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On Friday evening, HBO's Bill Maher announced to the world what certainly won't come as a shock to many: "You know who's putting country first? I am by supporting Obama." With this coming a week after he chastised "guys" at MSNBC -- likely Chris Matthews and Chris Olbermann -- for being ready to have sex with the Democrat presidential nominee, it appears Maher no longer thinks it's wrong for media members to gush all over the junior senator from Illinois. Having previously insinuated that Trig Palin was not Sarah's child (as pointed out by my colleague Brent Baker), Maher concluded...

The candidate is untried, inexperienced and charismatic. He is known as a great speechmaker, but his critics call him a celebrity. When he first runs for high office, he does so largely on the strength of an inspiring address he delivered. The person in question is not Barack Obama, but the man John McCain and the Republican Party have lionized for three decades: Ronald Reagan. At last week's GOP convention, Reagan loomed large. Republicans showed a rousing video tribute to him, and speakers sang his praises - invoking his presidency more times than they did George W. Bush's. And at...

Dunce -- I wasn't planning on sending you something tonight. But if you saw what I saw from the Republican convention, you know that it demands a response. I saw John McCain's attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign. But worst of all -- and this deserves to be noted -- they insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process. You know that despite what John McCain and his attack squad say, everyday people...

But the economy is not all; the GOP's last best hope remains identity politics. In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks' party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year's GOP convention is almost shockingly -- un-Americanly -- white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem. This year, however, whiteness is the only way Republicans...

ABC News' Matthew Jaffe reports: While Republicans congregate in the Twin Cities striving to keep their hold on the White House, Barack Obama's running mate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., sharply criticized the Bush administration Tuesday while delineating the changes Democrats would demand if they rise to power. "In an Obama-Biden administration, we will not have an attorney general who blatantly breaks the law," Biden said at a town-hall meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, his voice at times drowned out by applause. "We will not have a president who doesn't understand the Constitution. And I will not be a vice-president...

Journalism: The national media are based in New York and Washington, D.C., and don't always get the rest of the country as they should. That may help explain the coverage of Sarah and Bristol Palinohn McCain asked for, and got, a perfect storm of ignorance and condescension when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Geographically, politically and culturally, Palin is about as far from Manhattan and the Beltway as you can get. She's not even from Rush Limbaugh's "flyover America," which is in the Lower 48. She's from Alaska, where people shoot moose for the same reason the...

A little political commentary from poker celebrity Daniel Negreanu.

An angry Senator John Kerry is also an entertaining John Kerry. And on ABC's This Week yesterday, Kerry provided us with a lot of comedy entertainment including his assertion that John McCain was forced to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate by Rush Limbaugh and "the rightwing." There are a lot of other comedy nuggets in this interview conducted by This Week host George Stephanopoulos who fails to challenge Kerry on most of his absurdities including the notion that that merely traveling though countries overseas on a brief campaign stint counts as foreign policy experience. The transcript is below...

Obama said he first would ask officials in the affected areas what is most needed, which may not be known for a few days."We don't want to solicit a bunch of canned goods that can't get there, or, you know, bottles of water where they already have water," he said.Obama said he might visit storm-damaged areas once "things have settled down."

Indian outsourcing sector is in the decline especially in the IT Sector. The easy money time for the Indian bidy shoppers and custom software constructors is perhaps over as US economy sinks into long term recession tranforming into slow and steady multidecade depression. McCain’s choice of Palin is something that can crush the last hopes of Indian outsourcing companies. Palin is a social conservative. Unlike US president George Bush and Senetor Nccain she will put US interest first before allowing ruthless outsourcing at the expense of American well paid jobs. Governor palin is a stonch follower of Pat Buchanan who...

McCain has thrown the election. It is clear now with his choice for Vice President that he has no desire to win in November. Why else would he chose an inexperienced woman, whose only apparent qualification is that she won a beauty pageant in the 1980s? Why else would he refuse to say Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name? Why else would he run an ad praising Obama and congratulating him for winning the nomination? If McCain had chosen Mitt Romney, a man with real leadership ability, real charisma, and real experience, he might have stood a chance. He could have...

Ask Democrats which of their leaders they like (other than Barack and Hillary, of course) as they gather for their national convention in Denver, and Jimmy Carter and Al Gore lead the pack. More Democrats have a Very Favorable opinion of Independent Senator Joe Lieberman than of the party's Senate Leader Harry Reid and up-and-comer Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia now running for the Senate. But the Connecticut Democrat, the party's vice presidential nominee in 2000 who is now expected to speak at the Republican national convention next week, has much higher negatives. .............. Fifty three percent of...

When Barack Obama accepts his party's nomination this week in Denver, the senator from Illinois will give the most anticipated convention speech since Ronald Reagan addressed the Republicans in 1980 in Detroit. Obama's speech rates as a huge occasion for all the obvious reasons, but the key revelation about this event is that America's response to it will matter far more than the oratory itself. Great political speeches have historically been identifiable because they tapped into certain veins of the American imagination and experience. Pundits and historians could point to superb political oratory by sensing the speaker's grasp of the...

In demographic terms, Joe Biden is a sensible choice. In selecting him, Barack Obama is trying to compensate for his own two principal vulnerabilities: youthful inexperience, and outsiderhood. No one could call Joe Biden inexperienced. He seems to have been around Washington forever. After all, he was planning a presidential bid 20 years ago. He has the CV of a wise old pol who could play Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama's JFK. Biden is also rooted in middle America, where Obama has three big negatives. The first is color, which is still a handicap in a lot of the red...

You have to hand it to John McCain — his campaign ads are (inadvertently) the most incisive commentary on the death of Jeffersonian democracy ever broadcast. Superficially, they lambaste Barack Obama's worshipful crowds and messianic promises that a heavenly "light will shine down" on his candidacy. But what the ads really lampoon is what Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls Presidentialism: our paternalistic view that presidents are godlike saviors — and therefore democracy's only important figures. "The once-every-four-years hope for the lever pull sensation of democratic power blinds people to the opportunities for democratic representation, deliberation, activism and change that surrounds...

What with the Bush legacy of reckless war and economic mismanagement, 2008 is a year that favors the generic Democratic candidate over the generic Republican one. Yet Barack Obama, with every natural and structural advantage in the presidential race, is running only neck-and-neck against John McCain, a sub-par Republican nominee with a list of liabilities longer than a Joe Biden monologue. Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums, and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, lacks clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the...

There's a candidate in this presidential race who remains a mystery — hazy, undefined, so full of contradictions that voters may see electing him as an enormous risk. I'm referring to the cipher known as John McCain. In fact, there are some basic things about McCain that apparently even McCain doesn't know. Asked Wednesday by reporters from Politico how many houses he and his wealthy wife Cindy own, McCain responded, "I think — I'll have my staff get to you." The correct answer seems to be somewhere between four and seven, but who's counting? I don't begrudge McCain his multiple...

CARRBORO - Throughout the primary election season, Barack Obama's campaign argued that his nomination would expand the electoral playing field. In particular, they pointed to Southern states, including North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. Even in states like South Carolina and Mississippi, local political observers have made the case that high African-American turnout could turn their states "blue." As pollsters, pundits and others make their predictions, African-American turnout has been the focus of arguments and discussions. However, there is another side of the coin. What will turnout be like in the conservative Christian community? Republican victory in the South has always...

The Strong Dollar Illusion By Peter Schiff Economists who now see American troubles spreading around the world are predicting that foreign central banks will ignore the gathering inflation threat and follow the Fed down the rate cutting path. Similarly, they argue that since the downturn began here, the U.S. recovery will likely be underway while the rest of world is still decelerating. These assumptions have prompted a rally in the dollar, a sell-off in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, and have cast doubts on the ability of foreign economies to "decouple" from the United States. Investors should not take...

Strategy Who Started Cold War II Posted by Patrick J. Buchanan on August 18, 2008 The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO. Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis. If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the...

In this war, Russia won, Georgia lost, and US was resoundingly defeated Orly Azoulay Published: 08.13.08, 23:29 / Israel Opinion Moscow's decision to flex its muscle vis-à-vis Georgia was meant to signal to the West, and particularly to Washington, not to meddle in Russia's backyard. Even before Georgia's invasion into South Ossetia, President Saakashvili was in Russia's sights. He was too American for its taste. Saakashvili was certain he has a trusted friend in the White House; one who would come to his aid and offer significant help during times of crisis. This is what Washington made him understand. He...

The DUmmies have FINALLY discovered that their erstwhile hero, John Edwards, was nothing but a complete fraud. Something the most of the rest of the world has known for years. What brought the DUmmies to this discovery was the fact that Edwards on top of ditching his scholarship program has also DUmped his completely self-serving poverty program. I guess no more poverty tours by the Silky Pony. Oh, and is okay now to shop at Walmart? You can see the DUmmies finally open their eyes tardily in this THREAD titled, "John Edwards Ends Fling With Anti-Poverty Center." The thread...

By viewing evolution as the motion of energy flows toward a stationary state (entropy), evolution can be explained by the second law of thermodynamics, a law which conventionally describes physical systems. In this view, a cheetah serves as an energy transfer mechanism, and beneficial mutations allow the animal to transfer more energy within its environment, helping even out the energy.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)-If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects. The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight....

FORGET those plans to have a third child for the country because further increases in the birth rate could harm the economy, the nation's productivity watchdog has warned. A major analysis of the nation's increasing fertility rate said it was at its highest level for 25 years - but the Productivity Commission yesterday warned further increases may aggravate rather than solve the problem of the ageing of the population. This is because it will shift women out of the workforce while they care for babies, depressing labour supply and reducing the taxation base as our population ages, the Daily Telegraph...

FOOTHILL RANCH – A man walked away with only a superficial scratch after trying to pet a mountain lion cub today in Whiting Ranch, officials said. Using a helicopter and foot patrols, authorities are now looking for three small cubs and a mother in the park. The man, in his mid-40s, spotted three mountain lion cubs as he was walking through the park. Assuming that the cubs would not be dangerous because of their small size, he walked toward them and tried to pet one of them, said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. "He said he...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects. The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight. "Genetically and physiologically, it should be impossible" for all U.S. adults to become overweight, said Dr. Lan Liang of the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of the researchers on the study. However,...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - Democratic candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Tuesday for taking a page out of "the Cheney playbook" on energy, overlooking his own support of oil-friendly policies that the unpopular vice president helped to craft. ADVERTISEMENT Obama voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by President Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production, a measure for which Vice President Dick Cheney played a major role. McCain opposed the bill, saying at the time that it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.

"We could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could save just as much."

Former Vice President Al Gore, delivering a speech in Washington on environmental issues, said global warming, not terrorism, is the No. 1 threat to America. The former V.P. encourages a national switch to earth-friendly power sources. (Video at Link) *barf alert is standard for algoreWhile he praised both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain for their stands on environmental issues, Gore challenged the next president to take bold steps to solve the problem. "Both are serious and must be addressed. That having been said, I think that the climate crisis is, by far, the most serious threat we have ever...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday said he wants to rid the world of nuclear weapons and pledged to fight emerging threats posed by biological and cyber-terrorism. It's time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons," the White House hopeful said. "As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong deterrent. But we'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy." The remarks, delivered at Purdue University in Indiana before a roundtable discussion with foreign policy experts, come as...

How far can an administration go in destroying its country's environment, harming the citizens to which it is (in theory) beholden and dooming the future not only of its own people, but spreading the harm across the world? We won't know for sure until President Bush leaves office, but his record, and that of his administration, borders on criminal. On Monday, Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling -- a move we hope Congress can block -- plundering the oceans for a paltry sum of oil (less than three years' worth), which won't even be available for a decade --...

How much do we really have? According to API (Transcript 23:17), we really don't know how much recoverable oil is available. There are some published estimates for various pieces--coastal oil, OCS-48 states oil, Alaska-offshore, Alaska-ANWR--but none of these is very big. At this point, we haven't done any on-site research to see what is really there, using today's equipment. We don't know if there are some fairly good sized fields that we have overlooked. It is possible that the estimates are too high, but without looking, we really don't know. Better use of existing pipeline systems We have pipeline systems...

Former CIA agent: "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement'" Glenn L. Carle "was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats." In "Overstating Our Fears" in the Washington Post, July 13, he says this: We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda. In a circulating e-mail, LTC Joseph Myers, who has served...

On the Spot (CNSNews.com) – A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the “black hawk down” battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, also equated the drive for global warming legislation with the drive for women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But one global warming expert from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) told Cybercast News Service that such a remark...

By becoming the first African American set to win the nomination of a major political party, Barack Obama showed that we have come a long way in overcoming our long history of racism. But winning the presidency is a different matter. The racial divide seen in the primaries has many Democrats (I include myself) worried that the issue of race will loom even larger in the general election. Too many people – how many is hard to estimate since some voters lie to pollsters – still harbor racial resentments against blacks. For them, Obama is first and foremost a black...

Did you know that violent white men are never arrested for their actions? The Chicago Sun-Times' Mary Mitchell is sure of it, if you aren't. In another of her typically race baiting articles, Mitchell this time says that any time a white man is engaged in violent behavior, he is let off "to go on his merry way," never to be "held accountable" for his actions. Race monger Mitchell is sure of this, see, because she saw a traffic scuffle between two "old white guys" where no arrests were made by Chicago police. Two "old white guys" let go without...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today pointed to President Bush’s unpopularity as an explanation for Congress’s single-digit approval rating. "Any time you have a president that is down so, so far in poll numbers, it drags down a city councilmember. It drags down any elected official, including us, and we recognize that," Reid said when asked about Congress’s rating. Rasmussen reported today that Congress’s approval rating has slipped to 9 percent—down two percentage points from last month, and the first-ever single-digit rating for Congress in Rasmussen’s history. Polls this month show Bush’s approval between 29 and 30 percent. But...

It isn't just that young voters like Obama--more importantly, over the last eight years, they've come to believe in liberalism. Young voters played a crucial role in Barack Obama's successful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. In state after state, exit polls showed that Obama received his strongest support from voters under the age of 30. Now that he has clinched the Democratic nomination, Obama is counting on strong support from under-thirties to offset John McCain's expected advantage among older white voters, some of whom continue to be uneasy about the prospect of an African American president. Recent polling data...

Not until a year after Lexington did the Continental Congress muster the resolve to declare the 13 colonies free and independent states, no longer subject to Parliament or Crown. Not for five years after July 4, 1776, did George Washington's army truly attain America's independence at Yorktown. Even then, Washington and his aide Alexander Hamilton knew that the 13 states, while politically independent, were dependent upon Europe for the necessities of their national life. Without French ships and guns, French muskets and troops, the Americans could not have forced Gen. Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. Cornwallis would have sailed away, as...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Some of the almost 10,000 members of the National Education Association (NEA) attending the teachers union's annual conference this week in the nation's capital spoke out on the issues they hope their lobbyists will fight for during next year's legislative session, including the establishment of a peace academy, in-state college tuition and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who graduate from high school. Susie Jablinske, a first grade teacher at Central Elementary School in Edgewater, Md., said children who are in the country illegally should have the same educational rights as American children. She proposed that...

Lonely whales are 'losing the will to live' due to over-hunting By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 4:57 PM on 02nd July 2008 The steeply declining number of whales in the world's oceans is causing the remaining creatures to suffer loneliness and 'lose the will the live', a leading expert has claimed. The psychological impact of over-hunting on the highly intelligent and sociable animals has been identified as the latest threat to the survival of the species. The whale population has already fallen dramatically over the past few centuries because to culling by Japan, Norway and Iceland, and the...

Boulder, Colo. -- The Earth has about 16.2 million square miles of forests but scientists say research is needed to understand the forests' impact on climate change. "As politicians and the general public become more aware of climate change, there will be greater interest in legislative policies to mitigate global warming," said atmospheric scientist Gordon Bonan of the National Science Foundation's National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "Forests have been proposed as a possible solution, so it is imperative that we understand fully how forests influence climate." The complex relationships within forests both add and subtract from the...

Winnie the Pooh, Luke Skywalker and British football hooligans could shape the foreign policy of Barack Obama if he becomes US President, according to a key adviser. Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else. Mr Danzig told the...

WAUKEGAN, Illinois (CNN) -- Wayne Gerdes is a man on a mission. He wants to end our wasteful ways, and that became plain as day to me from the moment I met him. He is the king of "hypermilers," drivers who push cars to their miles per gallon limits and beyond. Wayne gets about 50 mpg from his Honda Accord using hypermiling techniques. We met him at the Waukegan Regional Airport not far from his home. CNN producer Dana Garrett and I had flown there in my small, single-engine airplane, a Cirrus SR22. Within moments, Wayne and I were talking...

"More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless."

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) “Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I would be great. First of all, I know how to behave at weddings and funerals. And I know how to be commander in chief. I’d bring a lot of fun to the job. We would rock the Naval Observatory.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) “My name has been discussed partly because I’m a female and it’s always nice to balance things in gender … I’ve discussed it with my kids. My 16-year-old thinks it’s a fabulous idea because he thinks we probably couldn’t find any better residence in Washington, D.C., than the...

McCain Economic Plan Across America, families are facing economic challenges. Gas prices are rising, mortgages are threatened, and thousands have lost their jobs. Now is the time to act and John McCain has outlined several near-term, tangible plans to address some of the challenges confronting Americans today Helping Americans Confront Higher Living Costs: John McCain Will Help Americans Hurting From High Gasoline And Food Costs. Americans need relief right now from high gas prices. John McCain will act immediately to reduce the pain of high gas prices. John McCain Believes We Should Institute A Summer Gas Tax Holiday. Hard-working American...

Ihad been thinking for some time that more attention should be paid to Rush Limbaugh – not to what he says, because it is pretty much the same old rightwing bombast he has been selling for 25 years, but to what he has been urging his legion of 20m similarly inclined radio listeners to do. This is, wherever state laws allows, that they should register in a Democratic party primary and cast a vote for Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama, the front-runner to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He calls it “operation chaos” and he has been revelling in its...

According to an AP article which can be found at the WTTK.com website, and which cannot be cited here due to copyright issues: Barney Frank is complaining that the morgage industry isn't doing enough to make jumbo mortgages available. Seems he thinks that the interest rates they charge are too high.