Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, or Sarah Palin as Tina Fey?

CNN discovered that some of the funniest gobbledygook out of Tina Fey's mouth during her portrayal of Sarah Palin last night on SNL was an actual Sarah Palin quote. Wow. And John McCain thinks this person is qualified to be your president.

Read the rest of this post...

More and more conservatives are criticizing Palin

The LA Times does a nice compilation of the conservatives who have gone public over their concerns about, or outright disdain for, Sarah Palin. Read the rest of this post...

$5000 won't buy you diddly-squat

George Stephanopoulos followed up on Friday night and asked John McCain a little bit about his health care plan this morning. Specifically, he wanted to know if it's true McCain plans to tax your health care benefits at work as if they're salary. Not only is it true - very, very true - but you're not getting the full story. McCain says he'll give you a $2500/$5000 (individual/family) tax credit to go out and buy your own insurance instead. Sounds great, but do you know how much insurance costs these days?

Overall, premiums for family coverage increased to $12,680 and premiums for single coverage increased to $4,704, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust. Employers pick up, on average, about three-quarters of that cost.

Guess who gets to pay the difference if you want to keep the coverage you've got? Got an extra few thousand dollars laying around? Me neither.

So you go out and buy a cheaper plan because it's all you can afford now, and you just hope to G-d you don't get sick. Because those cheap plans cover nothing and come with high deductibles, higher co-pays, and so much fine print that you're going to have the equivalent of the subprime mortgage crisis in health care. A lot of very sick people who cannot afford to pay their bills and who didn't know their health insurance plan was crap.

Here's the exchange from This Week. It's not what McCain says. It's what he doesn't say that matters:

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the other points he made in the debate that you weren’t able to respond to in the debate, he said that, for the first time ever, you would tax health benefits by taking away the deduction that employers now get to provide health benefits.

MCCAIN: Right -- this all began during World War II with price and wage controls. And employers then, because they couldn’t give them pay raises, gave them increased health benefits.

Now, my plan gives $5,000 tax -- refundable tax credit for every family in America. That, for small -- a lot -- many -- huge number of small-business people is a great step forward because they don’t provide health insurance for their employees. They can’t, and they can’t afford it.

This will, actually, by giving the -- the worker and the family tax credits, they’ll be able to go out and then select their own health care insurance.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But even -- but several...

MCCAIN: And we will be able to then make sure that they’re able to get the lowest cost, most available, most effective health insurance.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But several studies have shown that, for people who now get their health care through employers, this could be a tax increase over time. And your own economic adviser, Douglas Holtz- Eakin, told the New York Times, said the campaign cannot yet project how many taxpayers might see their taxes go up, but for some, Mr. McCain’s health care tax credits would not be large enough to compensate for his proposal to eliminate the tax breaks.

MCCAIN: Actually, my position is that it will be able to give people actually more money to go out and purchase tax -- health -- health insurance on their own. And only those with the Cadillac, gold-plated health insurance policies today are the ones who might suffer from it, the ones...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So they would see their taxes go up, potentially?

MCCAIN: It depends on -- on what plan they have, but that’s usually the wealthiest people. Ordinary working Americans have the kind of -- or overwhelming majority of them have the health insurance plans that this tax credit, refundable tax credit will actually put more money in their pockets for purchase of health care than what they had before.

McCain is so out of touch with how everyday people live and what everyday people pay that he thinks his plan is a gift.

It is. Just not for us. Merry Christmas, insurance industry. Read the rest of this post...

AP Investigation: Palin got zoning aid, gifts

AP:

Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual, an Associated Press investigation shows.

When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception — and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard.

She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free "awesome facial" she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The "absolutely gorgeous flowers" she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home.

Read the rest of this post...

The last thing the McCain campaign campaign should be doing is dropping 'gambling' metaphors

The McCain campaign accused the NYT today of "gambling away what little credibility it still has." You see, McCain is angry that the NYT exposed his extensive ties to gambling lobbyists, and the fact that McCain's work exposing the Abramoff scandal may have simply been McCain's attempt to help yet another lobbyist who was a competitor of Abramoff. Ooops.

But back to McCain's gambling analogies, let me make a few points. One, a guy who just gambled away the security of our country by picking an idiot as his running mate, has no right to accuse anyone else of recklessness. Second, should John McCain, a known actual gambler (with money), be using gambling metaphors to demean others? (Reminds me of when McCain's spokeswoman suggested that POW's don't "cheat" - hmmm, tell that to McCain's first wife.) But back to gambling, if gambling is so bad, then why does McCain himself gamble? And finally, newsflash, but McCain voters don't read the New York Times. They read the Washington Times, and watch FOX News. The newspapers and TV networks need to wake up to the fact that Republicans who don't like you are people who don't read you and people who don't watch you, so it doesn't matter if they threaten to walk away from you. You never had them in the first place. The NYT got the best revenge on the McCain campaign - they told the truth. John McCain ought to try it some time. Read the rest of this post...

Dear Lord, he's hallucinating now

McCain is now claiming that while he stayed at home yesterday, and then went out for a night on the town wining and dining Joe Lieberman at one of DC's richest restaurants, he was actually the guy responsible for everyone coming to a deal on the bailout. Yes, it wasn't the folks on the Hill actually working on the deal - it was McCain, sitting at home trying to get the Betamax to stop blinking. But McCain actually believes, apparently, that he was busy negotiating deals on Capitol Hill, when he wasn't. Uh huh. Maybe he was able to see the Capitol dome from his window. Read the rest of this post...

Help Dennis Shulman defeat the right wing, anti-dog, oil company loving Scott Garrett

You have to meet Dennis Shulman. And, you have to help send him to Congress.

Shulman is the blind rabbi running for Congress in New Jersey's 5th Congressional District. This is one of those sleeper race. With enough resources, Shulman can upset the incumbent, Scott Garrett. The New York Times profiled the race in an article titled "Rabbi With the Compelling Back Story Is Not to Be Ruled Out."

Shulman is a true progressive across the board from the Iraq War to the environment to FISA to LGBT equality. He'll bring a much needed thoughtful voice to our issues in Congress. Dennis Shulman will be a better Democrat. This is a wise, decent smart man (and he has a very good campaign staff.)

There are many, many reasons Garrett should lose: He's one of the most conservative members of Congress, which is wrong since he's from New Jersey. He's one of the best friends of the oil industry. But, if you need one reason to help Shulman defeat Garrett, know this: Garrett is anti-dog (and anti-animal). I'm not kidding. My fellow dog lover, Jane Hamsher, reported the shocking facts:

* Garrett was one of 23 Representatives (and basically the only one in the northeast) to vote against this post-Katrina act that Bush signed into law. The act required municipalities to also include plans for household pets and service animals in disaster planning. It wasn't even a funding act, so Garrett's vote was strictly on principle.
* He also voted against a bill that upgraded penalties to felony-level for illegal transportation of fighting dogs (the crime Michael Vick was charged with); it also banned interstate and foreign commerce in cockfighting. The bill passed 368 to 39 in the House and unanimously in the Senate.
* He voted against the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, which passed 263 to 146.
* He voted against HR 3824, which including the deauthorization of “critical habitats” for endangered species.
* He voted against HR 249, which restored the prohibition on commercial sale and slaughter of wild horses and burros.
* He voted against HR 2643, the Polar Bear Protection Act, which would have banned federal funding that enables imports of sport-hunted polar bear trophies from Canada. The bill failed.

As Blue Jersey notes, Garrett has received a 17 out of 100 on the Humane Society Legislative Fund’s most recent scorecard, up from 14 for the last one.

That should be enough...but there's more. Like many of his GOP brethren, Garrett talks a good game on taxes, then scams the system himself. Shulman is on the air with an ad busting Garrett:



If you love dogs or despise the oil companies or just want to beat the right wing, show Dennis Shulman some support. Help keep the ad on the air. We've set up an ActBlue page to make it easy.

Scott Garrett has to go. It's going to take the blind rabbi candidate to beat him. Read the rest of this post...

McCain takes back what Palin says about Pakistan. Just takes it back. Just like that.

John McCain doesn't like it when people ask Sarah Palin questions. And, we're learning that just because Sarah Palin says something, it doesn't mean she meant it. Mean people are sticking microphones in her face -- and McCain doesn't like that. So, he just took back what she said. Just like that:

Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin's stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama's support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists

"She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos of Palin. "In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that's—that's a person's position… This is a free country, but I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitve policy statement made by Governor Palin."

Saturday night, while on a stop for cheesesteaks in South Philadelphia, Palin was questioned by a Temple graduate student about whether the U.S. should cross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

"If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin said.

During Friday night's presidential debate in Mississippi, Obama took a similar stance and condemned the Bush administration for failing to act on the possibility terrorists are in Pakistan.

McCain is clearly outraged that Palin is getting tough questions. But, we still haven't heard John McCain respond to Obama's challenge at the debate. Why is John McCain so unwilling to say he'd take out Bin Laden?:

Read the rest of this post...

McCain never bothered showing up for the bailout talks Saturday, but he did have a very swanky dinner with Joe Lieberman

You know how John McCain told his supporters Friday night that he was returning to Washington to join the negotiations on the bailout bill?

The McCain campaign just sent out an email to supporters that highlights his return to DC tonight to "to resume negotiations with the Administration and Congressional leaders from both parties to forge a bipartisan solution to our economic crisis."

Yeah, um, that would be a lie. McCain spent Saturday loafing around at his apartment. So much for returning to DC to focus like a laser on the bailout. ThinkProgress has more:

After declaring he’d return to Washington to help with the bailout negotiations immediately after last night’s debate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) never went to Capitol Hill today. In fact, McCain stayed largely holed up in his Arlington apartment, leaving only to go to his campaign headquarters just around the block, the New York Times reports:

Asked why Mr. McCain did not go to Capitol Hill after coming back to Washington to help with negotiations, [McCain adviser] Mr. Salter replied that “he can effectively do what he needs to do by phone.’’

Did you catch that? McCain claimed he suspended his campaign (he didn't) in order to rush back to Washington (he didn't) so that he could attend the bailout talks. Then McCain said he could do it all by phone, which means he didn't have to return to Washington at all.

Okay, stay with me here. Because, while yesterday, McCain was supposed to be working the phones, he apparently wasn't. Because, today, Think Progress reports (with video) that both McCain and his sidekick, Lindsey Graham, said you can't phone into something like this. In the true drama queen language you'd expect from Lindsey, he said, "Thank God John came back." So, if McCain wasn't on the phone, since this was something you can't phone in, and he wasn't actually at the meetings, what was he doing?

It gets better because we now know what McCain was doing last night. While key members of Congress were working at the Capitol on Saturday night, McCain went out for dinner at one of Washington's swankiest hotels with Joe Lieberman. Politico provided the details:

As his colleagues worked on the deal at the Capitol Saturday night, McCain and his wife, Cindy, dined with Sen. Joe Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, at Cafe Mozu inside Washington’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

Read the rest of this post...

Get off my lawn!

Whether McCain did or didn't mutter "horseshit!" twice during his debate with Obama, he sure did mutter a lot. Think about that: During the first presidential debate, when the eyes of the world were watching, McCain was muttering under his breath. That's not normal. It's erratic.

Someone needs to take some anger management classes. (I will not say trollop, I will not say trollop, I will not say trollop...) More on the exchange here If McCain hasn't addressed his raging temper by the time he is 72 years old, it's not going to happen. It hardly looks presidential as McCain loses his composure during a simple debate. How will he guide America in dangerous situations if he's unable to control his temper in such a friendly and important setting?

In 2000, the pundits went crazy when Al Gore sighed. We should as much furor over McCain's mutterings. Read the rest of this post...

McCain's Night at Foxwoods Casino: A tale of how the gambling industry came to love McCain and all of his lobbyists.

NY Times has a long article today examining John McCain's ties to gambling --- and McCain's own love of gambling. Lots of lobbyists made a lot of money lobbying McCain about gambling. Lots of times, McCain showed up at the tables. So, on one level, this is another story about McCain and the coterie of lobbyists who surround him. Jed wrote about McCain and gambling lobbyists back in May.

McCain has really been a great ally to the gaming industry and many of his closest aides have benefited handsomely. But, there's another angle to this issue, which isn't addressed by the NY Times. The evangelicals are fierce opponents of gambling. Yet, here's their guy promoting it in a big way.

These first few paragraphs give a flavor of the piece. It's an in-depth look at another aspect of McCain's tangled ties to lobbyists, which hasn't had much attention:

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain.

As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

So, the NY Times didn't quite back down after all the McCain threats and hissy fits. And, speaking of hissy fits, this quote from Tucker Bounds:

Mr. McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Bounds, would not discuss the senator’s night of gambling at Foxwoods, saying: “Your paper has repeatedly attempted to insinuate impropriety on the part of Senator McCain where none exists — and it reveals that your publication is desperately willing to gamble away what little credibility it still has.”

He's a bitchy one, that Tucker (there are a couple of Tuckers on the McCain campaign). But, the point isn't the NY Times gambling. It's McCain's own gambling and the lobbyists who raked in so much money from gambling interests to lobby McCain, who loves gambling.

Funny how this issue didn't come up during the Saddleback forum. But, it should be the talk of the religious right today. Read the rest of this post...

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria destroys Sarah Palin, and McCain for picking her

It's rather amazing the degree to which everyone the bottom has fallen out on Sarah Palin ever since her horrendous Katie Couric interview. People weren't too sure she had what it took before. Now they're convinced she's a buffoon. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, just eviscerates her in the latest Newsweek. It's an incredibly well-written, well-documented, and devastating piece of journalism. And it doesn't just indict Palin, it blasts McCain for risking the future of our country.

Palin Is Ready? Please.

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"?...

This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start....

Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

Read the rest of this post...

SNL does Palin again

Read the rest of this post...

Swollen, lisping McCain appears on ABC's THIS WEEK

Remember, the reason we are forced to speculate about John McCain's health is because John McCain refuses to release his medical records. McCain let a few journalists review his records for 3 hours, that's it. They couldn't make copies, they had to leave everything behind. They got about 5 seconds to review each of other 1000 pages, then they had to move on to the next page. It's patently absurd. But that's where we are, due to John McCain's own choice in hiding his medical records. Thus, we are forced to speculate whether our potential next president is sick or dying.

McCain looks horrible. Something is wrong with him. I'm watching McCain be interviewed by Stephanopoulos, and in addition to being even more comatose than usual, McCain's bottom lip looks swollen, his top lip doesn't even move, and he sounds like he's lisping a bit now (his "s" is whistling). Watch it. His mouth is swollen, and I'm not talking about his swollen left cheek from the cancer surgery. I wish they would tell us what is going on with McCain's health. Any readers have any expertise in this - is it botox, a mixture of that and some ailment, or what? This brings me to mind McCain's other odd health issue, his left eye and its out of synch blinking.

Oh, and McCain just told Stephanopoulos that he hates how members of Congress are forced to vote for huge bills that are generally good bills, even though individual members may add bad pieces of pork to the bill. He said that even he would probably be forced to vote for a good bill even if it had some objectionable pork in it. Funny, then, that McCain criticized Obama for voting for the Highway Bill even though it contained the Bridge to Nowhere in it. And in fact, McCain voted against the bill, so why now is he saying that he'd probably vote for legislation, good legislation (like the highway bill), that included some extraneous pork? Read the rest of this post...

Bailout agreement reached in Congress. Obama calls it "culmination of a sorry period in our history."

Reuters:

U.S. lawmakers on Sunday were set to sign off on a deal to create a $700 billion government fund to buy bad debt from ailing banks in a bid to stem a credit crisis threatening the global economy.

After marathon talks into the wee hours of Sunday morning, congressional leaders from both parties emerged with an agreement that altered key parts of a Wall Street bailout program initially proposed by the Bush administration.

Here is Obama's full statement on the deal:

“The breakthrough between Congress and the Administration is the culmination of a sorry period in our history, in which reckless speculation and greed on Wall Street and lax oversight from Washington led to a meltdown of our financial markets. But regardless of how we got here, a failure to deal with the current crisis would have devastating consequences for our economy, costing millions of Americans their jobs and retirement security.

“To understand how this tentative deal was reached, it's important to remember how this all began. The Bush Administration initially asked for a blank check to respond to this problem, which I strongly opposed. It would have been unconscionable to expect the American people to hand this Administration or any Administration a $700 billion check with no conditions and no oversight when a lack of oversight in Washington and on Wall Street is exactly what got us into this mess. If the American people are being asked to pay for the solution to this crisis, their tax dollars must be protected.

There's more. The rest is after the break.

“That is why over the past ten days, in conversations with the President, Secretary of Treasury and leaders of Congress, I laid out the four core principles I believed had to guide any solution: oversight by an independent board; protections for taxpayers to ensure that they are treated like investors and that they receive any profits - and recoup any losses - from this plan; measures to help homeowners stay in their homes; and rules to make sure CEOs are not being rewarded at taxpayers' expense. While I look forward to reviewing the language of the legislation, it appears that the tentative deal embraces these principles.

“When taxpayers are asked to take such an extraordinary step because of the irresponsibility of a relative few, it is not a cause for celebration. But this step is necessary. Now Washington has to show the same sense of urgency in dealing with the crisis facing Main Street and the middle class by passing an emergency economic stimulus plan that would create jobs by rebuilding our crumbing roads; shore up flagging state budgets to prevent drastic cuts in education and health care; and extend expiring unemployment insurance benefits for those who've lost their jobs in this downturn and cannot find new ones.

“One final point. If elected President, I will order a thorough review of this plan to make sure that it fully lives up to the principles I've laid out. And I will also move quickly to upgrade our financial regulations for the 21st century, establishing new rules of the road and tougher oversight to ensure that the American taxpayers are never again forced to put their money and their futures at risk because of bad decisions in Washington and on Wall Street.”

Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

NBC News just told me there's a deal on the bailout. NY Times reports it, too.

It's been a crazy couple weeks on the campaign. Today is a big day on the shows. McCain and Obama are doing appearances.

McCain took the easy route and is appearing on ABC. Will George dare to ask McCain about his odd, angry demeanor at the debate? Will George dare to ask McCain about his erratic behavior? I doubt it. I think George is afraid of McCain.

Obama is appearing with Scheiffer. Barack has been the steady one. McCain is a lot older and has been around a lot longer (as he kept reminding us during the debate), but Obama has been the candidate acting like a president, not like a kid with ADD.

Bill Clinton is on "Meet." It's become pretty clear he's quite fond of Palin. He "get[s] why she’s hot out there.” Of course he does. But, Democrats are trying to keep the focus on the presidential race and electing Barack Obama.

NBC also has the Colorado Senate candidates.

Should be fun watching. Here's the lineup:

ABC's "This Week" — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

___

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

___

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Former President Clinton; David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist; Steve Schmidt, senior adviser to McCain; Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo.; former Rep. Bob Schaffer, R-Colo.

___

CNN's "Late Edition" — Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari; Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Kerry, D-Mass; Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Provide the commentary, please. Read the rest of this post...

British mortgage lender to be nationalized, Belgian-Dutch bank on the list

This list of troubled banks and lenders expands. Britain's Northern Rock was nationalized last year after a run on the bank and just over a year later, it's the UK's Bradford & Bingley who are about to be taken over by the government. Also in talks this weekend is Fortis, a major European bank, who is seeking money to stay afloat. (Be cautious of any bank out there that offers interest well above the market norm because that suggests an urgent need for cash reserves.)

Who will be the next to fall? Phil Gramm's UBS seems to be defying gravity considering their $38 billion write-downs but then again, maybe there are plenty of people out there who are willing to invest billions to cover years of financial losses. Just because it hasn't worked elsewhere so far - as we witnessed with Lehmen, who failed and buyers moved in without buying old debt - doesn't mean a miracle can't happen. Read the rest of this post...

FDA warns on melamine-tainted instant coffee

In other words, run like hell to throw that stuff out. If the Bush-FDA is actually issuing a warning, it's really bad because they never lift a finger even when the evidence is overwhelming. (They still insist the Bisphenol A (BPA) bottled originally produced by Nalgene and loved by backpackers - myself included - are OK to use despite health safety departments and studies around the world suggesting the opposite.)

Wouldn't it be nice and a bit of a crazy idea to have food that's actually food and then regulate accordingly? Just as Bush-McCain Republicans hate regulation in the banking/finance sector, they also have fought against it with food and pharmaceuticals. Can we quit the little word games that these anti-regulation types keep playing? Their extremist right wing theories are killing the rest of us, so just move on. You failed.

U.S. regulators warned the public on Friday not to consume seven Mr. Brown instant coffee and milk tea products that were made in China because of concerns they may be contaminated with melamine.

The Food and Drug Administration said the products were recalled by King Car Food Industrial Co Ltd "due to possible contamination with melamine."

Infant formula tainted with the industrial chemical has resulted in hospitalization for thousands of Chinese babies with painful kidney stones. Four have died.

Oh and over 54,000 people in China have become sick. Read the rest of this post...

Any idea what this is?

UPDATE: There are a few correct answers in the comments. We added orange flower water but it is also used for rose water. A few drops in a cup of coffee or a fruit salad and you're set to go. I walked right by them before and had no idea. I'm unable to confirm whether it could also be Palin's radio for the debate though it would be slightly more discrete than Bush's radio on his back in 2004.

Some good friends brought this back from the Maghreb recently and I had no idea what it was until they explained. Fortunately I had what is supposed to go inside after our recent visit to Tunisia. The coffee mug is there to give you an idea about size of the object which is used at the table. Take a guess and I'll update later in the day. I'm desperate for caffeine at the moment. Read the rest of this post...

You can't even trust her to buy a cheesesteak

She really is that big an idiot:

Sarah Palin told a customer at a Philadelphia restaurant on Saturday that the United States should “absolutely” launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the event that it becomes necessary to “stop the terrorists from coming any further in,” a comment similar to the one John McCain condemned Barack Obama for making during last night’s presidential debate.

During Friday’s debate, Obama criticized the Bush administration for sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan without ridding the border region of terrorists.

“If the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out,” Obama added.

McCain fired back hard, arguing that newly elected Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has had his “hands full” and suggesting that Obama’s tough talk was naïve.

“You don’t say that out loud,” McCain said. “If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”

Palin’s apparent disagreement with McCain’s position on Pakistan came as the Alaska governor was picking up a couple of cheesesteaks at Tony Luke’s in South Philadelphia. She was approached by a man wearing a Temple University t-shirt, who later identified himself as Michael Rovito.

Read the rest of this post...