The Internet Is About Porn

but you knew that, right?

...by 1989 or thereabouts, bands of tech-savvy sexual explorers were finding each other on Usenet, an all-text, no-pictures corner of the net that predated the web. Among them was software developer Harry Ugol, who formulated the oft-quoted Ugol’s Law: “To any question beginning with ‘Am I the only one who … ?’ the answer is no.”
Today, thanks to the web, the content of Ugol’s Law is common knowledge — even for those who have never heard it stated quite that way. But a mere 20 years ago, for that first generation of Usenet pioneers, it was revelatory. That’s how much the world has changed...

From Freakonomics, of course. Who else?

Follow Me!

I won't lead you astray. At least not on purpose.

C'mon, I know you're out there. I even know who some of you are cuz you tell me. Anyway, it's kinda like Facebook, only a lot smaller.
See that Followers thingie over on the right. Sign up. Please.
C'mon, who else reads it so you don't have to?
Oh, yeah, well besides them?

Politically Correct Fish: News You Can Use

w/recipes. Eco best fish, eco ok, and eco worst.

I've had deep fried catfish twice in the last 10 days. It's delicious.

Catfish Tidbits

Contributed by Environmental Defense Fund staff

Serves 4 to 6 as an appetizer
1 pound catfish fillets
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 beaten eggs
1 cup breadcrumbs
¼ vegetable oil

1. Rinse fish under cold water. Cut into bite-size pieces.
2. Mix flour and seasonings and place in a plastic bag. Add catfish pieces a few at a time and shake bag until fish is well coated.
3. Remove pieces from plastic bag, and dip flour-coated fish in beaten eggs and drain off excess. Then dip in breadcrumbs.
4. Heat oil in a frying pan. Fry fish a few pieces at a time until golden brown. Drain pieces on paper towel.
5. Serve with your favorite spicy cocktail sauce for dipping.

Campaigns Are Expensive

Forty-nine percent of Obama's donors are people who have given less than $200. I am one of those and I plan to give more, but he's also quietly signaled the 527s to go after McCain and some of them have. One very effective ad is out attacking Palin for her leadership in broadening the hunting of wolves from airplanes, making more mooseburgers available for hunters.
The ad is up in Ohio,, and they need more money to get it up elsewhere.
Anyway, check out this diary at Daily Kos for all the 527s and consider kicking them a little love.

I Am So Proud

Ann Telnaes is a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.
This one is priceless.

NPR Saturday Morning

The best radio day is Saturdays on KPLU 88.5 from early morning until Bob Edwards' always fascinating interviews at 10 to Click and Clack the Car Guys at 11 and ending with This American Life, a radio phenom at noon.
I always learn new and often delightful things, like today's story about Striker Bikes in Oakland, California.
They are a huge hit on YouTube.

It reminds me of Clown Krumping. If you haven't seen the movie Rize about the urban art form, order it from Netflix.

McShame

No Way, No How, No Palin

Petition here.
Women Against Palin web site here

P.S. First Dood has been subpeonaed by Alaska legislative committee investigating Troopergate, along with Palin's other employees. Deciding vote cast by Republican representative from...wait for it...Wasilla.

Send this Video

to everyone you know and tell them to do the same.


Here's the URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SV9-PPe9yw

Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them

Apologies to Al Franken. Andrew Sullivan says McCain on The View got the best grilling done so far and  we all wonder why so-called news broadcasters can't do the job at least as well as Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters.
Here's a link to the whole thing at Huffpo. Judge for yourself.
I haven't watched it yet, so can't vouch for Sullivan's opinion, but he says this will kill the campaign.

Chill, Fellow Dems

Gail Collins puts it in perspective (and by the way, O is up five points in Ohio and Penn today).

Have you seen the polls? He should be talking more about the economy! Why isn’t his campaign working harder?
If the Obama brain trust seems relatively serene compared with its seething base, it’s because they live in the Electoral College world, where the presidential race only takes place in a third of the country. They don’t care about national polls — a concept as quaint as measuring one’s wealth by caribou pelts. They worry about the undecided vote in Minnesota and Ohio and run their TV ads (about the economy) in places like Colorado and Michigan and Florida. If you live in California or New York or Texas, you don’t really have much of a feel for their level of effort because as far as they’re concerned, you’ve already voted.

Quote O' Teh Day

Smoke it all, drink it all and don't fall off the porch.
Tim Miller

Here's What We Mean

when we say, ignore the national polls.

McCain is not ahead a single state that Kerry won. Obama is well ahead in IA (a pickup from 2004) and he is ahead in MI, CO and NV. Obama could even lose OH, FL *and* VA and he still wins.

The Twenty

most corrupt members of Congress announced today by CREW, Citizens for Ethics in Washington.
I kinda like Charley Rangel but, hey, it figures.
The 20 most corrupt Members of Congress

• Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) Rep.
• John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
• Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
• Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-NY)
• Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA)
• Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
• Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL)
• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA)
• Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)
• Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA)
• Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA)
• Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM)
• Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY)
• Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY)
• Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)
• Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

Aha! Speculation Driving Oil Prices

I actually watched the whole hearing on this issue chaired by Sen. Maria Cantwell.
All that supply and demand crap was just that.

Study links oil prices to investor speculation

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press WriterWed Sep 10, 1:03 PM ET

Speculation by large investors — and not supply and demand for oil — were a primary reason for the surge in oil prices during the first half of the year and the more recent price declines, an independent study concluded Wednesday.
The report by Masters Capital Management said investors poured $60 billion into oil futures markets during the first five months of the year as oil prices soared from $95 a barrel in January to $145 a barrel by July.
Since then, these investors have withdrawn $39 billion from those markets as prices have retreated dramatically, the report said. Oil traded at about $102 a barrel Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"We have clear evidence the fund flow pushed prices up and the fund flow pushed prices down," said Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, calling the amount of money moving into oil futures markets by large institutional investors in the early part of the year "way off the scale."

Lipstick, Meet Pig

Today's Big Lie

Has the McCain campaign jumped the shark? Scary black man victimizes children. The 'sphere is in a tizzy over it, as wingnuts cry sexism for Obama's use of the term "lipstick on a pig," referring to Palin as the lipstick, McCain as the pig.
It's getting really dirty, and it's only Sept. 10.







Favorite comment: You can put lipstick on McCain, he's still Bush.

Countdown to 9/11

Relax, this is funny.


By the way, Hulu is a great place to visit. Watch out you don't get lost there. I hear they've got all the Arrested Development episodes.

You Probably Never Heard of This Guy

Nouriel Roubini, but he's often cited by right and left alike as the ultimate authority on the economy.
His take on Fannie and Freddie:

So now Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke (as originally nicknamed by Willem Buiter) have now turned the USA into the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America). Socialism is indeed alive and well in America; but this is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street. A socialism where profits are privatized and losses are socialized with the US tax-payer being charged the bill of $300 billion.

He was also on Charlie Rose last night, although I missed it. The re-run is at 5 p.m. today on Channel 9 in Seattle. Probably a podcast of it out there, too. I've never seen him.

Would Your Spa Sisters Vote For You?

5 min.

$arah'$ Bridge

"No One Knows What War Is Like

other than my family. Period." Meghan McCain
Good one, Megs. Hope the book sells well.

$arah!

The part-time job of Alaska governor only pays $125,000 a year, but Mrs. Palin, who has a Down syndrome baby and believes it's God's will we are in Iraq, has a secondary gig.
Like any true reformer, she stays home to minimize the intrustion of government into Alaskan citizens' lives.
And when she stays home, she charges the state a per diem travel allowance for it. Cuz it's like "on state business" or something.
During her first 570 days in office, she charged per diem for 312 of them. I guess the rest of the time she was in the gov' mansion at her official "duty station" in Juneau.
Anyway, $ara's home time was worth $16, 951, according to the Washington Post which also details the cost of her family's travel expenses.
Of course, in all fairness, it notes that Frank Murkowski, the much despised incumbent Republican governor that Palin defeated in the primary, seemed a lot looser about such things.
Oh, and she didn't sell his jet plane on Ebay after all. It was listed there, as were many state surplus items. But it didn't sell. Finally, sold through an aircraft broker, the state lost money on the deal, contrary to what Palin and McCain have been telling campaign audiences.

Me, It's All About Me

Be my follower.
C'mon, I know you're out there. I even know who some of you are cuz you tell me. Anyway, it's kinda like Facebook, only a lot smaller.
See that Followers thing over on the right. Sign up. Please.
C'mon, who else reads it so you don't have to?
Oh, yeah, well besides them?

The 'L' Word

Progressives have been chomping at the bit for Obama to unleash the negatives against McCain and Palin.
Some suggest the campaign knows what it's doing and timing is everything.
Anyway, today's new ad in select states is the first of what promises to be  a long series.
Notable. They're charging the R's with lying. Liar, lie, lying, lied. Deliberately and knowlingly. There, was that so hard?

TV's Smartest Woman

Rachel Maddow, starts her own show tonight on MSNBC.

Followers, I Want Followers

C'mon, I know you're out there. I even know who some of you are cuz you tell me. Anyway, it's kinda like Facebook, only a lot smaller.
See that Followers think over on the right. Sign up. Please.
C'mon, who else reads it so you don't have to?
Oh, yeah, well besides them?

Scared Yet?

No? That's because you haven't seen today's national polls (which I've told you time and again to ignore) nor heard the whining from your favorite broadcasters about McCain's ascent and Obama's descent.
The Palin effect? Possibly some of that, and an expected post-convention bounce that always happens. Happened for Obama, too.

But if you want to be really scared, you can always fall in line with the folk who think Obama's fatal mistake was not choosing Hillary to run with.

"That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

Here's where the analysis breaks down, although whether voters will know it is not mine to guess.

He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card.

Ignore the fisherwoman and huntress stuff. Neither of these people are mavericks, it's the campaign mythology and whether it holds for much longer is up to the Obama campaign. Todd carries a steelworkers card because he has to. Ewww! This is all such crap, and yet there it is. The Narrative.
Without the baby blankets. Must have been written by a man. I feel better now.

Somebody named Spengler wrote this for Asian Times and I don't have a link because I stole it from a comment.

Ooh, the Oedipal Card!

For the first time in American politics there is a strong alpha woman with whom mothers identify, and after whom sons lust. The GOP is playing the Oedipal card. And it could mean bloody war, fought house to house.

Inside the security corps.

The Compleat Sarah

63 pages
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM106_palin_doc.html

The Editor of Wonkette

summarizes the Republican National Convention. You should visit Wonkette once in a while, it's fun.

The Republican convention was a neat, quaint operation. Nobody expected anything flashy or fun or interesting, and nobody expected any answer to America's economic and military collapse beyond an oft-told 40-year-old shaggy dog tale of an old man who crashed a plane into the village he was bombing, back when he was young, and his brave story of personal redemption as his father continued mercilessly killing the Vietnamese children for another five-and-a-half years.
 

No Comment

Yeah, Change. That's the Ticket.

Fannie and Freddie

UPDATE: Oops, linky. Thanks, anon.

When it comes to matters economic, I like to put my faith in the knowledgeable people I trust and cut to the chase. Here's Jerome a Paris at Daily Kos:

the biggest scandal is the open-ended commitment to protect the creditors of the two organisations. Shareholders are wiped out, but bondholders are sittign rather pretty.

Jerome's a French banker currently up to his eyeballs in alternative energy investment. If you follow the link, you can find his real name at one of the European blogs he also posts at.

A Landslide, I Tells Ya

Poster at TPM does the numbers and concludes that Obama's ground game will result in an unprecedented electoral victory. I've felt this in my bones for months.
Here's a little snippet, but read the whole post and comments. Lots of good stuff to buoy the spirit.

Here are some others. #s courtesy of Pollster, Electoral Vote, and Five Thirty Eight.

North Dakota: Bush won by 27pts. Obama tied to ahead by 3.
South Dakota: Bush won by 22pts. Obama's within 4-6.
Indiana: Bush won by 21pts. Obama's within 2-4.
Montana: Bush won by 20pts. Obama's tied to ahead by 3.
Georgia: Bush won by 17pts. Obama's within 6-7pts.
North Carolina: Bush won by 12pts. Obama's within 3.
Virginia: Bush won by 9pts. Obama's ahead by 1-2 or tied.