Your moment of Keith

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Urinal video game launched

Because sometimes we need a break from scary politics.

TWO Belgian beer fans have launched a video game named Place to Pee, which allows players to fly down ski slopes or kill aliens while relieving themselves at urinals.

Werner Dupont, a software developer and Bart Geraets, an electrical engineer, got the idea while drinking beers.

The Place to Pee' booth is designed for two users at a time and offers two games - blowing up aliens in outer space or skiing down a virtual slope.

Gamers hit their target by aiming at sensors positioned on either side of the urinal.

A specially designed paper cone allows women to play too, the inventors say.

Two at a time? Read More......

e·lit'ist

ELITIST - elit·ist (\ā-ˈlē-tist)

1. A man who can't remember if he has eight homes or nine.
2. John McCain. Read More......

McCain senior adviser Charlie Black misinformed the country about campaign manager's lobbying today

The lies and the subterfuge never stop with these guys. Today, senior McCain campaign adviser Charlie Black, himself a Typhoid Mary of despicable lobbying clients, claimed that McCain campaign manager, Rick Davies, hasn't lobbied in five years.

Small problem. Davies was listed as a lobbyist fewer than 3 years ago. And Davies' name is still on the letterhead of his "old" lobbying firm. That must be getting them some juicy clients nowadays, what with the lobbyist on the letterhead owning John McCain.

This isn't the first time McCain has raised eyebrows over his troubling ties to lobbyists. Bush criticized McCain during the 2000 presidential campaign for taking campaign money from people who had business before his own Senate committee. McCain likes to talk about ethics, but his career, from the Keating Five on, has been anything but.

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One reason vet care is so important

Veterans issues have been in the news recently, appropriately and necessarily, due to Senators Webb's continuing efforts on a 21st century GI Bill, the disgraceful behavior of a VA hospital employee instructing doctors to avoid making PTSD diagnoses, and because of a number of stories about recovery from injuries.

That last category is one that tends to be overlooked, but it's vital. Two factors are combining in this particular war to lower the number of soldiers killed but significantly raise the number of those who survive catastrophic injuries. As a comparison, in Vietnam, there were roughly 60,000 U.S. troops killed and about 300,000 wounded, for a 1 to 5 killed to injured ratio. In Iraq, there are approximately 4,000 dead but nearly 30,000 wounded, making the ratio drastically different -- about 1 to 7.5 killed to injured. I imagine there are several factors involved in this, but two main ones are: (1) The *extraordinary* advances in medicine, especially on the battlefield, and (2) the nature of the injuries -- burns and (relatively) small explosions far more than gunshots and large explosive munitions. Combine these two factors and many more injured troops are being saved than ever before . . . but that means people are surviving with life-changing injuries (major burns, loss of limb(s), etc). Not to mention brain injuries from explosions that often go undiagnosed.

So this issue of veteran care is far from academic, and the effects are far from uncommon. As one example, via a reader comes an NBC interview with a severely burned Army Sergeant that's tough to watch but vitally important for people to understand what this war means for individual lives on a daily basis. There's no need to politicize injuries or the stories of particular people, and readers know my thoughts on the war in general, so regarding this story, I just want to say that Americans should view this war with both eyes open. Too often the real and profound human costs are ignored. Read More......

e·lit'ist

ELITIST - elit·ist (\ā-ˈlē-tist)

1. A man with "eight or nine" homes.
2. John McCain. Read More......

Jesus had 9 houses, 2 wives, and his own artificial lake?

Who knew? Read More......

Another day, another high for oil

How many cars does one have if they have 8 or 9 houses (Cindy McCain can't recall exactly how many houses they have)? Just a wild guess, but I doubt anyone with that many homes thinks much about the price of gas for either their cars or their private jet. Heck, they can own their own oil well with that kind of cash.

Oil closes at $127.05. Would "lower taxes and less regulation" help here too? Read More......

Huff Post: Superdelegates Allegedy Turned Down $1 Million Offer From Clinton Donor

Huff Post reports on a story that I knew of last week, but wasn't going to report until and unless it was confirmed. They appear to have done just that:

One of Sen. Hillary Clinton's top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.

Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter, denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization's other superdelegate backed Clinton....

Saban is the nation's largest political campaign contributor over the last decade, FEC records show, giving nearly $13 million since 1999 to dozens of candidates, PACs, and Democratic campaign committees....

In March, high-ranking donors for Sen. Clinton, including Saban, sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chastising her for suggesting that superdelegates had a responsibility to support the candidate who finished the primary process leading in the pledge delegate count.

It's a little disturbing that the YDA's superdelegates/leaders aren't speaking out publicly about this matter. What happened and when? If David Hardt was on the receiving end of such a conversation, he needs to come clean. Read More......

Obama: "What are John McCain and George Bush afraid of?"

Temper, temper...

In Montana a few minutes ago, MSNBC reports, Obama asked "what are John McCain and George Bush afraid of?" He said he does not fear a "propaganda battle" with Iran" and that the reason Iran has gained influence in recent years is because of "Bush-McCain policies."

Everybody hit the floor, McCain's gonna blow! Read More......

We're to believe that McCain and the RNC can exert no pressure on the TN party?

The Obama campaign shut off the money to an independent group that it didn't want operating outside of its campaign. So why can't the Republicans do the same thing with the Republican state party of Tennessee, the party that keeps running racist ads against Obama, keeps attacking his wife, etc? Are we to believe that the TN republican party gets no support whatsoever from the national GOP? No money, no help, that the TX republican party leaders don't ever meet with the national party people? The local party doesn't even have any visits, meetings, with officials from the White House, from the Congress? Bull. Obama cut off and destroyed outside people he didn't want talking during this campaign. Why haven't John McCain and the GOP done the same with the Republican party of Tennessee? Have they severed all relations? Have they cut off funding? And why isn't the media asking John McCain about this? Someone needs to detail every bit of cooperation between the state party and national republicans, and every time the local Republican racists weigh in, John McCain and the national GOP need to be held accountable. Will John McCain be campaigning in TN? If so, will he be meeting with, speaking to, doing any events with, the local party? You better believe it. Read More......

Facebook vs. Mubarak

Absolutely fascinating:

[I]n Egypt, Facebook is the stage for the latest twist in the generation gap, playing host to politically hungry young Egyptians eager to take on their aging leader.

On May 4, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turns 80. To mark the big day for the man who has ruled them for 26 years, Egyptians who have known no other leader and who are increasingly going online to challenge him have urged their compatriots to go on strike, wear black, and write “No” to Mubarak on their money.

I know all of this, not through news stories, but because activists publicized the details and demands of the strike on Facebook....

A group promoting the May 4 strike has almost 74,000 members, up from about 60,000 a month ago....

To understand how rattled Mubarak’s regime is by the increasing popularity of what one young man called the “Political Party of the Internet,” look no further than Egypt's queen and king of Generation Facebook: Esra Abdel Fattah, 27, and Bilal Diab, 20.

Esra was detained for more than three weeks for forming a Facebook group calling Egyptians to take part in an April 6 general strike. Her group collected more than 60,000 names. She was released after her mother personally appealed to Mubarak and his wife.

What but desperation would inspire a regime with 26 years under its belt to detain a 27-year-old over a Facebook group?

Well, I think the writer is being a bit cavalier, and undercutting her own story. There's little difference, in terms of the threat they pose a repressive regime, between a woman running a Facebook group and an opposition newspaper editor. I'm not saying the woman should be arrested, but don't discount the power of the Internet. Facebook may be "cute," but it and online networking are powerful forces. That's the point of the entire story. So it's not "desperation" that's making the government detain her. It's the real power of the Internet to threaten corrupt regimes in closed societies. Read More......

e·lit'ist

ELITIST - elit·ist (\ā-ˈlē-tist)

1. A man who wants to go fishing so he builds his own lake.
2. John McCain. Read More......

Israel is negotiating with Hamas. When will McCain and Bush denounce them?

I'm waiting for John McCain and George Bush to explain to the American people how the Israelis are actually Holocaust appeasers, that should be fun to watch. Seriously, the media has to ask John McCain and George Bush why their harsh words about Barack Obama don't apply equally to Israel itself? John McCain needs to be asked why his policies for dealing with the Middle East are directly opposite to what Israel is doing? More from Haaretz (via Ben):

Participants at a recent inner cabinet meeting were listening to details of the Egyptian mediation initiative between Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip recently, when a senior minister reportedly reminded those present that Israel does not negotiate, directly or indirectly, with Hamas. Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin interrupted, saying there was no other way to describe the talks.

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Check out the crowd at the Obama rally in Oregon yesterday

Joe linked to the NYT story last night, but check out this photo of Obama talking at the rally. 75,000 people. Ben has another great shot, and notes that it was the Portland Fire Dept. that estimated the crowd at 75k - that means this isn't some inflated number by partisans, it's the real number.

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The failed President continues his litany of failures

George Bush went to the Middle East and came back with pretty much nothing:

Bush arrived back in Washington late Sunday with little to show for the trip. Saudi Arabia rebuffed his plea for help with soaring oil prices, Egypt's leader questioned his seriousness about peacemaking and there was not enough progress in the peace talks to warrant a three-way meeting of Bush with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Well, Bush has "little to show" except higher oil prices. Oh, and he did launch an unprecedented political attack from the parliament of a foreign country. Bush is really building that legacy.

No one in America listens to the guy. Why would anyone in the rest of the world pay any attention to the buffoon?

But since Bush is on such a losing streak, he needs to get out there and campaign for McCain to keep his record intact. Read More......

McCain relying on Bush for campaign cash

Confirming once again that Bush and McCain are inextricably linked, it's Bush who will be raising the bulk of money for McCain's campaign effort. McCain can't raise it for his own campaign, so he has Bush raising dough for the RNC:

To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts — and whose efforts suffered a blow this weekend when a key fund-raiser, Tom Loeffler, resigned because of a new campaign policy on conflicts of interest — is leaning on the Republican National Committee.

Mr. McCain is likely to depend upon the party, which finished April with an impressive $40 million in the bank and has significantly higher contribution limits, to an unprecedented degree to power his campaign, Republican officials said.

To that end, Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf. They will appear together at a fund-raiser in Phoenix on May 27, and the next day the president will take part in a luncheon with Mitt Romney in Salt Lake City and then an exclusive dinner at Mr. Romney’s vacation home in Park City, Utah.

This is another reason why Obama should never ever enter into any campaign finance agreement with McCain. The Arizona Senator already scammed the campaign finance system during the primaries. Now, he's using Bush as his ATM.

Bush wants a third-term. McCain is so desperate, he's tied himself to Bush. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

This is the week Obama wraps up the Democratic nomination by the numbers. He'll garner the majority of pledged delegates on Tuesday -- and the supers should begin to line up quickly from here on out.

So, battle stations everyone. We're moving on to McCain. And, it's going to be intense and ugly. But, as we saw last week, Obama will smack them back every time. Be fun to be on the offensive against McCain, who keeps losing the lobbyists on his campaign staff. McCain surrounds himself with the hierarchy of the GOP lobbying establishment. At the rate McCain is bleeding staff, pretty soon it'll be just him and Cindy (although she's got her own shady past.)

So, what do we need to know? Read More......

ECB: Credit crunch an 'ongoing' issue

At least someone in finance is living in the real world. Not that Bernanke and Wall Street really care about the problems facing most people, but hopefully someone is listening.

The credit crunch is continuing and it is not evident that the worst is over, the head of the European Central Bank has told the BBC.

Jean-Claude Trichet said we were seeing "an ongoing, very serious market correction," during an interview with the BBC business editor Robert Peston.

He warned that if central banks were tempted to cut interest rates now, more serious problems could follow.

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Countries meet to discuss cluster bomb ban

If only the major producers of cluster bombs such as the US, China, Russia and India were present. If only it wasn't so profitable and acceptable to Congress. As it stands today, there is a fairly high rate of unexploded traditional ordnance scattered across the world. Cluster bombs increase that rate exponentially making a bad problem much worse. Even yesterday there was an incident in Tokyo with an unexploded WWII bomb and the world powers have left their mark in every corner of the globe. Farmers in countries such as Angola and Laos often live with the reality of working the soil and exploding leftover ordnance from another era. The people of Lebanon potentially have a much more serious problem since the recent war with Israel left cluster bomblets (probably US made) throughout the battle zones.

"Governments have been talking about the dangers of cluster bombs for years. More delays mean more injuries and death for ordinary people. We have a unique opportunity to ban cluster bombs in Dublin -- it is now or never," she said.

Cluster munitions are among the weapons which pose the gravest dangers to civilians, according to the CMC.

Dropped from planes or fired from artillery, they explode in mid-air, randomly scattering bomblets. Countries are seeking a ban due to the risk of civilians being killed or maimed by their indiscriminate, wide area effect.

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