Just got her own show on MSNBC. She'll replace Dan Abrams! Keith Olbermann leaked it on DailyKos.

w0oT, Rachel!

So...

I guess John Edwards won't be a Veep choice after all.

I feel so bad for Elizabeth Edwards in this. Could John be more of an asshat?

ETA: It is reminiscent of McCain dumping his first wife after after she waited for him to return home from Vietnam. When he was released from a POW camp, he discovered she had been horribly injured in a disfiguring car accident. He promptly left her for a hot, blonde, filthy rich brewing heiress.

Then there's the case of Newt Gingrich serving his wife (his former high-school math teacher) with divorce papers in the hospital as she was recovering from cancer surgery. He married the woman with whom he was having an affair and he refused to pay either alimony or child support. Newt Gingrich also dumped that woman, his second wife, over the phone after allegedly learning of her affliction with multiple sclerosis. He went on to marry a third woman with whom he was also having an affair during his second marriage.

John Edwards may be a douchebag, but he is not an unholy piece of crap like Gingrich. I suppose that's about where he's at right now. "At least I'm somewhat better than Newt." Ouch.

I have access to some hi-res galleries on the NBC site. I have uploaded all the Doctor Who hi-res photos, 105 of them in all, to this gallery.

They are in the order in which they appear on the site. The episode order seems pretty random and many episodes seem unrepresented. You may have seen all these before, but here they are, just in case.

Click the thumbnails and then click the "FULL SIZE" link above each picture to get the highest resolution image possible.

This image, showing Donna, the Supreme Dalek and the Doctor, for example is 4690 x 4961. So, that's what I got.

If you like 'em or want 'em, go ahead. Could you leave me a message here letting me know if you did, just so I know if it's something I should continue?

Thanks and happy viewing.

PS I tagged all the images, so look for the tag cloud under each preview image (not the thumb.) They're tagged by character, episode number, and episode title.

ETA: PLEASE post this in any of your Doctor Who comms, if you feel others would be interested. The more the merrier.

Does anyone else NOT get the fact that making sure your tires are inflated properly and keeping your car well-tuned are real-life things YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO TODAY to help save gas?

What are YOU going to do: personally go out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and start drilling for oil from your dinghy?

Don't people realize that it IS the cumulative little things we can all do right now that can make all the difference in the world? Keeping your tires inflated can add 3% fuel efficiency to your car and keeping it tuned can add another 4%. If you drive a conservative 15,000 miles a year, that's a savings of 1,050 miles a year. If your car gets an average of even 25 mpg (a very generous number given the number of unsellable SUVs still on the roads) that amounts to a savings of 42 gallons a year or about $168 at current prices, or about $14 a month. That's a movie. That's a couple of lunches out at work or a couple of six packs of good beer you could have, you know... RIGHT NOW.

Let's take it a step further. Try to keep up, I know thinking's hard. Do a little math... No. Stay with me here. It's easy math; I'll do it for you. Let's say 1,000,000 people think McCain's full of shit and Obama's right about this. I mean, what's it gonna cost? A little time at the gas station, a trip to Jiffy Lube. No biggie, right? That's 42,000,000 gallons of gas saved and another $168,000,000 we're not giving away to the gas companies. That's money going for food and debt service and college and hell, maybe even vacations.

The question isn't, as the GOP would love to frame it, why the hell would anyone do what Obama wants? The questions for you is: why the hell wouldn't you?

It's the same shit they pulled on Carter. "That peanut farmer's whole answer to the heating oil problem is to wear a sweater." Except, no, that was Carter's way of empowering the individual to join his countrymen, make a small sacrifice to comfort while making a collective difference as a whole. But that's antithetical to the GOP mantra: Fu-huck the whole. What's in it for me?

Don't let the Republicans get away with this. They will try to make Obama and the Democrats look stupid. They'll wave gas gauges in our faces and laugh at the silly Democrats. What a bunch of math geeks and tree-huggers we are! What a bunch of uppity, elitist, presumptuous people we are!

Except we are right. Don't be afraid to be right and smart and to know better. It's up to the smart people to save the rest of this country from four more years of "bomb it, kill it, drill it."

Hi. I'm your brain, and I'm feeling a little underutilized over here. What shall we think about today?

ETA: Obama responds:

So our little Harry's 28 today. Too bad he's still married to Ginny. Imagine saving the world and being saddled with the monster in your chest. Pity.

Week 2 of the 100 pushups program. Last night completed 68 pushups over 5 sets. I also fell below the 200 lb threshold earlier this week. So, that's, you know... coming along. Another 10 lbs to go, preferably 15. I think cutting the beer out of the diet has been huge.

I still haven't seen the Dark Knight, which sucks. I'm geeked for Watchmen and now am starting to get excited again about HP with the release of the teaser for HBP. It looks pretty awesome. Too bad the whole R/H thing's gonna fuck it up for me. Feh! Feh, I say! Anyway, since they focus primarily on Harry's arc, hopefully that will be minor, comic-relief type stuff since the whole foundation for that relationship is comical, at best.

/rant. Damn you, JKR. Damn you to hell. /ranty-mcranterson

In convenient, easy-to-use mp3 format.

Parts I & II here.

On a day when John McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm (one of the prime architects of the sub-prime mortgage disaster, a principle in the Enron scandal, a likely Treasury Secretary under McCain and dick), laments that we are a "nation of whiners" who have psychosomatically convinced ourselves that we're in a "mental recession," what is the main story on MSNBC, CNN and Fox?

Jesse Jackson wants to cut off Barack's nuts.

Good to see the MSM isn't at all out of touch with real Americans. I know this morning as I was choosing which bills to pay this check while pumping $60 worth of gas into my car, I was worrying about the state of the presumptive Democratic nominee's testicles and not at all about the imaginary recession I convinced myself we were in.


Nope. Thankfully, Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer and Bill O'Rly are all over Barack's balls.

Dear Senator,

Thanks for your vote on FISA, HR 6304. It's good to know exactly where my elected representatives stand on the subject of MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. As a direct result of your vote, you have forever lost mine.

Kind regards,

Drew(cypher)
Former Constituent

PS I find it of great interest, and no small irony, that you have a topic heading for "Second Amendment" (Guns), but none for "Fourth Amendment." Why do you think that is?

Seymour Hersh interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC:


Read Hersh's article in the New Yorker

Then last night, NBC's Iraq War correspondent, Richard Engel, said a strike on Iran could precipitate a rise in oil prices to $300 or $400 a barrel.

$300? $400 a barrel? Name your price? This raises the question, for me at least: If another country, NOT the U.S., was preparing a pre-emptive attack that could raise the cost of gasoline to $11.50 a gallon (in the U.S.) and cripple the world-wide economy, what would the U.S. response be?( Read more... )

It comes as some shock, but apparently not all people agree with me and a great many think I'm something of a moron.

What I thought was a scathing rebuke of some of Obama's recent decisions fell quite flat in two Obama LJ comms. I guess not everyone thinks Glenn Greenwald, Markos Moulitsas or Arianna Huffington are reasonable, intelligent people either, not that I put myself in the same category.

Hmm.

There's something to crunch on for a while.

Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com has an excellent column today highlighting Obama's right-wing betrayals of the last two weeks and the possible effects it could have on his run for the Presidency.

I've been particularly vexed over the last several days marking his flip-flops changes in attitude on a number of progressive issues: FISA, throwing the eloquent and all-too-correct 4-star Gen. Wes Clark under the bus over his comments on McCain (he did not dishonor his service, read the freakin' paper, Barack!), condemning MoveOn.org over the Betray-us/Petraeus ad, and on and on it goes.

Arianna Huffington is correct in her most recent column: Moving to the Middle is for Losers.

With all due respect, Senator Obama, you are where you are now by FIRST galvanizing the left, the progressive netroots of the Democratic party. You claimed you were a post-politics politician who would rise above the partisan divides in our country by appealing to the better angels in all of us. Then, you tell a man like Wes Clark that he was wrong for daring to say that the mere fact of John McCain's service does not alone qualify him to make decisions as commander in chief.

You say to ALL Americans, not just Democrats, that the 4th Amendment is for sale to the highest bidder, that corporations and the people that control them are above the law and above us all if they write a big enough check to the right people. You say to us that our privacy in communications is meaningless, that our e-mails, our instant messages, our private phone calls inside the United States are subject to government scrutiny without warrant and without redress.

You are becoming what you once swore you would not become. You're almost worse, because you encouraged us to hope. You told us to believe. "Yes We Can!" Were they just words? Just things you said to get elected? Are you a man of belief or a man of perceived political pragmatism? Is Mark Penn running your campaign?

I call you out for pandering to the right, abandoning the left and begging for the middle who can spot a phony from a mile away. I call you out because you empowered me to do so. I call you out because we deserve the Barack Obama of February and March, the man who shook me out of my politically depressed stupor to fight for something good and true and honest.

I call you out because the man I caucused for in Colorado would never have gotten my vote by abandoning the people who worked so hard to get him where he is now... on the precipice of history.

I call you out because you have let me down. You owe me better than this. You owe us all more than this. You promised to do what is right, damn the cost and damn the old politics of expediency.

There has been far too much damage done to MY country to allow one more pretty-talking politician to inflict more pain. If you aren't going to be the agent of change you promised, tell me now, so we can start looking for someone to take up the mantel of the ideals you espoused but have since abandoned.

I am angry. We deserve better than what we are getting from you now. And I WILL call you out on it because the Barack Obama I voted for would expect me to.

ETA: It looks like about 9,000 on Obama's own website feel the same way I do and are not afraid to disagree with someone they will support for President.

Suck it, trolls.

Didn't end up going 15 miles.

Went 24.2 around the Cherry Creek Reservoir and home. Legs feel like spaghetti. Guess I atoned for the ice cream.

I, uh... shan't be doing that again anytime soon.