Dan Spencer, known to many of us as California Yankee, has a new blog. Or, rather, he has a new look for a blog he’s been maintaining for a while now that the folks of Examiner.com have put him at the helm of Right Side Politics Examiner.
Congrats, Dan!
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It took bloggers a matter of hours to discover that Cindy McCain’s “family recipes” posted on her husband’s campaign website were ripped off from the Food Network, but only a matter of minutes for the campaign to blame an intern for what’s now being called “Recipegate”.
Cindy McCain’s tuna recipe was actually developed and submitted to the Food Network by cookbook author and former “Cooking Thin” host Kathleen Daelemans. The recipe for farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms was a “quick pasta classic” from the TV show “Everyday Italian.” That old McCain standby — rosemary chicken — was a creation of TV chef Rachael Ray and was lifted, with a few changes, from the same Food Network site.
All three were listed on a McCain Web page titled “Cindy’s Recipes.”
Naturally, Dems wonder why an intern would have been tasked with finding the McCain “family” recipes, which is an admittedly valid question.
The incident came to light even as McCain continued debating with Clinton and Obama over who is “more in touch” with American voters. I can’t help wondering, though: just how in touch can McCain’s campaign be if they don’t grasp the sheer number of bloggers out there who are fact-checking every statement made, including recipes, and how the internet makes it so very easy for them to do so.
Source: The White House
Do you see what he sees? No wonder the Veep is smiling, eh?
I must’ve missed this one the first time it made the rounds, so when my mom forwarded the link today I naturally assumed it was an April Fool’s Joke. But that really is John McCain “singing”. Apparently he’d run this on his campaign website a while back.
He’s so damn funny I nearly peed.
Universal health coverage may be a priority for Hillary Clinton, but apparently paying health care bills for campaign workers isn’t. Clinton ran up a $292,000 tab for health insurance premiums for her campaign staff — and their spouses, partners and children — the campaign took a couple of months to get around to paying for it.
Naturally, her staff blames it on the need to verify expenses and the lag between when expenses are paid and when they show as paid. There’s just one problem: rather than paying down their debt with Aetna, for instance, the campaign spent its money on other benefits, leaving the insurance companies unpaid.
And how do insurance companies deal with slow-payment? Why, by raising the costs for other (paying) customers to offset the losses based on the time-value of money.
In other words, Hillary’s campaign is part of the cause of the problem she says she wants to fix. Now that is job security.
One day after a visit from Dick Cheney, the Saudi government-controlled newspaper, Okaz ran an ominous story about the Saudi Shura Council’s newest project:
“(Making) plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts’ warnings of possible attacks on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors”.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking: those Lefties are whining again. They got a whiff of Adm. Fallon’s retirement from CINC/CENTCOM and decided it must be due to his opposition to a U.S. attack on Iran. So naturally they’re pulling out the ol’ Bush is a war hawk argument. *yawn*
Not so fast, folks.
After months of reports coming out of Washington, D.C. claiming that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, the National Intelligence Estimate — a consortium of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies — concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but was keeping options open for the future.
Two weeks ago, Vice President Cheney was asked about this report. His response should sound eerily familiar to those who recall the administration’s statements just prior to the start of the war in Iraq:
It’s important if you’re going to look at the National (Intelligence) Estimate that we be precise in terms of what it says,” Cheney said. “And what it says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted.
“What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they’re trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they’ve got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “They’ve been working at it for years. They’ve now got a large number of centrifuges operating. We know this from the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“I have high confidence they have an ongoing enrichment program,” Cheney said.
So, is the country stepping up to launch yet another war based on this “hunch”?
• Last week, a U.S. nuclear sub joined the fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf.
• On land, Russian sources say the U.S. is currently massing forces on the Iranian border.
• Today the U.S. announced plans to sanction Iran’s Central Bank for funding state-sponsored terrorism.
Military positioning plus sanctions: that sounds awfully familiar to me.
Not that we’ll hear much about it, what with today’s big brouhaha over the domestic economy that everyone’s been worrying about.
How conveeeeeenient.
I’ve said before how tired I am of being made to feel guilty for having been born white. Mostly it irritates me because I’m not white: I’m more peach-colored, thank you very much.
So, frankly, I take a bit of offense being lumped in Barack Obama’s now-infamous reference to the “typical white person”. Or, at least, it would irritate me if I didn’t live in Kansas and think these Typical White Person t-shirts were so damn funny.
When New York’s new governor, David Paterson, admitted to an extra-marital affair lasting several years, his ex-lover Lila Kurton had no idea what was coming. In fact, she pretty much figured that once Paterson took power her position in the Governor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs was a sure thing.
According to the NY Daily Mail, Kirton was hired during former governor Spitzer’s administration to the $150,000 per year post. Paterson has left it to her to decide whether she wanted to keep her job, and by all appearances she planned to stay on. Until she was caught off-guard by Paterson’s announcement of their affair, that is.
Insiders said Kirton was so optimistic about her prospects last week - once it became clear that Paterson would become governor - she began putting sticky notes on the doors of top executive staffers indicating who their replacements would be.
The notes were taken so seriously, some began cleaning out their desks, insiders said.
Yesterday, aides said only that Kirton remained an employee of the governor’s office, but did not elaborate when asked if she had been transferred to another position.
Meanwhile, Paterson continues to resist calls for the disclosure of his credit card statements reflecting hotel charges for trysts with Kirton. The NY Times reports that Paterson may have used a campaign credit card for those hotel stays, but that he’s only reimbursed his campaign three times for personal expenditures. Paterson has denied using campaign funds for such stays.
Due to their resemblance of Spitzer’s illicit activities as Client No. 9, Paterson’s payments to Kirton are coming under fire, too:
On Wednesday, Mr. Paterson told the Daily News that purpose of a $500 expenditure to a girlfriend in 2002 that had been listed on campaign forms as “professional services” was to reimburse her for a donation she made on his behalf to the gubernatorial campaign of Carl McCall.
When asked about other incidents of infidelity, Paterson wouldn’t say if he’d had other affairs. The NY Sun is currently investigating over Paterson’s payments exceeding $11,000 to April Robbins-Bobyn over a 5-year period. Paterson’s spokesman said Bobyn had been a staffer for Paterson when he served as Senate minority leader, but later amended his statement to describe her as a campaign aide. (The Sun says she was listed as “Director of Special Events” on a 2006 blog entry posted by Paterson’s office when he was a Senator.)
I’ve found additional listings for Ms. Bobyn under the financial disclosures filed with the NYS Board of Elections. The first, is on a March 17, 2008 financial disclosure list and the second financial disclosure listing April Bobyn is dated March 18, 2008.
Paterson served as a state Senator from 2002 until he was picked by Spizter as his running mate in January 2006.
Expenses associated with Ms. Bobyn include:
Other records show additional payments to Ms. Bobyn:
The payments were listed as unspecified reimbursement, travel expenses, office expenses (including an $1,840.23 expenditure), constituent services, wages, and a bonus of $2,500.
Bobyn is not speaking with the press at this time.
Not surprisingly, the media as well as many citizens are curious whether there’s more to Paterson’s past behavior than what he’s revealed. Certainly, his disclosure of his past infidelity validates the NY Times‘ description of him as a disarmingly candid politician who defies public expectations. So it’s no surprise that New Yorker’s continue to show strong support for Paterson.
But not everyone is convinced that Paterson was as candid as he appeared to be when he publicly acknowledged one past marital affair with Lila Kirton. As the NY Times reports, people are struggling to make sense of the whole Governors Gone Wild sexcapades, and just what relevance a politician’s private life should have.
Many said there was, in effect, an implicit bargain between a public figure and the public: The public figure — whether a politician or an entertainment star — is playing a role and must realize that what he or she does in private has to be very private if it is at odds with his or her public image.
So what do you think? Is there more to this story than Paterson is letting on and, if so, should he come clean about other affairs? Or are politicians sex lives — even those involving employees — nobody’s business?
Speak out in the comment section and discuss amongst yourselves.
Were you thinking Spitzer’s resignation would end the discussion of New York’s governor’s marital affairs? Think again.
New York’s new Governor David Paterson now admits that both he and his wife had affairs during a rough patch in their marriage.
Paterson says he maintained an extra-marital relationship with a woman from 1999 to 2001, then at one point he and his wife decided to patch up their relationship. There’s no indication that Paterson funded his fun with taxpayer money, and the matter is certainly well behind the couple.
The timing of this little revelation still stinks, coming one day after Paterson took the oath of office. Then again, perhaps New York’s first black, first blind Governor might also become the first politician to prove that certain activities don’t matter… as long as they’re privately funded on private time.
The founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, along with companies that sell carbon credits. Coleman, who feels the network he created in 1982 is now losing sight of its initial focus, has been a long-time skeptic about global warming.
Now, he’s hoping that a lawsuit — with its accompanying legal discovery and scientific testimony — will serve as a vehicle for a full-fledged fact-finding debate to learn whether there’s any truth to the whole “global warming” thing. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a scam:
“As you look at the atmosphere over the last 25 years, there’s been perhaps a degree of warming, perhaps probably a whole lot less than that, and the last year has been so cold that that’s been erased,” he said.
“I think if we continue the cooling trend a couple of more years, the general public will at last begin to realize that they’ve been scammed on this global-warming thing.”
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is ignoring news of the lawsuit, possibly because Al Gore is just so darn fashionable these days.
After all, doesn’t he hang out with Bono and parody himself on SNL? Isn’t he on the Hollywood A-list for party invites?
Frankly, Al Gore pretty much convinced me that he’s out of touch reality when, at the Nobel Prize Concert, he used the same tired speech he’d previously given to the U.N. (video). You know, the one where he hammers on how “we in our generation will find the moral authority and capacity for long-term vision”.
Oh, sure, it went over just fine when he was talking to a crowded gathering of other old farts, but seemed rather smarmy at the Nobel Prize Concert where he was old enough to have fathered (or grandfathered) half of audience.
Best way to reduce carbon emissions: tape Al Gore’s mouth shut for a while.
I love the smell of a fresh scandal in the morning.
And, really, what should one wear when caught in a timeless act of corruption but another classic?
That’s right, it’s the now and forever fragrance of Client No. 9, the scent we all recognize as the fullest expression of a politician’s true self.
Sure, it might cost you everything you’ve spent your entire life working for, as well as your family and your self-respect, but you’ll be guaranteed to linger forever in the public memory.
So go ahead and spritz it on liberally. After all, no one needs their nose to tell them you’ve been coming.
UPDATE: Rammer thinks it’s the same ol’ stink in a different package.
After 49 years in power, Fidel Castro has announced his retirement. He’d been hinting at this for a while, and two years ago had temporarily handed power over to his brother due to health problems. Now, it’s official:
“I neither will aspire to, nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief,” he told the newspaper, Granma.
Castro hasn’t been seen in public for over 19 months, although occasional staged photos and heavily edited video footage have been sporadically released to the press.
But don’t get too excited about regime change. The news may ultimately have minimal impact since the two people considered likely successors are his brother, Raul, although or Vice-President Carlos Lage Davila.
I’m not sure whether these results are more of a reflection on me, or on McCain.
So, where do you stand?
Kim just sent an email telling me that Romney’s dropping out of the Presidential race. Sure enough: that’s what the NY Times says, too.
Of all the lame-brained ideas! What’s the point of having a runoff to the party convention if strong candidates drop out within days of Super Tuesday. Has that day subsumed the party convention now?
Granted, I’ve lost quite a bit of interest in politics over the past couple of years. So much so, in fact, that I’ve spent the past couple of months mostly just skimming the headlines and occasional blog entries discussing various candidates’ positions. I figured I’d wait until the race heated up a bit before I really started examining them more in-depth.
You know… like maybe after the primaries?
The real pisser? I’d started thinking recently that I liked Romney better than all of them. Because I am not going to vote for John McCain. I learned enough about him during the last election to know I’d rather vote Democrat than help that man get into the White House.
You’ve probably seen the Lipitor commercials featuring Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, who talks about how he’d planned to go into architecture until his father suffered a heart attack. Now, he says, he’s devoted his life to helping improve heart health.
Incidentally, he is also married to the world’s smartest woman, Marilyn Vos Savant… so you men think about what his life must be like living with a woman who really is smarter than everyone else.
The ads make him look pretty darned healthy himself. In one, he jogs alongside his much younger son keeping pace, stride for stride. In another, he rows across a beautiful lake. He looks healthy enough but, as he says in the commercial, he takes Lipitor himself for his high cholesterol. Still, he’s decidedly trim and, at 61 years old, certainly looks spry even though a longtime collaborator says “he’s about as much of an outdoorsman as Woody Allen”.
And that fact — that he isn’t a jock — has prompted two House of Representatives members to investigate Jarvik. Jarvik, they claim, used a body double in the rowing commercial, so they’ve demanded that Lipitor’s manufacturer, Pfizer, provide information relating to the commercial’s script.
Congress is also incensed that Jarvik’s appearance in the commercial appears as if he’s giving medical advice. Jarvik, you see, received a Master’s for medical engineering from New York University and an M.D. from the University of Utah. He is not licensed to practice medicine, however, nor is there any indication that he’s attempted to obtain a license.
Because he’s a scientist and an engineer.
That point is apparently lost on Congressional members who seem to believe that consumers will somehow be mislead. But by what exactly? Someone selling a medication in a commercial? Last time I checked, even if a viewer thought was intrigued by an ad for a medication s/he would still have to ask their doctor to prescribe it. So where’s the harm?
Oh, wait, that’s right: there’s an election coming up, which means Representatives dream up crises to look like they’re worth their paychecks. Silly me.
Yes, it’s Super Tuesday. If I hadn’t figured that out on my own, your constant proclamation of the fact every 5 minutes during the 5 a.m., 6 a.m., 7 a.m and 8 a.m. morning news would’ve clued me in.
Ditto for the 23 mentions I counted during the noon news.
Within two hours of their opening, you’d already proclaimed that Obama got the Democrat nod in Kansas, Hillary took it in Missouri where McCain edged out Huckabee at the Republican primary. But just in case I hadn’t figured that out from your 5 o’clock and 6 o’clock news, I certainly understood it during the first 5 minutes of your 9 o’clock news show. (The other 19 times you brought it up in the 10 o’clock news program were rather redundant.)
Now here it is 10:53 p.m. and you’re still babbling on about the results. And babbling. And babbling yet some more.
Look, not a single one of you hair-sprayed, Botoxed bubble heads are actually political scientists so why are you occupying valuable pre-bedtime broadcasting time talking about things well beyond your collective, double-digit IQ?
And, please, don’t convince yourself that pulling some schlub from each party’s local headquarters makes you somehow look more erudite. The fact that none of you could think up a single insightful question just served to emphasize that your viewers’ evenings would have been better spent watching yet another rerun of King of Queens.
I just thought I’d point this out since, after all, the Kansas Republican primary isn’t until Saturday and I’d rather spare you — and myself — yet another evening of your vapid blather.
Regards,
VK
Sure, it’s Super Tuesday but it’s also American Idol night. Thankfully, I’ve yet to get truly interested in Idol this season since it’s still in the early stages.
Otherwise, to be perfectly honest, I’d probably tune into Idol and skip the Super Tuesday coverage the other networks will be airing, analyzing, predicting, rehashing and otherwise milking for hours.
How about you: what will you be watching?
Things must be rather slow in the Mississippi state House of Representatives, judging by a recent asinine legislative proposal that would make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese customers.
Yes, you read that right: there would be no food for fat folks in the Magnolia State, if three state representatives have their way.
The bill proposes that the state’s health department establishes weight criteria after consulting with Mississippi’s Council on Obesity. These criteria would then be supplied to all restaurants so they could decide who not to serve.
Can you imagine going to Chilis or Applebee’s and being asked to stand on a scale before they decide whether you can come in? Or being the person whose job it is to tell someone, “Sorry, sir, but I think you might be a bit too fat for our food. Mind stepping on the scale? But… um… would you please set your baseball bat down first?”
Apparently, there aren’t too many people seriously expecting this bill to become law, but that hasn’t stopped the tax-payer funded governmental peons from wasting legislative time crafting and lobbying for it.
Seriously, if Mississippi is interested in helping its citizens shed pounds, I’d suggest they first start by jettisoning the three representatives behind this bill.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina were able to control a robot in Japan using a monkey’s brain. That’s right, a monkey’s brain in which they’d implanted electrodes that communicated in real-time with a robot over 7,000 miles away.
“They can walk in complete synchronization,” said Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, who also is the Anne W. Deane Professor of Neuroscience at Duke. “The most stunning finding is that when we stopped the treadmill and the monkey ceased to move its legs, it was able to sustain the locomotion of the robot for a few minutes — just by thinking — using only the visual feedback of the robot in Japan.”
Neat, huh? But is it news?
I mean, ever since Bush-Cheney got reelected there have been plenty of people wondering if the reverse procedure’s been in effect for a while.
Thanks to a bill passed by Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006, any Massachusetts residents without health insurance by midnight tonight will lose their personal tax exemption of $219.
But wait, there’s more!
When the new year begins Tuesday, most residents who remain uninsured will face monthly fines that could total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by the end of 2008, according to penalty guidelines unveiled by the Department of Revenue on Monday.
The penalties are based on the cost of insurance plans available and are due as part of the 2009 tax return. According to lawmakers, only adults “deemed able to afford health insurance by the Health Insurance Connector Authority” will be fined.
The good news is that uninsured Massachusetts residents probably won’t need colonoscopies since the government will have already done a rather thorough job while it was up there, anyway.
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