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Sonnet

post from American Street on 04 July 2009 10:51:00 AM. © American Street

Video here.My friend and meLooking through her red box of memoriesFaded I’m sureBut love seems to stick in the things you knowYes, there’s love if you want itDon’t sound like a sonnet, my lordYes, there’s love if you want itDon’t sound like no sonnet, my lordMy lordWhy can’t you seeThat nature has its way of [...]

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http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2009/07/04/sonnet/

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The Young Turks Reveal FOX's Talking Points on Al
Franken

post from Open Left - Front Page on 04 July 2009 10:37:57 AM. © Open Left - Front Page

Last month, when Stephanie Taylor and I turned the tables on FOX's Griff Jenkins, he had "no[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/C5Q4KhAQ9lQ/the-young-turks-
reveal-foxs-talking-points-on-al-franken

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Come Saturday Morning: Doing the Honorable Thing

post from Firedoglake on 04 July 2009 10:30:55 AM. © Firedoglake

Apparently the Kaplan subsidies just aren't enough, and the Washington Post feels it must sell access to the very people its editorial team scolds in print. There's a much more honorable way for the WaPo to pay the bills: Start running sex ads.[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/04/come-saturday-morning-doing-the-honorable-thing
/

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Is There a HouseGate in Sarah Palin's Future

post from TalkLeft on 04 July 2009 10:28:00 AM. © TalkLeft

Speculation is mounting on the internet that Sarah Palin is facing trouble over the source of the building materials for her Waslilla, Alaska home. If you remember, Todd was interviewed saying he built the house with his own hands and some buddies helped out with materials.

The details were reported in 2008 by Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett. Mudflats also reported on it. Hypocrites and Heffalump Traps wrote it up in February, with pictures of each, showing similarities and posts an update today. [More...]

Here's the railing at the Wasilla Sports Complex:

And here's the railing at the Palin home:

The complex cost $12.5 million to build. Barrett reported:

Six months before Palin stepped down as mayor in October 2002, the city awarded nearly a half-million-dollar contract to design the biggest project in Wasilla history to Kumin Associates. Blase Burkhart was the Kumin architect on the job—the son of Roy Burkhart, who is frequently described as a "mentor" of Palin and was head of the local Republican Party (his wife, June, who also advised Palin, is the national committeewoman).

Asked if the contract was a favor, Roy Burkhart, who contributed to her campaign in the same time frame that his son got the contract, said: "I really don't know." Palin then named Blase Burkhart to a seven-member builder-selection committee that picked Howdie Inc., a mostly residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent. Formally awarded the contract a couple of weeks after Palin left office, Nugent has donated $4,000 to Palin campaigns. Two competitors protested the process that led to Nugent's contract.

The Village Voice obtained a list of sub-contractors at the Complex. One was Spenard Builders.

In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin's snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004. When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002—at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor—Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office.

Spenard actually filed a notice "of its right to assert a lien" on the deed for the Palin property after contracting for labor and materials for the site. Spenard's name has popped up in the trial of Senator Stevens—it worked on the house that is at the center of the VECO scandal as well.

Other subcontractors also donated to Palin:

Dorwin and Joanne Smith, the principals of complex subcontractor DJ Excavation & Development, have donated $7,100 to Palin and her allied candidate Charlie Fannon (Joanne is a Palin appointee on the state Board of Nursing). Sheldon Ewing, who owns another complex subcontractor, Weld Air, has donated $1,300, and PN&D, an engineering firm on the complex, has contributed $699.

Max Blumenthal writes at the Daily Beast:

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

...Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS [Spenard] to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an additional $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Wouldn't the statute of limitations be up on home renovations performed and contracts awarded in the 90's? Even if she didn't declare the value of the contributions on her tax return, the statute of limitations has probably run. If Palin has upcoming legal problems, I think it's more likely they are related to the e-mails that suppoosedly are coming out than the Wasilla Sports Complex.

As to theories she's resigning to hit the lecture circuit or become a cable news pundit to pay her legal bills, didn't she just get a fat book contract that should take care of those?

Whatever her reasons for resigning, I suspect her political career is over. She can run around the country from now until 2012, and she's not going to be nominated for President. Memo to Mrs. Palin: We're just not that into you.

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Saturday Swedish hedgehog blogging

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 04 July 2009 10:23:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

The cutest little things. Apparently the island Jane Hamsher and I are on is known for its abundance of hedgehogs. I finally got to see one the other night, walking home from a reception or something around midnight, and there it was, scurrying along the street, around the size of a fat squirrel. (You can get a sense of how small the things are by the photo below.) The little guy actually stopped, looked at me, and then even walked a bit towards me - they're not particularly scared by humans. My new Swedish friend Bjorn immediately walked up and started petting the thing. I declined, after hearing the story the other night of the Swedish friend of Bjorn's who decided to pet the local "tame" fox, and got bit. Anyway, Bjorn let the little guy go and he quickly scurried around the corner (the hedgehog, not Bjorn). I've now seen a few of these little guys, usually late at night, and they really are quite adorable.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/FeVnR9brI9I/saturday-swedish-hedgeh
og-blogging.html

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This Week in Science

post from Daily Kos on 04 July 2009 10:16:05 AM. © Daily Kos

Last week a group of paleo-biologists from all over the world visited that crowning fundamentalist temple of insular self indulgence, the Creationist Museum. Here there be dinosaurs wearing saddles, toothy raptors peacefully munching veggies next to Adam and Eve, and everywhere you look posters and exhibits lay the blame for mankind's greatest sins on evolution. Some of the scientists chuckled, others were confused, and educated Americans from every political background could only hang our heads in shame-by-proxy:

"It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?" said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

There have been many reviews of the creationist theme park and gift shop. Some funny, many informative, and each depressing in its own way. But the most hilarious and -- I'm warning you -- ruthlessly irreverent such article of all time has to be this one.

Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan channeled the ghost of Jerry Falwell in an anti-evolution screed so hoary, so egregiously bad, that it was panned by a number of conservatives.

Any piece that starts like this is going to be good:

It was probably inevitable. Given the mileage progressives got out of slamming the Bush administration for abusing science, conservatives were bound to bring parallel charges against the Obama administration.

Igor Derysh has a brief and critical look at ACES well worth reading:

The bill allows companies to skimp on the set standards of the bill and allows them to miss the milestone goals. That's like telling your child "you're not allowed to drive, but if you drive for less than two hours it's ok."

For all its amazing abilities, the number one mortal flaw in vertebrate physiology is our single, beating heart. Researchers have now identified the master stem cell that could one day be harnessed to grow new cardiac components, or even whole new tickers.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/g1ZV7_CJD44/-This-Week-in-Science

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HONORING THE FALLEN: US Military KIA, Iraq &
Afghanistan/Pakistan - June 2009

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 04 July 2009 10:09:35 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Dover 'Old Guard'Dover 'Old Guard' team shoulders heavy burden Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!! There have been 4,641 coalition deaths -- 4,324 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2[...]

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ilitary-kia-iraq-afghanistanpakistan-june-2009

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The Celebration of a Progressive Holiday

post from Open Left - Front Page on 04 July 2009 10:00:00 AM. © Open Left - Front Page

On this holiday celebrating the courage of America's brave revolutionary founders, all Americans[...]

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It's time for all 60 senators who caucus with the
Dems to adopt the Sanders Rule: EVERYONE in the caucus votes against GOP filibusters

video details and more

Cenk makes his case for the Sanders Rule: "It's genius."

by Ken

We've been talking, of course, about the implications of the Democrats reaching, more or less, the magic 60 threshhold in the Senate. The consensus is that there aren't any implication, considering the lack of cohesiveness of those 60 senators the 58 nominal Democrats and the two Independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Why, just look at those two Independents. You've got probably the most upright person in the Senate, Vermont's Bernie Sanders, and perhsps the most lowdown, Connecticut's Holy Joe Lieberman. Both New Englanders, but it's hard to think of much of anything else they have in common.

It turns out that Senator Sanders has been thinking along the lines of our friend Lane Hudson, whose thinking we passed on in one of our ponderings of the Democratic supermajority. Beyond the importance of making sure that we make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid aware of our hopes and expectations,

he makes the eminently practical point that at the very least the leadership should be held to mustering its voting clout on cloture votes, requiring caucus members to toe the line on them. They would still be free to vote their conscience in the final vote on a bill, but they shouldn't be allowed to aid the opposition in preventing a final vote from happening.

The filibuster, which in all its configurations has always been understood as a last resort, reserved for matters of do-or-die principle, has been transformed by the new Republican minority into a strategy of first resort. Having no program of their own, except to screech "Hell no" at any proposal made by Democrats, they now threaten it routinely, indeed automatically. What they have wrought is a substantial transformation of the way the Senate does business, so that the most routine Senate business now requires 60 votes.

Our friend Cenk Uygur (of the Young Turks) wants everybody to know about "The Sanders Rule: All Bills Get Up or Down Votes." He first quotes the senator:

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents. I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'" (emphasis added)

and then comments:

I love this Sanders Rule. It makes perfect sense. This is the whole point of having 60 senators in your caucus. I don't need or want ideological rigidity on the Democratic side. I believe in the Big Tent. So, how people vote is up to them. But getting these bills to the floor to get up or down votes is absolutely necessary. This is part and parcel of being in the caucus. Not just in healthcare, but all of the bills must have up or down votes (but by far the most important thing right now is to include a public option in the healthcare bill that gets an up or down vote).

I know Democrats bend over backwards to accommodate the Republicans and appeal to bipartisanship. Although the Republicans never, ever seem to reciprocate, that is all fine and dandy, as long as we get to vote on the legislative proposals. They can have bipartisan proposals come up. They can have progressive or conservative proposals come up. But no matter what they should all get a vote, as long as there are sixty senators in the Democratic caucus.

If the Democrats don't use their 60 seat majority to break filibusters, then they are absolutely complicit. There are no excuses left. It's one thing to say you're voting your conscience on a bill (though a great majority of the time they are in fact voting their pocketbook by voting with the lobbyists), it's another to say that you will join the Republicans in upholding a filibuster. That is not acceptable.

Everyone who voted for a Democrat in the country should absolutely insist that they follow the Sanders Rule. All bills must get up or down votes. That's the least they can do with the overwhelming mandate they have been given to get us real change.

If they squander this - with control of the White House, a huge majority in the House, a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and all of the national polls behind them - then they were lying. They never intended to bring us change in the first place. The lobbyists will have won. And Obama's presidency will be like all of the others. A lot of bullshit promises and no change despite every conceivable advantage. If they can't get it done under these circumstances, then they can never get it done - nor did they ever want to.

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/07/its-time-for-all-60-senators-who-cauc
us.html

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How Abstinence-Only Leads to Crime

OK, I get that their purity pledges didn't cover orgasms, but is there in Connecticut no porn?

A group of teenagers misunderstood a woman's screams during sex and, thinking they were stopping an assault, beat a 25-year-old man in her bedroom, police said.

As PZ writes: