I Guess He Still Doesn't Understand How These Internets Work

Apparently John McCain is unfamiliar with YouTube and how the things you say yesterday are still around today. For Example, he thinks he can lie today...



...about what he said yesterday (approx. 2:28 into the clip)...



...and no one will ever find out. Senator, this isn't like when you were one of the Keating Five and went about lying Willy-Nilly. You will be caught when you lie. You are a liar sir, and not a very good one at that.

Bitch Slapped Again!

Deja Vu All Over Again

40 Years Ago Today From DC Comics -- Action Comics #369

Action Comics #369 (On Sale: September 26, 1968) has a cover by Curt Swan and Jack Abel.

We begin with "Superman's Greatest Blunder" by Otto Binder, Curt Swan and Jack Abel. Continuing from last issue, Superman has exiled himself to a world with a red sun after a group called the Sentinels have eliminated crime and disasters on Earth. Without his powers Superman becomes hungry and eats some local fruit. He is arrested by the local authorities because the fruit was reserved for the planet's king. Superman is to be executed for his crime, but his powers return. The red sun is actually half yellow, which allows him to escape the planet.

Superman returns to Earth and becomes suspicious about the motives of the Sentinels. When he sees one attempting to seal his Fortress with the inhabitants of Kandor trapped inside, Superman suspects that the Sentinels plan to conquer Earth. He then proceeds to destroy them after realizing they aren't alive. After all the Sentinels are destroyed Superman learns that he was wrong and they actually were benevolent. Because of Superman actions, crime and disaster has now returned to Earth.

The Supergirl storiung is "The Boy Who Broke Supergirl's Heart" by Leo Dorfman and Kurt Schaffenberger. Linda Danvers consoles her friend Claire Valton when she is jilted by campus playboy Gary Sparks. Linda tries to get revenge on Gary by dating him, then dumping him. However, before she can finish executing her plan, Gary has already started dating another girl. Though she is upset with Gary, Linda can't stop thinking about him and decides to try winning him over as Supergirl.

Edited by Mort Weisinger.

Timing Is Everything!

So yesterday the people at the Residence Inn I am staying at left a note on the desk inside the room. It said:

Dear Valued Guest,

We hope that you are enjoying your home away from home! We would like to inform you that we will be performing maintenance upgrades this week. We will be replacing the lock on the entry door of your suite.

Nice to know. Better if they had left the note BEFORE they changed the locks.

I Smell a Rat

Am I the only one who thinks it is a little bit fishy that we have this huge financial crisis just as Bush and his thugs are about to escape to South America? They are cleaning out the coffers my friends, taking the last of your and my money and heading for the border. I'm not buying any of this, but the congressional Democrats already have and our future is about to be $700 billion poorer for it. When was the last time Bush ever told the truth about anything? Think about it! We are being scammed.

Update! I'm not the only one eying this with great suspicion.

Witchcraft Free Since 2005

Apparently witchcraft is a big problem in Alaska. Who knew?



And what is Bill Gates doing there?

40 Years Ago Today From DC Comics -- Strange Adventures #215

Strange Adventures #215 (On Sale: September 24, 1968) has a beautiful cover by Neal Adams. This is the second Deadman cover where our hero is depicted as a disembodies head superimposed over the action of the cover. Within a year Adams would perfect this style of cover on the revised Phantom Stranger book.

"A New Lease on Death" is written and drawn by Neal Adams. Neal really moves the basic plot line of the series forward with this issue, moving towards a redesign of the strip's premise. Continuing from last issue, Deadman tracks assassin Willie Smith to Hong Kong where he receives a new assignment. Deadman learns that the target is his own killer, Hook. Willie catches Hook and brings him before a Society of Assassins for which both killers work.

The leader of the assassins known as the Sensei accuses Hook of failing in his initiation assignment, the murder of Boston Brand. The killers believe Boston is still alive since Cleveland Brand has taken his brother's place at the circus.

Sensei then orders Hook's death. Deadman tries to intervene by taking control of Willie's body. However, the Sensei is able to defeat him and is immune to Dead man's powers of possession. Hook is killed and left behind, while the Sensei and the others leave. Deadman is contacted by Rama Kushna, but he feels no satisfaction in the fact that his killer is dead. Reprinted in Deadman #6.

The back-up story is "The Incredible Mutated Man" drawn by John Giunta. Since Giunta had not drawn anything for DC in five years I assume this is a reprint, but I don't know from where.

Edited by Dick Giordano.

Rachel Maddow

I've like Rachel since I first heard her on Air America. Sam Boyd over at American Prospect does a pretty good piece on her here, an in-depth analysis of her style, how it differs from other liberal hosts and why it seems to be working so well. Well worth a look.

American Priorities

The economy is about to completely collapse (if you believe Bush and Paulson), congress is about to give away our future to the tune of $700 billion dollars and three of the ten most viewed stories on Yahoo News today are:

Clay Aiken is gay.

Lindsay Lohan is gay.

Nicole Kidman said swimming in Australian Outback waterfalls help make her pregnant.

And we wonder how we got into this economic problem.

Hell-Bent on Parody

I had to share this because the Republicans are "hell-bent" on destroying this democracy and I can see Hollywood from my back yard.

Alter on McCain

Jonathan Alter from Countdown...

[Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it's crazy but there's been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he's getting a hard time, he's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country. But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did nothing - nothing - to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all kinds of things that he would never forget.

Taken For Granted

Time Magazine has an informative piece on the MacArthur Fellowship. This year's batch of new "Fellows" includes stage lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, geriatrician Diane Meier and urban farmer Will Allen. I first learned of the MacArthur grants when reading of Richard Stallman in the book Hackers. Stallman wrote GNU Unix and created the GNU license agreement among other pieces of technology.

Be Quiet and Drink Your Rocket Fuel!

According to USA Today...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public but reviewed Monday by The Associated Press.

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."

Dear American:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson

Selling Short

Now I don't know a whole hell of a lot about economics, which means I know about as much as John McCain, but I have always thought that the idea of selling a stock short was outside of the basic purpose of the stock market. Borrowing stock now in order to sell it high and pay for it later at a lower price doesn't sound like "financing American growth;" it sounds like betting on the COME line in craps, i.e., I'm betting you are going to fail. It sounds like gambling with an upside only for the person taking the gamble, and no upside for the company whose stock is being gambled with.

Am I missing something here (I'm sure I am)?

Cactus Beer

I've mentioned a few beers here before that I like to drink though my preference is red wine or bourbon. Beer has too many carbs and too many calories and hell, red wine is good for you. Bourbon drinking on the other hand makes you a man!

Anyway, one beer I have to confess to really liking is Tequiza from Anheuser-Busch. It has this lime and agave cactus flavor that reminds you of the taste of tequila and lime. I could have sworn that they stopped making this beer a few years ago (and the dead tequiza.com website adds to that suspicion, only, I bought a six-pack of it last month at an Albertson's in Pomona. That was the first time I have seen Tequiza in a few years.

Since then I have been looking and can't find it anywhere else. So where are you to go to sate your beer, lime and cactus Jones? Have no fear, Tequiza may or may not be dead but Anheuser-Busch has come to the rescue with Michelob ULTRA Lime Cactus, which I discovered just this week.

ULTRA is supposed to be a low-carb beer, but ULTRA Lime Cactus has 6 carbs which is higher than a lot of the low-carb beers on the market. The lime and cactus taste is not nearly as strong as in Tequiza, so I don't find it quite as refreshing (I don't think tequila), but it does seem to be available everywhere. When you want to drink one, that becomes a big plus!

Also different is I believe Tiquiza is actually a malt liquor while the ULTRA Lime Cactus bottle says it is a Pilsner Beer. Personally I don't care; this is all about taste.

The Bloody Truth

The bloody truth: every time I went to the dentist for a cleaning I bled like a victim of the St. Valentines Day massacre. Hell, the same thing would happen every time I flossed. If you're American this happens to you too. Apparently, ten years ago this was not the case. This all brings me to my recent trip to the dentist for my simi-annual cleaning.

Now most people don't like the dentist, and I feel sort of strange admitting that I don't mind going there at all. No, I'm not the Bill Murray (or Jack Nicholson, depending on how old you are) character in Little Shop of Horrors. I don't like for a dentist to hurt me. When I lived in Taft, California we went to a dentist in Bakersfield and the dental assistant that worked on my mouth was a sadist. She hurt me like no one in a dental office ever did. I never went back.

That I would not stand for, but the gentle probing of a good dentist (I have a good dentist) feels kind of reassuring to me. That fact that it doesn't hurt that bad registers to me as "good news." No real pain, no real problem and the feeling of having my gums massaged is only a plus. But the blood! Argh! That I could live without, only on my most recent trip there was almost no bleeding at all through my full cleaning.

When it was over I asked my dentist if he noticed the lack of blood and he said he did and that a non-bleeding patient is becoming more and more of a rare occurrence. He asked me what I had done differently and and I told him.

"I always liked the feel of a firm toothbrush but it is almost impossible to find one these days. But I did find one and have been using it for about four months. I know the ADA says firm toothbrushes are bad, but I don't care. My gums have never been better." I also told him that I run my toothbrush through the dishwasher every month to sanitize it and I plan on using it till it completely falls apart.

And my dentist, much to my surprise, said I was exactly right and that the ADA is the one wrong. The ADA has run away from firm toothbrushes because they are terrified of Trimarco vs. Colgate Palmolive, an idiotic 1999 class action suit that never went anywhere, but for some reason had the ADA caving like a John McCain statement on the economy. Trimarco vs. Colgate Palmolive alleged basically that toothbrushes are "unsafe and unreasonably dangerous" and should carry package warnings on the "risks of toothbrush abrasion" as well as instruction on how to use brushes to avoid abrasion. The ADA freaked, Colgate Palmolive freaked and they pulled firm toothbrushes off the American market.

They still make firm toothbrushes, but they don't sell them in the United States, though occasionally one will slip into the U.S. market. My dentist also said that since the "ban" on firm toothbrushes, the average American mouth is a mass of soft, tender bleeding tissue. So, the next time you go to the drug store, spend a few minutes searching the toothbrushs. You might just find a firm one and if you do, grab it like the gold it is.

On my next cruise to Mexico I think I will pass on the cheap Viagra and bring home a suitcase full of firm toothbrushes.

Tell It Like It Is

McCain is a national embarrassment.

Fruitless