Month: October 2008 Page 1 of 2

The Things He Carried

Jeffrey Goldberg writes about the “hopelessness” of airport security in The Atlantic:

During one secondary inspection, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, I was wearing under my shirt a spectacular, only-in-America device called a “Beerbelly,” a neoprene sling that holds a polyurethane bladder and drinking tube. The Beerbelly, designed originally to sneak alcohol—up to 80 ounces—into football games, can quite obviously be used to sneak up to 80 ounces of liquid through airport security. … My Beerbelly, which fit comfortably over my beer belly, contained two cans’ worth of Bud Light at the time of the inspection. It went undetected. The eight-ounce bottle of water in my carry-on bag, however, was seized by the federal government.

Important ALCS on TBS question

Why does Buck Martinez sound like a bicycle horn?

Voter registration deadlines in California

Just so you know, California voter registration deadlines are coming up. Here’s what I posted at work yesterday (yes, this is shameless):

It’s a critical year for environmental voters to get out and vote on November 4th! Here are this year’s voter registration deadlines in California, which are coming up soon.

  • The big one: You must register to vote by October 20 in order to vote in the November 4th election.
  • If you want to register as an absentee (i.e. vote-by-mail) voter, you must do so by October 28. (Get more info on voting by mail from the California Secretary of State’s office.)
  • If you are an absentee/vote-by-mail voter, you should mail your ballot by at least October 31 (it must arrive by 8 pm on November 4th, when the polls close).
  • Though we don’t encourage you to procrastinate, sometimes election day sneaks up unexpectedly. If you hold onto your ballot too long, that’s okay — you can drop off your ballot at your Registrar of Voters office anytime, or at your polling place on the day of the election. (Your polling place is on the voter information packet you should be receiving in the mail, or you can find out through the Secretary of State’s office.)
  • If you somehow lose your ballot, or your official yellow vote-by-mail envelope (and though I hate to admit it, I’ve done it), you can go to the polls on election day and cast a provisional ballot, which will be counted when it is verified that you didn’t vote by mail.

There’s a lot more information for voters available from the Secretary of State’s office.

I added a little pitch for money, which I don’t really need to duplicate here…. 🙂

The Dangerous Panic On The Far Right

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (October 10, 2008) – The Dangerous Panic On The Far Right:

This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies – not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.

For God’s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.

Thank God for Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald is doing some incredibly important reporting on Salon.com — keeping the federal government accountable in a way that more reporters should be doing.

Guess what? What a surprise: The feds have been eavesdropping on (from the article) “American citizens who had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.”

Angry, self-centered power monger John McCain

“After a week of bile”

“Is McCain serious about Ayers… No” and a response from Time

Etc., etc.

It’s incredible to me that the McCain campaign would sink this low. I shouldn’t be surprised, because this is the Republican party we’re talking about, and it’s just gotten worse and worse in my lifetime.

I guess the illusion that John McCain worked so hard to create during the first 30 years of his political career — that he was somehow above the down-and-dirty realities of American politics — has been completely shattered now, and he’s left looking like an angry, self-centered, spoiled powermonger who will do anything to either achieve the highest office in the land or leave a path of death and destruction in his wake.

(Edit: Oh, but, this is odd: McCain tries to put the genie back in the bottle.)

“The Dangerous Panic On The Far Right”

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (October 10, 2008) – The Dangerous Panic On The Far Right:

This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies – not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.

For God’s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.

(Andrew Sullivan has been described as a classical libertarian conservative, by the way.)

Mad Dog Palin : Rolling Stone

Mad Dog Palin : Rolling Stone.

Mystery, Alaska

An article by David Gargill that “examine[s] the roots of Sarah Palin’s spectacular and sudden ascent from the depths of obscurity to the heat of the national spotlight.” A little breathless. Published in the United Arab Emirates for some reason

McCain really CAN crash and burn

“My fellow prisoners”???

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