Again, what killed the Dinosaurs? Jesus.

According to this story, the creationists are taking the dinosaurs back.

The money quote is:

Dinny's new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two by two onto Noah's Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution."

These are the same people who tried telling me that Dinosaurs were in the Bible, and I looked, and looked and didn't see them...

If you want to know why other countries are starting to kick our ass in the realm fo science, just look at things like this.

Back from a training

And being a week away from the internet means three things:

1) I'm further behind on updating this webpage, and for that I apologize.
2) The only news I had was cable news, which means I had no real news. So, I didn't watch any news and spent the weekend catching up.
3) I had over 300 e-mails waiting for me when I got back.

Even though my trip wasn't a vacation, I have to think that it was better than Bush's vacation where he's biking, being protested and a new poll shows that only 36% of Americans think he's doing a good job. For comparison's sake, Nixon's lowest job approval rating was 39%, and he resigned in shame.

I'm sure that there are people who will make tons of Nixon allegories, and be turning Iraq in Vietnam, but I think the reason is a lot simpler.

Gas is $2.59 a gallon and everyone knows Bush is an oil man.

They can spout all the stats they want, but when gas costs a dollar more than it did before the election, people are going to have a huge case of buyer's remorse. Bush is seen holding hands with a Saudi Prince and oil prices keep going up. Bush signs a bill that gives BILLIONS to oil companies and gas prices keep going up.

Gas gets about $3 a gallon, and you could look at Bush's approval numbers being in the single digits.

Just an idea here

There are times I wonder if anyone in the Democratic Party has an IQ above room temperature. Reading about Cindy Sheehan, the woman who is waiting outside Bush’s fake ranch as a protest to the war, confirms that in quite a few ways, so let me, as a simple little gadfly, give any Democrat who might happen to read this somewhere some advice:

America loves soldiers. We do. It’s probably somewhere in our DNA, but for some reason, we tend to love our hired killers, and think of them as automatic heroes, even if, for the most part, they either join the military because someone in their family told them to, they couldn’t find a decent job, or they need the personal power. Let’s face it, what other job can a 16 year old sign up for where everyone calls you a hero just for signing a piece of paper?

If you are running for office, you need to understand that. Even if you know that most of the people in your district signed up because they weren’t quite smart enough to get a job loading shelves at Wal-Mart, the minute they put on a uniform and go through basic training, they transform from “Wade, the fucking bully who someone needs to knock the shit out of” to “Wade, the man who is willing to die for our freedom.” So, every chance you get to be around a soldier, do so. The Republicans do. They don’t enter the military, they don’t let their kids enter the military, and they don’t much do anything for the military, but because they show up, everyone thinks Republican = National Defense and Love Of Soldiers.

Now, anyone who is paying attention knows that this is bullshit. No, no fancy metaphors or cute phases to make the truth go down a bit easier. Just a simple fact. It’s bullshit. And the longer the Democrats allow the public to believe this bullshit, the harder it will be for us to have anyone but Evangelical corporate whores running the US to the bottom of every “quality of life” list that there is.

Since Bush got into office, he’s been cutting away at Soldier benefits, uses the National Guard as much as he can so that we can pay them less and dump their medical benefits as soon as possible, and hasn’t shown up at a single soldier’s funeral. The Republicans have made it a crime to photograph the returning flag draped coffins, not allowing us to honor the fallen, do their best to hide the figures, and try to stop anyone who mentions who and how many have died (just ask Ted Koppel).

And not a single Democrat has done either jack or shit to capitalize on this. If the situation were reversed, whoever the Democrat in office was would be subject to endless calls that he attend funerals, ads would be running on every market that had lost a soldier giving his name and asking people to “Call the White House. Tell The President To Honor Our Soldier’s Sacrifice.” The right-wing yap dogs would have the marching orders to hammer on the cuts in military benefits every single day, and offer amendments to bills they KNOW will fail so that they can run ads where “Representative So And So voted against giving our soldiers medical coverage for the injuries they got in THEIR war.”

When I turn on my TV, I don’t see a single ad. I rarely hear the Liberals in the media bring any of this up. I only see whatever Republican Fathead was able to get a camera to pay attention to him speaking to cheering soldiers, or having a backdrop of people in uniforms.

So. I think that they first Democrat who starts running ads that mention Republican Senator So and So voted to cut Veterans benefits, goes to Army bases and promises soldiers that if they are elected they will have medical coverage for life, and flies about the country talking to families and attending funerals will win.

Is it a shallow was of looking at things?

Damn skippy it is. People are busy and their knowledge of politics is shallow. They have jobs, kids, bills, three CSI series and four Law and Order series to watch. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to pick apart nuance and understand shades of gray.

Will it work?

Don’t know. But right now, Bush’s approval ratings are tanking because of his bullshit way of fighting the war in Iraq and trying to keep it as a war with no American consequences. If someone were to actually SHOW the consequences, I would imagine there’ a better opportunity of change than if the Democrats continue doing what they are doing…which is either nothing or cowering in fear.

And now, an editorial rebuttal by Chiz J Chisholm

I don’t understand why all of these commie pinko liberals upset that American Hero and Defender of Liberty Bob Novak told the American People the truth about that lying, no good snake in the grass James Carville.

It’s about time that someone stood up to the liberal media and told the truth! Why, if it weren’t for Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Sustren, Joe Scarborough, Brit Hume, (huge deep breath) Tony Snow, Cyndy Brucato, Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews, The Patriot, AM 1500, George Will and Ollie North, there wouldn’t be any conservatives at all. I hear all the time on the radio and the TV that liberals control the media, and since this is the only station where they don’t say that, I know it has to be true.

I didn’t see what happened, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion on it, and I think the Bob Novak Did The Right Thing! He was provoked! He was backed into a corner! He was trapped in a world he never made. He was America’s last hope! He was fighting terrorists who had taken over a building to save his wife. Or maybe that was Bruce Willis in “Die Hard.” I’m not sure, but I know Bob Novak has done some pretty heroic things too.

So he said some bad words. Everyone says bad words. The Vice-President said bad words on the Senate floor and no one made him apologize. They say bad words all the time on the TV and no one ever apologizes. I even say bad words when I hit my thumb with a hammer, stub my toe in the dark or find out some of the money I give at church goes to poor people, but no one tells me to apologize. OK, my wife does, but when I say it, I don’t mean it. Bad words never hurt anybody, unless you wrote them down on a two by four and smacked them upside the head with it, and that only happens a few times a week, tops! If God didn’t want us to curse, he wouldn’t have given us HBO!

I don’t see why everyone is so upset that he outed Valerine Plame. No one cares if she likes women. It has nothing to do with terrorism, and unless she was one of Bill Clinton’s girlfriends, there’s no reason to get a special prosecutor, since a special prosecutor’s job is to find out who Bill Clinton is dating so that we have something funny on Jay Leno’s show. Like those dancing judges. I wish he’d bring them back. Maybe they could have a bunch of dancing judges decide if Bob Novak did anything wrong. Isn’t that in the Constitution somewhere?

So, in conclusion let me end by asking why Bob Novak has to apologize when James Carville doesn’t have to? Sure Carville didn’t swear or walk off the set or tell people who was an agent of the CIA, but as a liberal, I’m sure he’s done something wrong, and he should apologize for it. As should these commie, pinko, liberal Air America radio stations. And it’s anti-American hosts. And the people who own that station, isn’t it Wally Carbo? Maybe it was Verne Gagne. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter because until I get an apology, I’m going to continue to not pay attention to the facts and give my opinion.

Thank you and good day.

(announcer’s voice): Just for the record, Wally Carbo and Verne Gagne worked for the America Wrestling Association and have nothing to do with Air America Minnesota, even if politics has more in common with Professional Wrestling than civil debate anymore. Thank you.

Shockingly enough, "Dukes of Hazzard" movie does well down south.

This article goes over the weekend box office, but it only hints at the fact that the Dukes movie did VERY well down south, and not so well in the civilized world. This comes despite a Republican best known for playing a character named after a woman's vagina and winning a Congressional seat running on that fact said that the movie doesn't uphold the original "family values" of the TV series.

And which "family value" was that? Running illegal liquor? Evading the police? Failing to obey traffic laws? Being the dumbest TV show during a "golden age" of stupid TV shows?

It was one of those weekends when if I would have had time to go to a movie, I still wouldn't have. I've moved out the movie studios major demographic...no, not because of my age, but because of my IQ.

Why is it that TV is getting smarter (Lost, The Shield, Deadwood, the various CSI shows, Numb3rs, Alias, etc...) and movies are getting dumber?

Leaked emails claim Guantanamo trials rigged.

Not that it surprises me, but this creeps me out.

I just have to ask....do we still live in America?

So, worried yet?

The country's drunken spending spree has worried wonks who go on and on about such things, but the deficit is reaching a tipping point if people are paying attention. Last week, China said that they would no longer tie their currency to the dollar, and with that change, the dollar didn't do much yet, but it could. The worry some people have is that the dollar will no longer be attractive to investors, so no one will buy our debt.

China has a lot of it right now, over $750 Billion of it. To the hard-line right-wingers out there, YOU should be upset that so much of our debt is in the hand of an enemy...they are an enemy, right? I can't keep track any more.

For me, I'm more worried that Bush's plan to deal with the debt is to let the dollar go into free-fall, that way the debt will remain the same in dollars, but be worth much less across the board as foreign currencies become the benchmark, and wealthy Americans who have been putting their money in other currencies and getting out of bonds (which Bush claims are worthless IOUs) will be fine.

This is probably an AMAZINGLY over-simplified version of things, and I'm no economist...but I do think we should be worried that our debt is reaching a point where foreign countries don't want to buy it because we might default.