The Republican National Convention was scheduled to start Monday, but has been postponed for a day because of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Issac. The storm also disrupted plans for Vice President Joe Biden to tour Florida in a counter-programming attempt. Being that the convention is in Tampa and this is the height of hurricane season for that part of ( Read more... )

In what can only be called an effort to torpedo his own campaign, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), running for the Senate in Missouri said that "legitimate rape" leads to "the female body [trying] to shut that whole thing down." Comments are here and the video of the morning show he said this on is available here. Yes, he said that women who are raped rarely ( Read more... )

There comes a time in the history of all nations when they must go to war. Whether for offense or defense, practical reasons, vanity or holy wars, all nations make war. In fact, one of the best ways to no longer be a nation is not to go to war when necessary. Traditionally, nations will call upon its citizens to be armed, get trained and go out and ( Read more... )

Two months after bin Laden has been captured and Obama's numbers haven't spiked or fallen. They've been about the same for the past 6 months. Bin Laden is dead and the OTHER most wanted felon in the US, James "Whitey" Bulger, was arrested after years on the lam and immortalization (as character inspiration) in the movie The Departed. The head of ( Read more... )

Americans have traditionally been defined by two things, people who distrust authority and who love a good fight. It's how we came to be a country and it's how we have continued to define ourselves. It rarely matters what the authority is, someone in this country will start fighting it. One of the more recent and bloody of these battles has been ( Read more... )

This rant was meant to come out much earlier, but it is fortunate there was a delay. On Friday, McCain's choice of Sarah Palin. She is currently the governor of Alaska for 21 months now and before that was the mayor of Wasilia, Alaska, population of about six thousand (sources vary on this, placing the population between 5000 and 8000). She's a 44 ( Read more... )

sorry, no update tonight. I have a massive headache that is preventing me from concentrating so much that I can't even write. be back tomorrow for the results.

In what can usually be ascribed to a slow news day, CNN has dramatically increased their coverage of autism. They even made a special section for it. Except that it's not just some random slow news day, today was Autism Awareness Day (which I didn't know until I was writing this blog). For too long, autism was ignored or seen as just a ( Read more... )

Yes, another state of the union, and there was nothing great that happened and nothing great he put forward. He had no real bold visions for the future, but seemed to be visions of the past. Granted, they were visions of HIS version of the past, including his bringing up discredited "terrorist plots". He did mention all the key events of the past ( Read more... )

This the second part of the rant started last night and it needed a second part since to keep going last night would have crashed the system, my computer and quite possibly the entire internet. This issue is a bellwether of so many other issues, so many other problems in the US, and Western society in general. We are at a point where the deaths of ( Read more... )