Huckabee speaking at NRA convention (CNN)
“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”  Read more 

Is Obama up for the GOP hate machine? I haven’t heard him do anything to counter-punch these attacks. He’s looking more and more like Kerry.

GOP memo calling immigration a “tar baby” (Politico)

… [McCain] has standing among Hispanics. Barrack Obama has not made the sale to Hispanic voters. Thus, this issue is a tar baby for anyone who touches it, with land mines everywhere.

Prince Frederic von Anhalt, aka Prince Von A-Hole, called Barack Obama’s wife a “washerwoman.” (TMZ)  Read more 

Hi-tech face recognition cameras used in Budgens to spot underage drinkers (h/t boingboing)

A supermarket chain is introducing face recognition cameras to prevent staff mistakenly selling cigarettes and alcohol to under-18s.

So in the UK they will automatically record every face who buys cigarettes or alcohol. In the US they have started doing this electronically by swiping your drivers license in many states.  Read more 

I don’t know why I do it, I was looking for some summary of the final numbers from IN and NC, but I read “Now You Want to Make Nice” dkos diary which poses a simple request…. Obama cannot win against McCain without all of Hillary’s supporters.

So why don’t the Obamites take the high road and end the ugly attacks on Hillary. Otherwise it will only take a couple of million Hillary supporters sitting on their hands to end your dream. Think before you say something that could damage party unity. — shamprez

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Cops in small town Oxford, Ohio, home of “Izod” University, tasered a drunk 24 yr old outside of a local bar for interfering when they were trying to arrest another person. You see can they administer at least one 10 second cycle. The man stopped breathing at the scene and died after five days in critical condition.

You’ll note if you watch the video again, but look at the timer in the bottom right, the media spliced together the same footage to make it appear he was shocked three times.  Read more 

So I’m reading this Newsweek article I saw on digg, and after of jawdropping moment of WTF, I noticed the byline “By Marko5 Mou1itsas | NEWSWEEK”

Here’s what I don’t get, the article essentially pretends to spin the long drawn out Dem primary as a good thing, that has led to better organization, money, boots on the ground, and vetted Obama. But if that is true and if Obama has so clearly won, why all the attacks? Why are OFB so rabid on the WWTSBQ?

If Obama has won, why not focus on McCain or shut up and just let Clinton look more and more desperate? If Obama has enough votes why this long screed about Clinton’s dastardly evil plans.

I think a certain douchebag doth protest too much.

“She’s already lost.”  Read more 

The FL Dems walked right into this. Everyone keeps blaming the GOP and claim the Dems had no control over the DNC stripping of delegates, but this video says differently. (Hilariously posted by “floridagop”)  Read more 

Probably nothing wrong with tweaking bacteria genes into producing petroleum products. It’s not like a release of these solar-converting bacteria spread across the world’s oceans would be a problem (I mean look at how well the Valdez spill cleaned up).

At the very least, it looks like they require a great deal of carbon input (CO2) which makes me wonder how much energy we’d have to put into the system to generate CO2 which ends up as oil. But if the little buggers are using solar to re-bond petroleum chains then it might be semi-efficient.

Could all be talk and PR for VCs, but Venter does have quite the track record. (From EcoGeek)  Read more 

Apparently Georgia state legislature just passed a bill to invade TN?!

“Us good Tennesseeans will take our long rifles up to Lookout Mountain and fire when ready,” said Justin Wilson, a Nashville attorney and former deputy governor.

A mile to the north of the GA-TN border is the Tennessee River which is like texas tea to solve drought issues and allow Atlanta to drain the river like the West has done with the mighty Colorado.  Read more 

I searched the Diary titles from the last seven days:

’Obama’ - 538 Diaries (50 with > 200 comments)
the majority of them positive titles

’Clinton’ - 222 Diaries (26 with > 200 comments)
the majority of them negative and/or containing “Obama”

’Iraq’ - 22 Diaries (2 with > 200 comments)
one of those two was “Chelsea Clinton Gives An Arrogant Response to a Question on Iraq”

’Economy’ - 7 Diaries

’Media’ - 21 Diaries

’Health’ - 13 Diaries

’Rove’ - 2 Diaries (one of those “Hillary Plays a Karl Rove”)

Too funny. If you ever read the lobotomy inducing anti-election integrity rants over at big orange by “DHinMI” you won’t be too shocked to read the BradBlog discovery of the pro-Holt Bill (pro-eVoting) background of this frontpage poster.

[DHinMI former] well-paid Chief of Staff to the U.S. Congressman from New Hampshire’s 2nd district, Rep. Paul Hodes, who has been an ally of HAVA co-author and e-voting champion, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, since arriving in Congress in 2007.

No wonder he was so defensive about the NH irregularities. They happened to his boss’s constituents and people hate to rock the boat that sailed them to Washington.  Read more 

I rescind my previous rant on missing NY Primary votes after further review of the “process” in NYC.

here is a good rundown on the voting and checking process of the votes. I didn’t realize one cop takes the results and heads back to the cop precinct to enter in the results. Geez, the more you know about voting, the more f-cked we are.

I searched the blogosphere and other than Raw Story I found almost nothing concerning the moving words yesterday by Congressman Silvestre Reyes, D-TX, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

His letter to Bush is a rare moment of Hope (and not the OFB type).

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

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Florida has it’s own cop controversy:

A veteran Florida sheriff’s deputy is in hot water after she was caught on video dumping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair while he was being booked on Jan. 29

You really don’t want to see the booking room video. I’m pretty sure the description doesn’t leave much to the imagination.

Anyone who treats another human being this way is pretty sick.  Read more 

I could post about 1000 links detailing the Hurricane Katrina that is the Ohio 2008 election(s). I can’t even begin to describe the utter total meltdown that is going to occur (except the media, Secretary of State, and election officials will say “no problems” but they also did that in 2004)

If you are a videographer there will be plenty of documentaries to be made. I know of five good ones that came out of 2004.  Read more 

A new patent filed discusses the use of the nifty airport body scanners to not only see through your skin, but also to uniquely identify you.

Go read the patent here and the applications are stunning. For instance, a synthetic aperture radar sitting in a van parked in front of your house. Maybe we have entered some new sci-fi world where you won’t need to carry keys or RealID cards. Just don’t break a rib or you might become a person of interest.

It is candidate Hillary in a pantsuit with a campaign button. I can’t tell if this is positive or negative, though “Eagleview USA Inc” sounds like a rightwing company to me.

Barack Obama earned the endorsement of MoveOn which claims to have 1.7M members in Super Tuesday states.

On the flip side, Coulter thinks Clinton is more conservative than McCain. And also thinks HRC is the most conservative of the two Democratic candidates.

I’m confused by the new GOP rovian desperation. It will be fun to see the inevitable McCain v. Clinton race and see Coulter either eat crow or join the Clinton’08 campaign.

Oh Ponuppy. Why do you have to be so cute.

Waiters use nodding trick to boost restaurant tabs (bBoing)

Beejebus, if this thing works over the phone, can we make it work over the internets???

Studies have concluded that 60–70% of the time, a Sullivan nod will result in the customer choosing the ’recommended’ item.

From BradBlog we learn that Pelosi, Reed, and Steny Hoyer have “postponed” the criminal contempt charges until they properly stimulate the Bush war machine.

On a side note, how is this “contraversial”? Did I miss something about what contempt means and the big middle finger that was shown to Congress? It seems the more dangerous precedent has already been set (not a failed vote, but no vote at all).

Also a classic, Kucinich quote

“If impeachment is off the table,” Mr. Kucinich said, “truth is off the table. If truth is off the table then this body is living a lie.”

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Plame emails, US Attygate, heck everything.

Why can’t they all learn from Bush, Cheney and Hillary Clinton? You just don’t use email.

The Kucinich recount is under way today. Unfortunately, Kucinich is doing a Nader version where he is only going to recount a few large Diebold precincts and then call it a day. Just like Nader before him, the electronic results will match the hand count.

[EDIT] Some Kucinich folks claim they are counting the whole state.

The bigger question that everyone seems to missing is the little matter of who handled these ballots since election night. I have heard rumors that the LHS shady company that is the one-stop shop for New England voting, in addition to programming the machines, tabulating the memory cards, also dropped off and picked up the machines and possibly all of the paper ballots.  Read more 

Bush travels to the Middle East and speads his message of hope and democracy war and terror. This was his recent comments at The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi.

“Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.  Read more 

I’m really not against hand counts and audits of electronic voting. Heck I think there should be federal laws requiring audits where hand counts are compared to electronic results. But, in this case, I think the NH recount will be used by the media as a big orange-devil-stick to silence Those-that-dare-speak-its-name. (and Bev agrees)

Candidates who lose by 3 percentage or less are entitled to a recount for a $2,000 fee. Candidates who lose by more must pay for the full cost. Kucinich’s campaign said it was sending the $2,000 fee to start the recount.

 Read more