Had a few Magic Hats after the races in Saratoga Springs today to drown the sorrow of losing horribly and reinforcing the reasons I don’t gamble. Anyway, I felt a lot more liberal after a few and apparently they worked wonders for this guy, too. I’m thinking of sending a case of #9s over to American Power.
Preparing to transfer a batch of wheat beer to the secondary fermenter where the apples await. I’m fairly new to the brewing, so I hope my Apple Wheat will turn out better than the strawberry and raspberry did. I used extracts for those. Extracts are the pits. Real fruit now. Was going to use blueberries, but the cost was prohibitive. I chopped up 2 and a half pounds of apples and threw in a can of Old Orchard Apple Raspberry concentrate for good measure.
BTW, if the prez is in the Glens Falls area, he can stop in for a homebrew and home baked bread anytime.
Well, more than they did anyway. Sorry if it pisses off the neocons, but most of the sane people in the US actually care if we’re respected and looked up to by the rest of the world.
Improved attitudes toward the United States were most marked in Western Europe, but also evident in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as some predominantly Muslim countries.
In Indonesia, where Mr. Obama spent part of his youth, no fewer than 73 percent of those polled said that his election had directly improved their opinion of the United States.
But the survey, taken among more than 26,000 people in 24 countries, plus the Palestinian territories, found that anti-American animosity remained high in places like Pakistan, Turkey and among Palestinians.
Europeans, in particular, seemed to be responding positively to Mr. Obama. The number of Britons saying that they trusted the American president to do the “right thing” in world affairs soared to 86 percent this year, under Mr. Obama, compared with just 16 percent last year, under President George W. Bush. The increase was slightly larger in both Germany and France.
The right thing numbers also jumped in all Middle Eastern countries surveyed — except Israel, which saw no statistical change.
If Obama can follow through on Iraq and solve the Afghan quagmire, he’ll be up 100% internationally. Obviously, we have a solid 15% in this country that are not happy if we are not involved in a clash of civilizations somewhere.
The mainstream of the Republican party is now a group of conspiracy theorists who cannot even accept the fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and that by 1961 it was part of the freakin’ US.
(T)he Right Wing of 2009 is rapidly embracing a wild-eyed, media manipulated, and self-destructive "conspiracy theory conservatism."
If there are people in the GOP who are actually not insane, I believe it would behoove them to try and curb this inclination toward finding a conspiracy under every rock. I don’t even see what the upside is to promoting the crazy. Unfortunately, anyone who mutters a discouraging word is labeled a liberal or RINO or whatever.
Barack Obama says he is a Christian, but he is really a Muslim working with a secret group to fool the public and take over the American government.
Barack Obama says he is a capitalist, but he is really a socialist working with a secret group to fool the public and take over the American government.
Barack Obama says he is American, but he is really a foreigner working with a secret group to fool the public and take over the American government.
It’s amazing that a small cadre of crazies can influence the entire party to adopt the lunacy. Well, it’s fun to watch anyway. Lucky that only a select few of us loyal libs know that Obama is secretly a Romulan out to destroy the Federation of Planets.
“I want my country back.” What the Hell does that even mean? Your candidate lost the election. Suck it up!
Shorter Jim DeMint: “We don’t give a rat’s ass about people without health insurance.”
It’s funny, I like hearing Julian Bond use the term more than I do hearing wingnuts use it.
Hopefully, we are moving toward a more “color blind” society spurred by education and demographics.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Michelle Malkin, top o’ the line wingnut blogger attempting, well I’m not sure what.
On a completely unrelated note: a snippet of a comment at American Power reads:
According to my research and notes following a multitude of fincail gurus not interested in politics
Apparently his research and notes didn’t extend into the spelling of the word, financial.
From “Dr.” Long Beach City College. Is this just the saddest piece of propaganda you’ve ever seen? Good Christ, are you people even trying anymore? Do you think all you have to do is throw out the names Kevorkian and Mengele? Where have all the smear merchants gone, long time passing?
I’m not even going to bother with a link to the post, “Obama to Ration Health Care” which could have at least tried tried to tie it to euthanasia for the Kevorkian link.
And Mengele, who the Hell knows how he fits in?
I expect more from a pro-victory professor.
Oops, here’s an American Power post that got by me that deserves some attention. It concerns Hilzoy’s retirement from blogging. It’s got a variety of wingnuttiness. There’s the misogyny of Douglas’ commenters who likely haven’t taken a hard look in a mirror lately. Douglas himself is certainly no candidate for any female blogger’s rule 5 blogging, if you know what I mean.
Then there’s:
Perhaps Professor Bok needs to spend some time with her colleagues in the Department of Psychology!
You can cut that irony with a knife. But, perhaps Long Beach has no department of psychology.
Then there’s the out of left field attacks:
And here's an interesting piece of related trivia: Conor Friedersdorf, the eminent "conservative" and now Atlantic blogger/Andrew Sullivan colleague, was a student of Professor Bok's at Pomona College in the 1990s. And being the idiot that Friedersdorf is, he refuses to address her by her real name after he found it published at Wikipedia.
The only idiotic thing Friedersdorf has done is go over to Don’s place and play on his field. It’s likely that Don’s trying to bait him into doing so again, as he does with Sullivan, Greenwald and others.
And here’s the wingnut as victim:
UPDATE: I love it! Personal attacks in place of argumentation or refutation! From the very first comment:
Your jealousy is showing, Mr. Long Beach City College.
He doesn’t mention the personal attacks on Hilzoy in his comments section. But, I can see why there aren’t many female commenters at AmPow. And once again pointing out that, “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor”:
Actually, that would be "Dr. Long Beach City College."
Liz “Spawn of Satan” Cheney defends the Dark Lord:
Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Liz said Tuesday she doesn't believe her father did anything wrong in connection with a secret CIA operation that officials have said was designed to capture and kill al-Qaida figures.
I think that I, along with my America hating leftist buddies, were assuming that we were trying to capture al-Qaida operatives. Capture and kill sounds like summary executions, though.
Asked directly on MSNBC whether her father directed the CIA not to keep Congress fully informed about the secret program, Cheney said, "This is a classified program and he doesn't talk about classified programs."
He especially doesn’t talk about them to Congress. Keeping Congress informed is so pre-9/11.
Liz Cheney, a former principal deputy secretary of state for Mideast affairs during George W. Bush's presidency, is helping her father write his memoirs. She aggressively defended him in Tuesday's nationally broadcast interview while declining to say point-blank whether he had violated any law or rule.
The closest she came was in declaring, "There's no evidence of that."
And here I expected her to say, “Damn straight he did, he was vice-president of the United States which we all know is the highest elected office anywhere.” And I’m sure it’s always a surprise to these news programs that invite her on. Who could anticipate that she would defend her father so vehemently?
Cheney said she didn't think Democrats were "up to handling national security" and that she thought they were trying to cover themselves on classified they agreed to support "when it was politically expedient."
Blah blah blah, because her daddy is such a man’s man despite the 5 deferments during the Vietnam War, one of which is her.
"People had different perspectives about when Congress needed to be briefed," she said. " ... I think we've got to go back to, how have we been so successful in protecting against attacks to the homeland?"
Yes, because it’s always a good idea to put unlimited power in the hands of a few incompetent schmucks and not have any oversight on them. Worked out well for the Romans.
Perusing the offerings at American Power, it’s so hard to make a choice. Think I’ll go with “Obama Gets Thrill With Gaddafi Handshake!” with obligatory exclamation point. Yes Libya, under Gaddafi, has funded terrorists. But then, technically so has the United States under a variety of presidents from both parties. This includes anyone called a freedom fighter and a number of state terrorists. Yes Gaddafi is probably insane. But, if he is no longer funding terrorism and a handshake will help insure that he continues in that manner, what’s the harm?
Then there’s the fact that under George the Lion-Hearted, we made nice with Libyans.
Gaddafi and Bush do apparently see eye to eye. On Monday, Gaddafi accomplished one of history's great diplomatic turnarounds when Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice announced that the U.S. was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya and held up the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya as "a model" for others to follow. Rice attributed the ending of the U.S.'s long break in diplomatic relations to Gaddafi's historic decision in 2003 to dismantle weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism as well as Libya's "excellent cooperation in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since September 11, 2001."
It’s convenient for the “professor” to climb into the time machine and go back to the 80’s and resurrect Gaddafi as public enemy number one in order to hit Obama over the head with him. Of course, the 80’s was when Saint Ronald was not only shaking hands with terrorists, he was selling military spares to the same Iranians that held Americans hostage for 444 days. And then, he took the profits to arm the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua. But, at least he didn’t shake hands with terrorists. He sent Rumsfeld to do that.
From Herr “Professor”: By now there's no doubt that President Obama gets a thrill up his leg when he's pressing the flesh of the world's most brutal dictators.
I suspect, though, that it doesn’t compare to the thrill that Douglas gets when Obama shakes the hand of Gaddafi or Chavez. If it was Castro there’d be something running down his leg.
And this from an AmPow commenter:
We, as Americans, Lefties included, need to examine our complaisant (sic) fantasies and realities in this country. We have enemies. Obama is dragging his entourage of adoring press, that influences the public zeitgeist, with him in confusing surface friendships with opportunists -deeply soulless dictators. They will take all of your American comforts, and turn them into ashes. And they will not care if you are sympathetic to their causes. You, my leftist friends, are their enemy, too.
See, the problem is that we just don’t have enough enemies. Despite the fact that we (during the Bush II administration) re-established diplomatic relations with Libya that is no reason to act diplomatically toward them.
Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin:
In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.
In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.
And after eviscerating the myths of Palin:
The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.
It's not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won't be that way.
We are going to need the best.
Burn the witch RINO!
UPDATE: They are now gathering the kindling* at right wing sites.
*Truth warning-do not click this link.
In GOP sex scandal news, attention turns back to John Ensign who has been thanking Allah Jehovah for Mark Sanford, Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson.
Nevada Sen. John Ensign has acknowledged that his parents paid his mistress and her family $96,000 in April 2008, according to a statement made by his attorney moments ago.
It’s not a pay-off or anything like that, though.
"After the Senator told his parents about the affair, his parents decided to make the gifts out of concern for the well-being of long-time family friends during a difficult time," said Paul Coggins, counsel to Ensign.
Just finished bottling a batch of Raspberry Wheat Ale and am currently relaxing with a Strawberry Wheat. Thought it appropriate to thank the men who made these homebrews possible. Thanks Mr. Jimmy and Rep. Barber Conable.
The American public had decided it liked its beer cheap, bland, and less filling, and the industry—which, after decades of consolidation, consisted of a mere 44 breweries in 1979—was happy to oblige.
Three decades later, the U.S. boasts 1,463 breweries, including 975 brewpubs.
Most microbrewers started out as homebrewers, So, if you ever find yourself enjoying a beer above and beyond the mass-produced Budweiser quality, raise one for Jimmy and Barber.
On July 30, conservatives are 'going Galt,' named after Ayn Rand's famous character John Galt from her novel Atlas Shrugged, and thus refuse to show up for work. They plan to 'call in conservative.'
How will the republic survive without conservatives for one day?
If this means businesses lose billions of dollars on that day, fine. If this means that travel will be disrupted, good. If this means communication systems are crippled, so be it.
Feel the sting of “John Galt.”
No doubt employers and business owners will threaten employees with termination if they 'call in conservative' on that day. Don't let them intimidate you. They need conservative employees, who tend to be the most reliable and conscientious. And, it must be stated that some will probably lose their jobs.
It’s like Nathan Hale, only,“Give me the day off or give me termination.” If they get fired for one call in, doesn’t that kind of quash the idea of how indispensible they were in the first place?
Your country and its rule of law--The United States Constitution--need your help at this critical time. If multi-millions of citizens participate, there is no way Washington can ignore us. And if they do, the next step may not be so pretty.
And, if no one notices will you STFU about it?
Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.
Douglas MacArthur
I'm quitting the business today. I'm going to open up an appliance store, I've always really been into toasters. I'm giving it all up.
Dane Cook
If either player abandon the game by quitting the table in anger, or in an otherwise offensive manner; or by momentarily resigning the game; or refuses to abide by the decision of the Umpire, the game must be scored against him.
Howard Staunton
Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.
Lance Armstrong
Quitting doesn't enter my mind.
Jimmy Buffett
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Most people who succeed in the face of seemingly impossible conditions are people who simply don't know how to quit. ~
Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. ~
A quitter never wins and a winner never quits. ~
No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind. ~
A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits. ~
Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit. ~
When faced with a mountain, I will not quit! I will keep on striving until I climb over, find a pass through, tunnel underneath - or simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine, with God's help! ~
It's always too early to quit.
Please don’t go away, Sarah!
The religious left has a long tradition of activism on social issues, including the civil-rights movement. But for the past quarter century, faith-based politicking has been dominated by the religious right, which built a powerful army of activists -- and a formidable fund-raising machine -- on the strength of leaders such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority and radio host James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
The religious left's re-emergence as a strong voice -- with the financial backing to make aggressive media buys -- is a "seismic shift," said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University who studies evangelical politics.
If the Republicans don’t even have religion to fall back on anymore, what do they have?
A religious coalition called the American Values Network spent nearly $200,000 placing the global warming ads. Some political analysts credit the campaign with boosting support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which narrowly passed the House last week.
As opposed to the right wing religious view that God gave us the planet to destroy as we see fit.
Democratic lawmakers representing conservative districts say such efforts help them make the case to skeptical constituents that they aren't simply toeing the party line -- or turning into bleeding-heart liberals -- when they support President Barack Obama's calls for health-care and climate-change legislation.
Maybe Obama knew what he was doing when he was “palling around with Rick Warren.”
Of course, as any good pro-victory associate professor of polisci will tell you, left wing types can’t be religious. They are all atheistic nihilist scum from the fever swamp or something like that.
