David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Barack Obama’s campaign, said at a campaign manager’s forum here at Harvard University tonight that things might have been a lot different had the disputed Florida primary actually counted in the Democratic race.

“In fact, we might not have been the nominee,” Mr. Plouffe said at a forum sponsored by the Kennedy School of Government.

Huh. Never thought of that.

No comment on MI though, and no comment (or question) about whether or not they would have had the nomination if both FL and MI had been counted when they counted.

Sometimes the yucks come from the oddest places:

"Save a Bundle When You Buy a Bank (like Citigroup...)

Help your children start to practice financial responsibility early! Our ATMs work just like the real thing—deposit cash and coins, and they will keep a running balance of savings. It's a great way to save for something special, and to build on math and budgeting skills. Plus, for 48 hours only, you can save $10 when you buy!

The Deluxe ATM features a motorized feeder that accepts bills and credits the account once the amount is entered. It also includes a personal ATM card to withdraw money from the vault, and can even be mounted to a wall for a more realistic experience!"

This may be the only experience these youngsters will have with money.

Here is a list of others who shut down parliament when it didn't agree with them:

1629 King Charles I in England
1799 Napoleon in France
1913: Victoriano Huerta in Mexico
1933: Adolf Hitler in Germany
1936 Fransisco Franco in Spain
1939: Benito Mussolini in Italy
1973: Augusto Pinochet in Chile
2008: Steven Harper in Canada

Precedent setting. pfffffffft

I was going to do a knitting post, but I have decided to prorogue it for the time being.

Ho, ho, Correntians. I'm fairly sure I'm the first here to link to this. And galdurnit, don't tell me if I'm wrong, in the holiday spirit of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Baby Jeebus cries if you do. Even so, Haw! I love this kind of shit:

A gay version of the Bible, in which God says it is better to be gay than straight, is to be published by an American film producer.

New Mexico-based Revision Studios will publish The Princess Diana Bible – so named because of Diana's "many good works", it says – online at princessdianabible.com in spring 2009. A preview of Genesis is already available, in which instead of creating Adam and Eve, God creates Aida and Eve.

"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Aida, and she slept: and he took one of her ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from woman, made he another woman, and brought her unto the first. And Aida said, 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of me. Therefore shall a woman leave her mother, and shall cleave unto her wife: and they shall be one flesh.' And they were both naked, the woman and her wife, and were not ashamed."

The film studio said it would also adapt and direct the revised Bible as a two-part mini-series, The Gay Old Testament and The Gay New Testament, once it is completed.

"There are many different versions of the Bible; I don't see why we can't have one," said Max Mitchell, who directed the science fiction comedy Horror in the Wind, in which an airborne formula invented by two biogeneticists reverses the world's sexual orientation. Read more…

Haw.

An atheists-rights group is suing the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security because state law requires the agency to stress "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

American Atheists of Parsippany, N.J., and 10 non-religious Kentuckians are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, set to be filed Tuesday in Franklin Circuit Court.

Edwin Kagin, a Boone County lawyer and the national legal director of American Atheists, said he was appalled to read in the Herald-Leader last week that state law establishes praising God — and installing a plaque in God's honor — as the first duty of the Homeland Security Office.

The state and federal constitutions both prohibit government from getting involved in religion, Kagin said Monday.

"This is one of the most outrageous things I've seen in 35 years of practicing law. It's breathtakingly unconstitutional," Kagin said.

Yes. Yes, it is. Go KY atheists! And FSM be praised for McClatchy for bringing us this news.

We're in a recession. How long will it take for them to admit we're actually in a depression? I'm guessing another year.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/01/news/eco...

The WH did have some words of encouragement:

"In a statement, White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said that even though the recession is now official, it is more important to focus on the steps being taken to fix the economy.

"The most important things we can do for the economy right now are to return the financial and credit markets to normal, and to continue to make progress in housing, and that's where we'll continue to focus," he said. "Addressing these areas will do the most right now to return the economy to growth and job creation." Read more…

International Talk Like a Banker Day.

The proposed date is the 15th of December. Start practicing now!

Who knows, maybe you could sound convincing enough to get your own stake in the bailout!

Now that we're distracted by the upcoming holiday season, the real news breaks about where our economy is right now. In the toilet.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/q3...

"Economists have said they believe the weakness in the July-through-September quarter is a harbinger of further weakness ahead. Growth in the current quarter is on track to fall at a 4% annual rate.
'As bad as the third quarter was, the fourth quarter will undoubtedly be worse,' economists at RBS Greenwich Capital wrote to clients.
Business and consumer activity ground to a halt between mid-September and mid-October. "

Apparently it's our fault...again... Read more…

Bailout humor, anyone? SFW, even. "Mooooooo-ney. Moooney." Heh. For Ali.

 Read more…

Boston.com (yes, I know) is reporting that Tom Daschle is up for Health and Human Services.

Obama may not pick Kerry for SoS but Congress (ok, Harry Reid) lines up to give Kerry a consolation prize.

If Clinton accepts SoS, I'm trying to imagine what the nomination hearings might be like. (or can they just skip hearings and take it to a vote? The Senate does have to confirm Cabinet appointments, doesn't it? Or am I mixing it up with something else?). Read more…

Sometimes, it's good to be human. I confess: I really enjoyed this film short. The best part about renting the disc was the 'special features,' in which the producers and actors revealed just how fun and silly it is to be part of a low-budget film production. Netflix is good; I'd never have come across it any other way. Rent it; it's safe for little kids and fun for anyone who loves B Sci-Fi, or has fond memories of the silent film age. Cardboard! Melted garbage bags! Dark lipstick on men! It's hard to pack more fun into 47 minutes of "horror" than this. Background. Production details.

The Intertubes have long given homage to Cthulhu, and this is why. Shrill!

and then tells Reid / Pelosi: if you don't take away Holey Joe's gavel, you're insulting Obama and all his voters. Do which, now? Divesting a guy whose behavior is about as disloyal to the party as possible of his gavel is required, to avoid insulting the guy who's so over the (or any) party?

Our flailing overlords are kinda funny.

So, we've got that going for us, which is nice.

Campbell Brown: And for those people who have been worried about the possibility of one party controlling Congress and the White House, the last president to do that was?

John King: That was Bill Clinton and--

Campbell Brown: --Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton had Democrats in the House and the Senate?

John King: Very briefly.

Campbell Brown. Very briefly. It didn't go so well.

John King: No it didn't. Read more…

This is no way to start a week: Study Links Teen Pregnancy to Sexy Shows

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Exposure to some forms of entertainment is a corrupting influence on children, leading teens who watch sexy programs into early pregnancies ...

Quoting further:

"Television is just one part of a teenager's media diet that helps to influence their behavior. We should also look at the roles that magazines, the Internet and music play in teens' reproductive health," Chandra said, acknowledging still other factors can influence teen sex habits. Read more…

I can't fill in Obama's name, not yet.

I can't give up the hope that someone in our political culture will notice if McKinney's policies are supported by voters. Yes, I know she has no organized downticket presence, and the WaPo article made her and her supporters sound addled, and everyone and his banker thinks Obama's the smart play.

But I cannot forget how he allowed his supporters to treat people he thought were in his way. And I have absolutely no faith that he can profit from his own triangulation of his backers' neo-liberal interests with his gauzy rhetoric to Americans. Read more…

Joe Biden:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Don't question Obama. Focus your energy on the demonization of John McCain and Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton or Somerby or Lambert--heck, even me if you feel so inclined, but throw in some condescension about my age, ego or intellect compared to yours, that works nicely--anyone who is warning of red flags.

At some point, if Obama wins, he's going to have to govern and he won't have the Hillary/McCain/Palin/Dominionist bogeyman to fend of criticisms. It seems like Biden is hinting at their possible governing strategy: Even if you think we're wrong, we need you to use your influence to convince people we are right. It's working so brilliantly now, why change?

Nice to know the Patriot Act and FISA don't just apply to civilians. According to an article at Military.com:
The Senate Intelligence Committee is examining allegations by two former U.S. military linguists that the super-secret National Security Agency routinely eavesdropped on the private telephone calls of American military officers, journalists and aid workers.

On November 2nd, but Why, Oh Why? Read more…

In noting that the Washington Post endorsed Barack Obama, Atrios wrote the following:

There really was never any doubt about who Fred Hiatt's gang would endorse. The best way to push your center-right agenda is to pretend it's actually a center-left agenda. That's been the racket for as long as I can remember.

"... the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay "ex-gay" gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage ..." Read more…

If there is one thing I learned this election cycle, its that the right doesn't have a monopoly and lies and smear tactics. How does the left do it? Well, they take a person (preferably a female politician) and connect them to some religious fundamentalists or people who have ties to religious fundamentalists. Its especially nice if they are scary religious fundamentalists, "dominionists" even. Next, write pages and pages of about how scary "dominionists" are. Its an extra bonus if you can find quotes by these scary "dominionists" that have them praising said female politician. These people can have two, three or four degrees of separation from the female politician, it doesn't matter. Extra special bonus if you can use scary terms like "cell". If you think I'm talking about Sarah Palin, you're wrong. I'm talking about Hillary Clinton. Read more…

from USAToday blogs:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/200...

Update at 12:50 p.m. ET. In his speech, Obama outlines six principles for reform. From his remarks, as prepared for delivery:

"First, if you're a financial institution that can borrow from the government, you should be subject to government oversight and supervision. Taxpayers who have now been called upon to spend nearly a trillion dollars to save our economy from the excesses of Wall Street have every right to expect that financial institutions are not taking excessive risks. Read more…

Efforts to correct mistakenly(?) reported facts are counterproductive:

...journalists’ attempts to correct misinformation is unlikely to sway public perceptions, according to a series of experiments by a Duke University political scientist.

“What we found is that corrections are ineffective for the group most likely to have the misperception,” said Brendan Nyhan, a Ph.D. candidate in Duke’s political science department. “Even worse, we found that those people may actually end up believing in the misperception more strongly after hearing a correction.”

.... Read more…

This old hat that I've got on,
The crown of him is gone,
And the brim is all gone to asunder.

John Conyers aptly describes our current health care-less system as "the current non-system of health care run by profit hungry insurance companies."

Non-system indeed; it is like a shirt with more holes than cloth, a hat with no crown or brim, nothing left to reform. It's not just the greed, it's the patchwork nature of everything. And of course, it's those far from the centers of power who suffer the most. Look at this story from Chillicothe in southern Ohio, i.e. Appalachia. The writer has just been informed that she must change either her doctor or her health insurer: Read more…