Beautiful Horizons

If there was any lingering doubt...

I'd say that seals the deal for Obama.

UPDATE: This didn't take long:

One of My Wishes

Notwithstanding the fact that this was a report on Globo, Brazil's huge and Murdochesque media empire, even if you cannot read or understand Portuguese, I urge you to watch the video accompanying this story.

One of my wishes, indeed one of my dreams is to have this sort of media coverage on Brazilian elections someday in broadcast media in this country.

By the way, that analyst towards the end is Mercia and my dear friend, Andrea Hunt. Meus parabéns! Puxe, Andrea: você virou estrela!

Time For Another Civics lesson

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Why is this so hard for Sarah Palin to understand?

RIP Studs Terkel

Exceprts from his book, "Race," here.
And from "Hard Times", here.

Mad Men

As the McCain-Palin campaign ramps up its attacks on the press - most recently calliing for the LA Times to violate journalistic standards at the behest of a couple of politicians running for office - let's take a moment to reflect on the new face of the Republican Party:

By my watch we're at fourteen minutes, fifty-nine seconds:

Oh, this is so nice:

A former Haitian paramilitary leader accused by human rights groups of committing murder and torture in Haiti was sentenced on Tuesday to as many as 37 years in prison for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme in Brooklyn that bilked lenders out of more than $1 million.

In his sentencing remarks, Justice Abraham G. Gerges of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn linked the defendant, Emmanuel Constant, to the American foreclosure crisis and the current global economic turmoil.

“This case, while serious in and of itself, takes on an added resonance given the current global financial crisis,” the judge said. “While the defendant and his confederates cannot be held accountable for the nationwide economic meltdown and the foreclosure crisis, this scheme, and others like it, have played a role in the situation.”

In the fraud, Mr. Constant and his collaborators used straw home buyers, falsified information on loan applications and inflated appraisals to cheat lenders.

The “defendant was a full and active participant in this scheme,” Justice Gerges said, adding that he found it interesting that Mr. Constant showed no remorse for the crimes he committed.

The sentence calls for a prison term of 12 1/3 to 37 years.

I've written about Constant before. He's a special species of vile and the world is a better place with him in striped pajamas, even if he isn't nailed for his most horrid and pernicious acts.

Oh happy day!

This petty:

Spain was not included in U.S. President George W. Bush’s invitation to the governments of the world’s leading economies and the larger emerging countries from the developing South -- a decision seen by Spain as a veto against the socialist government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero.

Although no one in the White House admits or has even implied it, the Zapatero administration as well as the rightwing opposition and the vast majority of Spain’s citizens are convinced that this is Bush’s way of retaliating against Zapatero’s decision to withdraw the country’s troops from the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, as soon as the socialist prime minister took office in 2004.

They reject the official argument that Spain was not invited because of its economic and industrial problems, as today Spain is the world’s eighth largest economy, the third leading exporter -- after the U.S. and France -- and home to two of the world’s top 16 banks.

Banco Santander now owns Sovereign Bank, the 19th largest bank in the US. Banco Santander has operations in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the US. Telefonica has the third largest customer base in fixed lines and mobile telephones in the world. Repsol is an oil and gas company with operations in 29 countries. In exports, Spain is third in the world after the US and France.

Those are facts. While it is my opinion that George Bush is a petty, vindictive man and arguably the worst president in our nation's history, he does precious little to give us any reason to believe otherwise. Thank God he also has precious little time in office.

Mr. Trend tips me to the possibility that Diego Maradona will be the coach for Argentina's Men's National Football Team. I share Trend's skepticism, but would like to give you an idea as to what a training session will look like:

That will get me flamed by his fans!

Apparently a fair and relatively positive profile of Fernando Gabeira in Sunday's New York Times was not enough to get him elected Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, as he lost a close runoff with Eduardo Paes, the candidate of the PT, the party founded by Lula.

What is interesting was where Gabeira's greatest support came from:

Just a month ago, few political analysts gave Mr. Gabeira much of a chance. But a campaign backed by many of Rio’s wealthy businessmen and intellectual elites has helped him make a surprising surge in recent weeks.

Powerful men like Eike Batista, the billionaire mining magnate, have thrown their support behind Mr. Gabeira

I would have been torn as to who to vote for. The article notes Gabeira's even temperment and clear positions, traits rare in Brazilian politics, especially at that level.

I am glad, however, Marta Suplicy lost in her bid to regain the mayor's office in Sao Paulo - and lost big. I have never been a fan of hers - sha has always struck me as being more about show than substance -  and under current mayor, Gilberto Kassab's leadership, as Mr. Trend notes, violence and crime rates in both Sao Paulo city and state have declined. Sao Paulo is better off without Suplicy.

I was never a big fan of Colin Powell, but I appreciated his reasoned and thoughtful explanation as to why he was supporting Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, those weren't good enough reasons for Dr. Judith Apter Klinghoffer:

Do you believe that Colin Powell would have endorsed a WHITE DEMOCRATIC Candidate for president? Me neither. Do you believe Colin Powell would not have run for president had he been WHITE? Me neither. Do you believe that Barack Obama would have offered Powell or any other black man who failed to endorse him a seat at the table? Me neither.

To be honest, I never liked the man. He struck me as a coward. Yes, he was a general but he let fear of assassination prevent him from running for the presidency and he betrayed those who gave him a seat at the table in ill timed books.

Well, the two man deserve each other. Honor, gratitude and loyalty are not values familiar to either of them. Throwing old friends under bus is a common sport for them. All we can hope is that the American people will see through the media hype and give them their just dessert. A defeat in the polls.

Disgusting.

This is beneath contempt. The only one injecting race into this Dr. Klinghoffer. Not one scintilla of proof, just bile. I don't know enough about Dr. Klinghoffer to know if she is a racist, but I believe that the sentiments described in her post are racist - and baseless.

Back in October 1994, when Susan Smith's claim of having been carjacked by a black man and her sons taken first came on the news, I turned to Mercia and made the following pronouncement:

"She's lying and I bet she did it."

As soon as I saw the picture of Ashley Thompson, the McCain campaign volunteer, I knew she was lying. Here's why:

First among the problems with her story was the fact that the "B" scratched on her face was backwards -- as it might be if she had done it herself using a mirror.

What is disgraceful is this:

TPM blogger "astral66" makes a very nice catch: since the photographer who took the picture first posted on Drudge (who had met Ashley Todd at a College Republicans mixer) only gave it to the police and the College Republicans, and since Drudge had it before there was any announcement from the police, guess who gave it to Drudge?

Will John McCain denounce the College Republicans? And while he's at it, will he denounce his Pennsylvania communications director?

Somebody was looking to milk a political advantage out of this from the beginning. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. The country doesn't need desperate people running it. McCain/Palin is not the answer; they are the question. No is the answer.

Sarah Palin gave a "major policy address" on assistiing special needs children that included this:

Of course, research on fruit flies has yielded information on the nervous system useful to understanding autism.

Biologist P.Z.Myers responds:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

This is where the Republican party has ended up: supporting an ignorant buffoon who believes in the End Times and speaking in tongues while deriding some of the best and most successful strategies for scientific research. In this next election, we've got to choose between the 21st century rationalism and Dark Age inanity. It ought to be an easy choice.

Virginia Heffernan, in Sunday's New York Times, writes about the use of a scene from the film Downfall, in which Hitler realizes all is lost and reacts accordingly. The article is interesting, but all this is just to call your attention to this sopecific parody using that scene:

My German is still good enough to know what's what, but it's still hilarious. The guy who created it is here.

Apparently Sarah Palin's self-vaunted pipeline deal may just be an example of crony capitalism:

In interviews and a review of records, the AP found:

—Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group — the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.

—Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

—The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team.

—Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.

Read the whole thing. While not exactly a smoking gun, it has an unpleasant stench to it.

New Face of the GOP

As the McCain-Palin campaign ramps up its attacks on the press - most recently calliing for the LA Times to violate journalistic standards at the behest of a couple of politicians running for office - let's take a moment to reflect on the new face of the Republican Party:

Joe the Plumber

By my watch we're at fourteen minutes, fifty-nine seconds:

Music To My Ears

Oh, this is so nice:

A former Haitian paramilitary leader accused by human rights groups of committing murder and torture in Haiti was sentenced on Tuesday to as many as 37 years in prison for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme in Brooklyn that bilked lenders out of more than $1 million.

In his sentencing remarks, Justice Abraham G. Gerges of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn linked the defendant, Emmanuel Constant, to the American foreclosure crisis and the current global economic turmoil.

“This case, while serious in and of itself, takes on an added resonance given the current global financial crisis,” the judge said. “While the defendant and his confederates cannot be held accountable for the nationwide economic meltdown and the foreclosure crisis, this scheme, and others like it, have played a role in the situation.”

In the fraud, Mr. Constant and his collaborators used straw home buyers, falsified information on loan applications and inflated appraisals to cheat lenders.

The “defendant was a full and active participant in this scheme,” Justice Gerges said, adding that he found it interesting that Mr. Constant showed no remorse for the crimes he committed.

The sentence calls for a prison term of 12 1/3 to 37 years.

I've written about Constant before. He's a special species of vile and the world is a better place with him in striped pajamas, even if he isn't nailed for his most horrid and pernicious acts.

Oh happy day!

Keep Your Eyes On the Prize

When it rains...

How Petty is George Bush?

This petty:

Spain was not included in U.S. President George W. Bush’s invitation to the governments of the world’s leading economies and the larger emerging countries from the developing South -- a decision seen by Spain as a veto against the socialist government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero.

Although no one in the White House admits or has even implied it, the Zapatero administration as well as the rightwing opposition and the vast majority of Spain’s citizens are convinced that this is Bush’s way of retaliating against Zapatero’s decision to withdraw the country’s troops from the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, as soon as the socialist prime minister took office in 2004.

They reject the official argument that Spain was not invited because of its economic and industrial problems, as today Spain is the world’s eighth largest economy, the third leading exporter -- after the U.S. and France -- and home to two of the world’s top 16 banks.

Banco Santander now owns Sovereign Bank, the 19th largest bank in the US. Banco Santander has operations in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the US. Telefonica has the third largest customer base in fixed lines and mobile telephones in the world. Repsol is an oil and gas company with operations in 29 countries. In exports, Spain is third in the world after the US and France.

Those are facts. While it is my opinion that George Bush is a petty, vindictive man and arguably the worst president in our nation's history, he does precious little to give us any reason to believe otherwise. Thank God he also has precious little time in office.

If Maradona Were Coach

Mr. Trend tips me to the possibility that Diego Maradona will be the coach for Argentina's Men's National Football Team. I share Trend's skepticism, but would like to give you an idea as to what a training session will look like:

That will get me flamed by his fans!

Run-Off Results in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro

Apparently a fair and relatively positive profile of Fernando Gabeira in Sunday's New York Times was not enough to get him elected Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, as he lost a close runoff with Eduardo Paes, the candidate of the PT, the party founded by Lula.

What is interesting was where Gabeira's greatest support came from:

Just a month ago, few political analysts gave Mr. Gabeira much of a chance. But a campaign backed by many of Rio’s wealthy businessmen and intellectual elites has helped him make a surprising surge in recent weeks.

Powerful men like Eike Batista, the billionaire mining magnate, have thrown their support behind Mr. Gabeira

I would have been torn as to who to vote for. The article notes Gabeira's even temperment and clear positions, traits rare in Brazilian politics, especially at that level.

I am glad, however, Marta Suplicy lost in her bid to regain the mayor's office in Sao Paulo - and lost big. I have never been a fan of hers - sha has always struck me as being more about show than substance -  and under current mayor, Gilberto Kassab's leadership, as Mr. Trend notes, violence and crime rates in both Sao Paulo city and state have declined. Sao Paulo is better off without Suplicy.

The Face of the Right In Academia

I was never a big fan of Colin Powell, but I appreciated his reasoned and thoughtful explanation as to why he was supporting Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, those weren't good enough reasons for Dr. Judith Apter Klinghoffer:

Do you believe that Colin Powell would have endorsed a WHITE DEMOCRATIC Candidate for president? Me neither. Do you believe Colin Powell would not have run for president had he been WHITE? Me neither. Do you believe that Barack Obama would have offered Powell or any other black man who failed to endorse him a seat at the table? Me neither.

To be honest, I never liked the man. He struck me as a coward. Yes, he was a general but he let fear of assassination prevent him from running for the presidency and he betrayed those who gave him a seat at the table in ill timed books.

Well, the two man deserve each other. Honor, gratitude and loyalty are not values familiar to either of them. Throwing old friends under bus is a common sport for them. All we can hope is that the American people will see through the media hype and give them their just dessert. A defeat in the polls.

Disgusting.

This is beneath contempt. The only one injecting race into this Dr. Klinghoffer. Not one scintilla of proof, just bile. I don't know enough about Dr. Klinghoffer to know if she is a racist, but I believe that the sentiments described in her post are racist - and baseless.

Dead Giveaways

Back in October 1994, when Susan Smith's claim of having been carjacked by a black man and her sons taken first came on the news, I turned to Mercia and made the following pronouncement:

"She's lying and I bet she did it."

As soon as I saw the picture of Ashley Thompson, the McCain campaign volunteer, I knew she was lying. Here's why:

First among the problems with her story was the fact that the "B" scratched on her face was backwards -- as it might be if she had done it herself using a mirror.

What is disgraceful is this:

TPM blogger "astral66" makes a very nice catch: since the photographer who took the picture first posted on Drudge (who had met Ashley Todd at a College Republicans mixer) only gave it to the police and the College Republicans, and since Drudge had it before there was any announcement from the police, guess who gave it to Drudge?

Will John McCain denounce the College Republicans? And while he's at it, will he denounce his Pennsylvania communications director?

Somebody was looking to milk a political advantage out of this from the beginning. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. The country doesn't need desperate people running it. McCain/Palin is not the answer; they are the question. No is the answer.

The evil of ignorance...

Sarah Palin gave a "major policy address" on assistiing special needs children that included this:

Of course, research on fruit flies has yielded information on the nervous system useful to understanding autism.

Biologist P.Z.Myers responds:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

This is where the Republican party has ended up: supporting an ignorant buffoon who believes in the End Times and speaking in tongues while deriding some of the best and most successful strategies for scientific research. In this next election, we've got to choose between the 21st century rationalism and Dark Age inanity. It ought to be an easy choice.

McSame

Can't we all just get along ?

The Hitler Meme

Virginia Heffernan, in Sunday's New York Times, writes about the use of a scene from the film Downfall, in which Hitler realizes all is lost and reacts accordingly. The article is interesting, but all this is just to call your attention to this sopecific parody using that scene:

My German is still good enough to know what's what, but it's still hilarious. The guy who created it is here.

Crony Capitalism Is Not Very Mavericky

Apparently Sarah Palin's self-vaunted pipeline deal may just be an example of crony capitalism:

In interviews and a review of records, the AP found:

—Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group — the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.

—Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

—The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team.

—Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.

Read the whole thing. While not exactly a smoking gun, it has an unpleasant stench to it.