Don Asmussen shows us!

PS - just as a service to the Rovians of the intertubes, that is Saddam Hussein, not BHO.....btw - continued actions on those lines will upset the actual fear mongers and slander artists as you are giving them a bad name.

So they send out an action item email saying that Obama canceled a trip to meet wounded troops because he "could not bring himself to meet with American soldiers who had been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he wanted to go shopping."

They have a front page post up with a "Graphic Design contest" asking users to illustrate Obama deciding to go shopping rather than meet the troops.

When in fact the Pentagon initially cleared the visit and then at the last minute expressed concern that it was a campaign event, leading Obama to cancel.

At dKos they are speculating that the whole thing was set up as a deliberate operation to make the Obama campaign look bad. One doesn't have to embrace that probably strained conclusion to recognize that Redstate is making a fool of itself pushing this as a story.

which can be viewed here is less well thought out than he is capable of. He tries to say that Barack's speech yesterday in Berlin "is that it was very much in the rhetorical tradition of one George W. Bush" and vindicates dubya's policies and actions during his presidency.

Frankly, I've seen a bunch of this lately. I suspect we'll all see a whole bunch more till election day because the folks that support conservatives and republicans have nothing but skanky lemons this year. They are doing what they feel they must by trying to make lemonaide out of it. But it's still just skanky lemonaide. Maybe it's the new Kool-Aide favorite of the right....whatever.

The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding
principles on using racial categories in human genetics

This is an interesting summary of the relationship between genetics and racism. It's written by a bunch of geneticists who are trying to define guidelines for doing research on human population genetics.

If only Al Capone was protected from playing violent video games...

[The legislation] mandates the inclusion of parental lockouts on all new consoles by 2010; however, the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 all already include such restrictions. It further requires all games to carry content ratings, in a similar way to those ones that are already there. Thirdly, it promises to establish "an advisory council to conduct a study on the connection between interactive media and real-life violence in minors exposed to such media.

Next up in New York's state legislature, book burning.

my mouth is, I will be doing my least favorite act of civic participation duty today, beating the streets and knocking on doors. blecch :(

I don't enjoy it, but it's my sacrifice for the nation. :)

Why do Republicans call Democrats socialists and why is the conventional wisdom that Democrats are Always better for the economy????

A little mix is good...... capitalism's rough edges softened with a little help on making those boot straps easier to reach.

In this morning's paper, they printed an article by Jess Drucker of the WSJ titled "Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow ". In it figures for 2006 reveal that:

"In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The group's share of the tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its share of income. According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation's total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult.

The average tax rate in 2006 for the top 1%, based on adjusted gross income, was 22.8%, down slightly from 2005 and the fifth straight year of declines. The average tax rate of this group was 28.9% in 1996, and was 24% in 1988.

As the wealthiest Americans' share of income has risen, so has their share of the income-tax burden. The group paid 39.9% of all income taxes in 2006, compared with 27.6% in 1988. In the most recently reported five years, however, the share of income reported by the very wealthy has risen faster than the group's share of income taxes."

The rich are indeed getting richer, and John McCain proposes to give them even more and make those changes permanent. Clue to anyone reading this...Guess who get's to pay a larger percentage of their income towards running the Federal Government so the rich can get out of paying theirs? Yup...you and me.

McCain has come out in favor of an Arizona referendum against Affirmative Action; Obama challenged him for flip-flopping on this issue, but recognized that AA is not a long-term solution .

Andrew Sullivan has some sensible words on this issue, claiming that Obama could have won big points by emphasizing the need to replace race-based affirmative action with a more liberal system--focusing on individual opportunity rather than social engineering.

Though he's long supported affirmative action, his campaign has signaled that he's open to the idea of replacing race-based AA with class-based AA.  In an ABC interview last year, Obama said AA should be a "diminishing tool" for achieving racial equality. In his Philadelphia speech, which was framed around working-class racial solidarity, he specifically acknowledged the "anger" and "resentment" AA has caused.  If he were to call McCain's bluff and come out in support of phasing out racial and gender preferences, Obama could erase a potential wedge issue for the fall. 

 Not only for the fall, but for the next generation of Americans.