This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and provided Thursday Oct. 26, 2006 shows the scattered remains of an exploded star named Cassiopeia A. Spitzer's infrared detectors 'picked' through these remains and found that much of the star's original layering had been preserved. In this false-color image, the faint, blue glow surrounding the dead star is material that was energized by a shock wave, called the forward shock, which was created when the star blew up. The forward shock is now located at the outer edge of the blue glow. Stars are also seen in blue. Green, yellow and red primarily represent material that was ejected in the explosion and heated by a slower shock wave, called the reverse shock wave. (AP Photo/NASA)
One thing that you can say about Bush is that, by and large, he doesn't change. Any basis for criticizing him has been glaringly apparent for quite some time. All that has changed is the fact that he is now wildly unpopular and that his failures are too glaring for most to deny. Because of that dramatic change --
and for no other reason -- these Bush-worshipping pundits are desperate to shed their Bush-following skin and pretend that they have been open-eyed realists and critics all along.
Thus, arguments which claim that "courts should stay out of debates over marriage laws and leave it to the legislature to decide" or "it would be better if these decisions were democratically resolved by majority vote" are -- even if true -- completely misguided and incoherent. Courts have no right to "stay out of" debates over laws if those laws violate constitutional guarantees. It's just that simple.
Also, do you really need Google Maps when you have the National Reconnaissance Office's spy satellites that can identify objects on the ground as small as 24 inches in real time?
The Republicans continue to think that if they don't show the coffins coming back (or even acknowledge that soldiers are dying) that people can be conned into believing that we are winning their war. In our continuing revival of Vietnam: The Musical, Tony's even bringing back the Westmorland body counts.
For some reason it's not working. perhaps it might just be because now that the fog of 9/11 has lifted, people look at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and see them for the losers they always were. Once the fans are over you they won't buy tickets to your show again.
As (Richard) Armitage points out, until Iraqis know we will stand down, they may never stand up.
"... as many people will say they did drugs with Dee Dee Ramone as claimed to have slid naked through the mud at Woodstock."
I won't claim to have done drugs with any of the Ramones, nor was I at Woodstock, despite being old enough, but I did see them in San Diego at SDSU's Aztec Center back in 1979, when they opened for, of all bands, The Babys!
It was so trippy, because that was back when none of the songs really had a start or an end, and you didn't really know when the new song started except for the "1, 2, 3, 4" count off.
The end of the disco era, and the start of new music, which at the time was all combined into the "punk" genre. Eventually, that split into "new wave," which included Talking Heads, (which spawned one of my favorite bands, Tom Tom Club), Elvis Costello and Blondie, and "punk" which included Ramones, New York Dolls and Sex Pistols.
I've never been to CBGBs. Nor have I been to any Hard Rock Cafe.
Over the last five years, particularly when it comes to policies ostensibly justified by The Terrorists, the Senate has fully acquiesced to the dictates of the White House. They have neither stopped nor meaningfully limited anything. And at the epicenter of this disgraceful record of Congressional abdication has been this group of "moderate, independent GOP Senators." Nobody has done more to enable the worst aspects of the extremist Bush agenda than they have.
It's amazing what a change of perspective can do. Just ask astronomers working with NASA's Cassini spacecraft. On September 15th, the Saturn orbiter found itself in a rare position — deep within a Saturnian eclipse. For about 12 hours the craft observed the ringed world from within the planet's shadow. In the unique image at right, the Sun is directly behind Saturn and the rings shine in scattered, rather than reflected, light. From this point of view small particles in the rings appear especially bright, much the way that cobwebs look brighter when lit from behind.
A colorful new bird has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups said Monday.
The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch was named for the indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountainous area where it was discovered.
"I always said Hilly should go to Vegas," said McNeil. "Girls with augmented breasts playing Joey Ramone slot machines. It would become an institution."
Now that's a visual!
One of the things that bothers me about neo-Republicanism and its entire foundation of lies, is the division it has created within families. I can hardly speak to my wingnut brother anymore, and we can't speak at all about politics. We had numerous heated debates in the first couple of years following the invasion of Iraq, but he would counter every sourceable evidence I put forward with a lie he had been fed by Fox News, Rush Phlegmball, or The President -- people who really have no honor whatsoever.
When I informed an uncle (in his sixties) about PNAC as evidence of pre-meditation of the war in Iraq, he asked me with complete and genuine concern if I had been getting information from the Internet, as if the Internet was a big tub of lies, with no sources to back up any assertion. His source of information about Iraq? He admitted it: newspaper editorials and the aforementioned Mr. Phlegmball.
It seems every political debate conducted in the family setting ends in emotional turmoil. If you're serious about the politics of death and dying, your own flesh and blood are the ones you most want to convince of how wrong and dishonorable the current administration is. But convincing the last thirty percent of deeply entrenched wingnuts, even if they're family, isn't going to happen given that the current Republican leadership is the most dishonorable lot of American politicians ever. They have institutionalized and legitimated the art of lying to where it is now an officially accepted practice. I really think they see lying as an important part of the political gamesmanship, the country be damned.
Other winning research included a U.S. and Israeli team's discovery that hiccups could be cured with a finger up the rectum ...
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) -- Good news for aging hippies: Smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer's disease.
New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function.
Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that marijuana's active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs.
THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer's patients, the researchers reported in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.
VATICAN CITY, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI, after deliberation by Vatican theologians, is abolishing the concept of Limbo that put the souls of unbaptized infants at risk.
While it was never a formal part of the church's doctrine, the existence of Limbo was taught until recently to Catholics around
the world, The Times of London said. Limbo was described in Britain as "a place of rest where the souls of the just who died before Christ were detained."
This week an international commission of theologians began its final deliberations on the concept of Limbo. Vatican sources told the newspaper it had concluded that all children who die do so in the expectation of "the universal salvation of God" and the "mediation of Christ", whether baptized or not.
A Times source said the theologians' finding basically says "that all children who die go to Heaven."
"[Rep. Foley's] problem isn't 12-year-old scotch. It's 12-year-old boys."
-Air America's Randi Rhodes on Foley's checking into rehab for alcohol abuse.
I'm beginning to realize why they were so freaked out by Bill Clinton having an extra-marital affair --- it was so mainstream and predictable compared to their personal habits that they thought it was kinky. -- digby
Yeah, giddy up, ding dong.
And now, for a change of pace.
