I haven't had much time to watch the Olympics. I catch a little of the broadcasts late at night. I miss the simpler Olympics that I remember watching as a kid, but I still try to extract the kernel of authenticity from the hyper-hyped corporate entity it's become. I seem to recall that back when Beijing was awarded the games for 2008, much of the rationale involved the expectation that it would open up the Chinese to reform, and force them to turn from their totalitarian ways.
The Republicans have announced that Rudy Giuliani will be the keynote speaker at their convention on Tuesday, September 2nd.
Based on the growing list of no-shows within the Grand Oil Party who fear being seen in public with the parade of has-beens, never-weres, and public disgraces who comprise this cabal, it seems increasingly likely that the protesters outside the Xcel Center will vastly outnumber attendees.
But the Traditional Media will, of course, go out of their way to obscure this reality from the American viewing public. And breaking through their barriers in order to be seen requires some serious efforts at PR.
Follow me after the jump for a strategy that will ensure that, for at least the night of Rudy's triumphant speech, the protesters outside will garner as much or more attention than the travesty inside the hall.
So I have this Obama banner of my own design....and MoveOn announced a competition for Obama-related artwork last week. As usual with MoveOn, they posted the event with very short notice. The deadline has passed; winners will be notified before midnite tonight.
Here's my banner first displayed at the King County convention in Seattle. It's stitched layers of fabric with glittering embellishments, featuring Washington State & its icons: the Space needle, salmon, apple, Mt. Rainier and evergreens.
It was a big hit! So I made art on the reverse side for the 7th CD caucus.
You can find more posts on climate change science, policy, and news on Climate 411.
Have you ever spent time scrolling through NASA's image gallery? Some of the pictures are absolutely mesmerizing. I particularly like "Blue Marble" (below the fold), which was stitched together using satellite data.
Satellites provide more than pretty pictures, though. Our ability to understand and predict climate change depends on continuous high-quality satellite data.
Unfortunately, this critical data stream is threatened by budget cuts and lack of political support. In 2005, the National Academies assessed the situation and deemed it "alarming". Three years later, the outlook has not improved.
Follow me over the fold to learn more about why this is important, how this critical resource is threatened, and what the next administration needs to do about it.
Watching the beauty and grace of the athletes at the Olympic it is easy to forget that these games were developed to fight wars. The hammer throw, discus throw, javelin throw, boxing, fencing, and wrestling were all important in ancient warfare.
You may have wondered why the marathon is 42.195 kilometers (26 miles 385 yards). It's a strange and awkward number. According to one legend, it is the exact distance from the battlefield at Marathon, Greece, to the Senate building in Athens. A messenger named Pheidippides ran the entire distance without stopping, burst into the Senate and declared, "Nenikékamen ('We have won')" before collapsing and dying.
The Mayans took the seriousness of their games to another level. This game, played for thousands of years, was some combination of racquetball and volleyball. The winners became heroes. The losers sometimes became human sacrifices to the gods.
But its not ancient games I want to talk about. It's a much more modern one that interests me.
For 30 years the Tamil Tigers have controlled an area in the North of Sri Lanka known as the Vanni, with the town of Kilinochchi at its centre. Following a series of recent government victories in other areas, this area is now all that remains of the Tigers’ de facto separatist homeland state.
But maybe not for much longer. The entire region is surrounded by government forces, and is being squeezed on three fronts. The bubble is shrinking as the forward defensive lines are creeping in, slowly converging on Kilinochchi.
I discovered this morning that one of my closest friends and confidants is being deployed to Iraq. The spectrum of emotions I have gone through today is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I fear for my friend, I worry for his safety, I shudder at the possibility of a young life without such a friend, and I feel guilt at the selfish emotions coursing through my thoughts, when I am not the one destined for the battlefield, and I am not the one putting myself in harm's way.
I cannot begin to imagine the feelings of mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters, wives, husbands or children, who are seeing men and women whom they have watched grow as adults, as siblings, as partners, or as parents being shipped off for their first or second or third deployments. Nor can I begin to understand, the grief of those who have lost their loved ones in this war.
The video and story below chronicle a recent Sunday afternoon in Venice, California, when 22 children, ages 5-12, gathered to sing original songs in the belief that their singing would lift up our communities and the Obama campaign for the coming election. This was a grassroots deal from the start, but thanks to unexpected assistance from parents and then top film production folks in LA, the performances are captured for all time.
The video was just finished and uploaded to YouTube earlier this evening, and as one of the video’s two grips-for-the-day, I’m especially proud to present it to Daily Kos first:
This story has been covered already by a few blogs, but not here, and none seems to have presented the graphic shown below.
Jowie Chen, a doctoral student in political science at Stanford, obtained the records of 2.6 million applications for FEMA disaster assistance in Florida in 2004. (This happened not because the Bush administration made them available voluntarily, but because four Florida newspapers won a Freedom of Information Act suit.) Chen then mapped these applications and the subsequent FEMA grants into counties and precincts, added data on actual weather conditions in these locations, their demographic characteristics, and finally local voting patterns in recent Federal elections. The paper can be found here. The following map shows part of his results.
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Eight years ago, then Governor George W. Bush revealingly joked about his backers at the 2000 Al Smith Dinner. "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores," Bush said, adding, "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." With his own quip Saturday night that "$5 million" is his definition of "rich," John McCain made no mistake that he is Bush's natural heir.
Saturday, I followed Tom Udall around the city, starting up in the Northeast Heights at Page One, the largest independent bookstore in the state.
Page One Town Hall
The event at Page One was a town hall meeting, where about 100 people showed up to hear Udall give a short speech and ask the Congressman questions.
Udall began the speech by telling about his accomplishments both as the Attorney General and as a Congressman. He mentioned he voted against the war in Iraq and said, "We should have stayed in Afghanistan; we should have captured Osama bin Laden."
As we continue to celebrate the Olympics with profound pride and patriotism , I wanted to share some disheartening rankings that reflect our country's stark decline relative to the rest of the world. I list these fully knowing this community's cognizance of such issues, but sometimes numbers yield a haunting, and thus effective, reminder. For anyone truly proud to be American, these numbers should anger, motivate, and prompt action.
32nd - World rank of U.S. infant mortality rate.
First - CEO to Worker pay ratio (531:1) (Second place is Brazil at 57:1)
9th - Adult Literacy Scale (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
12th - student reading ability (Source: OECD)
37th - U.S. rank on the Healthcare Quality Index (World Health Organization)
I've gotten tired of explaining why supply-side economics -- i.e., voodoo economics -- don't actually work. So I've decided to write up a quick-and-dirty version that I can just link to as necessary. This is not meant to be a definitive statement on the subject. It's not even an air-tight argument of the principles being espoused. It's just me pointing at some pretty fundamental absurdities in voodoo economics and saying, "Hey! Look! Have you even thought about this? It doesn't make any sense!"
John McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time last year.
That's no small feet.
But when McCain says that he refuses to let soldiers return from Iraq until he "wins with honor and victory," it's not Bush I'm thinking of, but McCain's old hero, Richard Nixon.
In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that a doctor is not permitted to discriminate against gay patients on religious grounds. Moreover, the court noted that the doctor was selectively refusing to perform the same procedure on a gay patient that the doctor had performed without incident on heterosexuals.
The court sided with the plaintiff on the grounds that California state law strictly prohibits discrimination on the basis of one's sexual orientation. In doing so, the court rejected a claim by the physician that treating a gay woman would be against her "Christian" beliefs.
Hello all, I'm a citizen of New Orleans and blog almost purely about local politics and recovery issues at We Could Be Famous. I wrote this earlier today on my blog after the release of the 10 year facilities master plan that will guide the future of New Orleans public schools. Because my blog tends to be written for a local audience, I've added an extra piece at the end for Kos readers.
Essentially, the schools master plan punishes the communities most in need of social services and municipal investment by rewarding school facilities primarily to communities that already have rebuilt their assets. Please read on.
McCain has flopped from opposing wind energy to supporting wind energy. Has McCain really flipped or has he only embraced a pseudo flop to publicly pander for renewable energy votes while he more quietly takes actions to block wind energy progress? McCain can be very clear and specific when talking about nuclear energy, or coal, or off-shore oil drilling, yet he can not even muster up one "yes" vote out of 8 chances on renewable energy tax credits legislation. His actions are consistent with blocking wind energy, which is a competitor for oil industry subsidies and may transform oil barons into barren businesses no longer needed.
Hope you don't mind a break from all this VP talk.
A few weeks ago I got an email from my college's financial aid office.
Dear Student
Your lender is no longer processing loans for us so you need to complete a new promissory note. Please contact the Financial Aid Office for help with this.
I didn't think much of it, other than it was really inconvenient, and I hoped that it wouldn't delay my aid. So, the next day I called the financial aid office and got the instructions for completing a new master promissory note. It was when I was finishing up my promissory note that I realized something was hinky.
McCain has flopped from opposing wind energy to supporting wind energy. Has McCain really flipped or has he only embraced a pseudo flop to publicly pander for renewable energy votes while he more quietly takes actions to block wind energy progress? McCain can be very clear and specific when talking about nuclear energy, or coal, or off-shore oil drilling, yet he can not even muster up one "yes" vote out of 8 chances on renewable energy tax credits legislation. His actions are consistent with blocking wind energy, which is a competitor for oil industry subsidies and may transform oil barons into barren businesses no longer needed. 
