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Awesome Star Wars comment I read

I won't go into how exactly it is I ended up here, but this line from a commenter was awesome:

I guess, "Master Luke you're standing on..." isn't enough warning for a Jedi. That or he's too busy using his dropping a deuce face, um I mean the force to actually hear 3PO's advice. Let's face it, Luke's a prick.

Where does the money go?

People say that Obama is a socialist, and wants to redistribute your wealth. For one, socialism is a bit more than "spreading the wealth." Something about the state controlling the means of production, and all that. What Obama wants to do is simply make the tax code slight more progressive. Specifically, the richest 5% of households see their marginal tax rates for income above $250K move from 36% to 39%. Why suddently that's "socialism" is beyond me. But taking a gander at yon pie chart, it should make it obvious why this needs to be done, and that Obama is proposing isnt' really enough, IMO.

great shot

This is just a great photo.

How dumb can you get

Apparently some on the Right are complaining that at a recent speech in Toledo, Ohio, Obama had put up his own flag:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200810160022?f=h_latest


Now, I happen to have lived in Ohio, and was always quite proud that Ohio's flag is actually a burgee, which made it quite unique. But even without know that, you'd think these people could seriously put 2 and 2 together and figure out the state of Ohio begins with the letter "O." Good god.

ACORN and voter registration

(Can you tell I'm having problems sleeping?)

In case the 3 readers of this blog noticed, I italicized "registration" in my last post when referring to voter registration. Why? Well, somebody already said it better than I. When it comes to the reporting on this, here's the deal:

"1) ...the statutes of most of those states require third parties registering prospective voters to submit all registration forms they receive; and 2) that actual instances of illegal votes being cast as a result of registration fraud are extremely rare."
(http://mediamatters.org/items/200810160020?newsref=www.eschatonblog.com)

This whole fixation on ACORN is one big put-on. It's voter registration! There's no vote fraud, which should be patently obvious, because we haven't voted yet. You can do whatever you want with your voting registration, but when you go to vote, you need to be able to vote as who's registered. Mickey Mouse isn't going to vote. You can complete 100 registrations for yourself, they'll still only let you vote once (er, we'll leave Chicago history out of this).

So when you hear somebody report about ACORN and voter fraud, roll your eyes and yell at the TV, "this is voter registration fraud!!!" This is not a threat to our democracy, and is simply a way for the GOP to discredit the election results, since McCain is going to get blown-out by Obama.

Joe the Plumber

This is just getting too rich, I have to post something.

Joe the Plumber is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher. He's not a licensed plumber. That's not really a big deal in and of itself, but just to note that the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters has endorsed Obama. Joe's also got a lien for unpaid Ohio taxes in 2007. Again, not a huge deal, perhaps an honest mistake or mix-up. ( I'm not being snarky, I was recently audited because my mortgage lender and student loan lender neglected to report my financial information to the IRS. Yeah, really.)

But it sort of keeps going from here. The business he's looking to buy, by Joe's own admission, probably won't make more than $250,000 a year. Based on interviews with him, he just sounds like a standard anti-tax Republican. Which probably makes sense, because it turns out he's a registered Republican (granted, it appears he only first registered in March). But this again gets better. It was initially reported that he wasn't registered. Turns out this was likely due to a mispelling in the voter registration database in Ohio. Which has been a big deal, because the GOP has been using this as an excuse to hit voter registration fraud as the potential to end civilization as we know it. Or just cause Obama to win a total blow-out victory, take your pick.

So the guy McCain refers to 24 times in the last debate isn't a licensed plumber, isn't currently in any danger of having his taxes raised by anybody, isn't likely in the future to have his taxes raised by anybody, is actually a Republican, and may in fact have already had his voter registration purged due to GOP efforts in Ohio based on the fear of voter registration fraud. Seems like a good plan to keep bringing Joe up, this won't blow up in McCain's face.

General: Iraq-style surge won't work in Afghanistan

That's the title of an article about Gen. McKiernen, commander in Afghanistan:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081002/news_1n2afghan.html

Some select quotes:

“Afghanistan is not Iraq”

“The word I don't use for Afghanistan is 'surge' ”

I watched the debate on NBC, and didn't see the Truth Squad, or whatever they call themselves, say anything about this, while a blogger found the above article online during the debate just a few minutes after it was said:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/221584.php

This is pretty significant. Palin and McCain are claiming they'll listen to their commanders on the ground. Doesn't sound like it to me. We could use a bit better "fact checking" than what the jokers on NBC provided.