news commentary a deep sense of how governmental institutions and players operate, as well as the perspective gained from decades of watching history upfront.

"He could compare presidents from Eisenhower on through, and that gave him historical context for things," said Donald A. Ritchie, Senate historian and author of a book about the Washington press corps. "He had lived it, he had worked it and he had absorbed it. That added a layer to his broadcasting that was hard for somebody his junior to match."

Schorr's 20-year career as a foreign correspondent began in 1946. After serving in U.S. Army intelligence during World War II, he began writing from Western Europe for the Christian Science Monitor and later The New York Times, witnessing postwar reconstruction, the Marshall Plan and the creation of the NATO alliance.

Schorr joined CBS News in 1953 as one of "Murrow's boys," the celebrated news team put together by Edward R. Murrow. He reopened the network's Moscow bureau, which had been shuttered by Joseph Stalin in 1947. Ten years later, Schorr scored an exclusive broadcast interview with Nikita Khrushchev, the U.S.S.R. Communist Party chief — the first-ever with a Soviet leader. Schorr was barred from the U.S.S.R. later that year after repeatedly defying Soviet censors.

He covered the building of the Berlin Wall as CBS bureau chief for Germany and Western Europe. In 1962, he aired a celebrated portrait of citizens living under Communist rule in East Germany.

He was reassigned to Washington in 1966. Other reporters in the bureau were already covering major institutions such as Congress or the State Department, so Schorr assigned himself to cover the implementation of President Johnson's Great Society programs.

"No one had such a beat," recalled his bureau colleague Roger Mudd. "He was everywhere. He had almost carte blanche to cover Washington."

David Broder, a longtime political reporter and columnist for The Washington Post, added: "I think he's unique in the sense that he's been at the center of so many different stories, both here in Washington and overseas, for so long. He kept his perspective so well and does not ever exaggerate what's taking place, but really let you know why it's important."

Becoming Part Of The Story

Schorr was surprised to find himself on the so-called Enemies List that had been drawn up by Richard Nixon's White House when he read it on the air. The list — naming hundreds of political opponents, entertainers and publications considered hostile to the administration — became the basis for one of the charges of impeachment against Nixon.

Schorr, along with some other members of the list, counted his inclusion on it as his greatest achievement.

Schorr won Emmys in each of the Watergate years of 1972, 1973 and 1974. Over the course of his long career, he was honored with numerous other decorations and awards, including a Peabody for "a lifetime of uncompromising reporting of the highest integrity." Schorr was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists.

"He was sophisticated about the government and how it works," Mudd said. "He was a damned vacuum cleaner, is what he was."

(much more at the link)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128565997

I enjoyed his Saturday commentaries on the current news because of his unique historical perspective. He'll be missed.

Strange Brew

The End of History - featuring dead animals - comes at £500 a bottle

This may be the strangest beer news I've ever read:

The End of History, made by BrewDog of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, is 55% and £500 a bottle.

The bottles have been made using seven dead stoats, four squirrels and a hare, said to be roadkill.

However, Advocates for Animals and Alcohol Focus Scotland both condemned the marketing.

BrewDog claims the beer is the world's strongest and most expensive.

Its co-founder James Watt said: "We want to show people there is an alternative to monolithic corporate beers, introduce them to a completely new approach to beer and elevate the status of beer in our culture."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-10725024

At 55%, it's even stronger than "Tactical Nuclear Penguin", but really; bottles covered in roadkill? That just seems too weird.

Nice Boobies

For Friday.

Explosives

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog points to an article that helps explain why the Times Square car bomb was a dud: we passed some reasonable laws that worked:

Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad used inferior explosives to avoid detection, New York's police commissioner said Tuesday, helping to explain why an international bomb plot ended up a dud.

Commissioner Ray Kelly, speaking to the Center for National Policy, a Washington think tank, discussed his department's concerns about the changing threats of terrorism....

"He tried to lessen the explosive nature of the fertilizer that was used because he thought he would get a higher profile as he went to buy it," Mr. Kelly told reporters, adding that Mr. Shahzad "sort of dumbed that down."

Mr. Shahzad also used M-88 fireworks that were much weaker than other alternatives, Mr. Kelly said.

... Mr. Shahzad was apparently so worried about [legal] tripwires that he deliberately built a weaker, less effective bomb....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704723604575379371725895584.html

Truly, it is much more difficult to get serious explosive ingredients than it was back when I was building big fireworks in my youth. Yes, a determined terrorist can still figure out ways to construct a significant device, but the amateurs (of any political stripe) can't just build a major explosive "off the shelf" without drawing scrutiny.

And that is a good thing.

Flooding

One of the things that I noted in the wake of last month's Schultz fire was the risk of flooding during the monsoon season. Which is exactly what is happening now:

A cloudburst over the San Francisco Peaks fell on the area burned last month in the 15,000-acre Schultz fire, moving boulders into roads and pushing sheds across yards.

Residents said the approaching water and ash sounded like an avalanche, a jet engine, or a loud truck as it came off the mountains into Timberline, flooding some homes and leaving many others with mostly mud in the yard.

http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_320591b2-b939-5865-aa4d-f33cd801bb6a.html

Sadly, a 12 year old girl was swept to her death in the floodwaters:

Shaelyn Wilson, 12, died Tuesday afternoon after falling into a flooded wash south of the old White Vulcan pumice mine near her neighborhood.

She had been watching the floodwaters with her sister after the thunderstorm.

I'll avoid commenting on the lack of wisdom of watching a flood from close proximity, except to say "you really shouldn't do it!"

Speaking of 'lack of wisdom', the ban on campfires in the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests is being lifted, effective today. While we've had some nice rain, the fire danger is still way too high to start allowing campfires. Unless you have a way to insure that the persons who start them are not idiots.

Bible Reviews

My review would go something like "the plot was really hard to follow, and there are too many characters."

(found at helenofdestroy, who's definitely NSFW but quite provocative)

July 20th

July 20th, 1969-41 years ago today-Apollo 11 landed on the moon at 4:18 pm edt. One of those events that permanently remains in your memory if your of a certain age. My father worked for IBM at the time, and was doing contract work for NASA. The lunar mission motivated him to buy our families first TV (Dad had refused to have an "idiot box" in the house before this) and we all sat around watching the landing in black and white. Truly, it was an amazing event in human history.

At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a famous message: "The Eagle has landed."

At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the lunar module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation. At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." He then planted his left foot on the gray, powdery surface, took a cautious step forward, and humanity had walked on the moon.

"Buzz" Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface at 11:11 p.m., and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, and spoke with President Richard M. Nixon via Houston. By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon--July 1969 A.D--We came in peace for all mankind."

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/7/20

I wonder if younger people appreciate how incredible it was at the time.

Happy 71st

Happy 71st birthday to my old friend, Hunter S. Thompson. You left us much too soon, but I cherish the memories of talking politics and drunkenly shooting pictures of Reagan and Nixon with you.

Damn

Damn. Nobody has left a single comment in over a week. I know this little blog isn't all that interesting, but I do wish somebody would say something.

The McCain-Hayworth Debate

I didn't actually watch it, as I'm trying to maintain my mental health, but reading that McCain And Hayworth Pound Each Other At First Debate wasn't surprising. This race is an "ugly" contest, with each trying to be the ugliest in show:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had his first debate tonight with his challengers, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth and conservative activist Jim Deakin, hosted by 3TV in Phoenix.

And one thing was made very clear, as if we didn't know it already: McCain and Hayworth really don't like each other, and they're not trying to hide it as they head toward the August 24 Republican primary.

"Congressman Hayworth is a pretty persuasive fellow," McCain said early on. "After he was voted out by his constituents he became a lobbyist, and after that a talk show host, and after that an infomercial late night star." Hayworth was first elected to the House in the Republican wave of 1994, and went on to lose re-election after six terms in the Democratic wave of 2006.

"John claims he's a Ronald Reagan Republican, and right out of the gate he's violating the 11th Commandment," Hayworth responded a short while later. (Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment was, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.") "Now I will admit I made a mistake making that informercial, but I'm willing to admit my mistakes." By contrast, said Hayworth, McCain isn't admitting his mistakes in voting against the Bush tax cuts, and in having supported amnesty for illegal immigrants.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/mccain-and-hayworth-pound-each-other-at-first-debate.php

Sadly, this is Arizona, so whichever wins the repub primary will win the senate seat. And as much as I hate St. Sleazy McCain, J.D. "dumber than an eggplant" Hayworth would be even worse. Hayworth embodies all the most hateful traits of the current republican party.

And regardless of who wins, we'll continue to have the embarrassment of Jon Kyl. Damn.

Because I Can

Here's a gallery of Hairy Grotesques for you.

Saddest News of the Day

Lab tests cast doubt on olive oil's virginity.

Yup, even the Olive Oil is screwed.

Sunny Summer Boobies

Is there a better way to spend a sunny summer Friday than looking at Boobies? I don't think so.